Then, quite suddenly, the headlong plunge had ended and I was running uphill again, climbing the little saddle that lay between me and the beach at Nesti Voe. For a few yards my momentum carried me forward, but then I was slowed to a walk and the weariness began to creep again among my muscles and tendons. God, I'd only to go over the fifty-foot contour line, and after that it was downhill again ! I must keep going. I breasted the top of the slope, staggered forward a few yards, and let go again, flogging my weary body on.
From where I was the moonlight lit the beaches. Catriona was still there, and afloat not aground. Thank God for that! And then I saw something else, something that momentarily stopped me in my tracks.
For a few seconds I could see the other beach, too. And another boat lay there, a little Shetland model, the dark thread of her mooring line curving to the beach!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So Anderson was on Noss!
Oh, God!
Where the hell was he? Why hadn't I seen him on my way down the slope? But I knew why – I hadn't been looking at anything but the way down. He'd have seen me, probably. Or would he? Maybe he'd been on lower ground, working his way round the southern cliffs while I came down the great central slope.
As I forced myself to move again, my mind was racing. Marasov would land on Noss if he believed anybody was there. Maybe Anderson could hide successfully, climbing, perhaps, down some cliff chimney he knew. But his boat would be found, he'd be trapped there and sooner or later
they'd reach him. The fishing boat would circle the island, men ashore would search. Anderson would be finished. I wondered briefly why it had taken Anderson so long to reach Noss.
I reached Catriona, pulled the anchor clear of its rock, waded into the shallows, slung it aboard and climbed over the low stern. Then I bashed the starter, swore as the engine failed to fire, pushed it again and gave a whooshing grunt of relief as it spun and caught. Did the bloody thing always fail first time and go the second?
Now, astern! I flung the lever over and heard the water swishing under the propeller blades. The beach receded slowly as I backed Catriona off, waited, then flung the lever forward and brought her head round.
Where was the fishing boat? I stared over my shoulder and was appalled to see she was no more than a few hundred yards away, barging across the mouth of the little bay beyond the beach, her bow wave glistening. I'd already half-decided, in a rational, if selfsacrificial moment, that if I could make it follow me, Anderson's chances would improve. Now the option wasn't even open. It was roaring towards me at full speed, big and powerful, searchlight knifing into the night. I opened the throttle as wide as it would go and slowly Catriona began to pick up speed. So far as I could tell the island of Bressay, only two hundred yards away across the channel, was all cliffs. Not high cliffs, but they didn't need to be, high to stop me. I reached for the chart and ran my eyes feverishly down the Bressay coastline. Yes, there! A gap in the cliffs at a spot called Grut Wick. I must get there. How far? A mile, perhaps more. I'd never make it. There was only one way — I'd have to blast Catriona straight across the Noss channel and try to get ashore as she struck.
Glancing over my shoulder, I was horrified to see how close the Russian boat was now. She seemed to be tearing through the water. And she'd seen me, too. She wasn't slowing or turning to go into Nesti Voe; she was coming powerfully on, directly towards me. But Catriona, too, was picking up speed. Poor Catriona a!
Poor Lincoln, too, for that matter, with his boat smashed deliberately into cliffs and then probably sinking, certainly abandoned. Bressay loomed nearer. Only a few yards to go now, and I could see the waves washing on the half-submerged rocks that jutted forward from the base of the low cliff. I left the wheel and scrambled forward, ready to jump as she struck. A harsh grating noise, then she stopped with a brutal bank and I was half catapulted, half jumping down to the flat, water-covered, sloping rock below me, falling headlong into the icy water. I scrambled upright and began to climb, glancing over my shoulder. The Russian fishing vessel was only a couple of hundred yards away now, knifing forward. I hauled myself desperately upward, insanely grateful that the cliff sloped back, that the rock stratum had buckled under some tremendous pressure of long ago and afforded scrambling angles. In a few seconds I was up and clear of it, but my heart was thundering painfully with each step now, every beat hammering at my eardrums. My legs were latex cylinders, buckling in all kinds of directions at once. That last explosion of effort had done for me. My strength was gone. I stood shakily for a moment on the grass slope at the top of the cliff and looked up. Ahead of me the ground sloped high, five or six hundred feet of rearing hillside,, a steep track that I had no hope of climbing, led to an escape I would now never make.
I was beaten. I'd tried, but I was done. From behind the damned searchlight caught me and I waited for the bullets to smack into me. But no bullets came. Marasov must have decided to catch me alive. Well, he'd have no trouble. I made myself stagger on a few steps more, but it was only a token, a gesture to myself that I hadn't given up. I'd keep trying until they actually caught me; until hands grabbed me and held me and I could stagger no more. The searchlight threw the slope into blinding relief ahead of me and in its great blaze I could see the long stripe of my own shadow, black against the hillside. A few more stumbling steps brought me on to a tiny plateau, and there it ended. I could go no more. The will remained, but not a morsel of
strength. I simply stood still in the searchlight beam, sagging, looking at the ground at my feet. I didn't even turn to watch Marasov's men come over the cliff, just stood there, waiting to hear the footsteps come towards me.
But that sound . . . it wasn't footsteps. An engine? The fishing boat, of course. But no, it couldn't be. This was a clattering sound, and came from above. The searchlight went out suddenly and I was blind in the night, listening still, wondering what the sound could be, but too spent even to lift my head. It grew louder, frighteningly loud, and I cupped my hands over my ears to keep it away. The, light came on again, but differently somehow, then I knew why it was different: it, too, came from above. I made myself look up and saw a huge helicopter quite close above my head, dropping slowly, and a man stood framed in its doorway, waving to me. What did he want? My soggy brain realized he wasn't waving, but beckoning. The wheels touched now, and the huge helicopter bounced gently on her suspension and I staggered towards the beckoning arm. I was grasped and bundled in through the doorway and suddenly there was a great roar as the floor lifted powerfully beneath me.
A voice said, 'You're such a clever bastard!' and I knew the voice, somehow, but I didn't understand why my eyelids were clamped closed. I couldn't open them and I didn't want to. Everything was sliding away.
Pain woke me. Not great pain, just a multitude of tiny agonies in various parts of my body. I tried to ease my limbs to make the tiny agonies go away, but they didn't. I opened my eyes and blinked a few times, looking up directly into a bare light bulb on the ceiling. A white ceiling; white walls, too. I was in a bed. Whose bed, where? I saw the door. Steel, with boltheads, painted a heavy green, battered and scraped. And in the middle of the door a kind of inset cone. Realization came and I sat up suddenly and painfully, grunting at the protests of flaring muscle pains. This was a cell! A cell in a prison. I looked behind me at the window. Bars confirmed it. Memory flooded back. A helicopter. A