the Savage Day - Simon Vaughn 02 (v5) Read online

  'Only the best.' She looked suitably impressed. 'How is she powered?'

  'Penta petrol engine. Twin screws. She'll do about twenty-five knots at full stretch. Depth sounder, radar, automatic steering. She's got the lot.'

  I cut the motor and we coasted in. Norah Murphy took the line and went over the rail nimbly enough. Binnie was nothing like so agile and from the look on his face it was obvious that he was going to have a bad night of it whatever happened.

  He was like a fish out of water. In fact, I doubt if he had ever been on a boat, certainly a small boat of that type, in his life before. When he took off that sinister black overcoat of his he looked younger than ever and the clothes he wore didn't help. A stiff white collar a size too large for him, a knitted tie and an ill-fitting double-breasted suit of clerical grey.

  Norah Murphy opened one of the saloon cupboards to hang the coat up for him and found a neopryne wet suit, flippers and mask and an aqualung inside.

  She turned, one eybrow raised. 'Don't tell me you still intend to go over the rail if the situation arises.'

  'I'll take you with me if I do, I promise.'

  She put the suitcase on the table, opened it and took out Binnie's Browning automatic. She held it in her right hand for a moment, looking at me, eyes narrowed slightly, then she tossed it to Binnie who was sitting down on one of the bench seats.

  'Damn you, Vaughan,' she said rather petulantly. 'I never know which way to take you. You smile all the time. It isn't natural.'

  'Well, you've got to admit the world's a funny old place, love,' I said. 'Definitely a laugh a minute.'

  I went into the galley, got the bottle of Jameson and three mugs. When I returned she was sitting on the opposite side of the table from Binnie smoking a cigarette.

  'Whiskey?' I said. 'It's all I've got, I'm afraid.'

  She nodded, but Binnie shook his head. Admittedly we were dancing about a bit, for quite a ground swell was building up inside the harbour, but he already looked ghastly. God knows what it was going to do to him when we ventured into the open sea.

  Norah Murphy said, 'Where's the cargo?' I told her and she nodded. 'What are we carrying?'

  'Fifty Lahti anti-tank cannon and fifty sub-machine-guns.'

  She sat up straight, frowning deeply. 'What goes on here? I expected more. A great deal more.'

  'Impossible in a boat this size,' I said. 'Those Lahtis are seven feet long. Have a look in the aft cabin and see for yourself. It will take a couple of trips to get all your first order across.'

  She went into the aft cabin. After a while she came back and sat down, picking up her mug again.

  'Another thing,' I said. 'If we're challenged, if this boat is searched, we don't stand a cat in hell's chance, you realize that. As I'm not one of those captains who relishes the idea of going down with the ship, I'd appreciate it if you'd make it clear to Billy the Kid, here, that we don't want any heroics.'

  Poor Binnie couldn't even manage a scowl. He got up suddenly and made for the companionway.

  Norah Murphy said, 'I'm afraid he isn't much of a sailor. What time do we leave?'

  'I've decided to make it a little later than I'd intended. Five o'clock or even six. Give this weather a chance to clear a little.'

  'You're the captain. What about your friend Meyer? Will we be seeing him again?'

  'I should imagine so - when the right time comes.'

  Binnie stumbled down the companionway and clutched at the wall to keep his balance. I said, 'Never mind, Binnie. They say Nelson was sick every time he went to sea. Still, I don't suppose that's much comfort. Your lot didn't have much time for him either, did they?'

  He ignored me completely and disappeared into the aft cabin. I started for the companionway and Norah Murphy moved round the table to block my way. She seemed genuinely angry.

  'Were you born a thoroughgoing bastard, Vaughan, or do you just work at it?'

  The boat rocked hard, throwing her against me so I did the obvious thing and kissed her. It was hardly all systems go, but I'd known worse.

  When I finally released her, she shrugged, that strangely cruel mouth of hers twisted scornfully. 'Only fair, Major,' she observed.

  'Now who's being a bastard?' I said and went up the companionway fast.

