Odonnell peter modesty.., p.3
O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 09 - Dragon's claw, page 3
“Och, she has Aborigine friends?”
“We both ‘ave, but that’s another story.”
“All right, go on.”
“Well, then she went on to see old Ben Hollinson. Ben used to be in charge of our boat section during The Network days. Now he builds small boats in Brisbane.”
She knew about The Network. It was the criminal organisation, based in the Mediterranean, which Modesty Blaise had set up when she was in her teens, after wandering the Middle East from childhood. She had found a man called Willie Garvin in a squalid Far East gaol two or three years later, secured his release, and re-made him completely by giving him first trust and then responsibility. In return, the new Willie Garvin had given her his total loyalty once and for all, and had become her right arm.
Looking at Willie now, as he sipped his tea and slowly turned the dial of the vernier control, Janet found it impossible to imagine that he could ever have been a sullen, friendless creature, filled with hate for himself and for all men. But he had assured her soberly that this was true.
“… So Modesty went up to Brisbane to look in on Ben,” he was saying, “and there was this boat to be delivered to a bloke in Wellington. Thirty-four foot glass-fibre sloop with a diesel and a self-steering rig. Roller-furling gear for the jib, to make for easier ‘andling solo. Ben was going to sail the boat down to Wellington ‘imself, because he reckoned by doing that he’d open up a nice market in New Zealand for this new design. Then he broke ‘is arm, so the Princess said she’d deliver the boat for ‘im.”
“Surely that’s a wee bit reckless, Willie? She always says she’s awful cautious. So do you, for that matter.”
“She is. We both are, Jan. Oh, I suppose there’s a bit of risk from tropical storms and all the usual cruel-sea stuff, but the boat’s ‘ad a shakedown cruise and she said it ‘andles beautifully. Makes a fair speed in a decent breeze, and can look after ‘erself in a forty knot gale without turning somersaults. Anyway, Ben Hollinson’s a friend, and you know what she’s like.”
“Aye, Willie, I know. I take it she’s a good sailor?”
“Sure. And a first-class navigator.”
“Sometimes you make me sick, the two of you. You’re good at too many things, Willie.”
He said seriously, “Not really, but I suppose we’re lucky ‘aving loads of time to spend on whatever it is. Modesty’s always setting ‘erself something new to learn, and I picked it up from ‘er. Hire the best teacher and then go at it pretty well full time for a month, or two months, or a year, or ‘owever long it takes, whether it’s sailing or gliding or scuba-diving, or maybe learning a new language”
He broke off and his hand froze on the dial as the mush was suddenly deadened by a barely audible hum, and a voice said clearly: “… and I’ve jiggered around with the aerial now, but maybe we have one-way communication only. On the other hand you might have gone back to bed by now, in which case I’m wasting my time, but let’s try once more. G3QRM, G3QRM, here is G3QRO stroke maritime mobile calling on sked. How copy?”
Lady Janet started and blinked at the set, unable quite to take in that the voice could be coming from a girl in a boat on the Tasman Sea, half a world away. Willie picked up the mike, smiling, and said: “G3QRO stroke maritime mobile, here is G3QRM replying. You’re coming in clear as a bell, Princess. Haven’t picked up a whisper from you on any sked since you left Brisbane, but you suddenly seem to have knocked a hole in the wall. How copy?”
She came through so strongly that he turned down the volume. “You’re like next door, Willie, and it’s lovely to hear your voice. I always kid myself I’m the quiet sort, but after being on my own for five days I find I’m basically garrulous. I’ve been talking to some dolphins quite a bit today. I squeak at them and they squeak back. What’s your QTH, Willie?”
“The Treadmill, and as it ‘appens I’ve got Janet beside me.”
“It must be … what? Gone one o’clock summer time? I bet she made you some tea.”
Willie looked surprised. “As a matter of fact, she did. How d’you guess, Princess?”
“I’m psychic. Give her my best and tell her not to spoil you.”
Janet mouthed words. Willie nodded and said into the mike, “Done. And hers to you. What’s the trip like?”
