The Golden Rendezvous. Alistair MacLean
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brought us both sharply back to the present and what was going on around us. One of the two chain slings round the big crate now poised exactly over the hatchway to number four hold had suddenly come adrift, one end of the crate dropping down through an angle of 60 degrees and bringing up with a jerking jolt that made even the big jumbo derrick shake and quiver with the strain. The chances were good that the crate would now slip through the remaining sling and crash down on to the floor of the hold far below, which is probably what would have happened if two of the crew holding on to a corner guiding rope hadn’t been quick-witted enough to throw all their weight on to it and so prevent the crate from tilting over at too steep an angle and sliding free. But even as it was it was still touch and go.
The crate swung back towards the side of the ship, the two men on the guide-rope still hanging on desperately. I caught a glimpse of the stevedores on the quayside below, their faces twisted into expressions of frozen panic: in the new people’s democracy where all men were free and equal, the penalty for this sort of carelessness was probably the firing squad: nothing else could have accounted for their otherwise inexplicably genuine terror. The crate began to swing back over the hold. I yelled to the men beneath to run clear and simultaneously gave the signal for emergency lowering. The winchman, fortunately, was as quick-witted as he was experienced, and as the wildly careering crate swung jerkily back to dead centre he lowered away at two or three times the normal speed, braking just seconds before the lowermost corner of the crate crunched and splintered against the floor of the hold. Moments later the entire length of the crate was resting on the bottom.
Captain Bullen fished a handkerchief from his drills, removed his gold-braided cap and slowly mopped his sandy hair and sweating brow. He appeared to be communing with himself.
“This,” he said finally, “is the bloody end. Captain Bullen in the dog-house. The crew sore as hell. The passengers hopping mad. Two days behind schedule. Searched by the Americans from truck to keelson like a contraband-runner. Now probably carrying contraband. No sign of our latest bunch of passengers. Got to clear the harbour bar by six. And now this band of madmen trying to send us to the bottom. A man can stand so much, First, just so much.” He replaced his cap. “Shakespeare had something to say about this, First.”
“A sea of troubles, sir?”
“No, something else. But apt enough.” He sighed. “Get the second officer to relieve you. Third’s checking stores. Get the fourth—no, not that blithering nincompoop—get the bo’sun, he talks Spanish like a native anyway, to take over on the shore side. Any objections and that’s the last piece of cargo we load. Then you and I are having lunch, First.”
“I told Miss Beresford that I wouldn’t——”
“If you think,” Captain Bullen interrupted heavily, “that I’m going to listen to that bunch jangling their money-bags and bemoaning their hard lot from hors d’œuvre right through to coffee, you must be out of your mind. We’ll have it in my cabin.”
And so we had it in his cabin. It was the usual Campari meal, something for even the most blasé epicure to dream about, and Captain Bullen, for once and understandably, made an exception to his rule that neither he nor his officers should drink with lunch. By the time the meal was over he was feeling almost human again and once went so far as to call me “Johhny-me-boy.” It wouldn’t last. But it was all pleasant enough, and it was with reluctance that I finally quit the air-conditioned coolness of the captain’s day-cabin for the blazing sunshine outside to relieve the second officer.
He smiled widely as I approached number four hold. Tommy Wilson was always smiling. He was a dark, wiry Welshman of middle height, with an infectious grin and an immense zest for life, no matter what came his way.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“You can see for yourself.” He waved a complacent hand towards the pile of stacked crates on the quayside, now diminished by a good third since I had seen it last. “Speed allied with efficiency. When Wilson is on the job let no man ever——”
“The bo’sun’s name is MacDonald, not Wilson,” I said.
“So it is.” He laughed, glanced down to where the bo’sun, a big, tough, infinitely competent Hebridean islander was haranguing the bearded stevedores, and shook his head admiringly. “I wish I could understand what he’s saying.”
“Translation would be superfluous,” I said dryly. “I’ll take over. Old man wants you to go ashore.”
“Ashore?” His face lit up, in two short years the second’s shoregoing exploits had already passed into the realms of legend. “Let no man ever say that Wilson ignored duty’s call. Twenty minutes for a shower, shave and shake out the number ones——”
“The agent’s offices are just beyond the dock gates,” I interrupted. “You can go as you are. Find out what’s happened to our latest passengers. Captain’s beginning to worry about them, if they’re not here by five o’clock he’s sailing without them.”
Wilson left. The sun started westering, but the heat stayed as it was. Thanks to MacDonald’s competence and uninhibited command of the Spanish language, the cargo on the quayside steadily and rapidly diminished. Wilson returned to report no sign of our passengers. The agent had been very nervous indeed. They were very important people, Señor, very, very important. One of them was the most important man in the whole province of Camafuegos. A jeep had already been dispatched westwards along the coast road to look for them. It sometimes happened, the señor understood, that a car spring would go or a shock absorber snap. When Wilson had innocently inquired if this was because the revolutionary government had no money left to pay for the filling in of the enormous potholes in the roads, the agent had become even more nervous and said indignantly that it was entirely the fault of the inferior metal those perfidious Americanos used in the construction of their vehicles. Wilson said he had left with the impression that Detroit had a special assembly line exclusively devoted to turning out deliberately inferior cars destined solely for this particular corner of the Caribbean.
Wilson went away. The cargo continued to move steadily into number four hold. About four o’clock in the afternoon I heard the sound of the clashing of gears and the asthmatic wheezing of what sounded like a very elderly engine indeed. This, I thought, would be the passengers at last, but no: what clanked into view round the corner of the dock gate was a dilapidated truck with hardly a shred of paint left on the bodywork, white canvas showing on the tyres and the engine hood removed to reveal what looked, from my elevation, like a solid block of rust. One of the special Detroit jobs, probably. On its cracked and splintered platform it carried three medium-sized crates, freshly boxed and metal-banded.
Wrapped in a blue haze from the staccato back-firing of its exhaust, vibrating like a broken tuning fork and rattling in every bolt in its superannuated chassis, the truck trundled heavily across the cobbles and pulled up not five paces from where MacDonald was standing. A little man in white ducks and peaked cap jumped out through the space where the door ought to have been, stood still for a couple of seconds until he got the hang of terra firma again and then scuttled off in the direction of our gangway. I recognised him as our Carracio agent, the one with the low opinion of Detroit, and wondered what fresh trouble he was bringing with him.
I found out in three minutes flat when Captain Bullen appeared on deck, an anxious-looking agent scurrying along behind him. The captain’s blue eyes were snapping, the red complexion was overlaid with puce, but he had the safety valve screwed right down.
“Coffins, Mister,” he said tightly. “Coffins, no less.”
I suppose there is a quick and clever answer to a conversational gambit like that but I couldn’t find it so I said politely: “Coffins, sir?”
“Coffins, Mister. Not empty, either. For shipment to New York.” He flourished some papers. “Authorisations, shipping notes, everything in order. Including a sealed request signed by no less than the ambassador. Three of them. Two British, one American subjects. Killed in the hunger riots.”
“The crew won’t like it, sir,” I said. “Especially the Gôanese stewards.