The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter. Desmond Bagley
I said, still spluttering. ‘It’s perfect, that’s all.’
Coertze said, grinning, ‘I’m a fine bricklayer when the rates of pay are good.’
A voice started to bleat in my ear and I turned round. It was an itinerant lottery-ticket seller poking a sheaf of tickets at me. I waved him away, but Coertze, in a good mood for once, said tolerantly, ‘No, man, let’s have one. No harm in taking out insurance.’
The ticket was a hundred pesetas, so we scraped it together from the change lying on the table, and then we went back to the flat.
V
The next day we started work in earnest. I stayed with Sanford, getting her ready for sea by dint of much bullying of the chandler and the sailmaker. By the end of the week I was satisfied that she was ready and was able to leave for anywhere in the world.
Coertze and Walker worked up at the house, rehabilitating the boat-shed and the slip and supervising the local labour they had found through Metcalfe’s kind offices. Coertze said, ‘You have no trouble if you treat these wogs just the same as the Kaffirs back home.’ I wasn’t so sure of that, but everything seemed to go all right.
By the time Metcalfe came back from whatever nefarious enterprise he had been on, we were pretty well finished and ready to leave. I said nothing to Metcalfe about this, feeling that the less he knew, the better.
When I’d got Sanford shipshape I went over to Metcalfe’s Fairmile to pay my promised visit. A fair-haired man who was flushing the decks with a hose said, ‘I guess you must be Halloran. I’m Krupke, Metcalfe’s side-kick.’
‘Is he around?’
Krupke shook his head. ‘He went off with that friend of yours – Walker. He said I was to show you around if you came aboard.’
I said, ‘You’re an American, aren’t you?’
He grinned. ‘Yep, I’m from Milwaukee. Didn’t fancy going back to the States after the war, so I stayed on here. Hell, I was only a kid then, not more’n twenty, so I thought that since Uncle Sam paid my fare out here, I might as well take advantage of it.’
I thought he was probably a deserter and couldn’t go back to the States, although there might have been an amnesty for deserters. I didn’t know how the civil statute limitations worked in military law. I didn’t say anything about that, though – renegades are touchy and sometimes unaccountably patriotic.
The wheelhouse – which Krupke called the ‘deckhouse’ – was well fitted. There were two echo sounders, one with a recording pen. Engine control was directly under the helmsman’s hand and the windows in front were fitted with Kent screens for bad weather. There was a big marine radio transceiver – and there was radar.
I put my hand on the radar display and said, ‘What range does this have?’
‘It’s got several ranges,’ he said. ‘You pick the one that’s best at the time. I’ll show you.’
He snapped a switch and turned a knob. After a few seconds the screen lit up and I could see a tiny plan of the harbour as the scanner revolved. Even Sanford was visible as one splotch among many.
‘That’s for close work,’ said Krupke, and turned a knob with a click. ‘This is maximum range – fifteen miles, but you won’t see much while we’re in harbour.’
The landward side of the screen was now too cluttered to be of any use, but to seaward, I saw a tiny speck. ‘What’s that?’
He looked at his watch. ‘That must be the ferry from Gibraltar. It’s ten miles away – you can see the mileage marked on the grid.’
I said, ‘This gadget must be handy for making a landfall at night.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is to match the screen profile with the chart. Doesn’t matter if there’s no moon or if there’s a fog.’
I wished I could have a set like that on Sanford but it’s difficult installing radar on a sailing vessel – there are too many lines to catch in the antenna. Anyway, we wouldn’t have the power to run it.
I looked around the wheelhouse. ‘With all this gear you can’t need much of a crew, even though she is a biggish boat,’ I said. ‘What crew do you have?’
‘Me and Metcalfe can run it ourselves,’ said Krupke. ‘Our trips aren’t too long. But usually we have another man with us – that Moroccan you’ve got on Sanford.’
I stayed aboard the Fairmile for a long time, but Metcalfe and Walker didn’t show up, so after a while I went back to Metcalfe’s flat. Coertze was already there, but there was no sign of the others, so we went to have dinner as a twosome.
Over dinner I said, ‘We ought to be getting away soon. Everything is fixed at this end and we’d be wasting time if we stayed any longer.’
‘Ja,’ Coertze agreed. ‘This isn’t a pleasure trip.’
We went back to the flat and found it empty, apart from the servants. Coertze went to his room and I read desultorily from a magazine. About ten o’clock I heard someone coming in and I looked up.
I was immediately boiling with fury.
Walker was drunk – blind, paralytic drunk. He was clutching on to Metcalfe and sagging at the knees, his face slack and his bleared eyes wavering unseeingly about him. Metcalfe was a little under the weather himself, but not too drunk. He gave Walker a hitch to prevent him from falling, and said cheerily, ‘We went to have a night on the town, but friend Walker couldn’t take it. You’d better help me dump him on his bed.’
I helped Metcalfe support Walker to his room and we laid him on his bed. Coertze, dozing in the other bed, woke up and said, ‘What’s happening?’
Metcalfe said, ‘Your pal’s got no head for liquor. He passed out on me.’
Coertze looked at Walker, then at me, his black eyebrows drawing angrily over his eyes. I made a sign for him to keep quiet.
Metcalfe stretched and said, ‘Well, I think I’ll turn in myself.’ He looked at Walker and there was an edge of contempt to his voice. ‘He’ll be all right in the morning, barring a hell of a hangover. I’ll tell Ismail to make him a prairie oyster for breakfast.’ He turned to Coertze. ‘What do you call it in Afrikaans?’
‘’n Regmaker,’ Coertze growled.
Metcalfe laughed. ‘That’s right. A Regmaker. That was the first word I ever learned in Afrikaans.’ He went to the door. ‘See you in the morning,’ he said, and was gone.
I closed the door. ‘The damn fool,’ I said feelingly.
Coertze got out of bed and grabbed hold of Walker, shaking him. ‘Walker,’ he shouted. ‘Did you tell him anything?’
Walker’s head flapped sideways and he began to snore. I took Coertze’s shoulder. ‘Be quiet; you’ll tell the whole household,’ I said. ‘It’s no use, anyway; you won’t get any sense out of him tonight – he’s unconscious. Leave it till morning.’
Coertze shook off my hand and turned. He had a black anger in him. ‘I told you,’ he said in a suppressed voice. ‘I told you he was no good. Who knows what the dronkie said?’
I took off Walker’s shoes and covered him with a blanket. ‘We’ll find out tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And I mean we. Don’t you go off pop at him, you’ll scare the liver out of him and he’ll close up tight.’
‘I’ll donner him up,’ said Coertze grimly. ‘That’s God’s truth.’
‘You’ll leave him alone,’ I said sharply. ‘We may be in enough trouble without fighting