“Very comfortable so far, except for a hell of a squall a couple of days ago. It only lasted an hour, but I thought The Wasp was going to start turning cartwheels with me.”
“She didn’t, though?”
“No, she’s a very good boat, and we had no real trouble. Apart from that, the weather’s been fine and the sea calm to moderate. Enough wind to keep me going nicely most of the time, except for a couple of hours dead calm yesterday afternoon. I didn’t use the engine, though, I went over the side on a lifeline and had a swim with Bubble and Squeak, who seem to be head prefects of the school.”
“The dolphins?”
“Yes. Oh, they’re gorgeous, Willie. I’m sure it’s the same lot that turn up every afternoon. My fellow-traveller in the morning is a shark, a whitetip. He seems to be a loner, and he pushes off when the dolphins arrive.”
“Is he with you now?”
“Yes, I can see him a couple of hundred yards astern. He tends to lag behind, then comes spurting up and swims round the boat. I think he fancies me with a bit of egg and breadcrumb.”
“Hang on a sec, Jan’s saying something. Oh yes, she wonders ‘ow you keep yourself occupied when the going’s good.”
“You can answer that one, Willie. Time never hangs heavy, there’s always some cleaning or maintenance to do, and I often spend hours just trimming the sails, trying to get an extra half knot out of her. You know how you can fool around indefinitely on a boat. After dark I usually spend a few hours with the tape recorder and a Teach Yourself Russian course I’m working on.”
“Does the self-steering rig work okay?”
“It’s pretty good. A swivel sheared through last night and The Wasp came round to the north-east, but I woke up.”
Willie made a mental note to explain that to Janet later. Modesty had a quite inexplicable gift of orientation. Put her down blindfold in any part of the world, and after a little contemplation she could give you her position plus or minus five degrees north or south, east or west, and could also give you local time to within a few minutes. That she should be roused from sleep by the boat turning off course was quite unsurprising to him.
“I take my hat off to these intrepid round-the-world sailors,” she was saying. “I don’t think I’d sleep at all if I was anywhere near a shipping route. Even on this bit of watery desert I get the wind up at night. I lie tucked up in the bunk with my ears pricked, imagining some mile-long oil tanker about to tread on me. It’s stupid, of course. The chances of seeing anything at all before I sight North Island are pretty remote, so …” Her voice trailed away. Willie lifted an eyebrow, drew breath to speak, then hesitated. As he did so there came the hum of her transmission and her voice saying, “Well I’m damned. I can see something out of the portlight. Looks like a small inflatable, and only about half a mile away to starboard. Hang on while I go on deck and take a look, Willie love.”
Lady Janet took Willie’s cup and poured more tea. “I’m glad I came up,” she said. “I’d not have believed what an exciting thing it is to talk to somebody on the other side of the world. By radio, I mean, like this. It’s an awful lot different from the telephone.”
“M’mm.” Willie tugged at his ear absently. “It’s rum about this dinghy, though. Or whatever it is.”
“I suppose there’s all sorts of things floating about on the sea.”
“Sure. But seeing something like that would be about the same as spotting a split pea on Loch Lomond, in proportion.”
Janet shook her head firmly, the chestnut hair glinting. “Not when it’s Her Highness there, Willie. She makes things happen like … like a poltergeist. No, I mean she attracts happenings to take place near wherever she happens to be. Lord, but that was a poor gawky sentence.”
Willie grinned and patted her hand. “You’re beautiful and you’re sexy. I don’t care about you talking funny and not being literate.”
“Cockney sod,” said Lady Janet amiably.
Five minutes passed before Modesty came on the air again. She was breathing a little heavily, as if she had been busy.“Sorry to keep you but I’ve been getting all the canvas down and changing course. Using the engine now. I’ve had a look through binoculars, and it’s a small inflatable all right, a yacht’s tender. There’s someone in it. I can see him when a wave tilts the thing, which isn’t too well inflated. I think it’s a man. It’s not a skeleton, anyway, I could see that much. He’s just sprawled in the bottom, not moving. The trouble is, my camp-follower is taking an interest. Seamus the Shark. Every now and then he butts at the dinghy, and sooner or later he’ll either turn it over or bite a chunk out. So if the man’s alive, I’d better get him aboard The Wasp as fast as I can.”
