Jenny and Colly looked at each other. Tony Monkhouse seemed odder than usual.
The boat pitched and rolled wildly in the short waves. The screws of the twin outboards screamed at the air when the stern lifted clear of the water, then bit again when the stern dropped and the bows reared themselves up into the bright white sky.
Colly lit a cigarette, with great difficulty in the wind and spray and with the boat dancing like an excited puppy.
They were still headed directly out to sea. It seemed to Colly they were getting far too far offshore to expect to catch fish.
He called: ‘Hey, Tony! Are you heading for the Seychelles or Ceylon or what?’
Tony turned briefly from the wheel. He grunted something inaudible.
They bounced over the shiny choppy water towards the rising sun.
Sandro flew into Nairobi very early in the morning. He collected Dave Black. He told Dave he must have two days’ holiday by the sea. Dave said he was too busy but he allowed himself to be overruled. He did not need a holiday but he badly wanted to see Jenny.
Sandro hitched a ride for them both with a friend who was going to Kilifi in his private Cessna. They landed on the airstrip behind the Mnarani Club. They went into the Club for coffee. They saw an Englishman called Freddy whom they all knew. Freddy reported that Colly and Jenny were quite well when last seen. Dave was interested in this news.
‘At this moment they’re fishing,’ said Freddy. ‘With a strange bloke called Tony Monkhouse. Did you meet him before you left, Sandro?’
‘Did I? Tony Monkhouse? Anthony Monkh . . . Dio!’
The change in Sandro was sudden and extraordinary. One moment he was stretched in a long chair, in half shade, indolently drinking coffee and smoking and looking at the pool. Then in an instant he was a whirlwind of explosive energy. The friend with the Cessna was routed from a late breakfast and bundled, complaining loudly, to the airstrip.
In the intervals of running and commanding Sandro had time to say to Freddy: ‘When did they leave?’
‘I can tell you exactly. An hour ago.’
‘What boat?’
‘Charter from Malindi. Identical to mine.’
‘Name?’
‘No idea.’
‘Okay. Now take Dave in your boat. Go fast and straight out to sea, go due east. Tie a big red flag to the mast or a spreader, yes? When I find them I will tell you which way to go.’
‘How, Sandro?’
‘We will waggle the wings and then fly straight. When you see that you will follow.’
‘Why?’
‘Questions later. Go now quickly.’
Sandro climbed into the Cessna with his friend, who was still cross but was already aboard and fiddling with the controls. The self-starters fired one engine and then the other, and the neat little aircraft lifted after a short run and banked and droned out to sea.
The man called Freddy hurried with Dave down to the jetty. He was a rich young Englishman who farmed near Kitale and kept a few racehorses and this boat.
‘I don’t understand any of this, Dave,’ he panted. ‘What’s the panic?’
‘Didn’t Sandro tell you?’
‘He said there wasn’t time.’
‘There wasn’t, was there? He says the charter boat’s unseaworthy.’
‘But he doesn’t know that boat. He doesn’t know her name.’
‘Perhaps he knows the owner. Anyway he thinks they’re going to sink. Come on, Freddy. I wonder if Jenny’s a good swimmer . . .’
‘Yes. I’ve seen her in the pool. Very nice she looks in her bikini.’
‘Yes,’ said Dave through dry lips.
As Freddy said, his boat was very like the one from Malindi. It could get about the same speed. They drove out of the creek into the open sea. Dave clung to the wire rail in the bows and tried to search the sea with binoculars, but spray continually dashed against the lenses and with the bucking of the boat it was impossible.
‘There’s Sandro!’
The Cessna, fairly high, was flying parallel to the shore about a mile out to sea. It was going north.
Freddy drove his boat hard, due east. It bucketed in the rough water. The sun was getting high. There was no sign of any other boat and the aircraft had disappeared to the north.
