Medusa

'That will not be necessary,' Gareth said.

'You will leave then under your own steam?'

''When I have orders to leave I will leave. Not before.'

'So! You are not going to leave?'

'No.'

'Very well, Capitan. Ialso have orders. El Presidenteinstructs me to say that you have until noon. If you are not away from Mahon by midday he will be forced to regard your continued presence here as a hostile act. You understand?' He gave a formal little bow, and without waiting for Gareth's reply, turned quickly and made for the door. His last words as he went out were, 'You have until midday.'

Part IV BLOODY ISLAND

CHAPTER ONE

I remember standing by the taula on Bloody Island watching as the minute hand of my watch crept towards the vertical. Clouds were forming to the south over St Felip, the day already hot and airless, as I had known it would be, and the frigate lay to her reflection in the oily water, nothing moving on her deck, everything very still and silent. I was alone, and had been since Medusa'slaunch returned me to the island shortly after eight that morning. Gareth had accompanied me to the head of the ship's ladder. 'You'll be going ashore, will you?' By that he had meant, of course, going across to Mahon. 'Give my love to Soo.' He smiled then, a funny, crooked little smile, and then he had said, 'Pray for me, both of you.' A perfunctory salute and he had turned on his heel and disappeared back up to the bridge.

It wasn't until after I had landed and the launch was on its way back to Medusathat the full import of what he had said began to sink in. By then I had discovered, not only that Petra's inflatable wasn't at the landing place, but there was also no sign of Lennie's semi-rigid diving boat. I was on my own and plenty of time to think about it. Also, I had no means of knowing what was going on ashore.

The odd thing was that everything seemed normal enough, the usual volume of traffic along the waterfront, so shops and businesses must be opening as usual. But on the water itself virtually nothing moved. As for the outside world, now that I was off the frigate all I had was Petra's little portable radio, and listening to the news bulletins I got the impression the media was deliberately playing down events in Mahon. The unilateral declaration of inde pendence was referred to, but only briefly, and even the Overseas Service relegated it to a late spot in the World News. This could, of course, be the result of a local clampdown. It could equally be political pressure at home.

Sitting there in the sun, stripped to the waist as the day advanced, there was something quite uncanny about the brooding ruins of the hospital, the sense of isolation, and that lonely British warship riding there so peacefully to her reflection. She looked puny against the shimmering sprawl of La Mola and it was hard to realise that inside the battered plates of that grey hull the Communications Room must be humming with messages bounced off satellites as the well-known names of international politics, roused from their beds at an unaccustomed hour or called to their offices unexpectedly, endeavoured to grapple with the possible repercussions of Fuxa's seizure of power on a small island in the Western Mediterranean. Was Gareth right when he had said it was all because of this four and a half miles of deep, sheltered water that stretched away on either side of me?

Shortly after eleven a single mobile gun took up a position in the garden of a villa above Gala Llonga. Now, as I waited by the beacon beyond the dig, periodically checking my watch as the seconds ticked away to noon, I wondered whether it would actually open fire, whether there were other guns ranged on the frigate. La Mola had been very quiet since that early morning explosion.

Noon. And nothing happened. The sun blazed down, everything very still, the frigate's anchor chain hanging slack, the water flat like polished brass. Fearing the worst it was almost an anti-climax. Away to the south a plane rose from the airport. It looked like a military plane, but it flew west towards Ciudadela.

I stayed there, watching, and shortly after twelve-thirty alaunch moved out from the commercial quay heading straight for Bloody Island. It was the same launch that had brought the new harbour master out to Medusa.I turned the glasses on to the naval quay. Still the same three ships there — a fast patrol boat, one of the big fishery protection launches and the old minesweeper that had escorted Medusain. The launch came through the narrows, making for the frigate, and as it passed I could see a little group of three men in the stern of it. One was Romacho. He was now wearing an official cap and beside him was a man in uniform, an Army officer by the look of it. The third man was in civilian clothes and I wondered who it was. He had his back to me and it wasn't until he turned to speak to Romacho that I realised it was Fuxa himself.

So the RN presence was that important. The launch swung alongside the frigate's accommodation ladder where they were met by one of the officers, Mault I think, certainly not Gareth, and all three of them went on board.

I stayed there by the beacon, watching through the glasses, waiting to see what would happen now. They were on board exactly seventeen and a half minutes by my watch and it was Gareth himself who escorted Fuxa and his two companions to the head of the ladder, saluting perfunctorily, then turning away. The Army officer did not salute and there were no handshakes, the three of them hurrying down the ladder to the waiting launch without looking back.

I watched them all the time through the glasses, and all the way through the narrows they stood silent and grim-faced, none of them saying a word.

Nothing happened after the launch had returned to the inner harbour. Nobody else came out to the frigate, so I presumed the deadline had been extended. It was siesta time anyway. The day dragged on, no sign of Petra or Lennie, with the result that I was marooned in the midst of what now seemed something of a non-event, everything so quiet, so peaceful it was almost unbelievable, and only the absence of any movement in or out of the harbour to convince me of the reality of it.

I had time then to think about myself — my own life and how sailing, and a fascination for the precision of target shooting, had given me the means to live by my wits in a world that seemed to be getting everlastingly richer as more and more successful businessmen decided to make the Mediterranean their playpen. It had seemed so easy. Exciting too. Then I had met Soo and the urge to build something solid, a business of my own, a family, had brought me here.

And now?

I went over it all in my mind, sitting in the blazing sun beside the half-cleared outline of that fallen taula — the night of that Red Cross barbecue in the Quarries, the cave and the loss of the child, the murder of Jorge Martinez, that big beautiful catamaran and the blind stupidity of my desire to own it.

And Soo. My mind kept coming back to Soo. The only sheet anchor I had ever had. And I had lost her. Give my love to Soo,he had said with that funny little smile. And he was there, on that frigate, and she could see the ship from her bedroom window. Pray for me,he had said.

Hell! It was I who needed praying for, sitting alone beside a religious monument fashioned by Bronze Age men some three thousand years ago, and wanted by the police.

Shortly after four, with Mahon active again after the three-hour break, a convoy of over half a dozen yachts left. There was activity in the port area now. But still no sign of either Petra or Lennie, and no means of crossing the water to Mahon. The narrows on the north side of Bloody Island are barely three hundred metres wide and I was greatly tempted to swim across, but it would undoubtedly be under observation, and apart from the Naval Base, I was certain the whole peninsula that formed the northern arm of the harbour was in the hands of the new regime. How much of Menorca they held, outside of the Mahon area, I had no means of knowing. Not all of it probably. Several times I thought I heard firing away to the south-west, in the direction of the airport. Then suddenly there was the sound of engines, a distant rumble from the far end of the port, by the new cargo quay.