Petersen didn’t show any particular emotion but his tone sounded implacable enough. Carlos, his pain forgotten, laid a hand on Petersen’s forearm.
‘People don’t commit murder aboard my ship.’
‘Haven’t committed. And murder is for peacetime. In wartime we call it execution.’ For those listening inside the cabin the tone of his voice could have lent little encouragement. ‘George, Alex. Help Franco and Sepp into the cabin. Keep out of any line of fire.’
Franco and Sepp didn’t need any kind of helping. Execution chamber or not they couldn’t get inside it fast enough. The door banged shut arid a watertight clip came down. Petersen examined the pear-shaped object in his hand.
Carlos said apprehensively: ‘What’s that?’
‘You can see. A hand-grenade of sorts. George?’ George didn’t need telling what to do. He never did. He took up position by the cabin door, his hand reaching up for the closed watertight clip. With one hand Petersen took a grip on the door handle, with the other he pressed a lever on the bottom of the grenade as he glanced at George who immediately opened the clip. Petersen jerked open the door the requisite few inches, dropped the grenade inside and banged shut the door as George closed the clip again. They could have rehearsed it a hundred times.
‘Jesus!’ Carlos’ face was white. ‘In that confined space -‘ He stopped, his face puzzled now, and said: ‘The explosion. The bang.’
‘Gas-grenades don’t go bang. They go hiss. Reactions, George?’ George had taken his hand away from the clip.
‘Five seconds and then whoever it was gave up. Quick-acting stuff, is it not?’
Carlos was still almost distraught. ‘What’s the difference? Explosives or poison gas -‘
Petersen spoke with patience. ‘It was not poison gas. George.’ He spoke a few words in the ear of his giant ‘lieutenant, who smiled and moved quickly aft. Petersen turned to Carlos. ‘Is it your intention to let your friend Cola die?’
‘He’s not my friend and he’s in no danger of dying.’ He turned to the elder Pietro who had just arrived on the scene. ‘Get my medicine box and bring along two of your boys.’ To Petersen he said: ‘I’ll give a sedative, a knockout one. Then a coagulant. A few minutes later and I’ll bandage him up. ‘”There’ll be a broken bone or bones. It may be that his shoulder is shattered beyond repair, but whatever it is there’s nothing I can do about it in this seaway.’ He glanced aft, crossed his hand over his forehead and looked as if he would ‘like to moan. ‘More trouble.’
Michael von Karajan was approaching them, closely followed by George. Michael was trying to look indignant and truculent but succeeded only in looking miserable and frightened. George was beaming.
‘By heavens, Major, there’s nothing wrong with this new generation of ours. You-have to admire their selfless spirit. Here we are with the good ship Colombo trying to turn somersaults but does that stop our Michael hi the polishing of his skills? Not a bit of it. There he was, crouched over his transceiver in this appalling weather, headphones clamped over his ears -‘
Petersen held up his hand. When he spoke his face was as cold as his voice. ‘Is this true, von Karajan?’
‘No. What I mean is-‘
‘You’re a liar. If George says it’s true, it’s true. What message were you sending?’
‘I wasn’t sending any message. I -‘
‘George?’
‘He wasn’t transmitting any message when I arrived.’
‘He would hardly have had time to,’ Giacomo said. ‘Not between the time I left our cabin and when George got there.’ He eyed the now visibly shaking Michael with open distaste. ‘He’s not only a coward, he’s a fool. How was he to know that I wasn’t going to return at any moment? Why didn’t he lock his door to make sure that he wasn’t disturbed?’
Petersen said: ‘What message were you going to transmit?’
‘I wasn’t going to transmit any -‘
‘That makes you doubly a liar. Who were you transmitting to or about to transmit to?’
‘I wasn’t going to-‘
‘Oh, do be quiet. That makes you three times a liar. George, confiscate his equipment. FOE good measure confiscate his sister’s as well.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Michael was aghast. ‘Take away our radios? They’re our equipment.’
