CHANDLER UNTIED THE RAFT WHICH continued bobbing aggravatingly against the pontoon, keeping him off balance. He poked at the plane with the oar, pushing off, and the raft slowly broke away as if leaving a magnetic field. Polly grabbed the other oar and set to flailing away at the black water. Chandler began sweating under the raincoat and sweater, his body alternately hot and clammy. Quite suddenly, the raft was well clear of the aircraft. It seemed, as he struggled, spending his breath and beginning to ache, that he wasn’t getting anywhere, but the plane kept getting smaller, the yellow glow of the foglights further off. Polly heaved quietly away on her own oar, steadily holding her own, while Chandler felt the kind of physical stress he associated with playing football years ago in hot weather: somehow, he wanted to avoid any explosion in his chest cavity or his brain.
“You’re working too hard,” Polly called, stopping, waving at him to put up the oar. “You’re panicking. We’re going to get there all right … rest a minute, Colin. Don’t kill yourself.” Water was collecting around their feet.
Chandler looked up again. Behind him the yellow glow hung like a ghost over the water. Polly was directing the light toward the beach, breathing hard: “Hey, I see it, I see the damned beach!” She turned smiling, her face wet, hair plastered down, looking about eighteen.
After the breather, they bent to the task of rowing, watching the beach take grayish shape in the beam of light. Chandler was cold, wet, soaked through, water to his ankles, sneezing, but he forgot it all at the glorious sensation of the raft’s bottom scraping and bouncing on the rough, sandy, rocky slope of beach … He sagged inside his wet clothing, feeling old and shrunken, heart pounding: it struck him that his poor heart had been overtaxed ever since the whole insane ordeal had begun … Well, maybe it was good for you. Maybe.
“Colin, we did it, we’re here!”
He nodded, grinning.
“Darling,” she said, staggering toward him, bumping into the duffel bag, “you look just a little green about the gills—are you all right?”
Chandler nodded: “Fit as a fiddle, of course.” He stepped out of the raft, immediately sank to his knees in a foot of water, icy water that pierced him like broken glass. Sand swirled up, settled inside his shoes. He managed to right himself, grinned against his better judgment: “Just like MacArthur …” Standing in the water he reached into the raft, tugged at the duffel bag which lay on its lumpy side in the water at the bottom of the raft. Thank God Prosser had wrapped the documents and the portrait in layers of oilskin. With a final heave he yanked it out of the raft, swinging it ahead of him up onto the sand. Polly, poised on the edge of the raft, fell gratefully into his arms. Together they staggered, waded up out of the surf, dragging the raft behind them, like a pair of creatures frantically speeding up the process of evolution. He dropped the raft, pushed it away from him: “I’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
They stood, holding each other on the beach, shivering against one another, teeth chattering, their faces ice cold, the rain spitting and blowing against them, and out on the water the yellow glow was gone, without their having noticed the departure itself.
“Thank God, we’re here,” she whispered, half crying tears of relief, “and you’re holding me …”
“Well, we’re safe, anyway. Are you okay?”
“Sure. I’m a tough little bastard.” She laughed, wiped her nose. “Let’s find the path.” She picked up the flashlight and he took the duffel bag after fetching it a smart kick in the side. Damned bloody thing: it had become a grotesque extension of his right hand.
They pulled their raincoats up over their heads and leaned into the wind, trudging along the wet sand, the beam of light swinging ahead of them, pointing the way. The cliffs were laid back from the beach, a dark green blur through the rain: there was no real smell but the distinct odor of damp coldness and the wet wool of his sweater. There were slippery disks of ice in the sand and the walk toward the path was agonizingly slow, punctuated by Chandler’s loud curses which replaced the quiet, awful, windblown fear of the plane and the raft.
“Good Christ!” he muttered, craning his neck as Polly tilted the lamp. “It’s straight up …” He dropped the bag which fell over and began to roll down the beach. “Straight bloody up! I’m no mountain goat, you may have noticed—”
“Don’t grouse,” she said. “You only make yourself feel worse.” She paused, directing the light at the path. “I admit it is rather steep …”
The path rose abruptly, apparently at right angles to the beach, snaking upward among the wet, harsh shrubbery, between the rock facing which glistened treacherously on either side. Chandler picked up the bag yet again and began the climb. Occasional moss-covered stones provided handholds which he used to lever himself painstakingly onward: the footing was not only slippery and muddy but dotted with patches of ice made worse by the steady rain which coursed down the path, as well as inside his collar. His feet were raw from rubbing the inside of his wet shoes. He kept finding himself on his hands and knees, trying to keep from falling ass over duffel bag back down the hill and onto the beach. How long, oh Lord, how long?
“Why did we climb it, you ask,” Polly puffed from somewhere behind him. “Because it was there!”
Chandler tried to laugh but his mouth was dry and nothing came out. Anyway, he was too tired to laugh. The angle of ascent never seemed to lessen, just went on, wet and icy and muddy and what in the name of God had he ever done to deserve this? “Shine the goddamn light up ahead,” he shouted, “see where the hell we are—”
“Don’t be testy and ruin everything, Colin. This is an adventure—”
“Oh, shit,” he cried, slipping suddenly backward, clutching the bag, free arm flailing until he found a foothold in the rocks.
“Come on, Nimrod, we’re almost there.”
“Don’t be cheery,” he said. “I can’t bear that—not cheeriness.”
“You have mud all over your face.”
“Ah, yes, I expect that happened when I was pushing the bag ahead of me with my nose. In fact, my dear girl, I have mud in places where—”
“I never knew I had places, yes, yes. Very, very old.”
He lay panting, clutching the duffel bag to his mudpacked raincoat: “But true, nonetheless.” She sat down next to him, drew her knees up, rested her chin on them.
“Maybe we should, you know,” she said, “take a little rest for a moment.” She licked the rain off her upper lip and peeked over at him. “Every so often I can’t quite remember how we got here …”
Chandler grunted: “Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert …”
After a while she took a deep breath, said: “Well, can you start again?”
“I’m not altogether sure.”
“You take the light. I can push the bag—”
“No, my dear, I’m only out of shape, not actually dead.” He stood up, balancing precariously. “Come on.”