‘Remarkable chap, Sandro,’ said Freddy. ‘There was old Danny Birkbeck having his breakfast, quiet as a mouse and bothering nobody. Then Sandro whistles, and now poor Danny’s zooming up and down over most of the Indian Ocean.’
‘Sandro’s got a good reason.’
‘Oh yes. Well, I bloody well hope so. There was I, just about to have a soothing dip in the swimming-pool. Sandro snaps his fingers and now look at me. Bursting my motors, using a lot of expensive petrol, quite likely to be as sick as a pig, and not even bloody well fishing. If that boat turns out to be sound, Sandro can buy us—’
‘There he is.’
The Cessna reappeared, much farther out to sea, at the same height, flying south. Suddenly it went into a shallow dive, banking steeply.
‘They’ve found it!’
The aircraft flew low over the sea, banking in sharp turns. Most of the time it was invisible behind the steep waves round Freddy’s boat.
‘We’re going the right way,’ said Freddy.
‘Can you go any faster?’
‘No.’
‘Who’s come to call?’ said Colly, as the Cessna slanted towards them and then banked.
‘He’s very low. Is he all right?’
‘Nuts, if you ask me . . . hey, there’s a guy waving.’
‘Colly, it’s Sandro!’
‘Crap, darling. The old man’s in Switzerland . . . you’re right. Is he hell-bent on suicide?’
They could see Sandro clearly as the little plane buzzed them, banking so that Sandro, beside the pilot, seemed almost close enough to touch. He was behaving like a lunatic. The perspex canopy was pushed back and he was leaning half out of the cockpit. He was pointing downwards.
‘The sea?’ said Jenny.
Sandro jabbed his finger downwards with furious meaning. His mouth was wide open, shouting, but nothing could be heard.
So for a split second: then the aircraft droned away and turned and came towards them again as though about to rake them with machine-guns.
Tony Monkhouse, at the wheel, glanced at the Cessna with flat, expressionless eyes. He continued to drive the boat hard, directly out to sea.
Sandro was leaning farther out of the cockpit. Jenny clutched Colly’s arm. Sandro seemed almost clear of the fuselage of the plane, perilously clinging, battered by the rush of air.
‘Pointing down,’ said Colly. ‘What the hell?’
‘Something below us? Wreck or whale or mermaid?’
Jenny glanced overboard, at the rushing and heaving water.
A third time and a fourth the plane zoomed terribly close to the boat. Jenny waved cheerfully but she was completely puzzled. Sandro was gesticulating with a kind of agony, down at the—
‘Wing!’ said Jenny suddenly.
They looked at each other, and glanced simultaneously at the back of Tony Monkhouse’s head. He seemed to have become oblivious of the aircraft.
‘Wing,’ muttered Colly. ‘He found out in Geneva. Christ, it all fits.’
On the Cessna’s fifth run over them Sandro was safely back inboard but the perspex hood was still open. Colly and Jenny waved and nodded, and Jenny mimed the slitting of a throat.
Tony Monkhouse glanced round. He saw the gesture.
The plane zoomed away before any more could be communicated.
Sandro, on his next run, made a swooping serpentine motion with his hand.
‘Mm?’ grunted Colly.
‘He wants us to dive.’
‘Out here? Oh no.’
Tony Monkhouse saw Sandro’s gesture. As soon as the aircraft had zoomed away again before its next turn and run he leaned forward and reached into a locker by the wheel. He straightened and turned, his back to the bow but his left hand still holding the wheel. There was a gun in his right hand, held low and out of sight of the plane.
In one movement Jenny was over the gunwale and into the water. There was no time for a proper dive. She had a short, shocking vision of a leg or arm fouling the racing screws of the twin outboards, but the boat roared on and she was clear.
She dived downwards and swam strongly away from the wake of the boat. She supposed Colly was still alive. If Tony Monkhouse was Wing he was mad but he probably knew how to use the gun.
