Alistair MacLean Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection: San Andreas, The Golden Rendezvous, Seawitch, Santorini. Alistair MacLean
words were blurred and indistinct: speaking through those blistered lips had to be agonizing. ‘Sister has told me. Even the boat compass smashed. Flannelfoot.’
‘Flannelfoot?’
‘He’s still around. Flannelfoot.’
‘Flannelfeet,’ McKinnon said.
‘Archie!’ It said much for the Captain’s state of mind that, for the first time ever, he had, in company, addressed the Bo’sun by his first name. ‘You’re here.’
‘Bad pennies, sir.’
‘Who’s on watch, Bo’sun?’
‘Naseby, sir.’
‘That’s all right. Flannelfeet?’
‘There’s more than one, sir. There has to be. I know. I don’t know how I know, but I know.’
‘You never mentioned this to me,’ Patterson said.
‘That’s because I didn’t think about it until now. And there’s another thing I didn’t think about until now. Captain Andropolous.’
‘The Greek master,’ Bowen said. ‘What about him?’
‘Well, sir, you know we’re having a little trouble with the navigation?’
‘A little? That’s not how Sister Morrison tells it.’
‘Well, then, a lot. We thought Captain Andropolous might give us a hand if we could communicate with him. But we can’t. Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe if we just show him your sextant, Captain, and give him a chart, that might be enough. Trouble is, the chart’s ruined. Blood.’
‘No problem,’ Bowen said. ‘We always carry duplicates. It’ll be under the table or in the drawers at the after end of the chart room.’
‘I should be back in fifteen minutes,’ the Bo’sun said.
It took him considerably longer and, when he did return, his set face and the fact that he was carrying with him the sextant in its box and a chart bespoke a man who had come to report the failure of a mission.
Patterson said: ‘No cooperation? Or Flannelfoot?’
‘Flannelfoot. Captain Andropolous was lying on his bunk, snoring his head off. I tried to shake him but I might as well have shaken a sack of potatoes. My first thought was that the same person who had been to attend to Trent had also been to see the captain, but there was no smell of chloroform. I fetched Dr Singh, who said he had been heavily drugged.’
‘Drugged!’ Bowen tried to express astonishment but his voice came out as a croak. ‘God’s sake, is there no end to it? Drugged! How in heaven’s name could he have been drugged?’
‘Quite easily, it would seem, sir. Dr Singh didn’t know what drug it was but he said he must have taken it with something he’d eaten or drunk. We asked Achmed, the head cook, if the captain had had anything different to eat from the rest of us and he said he hadn’t but also said that he had coffee afterwards. Captain Andropolous had his own idea as to how coffee should be made – half coffee, half brandy. Dr Singh said that that amount of brandy would have disguised the taste of any drug he knows of. There was a cup and saucer by the captain’s bunkside table. It was empty.’
‘Ah.’ Patterson looked thoughtful. ‘There must have been dregs. I know nothing about those things, of course, but couldn’t Dr Singh have analysed those dregs?’
‘There were none. The captain could have done it himself – washed the cup, I mean. More likely, I think it was Flannelfoot covering his tracks. There was no point in making enquiries about who might or might not have been seen going into or leaving the captain’s cabin.’
‘No communication, is that it?’ Patterson said.
‘That’s it. Only his own crew were around at the time.’
Patterson said: ‘Assuming that our saboteur has been at work again – and I don’t think we can assume anything else – where the hell would he have got hold of powerful drugs like this?’
‘Where did he get hold of the chloroform? I would think that Flannelfoot is well-stocked with what he considers essentials. Maybe he’s not only a bit of a chemist, too. Maybe he knows what to look for in the dispensary.’
‘No,’ Bowen said. ‘I asked Dr Singh. The dispensary is kept locked.’
‘Yes, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘But if this person is a professional, a trained saboteur, then among what he rates essentials I would think that a set of skeleton keys comes pretty high on his list.’
‘My cup overfloweth,’ Bowen mumbled. ‘As I said, all gone to hell and breakfast. If the weather breaks down much more, and I understand it’s doing just that, we can end up any place. Coast of Norway, most like.’
‘May I speak, Captain?’ It was Lieutenant Ulbricht.
Bowen twisted his head to one side, an ill-advised move that made him grunt in pain. ‘Is that Lieutenant Ulbricht?’ There was little encouragement in his voice and, had his eyes not been bandaged, it was quite certain that there would have been none there either.
‘Yes, sir. I can navigate.’
‘You are very kind, Lieutenant.’ Bowen tried to sound icy but his blistered mouth wasn’t up to it. ‘You’re the last person in the world I would ever turn to for help. You have committed a crime against humanity.’ He paused for some seconds but it was no pause for reflection, a combination of anger and pain was making speech very difficult. ‘If we get back to Britain you will be shot. You? God!’
McKinnon said: ‘I can understand how you feel, sir. Because of his bombs, fifteen men are dead. Because of his bombs, you are the way you are. So are the Chief Officer, Hudson and Rafferty. But I still think you should listen to him.’
The Captain was silent for what seemed an unconscionably long time. It said much for the regard in which he held the Bo’sun that probably no other man could have given him pause for so long. When he spoke his voice was thick with bitterness. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. That’s it, isn’t it?’ McKinnon made no reply. ‘Anyway, navigating a plane is quite different from navigating a ship.’
‘I can navigate a ship,’ Ulbricht said. ‘In peacetime I was at a Marine Schule – a marine school. I have a marine navigation certificate.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Not on me, of course, but I have one. Besides, I have many times taken starsights from a plane. That is much more difficult than taking sight from the bridge of a ship. I repeat, I can navigate.’
‘Him! That monster!’ Sister Morrison sounded even more bitter than the Captain but maybe that was because her lips weren’t blistered. ‘I’m quite sure he can navigate, Captain Bowen. I’m also sure that he would navigate us straight to Alta Fjord or Trondheim or Bergen – some place in Norway, anyway.’
Ulbricht said: ‘That’s a very silly statement, Sister. Mr McKinnon may not be a navigator but he must be a very experienced seaman and it would require only one glimpse of the sun or the Pole Star to let him know whether we were steering roughly south-east instead of roughly south-west.’
‘I still don’t trust him an inch,’ Sister Morrison said. ‘If what he says is true, then I trust him even less.’ Her eyes were coldly appraising, her lips firmly compressed, one could see that she had missed out on her profession, she was well on the way to being the headmistress of Roedean with Ulbricht cast in the unlikely role of a trembling and errant pigtailed third-former. ‘Look what happened to Trent. Look what happened to that Greek captain. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to Mr McKinnon?’
‘With respect, Sister,’ McKinnon said in a voice notably lacking in respect, ‘I have to repeat what Lieutenant Ulbricht said – that’s a very silly statement indeed. It’s silly for two reasons. The first is Naseby is also a bo’sun and a very fine one, too. Not that I would expect you to