It went more quickly the second time. Ten minutes of hard slogging brought them to the top where they stood gasping, sucking deep gulps of cold air into tight, aching lungs. They were standing on a dark lawn and the house itself loomed indistinctly another hundred yards away, up a gently sloping rise. Steeling themselves, they set off wordlessly, trudging across the slick grass, following the jiggling beam of light as if it were a leash and they were being wound inward.
Chandler’s vision blacked out every so often, leaving him with a faint pinpoint of light and shadow, a goal, toward which he kept marching, one slogging, squishing footstep after another, shoes apparently trying to suck themselves from his feet. Polly went on, sturdy, uncomplaining, a marvel. She was slightly in the lead and he watched her, tried to absorb her determination and energy: she was the stronger at this point and it was indicative of the change he’d undergone that it never occurred to him to feel ashamed, irritated, or frustrated that she was there ahead of him, seeing him through the ordeal. He was just damned glad …
The house was a long red brick and gray-stone building, gabled somewhat excessively, fronted along its entire length by a porch with square brick pillars, backed at one end by leaded glass French windows like sleeping eyes, drapes drawn behind them; hooded chimney pots cluttered across the slate slabbed roof, heavy lead gutters, the architecture generally an example of the kind of 1920s brutality of weight and size, here for the purpose of withstanding the onslaughts of the Atlantic storms themselves, yet a building whose very overtness, like the presence of Marie Dressier in an old movie, finally overcomes its form and substance to achieve a variety of timeless grace. Lions with clawed feet sat at the corners of the second-floor balcony which was in fact the top of the porch. Standing in the rain, holding the light, Chandler imagined for just an instant a porch full of women in pastel frocks and men in white flannels, tennis racquets in hand, club ties waffling in the cool ocean breezes, a summer weekend fifty years before, but the images were soon gone and Polly was calling to him from the shelter of the porch. “Come on, crazy man, get out of the rain …”
The immense oak door, banded by black wrought-iron hinges like straps, bore a brass plate engraved with the single word in artless block capitals: STRONGHOLD. The key worked smoothly and the huge door swung back with a creak from the massive hinges … It was like a replay of their arrival at the house in Maine, only on a much grander scale, as if they were stepping through a series of ever enlarging mirrors, doomed endlessly to run away, afraid, always repeating themselves.
Stronghold was in perfect running order: obviously someone on Cape Breton must have been engaged to come across the water at regular intervals and keep order, tend to maintaining the pipes and whatnot. An hour later Polly and Chandler were bathed, wrapped in huge bath towels, their clothes drying before the stove in the kitchen, a fire roaring in yet another library fireplace, more books gleaming darkly and gilt-stamped. “Hollywood must do Prosser’s decorating,” Polly remarked. Rain rattled like stones on the windows.
The duffel bag was unpacked upstairs where another fire was roaring. The freezer offered an array of frozen steaks, packages of vegetables, orange juice; but they settled for coffee and toast smeared with butter. They savored the steaming coffee in the library. They were grateful for the fire. They huddled close to the crackle, felt the heat full on their faces, sneezed and laughed and moaned over their exhaustion.
“You look just about done in,” she sniffled. When she turned away from the fire, he could see her breath like smoke.
“In this case, looks are not deceiving.” He leaned back against a chair, stretched his cold, damp feet to the fire, pulled his towel closer like a toga, yawned mightily. “Here is where we make our stand, my dear, and fight it out, get the wagons in a circle … I’ve run just about as far as I can …”
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “I think there’s nothing left to do but wait it out.” She made an impatient face: “I wish I understood what Prosser is up to. God, it just baffles me—everything about him sets me on edge—”
“Don’t be so hard on him. I keep thinking, what if he’s lying in the house back there, shot to hell by that crazy son of a bitch … and if he’s dead, what the hell do we do then? How do we get out of here? Wait until somebody comes over to check the pipes? Just hope for the goddamned best … I tried the telephone, it’s the one thing that doesn’t work worth a damn.” He frowned at the fire, sneezed.
Finally she said: “Come on, we’re beat. Let’s go to bed.” In the darkened bedroom they climbed into a large oak fourposter, pulled the comforters up around their chins, and watched the shadows from a newly laid fire march around the walls like sentries on guard duty. He thought back over the past few nights: the couch in Polly’s living room, Percy Davis’s inn on the Maine coast, the night spent outdoors … my God, that was last night. Polly whispered to him, folded sleepily within the arc of his left arm. Outside the storm cursed and hammered at the house. “I know a poem,” she said softly, “from twenty years ago, from college freshman days … listen …
Bolt and bar the shutter
For the foul winds blow:
Our minds are at their best this night,
And I seem to know
That everything outside us is
Mad as the mist and snow …”
He kissed her, said: “I’m not so sure about our minds.” Then he closed his eyes, hugged her, and went to sleep, as if it were all exactly as planned.
They made love in the early gray light, the room still snug from the heat of the embers in the fireplace. Pale shafts of iciness slid like knives through the thick leaded windowpanes; the carved lions on the balcony, watching the sea, cast bulky shadows. They slept awhile longer, then he got up and padded down the cold hallway, half awake but anxious to be up and about.
No radio, no telephone, absolutely cut off so far as he could ascertain. He took bread out of the freezer and made toast. Coffee perking: the smell of normality calmed his early morning nerves. He had climbed back into the dried-out trousers, stiff shoes, and heavy oiled sweater which had apparently flourished with the previous day’s treatment. He sat munching toast, staring out into the fog, waiting for her to come down. She finally appeared in Levis and boots and a fresh heavy wool shirt nattily tailored with epaulettes and a profusion of buttoned flaps. She smelled faintly of shampoo and had a succulent moist look, freshly showered, pink-cheeked, and ready to eat a horse. He made more toast and as she ate she watched him, smiling. He felt her protection falling softly around him, felt her pleasure in it and the bond growing between them, but neither of them was tempted to comment on it. Their relationship seemed to be, something which already existed. It struck him as altogether pleasant, peculiarly liberating.