A wave lifted Jenny high. She saw Colly in the water twenty yards away. She saw the boat. It was forty yards away, turning in a tight circle. She saw the aircraft. It was banking and turning. Jenny assumed Sandro had a gun. He could use it to distract and unnerve Tony Monkhouse, but he was unlikely to hit him. Perhaps he had a grenade or a bomb of some kind. Jenny hoped he would not drop a depth-charge into the water near her.
The sea was not very cold. Jenny liked swimming in rough water. The sun and sky were magnificent.
Jenny’s supporting wave rolled away from beneath her and she dropped into a deep trough between waves. Colly, boat, aircraft disappeared. All she could see was brilliant sky and green-white mountains of water.
This was all right, she thought, as long as it didn’t go on too long.
Another wave lifted her. The boat had turned. It was heading towards her. The aircraft had turned. It was coming in at the boat. Jenny heard a shot over the noise of boat and aircraft, but it was impossible to say which it came from. She was dropped into another trough. The aircraft went directly over her, fast and low. She thought she glimpsed a face or two faces looking down at her. She waved. The plane was gone.
She was lifted heavenward again by the smooth irresistible elevator of another wave. The boat was close. She saw Tony Monkhouse. He was leaning out. She thought he saw her. She duck-dived and swam fast under water.
If this went on she was going to get tired.
She was lifted. The boat was near, moving slowly. Tony Monkhouse was in the stern. He seemed to be shouting. Perhaps, for the benefit of the aircraft, he was acting rescuer. Jenny swallowed a mouthful of sea. She trod water, choking.
The Cessna buzzed the boat. Before Jenny could see what Sandro was doing the wave slid by and dumped her ten feet down into a heaving trough.
It was difficult to think in the rough water, but Jenny thought: the madman on the boat would have a good story. The aircraft had startled his passengers. They had fallen or jumped. Nobody would know about the gun.
The plane zoomed low over her again. Jenny suddenly wondered how much gas it had. Tony Monkhouse, she knew, had plenty. He could motor slowly or cut his outboards and drift. Sooner or later Sandro would be forced back to land to refuel, and then . . .
Up.
The boat was turning again.
Why? Why not leave them to drown? No, he had to cover himself. At least as long as the plane was there. Perhaps he would roar away as soon as the plane went.
Down.
Only the sky and a world of sliding green mountains.
The aircraft must have a radio. Who would they radio? Saying what? Who would come out? How soon? From Mombasa, thirty miles south? Some kind of customs boat? Would they find them? Up.
Tony Monkhouse had a boathook. The boat was quite close. He would jab with the hook. Pretending to the men in the aircraft that he was trying to rescue, but as soon as he was out of their sight stabbing or stunning.
Down.
And he had the gun.
It seemed to Jenny that she must keep a fair distance from the boat, but not lose it. The boat was her only link with Colly and her only chance of rescue.
Would they have been better tackling Tony Monkhouse, the two of them, trusting that the heaving deck would spoil his aim even at such short range?
Well no. That would have been certain death for at least one of them. This way they were still alive. For the moment.
Up.
The aircraft was not making its usual steep turn. It went straight on. It went towards the coast. Things were a little more tense.
How soon could they get a boat out here from Kilifi? An hour? An hour and a half? Would she be alive? Were there any helicopters on this coast? How far away could she be seen from the air in a sea as rough as this?
Down, and quickly up.
Tony Monkhouse saw her. He gunned his engines and came at her. She dived and swam fast under water. When she surfaced she was well away from the boat. But the effort was exhausting. She was beginning to feel cold.
Time was on Wing’s side. He could putter about or drift forever. Until dark. Jenny did not give herself very long.
The important thing was not to start thinking how nice it would be to sink quietly down into this shining, sunlit sea under the brilliant African sky.
Dave saw the aircraft turn in a wide, shallow circle, waggle its wings, and head again directly out to sea.
‘We’re going right,’ said Freddy.
‘Yes.’
