pseudo-solicitous young lady asking me about cocktails only two days ago
in carracio, but the vision faded as soon as it had come; the
incongruity was too much.
“Susan!” I said urgently. “Are you “i’m not hurt.” she gave a
long, tremulous sigh that was ore shudder than sigh. “I was just too
scared to move.” he eased her grip a trifle, looked at me with green
eyes enormous in the pallor of her face, then buried her face
my shoulder. I thought she was going to choke me. It didn’t last
long, fortunately. I felt the grip slowly easing, w the beam of the
lantern shifting, and she was saying in n abnormally matter-of-fact
voice: “there they are.” I turned round and there, not ten feet away,
they were deed. Three cotlins-carreras had already removed the
cases-and securely stowed between baffle and bulkhead and added with
tarpaulins, so that they could come to no harm.
tony carreras kept on repeating, his old man didn’t miss much.
Dark, shiny coffins with black-braided ropes and brass handles. One of
them had an inlet plaque on the lid, copper r brass, I couldn’t be sure.
“That saves me some trouble.” my voice was almost back normal. I took
the hammer and chisel i’d borrowed from e bosun’s store and let them
drop. “This screw driver will all I need. We’ll find two of those with
what’s normally side them. Give me the lantern and stay there. I’ll be
as quick as I can.”
“You’ll be quicker if I hold the lantern.” her voice matched my
own in steadiness, but the pulse in her throat was going like a trip
hammer. “Hurry, please.”
I was in no way to argue. I caught the foot of the nearest coffin
and pulled it towards me so that I could have room to work. It was
jammed. I slid my hand under the end to lift it and suddenly my finger
found a hole in the bottom of the coffin. And then another. And a
third. A lead-lined coffin with holes bored in the bottom of it. That
was curious, to say the least.
when i’d moved it far enough out, I started on the screws. They
were brass and very heavy, but so was the screw driver i’d taken from
macdonald’s store. And at the back of my mind was the thought that if
the knockout drops dr. Marston had provided for the sentry were in any
way as ineffective as the anaesthetic he had given me, then the sentry
would be waking up any minute now. If he hadn’t already come to. I had
that coffin lid off in no time at all.
beneath the lid was not the satin shroud or silks I would have
expected but a filthy old blanket. In the generalissimo’s country,
perhaps, their customs with coffins were different from ours. I pulled
off the blanket and found I was right. Their customs were, on occasion,
different. The corpse, in this case, consisted of blocks of amatolach
block was clearly marked with the word, so there was no mistake about
it-a primer, a small case of detonators, and a compact square box with
wires leading from it, a timing device probably.
susan was peering over my shoulder. “What’s amatol?”
“High explosive. Enough there to blow the campari apart.” she
asked nothing else. I replaced the blanket, screwed on the lid, and
started on the next coffin. This, too, had holes in the underside,
probably to prevent the explosives sweating. I removed the lid, looked
at the contents, and replaced the lid. Number two was a duplicate of
number one. And then I started on the third one. The one with the
plaque. This would be the one. The plaque was heart-shaped and read
with impressive simplicity: “richard hoskins, senator.” just that.
Senator of what I didn’t know. But impressive. Impressive enough to
ensure its reverent transportation to the united states. I removed the
lid with care, gentleness, and as much respectful reverence as if
richard hoskins actually were inside, which I knew he wasn’t.
whatever lay inside was covered with a rug. I lifted the rug
gingerly; susan brought the lantern nearer, and there it lay, cushioned
in blankets and cotton wool. A polished cylinder, seventy-five inches
in length, eleven inches in diameter, with a whitish pyroceram nose cap.
Just lying there, there was something frightening about it, something
unutterably evil; but perhaps that was just because of what was in my
own mind.
“What is it?” susan’s voice was so low tht she bad to come closer
to repeat the words. “Oh, johnny, what in the world is it?”
“The twister.”
“The-the what?”
“The twister.”
“Oh, dear god!” she had it now. “This-this atomic device that was
stolen in south carolina. The twister.” she rose unsteadily to her
feet and backed away. “The twister!”
“It won’t bite you,” I said. I didn’t feel too sure about that
either. “The equivalent of five thousand tons of t.n.t. Guaranteed to
blast any ship on earth to smithereens, if not actually vaporise. And
that’s just what carreras intends to do.”
“I-i don’t understand.” maybe she was referring to the actual
hearing of the words-our talk was continually being punctuated by the
screeching of metal and the sounds of wood being crushed and snapped to
the meaning of what I was saying. “You when he gets the gold from the
ticonderoga and transships it to this vessel he has standing by, he’s
going to blow up the campari with-with this?”
“There is no ship standing by. There never was. When he’s loaded
the gold aboard, the kindhearted miguel carreras is going to free all
the passengers and crew of the campari and let them off in the fort
ticonderoga. As a further mark of his sentimentality and kindness he’s
going to ask that senator hoskins here and his two presumably
illustrious companions be taken back for burial in their native land.
The captain of the ticonderoga would never dream of refusing-and, if it
came to the bit, carreras would make certain that he damned well didn’t
refuse. See that?” I pointed to a panel near the tail of the twister.
“Don’t touch it!” if you can imagine anyone screaming
in a whisper, then that’s what she did. “I wouldn’t touch it for
all the money in the ticonderoga,”
I assured her fervently. “I’m even scared to look at the damned
thing. Anyway, that panel is almost certainly a timing device which
will be preset before the coffin is transshipped. We sail merrily on
our way, hell-bent for norfolk, the army, navy, air force, f.b.i., and
what have you-for carreras’ radio stooges aboard the ticonderoga will
make good and certain that the radios will be smashed and we’ll have no
means of sending a message. Half an hour, an hour after leaving the
campari-an hour, at least, I should think; even carreras wouldn’t want
to be within miles of an atomic device going up-well, it would be quite
a bang.”
“He’ll never do it-never.” the emphatic voice didn’t carry the
slightest shred of conviction. “The man must be a fiend.”
“Grade one,” I agreed. “And don’t talk rubbish about his not doing
it. Why do you think they stole the twister and made it appear as if
dr. Slingsby caroline had lit out with it? from the very beginning it
was with the one and only purpose of blowing the fort ticonderoga to
kingdom come. So that there would be no possibility of any comeback,
everything hinged on the total destruction of the ticonderoga and
everyone aboard it, including passengers and crew of the campari. Maybe
carreras’ two fake radiomen could have smuggled some explosives aboard
but it would be quite impossible to smuggle enough to ensure complete
destruction. Hundreds of tons of high explosives in the magazines of a
british battle cruiser blew up in the last war, but still there were
survivors. He couldn’t sink it by gunfire-a couple of shots from a
moderately heavy gun and the campari’s decks would be so buckled that
the guns would be useless-and even then there would be bound to be
survivors. But with the twister there will be no chances of survival.
None in the world.”
“Carreras’ men,” she said slowly, “they killed the guards
in this atomic research establishment?”
“What else? and then forced dr. Caroline to drive out through the
gates with themselves and the twister in the back. The twister was
probably en route to their island, by air, inside an hour, but someone
drove the brake wagon down to savannah before abandoning it. No doubt
to throw suspicion on the campari, which they knew was leaving savannah
that morning. I’m not sure why, but I would take long odds it was
because carreras, knowing the campari was bound for the caribbean, was
reasonably sure that she would be searched at her first port of call,
giving him the opportunity to introduce his bogus marconi man aboard.”