He broke the comfortable silence: “Well, I think we’d better look around the place, find out what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
Viewed from the long porch at the front of the house, the island seemed to be smoldering, a kind of smoking pile with the outlines blurred by the blowing fog which obscured the water beyond, faded the forests, and gave it all the look of hardened lava: it was an image he’d seen before, deja vu, but he couldn’t place it … He was used to the dense and blowing fog which made everything look like a battlefield with the smoke hanging all about like impending death.
Heading across the damp grass, angled away from the direction they’d come twelve hours before, they saw the character of the island take form: a huge pile of firewood soaked beyond any hope of burning, behind it a solid bank of pines and firs, dark and impenetrable, forming a wall as flat and inhospitable as a bluff of shale. They followed the tree line through the heavy fog which damped them to their skin, heading toward the water, hearing the sound of the surf as they drew nearer, the crashing of the waves breaking through the velvety muffling effect of the fogbank.
Nearer the water the trees and the thick, grasping tangle of shrubbery clawed backwards, inland, trunks and limbs bent and twisted as if fleeing in terror from the sea. Along the top of the escarpment was yet another line of trees—hemlock, red and sugar maples, beech, and spruce—these planted deliberately by man, building a windbreak and leaving a fine view from the house which stood fully a hundred yards back and on much higher ground. They stood at the top of a long, shabby, decidedly rickety wooden stairway which zigzagged erratically down the steep rock face, moss pasted to the cliff on either side.
At the bottom, the beach was actually a shingle of large rocks scattered across a level expanse of sand finally giving way to the sea. A dock and boathouse sat gray and wet some three hundred feet below where they stood and another fifty yards to the right. Just beyond the boathouse was an arm of slate-gray rock sloping outward, covered patchily with brown underbrush and mosses. Well out in the water, forming a natural gateway, there were six large, uneven slabs of stone projecting upward, an arc swinging across the inlet like the teeth of a hag’s gummy lower jaw. The surf foamed white against the gray and purple and blue and black stones on the beach.
Even while they stood silently watching, the fog gusted in like a phantom army and swallowed the hag’s teeth, leaving what seemed to be a misty, hazy expanse of uninterrupted, quiet water, moving gently toward the beach, safe and flat … another burst of wind and they were there again, reminding Chandler of the great stone circles he’d seen in the English countryside, left there by another race of men with their significance and their awesome silence forever enigmatic … this island, he reflected, and the house—they were like that, too, as if there were secrets which would never be revealed. He looked back at the house and it had now disappeared in the fog, there was nothing but the blank grayness where it had been, that and the feel of the mist on his face. Spinning back, he knew what he would see: the hag’s teeth were gone, the water flat and untroubled. Polly smiled tentatively: she had seen it, too. “We’re in the middle, aren’t we?”
“Let’s climb down,” he said.
The stairway creaked but held. The beach made for tough walking and they stumbled frequently, scuffing their shoes, insult to injury which hardly made a difference anymore. Large gray boulders bore wide pink stripes. Polly found pretty little stones, scooped them up, dropped them in her pocket. The water, seen close up, had a savagery when it beat and foamed on the boulders which was not visible from above. Past the large rocks, the surf swept in across the small stones, furling and sucking at their shoes. The sky had a metallic blue-gray quality.
They walked toward the boathouse: “Doesn’t look safe,” Chandler said, nodding toward the catwalk leading across the foam to the boathouse and its dock. The wood was rotting, slats drooping. “Look,” he went on, taking her hand, “let’s skip it. We’d better get back to the house. Suppose somebody comes for us, can’t find us, and leaves—”
She nodded, agreeable, squeezing his hand.
There was an idyllic quality to the moment, their breath hanging like speech balloons before them, holding hands, scuffing along the beach like a couple in a cigarette ad. They stopped once, she closed her eyes, he kissed her, wrapped his arms around her.
Yet, climbing back up the narrow stairway, reaching the tree line at the top, there was the inevitable sense of unease, the incompleteness, the waiting.
Hand in hand they walked back toward the house. A deer flickered across the lawn, white tail like a gentle flag of friendship. “Anyway,” Polly said, looking up at him, “it’s lovely being alone.”
They were not alone, however.
A man watched from a shrubbery-covered promontory above the beach where Chandler and Polly had arrived the previous night. He watched them until they disappeared into the bank of swirling, shifting fog.
Chandler sat by himself in a window seat, feet cocked opposite himself, and watched the lawn and the water far beyond which was a darker shade of gray-blue than the fog which slid constantly across his vision. He watched but saw nothing. Alone, with Polly off puttering by herself, his mind turned anxiously back to Hugh Brennan and Bert Prosser, either one of whom could be dead: he felt desperate and helpless, trapped on the island, unable to come to the aid of either. Though what his aid was worth he wasn’t quite sure. He went outside and paced the length of the porch, accusing himself of being an idiot for having gotten involved at all-then, of course, he realized he’d had no choice. If ever a man had sought to maintain his distance, his innocence, it had been sheltered, academic Colin Chandler.
In the late afternoon they grilled steaks, opened a nice claret, and lazed about the library looking through the matched sets of Thackeray and George Eliot and Jane Austen and Trollope. They snooped in desk drawers which proved to be empty and they admired the old English hunting prints. There wasn’t a clue as to what normally went on at Stronghold, nothing to snap the isolation.
Polly went upstairs, leaving him alone, the fire whispering and the wind racketing outside. He might have dozed: the next thing he knew she was standing in front of him tapping his arm, holding the oilskin package Prosser had wrapped so carefully before they’d left the house in Maine.
“Let’s have another look,” she said. “Maybe you’ll have a revelation once you see it again.”
They unwrapped the package carefully. Underneath the oilskin Prosser had obviously wrapped the portrait and the documents in several thicknesses of newspaper. Polly stood watching, hands on hips, as he peeled the dry, perfectly protected pages away, came aware as he did that something was very wrong. Working feverishly, panicking, Chandler threw newspapers away in a frenzy. In the end he looked up, his face pale.
“It’s nothing but newspapers,” he said. “It’s not here, not any of it.”
“He kept the whole thing,” Polly breathed, a smile slowly spreading across her wide mouth.