‘We’re a hell of a long way out already. If the waves get any bigger I shall be sick. It may be childish but I shall.’
The aircraft turned again and headed west, for the land.
‘Why?’
‘Gas, perhaps,’ said Freddy. ‘Danny came down from Nairobi. He’s been puddling about out there for quite a time. Round and round. We’ll see them in a minute.’
‘Can’t you go faster?’
‘No.’
The needle of the fuel-gauge was near zero. Sandro wanted very badly to keep flying over the boat and the swimmers until Freddy reached them, but Danny Birkbeck refused to stay over the ocean a minute longer.
Sandro thought Jenny and Colly could stay afloat unless they were hit by something. He considered the possibility of Wing, alias Antoine l’Abbaye, alias Anthony Monkhouse, speeding away and leaving them in the great heaving waste of water. Then they would be very difficult to see from a boat and quite difficult from the air. Therefore he had dropped two bright orange lifejackets into the sea near the swimmers. They would be immediately visible from an aircraft, if not at once to Freddy and John. Of course Monkhouse might find them and fish them out before hurrying away.
There was the possibility also that the madman might ram Freddy’s boat or in some other way impede the rescue. There were a lot of possibilities, all frightening and depressing.
Sandro did not know about Tony Monkhouse’s gun.
Up.
The Cessna was far away, over the coast, landing.
They were alone in this untidily-billowing sea with Tony Monkhouse.
Where was he? A litde way away. Quiet: engines cut.
Down.
Jenny heard the gun. He was shooting at Colly.
Up.
The crack of the gun. He was shooting at her. She dived.
He would be lucky to hit either of them, but this diving and hard swimming and dodging in the big choppy waves was dangerously exhausting.
Up, down, up. Snap-shots. He had plenty of ammunition. A lucky shot, a graze, would mean blood. Shark.
Creeping cold was invading Jenny’s legs and fingers and heart.
Up. The boat close, too close. Tony Monkhouse by the wheel, legs braced, pistol held out straight like a marks man.
And suddenly a big dull thud, gigantic, an explosion. The boat fell apart.
Down she went into a trough. The shock hit, but not hard. She choked and struggled. She was all right.
Up on a great creamy green wave.
No boat. Bits. Smoke whirled away by the gusty wind. Waves like great green bottles heaved up with fragments of the boat on their backs.
No Tony Monkhouse. But perhaps some of the dark jetsam on the water was part of him.
‘Oh my God,’ said Dave.
‘Gas?’ asked Freddy.
‘A bang like that? That was high-explosive. Jenny. Oh my God.’
They were now close to the wide-strewn bits of boat. They were just bits of boat.
‘Lifejacket!’ shouted Freddy.
A bright orange square was lifted by a wave, some way away on their starboard bow. It disappeared again at once. Dave thought there might be someone clinging to it.
Freddy turned the wheel hard and they got there quickly. Jenny was holding the lifejacket. She was very cold and tired and unable to talk. Dave went down into the water to help her aboard. Her lips were blue and she shivered uncontrollably.
She tried to say: ‘Find Colly,’ but nothing came out except a bubbling moan through helplessly chattering teeth.
Dave rubbed her down with a towel. He had never had a child: he had never done this for Eva: he had never rubbed anybody down with a towel before. He rubbed gently and tried to think only of getting Jenny dry and warm. They had no blankets or heavy clothes on the boat. Freddy gave Jenny his shirt. There was a little whisky. The mouth of the bottle rattled against her teeth and she choked on the neat whisky. She huddled in the stern of the boat, out of the wind, in Freddy’s thin gay shirt.
They hunted madly for Colly.
They found him after a crawling quarter-hour. He was in better shape than Jenny. He had found a big piece of wood from the exploded boat, a fish-locker. He needed help to get aboard, a lot of help, and he was very tired and chilled and unable to talk clearly. He and Jenny embraced weakly in the sunlit stern of Freddy’s boat.
