'When was that?'
'It was early, about 04.30. Just those on the ship. A few prayers, a hymn or two. All he told us then was that the situation had improved and we should give thanks to God.' The boy was smiling to himself, remembering the scene. 'Lead kindly light… I can still hear him singing it in that fine voice of his. He's Welsh, you see.' And he grinned apologetically, embarrassed at being carried away and forgetting I would have known that. And when I asked him how the ship had come to land up on Bloody Island, he looked at me uncertainly, suddenly hesitant. But the excitement of events and his admiration for his Captain got the better of him. 'The buzz is he put her aground himself,' he said brightly.
'Deliberately?'
'I couldn't say, sir. I wasn't on the bridge. But that's what they're saying — so that there was no way they could shift us. We were committed then, you see, a Nato ship stuck there and prepared to fire at anything that didn't support the legitimate Spanish government and the Spanish King.'
I nodded. He wouldn't know about Soo, of course. None of them would, except Mault. At least I hoped he was the only one. For the time being anyway. The midshipman saw it solely in terms of naval tactics, the sort of move Nelson or Cochrane might have made, not realising that what Gareth had done was to take the one positive action that could nullify absolutely his half-brother's threats. God knows what it had cost him in mental anguish to take such a gamble, not just with Soo's life, but with his own, and with the lives of all his men. He had called Evans's bluff and he had won, and I was hearing it from this kid of a midshipman, who was standing there, starry-eyed and bubbling with excitement, as he told me how he had spent the first half of the night in charge of half a dozen seamen on the hospital tower, acting as lookouts and armed with hand-held rocket-launchers.
It was hot as the launch slowed to run alongside our quay, the sun blazing out of a blue sky, the surface of the water oily-calm, and traffic moving on the steep road from the Martires Atlante to the Carrero Blanco. Everything looked so normal it was hard to believe that there had been several hours during the night when the future of Menorca had hung in the balance, the threat of hostilities looming.
And then I was ashore, the chandlery door open and Ramon coming out of the store in answer to my call. No, he had no news of the senora. I raced up the stairs. Somebody had cleared the place up, the maid I suppose. The telephone was still working. I sat down at the table by the window and rang the Renatos, but Manuela had no information about her. She suggested I ring the Gobierno Militar.Gonzalez had been there since early morning and might have heard something. But her husband was no longer there, and when I finally tracked him down at the ayuntamiento,he had heard nothing. I tried the policia,the Guardia Civil,finally in desperation I rang the Residencia Sanitaria. They had quite a few casualties in, but they were all men, including an Australian who had just been brought in from the English warship. When I asked how serious his injuries were, they said he had not yet been fully examined. If I liked to enquire a little later…
I said I would ring back in an hour's time, and then as a last resort tried to get through to Perez at the Naval Base, but the phone was engaged and when I finally did manage to reach his office, he was out and the officer who answered the phone had no idea when he would be back. I rang the Army then, out at La Mola, and to my surprise I was connected immediately with some sort of duty officer. He put me through to somebody in one of the casements, who said a woman had been seen with a group of the 'soldadi del revolucion',but where they had taken her he did not know. Needless to say he was not prepared to discuss what had happened the previous day nor even where she had been held.
All this took time and it was late afternoon before I had exhausted all possible sources of information and was forced to the conclusion that I would have to go out to Addaia, or wherever it was they had embarked, in the hope of finding somebody who had actually witnessed their departure. But first I needed a car. Mine had disappeared. I tried to borrow one, but everybody I rang was either out or their car was in use, and I couldn't hire one because my driving licence was in the pocket of my own car. In the end I persuaded the people who provided cars for tourists staying at the Port Mahon Hotel to let me have one of their little Fiats on the understanding that I applied immediately for a copy of my licence.
I tried the hospital again while I was waiting for one of their drivers to bring it round. After some time I was able to speak to one of the sisters, who told me Lennie's cheek had been stitched up and the knife wound in the chest, which had narrowly missed the heart, had pierced the lung. He was under sedation at the moment, so no point in my trying to see him. She advised me to ring again in the morning.
As I put the phone down Ramon called to me from below. I thought it was to say the car had arrived, but he shouted up to me that it was Miguel Gallardo's wife, asking to see me.
She was waiting for me in the chandlery, her large, comfortable-looking body seeming to fill the place, but all the vivacity gone out of her, a worried look on the round, olive-complexioned face, her large eyes wide below the black hair cut in a fringe. She had been trying to phone me, she said. About Miguel. She was speaking in a rush and obviously in a very emotional state. He hadn't been home for two nights and she wondered whether I had seen him or had any idea where he might be. She had been to the Guardia,of course, and the hospitals, but everything was so confused following all the happenings of the last two days… And I just stood there, listening to her, a sickening feeling inside me, remembering how her husband had driven up to that villa in his battered estate car. Christ! I'd forgotten all about it until that moment.
What the hell could I tell her? That Miguel, innocent and unsuspecting, had driven straight into a bunch of men loading arms and ammunitions from an underground cache and on the brink of a desperate coup? And then, as I stood there, speechless and unable to give her a word of encouragement, it hit me. That cellar, that hole in the floor. An oubliette. Oh, God!
I told her he might have had business somewhere, and in the circumstances he might not have been able to let her know he was delayed in some other part of the island. She nodded, drinking in my words, clutching at hope — and my own heart thumping. Would I know — if she were alive, or if she were dead? Would Miguel's wife, her hands folded and on the verge of tears, know if he were alive?
The car arrived and thankfully I escaped into the routine of taking it over. 'I've got to go now,' I told her. 'But I'll keep an eye open and if I see him..' I left it at that, the sickening feeling with me again as I offered her a lift. But she was all right. Her daughter had a shoe shop just by the Club Maritimo. She would take her home. Her hands were warm and pudgy as she clasped mine, thanking me profusely, her lips trembling. 'You will telephone me plees.' She was very near to tears now. 'If you hear anything. Plees, you promise.'
I promised, escaping quickly out to the car, close to tears myself as I thought of what might have happened. Evans wouldn't have taken any chances. He wouldn't have left her body lying about. And the villa of that absent German businessman was barely four miles from Addaia, ten minutes by car. Less if the Santa Mariahad been shifted to the seaward end of the inlet and had been waiting for him at Macaret. The villa wasn't two miles from Macaret, and I had been so busy trying to find somebody in Mahon who might have seen her or know where she was that I hadn't thought of it.