“I just don’t understand,” Chandler said. He felt as if the fight had finally gone out of him.
“I knew it!” Polly gloated. “I just knew it … damn it, there’s just something weird about him …” She kicked a piece of newspaper, beaming. “Don’t you see, Colin? For once something’s happened that sticks right out. Prosser told us he was giving all the stuff to us, and then he kept it—somebody whose identity is perfectly clear to us has lied to us. And I thought Prosser was so worried about the bad guys getting it …”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s weird, everything is very weird …”
Chandler woke in the middle of the night, lay half asleep beside Polly, listening to her breathing and feeling the weight and warmth of her as she shifted, rested against him. The carefully wrapped oilskin packet of newspapers stayed resolutely in the forefront of his mind; when he closed his eyes he saw it, enigmatic, mocking … why would Prosser have done such a thing? So far as he could tell, it made no sense: they had been under siege at the time and the logical thing had been to give it to those who were escaping: keeping it, Prosser had clearly run a greater risk of its falling into the hands of the enemy … Unless—unless what?
He turned on his side and watched the moon shining on the clouds. He was tired and his eyes were bleary. But why was there a pink tinge to the night sky? Decidedly pink, blurring from the left, brightening the rectangles of night through the window. Northern lights? A shooting star? More likely a fire of some kind … As he watched the pink glow lightened, then faded. He was groggy but he wondered what the hell made the sky do that? Polly muttered something in her sleep and tugged the covers over herself, baring him. Finally he stood up and went to the window, looked out: he saw a fogbank resting lightly on the water beyond the hag’s teeth which were perfectly visible in the moonlight filtering through the lacework of clouds. The pinkness had come from the left but was almost gone now, a vague smudge that was gone as he watched. He lit a pipe of ashy, once-used tobacco and stared at the area where it had been until he was sure it was gone, that the night had returned to its normal color. He smoked, watching and thinking and worrying.
To begin with he wasn’t aware of it at all, the movement below him, and then he thought it was a trick of his tired eyes, a bit of fog blowing or a shred of cloud crossing the moon, a symptom of his exhaustion and a bad case of nerves … then the shadows moved again, and again, and he felt his breath catching behind his breastbone, recognized the sickish feeling in his belly: it was the old fear, gnawing, turning his legs weak and his will to sweat and trembling.
The shadows were coming up from the beach where he’d stood and looked back at the yellow blur of the seaplane … the shadows were coming from the direction of the pink glow. He watched, immobilized, as if he’d run utterly out of responses, as they came skittishly, jerkily, like beetles picking their way across the lawn.
There were six of them, six clearly defined shadows—men—darting across the long spread of lawn toward the house. He was afraid all right, but his adrenalin was gone: how to escape? how to protect Polly? how to get help?
The shadows moved into the trees and shrubbery near the house and the lawn was empty again: had he imagined it? Christ, talk about wishful thinking! No. While the experience had had a good many of the characteristics of a bad dream, there was no doubt, he hadn’t imagined it.
Forgetting the shadows for a moment, since they had stealthily concealed themselves out of his angle of vision, he found his eyes drawn upward toward a light blinking in the inlet, inside the hag’s teeth, and he saw in a shaft of moonlight, what looked like a ramshackle fishing boat, a trawler, riding low in the backwater between the rocks and the shoreline. A fishing trawler?
Suddenly the island was a hell of a popular spot. He watched intently as the light that had seemed to blink beforehand swung nervously along the shoreline: for God’s sake, it was a searchlight with a narrow, piercing beam, winking at him as it played along the sand and rocks. Perhaps Prosser had sent another Kendrick-type to stage yet another rescue? The idea flickered across his mind like the searchlight, went out. Beyond the trawler the fogbank persisted, motionless, providing a gray backdrop for the gateway of stones arcing across the bay. He smelled the sea on the wind which worked its way toward the house.
He gently shook Polly’s arm, insistently, until she was awake and coherent.
“My darling, it’s time to wake up. There are little men crawling all around our house and I’m not at all sure what to do.” He laughed nervously.
“Try not laughing nervously and putting your pants on—”
“But that’s two things at once,” he said.
“Whose little men are they?”
He told her what he’d seen while they were getting into their clothes, stopping every few moments to listen and look at the window. He swung the French window open and stepped out onto the balcony, leaned over the edge, and saw them again in the shadow of the house, by the porch railing, clustered around their leader. They were whispering. They seemed to be somewhat confused.
“Well, Jesus,” the leader finally said impatiently and audibly, “we can’t just knock and go in the front door. You two move out along the porch and try those long windows. You two go find the back door-we’ll stay here and play with the front door. Now git!”
Chandler watched from above as they scampered off, then went back into the bedroom, saw Polly standing in the doorway to the second-floor hallway, watching. A dim nightlight burned outside their door, casting shadows against the stags on the wallpaper.
“They’re coming in,” he said. “Do you think if I ran screaming down the hallway I’d scare them off … no? Well, I can’t think of anything else—”
“Just wait,” she said. “See what they do …”
They heard an attempt to open the front door which was locked. An abrupt curse was followed by a throaty, muffled laugh. Footsteps moved along the porch. The silence was broken by the shattering of glass. They were coming in the French windows. The house creaked in the night wind. They heard the house filling with men, one noise after another now, coming fast: it was like floodwater rising in your own home. There was nothing to be done about it.
They were in the hall below now, voices muffled, tread heavy. Chandler heard the metallic, oiled sound of guns being handled. The hair on the back of his neck crawled. A light flared on at the top of the stairway, at the end of the long hallway. Polly suddenly shook against him.
“God,” she whispered, “this is like getting raped, they’ve penetrated us …”
He heard them on the stair and pulled her back into the room. She sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. He went back onto the balcony and looked back toward the spotlight. More shadows fanned out across the wide spread of the lawn coming from the direction of the fishing trawler, moving from the edge of the cliff with its black tree line. He counted seven moving figures and then heard a loud voice braying at him from the bedroom.
