I was thinking about that as the sailors pushed off and we manoeuvred round the rocks and into the loading point. Five minutes later we were back at the tent and as I held the flap back for Petra, I noticed the lights of at least half a dozen vehicles moving west along the main road from Villa Carlos. They were evenly spaced and looked like a military convoy. I thought perhaps they were reinforcements for the defence of the airport, or perhaps for a dawn offensive towards Ciudadela. Their real significance never occurred to me.
In the dim interior of the tent it was as though we had never left it, the chairs, the table, the unwashed plates, the glasses and the bottle of Fundador. 'Damn that bastard Mault.' I reached for my glass, which still had some brandy in it. I was angry and frustrated, and when Petra said, 'It's not his fault, everybody must be very tense by now,' I told her to go to hell, downed the rest of my drink and walked out. I wasn't only angry with Mault, I was angry with myself. I should have handled it better. I should have insisted on seeing Gareth. I had the chance then, whilst we'd been tied up alongside, but I'd been so shattered by Mault's words, his obvious hostility, that I hadn't thought of it. And there was an element of truth in what he had said. That's what made it so hard to swallow. Putting his ship aground had been the one action Gareth could take that would effectively make Soo totally ineffective as a hostage, the one way he could save her life and at the same time carry out his orders to stay in Mahon under all circumstances. The only other thing he could have done was to put to sea, and that was out of the question.
Thinking about it, I almost fell into a newly dug slit trench. A Scots voice cursed me for a clumsy bastard, a hand gripping hold of my ankle. 'Luke where ye're fuckin' goin', laddie. There's some of us doon here that are still alive, ye noo.'
I was in the graveyard area and there were four of them sprawled on the ground with a couple of hand-held rocket-launchers. From where they lay they could see into the steep-sided little bay draped with the pale glimmer of villas that was Cala Llonga. I asked them if any vessel had put out in the last half-hour. But they had seen nothing, so clearly the customs launch had come either from Lazareto Island or from the La Mola peninsula itself. Perhaps even from Cala Pedrera on the other side of the Mahon entrance.
I squatted there talking to them for several minutes. Two of them were leading seamen whom I had met on the bridge during the trip out from Malta, one of them had brought me kai that night. But they couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. They had had a word with the Captain, they said, just after midnight. Apparently Gareth had made a tour of all the positions established round the island and in the hospital ruins, but it had been more of a morale booster. He hadn't told them anything very much, only warned them that if they were attacked, it would all happen very quickly. He had also said jokingly that if they weren't attacked, they'd probably be stuck out there all night. 'I asked him straight oot,' the Scots lad said, 'wha' are we expectin' then, but he was no' verra communicative. He just said, if it comes, make cairtin ye've said yer prayers. An' he wasna jokin'. He was daid sairious.'
The time was then ten minutes short of two o'clock and still nothing had happened. I started back towards the tent, but just before I reached it, I saw a little group coming down the gangway from Medusa'sstern. With no lights, I couldn't see who they were, but they headed towards me along the path under the hospital walls, so I waited. It was Gareth, setting out on a second tour of inspection. Mault was with him, and Sergeant Simmonds. I don't think he saw me at first. He was walking with his head bent, not saying anything to his companions, as though lost in his own thoughts, and when I spoke his head came up with a startled jerk and he looked at me, tight-lipped and very tense. 'Sorry you didn't make it ashore/ he said.
I asked him what was going on in the outside world and he just shook his head. He would let me know, he said, as soon as he had any definite news. And he added that, until he knew for certain what the situation was, there was no question of his risking the launch in another attempt to take us into Gala Figuera. And when I pressed him, saying that something had to be done about Soo, he just looked at me and said in a voice that was dead and without emotion, 'Your wife is only one of many factors I have to take into consideration.' And he added, in that same dead tone, as though he were talking about something quite remote and impersonal, 'In the overall scale of things I'm afraid she ranks very low, however important she may be to you, and to me.' He muttered something about being in a hurry — 'A lot on my plate at the moment.' And he nodded briefly, brushing past me.
I went back to the tent then. Nothing else I could do. With no boat, Petra and I were marooned on the island, and we just sat there, waiting. It was long past the time when the warships that were supposed to be supporting Fuxa's coup d'etat should have been entering Mahon harbour, and though I fiddled around with Petra's little radio, all I could get was dance music. God knows what was going on in the world outside of Bloody Island.
All around us there were the sounds of men settling in for the night in improvised trenches or in the stone walls of the hospital itself. And though I went out and talked to some of them, I couldn't find anyone who knew any more than we did. In fact, I suppose the only people who could have told us what was going on in the outside world were Gareth and his communications team. I learned afterwards that, apart from those two quick tours of the island's makeshift defences, he spent the whole night there, sifting endlessly through the mass of reports, signals, news flashes, and speculative comment from all around the world picked up by the ship's antennae.
Back in the tent again I found Petra sitting there, not drinking, not doing anything, just sitting there with a shut look on her face. I said something to her. I don't remember what. But she didn't answer. She had withdrawn into some secret world of her own. And then, suddenly, she got to her feet, a quick, decisive movement. 'I'm tired,' she said. 'God! I'm tired. No point in sitting here waiting for something to happen. I'm going to bed.'
I was desperately tired myself, my mind seemingly no longer capable of constructive thought. The picture of that room, the little dog, and Evans — the way he had talked about sending her to Gareth in bits and pieces. Christ! What a hell of a mess! All I could think of was the poor girl out there somewhere in the hands of those bastards.
In the end I found a spare sleeping bag and followed Petra's example. But before curling myself up in it, I went outside again. It was quite chill now, a whisper of a breeze coming down from the high ground above the harbour, the scent of wild flowers on the air, and as I stood there, relieving myself, I was conscious of the bodies all around me. It was very strange, hearing nothing, but knowing they were there, like the ghosts of all those buried dead.
But then the glow of a cigarette, showing for an instant under the hospital wall, brought my mind back to reality. Away to the right I could just make out the dim shape of a sailor standing in silhouette against the stars, and when I climbed to the top of a rock there was the outline of the frigate, stem-on and not a light showing. Somebody coughed, a hastily suppressed sound, and as I went back into the tent I heard a clink of metal on stone somewhere out beyond the dig.