Janet felt a chill of apprehension touch her stomach. She glanced quickly at Willie, and saw that his face was impassive.
“Quite apart from the shark,” Modesty was saying, “we have a weather problem coming up. In the last few minutes the sky in the north-east has turned almost black, so I imagine this morning’s forecast is going to be right. Bad weather for two or three days, we’re promised.” Urgency touched her voice. “I have to go now, we’re getting pretty close. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, but we might lose the conditions, so don’t worry if you hear nothing. I’ll come through on sked whenoh God, the bastard’s turned it over. Off and clear with eighty-eight.”
The mush closed in as the hum of her transmission ceased. Willie gazed at the set without expression, eyes half closed. Janet felt a sudden sweat break out upon her body. She slid an arm through Willie’s, and said in a low voice, “What will she do?”
“Dunno, Jan.” His tone was as expressionless as his face. “Depends on a lot of things. But if we don’t ‘ear in a couple of minutes it’ll mean she’s ‘ad to go in the water to get ‘im.”
“Oh, dear God.”
He picked up a pencil and pulled a pad towards him. “All we can do is wait.”
*
The Wasp had been no more than fifty yards from the dinghy when a butt from the shark had combined with the lift of a wave to capsize the little inflatable. She cut the engine and held her course, steering to interpose the boat between the dinghy and the dorsal fin which had moved smoothly away and was now circling back.
She was quite sure that in the moment of capsizing she had seen the man move of his own volition, as if roused from stupor and trying feebly to cling to the side of the dinghy. Bringing the boat round with the last of its momentum, she let the tiller go and stood up. A seventy-foot nylon lifeline was already secured about her waist. She wore very short denim shorts, much salt-stained, with a nylon bikini top. Her feet were bare, her black hair drawn back and tied in a club at the nape of her neck. Once the sun was well up she usually spent most of the day naked, but for a whim she had decided to dress up for the call to England. In her hand was the small deck mop.
She slipped the three-foot handle under her belt now, so that it lay along her flank, unhooked a section of the guard-wire, and dropped overside the short rope ladder she used for bathing. The half-naked, blue-trousered body came to the surface, rolling over, arms moving feebly. Pulling on her scuba mask, she slipped quietly over the side and swam towards the man, who was slowly sinking again.
Sharks favoured easy prey. The irregular sound of a feeble or disabled creature, fish or mammal, was a sure attraction, and so she swam with a firm and measured leg-beat. Forty feet from the drifting boat she drew up her legs, dived, caught the man under his arms from behind, and brought him to the surface. Lying on her back, one arm hooked under his chin to hold his head high on her breast, she continued to kick steadily with her legs as she drew in an arm’s length of the nylon lifeline, twisted her head to grip it with her teeth, then reached out to haul in some more, dragging herself and her burden a little nearer the boat with each pull.
The waves were not yet high, but had become steeper with an increase in the wind. Sometimes as she twisted her head to bite on the line she could see only the mast above the waves, sometimes the whole boat sliding over a crest. She felt the man try to kick with his legs, and paused before biting on the rope again to say, “Lie still, lie still, please. It’s very important.” Her voice was breathless with exertion, but she tried to keep it steady and emphatic, hoping to reach through his stupor and that he understood English. For whatever reason, he stopped moving. She kept her own strong leg-beat going and began to haul in again with hand and teeth.
The whitetip was not a big shark, perhaps twelve feet long, but it was a man-eater. It would be circling now within sight distance, moving cautiously, and slowly drawing closer, its tiny and unpredictable brain occupied in primitive assessment. In time it would bump the possible prey with its snout, presumably to test reaction before moving in again for the first great rending, head-shaking bite. That was the usual feeding pattern with a lone shark. If there had been others, then a bloody and competitive attack would in all likelihood have been launched as soon as the man was tipped into the sea.