  We left just before six that evening and although the weather hadn't improved all that much, at least it hadn't got any worse. As I pressed the starter and the engines rattled into life, the wheelhouse door opened, a flurry of wind lifting the chart like a sail, and Norah Murphy came in.

  She stood at my elbow peering into the gloom of evening. 'What's the forecast?'

  'Nothing to get worked up about. Three to four winds with rain squalls. A light sea fog in the Rathlin Island area just before dawn.'

  'That should be useful,' she said. 'Can I take the wheel?'

  'Later. How's Binnie?'

  'Flat on his back. I'd better go and make sure he's all right. I'll see you later.'

  The door closed behind her and I took Kathleen out through the harbour entrance in a long sweeping curve into the Firth.

  The masthead light began to swing rhythmically from side to side as the swell started to roll beneath us and spray scattered across the window. A couple of points to starboard I could see the outline of a steamer against the slate grey evening sky and her red and green navigation lights were clearly visible.

  I reduced speed to twelve knots and we plunged forward into the gathering darkness, the sound of the engines a muted throbbing on the night air. It must have been close to eleven o'clock when she returned. The door opened softly and she came in with a tray. I could smell the coffee and something more. The delicious scent of fried bacon.

  'I'm sorry, Vaughan,' she said. 'I fell asleep. I've brought you some coffee and a bacon sandwich. Where are we?'

  'Well on the way,' I said. 'There's Islay over there to the east of us. You can see a light occasionally between rain squalls.'

  'I'll spell you if you like.'

  'No need. I can put her on automatic pilot.'

  I checked the course, altered it a point to starboard, then locked the steering. When I turned and reached for my sandwich I found her watching me, a slight frown on her face.

  'You know, I can't figure you, Vaughan. Not for one single minute.'

  'In what way?'

  She lit a cigarette and turned to peer out into the darkness. 'Oh, the Beast of Selengar bit.'

  'My finest hour,' I said. 'Believe me, MGM couldn't have improved on the part.'

  And I had made her angry again. 'For God's sake, can't you ever be serious?'

  'All right, keep your shirt on. What do you want to know? The gory details?'

  'Only if it's the truth, no matter how unpleasant.'

  'And what's that?' I demanded and found that for no accountable reason, my throat had gone dry. I swallowed some of the coffee quickly, burning my mouth, and put the mug down on the chart table. 'All right, you asked for it.'

  I sat down on the swivel chair, unlocked the automatic steering mechanism and took the wheel again.

  'There was an area in Borneo around Kota Baru that was absolutely controlled by terrorists back in 1963 and most of them were Chinese Communist infiltrators, not locals. They terrorized the whole area. Burned villages wholesale, coerced the Dyaks into helping them by butchering every second man and woman in some of the villages they took, just to encourage the others.'

  'And they put you in to do something about it?'

  'I was supposed to be an expert on that kind of thing so they gave me command of a company of irregulars, Dyak scouts, and told me to clean out the stable and not come back till I'd done it.'

  'A direct order?'

  'Not on paper - not in those terms. We didn't have much luck at first. They burned two or three more villages, in one case after herding over fifty men, women and children into a longhouse beforehand. Finally, they burned the mission at Kota Baru, raped and murdered four nuns and eighteen young girls. That was i
t as far as I was concerned.'

  'What did you do?'

  'Got lucky. An informer tipped me off that a Chinese merchant in Selengar named Hui Li was a Communist agent. I arrested him, and when he refused to talk I handed him over to the Dyaks.'

  There was no horror on her face and her voice was quite calm as she said, 'To torture him?'

  'Dyaks can be very persuasive. He only lasted a couple of hours, then he told me where the group I'd been chasing were holed up.'

  'And did you get them?'

  'Eventually. They'd split into two which didn't help, but we managed it.'

  'They said you shot your prisoners?'

  'Only during the final pursuit, when I was hard on the heels of the second group. Prisoners would have delayed me.'

  'I see.' She nodded with a kind of clinical detachment on her face. 'And Mr Hui Li?'

  'Shot trying to escape.'

  'You expect me to believe that?'