“Professor Chandler, I presume,” the voice said, emanating from a large man in a dark blue sweater and trousers, with a matching stocking cap pulled down to the tops of his red ears. His face had been blackened with something greasy and his eyes shown brightly from the darkness. “Lieutenant Raines at your service, sir. My men and I are here to evacuate you from the island, sir.” He glanced at Polly who had herself back in hand and was sitting on the bed, propped against pillows, ankles crossed before her, watching the lieutenant with a bemused smile. The lieutenant was carrying a gun that looked as if it would keep on firing once you pulled the trigger.
“Well, Lieutenant Raines,” Chandler said, clutching his pipe, “you sure scared hell out of me.”
“I’m sure, sir. Nothing to be ashamed of, sir. There’s nobody on earth we can’t scare hell out of, I guess.” Raines appeared to be in his mid-twenties and reminded Chandler of a great many innocently pompous youths who had passed through his classes over the years. Behind him another, smaller boy, similarly dressed, appeared: “Everything as expected, sir?” His voice piped like a boy soprano.
“Sure,” Raines said. “No sweat.” Raines smiled: “Miss Bishop, Professor? Shall we make ready to go?” He pointed the gun barrel at the duffel bag. “Stow your gear in there.” He stood watching as they did as they were told.
“Who the hell are you?” Polly asked, beginning to fume. Chandler suppressed a smile. “Did Prosser send you?”
“Special Operations Executive, Miss Bishop. I never heard of anyone called Prosser. We just do our job—”
“I know, I know,” she snapped. “It’s a tough job and a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it—right, right. I’ve heard that before from people who love doing dirty jobs—”
“—and we want to get off this island as soon as possible. So let’s step on it.” To the smaller fellow he said: “Form everybody up in the main room we came in.”
The duffel bag was soon full and Raines made sure the windows were shut and locked; he turned the light off and followed them down the hallway, down the stairway to the front hallway. The last two men were just coming through the front door. They were all identically dressed, smeared with the blacking.
Chandler whispered to Polly: “This is all right out of The Commandos Strike at Dawn. Brian Donlevy or Robert Montgomery is going to show up at any minute.” There was no time to tell Polly about the other figures he’d seen coming across the lawn. Raines was discussing matters with his men.
“Professor,” Raines said quietly, turning a level glance at Chandler, “there is a package, I believe—our instructions are not to leave without it. May I have it, please?”
Chandler laughed, shook his head: “Correction—there was a package. But not anymore. It’s nothing but a wad of newspapers in the kitchen wastebasket … We were stung—”
“I don’t quite understand, sir. Our orders were to bring the two of you and a small package … without fail. They were most insistent about that package …” Youth was suddenly showing through the training, the hard cutting edge. “Now I must put it to you—”
“Oh, come on, Lieutenant. Put it anywhere you like, search us, go check the wastebasket. There is no package—”
“Then we’ve gone to a hell of a lot of trouble for nothing, sir.”
“Thanks very much. Polly, you and I are nothing in the lieutenant’s eyes. Look, try to understand, we were taken—we got a dummy package, not the real thing, see, and now you’re going to have to lump it. So, what are you going to do? Leave us here in a fit of pique?”
“All right,” Raines said, not liking it a damn bit. “We haven’t got time to search a house the size of this one. But God help you if you’re lying to me.” He wheeled on his expectant cadre: “Back to the beach. We’re taking them out, as scheduled, minus the goddamned package. Now haul ass.”
Raines made sure all the lights were out, leaving the house as they’d found it but for some broken glass on the carpet.
The first man through the door bearing the brass plate marked Stronghold took a brief burst of silenced automatic rifle fire, slammed backwards into the second man who fell heavily against the others. The first man was dead, died with a brutal gurgle which was intended as a scream. Everyone in the hallway was jumbled together on the floor, eyes not yet accustomed to the dark.
“What the fuck’s going on here?” Raines whispered sharply, having sat down with a thud as the single file went down like dominoes. “Who’s out there?”
“Christ, Lieutenant, I can smell blood, it’s all over me!” A strangled cry, terror-stricken, went up from a disembodied voice.
“Get him off me, shit, he’s dying … he’s dead.” Groans, oaths, shouts filled the hallway, fear coloring each voice as they all lay in the tangle of arms and legs on the floor, in the pitchy darkness which somehow made it all the worse. Incredibly there was no follow-up, no pounding footsteps and racketing guns and dying. “Do any of you see anybody out there?” Raines whispered, his voice coming from the foot of the stairs. The heavy door, scarred by gunfire, stood open. “Shit no,” came the answer, “and I sure as hell ain’t gonna look right now …”
The soprano said: “What should we do, Lieutenant?”
“Shut up, for starters,” the lieutenant said.
Chandler found Polly’s hand, tugged at it, pulled her toward the room from which they’d just come. He scrunched up onto all fours, crawled ahead of her, hearing her behind him, going as quietly as possible. The beginnings of a plan—the response which he’d believed himself beyond—were taking shape at the edges of his mind, fragments which might be worked out as he went along. From the hallway the whispers grew in urgency. He could still smell the blood and the mess made by the dying commando, the specific smell of death, sickly sweet.
The long, heavy draperies on the French windows had been pushed back when Raines’s men had broken the glass and entered: now a luminescent gray stripe of moonlight bisected the floor, streaking the carpet. Polly and Chandler crouched behind a massive desk.
“I don’t know who they are,” he whispered against her ear, “but I saw them coming up the lawn when I went out on the balcony … I think they came from a boat down by those rocks, where we were this afternoon—I saw it, too, sort of.” He grabbed the desk to stop his hands from shaking: cramps raced along his legs. “We’ve got to get out of here—I don’t know who we’re safer with …”
“We’re safer by ourselves,” Polly said.
A burst of gunfire came from the hallway, followed by a low moaning sound, muffled whispers. Scurrying sounds moving along the porch beyond the drapes; heavy breathing in the hall. Someone dashed up the stairs to the second floor: a door slammed above them.
“They’re putting someone on the balcony,” Chandler said, voice trembling, trying to hold his breath. “Raines may be down to three men … Come on.”
He crawled slowly onward, keeping to the perimeter of the room, staying well clear of the moonlight. At last, keeping track of the odd sound, aware of the waiting game going on around them, they reached the row of French windows and huddled in the corner, melting into the draperies which felt as if they were fashioned from chain mail.
