A salvage team would fly in tomorrow to begin the work on
Kingfisher. He had cabled IBM requesting engineers to check out the computer for water damage.
Six weeks, Johnny estimated, before Kingfisher was ready for sea.
Then his unruly imagination leapt suddenly ahead to Ruby’s funeral. It was set for Tuesday next week. Johnny rolled restlessly on his bunk, trying to shut his mind against the thoughts that assaulted it - but they crowded forward in a dark host.
Ruby, Benedict, Sergio, the big blue diamond.
He sat up again, stubbed out his cigarette and reached across to switch out the bedside lamp.
He froze like that, as a new thought pressed in on him.
He heard Sergio’s voice in his memory.
“Such a diamond as you will never see again.” Now he felt the idea come ghosting along his spine so that the hair at the nape of his neck and on his forearms prickled with excitement.
“The Red Gods!” he exclaimed, almost shouting the name. And again
Sergio’s voice spoke.
“In his coat. He put it in his coat pocket.” Jo swung his legs off the bunk, and reached for his clothes. He felt the pounding of his heart beneath his fingers as he buttoned his shirt. He pulled on slacks and sweater, tied the laces of his shoes and snatched up a sheepskin jacket as he ran from the room.
He was shrugging on the jacket as he entered the deserted radio room and switched on the lights. He crossed quickly to the chart table and pored over it.
He found the name on the map, and repeated it aloud.
“The Red Gods.” North of Cartridge Bay the coast ran straight and featureless for thirty miles, then abruptly the line of it was broken by the out-thrust of red rock, poking into the sea like an accuser’s finger.
Johnny knew it well. It was his job to find and examine any such natural feature that might act as a barrier to the prevailing inshore currents. At such a place diamonds and other seaborne objects would be thrown ashore.
He remembered the red rock cliffs carved by wind and sea into the grotesque natural statues which gave the place its name, but more important he remembered the litter of ocean debris on the beaches beneath the cliff. Driftwood, waterlogged planking, empty bottles, plastic containers, scraps of nylon fishing-net and corks - all of it cast overboard and carried up by the current to be deposited on this promontory.
He ran his finger down the chart and held it on the dots of
Thunderbolt and Suicide. He read the laconic notation over the tiny arrows that flew from the islands towards the stark outline of the Red
Gods.
“Current sets South South-West. 5 knots.” Above the chart table the depot keys hung on their little cuphooks, each labelled and numbered.
Johnny selected the two of them marked “GArage” and LAND-ROVER”.
The moon was full and high. The night was still and without a trace of wind. Johnny swung the double doors of the garage open and switched on the parking lights of the Land-Rover. By their glow he checked out the vehicle; petrol tank full, the spare five-gallon cans in their brackets full, the can of drinking-water full. He dipped his finger into the neck of the water container and tasted it. It was clean and sweet. He lifted the passenger seat and checked the compartment beneath it. Jack and tyre spanner, first aid kit, flashlight, signal rockets and smoke flares, water bottle, canvas ground sheet, two cans of survival rations, towrope, tool kit, knapsack, knife and compass. The Land-Rover was equipped to meet any of the emergencies of desert travel.
Johnny climbed behind the wheel and started the engine.
He drove quietly and slowly past the depot buildings, not wanting to awaken those sleeping inside, but when he hit the firm sand at the edge of the lagoon he switched on the headlights and gunned the engine.
He cut across the sand dunes at the entrance to the bay, and swung northwards on to the beach. The headlights threw solid white beams into the sea mist, and startled seabirds rose on flapping ghost wings before the rush of the Land-Rover.
The tide was out and the exposed beach was hard and shiny wet, smooth as a tarmac road. He drove fast, and the white beach crabs were blinded by the headlights and crunched crisply beneath the tyres.
The dawn came early, silhouetting the mystic shapes of the dunes against the red sky.
Once he startled a strand wolf, one of the brown hyenas which scavenged this bleak littoral. It galloped, hunchshouldered, in hideous panic for the safety of the dunes.
Even in his urgency Johnny felt a stir of revulsion for the loathsome creature.
The cold damp rush of the wind into his face refreshed Johnny. It cooled the gritty feeling of his eyes, and eased the throb of sleeplessness in his temples.
The sun burst over the horizon, and lit the Red Gods five miles ahead with all the drama of stage lighting. They glowed golden red in the dawn, a procession of huge halfhuman shapes that marched into the sea.
As Johnny drove towards them the light and shadow played over the cliffs and he saw a hundred-foot tall figure of Neptune stooping to dip his flowing red beard into the sea, while a monstrous hunchback with the head of a wolf pranced beside him. Ranks of Vestal Virgins in long robes of red rock jostled with the throng of weird and fantastic shapes. It was eerie and disquieting. Johnny curbed his fancy and turned his attention to the beaches at the foot of the cliffs.
What he saw started his skin tingling again, and he pressed the accelerator flat against the floorboards, racing across the wet sand to where a white cloud of seabirds circled and dived and hopped about something that lay at the water’s edge.
As he drove towards them a gull flew across the front of the
Land-Rover. A long ribbon of something wet and fleshy dangled from its beak, and the gull gulped at it greedily in flight. Its crop was distended and engorged with food.
The seabirds scattered raucously and indignantly as the Land-Rover approached, leaving a human body lying in the centre of an area of sand that was dappled by the prints of their webbed feet, and fouled with dropped feathers and excrete.
Johnny braked the Land-Rover and jumped out. He took one long look at the body, then turned quickly away and braced himself against the side of the vehicle.
His gorge rose in a hot flood of nausea, and he gagged it back.
The body was nude but for a few sodden tatters of clothing and a sea boot still laced on to one foot. The birds had attacked every inch of exposed flesh - except for the scalp. The face was unrecognizable.
The nose was gone, the eye sockets were empty black holes. There were no lips to cover the grinning teeth.
Above this ruined face the shock of colourless albino hair looked like a wig placed there as an obscene and tasteless joke.
Hugo Kramer had made the long voyage from Thunderbolt and Suicide to the Red Gods.
Johnny took the canvas ground sheet from under the passenger seat of the Land-Rover. Averting his eyes from the task, he wrapped the corpse carefully, tied the whole bundle with lengths of rope cut from the tow line, then laboriously dragged it up the beach well above the highwater mark.
The thick canvas would keep off the birds, but to make doubly certain Johnny collected the driftwood and planking that was scattered thickly along the highwater line and piled it over the corpse.
Some of the planking was freshly broken and the paint on it was still bright and new. Johnny guessed this was part of the wreckage of
Wild Goose.
He went back to the Land-Rover, and drove on towards the Red Gods which lay only a mile ahead.
The sun was well up by now, and already its heat was uncomfortable. As he drove he struggled out of the sheepskin jacket without interrupting his search of the beach ahead.
He was looking for another gathering of seagulls, but instead he saw a large black object stranded in the angle formed by the red stone cliffs.
He was fifty yards from it before he realized what it was.
He felt his stomach jar violently and then clench at the shock.
It was a black rubber inflatable life raft - and it had been dragged up the beach above the highwater line.
