Miller and Andrea found plywood bunks, rolled on to them, and closed their eyes: except Mallory. Mallory lay and felt the bound of the MTB over the swell, and the tremor of the Merlin engines, and rested his eyes on the plywood deck above him. There were matters he needed to ponder before he slept.
As they had left the armoury, a runner had caught him by the arm. ‘Telephone, sir,’ he had said.
The voice on the telephone had been light but hard: Jensen.
‘No names,’ it had said. ‘Something I wanted to say, between us two, really.’
‘Yessir.’
‘I wanted to say the best of luck, and all that.’
‘Yessir.’ Jensen would not have rung his mother to wish her luck. Mallory waited.
‘Our new friend,’ said Jensen. ‘The expert. He’s okay, but you might like to keep your eye on him.’
‘Eye?’
‘Just a thought,’ said Jensen. ‘I’ve got a feeling he might be on a sort of treasure hunt.’
‘Treasure hunt? What sort of treasure hunt?’
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be telling you to keep an eye on him, would I? Well, I expect you’ll be wanting to get on your way.’
Mallory lay and watched the deckhead. There were undoubtedly problems on Kynthos. But Mallory strongly suspected there was also a problem on the MTB, a problem called Carstairs. Mallory did not trust the man. Nor, it seemed, did Jensen. So why did Jensen insist that Carstairs be part of the mission? Of course, it had not been Jensen who had insisted. It had been Admiral Dixon. Mallory found himself thinking that a spell on the bridge of a destroyer would do Dixon a lot of good: or on an MTB, a floating fuel-tank, a bladder of aviation fuel with two Merlin engines…
But Dixon was safe behind his desk, and that was a law of nature. Just like the fact that Carstairs was along for the duration.
Railing against the laws of nature was entirely pointless. Mallory was not given to doing pointless things.
A new vibration added itself to the bone-jarring roar of the twin Merlins. Mallory was snoring.
He awoke much later, prised a cup of coffee out of the galley, and climbed on to the bridge. The sun was sinking towards the western horizon, North Africa a low dun line to the south. As far as any German aircraft were concerned they were heading east, for somewhere in the Allied territory in the gathering shadows ahead.
A rating brought up a plate of corned beef sandwiches and more coffee. It was quieter on the bridge. Mallory wedged a deck chair in a corner. As he ate his mind kept coming back to Carstairs. Why would an experienced guerrilla fighter have chosen a sniper rifle with a notoriously delicate sight? If they were all on the same operation, why were they notionally two separate units? Why –
A shadow fell across him. It was Carstairs, slender fingers in the pocket of his battledress blouse: like Clark Gable, thought Mallory. His hand came out with the gold cigarette case. He opened it, offered it to Mallory. ‘Turkish this side, Virginian that,’ he said.
‘Just put one out,’ said Mallory. ‘Tell me something. What are you doing on this trip?’
‘Same as you,’ said Carstairs.
‘So what … qualifies you?’
Carstairs smiled. ‘I’ve knocked about a bit.’
‘And you’re a rocket expert.’
‘So I am.’
‘Where did you pick that up?’
‘Here and there,’ said Carstairs, vaguely. ‘Here and there.’
You got used to vagueness on Special Operations. It was a mistake to know more than you needed to know. So why did Mallory have the feeling that Carstairs was using this fact for his own purposes?
‘Ever done armed insurgency work?’ he said.
‘Not exactly. But there have been … parallel episodes in my life.’
‘What’s a parallel episode?’ said a new voice: Miller’s.
‘A not dissimilar operation.’
‘I had one of those, but the wheels dropped off.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Carstairs’ face was stiffening.
‘All right,’ said Mallory. Carstairs, it seemed, was too important to have a sense of humour. ‘You’re good in mountains. You can shoot.’
Carstairs yawned. ‘So they told me on Nanga Parbat.’
‘I thought that was a German expedition.’
‘It was.’ They stared at him. ‘The Duke of Windsor asked me to go. Rather a chum of mine, actually, so one couldn’t refuse. I speak pretty good German. I’m a climber. What’s wrong with that?’
Mallory said nothing. The Nanga Parbat expedition had been supervised by Himmler in person. It had conquered the peak, but only by cementing in spikes and installing fixed ladders and ropes. They might as well have put scaffolding up the face. It was not what Mallory called climbing.
Carstairs said, ‘The idea was to get to the top.’
Well, that was true.
‘And the rockets,’ said Miller, doggedly. ‘Where did you find out all this stuff you know about rockets?’
Carstairs was not smiling any more. He said, ‘We have all led complicated lives I am sure, and a lot of the things we have done we would not necessarily have told our mummies about. You can take it from me that I know what I know, and I am under orders from Admiral Dixon, Corporal. Now if you will excuse me I could do with forty winks.’ And he went below.
‘Temper,’ said Miller, mildly.
Mallory lit a cigarettee. He did not look at the American. ‘I would remind you,’ he said, ‘that Captain Carstairs is a superior officer, and as such is entitled to respect. I would like you to give this thought your earnest attention.’ His eyes came up and locked with Miller’s. ‘Your very close attention,’ he said.
Miller smiled. ‘My pleasure,’ he said.
The MTB churned on down the coast. The sun sank below the horizon. Miller lay on the wing of the bridge, watching the last light of day leave the sky, and the sky fade to black, and upon it a huge field of silver stars come into being. Wills murmured an order to the man at the helm. Over Miller’s head, the stars began to wheel until the Big Dipper lay across the horizon, the last two stars in its rhomboidal end pointing across an empty expanse to a single star riding over the MTB’s bow.
They had turned north.
It was eight hours’ hard steaming from Al-Gubiya to Kynthos. Rafts of cloud began to drift across the sky, blotting out patches of stars. The breeze was up, ruffling the sea into long ridges of swell. M-109 made heavy weather, jolting and banging
