A Bridge of Magpies

'Who else could it be?'

'Who knows?'

A very uneasy present had blown up in my face and swamped a very puzzling past. Until I'd been confronted by the two murders and the mysterious Sang A I'd felt mentally like a castaway wandering on the dint shores of that past -

Jutta's past, Kaptein Denny's past-Doodenstadt's past. Now, however, I'd snapped clean into the present. In doing so a new suspicion the size of Possession Island hit me: was the C-in-C's mission itself not a blind? Maybe it was a front for something much more sinister and deep-rooted that he couldn't-or wouldn't-reveal at our interview. That would make sense of the underhand way he'd brought me from Santorin and his insistence on secret, single-handed investigation on my part. All this carried the implication that Koch was part of his conspiracy. Then he would have been the one who had attempted to get off that emergency radio signal to the C-in-C, via Breekbout. Why not send it himself, though? It was confusing, but possible; and what the time sequence of events was in regard to the two killings I'd never know. I wondered if the little admiral was gambling on the expectation that I would see the lost city mission for the blind it really was, and get his real message when things started to hot up? They had now.

Jutta and I stood around without saying much more until Kaptein Denny returned. He and I shrouded Koch in the canvas and left the body in the Land-Rover. It was so charred that we reckoned the jackals wouldn't scent it. Then we rowed out to Gaok.

I sought a topic to defuse the underlying tension,

'Why'd you call her Gaok, Kaptein Denny?'

'It's short for Gaokhaosib -Hottentot for the Bridge of Magpies.'

Everything always seemed to come back to the Bridge of Magpies! That past again!

We went on in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Finally when we three were seated in Gaok's cabin drinking coffee I said-'Priority number one is for me to go aboard Sang A again.'

'What purpose will it serve, Struan?' asked Jutta. 'They will deny any knowledge of Koch-they have already done so-just as they did in the case of Breekbout. It's a foregone conclusion.'

'It would look odder if I didn't inform them there'd been another murder. It mightn't sound too good in court one day.'

'They know already. It's a long way from here to court.'

'What if they did kill them both? What do you intend to do about it?' asked Kaptein Denny. He'd been very reserved up to now. 'You haven't even a radio link, now, with the outside world.

'You'll scare them off if you go at It like a bull at a gate,' said Jutta. 'They'll up-anchor and vanish. That won't do anyone any good.'

`They won't'

There was something about Denny's flat assertion that made the small bell of mistrust tinkle again at the back of my brain.

'What makes you so sure?'

I had a feeling he'd overplayed his hand and he knew it. He back-pedalled on the answer and merely said, Ira a move which could backfire disastrously on us.'

'How?'

'Look what happened to Breekbout and Koch!'

'They wouldn't dare..

Jutta interrupted me excitedly, 'Look! Look! Sang A fs getting up steam! '

We rushed to the nearest porthole. There was a thin wisp coming from the tall funnel, and a bow winch was taking in the slack of the anchor cable.

'That does it!' I rapped out. 'Move! She mustn't get away!'

C H A P T E R N I N E

I slipped Gaok's cable and Kaptein Denny had the diesel roaring in under a minute. We got under way and tore off in the direction of Sang A.

Jutta joined me on the bridge. I took a long look at the black ship.

'We're in danger of making fools of ourselves. That ship's not up-anchoring at all.'

'What's all the activity about then?'

I shouted to Kaptein Denny to cut our speed and join us. Sang A wasn't more than a mile and a half away now. 'They' re trimming her head,' I pointed out. 'Look, it's beginning to point towards Doodenstadt.'

'There's another mooring buoy astern.' Denny could make it out but I couldn't. 'There's a cable out to it and they're winching her stern round.'

'What the hell are they up tor

°There are a couple of boats, too,' added Jutta.

They were light launches and they were putting off from Sang A's side-trailing something between them. I saw what it was as Denny spoke.

'A hawser. They're dragging for something.'

'We don't want to break up this interesting little party,' I said. 'We'll just stooge around with the engine off.'

While Kaptein Denny attended to the motor Jutta and I kept watch on the launches. They worked their way slowly and deliberately between Sang A and a point on Possession, holding so straight a course that it was clear they were steering on a fixed bearing. Gaok lost way and lay rising and falling in the easy swell.

'Looks as if they're dragging for something on the sea bed,' I said.

'Perhaps they lost an anchor in the storm-' suggested Jutta.

Denny paused before replying-until the launches had made more progress towards the island.

'No, They're much too close inshore. Any skipper who 120 anchored there would need his head read.'

'Maybe he does anyway,' I retorted. 'See what they're doing with the ship itself.'

Swig A's head was pointing all wrong, to lie meeting the upchannel current but it was clear that was the way it was intended because they'd now secured her stern to the buoy and I could make out the tight thread of cable out of the water between the two.

'Take us close now,' I told Kaptein Denny. 'The top of Gaok's crow's nest is about level with the portholes in that odd shack of Sang A's. I mean to find out what's inside.'

'A sneak look seems the only way to do it-judging from their previous reception,' said Jutta.

Kaptein Denny grinned. Whatever Sang A was up to seemed to have put him in a relaxed mood.

'There's nothing to prevent us sailing round and round Sang A. You could always be looking after the interests of your darling birds?

The way he put it could have implied anything or nothing. Anything being that he guessed I was no more a headman than I was a gannet.

'Let's go.'

Our run-in was from astern of Sang A. I'd circled over towards Possession to get into position, and Kaptein Denny was to take the wheel while I made my eye-in-the-sky inspection. We were chugging along at about four knots.

`Steady!'

J glanced up to take my line.

'I'll be damned! Look at that!'

Sang A's masts and the stumps of the City of Baroda's were in a line.

'They've deliberately trimmed Sang A on the liner's old course!'

Jutta was afire, now that the liner had come into it. Denny said, 'We too are on that course-exactly.'

'The liner had already been hit by the time she reached the position where we are now. She was heading for the rocks to beach herself.'

Jutta gripped me tightly by the arm. She was looking everywhere as though she hadn't already memorized every detail of the anchorage!

`What's the sense of it? Struan .? Kaptein Denny…?'

Neither of us replied, because there wasn't a reply. `What's the point in mocking up an old course? It doesn't help.. I don't see..

'I do see something-Jutta: that there's more to Sang A than meets the eye.'

'You're going to cut that stern buoy mighty fine, Captain Weddell.'

'Shave it to a whisker, if you like. I want the best view.' '

It's like treading in old footprints made by someone you knew?' exclaimed Jutta.

Take it easy,' I said, hearing the excited pitch of her voice. '

There are no footprints in the sea. You've crossed and recrossed the line's course a dozen times already and it's meant nothing. Don't start imagining things.'

She replied with a gesture: you didn't need a pelorus to see how the six masts of the three ships stood in a neat line. Take her in now,' I told Kaptein Denny. I'm going up aloft.'