‘Good God in heaven!’ Petersen stared at him in disbelief. Whether, the disbelief were real or affected didn’t matter. The effect was the same. ‘I’m your commanding officer, you young fool. I can not only lock up your equipment, I can lock you up too, on charges of mutiny. In irons, if need be.’ Petersen shook his head. ‘”Can’t”, he says, “can’t”. Another thing, von Karajan. Can it be that you’re so stupid as not to know that, in wartime at sea, the use of radio by unauthorized personnel is a very serious offence.’ He turned to Carlos. ‘Is that not so, Captain Tremino?’ Petersen’s use of formal terms lent to his enquiry all the gravity of a court-martial.
‘Very much so, I’m afraid.’ Carlos wasn’t too happy to say it but he said it all the same.
‘Is this young fellow authorized personnel?’
‘No.’
‘You see how it is, von Karajan? The Captain would also be justified in locking you up. George, put the sets in our cabin. No, wait a minute. This is primarily a naval offence.’ He looked at Carlos. ‘Do you think -‘
‘I have a very adequate safe in the office,’ Carlos said. ‘And I have the only key.’
‘Splendid.’ George moved off, a disconsolate Michael trailing behind him, passing by Pietro, bearing a black metal box and accompanied by two seamen. Carlos opened the medicine chest – it appeared to be immaculately equipped -and administered two injections to the hapless Cola. The box was closed and removed: so was Cola.
‘Well, now,’ Petersen said. ‘Let’s see what we have inside.’ Alex, not without considerable effort, managed to free the watertight clip – when George heaved a watertight clip home it tended to stay heaved – then levelled his machine-pistol on the door. Giacomo did the same with his pistol, clearly demonstrating that whoever’s side, if any, he was on it clearly was not that of Alessandro and his henchmen. Petersen didn’t bother about any weapon, although he had a Luger on his person: he just pushed the door open.
The guns were unnecessary. The four men were not unconscious but, on the other hand, they weren’t very conscious either, although they would be very soon. No coughing, no spluttering, no tears running down their cheeks: they were just slightly dazed, slightly woozy, slightly apathetic. Alex laid down his machine-pistol, collected the several weapons that were lying around, then searched the four men thoroughly, coming up with two more hand-guns and no fewer than four very unpleasant knives. All these he threw out into the passage-way.
‘Well.’ Carlos was almost smiling. ‘That wasn’t very clever of me, was it? I mean, if you had wished to dispose of all of them you’d have thrown Cola in here, too. I missed that.’ He sniffed the air professionally. ‘Nitrous oxide, I’d say. You know, laughing gas.’
‘Not bad for a doctor,’ Petersen said. ‘I thought that gas was confined only to dentists’ surgeries. Nitrous oxide, a refined form of. With this, you don’t come out of the anaesthetic with tears in your eyes, laughing, singing and generally making a fool of yourself. Normally, you don’t come out of it at all, by which I mean you’d just keep on sleeping until you woke up at your usual time, quite unaware that anything untoward had happened to you. But I’m told that if you’ve recently undergone some sort of traumatic experience immediately before you’ve been gassed, the tendency is to wake up directly the effects of the gas have worn off. They also say that if you had something weighing on your mind, such as a nagging conscience, the same thing happens.’
Carlos said: ‘That’s a strange sort of thing for a soldier to know about.’
‘I’m a strange sort of soldier. Alex, take up your gun while I have a look around.’
‘Look around?’ Carlos did just that. The cabin, if one could call it such, held five canvas cots and that was all: there wasn’t as much as even a cupboard for clothes. ‘There’s nothing to look around for.’
Petersen didn’t bother to reply. He ripped blankets from the cots and flung them on the deck. Nothing had lain beneath the blankets. He picked up a rucksack – there were five of them in the cabin – and unceremoniously dumped the contents on a cot. They were innocuous. Among some clothes and a rudimentary toilet kit there was a considerable amount of ammunition, some loose, some in magazines, but those, too, Petersen considered innocuous: he would have expected nothing else. The second rucksack yielded the same results. The third was padlocked. Petersen looked at Alessandro, who was sitting on the deck, his ravaged face expressionless: the effect was chilling, even a hint of bale-fulness would have been preferable to this emptiness but Petersen was not the man to be moved by expressions or lack of them.