  I laughed, and without the slightest bitterness. 'Absolutely true and that's the most ironic part of it. I was quite prepared to take him down to the coast and let him stand trial, but he tried to make a break for it the night before we left.'

  There was silence for a while. I opened a window and took a deep breath of fresh sea air.

  'Look, what I did to him he would have done to me. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, a favourite tag of Michael Collins, but Lenin said it first and it's on page one of every Communist handbook on revolutionary warfare. You can only fight that kind of fire with fire.'

  'You ruined yourself,' she said and there was a strange, savage, concerned note in her voice. 'You fool, you threw everything away. Career, reputation, everything, and for what?'

  'I did what had to be done,' I said. 'Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden. I'd seen it all and I was tired of people justifying the murder of the innocent by pleading that it was all in the name of the revolution. When I finished, there was no more terror by night in Kota Baru. No more butchering of little girls. That should count for something, God knows.'

  I was surprised at the feeling in my voice, the way my hands were shaking. I stood up and pulled her forward roughly. 'You wanted to take the wheel. It's all yours. Stay on this course and wake me in three hours. Before if the weather changes.'

  She grabbed my sleeve, 'I'm sorry, Vaughan, I really am.'

  'You live long enough, you get over anything,' I said. 'I've learnt that.'

  Or so I told myself as I went below. Perhaps if I repeated it often enough, I might really come to believe it.

  I slept on one of the saloon bench seats and when I awakened it was almost three o'clock. Binnie was snoring steadily in the aft cabin. I peered in and found him flat on his back, collar and tie undone, mouth open. I left him to it and went up the companionway.

  There was quite a sea and cold spray stung my face as I moved along the heaving deck and opened the wheelhouse door. Norah Murphy was standing at the wheel, her face disembodied in the compass light.

  'How are things going?' I asked.

  'Fine. There's been a sea running for about half an hour now.'

  I glanced out. 'Likely to get worse before it gets better. I'll take over.'

  She made way for me, her body brushing mine as we squeezed past each other. 'I don't think I could sleep now if I wanted to.'

  'All right,' I said. 'Make some more tea and come back. Things might get interesting. And check the forecast on the radio.'

  I increased speed, racing the heavy weather that threatened from the east and the waves grew rougher, rocking Kathleen from side to side. Visibility was rotten, utter darkness on every hand except for a slight phosphorescence from the sea. Norah Murphy seemed to be taking her time, but when she returned, she brought more bacon sandwiches as well as the tea.

  'The forecast wasn't too bad,' she said. 'Wind moderating, intermittent rain squalls.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Some fog patches towards dawn, but nothing to worry about.'

  I helped myself to a sandwich. 'How's the boy wonder?'

  She didn't like that, I could see, but she kept her temper and handed me a mug. 'He's sitting up now in the saloon. I gave him tea with something in it. He'll be all right.'

  'Let's hope so. He could be needed.'

  She said, 'Let me tell you about Binnie Gallagher, Major Vaughan. During the rioting that broke out in Belfast in August 1969 an Orange mob led by B Specials would have burned the Falls Road to the ground, chased out every Catholic family who lived there - or worse. They were prevented by a handful of IRA men who took to the streets led by Michael Cork himself.'

  'The Small Man again? And Binnie was one of that lot?'

  'Don't tell me you're actually impressed?'

  'Oh, but I am,' I said. 'They did a hell of a good job that night, those men. A great ploy, as my mother would have said. And Binnie was one of them? He must have been all of sixteen.'

  'He was staying with an aunt in the area. She gave him an old revolver, a war souvenir of her dead husband's, and Binnie went in search of the Small Man. Fought at his right hand during the whole of that terrible night. He's been his shadow ever since. His most trusted aide.'

  'Which explains why he guards the great man's niece.' She lit a couple of cigarettes and passed one to me. I said, 'How does an American come to be mixed up in all this anyway?'

  'It's simple enough. My father spent around seventeen years in one kind of British prison or another, if you add up all his sentences. I was thirteen when he was finally released and we emigrated to the States to join my Uncle Michael. A new life, so we thought, but too late for my father. He was a sick man when they released him. He died three years later.'