All this she knew, but her awareness of the shark, and any imaginings of what it might do in the next two minutes or two seconds, were sealed off in a tiny compartment of her being, dark and remote, the closure held fast by a huge and continuing act of will. For this moment her whole world had narrowed to the simplicity of hauling and holding, hauling and holding. She was strong, very strong, but this was gruelling work, and the hardest part was yet to come.
An endless minute brought her alongside the boat, and she held the rope in her teeth for the last time as she reached up to grasp the rope ladder. Above the sound of water slapping against the hull she heard the man say something in a croaking voice. Thirty feet away she saw the fin of the whitetip show fleetingly on the surface. Still beating rhythmically with her legs she said quietly, close to his ear, “Are you strong enough to hang on?”
To her enormous relief, he understood. His arm moved, and she saw that the skin was blistered with sunburn as he reached slowly up and hooked a hand over a rung of the ladder, turning to face her as he did so. She glimpsed a stubble of beard, puffy eyes, and a very high sunburned forehead half hidden by a tangle of dark brown hair. Then she was turning her head, seeking the shark, fighting the urge to stop beating with her legs and draw them up tightly.
The boat leaned away from them as it slid down into a trough, then masked part of the sky as it swung over them the other way. The small deck mop was in her hand. She saw the fin reappear, moving more slowly now, and closer. Sucking in air, she forced herself to wait while she summoned her strength for the next move, certain there would be no second chance.
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, then looked at it. No blood. Her lips were sore from the rope, but not bleeding, thank God. A trace of blood would trigger a swift and frenzied attack. Breath rasping, she said, “Listen. When the boat leans over and helps lift us, I’m going to heave you aboard. Give it everything you’ve got when I say the word. Do you understand?”
His face bumped against her arm, and she heard him croak the word, “Yes.” Across the crests of three waves she saw the fin appear, angling towards the boat. Then it vanished. She snapped “Wait!” and ducked her head below the surface, the scuba mask giving her clear vision. The whitetip was gliding towards her. She pushed gently away from the boat, holding the lifeline with one hand, and presented herself head-on to the shark, extending the mop, pushing firmly down on the flat forepart of the head just above the nose, turning the creature aside.
The great body curved smoothly away and began to cruise back and forth at a distance of some thirty or forty feet, turning with a flick of the white-tipped tail. She watched it as she dragged herself back to the boat in two easy hauls, then lifted her head from the water, gripped the highest rung of the ladder she could reach, and said in a taut voice, “Get ready, we haven’t much time.” The shark had been deterred by encountering a non-passive reaction, but it would soon come back.
A wave lifted The Wasp. Modesty tossed the mop aboard, reached down, slid an arm between the legs of the man facing her, and said, “Now go!” As the boat leaned away she pressed her body against it and let all the held-down terrors explode within her. Adrenalin surged through her blood, bringing added strength as she poured the total power of her body and will into lifting the man with the roll of the boat … up, up, muscles protesting, mouth wide in a silent scream to give yet more power, now, now, now! and his weight was gone. She heard a gasping cry as he tumbled into the cockpit.
The boat tilted above her and she clawed her way up to grip the top rung of the ladder, then waited through long seconds of shuddering fear for the boat to mount the next crest, for she was helpless under the curving hull. As it lay over again she rose to grasp the lifting gunwale, chinning herself, then pressing up. The man had dragged himself to his knees and was pawing feebly at her, trying to help. She leaned forward, caught at a backstay, and snatched her legs from the water in a final spasm of terror before swivelling round and rolling over on to the cockpit grating deck.
Slowly she pulled off the mask, and for a long time she knelt there on all fours, head bowed, teeth chattering, chest heaving, letting the fear repossess her in retrospect so that it might run its course. The man lay sprawled half out of the cockpit, close to her, a blistered forearm resting across his swollen eyelids. After a moment his cracked lips moved and he said hoarsely but distinctly, “Thank you … very much.”
She gave a shaky laugh and lifted her head to look down at him. “Don’t mention it.”
He took his arm from his face and made a grimace that might have been a smile. The slitted eyes became fixed, staring up at her intently. Slowly he lifted a hand to her chin and pressed gently to turn her head a little, then his hand fell away, but his absorbed scrutiny continued. “Please … who…?”