“Chandler!” Raines hissed from the hallway. “Chandler—where are you, you bastard?” Not so much in anger as in frustration. Silence: he felt Polly’s fingers squeezing his.
Chandler noticed a slight movement, a flutter, in the draperies, a pushing-out from the glass side. He held his breath mightily, stilled Polly’s hand: someone was coming in from the porch, moving slowly, carefully in the dark … There was no way to warn Raines and he was not absolutely sure he wanted to. Special Operations Executive … assassins, for all he knew. The drapery bulged, he felt it move against his leg, saw the shadow flitting in the moonlight not five feet from where he stood: the sense of someone struck him forcibly, the smell of a human being and the smell, incredibly unique, of oiled weaponry …
“Chandler?” Raines called more loudly. “You there?”
Gunfire rattled, loud and harsh, beside him, squirted across the room, deafening, like an explosion inside your head: the room lit up like a show window, for only an instant: Raines was seen in the flash, ducking back out of the doorway as it splintered and the hallway beyond filled with plaster dust from the slugs stitching their jagged way along the wall. The man firing the gun was only a black shadow ten feet in front of Chandler and Polly who wrapped themselves in drapery.
With the flash of gunfire abruptly extinguished, Chandler felt the weight and pull of the drapery moving as several more men bulled their way through the French windows: three or four had joined the original intruder in the dark room and Chandler heard them bumping into one another. Raines, he knew, could have made hamburger out of them then and there but for one consideration … he was afraid that Chandler and Polly might be in the way. Chandler heard them puffing, heard a click. “Grenade,” someone said softly.
Chandler grabbed Polly and with his free hand found the handle of a window: they were now entirely behind the long drapery, smelling the tobacco smell trapped in the fabric for so many years. The handle wouldn’t move: he felt with his fingertips for the button or lever to disengage the lock … finally found it, switched it, muffling any sound with the flat of his thumb, and moved the door open an inch. He wished there was a way to communicate with Polly but hand pressure had to suffice: he waited …
Then came a grunt followed by the sound of something heavy bouncing on the carpet, rolling: the grenade … he was sure that everyone else was crouching behind the desk and the heavy chairs, but nothing other than the draperies protected him and Polly from the coming blast.
Now! and he swung the door open and pulled Polly after him, onto the long porch …
They had taken no more than three long strides across the stones toward the railing when the room exploded, the windows all shattered and flew outward, passed over and through and around them, glittering like clockwork silver birds in the moonlight …
Chandler felt himself propelled forward by the blast, as if a large hand had been placed in the small of his back, slamming him against and then toppling him over the porch railing. They landed in the shrubbery, sprawled half across one another, scratched and nicked but intact.
Shouts echoed in the night: the grenade had apparently not made it through the doorway into the hall, but had hit the wall and bounced back into the room … screams of agony came from the room, a fire burned against an inside wall, the rattle of gunfire came: Chandler saw it in his mind, Raines leaping into the doorway, raking the wounded and dying with automatic rifle fire.
He turned to Polly: “Can you make a run for it?” He felt mud clinging to the side of his face.
She brushed dirt and leaves from her own face, looked up: “Sure, boss—I think we got ’em right where we want ’em.”
He craned his neck, peered up at the balcony: the man was leaning over the railing, trying to see what had happened below. Polly reached through their railing and Chandler heard the clatter of a gun being drawn across the stones. The man on the balcony heard, too, and immediately loosed a fusillade of fire at the sound, chipping the cement as they ducked.
“Can you use one of these?”
“Is the Pope a Catholic?” he said. “Does a bear—sure, all the time … machine guns? Don’t be silly, almost never without one …”
He took it and was surprised by how heavy it was, began crawling along the bottom of the porch, through shrubs and mud and the odd bit of broken glass. His back stung where he knew broken glass had chewed through his heavy sweater. The gunfire from the roof was not repeated. The flames in the room were flickering higher, shadows moved erratically: looking back into the house was like peering into a woodburning stove. Intermittently a gun went off. There was just no way of telling what the hell was actually going on.
“Chandler?” a voice cried tiredly.
“Christ, if they were in there, good luck to them,” came a faint reply. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, weary. But the conversation was cut short by another explosion.
At the corner of the porch and the bed of shrubbery, Chandler crouched; “Run to the shadows,” he pointed, “then along the tree line toward the cliff … we’re all right if we stay in the shadows …” He looked out, away from the house: “The fog’s starting.”
Ahead of them, the fogbank which had sat so calmly out beyond the trawler and the hag’s teeth had begun seeping in: it was fifty yards away, floating toward them, thick and impenetrable, seemingly palpable in the moonlight.
The glare of the fire faded behind them as they ran for the tree line, slipping awkwardly on the wet grass, finally fetching up among the firs, gasping for breath. The house was quiet now, no sound, no movement, only the penumbra of light which was muted by the oncoming fog as they pushed ahead, out of breath and not altogether sure where they were going. A few minutes into their flight they felt themselves wholly submerged in the welcome, protective fog, still conscious of its billowing, clammy grayness because the moon lit it from above, giving Chandler the impression he’d wandered into a crystal ball. Water beaded on his glasses. He stopped, leaned forward on his knees, a pain in his side: “We can’t afford to get lost in this,” he gasped. “We’ve got to keep the trees close on the right and that’ll take us right to the cliff …” He looked up, smiled at her fog-blurred face: “I hope you don’t think I know where I’m going … I haven’t the foggiest, if you’ll pardon the expression. My primary idea was just to get away …”
Polly nodded: “That’s all right. I’ve got an idea—let’s just keep on going and leave everything to me. You said there was some kind of fishing boat in the bay?”
“Or something. I don’t know any more about boats than I do about machine guns.” He looked hopelessly at the gun in his right hand: “Heavy little bastard.”
“Keep it, though,” she said.” They’ve all got guns, we may need it … God, what a thought.” She sighed: “But hold on to it.” Then she set off again, every so often stopping, prowling to the right, to make sure the trees were there. He followed, relieved at having engineered the escape from the house which, glancing over his shoulder, he saw was gone, sunk like a stone in the fog, like a ghost ship with its grisly cargo.
