Alistair MacLean Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection: San Andreas, The Golden Rendezvous, Seawitch, Santorini

‘And after that?’

‘Aha! Clever, clever Janet Magnusson. If I haven’t got any plans for the future then I don’t see any future. Isn’t that it? Well, I do see a future and I do have plans. I’m going to take my first break since nineteen thirty-nine and have a couple of weeks back home in the Shetlands. When were you last back home in the Shetlands?’

‘Not for years.’

‘Will you come with me, Janet?’

‘Of course.’

McKinnon went into Ward A and passed up the aisle to where Sister Morrison was sitting at her table. ‘How’s the Captain?’

‘Well enough, I suppose. Bit dull and quiet. But why ask me? Ask him.’

‘I have to ask the ward sister’s permission to take him out of the ward.’

‘Take him out – whatever for?’

‘I want to talk to him.’

‘You can talk to him here.’

‘I can just see the nasty suspicious looks I’d be getting from you if we started whispering together and the nasty suspicious questions I’d be getting afterwards. My dear Margaret, we have matters of state to discuss.’

‘You don’t trust me, is that it?’

‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me that silly question. Same answer. I do trust you. Totally. I trust Mr Kennet there. But there are five others I don’t know whether to trust or not.’

McKinnon took the Captain from the ward and returned with him inside two minutes. After she’d tucked him back in bed, Margaret Morrison said: ‘That must rank as the shortest state conference in history.’

‘We are men of few words.’

‘And that’s the only communiqué I’ll be getting?’

‘Well, that’s the way high-level diplomacy is conducted. Secrecy is the watchword.’

As he entered Ward B he was stopped by Janet Magnusson. ‘What was all that about, then? You and Captain Bowen, I mean.’

‘I have not had a private talk with the Captain in order to tell all the patients in Ward B about it. I am under an oath of silence.’

Margaret Morrison came in, looked from one to the other, then said: ‘Well, Janet, has he been more forthcoming with you than with me?’

‘Forthcoming? Under an oath of silence, he claims. His own oath, I have no doubt.’

‘No doubt. What have you been doing to the Captain?’

‘Doing? I’ve been doing nothing.’

‘Saying, then. He’s changed since he came back. Seems positively cheerful.’

‘Cheerful? How can you tell. With all those bandages, you can’t see a square inch of his face.’

‘There are more ways than one of telling. He’s sitting up in bed, rubbing his hands from time to time and twice he’s said “Aha”.’

‘I’m not surprised. It takes a special kind of talent to reach the hearts and minds of the ill and depressed. It’s a gift. Some of us have it.’ He looked at each in turn. ‘And some of us haven’t.’

He left them looking at each other.

McKinnon was woken by Trent at 2.0 a.m. ‘The moon’s out, Bo’sun.’

The moon, as McKinnon bleakly appreciated when he arrived on the port wing of the bridge, was very much out, a three-quarter moon and preternaturally bright – or so it seemed to him. At least half the sky was clear. The visibility out over the now almost calm seas was remarkable, so much so that he had no difficulty in picking out the line of the horizon: and if he could see the horizon, the Bo’sun all too clearly realized, then a submarine could pick them up ten miles away, especially if the San Andreas were silhouetted against the light of the moon. McKinnon felt naked and very vulnerable. He went below, roused Curran, told him to take up lookout on the starboard wing of the bridge, found Naseby, asked him to check that the falls and davits of the motor lifeboats were clear of ice and working freely and then returned to the port wing where, every minute or two, he swept the horizon with his binoculars. But the sea between the San Andreas and the horizon remained providentially empty.

The San Andreas itself was a remarkable sight. Wholly covered in ice and snow, it glittered and shone and sparkled in the bright moonlight except for a narrow central area abaft of the superstructure where wisping smoke from the shattered funnel had laid a brown smear all the way to the stern post. The fore and aft derricks were huge glistening Christmas trees, festooned with thick-ribbed woolly halliards and stays, and the anchor chains on the fo’c’s’le had been transformed into great fluffy ropes of the softest cotton wool. It was a strange and beautiful world with an almost magical quality about it, ethereal almost: but one had only to think of the lethal dangers that lay under the surrounding waters and the beauty and the magic ceased to exist.

An hour passed by and everything remained quiet and peaceful. Another hour came and went, nothing untoward happened and McKinnon could scarcely believe their great good fortune. And before the third uneventful hour was up the clouds had covered the moon and it had begun to snow again, a gentle snowfall only, but enough, with the hidden moon, to shroud them in blessed anonymity again. Telling Ferguson, who now had the watch, to shake him if the snow stopped, he went below in search of some more sleep.

It was nine o’clock when he awoke. It was an unusually late awakening for him but he wasn’t unduly perturbed – dawn was still an hour distant. As he crossed the upper deck he noted that the conditions were just as they had been four hours previously – moderate seas, a wind no stronger than Force three and still the same gently falling snow. McKinnon had no belief in the second sight but he felt in his bones that this peace and calm would have gone before the morning was out.

Down below he talked in turn with Jones, McGuigan, Stephen and Johnny Holbrook. They had taken it in turn, and in pairs, to monitor the comings and goings of everybody in the hospital. All four swore that nobody had stirred aboard during the night and that, most certainly, no one had at any time left the hospital area.

He had breakfast with Dr Singh, Dr Sinclair, Patterson and Jamieson – Dr Singh, he thought, looked unusually tired and strained – then went to Ward B where he found Janet Magnusson. She looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes.

McKinnon looked at her with concern.

‘What’s wrong, Janet?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. It’s all your fault.’

‘Of course. It’s always my fault. Cardinal rule number one – when anything goes wrong blame the Bo’sun. What am I supposed to have done this time?’

‘You said the submarine, the U-boat, would attack if the moon broke through.’

‘I said it could, not would.’

‘Same thing. I spent most of the night looking out through the porthole – no, Mr McKinnon, I did not have my cabin light switched on – and when the moon came out at about two o’clock I was sure the attack must come any time. And when the moon went I was sure it would come again. Moon. U-boat. Your fault.’

‘A certain logic, I must admit. Twisted logic, of course, but not more than one would expect of the feminine mind. Still, I’m sorry.’

‘But you’re looking fine. Fresh. Relaxed. And you’re very late on the road this morning. Our trusty guardian sleeping on the job.’

‘Your trusty guardian lost a little sleep himself, last night,’ McKinnon said. ‘Back shortly. Must see the Captain.’

It was Sister Maria, not Sister Morrison, who was in charge in A Ward. McKinnon spoke briefly with both the Captain and First Officer, then said to Bowen: ‘Still sure, sir?’

‘More sure than ever, Archie. When’s dawn?’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

‘I wish you well.’