Shayne grabbed a heavy long-handled pipe wrench. Throwing himself down on the dolly, he launched himself from the wall with a powerful kick.
He shot along the top aisle, surprised by his own speed. Low enough not to be seen, he careened across the hold and was still moving very fast when he collided with the wall. Wrestling the dolly around, he kicked off from a bulkhead and rolled at the figure running toward him.
He saw a white shirt, a pale face, a mop of hair. The figure leaped straight up, picking up his feet like a second baseman making a double play, and Shayne shot beneath him.
Twisting off the rapidly moving dolly, Shayne hit the wall and came around. In the same motion he threw the wrench.
The heavy-jawed wrench struck the man between the shoulder blades. He staggered, nearly losing his footing. An instant later he was out the door.
By the time Shayne reached the doorway, the dimly lighted corridor was empty.
He waited, listening. Then he closed the door and pushed an empty drum against it, where it would be knocked aside if the door opened.
He retrieved the dolly. One of the casters was bent but it was still serviceable. Reloading it with his welding and cutting equipment, he rolled it to the Bentley.
Captain Stackpole had given Shayne authority to draw on the ship’s machine shop for any tools he needed, and he had brought a wide assortment, including a working light with a long heavy-duty cord. He found an outlet and plugged in.
He opened the Bentley’s luggage hatch, removed the spare wheel and turned back the floor carpeting. It was beginning to seem more and more likely to Shayne that at least some of Little’s story was true. A quick glance told him that the bolts attaching the gas tank to the chassis had been recently replaced.
He had to jack up the rear end and crawl underneath to reach the nuts. He found them easy to turn.
He could see from the tension on the rear springs that the tank must be unusually heavy. Bracing himself, he pushed upward with both hands. It gave perceptibly, but it was obviously going to give him trouble.
He drew jacks from nearby cars and began jacking it out, using one at each corner. At intervals, he slid out to see how it was coming. The tank cover was a half inch longer and wider than the tank itself, providing a flange that could be bolted to the body. The entire cover had been sliced off and later rewelded. The new weld was daubed with dirty grease, but under the bright 150-watt bulb, Shayne could see the faint scar where it joined the natural accumulation on the underside of the car.
He had three hours till daylight. He needed it all.
He disconnected the hose and opened the gas line, draining the tank into an oil pan. After measuring the tank carefully, he reconnoitered the neighboring cars and picked a late-model Oldsmobile. The steering wheel tag gave the owner’s name and an address in Coral Gables, adjoining Miami to the south. The two tanks were nearly the same shape and size, though the flange on the Bentley’s tank was wider and the bolt holes were spaced differently. On the American car, the bolts were rusted in place, and Shayne had to burn them off.
Because of the lack of space to maneuver, the transfer was difficult. The Oldsmobile’s tank lifted out easily after being drained and disconnected, but putting the Bentley’s tank in its place took an hour’s straining and prying. To bring the tank clear of the floor of the Bentley’s luggage space, he had to block up the jacks. It got away from him briefly as he was levering it over, and it left a bad scar in the front fender of a Jaguar.
Now, shining his flashlight into the tank’s open neck, he saw that it was, in fact, extremely shallow. The false bottom was slick and black. Before rolling it to the Olds, he inserted a small rectangular object wrapped in heavy plastic. This was a homing device, part of the standard survival equipment in the Queen Elizabeth lifeboats. The switch had been taped open, and for the last hour or so it had been transmitting a tiny pulsing buzz at thirty-second intervals. The batteries had a 36-hour life. The effective range of the device, Shayne understood, was a little over ten miles.
It was attached to a long wire. Leaving this dangling, Shayne began the difficult task of raising the heavy tank high enough so he could work it into the open trunk of the Olds. He found it a fraction of an inch too long. Firing up the cutting torch he had brought from the machine shop, he burned off a narrow strip of Detroit steel, allowing the heavy tank to drop into place. And then it was necessary to drill new holes for the bolts. He used only two. Before attaching the hose he ran the wire through the hose opening and beneath the car, and tied it into the Oldsmobile’s antenna.
After that, he installed the Olds tank in the Bentley, connected the gas lines and filled both tanks.
Back in his cabin as dawn was breaking, he showered and changed clothes and settled down to wait for the phone to ring.
Chapter 6
It rang just as he decided to make the call himself.
Anne spoke in a hushed voice. “I called you before, Mike — no answer. I’ve been worrying.”
“How is he?”
“Asleep, but it’s not doing him much good.” She lowered her voice further. “I found a couple of capsules in his suitcase. I don’t know what they are—”
“Get rid of them.”
“We have to talk. Can I come to your cabin?”
“No, stay with him. We’ll have to start being careful. I ran into somebody else who believes Little’s story, and this time a couple of shots were fired. I didn’t fire back. Somebody broke into my cabin earlier and took the bullets out of my gun. Those are the late developments. Stay under cover and don’t open the door to anybody.”
“Mike, if you’re trying to scare me,” she said accusingly, “you’re succeeding.”
“Fine. I’ve got something underway, and I think there’s a faint chance it will work. He’ll need some luck, but he already knows that.”
“Can you tell me about it? I could use a little reassurance.”
“Too many people know about parts of this already. He’s going to be closely watched when he comes off the ship. I don’t want to be seen with him, and the less he knows about it the better. I want him to look very jittery when he goes through Customs.”
“I can guarantee that! Mike, one of the things I wanted to tell you — I won’t be available to hold anybody’s hand. My brother and sister-in-law are meeting me, damn it. He heard about my great romantic disappointment in England — dear God, how long ago it seems now — so he’s taking a week off to cheer me up. I have to keep George Blagden and Dr. Quentin Little in two absolutely separate compartments.”
“That’s all right with me, but why?”
“George works for a Washington think-tank that’s always being accused of being too liberal. You see the implications. I’ve told Quentin, and he understands. Mike, are you really telling me that we shouldn’t talk about this at all?”
“I don’t even like this phone call. I’ll send down a bottle of vodka to help him through the day.”
“There’s a delicate line there, Mike, if you want him to walk down the gangplank under his own power. He can drink for hours without showing it, and then all of a sudden he comes apart. Well, that’s a minor problem. I’ll use my judgment. I don’t know where we’re going to be staying, but can I call you?”
“Call Mobile Operator Three. She’ll know how to reach me. If anything goes wrong, you’ll see it on television.”
“God! And I wanted some reassurance. Goodbye, Mike. He’s waking up.”
After a large breakfast, Shayne went to the communications center amidship and was assigned a booth. He placed a call to his friend Timothy Rourke, a crime and political reporter on the Miami News. The shoreside operator found him at the paper, working on a follow-up to the Bermuda story.