It took twenty minutes to travel the hundred yards to the top of the cliff. Standing still, they were only just able to hear the waves slipping across the rocky shingle below in the fog. The wind had picked up off the water and blew a fine stinging spray in their faces. The rickety stairway was slippery, the handrailing rotting, and the descent went slowly: as they dropped lower down the cliff face, they came out of the fog into a heavier mist which blew in sheets off the water.
The trawler sat darkly, enigmatically, deep in the water, the needle of light picking its way along the shoreline, slowly, erratically, lingering here and there, leaping onward, as if the man controlling it was having trouble staying awake. There were no markings on the ship, at least none visible in the moonlight, no way of identifying the vessel, by name or nationality: just a black shape with the piercing Cyclopean eye.
The beam of light played well short of the rock wall as they clambered to the bottom and stood leaning on one another. Chandler felt as if he’d been out of breath since birth. “Where are you taking me?” he asked, gulping air and rain. His lungs felt hot, like bursting. The backs of his legs pained him. He was so wet. He knew his back was bleeding from the broken glass. He was going to have a hell of a cold, assuming someone didn’t kill him first. Polly started off again and didn’t hear his question. He slogged on, cradling the gun in the crook of his arm. At least he wasn’t carrying the miserable duffel bag …
They reached the dock.
“Come on,” she said, “where there’s a boathouse there ought to be a boat.”
“Oh, wait a minute—I don’t know a damned thing about boats, I’m scared of boats—”
“You don’t have to know anything about boats. We’re a team, y’know—now come on before the searchlight catches up with us.”
He followed her, struggling up onto the rotting, soggy planks where she had nimbly leaped. The fog was coming in again, another great rolling bank: he smelled it more than saw it, and when he glanced back at the ship he saw only the vaguest outline, and the searchlight was a blur as it swung in stately fashion toward them.
“Hurry,” Polly called from up ahead. “The light …”
In his haste, Chandler tripped over a warped, jutting plank and plunged headlong, the gun flying ahead of him as he fell heavily, skinning his knees and the palms of his outstretched hands. Looking up, panic-stricken, he found himself staring, blinded, into the searchlight, squinting as it reflected among a million particles of moisture and bounced from one to the other, from one gust of fog to another. Like an animal, hypnotized and doomed in the headlights of an oncoming truck, he lay on the wet, crumbling wood as the light swung slowly past, stopped, tracked back over him and moved slowly off down the beach.
“Come on, Colin,” she called. “The light couldn’t crack the fog, they didn’t see you.”
Reprieved, he struggled his seemingly endless length into an upright position, retrieved the gun, and lumbered off down the dock to the warped door of the boathouse where Polly hugged him. “Oh, God,” she sighed, swallowing, “I thought … are you all right?”
He nodded, sweating, feeling light-headed. God, if You let me live, I’ll take up squash again, jog, do anything You say … The door stuck: angrily he slammed his shoulder into it, dislodged it, and they stepped into the darkness. Slowly, standing still, they let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. The place reeked of soaked wood, gasoline, oil. Gradually the open end took gray, rectangular shape. Moonlight slid dimly through a hole in the roof …
Polly fumbled along the wail, finally crowed: “I knew it—a light switch! Anybody with this kind of money is going to have lights everywhere, feeding off a central generator.” She flipped the switch and two bare hanging bulbs, dangling at the tips of frayed black cords, came to life, lighting the interior with a harsh glare. Knowing nothing about seagoing machinery, Chandler took stock of the device revealed before him and in his head pronounced it some sort of cabin cruiser, which sat in a trough of water, waves lapping sibilantly at the hull. Chandler took it in but understood none of it: he’d never been aboard a boat, had seen them only at a distance. Forty or fifty feet long maybe, lots of polished wood, an elegant look which made him think it had a good many years on it—he couldn’t imagine anyone making such boats anymore. The back end was open but the middle third was canopied like the one Humphrey Bogart found himself on at the climax of Key Largo.
On the dock there were two large red gasoline cans beside a pile of rags, some carefully wrapped paintbrushes, coils of greasy rope, a scarred and dented toolbox. Polly climbed aboard, poked around mysteriously, lifted hatches, sniffed, took something from a wall bracket near the pilot’s chair. She knelt down on the stairway and pushed a door open revealing a pit which he concluded had to house the bunks and galley. She closed it and came back up, stood with hands on hips, looking at him, shrugging with a smile.
“Well, we’re in business. This little dandy is going to get us out of here …”
“Little dandy,” he repeated. “Who writes your stuff?”
“No time to be brittle, my darling. In the words of the poet, they’re after us even as we speak—”
“But don’t you need charts, maps, that stuff?”
“There’s a stack of that stuff up there.” She nodded toward a shelf above the wheel. “And if that huge gunboat got into the bay, then this little—”
“Dandy.”
“—can get us out.”
“Are you sure you know how to—gunboat, you say?”
“It’s no fishing trawler, take my word. I’d say it’s Russian, a spy ship full of electronic paraphernalia, and some armaments. They patrol the coastline all the time. Remember, this is my business—at least, knowing stuff like this.”
“I never know whether to believe you when you go all worldly on me …”
“Believe me,” she said, busying herself, presumably readying the boat for the getaway.
“I repeat, are you sure you know how—”
“Look, somebody up at the house is eventually going to win the battle and whoever it is is going to look around, discover that we are gone and the package, too, and they’re going to decide that two and two make four, and we’re on the spot again … both groups came by sea so there are two ships lurking out there in the fog … it’s tag, and we’re it. So we’d better get the hell gone and we’re better off at night than by day … and, look, it’s my neck as well as yours, right? So, of course I know how to run the damned boat … now hurry up and get settled.”
He heard a fan going on, then they waited in quiet as Polly puttered deliberately about, then he felt and heard the engine turning over: it seemed terribly loud and whining, but then what the hell did he know? Let it be loud: just let it get them the hell out of there: “Are you sure this can work? Doesn’t it seem awfully easy?” He was sitting across from her on a padded bench, his sore back angled against an edge of wood which hurt.
