looking like Scott of the Antarctic, and reluctantly he packed his foul-weather gear into one of the bags, jammed it into one of the cardboard boxes, and crushed it down to the bottom of the trash bin. Then he picked up the other bag and began to walk into the town, toward the railway station, hoping it was not Sunday. He had lost count of the days of the week, but his guidebook told him there was a restored winter train service on weekdays leaving Mallaig for Fort William at 0800, in a little over one hour.
The walk seemed as cold as the desert at night at that time of the year. But Commander Adnam could deal with that. He quickened his pace, followed the signs to the station, and was gratified to discover it was Friday morning, March 3. He was also cheered to find a low, hot radiator in the waiting room, and he thankfully sat on it, having purchased himself a single ticket 130 miles south to Helensburgh. It was 35 miles to Fort William, where he would change trains.
At 0730 the train pulled into the station from a siding, Mallaig being the end of the line. It was warm and quite busy, but Ben Adnam found an empty corner. He guessed accurately that it would not remain empty for long since it was a Friday morning and there were people on board plainly going to work in Fort William. With his dark beard, rumpled suit, and no coat, he hoped he would be mistaken for a penniless Highland poet or some kind of a wandering minstrel. Anyway, he did not think he much resembled the usual image of a terrorist foreign Naval officer who had just wiped out three of the most important transatlantic jet aircraft on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nonetheless, he did feel uncomfortably conspicuous.
Ben Adnam had never traveled as far north on the West Highland Line, but he had been to Fort William once with an old girlfriend. Actually, she had been his only girlfriend, and he remembered it as if it had been yesterday. He remembered, too, the old Scottish garrison town, standing rock-steady in the shade of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain peak in the British Isles.
They had stayed in a lovely hotel, Ballachulish House, which dated back to the eighteenth century, and overlooked Loch Linnhe and the Morven Hills. Fort William held many memories for Ben Adnam, and he tried not to think of them, for they represented another world, to which he no longer belonged. They were days of remembered laughter and love. But after a brilliant, if unorthodox career, there was but one preoccupation for him. And it overwhelmed every other concern he had. Survival. Nothing else.
The train pulled out of Mallaig station on time, heading south, then east, across the top of Loch Shiel and on into the Highlands. It reached Fort William before 0900, and the Glasgow train was waiting. Ben grabbed a copy of
That task complete, he took the opportunity to clean himself up properly in the men’s room, before going back to his seat. He was at last free to stare out of the window at the breathtaking scenery as the train ran along the River Spean, with the great pinnacle of Ben Nevis 4,500 feet above them to the right. After 15 miles they turned down the Glen, all the way along the eastern shore of Loch Treig and through the mountains to Rannoch Moor. From there it was southward all the way, right down the northern end of Loch Lomond, and past Loch Long to the Gareloch. The route took them right past Faslane, the Rhu Narrows, and into Helensburgh.
The final miles were laden with memories, and the commander thought of his months there, of long-lost colleagues, and perhaps, most of all of his Teacher, Commander Iain MacLean, the cleverest man he had ever seen in a submarine — the stern, beady-eyed martinet who had taught him how to sink a big warship and how to evade the most relentless of pursuers. He tried, as he always tried, to fight away the memories of the great man’s daughter, the soft-spoken Scottish beauty who, to his everlasting regret, he never had time to love, far less to marry.
Helensburgh Station looked the same, gray and dour. A few passengers were waiting for the Glasgow train, but basically the place was deserted. It was midday when it arrived, and Ben was one of only five people disembarking. It was a little warmer there, certainly warmer than it had been out in the Hebrides Sea earlier in the morning, and Ben Adnam was heading for what they still called in that area, a gentleman’s outfitter.
