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We had to get clear of Sang A – quick.

J moved to help Kaptein Denny with the rowing. '

No,' he said. 'Watch him.'

So I stood behind him at the oars, bracing myself by splaying my feet on either side of the bottom-boards. I held the sub-machine-gun on Miki. Jutta was in the bow behind me. We'd only gone a little farther when she gave a low cry. '

Struan! You're dripping blood!'

I was. It was coming from the gash in my chest. I'd not noticed.

Jn a moment she was alongside me, steadying herself on my arm and dabbing at the wound with a handkerchief. '

Oh God! Struan, Struan!'

'It's not much.'

'Bandages! We must have some bandages for id'

Kantein Denny rested on the oars.

'Here!'

He leant forward as he sat, took Miki's shirt by the collar and ripped it bodily down the front. He might have been tearing it off a statue -except for the shock-wave of hate which his action sparked.

Denny passed the torn material over his shoulder to Jutta, who started work on me.

'Keep moving!' I told Denny.

'We're far enough, for the moment-' he replied. 'We've got 170 some things to sort out first'

'I'll say!'

We couldn't make out Sang A any longer, and the sounds coming from her were muted.

Kaptein Denny snapped a few words at Mild, who still didn't move. He raised his pistol.

'No!' cried Jutta. 'No!' should: it's what he deserves. Instead he can take his chance, and swim.'

Kaptein Denny gestured again. Miki remained where he was.

Then he uttered the only thing he'd said all along. It was a harsh-venomous little explosion of sound.

'Tenchu!

'Punishment of the gods!' echoed Kaptein Denny. 'Here it isTenchu

He struck Mild in the face with his fist. Mild topped over backwards into the water. When he came up, I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry he was still alive.

`Struan! Here! Pull!' Kaptein Denny was back at the oars. I took station alongside him. My last sight of Mild in the fog was of two malicious eyes burning just above water level-like the illustrations you see of vanished prehistoric monsters' heads swimming in search of prey.

The dinghy sped through the water. The slop of sea in the bottom of the boat made the hot barrel of the sub-machinegun I'd discarded sizzle. It threw off a kind of pinky foam-steaming off the blood on Kaptein Denny's knife. My blood wasn't contributing, now that Jutta had bandaged the wound. The navigation was a bitch. If I'd been alone I'd have fouled the spider's-web of cables and chains which enveloped Sang A. But Kaptein Denny seemed to know at every stage what he was doing. He made his changes of course by pulling less or more strongly on his oar, like a rider guiding his horse by his knees. The cables and smaller marker buoys were virtually undetectable until the boat was upon them: we evaded them aJl, however, and eventually broke clear of the network when one of the big buoys with its yellow number hove up on the port hand. At this point Denny made a radical alteration of course: I knew it was to the north-west because up lo them I'd been facing the east wind squarely and now it was to one side,

The heat lay on the water like a fever and our eyes were full of driving, blowing sand; rowing was as cooling as doing press-ups in a sauna. It was a good thing, though, because it flushed out of our pores the throat-tightening fear-stench of men who have been in the presence of death.

What it didn't flush out, however, were a thousand questions I had for Kaptein Denny. And a thousand suspicions which were mutiplying as fast as one-cell cultures in a testtube.

`Tenchu' Jutta uttered the word mechanically, like someone who, on waking, recalls a puzzling fragment of a bad dream.

Kaptain Denny anticipated the questions which I was intending to throw at him any moment. It didn't escape me that during our rowing he'd hooked the sub-machine-gun towards himself with a toe, so that it now lay within easy reach under his thwart. His pistol was in his belt-too -a Taisho, Japanese Imperial Navy model.

He said, 'Punishment of the gods. I was the instrument.'

'Instrument!' Jutta leaned forward so that her face was close to our oars. 'Now I've heard everything! You loved that fight back there! Oh, it was pleasant – as a meat tenderizing demonstration!'

'You've got. a lot to account for,' I added.

He replied, not at all breathlessly, because he was breathing easily and economically as he rowed.

'You listen to me, both of you. The Sang A crowd aren't paper tigers. They're a kamikaze suicide squad attached to the United Red Army-the Rengo Sekigun. Hijacking and terrorism. The same bunch who were responsible for the Lod airport massacre and a dozen other atrocities – remember?'

'There's nothing to terrorize at Possession..

I began, but he cut me short.

'There is. There was. Let's begin with what was. Emmermann is in fact Swakop, the Nazi spy who was landed from U-160- then disappeared. I heard nothing about him and thought he must have died-or gone back to Germany after the war.'

'Tsushima the spy!' exclaimed Jutta incredulously. 'A Japanese!'

'Fortunately for me the Oriental and Malay faces are very similar: I've pretended to be a gamat all these years.

Kenryo and the others are not Koreans. They're Japanese, like me. So are the others in Sang A. They didn't know I understood them that first day we went aboard.'

'A brace of ageing spies, you and Emmermann alias Swakop!' went on Jutta. 'I don't know where Miki fits in but I'd guess he is part of the same set-up. Revenge for some dead-and-gone hatreds whlch you've kept festering all these years since the war-thirty years! And you try to pass it off as punishment of the gods..

'This isn't an affair of the past but of the present…' he began. I knew that must be so since the C-in-C had got wind of it.

'You've turned the whole situation arse over tip,' J interrupted. 'Start at the beginning, for Pete's sake!'

'I repeat: I am Japanese, the man who got left behind on the mainland by U-160. Tsushima was only a code-name, like Swakop. My real name's Denzo. It's close enough to resemble Denny-the gamat who never was. Nor was I a spy. I'll come to that part of it in a moment. Let's stick to U-160. After she'd attacked the liner and been herself attacked by Gousblom, my cover was in serious danger of being blown. So I acted the part of the fisherman hero and rescued the liner's passengers. In the resulting confusion and admiration no one questioned my bona fides. But I had to silence the one man who knew who I really was. He was the head of the pro-Nazi cell in South West Africa. I returned to Luderitz and did so.'

Jutta said in a whisper, 'Hasler. The husband of the woman who adopted me.'

'I cut his throat,'

'Oh, God!'

'J had to.'

'Had to I Vengeance of the gods again, I suppose! How many others have you killed?' she asked.

I had to risk his closing up completely when I fired my question: 'For what? Why?

He replied deliberately-weighing his words. 'Because U-160 carried something more valuable than any treasure. It's what the kamikazes are after- of count.'

'I thought, almost from that first day we met, that there was more to you than fishing,' I accused.

'You nearly caught me out at Jutta's mother's grave. Those 173 were Japanese Shinto-rites for the departed.'

'What did U-160 carry?' My voice was harsh with tension. He gulped a great breath of the sandy wind as if he were trying to free a vice round his chest. His steady measured rowing said it wasn't for his muscles.

I'll tell you. I'll have to explain it. Japan established herself as one of the great naval powers of the 20th century by annihilating the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. You could call Tsushima Japan's Trafalgar. We also have our Nelson-Admiral Togo. My code name was associated with the victory: Tsushima.