I glanced at the dashboard clock. 2.00 a.m. Nine hours since I had left Inverness and only one stop for gas. I realized I was very hungry.
A couple of miles further on a neon sign blinked garishly through the heavy drizzle. A drivers' pull-up. I swung the Jaguar off the road, parked beside the heavy trucks and limped inside.
It was a bright, noisy, cheerful place, about half full. I picked up my bacon, sausages and eggs and went over to an empty table by the window.
The meal finished, I lit a cigarette and stared out unseeingly into the driving rain. Now and again I could hear the rumble and swish as a truck or night-coach rolled by on the Great North Road.
The Great North Road. The prelude, the curtain call to all the highlights of my life — long Italian summers on my father's ship, Oxford and the Law, the Royal Naval Barracks, Portsmouth. All these other times, I reflected, there had been uncertainty. So, too, this time. All these other times excitement, anticipation. But this time only doubt and wonder, foreboding and slow anger.
I fished out Nicky's telegram again.
ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG STOP HALLELUJAH STOP THE DE'IL LOOKS AFTER HIS AIN STOP NOW SUCCESSFUL BREEDER OF OIL WELLS STOP STAYING SAVOY WITH ALL THE OTHER MILLIONAIRES STOP RRR
NICKY
I pushed the telegram back into my pocket. RRR. The Special Service code sign — 'Where do we rendezvous?' I had wired back
SEE YOU SAVOY 7 P.M. WEDNESDAY.
Even now I did not know why I had done it. It just had to be done. This was one loose end in my life that simply had to be cut off. Courage, fear, curiosity, anger — these did not enter into it. There was just simple compulsion. This I had to do.
I paid my check, climbed into the Jaguar, pulled out on the A1, set the hand throttle and headed south.
I was confused. The bit about the De'il — the Devil looks after his own — a phrase he had picked up from me: that I could understand. He had seen the flaming eruption of disintegrating steel and burning oil as the Heinkel's glider-bomb had smacked accurately into the engine room of the F149. I had no right to be alive, the surgeon had said — but he had made a pretty good job of my crocked leg and mangled arm.
But I couldn't figure the rest of the telegram. It was too friendly. Too friendly by half for a man who, when we had last parted — five minutes before the explosion — had been standing on a desolate Tuscan beach at the wrong end of my Service Colt.45. I could see him yet, could see the anger dying in his eyes, the disbelief, the astonishment, the emotionless mask, I had stood there trying to hate him — and failing miserably — and trying not to hate myself. I had failed in that too. And I heard again his promise, quiet, almost conversationaclass="underline" 'Don't forget, Mac — I'll be looking you up one of these days.'
I sighed. Our first meeting had been rather different. I flicked the dashboard switch. 2.45. Two hundred miles to London. I shoved the hand throttle up a notch.
Malta, 1943. The George Cross island. The island of Faith, Hope and Charity — the three obsolete fighters pitted against the savagery of the Axis air fleets. Malta. The sorely battered capital of Valetta and the Grand Harbour, that destination of a very few, very lucky merchant ships, of the 40-knot plus gauntlet-running minelaying cruisers, of the submarine gasoline tankers, of the immortal 'Ohio'.
But the war was very far away that Spring morning. All was peaceful and still and bathed in sunshine as I walked into the Admiralty HQ.
'Lieutenant McIndoe to see Admiral Starr?' the duty petty officer repeated. 'Along the passage, first on the left, sir. He's alone just now.'
I knocked and went in. A large bare room, with Venetian blinds and walls covered with maps, it was completely dominated by the huge figure sitting behind the only table in the room. Two hundred and fifty pounds if an ounce, red-faced, white-haired and with bushy eyebrows, Vice-Admiral Starr had become a legend in his own lifetime. He had the face and expression of a bucolic farmer, a mind like a rapier and a deep-rooted intolerance of those who wasted either time or speech.
He pushed some papers away in a folder and motioned me to a seat.
'Morning, McIndoe. Carried out your instructions?' he asked.
'To the letter, sir,' I replied carefully. 'Gunboat F149 is completely stripped. The extra fuel tanks are fitted and the short and long-range receiving and transmitting sets were installed yesterday. She's fuelled, provisioned and ready for sea.'
He nodded in satisfaction. 'And your crew?'
The best, sir. Experienced, completely reliable.'
'Right.' He stood up. 'You'll contact Ravallo this evening and receive final instructions from him.'
'Ravallo, sir?'
'Major Ravallo, US Army. A top espionage agent and just about the best lend-lease bargain ever. From now on, he's your immediate boss.'
I felt distinctly aggrieved. 'Am I to understand, sir — '
'These are your orders,' he interrupted flatly. 'Besides,' he chuckled, 'Ravallo will welcome you with open arms. The last time he came back from Sicily, he had to swim the last two miles. Damned annoyed, he was.'
'Quite so, sir. Do I meet Ravallo here?'
Admiral Starr coughed. 'Well, no, not exactly. Major Ravallo is an American — ' he spoke as if this explained everything — 'and not subject to our discipline. You'll find him in the Triannon bar at six o'clock.'
'Have another, Mac,' Nicky Ravallo urged hospitably. 'You'll be needing it tonight yet.'
Major Ravallo, I reflected, would have made a big hit in Hollywood. With his dark, tousled hair, crinkling blue eyes, dark tan, white teeth and weird hodgepodge of a uniform designed strictly by himself, he looked ready-made material for a Caribbean pirate or a second d'Artagnan. But the gallant Major, it seemed to me, treated war much too lightly; besides, I was still smarting from the insult of being placed under an American's command — and from his smiling refusal to give me any details of that night's operation until we got to sea.
'No thanks,' I replied stiffly. 'So far I've never felt the need for any pre-operational stoking up on alcohol. And I'm not starting now.' I knew I was behaving badly.
'Suit yourself, Scotty.' Ravallo was not only unruffled but positively affable. 'Starr tells me you're a specialist on the Italian coast and language and just about the best gunboat handler in the business. That's all I want. Come along.'
In silence we walked through the white-walled streets towards the harbour and in silence we descended by the fearsome open elevator on the cliff-face to the gathering gloom of Christ's steps. Here we hired a dico and were rowed out to Motor Gunboat F149, moored at the far end of Angelo creek.
Once aboard, I had him meet my crew — Taffy, Passiere, Hillyard, Johnson, Higgins and Wilson, my second in command. They seemed favourably impressed by Ravallo, and he by them, although I did not take too kindly to his cheerful invitation to 'just call me Nicky, boys.' They would be calling me 'Sammy' next and I wasn't sure that I would like that.
'How come Passiere?' Ravallo asked when we were alone again. 'Hardly an Anglo-Saxon name that.'
'Like Ravallo?' I suggested.
He laughed. 'TOUCHE. But still,' he persisted, 'what's he doing here?'
'Free French,' I explained. 'There are thousands of them on our side — mostly in their own ships. He's a refugee from Vichy France, a holder of the CROIX DE GUERRE and just about the best radio operator I've ever known. I hope,' I added sweetly, 'that you have no objections to the presence of non-British nationals aboard this boat?'
'Sorry again,' he laughed. 'I guess I asked for that.' He ran his hand ruefully through his thick black hair and grinned quizzically at me.