He stepped out into the small resort town, which slopes up from the Clyde, and the wide streets seemed little changed. He knew precisely the shop he required, and he was inside and out again with two dozen pairs of undershorts and socks, plus ten shirts, and a half dozen ties. He next headed for a country sports shop down a small narrow throughway off Upper Colquhoun Street, and in there he purchased a thick Scottish sheepskin coat, two cashmere sweaters in olive green and dark red, a cashmere scarf, and a trilby hat. To this he added two country tweed jackets, two pairs of dark grey trousers, and two pairs of cords, one tan and one dark green. Shoes were more difficult, but he went for a couple of pairs of brown loafers with thick leather soles and a pair of black brogues. He wore one of the sweaters, and the sheepskin and the trilby and, feeling considerably better, stepped out again into the cold, headed for the Royal Bank of Scotland, having just punched a serious hole in his last ?1,500. At that moment he wished he had not been quite so generous to Captain Mackay, who had, unwittingly, wasted it anyway.
Ben had always retained a bank account in Scotland, under the name Benjamin Arnold, and he made a point of keeping a minimum of ?20,000 there, in case of an emergency, such as the one in which he found himself. No one at the bank knew him any longer, and he had to provide identification in order to collect 1,000. He checked the balance of the account, which was correct, and inquired briefly if there had been any mail addressed to him in the past three months. There had not, nor had he expected there to be anything. Since the Iranians had made a valiant attempt to blow him to pieces on board the
He left the bank, once more feeling a sense of desolation, and wandered through the town in search of a cab. That took him ten minutes, and by the time he arrived to spend the weekend at an old haunt from his Faslane days, the Rosslea Hall Hotel in Rhu, it was almost 1300.
At that precise time, a Royal Army Service Corps sergeant, George Pattenden, was stumping around the military camp on the island of St. Kilda making one loud and noisy demand, “Right, then. Well…where the fucking ’ell is everyone, then?”
Back on the beach, Captain Peter Wimble, R.C.T. was still holding the landing craft in the shallows near the church in readiness for the two soldiers, Lieutenant Larkman and Corporal Lawson, to move down the beach ready for evacuation. This was unusual in itself because everyone knew by radio the ETA of the landing craft, and thus far in his two-year tour of duty in the Hebrides, Captain Wimble had never yet arrived without the two departing men already standing on the beach ready to go.
On this Friday lunchtime, Sergeant Pattenden had leapt onto the beach and yelled. When no one showed up, he had, with considerable bad grace, walked up to the camp and been mildly surprised that the lights were all on, the generator was still running, but the jeep had gone, and of the lieutenant and the corporal there was no sign.
“Funny,” he had muttered. “That’s bloody funny. Where the fuck are they?” His irritation was plain, since it was obvious his landing party could not return to base at Benbecula without the men they had come to take off St. Kilda. Larkman and Corporal Lawson could not just be left behind with limited supplies.
At its longest stretch, the southwestern shore, the island stretched for 3 miles, from Soay Stack to the tip of Dun. At its widest point, from Gob Chathaill on that long shoreline, east to the Oiseval, the island measured almost 2 miles. But its coastline was a largely unapproachable panorama of towering black cliffs, riddled with caves, no beaches, and fairly high mountains in the interior. It was not a desperate place to search, if you had a half dozen Land Rovers. But Sergeant Pattenden knew they had virtually nothing. And in Army terms that meant they would have to walk, and there were only two hours of daylight left.
The sergeant headed back down to the beach to report the situation, and the young captain, a friend of Chris Larkman’s, immediately ordered the landing craft to be made fast at the jetty farther along the bay. Then, he said, two parties of three men each, would begin a search, one on the Ruaival side of Village Bay, the other up on Oiseval.
They kept going until 1630, when it became hopelessly dark, then returned aboard, radioing to their Hebrides HQ the distressing fact that Lieutenant Larkman and Corporal Lawson were missing. Everyone knew the weekend was shot to pieces. There would be no going back until Chris Larkman and his corporal were found. Everyone had the most terrible feeling of foreboding, because there was really nowhere they could be unless they’d gone over the edge of a cliff.
Captain Wimble decided they would be more comfortable at sea, and all six men spent the first night in the