She nodded: “Well, I expect it to get harder fairly soon, if that makes you feel any better …” She settled in behind the wheel in the high swivel chair. “I don’t know where we are and I’m going to have to play it more or less by—don’t look at me that way—by ear …” He couldn’t hear any more. The engine in the enclosed space was hammering at them with a considerable vengeance. She pointed with her right hand, in the manner of a tiny John Wayne, that they were moving out, and he nodded, pressing the cold, heavy weight of the gun across his knees …
The boat quivered mightily, edged slowly out of its slip, pushed off into the fog. The two cans of gasoline rested on the floor next to his feet; he had no idea what kind of gun he was holding, nor how to use it; but Polly seemed to be giving a knowing impression of someone coping with what was going on. Suddenly, the fog was in the cockpit with them, blowing in stringy wisps between them and he couldn’t see a goddamn thing … He stood up and crossed to his side, squinted at the windshield.
“Can’t see,” he said.
“Scary, isn’t it?” Behind them the ghostly glow from the boathouse, filtering through the fog, looked like a flying saucer hovering curiously over the water.
“Do you remember where the rocks are? The teeth?”
“More or less.”
“More or less,” he repeated faintly.
“Well, what can I say? I think I know where they are …”
They nosed on through the fog for another minute, Polly straining to see ahead, Chandler with eyes pressed tight, offering up a prayer. When he clicked his eyes open—why at just that moment, he had no idea—he was looking to the left of their path, and he cried out involuntarily: “Jesus! Look out!”
A wall of fog had split, been shredded into flowing trailers by the mysterious ship which now loomed over them, larger than he’d have believed possible, sliding toward them like an avenger … He heard Polly swear and saw her spin the wheel, felt the small boat shudder and moan as it cranked sideways in the water. The engine throbbed underfoot as she opened it up.
The rocks, she’s going to hit the rocks …
There was no way she could keep her bearings with the trawler bearing down on them, the fog swirling, the boat spinning and veering off in a new direction.
“Get the gun ready,” she yelled.
“Ready? What the hell do you do to get a gun ready?”
The trawler slid past behind them and he fancied he saw the movement of men on deck. Somehow they had seen the light in the boathouse … or maybe they actually had seen him in the fire of the searchlight as he tripped and fell … or maybe someone from the attack force had radioed them from the house, had alerted them … or maybe they used the electronic listening device aboard the spy ship …
As it slithered past and beyond them, it was leaning to the left, turning, and consequently Polly was maneuvering back across its path again a few seconds later. Chandler had made his way to the back of the boat and was resting the gun on the brass handrailing, crouched, watching, and the trawler was coming at them again out of the fog.
And as it came, straight on, flame flickered at him like a match in the wind, and the fog muted the rattle of a machine gun floating like death at him as he heard, felt the slugs hit the hull of the ship beneath the railing, heard them rip away the back of a swivel chair three feet behind him. He felt as if he had somehow gotten into place at both ends of a shooting gallery, simultaneously.
All right, by God. He saw the bust of Washington floating to the floor, coming slowly apart in a million particles of dust and plaster.
He trained the machine gun at the searchlight picking its way through the fog toward them, squeezed the trigger: the weapon came alive in his hands, vibrating, chattering, as if it were fighting to get loose, free of his amateur’s grasp. Miraculously, the light exploded at once and they were surrounded by the moonlit fog again. He turned in time to see Polly give him the thumbs-up sign.
Another yelp of gunfire came from the trawler which had straightened out behind them and was pursuing as Polly swung to and fro in the water, weaving her way toward the freedom of movement which lay beyond the rocks …
He felt the little boat take the fire briefly before Polly moved it out of range: the swivel chair near him, backless and in splinters, rotated this way and that, back and forth, as the path she steered changed, adjusted. They had to be nearing the huge hag’s teeth which had seemed so close during the day … but where in the name of God were they? As they slowed, picking their way toward them, where they had to be, the trawler heaved to out of the fog again, coming blindly, riding them down …
Determined to get in the first barrage, having no idea in the world who the hell he was blazing away at, Chandler steadied the gun, prayed there was still some ammunition, and squeezed the trigger a second time. His fire drew a startled cry which hung in the nightfog, like a banner stained bloody with the battle, then a rush of jabbering return fire which broke some glass and sent Chandler to the deck, trying to squeeze into the crawl space beneath the bench.
“I see it,” Polly called. “The channel through—”
The engines throbbed wildly again and the boat leaped forward, rushing into what seemed to Chandler a blank wall of fog. Immediately the other ship was left behind and they were for the instant alone.
“Look out,” she cried, “here it comes!”
And then he saw the stones.
She took the spread between them at full tilt, the waves foaming around them, driving the suddenly frail craft like a twig toward the gray stone tower on the right. Chandler knew his eyes were frozen wide, staring, and then he knew it wasn’t going to work …
The side of their boat slammed against the stone, something ruptured and tore, gave way with a dismal tug, and they seemed to be suspended out of the water, poised, the waves on the rise holding them pinned against the great thrust of rock and he saw Polly holding firm, pulling with all of her strength and determination against the push of the waves … then, without warning, the boat dropped away from the hag’s tooth, plummeted down the side of a wave like something cut loose in an elevator shaft, and suddenly the engines seemed to do some good again. They churned forward out into the open and miraculously they were still afloat, struggling but moving onward, piercing the sea and the fog and the cold wind.
Polly turned, grinning broadly, lower lip quivering and he went to her, kissed her wet cheek, held her to him.
Behind them, a matter of fifteen seconds later, there was a most remarkable sound: a solid, wet smashing, like a wrecking ball smashing into soggy concrete, an enormous deadening thud followed by a series of cracks and rending noises: the trawler, or spy ship, or whatever the hell it was, had clearly run afoul of one of the teeth … silence, the only sound the hum and drive of their own engines … and then, just like in the movies, there came a rumbling explosion, darts of red and orange fire piercing the fog, reaching toward them, all of which was suddenly extinguished, leaving the silence once again and the pattering of bits of debris falling from out of the fog into the water all around them.