When Eight Bells Toll. Alistair MacLean
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Название: When Eight Bells Toll
Автор: Alistair MacLean
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
isbn: 9780007289479
isbn:
‘In that case they’d be too late anyway. The damage would be done.’
‘Not without the sole witness who could testify against them?’
‘I think we’d better have those guns out.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t blame me for trying?’
‘No.’
‘Baker and Delmont. Think of them.’
‘I’m thinking of nothing else but them. You don’t have to stay.’
He set his glass down very carefully. He was really letting himself go to-night, he’d allowed that dark craggy face its second expression in ten minutes and it wasn’t a very encouraging one. Then he picked up his glass and grinned.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said kindly. ‘Your neck – that’s what comes from the blood supply to the brain being interrupted. You’re not fit to fight off a teddy-bear. Who’s going to look after you if they start playing games?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I meant it. I’d worked with Hunslett maybe ten times in the ten years I’d known him and it had been a stupid thing for me to say. About the only thing Hunslett was incapable of was leaving your side in time of trouble. ‘You were speaking of Uncle?’
‘Yes. We know where the Nantesville is. Uncle could get a Navy boat to shadow her, by radar if -’
‘I know where she was. She upped anchor as I left. By dawn she’ll be a hundred miles away -in any direction.’
‘She’s gone? We’ve scared them off? They’re going to love this.’ He sat down heavily, then looked at me. ‘But we have her new description -’
‘I said that didn’t matter. By to-morrow she’ll have another description. The Hokomaru from Yokohama, with green topsides, Japanese flag, different masts -’
‘An air search. We could -’
‘By the time an air search could be organised they’d have twenty thousand square miles of sea to cover. You’ve heard the forecast. It’s bad. Low cloud – and they’d have to fly under the low cloud. Cuts their effectiveness by ninety per cent. And poor visibility and rain. Not a chance in a hundred, not one in a thousand of positive identification. And if they do locate them – if – what then? A friendly wave from the pilot? Not much else he can do.’
‘The Navy. They could call up the Navy -’
‘Call up what Navy? From the Med? Or the Far East? The Navy has very few ships left and practically none in those parts. By the time any naval vessel could get to the scene it would be night again and the Nantesville to hell and gone. Even if a naval ship did catch up with it, what then? Sink it with gunfire – with maybe the twenty-five missing crew members of the Nantesville locked up in the hold?’
‘A boarding party?’
‘With the same twenty-five ex-crew members lined up on deck with pistols at their backs and Captain Imrie and his thugs politely asking the Navy boys what their next move was going to be?’
‘I’ll get into my pyjamas,’ Hunslett said tiredly. At the doorway he paused and turned. ‘If the Nantesville had gone, her crew – the new crew -have gone too and we’ll be having no visitors after all. Had you thought of that?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t really believe it either.’
They came at twenty past four in the morning. They came in a very calm and orderly and law-abiding and official fashion, they stayed for forty minutes and by the time they had left I still wasn’t sure whether they were our men or not.
Hunslett came into my small cabin, starboard side forward, switched on the light and shook me. ‘Wake up,’ he said loudly. ‘Come on. Wake up.’
I was wide awake. I hadn’t closed an eye since I’d lain down. I groaned and yawned a bit without overdoing it then opened a bleary eye. There was no one behind him.
‘What is it? What do you want?’ A pause. ‘What the hell’s up? It’s just after four in the morning.’
‘Don’t ask me what’s up,’ Hunslett said irritably. ‘Police. Just come aboard. They say it’s urgent.’
‘Police? Did you say, “police”?’
‘Yes. Come on, now. They’re waiting.’
‘Police? Aboard our boat? What -’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! How many more nightcaps did you have last night after I went to bed? Police. Two of them and two customs. It’s urgent, they say.’
‘It better bloody well be urgent. In the middle of the bloody night. Who do they think we are -escaped train robbers? Haven’t you told them who we are? Oh, all right, all right, all right! I’m coming.’
Hunslett left, and thirty seconds afterwards I joined him in the saloon. Four men sat there, two police officers and two customs officials. They didn’t look a very villainous bunch to me. The older, bigger policeman got to his feet. A tall, burly, brown-faced sergeant in his late forties, he looked me over with a cold eye, looked at the near-empty whisky bottle with the two unwashed glasses on the table, then looked back at me. He didn’t like wealthy yachtsmen. He didn’t like wealthy yachtsmen who drank too much at nighttime and were bleary-eyed, bloodshot and tousle-haired at the following crack of dawn. He didn’t like wealthy effete yachtsmen who wore red silk dragon Chinese dressing-gowns with a Paisley scarf to match tied negligently round the neck. I didn’t like them very much myself, especially the Paisley scarf, much in favour though it was with the yachting fraternity: but I had to have something to conceal those bruises on my neck.
‘Are you the owner of this boat, sir?’ the sergeant inquired. An unmistakable West Highland voice and a courteous one, but it took him all his time to get his tongue round the ‘sir.’
‘If you would tell me what makes it any of your damn’ business,’ I said unpleasantly, ‘maybe I’ll answer that and maybe I won’t. A private boat is the same as a private house, Sergeant. You have to have a warrant before you shove your way in. Or don’t you know the law?’
‘He knows the law,’ one of the customs men put in. A small dark character, smooth-shaven at four in the morning, with a persuasive voice, not West Highland. ‘Be reasonable. This is not the sergeant’s job. We got him out of bed almost three hours ago. He’s just obliging us.’
I ignored him. I said to the sergeant: ‘This is the middle of the night in a lonely Scottish bay. How would you feel if four unidentified men came aboard in the middle СКАЧАТЬ