  'And you never forgave them?'

  'They might as well have hanged him.'

  'And you decided you ought to take up where he left off?'

  'We have a right to be free,' she said. 'The people of Ulster have been denied their nationhood too long.'

  It sounded like the first two sentences of some ill-written political pamphlet and probably was.

  I said, 'Look, what happened in August '69 was a bad business, which was exactly why the Army was brought in. To protect the Catholic minority while the necessary political changes were put in hand, and it was working until the IRA got up to their old tricks again.'

  'I wonder what your uncle would have thought if he could have heard you say that.'

  'The dear old Schoolmaster of Stradballa?' I said. 'Binnie's particular hero? The saint who wouldn't see the children harmed at any price? He doesn't exist. He's a myth. No revolutionary leader could act like he was supposed to and survive.'

  'What are you trying to say?' she said.

  'Amongst other things, that he had at least forty people executed, including several British officers, in reprisal for the execution of IRA men - a pretty dubious action morally, I would have thought. On one particularly unsavoury occasion, he was responsible for the shooting of a seventy-eight-year-old woman who was thought to have passed on information to the police.'

  In the light of the binnacle, her right fist was clenched so tightly that the knuckles gleamed white. 'In revolutionary warfare, these things have to be done,' she said. 'There is no other choice.'

  'Have you tried telling Binnie that?' I said. 'Or hadn't it occurred to you that that boy really believes with all his heart that it can be done with clean hands? I saw him at Ma Kelly's, remember. He'd have killed those two Provos himself if you hadn't stopped him, because he couldn't stomach what they'd done.'

  'Binnie is an idealist,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong in that. He'd lay down his life for Ireland without a second's hesitation.'

  'I'd have thought it more desirable all round if he'd lived for her,' I said. 'But then that's just my opinion.'

  'And why in the hell should he take any notice of that?' she demanded. 'Who are you, anyway, Vaughan? A failure, a renegade who's willing to turn on his own side for the sake of a pound or two.'

  'That'
s me,' I said. 'Simon Vaughan, your friendly arms salesman.'

  I was smiling again although it was some-thing of an effort and she couldn't stand that. 'You arrogant bastard,' she said angrily. 'At least we'll have something to show for our struggles, people like Binnie and me.'

  'I know,' I said. 'A land of standing corpses.'

  She moved very close, a curious glitter in her eye, and her voice was a sort of hoarse whisper. 'Better that than what we had. I'd rather see the city of Belfast burn like a funeral pyre than go back to what we had.'

  And suddenly, for no sensible reason, I knew that I was close to the heart of things where she was concerned.

  I said calmly, 'And what was that, Norah? Tell me.'

  There was a kind of vacant look on her face. The voice changed, became noticeably more Belfast than American, and there was a lost, little-girl touch to it that chilled my blood.

  'When my father was released from jail that last time, he didn't want any more trouble so he dropped out of sight till we were ready to leave for America. They came to our house looking for him several times.'

  'Who did?' I said.

  'The B specials. One night while they were interrogating my mother, one of them took me out into the back yard. He said he believed there might be arms in the shed.'

  My stomach tightened as if to receive a blow. I said, 'And were there?'

  'I was thirteen,' she said. 'Remember that. He made me lie down on some old sacking. When he was finished, he told me there was no point in trying to tell anyone because I wouldn't be believed. And he made threats against my mother and the family. He said he wouldn't be responsible for what might happen .. .'

  There was a longish silence, the splutter of rain against the glass. She said, 'You're the first person I've told, Vaughan. The only one. Not even a priest. Isn't that the strange thing?'

  I said hoarsely, 'I'm sorry.'

  'You're sorry?' And at that she exploded, broke apart at the seams. 'By God, I'll see them in hell, Vaughan, every last one of them, for what they did to me, do you understand?'

  She stumbled outside, the door slammed. It occurred to me then, and not for the first time, that there were occasions when I despaired of humanity. And yet there was no sense of personal involvement and any pity I felt was not so much for Norah Murphy as for that wretched, frightened little girl in the back yard of that house in Belfast so many years ago.