hoped it would.
The saloon door opened and there was a brief exchange between one of
our guards and a man outside, and then it closed again. Clearly
Ramirez too had sent to ask about the shooting. I put my hand to my
pocket again and said to the man with the rifle, “Fesforos?” He made
no sign and I managed to get the matches out without being
threatened.
I lit the cigarette and said, “Look, Mark. You know everybody cooped
up in this saloon. Some have been your friends others have been more
than friends – a lot more. In God’s name, what kind of a man are
you?”
I found it hard to speak to him without my voice betraying me.
“What can I do?” he asked petulantly. “Do you think I want to see you
all killed? It’s out of my hands – Ramirez is in control here.”
Clare’s voice was cutting. “He washes his hands – the new Pontius
Pilate.” “Damn it, Clare, you don’t think I want to see you at the
bottom of the sea? I can’t do anything, I tell you.” Campbell
said,”It’s no use, Mike. He wouldn’t do anything to save us even if he
could. His neck’s at stake, you know.” This was my chance. To speak
to Campbell I had to halfturn away from Mark and the guards in a
natural fashion.
“He’ll join us anyway,”I said. “Ramirez has got what he wants now. He
doesn’t need Mark any more – he only needs to take my notes with him
and I’m damn sure he’ll want to rub out any witness to all this
including Mark.” I was printing on the back of the cigarette packet
with the stub of pencil I had taken from my pocket with the matches.
The words, as large as I could make them, were “CABLE HOLD’. I drooped
my eyelid at Campbell and he caught on fast. He shook his fist at Mark
to divert attention and started acting up a little. “You damned
murderer!” he shouted.
“Shut up,” said Mark venomously. “Just shut up, damn you.” I held up
the cigarette packet towards Campbell and said, “Take it easy. Have
one?” “No, no,” he brushed my offer aside, but the job was done, and
Bill had had a clear vision of my message over Campbell’s shoulder. I
hoped to God that he had good eyesight. Clare saw the message too and
her eyes widened – She bent her head over the still prostrate Paula to
hide her expression. I saw her whisper in the other girl’s ear,
apparently still soothing her.
I said to Mark, still playing for time, “Why the hell should he shut
up? We’ve got nothing to lose by telling you what we think of you.
I’m sickened at the thought of you being any kin to me.”
Mark’s jaw tightened and he said nothing. I had to goad him into
speaking. I risked a glance at the port, and saw that the face had
gone, to be replaced with a hand. The middle finger and thumb were
joined in a circle. Bill had got my message.
Whatever happened dow I had to give him time to act on it.
Now he knew where the rest of us were and might be able to do something
about it. I wondered if he was alone or if Jim and Rex were still with
him. It was a slim chance but it was all we had. I reckoned that the
only thing we could do to help was to get at Mark in some way – and in
his highly nervous state that might prove deadly dangerous.
I said, “What put you on to us? The sea’s a big place, Mark.
But of course you always knew where that high-cobalt nodule formation
was, didn’t you?” “I only knew approximately. I wasn’t the only one
doing assays on that damned I.G.Y ship, and I couldn’t get at all the
information I wanted.” His sullen tone implied that such information
should have been his by rights, which was typical of him, but I was on
the right track in getting him to talk about his own cleverness. Few
genuine egotists can resist such an appeal.
“Who had the bright idea that found us here, then’? We could have been
anywhere. We could have been a hundred miles from here. You couldn’t
know where we were.” He laughed. “Couldn’t I? Couldn’t we?
I know you like a book, Mike. I knew that you’d find that deposit
given time to survey properly – so I gave you that time. And I knew
that once you’d found it you couldn’t resist investigating the
source.
I knew you’d have to come to Fonua Fo’ou, to Falcon.
Ramirez couldn’t see it, of course. He can be a stupid man at times.
But I convinced him that I knew my own brother.
We’ve been hanging round here for two bloody weeks waiting for you to
turn up I said, “How did you get tangled with Ramirez?”We already knew
the answer to that one but it kept him talking.
Campbell there couldn’t finance me and Suarez-Navarro could. It was as
simple as that. Who else should I go to but them? They’d just shown
that they weren’t too scrupulous by what they’d done to his mines, so
they were just what I wanted.” “And then they led you into murder.
You had to kill Norgaard.” A “That was an accident,” said Mark
irritably.
“All Sven was doing was tying up loose ends. We were waiting for the
hue and cry to die down, and then Suarez-Navarro were going to provide
us with a proper survey ship to find this stuff.” He thumped the
papers and notebook.
“Meantime that damned fool decided that he wanted to publish. You see,
he didn’t know much about Suarez-Navarro and that’s the way I wanted
it. We had an argument – he was a pretty excitable chap – at first in
words, and then it came to blows. The next thing I knew was that he’d
cracked his head open on the coral.
But I didn’t mean to kill him, Mike. I swear it. All I ever wanted to
do was to shut him up.?
“All you ever want to do is to shut people up,” I said flatly.
“How do you go about shutting up a good scientist, Mark? It seems to
me that the only way is to kill him.” I was cold inside, chilled by
his amoral egocentricity.
Everything he had done was justified in his own eyes, and everything
that had gone wrong was the fault of other people Mark waved me
aside.
“Hadley knew, of course. He was my liaison with Ramirez.
They helped me to cover it up, but somehow the police got onto it.”
“My God, you think I’m naive,” I said. “Look, Mark, I wouldn’t be
surprised if Ramirez didn’t tip off the police himself. It wouldn’t
matter to him he was in the clear. He arranged for your “death” and
that was that.
But he had you neatly wrapped in a package from then on, and you
couldn’t do a thing without his say so.” It wasn’t like that,” Mark
muttered.
“Wasn’t it? Even when the first plan went wrong and Hadley was
implicated in your so-called murder Ramirez wasn’t worried. That’s why
he laughed his damn head off when I accused him. He knew that all he
ever had to do to clear himself and Hadley was to produce you, and you
can be sure he’d do it in such a way that would earn him the
congratulations of the law.” “What do you mean by that?” “He’d
produce you dead – or dying, Mark – just so you couldn’t talk. And the
police would pat him on the back for capturing Mark Trevelyan,-the
murderer of
Sven Norgaard, and maybe the mastermind behind the killing of
Schouten.
By God, I was right when I called you stupid. You’d really got in over
your head, hadn’t you?” He was angry and baffled, and I could see that
my attack had hit home; doubt was in his every action.
Campbell said, “It doesn’t make any difference now. Mark, you’re for
the deep six along with the rest of us. Ramirez will see to that.”
Geordie laughed without humour. “Do you think you can trust
Ramirez?”
Mark thought deeply and then shook his head. “Maybe you’re right,” he
admitted, and I don’t think he had often used those words in his
lifetime. “But it still makes no difference.
You want me to help you, but I can’t. You’ll never beat him and if you
did I’d still be wanted for murder. I’d rather stick to Ramirez and
take my chances. He still needs me.” I wanted to try and tell him how
wrong he was, but something else had finally penetrated to my
consciousness.
There was a whistling sound in the distance – high pressure steam was