Horse Under Water

over six foot of oiled muscle.

‘Take him,’ da Cunha shouted. He heaved at my arm and his adroit wiriness threw me off balance. ‘Take him to the cellar,’ he shouted, ‘give him six lashes. I’ll teach these thieving reactionary friends of the Jew Kondit what I mean by discipline.’ His mouth was a mousse of anger.

I said gently, ‘A man like you would never imprison an envoy.’ Da Cunha stretched himself to a regal height. ‘I have your message for my government,’ I coaxed. He looked through me for a moment or so and then gradually brought me into close focus.

He said, ‘It is only because you are an envoy that you shall live.’ He was speaking a little more quietly now. I caught the servant boy’s eye and he gave a slight twitch of the shoulders that might have been a shrug.

‘I shall carry your words to England,’ I said like something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then da Cunha and I shook hands gravely as though one of us was about to step into a space capsule.

He said, ‘Could you let me have that message your London office sent?’

‘About molecular rearrangements of water particles?’ I said. ‘I’m afraid not, I shouldn’t have brought it with me really.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘How did the last sentence read?’

‘I can remember it,’ I said, ‘It reads: “The work of Professor Knobel is vital to the anti-Bolshevist world’s stake in the Arctic”.’

‘When you get to my age,’ he said, ‘such food for the ego suddenly means a lot to one.’

‘I understand,’ I said. It was an understatement.

55 In me for a change

‘Marvellous,’ said Ossie, ‘absolutely delicious.’

It was true. The jam doughnuts in the buffet at Marrakech station are among the best I have ever tasted.

‘You’ve got it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Ossie. He tapped the canvas bag on the table. ‘Went like a dream. Just like you said. A puny little thing. The people who make shoddy safes like that should be locked up.’

‘You sent the message?’

‘I sent “Phase one complete. Commence Phase two. Stop. Eliminate Baker”, then they sent an acknowledgement.’ He smiled. ‘You think that Baix will think Baker means Baix when he intercepts the message?’

‘Unless he’s a bigger dope than I think he is. I’ve used a simple one-part code. I don’t know what else I can do to make it easy for him.’ Ossie chuckled again. He’d taken an unreasonable dislike to Baix and loved the idea of him avoiding a nonexistent assassin.

‘How did it go with you?’ asked Ossie. ‘You keep looking at your watch; you weren’t followed, were you?’

‘No. Train’s due in five minutes,’ I said; it was 2.55 p.m.

‘You won’t drag it in any quicker by quizzing the watch. Tell me about the talk you had with the old nut. And have a doughnut. You are sure you weren’t followed?’

‘I wasn’t followed.’ I took another doughnut and told Ossie about the conversation with da Cunha.

‘But that’s not true,’ Ossie told me at various places in the narrative.

‘If you are going to say “that’s not true” every time I say something that’s not true you’d better go and gargle now or wind up with a sore throat.’

‘Best liar I know, you are,’ said Ossie in great admiration. ‘And so that old blighter is really connected with the English Fascists.’

‘With English Fascists, French Fascists, Belgian Fascists and even German Fascists.’

‘So the Germans have them too,’ said Ossie, like he hadn’t been running his pork-sausage fingers through secrets for the last quarter of a century. ‘That stuff you invented about the message from London. I liked that. What did the message from London really say?’

I passed him the cable that Dawlish had sent me:

KNOBEL STOP NAZI STOP HOAXER STOP WATER FREEZING DISCOVERIES ENTIRELY IRREVOCABLY REPEAT ENTIRELY IRREVOCABLY DISCREDITED REPEAT ENTIRELY: DAWLISH

The long green modern train slid into the station. I helped Ossie with our luggage.

A man with a face like a half-eaten bar of Aero chocolate wanted money for showing us a seat on the almost deserted train. In exchange for my declining to play my part in this transaction he taught me some new Arabic verbs. The train pulled out of the neat little station of Marrakech. Ossie said, ‘That Baix, I’d love to see his face.’

‘That’s just what I’m trying to avoid,’ I said as I opened Ossie’s canvas bag. We both looked at the little radio transmitter that could talk to machines under the sea.

56 Deep signal

The long flexible blades cut the air above our heads. I tapped the pilot on the arm.

‘One more sweep,’ I said, ‘then we’ll return to the ship and try again tomorrow.’ He nodded.

We dropped towards the heavy sea and I watched the wave-tops, blunted by the downward thrust of air from the blades.

‘O.K., Chief,’ I shouted over my shoulder. Chief Petty Officer Edwards of H.M.S. Vernon leaned through the door and watched the ocean top.

‘Back a bit,’ Edwards shouted. It had always been a bomb-aimer’s joke, but now the pilot obediently brought the helicopter along a reciprocal course.

‘Just a floating piece of wood,’ Edwards’s voice said over the intercom. We moved on to the next square of the area search. Twelve miles away on the starboard side I could see the Portuguese coast at Cape Santa Maria. Through the grey sea ran black veins as the light fell across the contours of the water. ‘Too dark now,’ I said, and Ossie switched off his radio and the cabin glowed with the green light of the instrument panel.

It was two and a half days before our effort was rewarded. Hours of ‘backing a bit’ over foamlashed pieces of flotsam and sliding over for a close look at a shoal of fish.

When we made contact the extreme long-wave radio set on Ossie’s knees — the one he had stolen from da Cunha’s safe — gave a ‘beep beep’ of response. The pilot held us steady. The wave-crests were inches under us.

‘Beep beep’: it was emitting a signal to us. Ossie was shouting over the intercom and I grabbed the diver’s rubber-clad arm and tried to go through his instructions all over again in thirty seconds flat. Edwards patted my hand and said, ‘It will be O.K., sir’, then like a demon king in a pantomime he was gone. Hands crossed, face lowered, he hit the water with a splash. Only now did I see the target he had dived at. The silver metal floating amid the waves shone here and there through the green vegetation. C.P.O. Edwards had the cable lashed around the big metal cylinder within ten minutes. The winch operator began to haul it up and brought it splashing and dripping into the cabin of the helicopter.

Dawlish had done his stuff. When the helicopter got back to the ship everything was ready and waiting — even a ration of rum for the still wet C.P.O. Edwards. I was in the captain’s day-cabin with the cylinder; a Marine sentry was stationed outside and even the captain knocked before coming in to ask if there was anything more I required.

Two bolts had to be chiselled off, but that was only to be expected after more than a decade under the water. The light alloy panel came free to reveal a large compartment and give access for adjustments to the barometer, thermometer, hygrometer and the motors.