Still time. I went out on to the track and walked slowly back to Fiska Wick. The little beach was empty, the inflatable gone, and the water was like lead under a leaden sky. I went out on to The Ness where I could see the Mary Jane lying like a black rock against the pale glint of the water. She was swinging to the tide, the inflatable snugged against her side, and the cases were all on deck, the engineer and another man opening them up and getting the equipment into the wheelhouse.
I watched for a while, but it was cold and no way of getting out to her, so I turned to the slopes behind and began climbing Mouslee Hill, regretting now that I had refused the offer of lunch. Still time, he had said, and I could claim that he misled me. But it wouldn't be true. Where a decision is required the fault lies always in ourselves. From my experience of the sea I should have known that mistakes compound to produce disasters. The mistake I made that afternoon was to do nothing.
There were things I could have done. I could have gone into Haroldswick and phoned the police, or made an anonymous call like the bombers do. I could have gone aboard the ferry and radioed to North Star direct. Or I could have simply gone to Bruce's cottage and lain low there, watching to see what happened. But instead, I did nothing. I couldn't make up my mind.
I walked west across the backs of the hills to the high bold cliffs of Tonga, not a soul to be seen, not even Bruce, and conscious all the time of the solitude, the remoteness of this wild northern land, and of my own isolation. I stood for a while on the peat moss slopes above Tonga Stack, which is joined to the land, and north and south of me there were other, isolated stacks with the seas breaking against them. Birds everywhere, the air flecked white and shrill with their cries. And below me the water seethed, a chill northwesterly wind churning the flood tide into a welter of overfalls. The wildness and the solitude were overwhelming.
It was not the place to consider the merits of political activities and the role of economic warfare in an industrial society. Here only the elements counted. Nothing else. I walked south across Libbers Hill and Sneuga, as far as the brough on Flubersgerdie, and all the time I was walking I had the feeling that nothing beyond the peat moss hills and the distant glimpses of granite cliffs had any reality under that vast expanse of grey sky. Here was nothing made by man, nothing controlled by man. All was free and uncontaminated, and power lay in the wind, in the drive of the great depressions endlessly marching up to the white fish grounds from their birthplace far out in the Atlantic.
I was tired and hungry, and no nearer a decision, when I came down the slopes above Fiska Wick, the Mary Jane looking like a toy ship in the pale slash of the firth. The inflatable was back on the beach, the Land Rover backed up and two men loading cardboard boxes. They were the same two I had seen when I had first come to Root Stacks and they were waiting for me as I came down the beach.
'Will you be going aboard now?' the Irishman asked. They were standing in the water in their sea boots, ready to push off. 'The old man said to take you out if you wanted.'
'Has Dillon arrived?'
But he only motioned me to get in, the two of them holding the tubed sides to steady the boat. It was only when we were under way that I realized they had their own gear with them. 'You're going out tonight then?' I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of the outboard.
The quiet bearded man nodded. He was lying sprawled across the stores, spray whipping over him as the laden boat slapped into the wavelets. 'If everything works all right.'
I asked him what his name was, but he just stared at me. He had a soft, gentle face, very full in the cheeks. He didn't look like a seaman, more like an intellectual — a teacher, possibly a writer or a lecturer. And there was a tenseness about him, his brown eyes staring.
The engineer was waiting for us as the outboard died and we came alongside. There was a big fair man with him. They called him the Swede and the way he grabbed the painter and made us fast I knew he was used to boats.
I gave them a hand with the cases, and when it was all on deck, the outboard started up again, the Swede casting off and the inflatable swinging away from the side and heading back for the Wick. I went straight to the wheelhouse, but the door was locked.
The engineer stood watching me. 'Where's the key?' I asked him.
'In my pocket.'
'Give it to me,' I said. 'You don't keep me out of my own wheelhouse.'
He backed away at the tone of my voice. 'You don't give orders. You're not the skipper now.' He said it with the truculence of a young man who resented all authority.
I held out my hand. 'Give me that key.' But the Swede moved between us, and his hand closed on my arm, holding me gripped. 'Nobody goes into the wheelhouse now, only Mr Dillon.'
I stepped back and the grip on my arm relaxed. 'When will Dillon be here?' I asked.
The man with the beard glanced at his watch and said in a voice that was as gentle as his manner, 'Any minute now.' The engineer brushed past me. 'I got to get the engine warmed up.' And he disappeared down the after-hatch. The other two began humping the stores below and I went with them to the little galley. The diesel started into life as I was cutting myself a hunk of bread and some ham.
I was still eating when I heard the outboard alongside and the clatter of feet on deck. I poked my head up out of the after-hatch to see the Swede making fast. The outboard stopped abruptly and a dark face with lank black hair appeared above the bulwarks. He might have been a South American Indian, or perhaps he was Arab — it was difficult to tell against the leaden glimmer of the water as he vaulted on board. And then he leaned over to help my father up.
The old man steadied himself against the wheel-house, looking at me and breathing a little fast. 'I was told you were here.' The grimace of a smile came and went. 'I'm glad.' And for the first time I saw a glimmer of warmth in his eyes. He turned at the sound of a voice and his hand reached out to my arm, a restraining gesture. I could see Paddy's face as he stood holding the boat alongside and another man just swinging his leg over the bulwarks, his back towards me. He was wearing a dark blue anorak with a Shetland wool cap on his head. 'Dillon,' the old man murmured in my ear, and there was a note of warning. The man turned and I was looking at the hard set face, the cold elusive eyes I had last seen at Foula. 'You know each other I think,' my father said.
Dillon nodded, staring at me stonily, and I thought He smiled, but I couldn't be sure, the tight-lipped mouth compressed. 'So you're coming with us?'
My mouth was dry and I didn't answer, wondering if he knew how the sight of him affected me — the feeling of being trapped.
His wandering gaze appeared to fasten on my father. 'He's your responsibility,' he said. 'Not mine.' There was a note of censure in his voice. Then he turned to me, the hard mouth smiling grimly as he said, 'No doubt we'll find a use for you.' He seemed amused, but there was a tenseness about him, and then the engineer was there and the two of them went into the wheelhouse. In less than ten minutes the inflatable was lashed to the stern, the anchor up, and we were moving down the firth, the man with the dark Indian features in the wheelhouse connecting up the electronic gear.
Just beyond The Fidd they streamed the little torpedo like a tin fish from the stern, letting it out on a Terylene line and unreeling the wire connecting it with the transmitter. We motored almost to the entrance, then slowed to take bearings.
The old man came and stood beside me. 'You don't like him, do you?'
The straight line of our wake was bending now as the Mary Jane swung away in a wide circle. 'No,' I said.
'You should try to hide your feelings more.'
'Why?'
'He's one of our top men.'
We were standing in the shelter of the wheelhouse facing the stern and I watched as we completed the turn. 'What's his background?'