‘By God,’ said Freddy, ‘that was near.’
Jenny thought more about being rubbed down with a towel by Dave than about her narrow escape from drowning. Dave thought more about rubbing her down than about how nearly she had died.
They turned and bucketed towards the coast.
‘Terrible,’ said Mr Timothy Hikohoki. ‘Lunacy is terrible to contemplate.’
‘Certainly he was very mad,’ said Sandro.
‘I don’t know whether it’s romantic or cynical to welcome what happened. I don’t mean the ordeal of your friends. Of course that was dreadful. I mean Tony’s death.’
‘I welcome it.’
‘Yes. It could not, possibly, have been an accidental explosion?’
‘I was not there,’ said Sandro. ‘But how many boats with outboard motors have ever blown up? How many here?’
‘None.’
‘No.’
‘Then, with a bomb, Tony prepared his own death with theirs. I had no idea he had become so—utterly wild. So, as you say, so very mad. At least that is the end.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro. ‘How many agents did he have?’
‘Agents? For compiling the dossiers?’
‘For killing people. Like the man near my house in Italy who killed a man on my property.’
‘Oh. I do not know. For the archives, for researching, he enlisted many people. We paid them a little. I think Hannibal de Vain paid them by results.’
‘How much were they paid for machine-gunning men and dogs in England?’
‘That was terrible. He had the logic of the insane. He caused the dogs to be shot because they had become predators not for survival but for sport. Also some hunting horses were killed.’
‘I am very glad he is dead. Will his agents go on without him?’
‘I think not. If I accept your inference that they exist, I think they would resort to—ultimate solutions only on his orders.’
‘How fortunate for us all.’
‘Yes, I am very troubled,’ said the neat little Japanese. ‘Your friends are safe, thanks to your resource. They might most easily not have been safe. I am almost of a mind to feel that I should have told you more than I did. Somehow warned you against Tony.’
‘I am also of that mind.’
‘Of course. But you, Count, did not promise on your honour to keep his secret.’ Mr Hikohoki sighed. ‘A bomb, on his hired boat. I imagine very little can be discovered about it from the wreckage. Do you imagine a time-bomb? The clock must be in pieces and each piece at the bottom of the sea. A time-bomb. I am aghast to think of a man who was once my – well, my colleague, at the least – aghast to think of him waiting for a death which he had contrived. He was at least no coward. Oh dear. A sad and awful story. But it’s finished.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro.
‘Well well well well well,’ said Jenny. ‘What a lot of holes in the ground.’
Evening. She and Colly were fully recovered.
Sandro explained that Ala was A.l’A, and that ‘Antoine l’Abbaye’ was the archivist of SIPHEN.
‘That wraps it up,’ said Colly. ‘Good. I’ve been too scared too often this trip. What do we do? Go on safari?’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro.
Jenny heard Dave, inside the house, singing Voi que sapete from Figaro. Her heart thudded in her throat.
The sky and the sea were coppery-gold in the brief, beautiful evening. The little birds strutted and chirruped on the sandy grass under the palm-trees and flowering shrubs, and the cook’s tame mongoose piped like a little bird. The morning’s blustery wind had dropped. It was an evening on which murder seemed unthinkable.
Jenny thought she would remember until she died Dave’s hands vigorously but gently drying her with a towel in the rolling and pitching cockpit of the rescuing boat.
‘We will go on safari,’ said Sandro, ‘exactly as we planned. But we will go much more carefully than we planned. Ala will come and find us and we shall find Ala.’
Colly and Jenny glanced at each other. Colly took a drink from his glass and elaborately shrugged.
‘Think,’ said Sandro. ‘It is most extremely obvious that Mr Monkhouse was a rabbit’s-foot.’
‘No, chum,’ said Colly. ‘Not the lucky kind.’
‘A cat’s-paw. So now we must find his boss, who today murdered him with a bomb.’