Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird (20 page)

What he was looking at were the two broad patches of peeled paint and bruised wood in the starboard bow of the speedboat where she had hit the
Dolly
. I just had time to wonder how serious the damage was and what harm the
Dolly
had suffered when the launch rocked still further under the shrieking, giggling crowd and dipping, must have shipped water.

Or it might have been a leak. It was enough, at any rate, to induce one of the birthday party to shriek, hanging over the side, that the launch was stoved in and sinking. And for the rest of the birthday party to crush over to see, and by tilting the boat, to propel two of their number with a splash and a shriek into the dark Adriatic.

You could have heard the screaming this time in Split. Man overboard. Nothing more urgent; no greater priority; no emergency, save only foe, more arresting in its demand for quick action.

Don’t trust the doctor
.

Perhaps not, but that boatload of drunken youngsters couldn’t all be his accomplices.

Don’t trust the doctor
.

Lenny and Donovan were throwing lifebelts. The launch had righted. If they kept their heads, the swimmers would be picked up in five minutes. No one had asked to come aboard. So what was the point of the exercise?

No one was looking at me. Retreating softly, I sat on the coach roof. Beside me, upturned, was Johnson’s old dinghy, offering cover and shade. Drawing up my legs I lay flat on the roof and then very quietly slid forward, with the bulk of the rowing boat between me and everyone else. To my left was the dark open sea and the shining side deck of the
Dolly
, lit by the uncurtained windows of the saloon. And as I looked, across the nearest yellow lit square slid first one dark shadow, then a second.

We had visitors. Don’t trust the doctor indeed. We should have no fear of the launch. The launch was merely a diversion. While all our attention was to the port, the starboard side had acquired a neat rope ladder and a lashing, to which was attached, floating quietly below, a small and powerful speedboat with just enough room, one would judge, for four men, and a girl and a baby.

The second anchor was just where Lenny had placed it, but it seemed a pity to alarm anyone unnecessarily, and the rope ladder was nicely placed out of sight of the windows. I took off my shoes and slipped down it into the speedboat and with some regret, opened the sea cock. Then I came up and untied its painter. After that, keeping well clear of the windows, I put my shoes on and returned to my colleagues.

The two swimmers had been fished up and there was a short argument going on about whether or not they could come aboard to dry themselves. Noticeably, when Lenny refused, no effort was made to pursue the point. I remember remonstrating with him for the sake of appearances and because suddenly it seemed ridiculous that one couldn’t bring two soaked and shivering people into the warmth and comfort of
Dolly
.

But that would ruin the plan. And on the success of the plan depended much more than the comfort of two over-hilarious party-goers. I got Lenny’s message pad and wrote on it ‘Visitors below. Sunk their boat’; showed it to both men and then obliterated it.

In between we all went on calling and gesticulating. The launch came up near for the last time and slung aboard our lifebelts, bumping the stern again as she did so. Then, like a guilty child, she scuttled off to calls of ‘Oprostite! ’ and we could see the glint of the bottle repassing. Before they got half-way to the harbour they were all singing. A Eurovision song I had seen called ‘Look Woot You Dun’, to be accurate.

Donovan said, ‘The rain’s coming on again. Who’s for a last drink? Come, on, Lenny: you deserve one. You can inspect the damage later.’

‘Well sir, thank you sir. I wouldn’t say no,’ Lenny said. ‘Although I must go round with a lamp right after. She’s not taking water but she had a couple of nasty shunts. You’d think they’d never been in a bloody boat before, begging your pardon.’

‘They were tight,’ I said. I led the way down to the cockpit. It was empty. ‘And I can’t help feeling it’s all my fault. What on earth will Johnson say?’

I opened the saloon door and went down the steps. It was empty, too.

‘I can’t imagine,’ Lenny said. ‘But we’ve had worse before. She’s not a pretty lady just for show, is the
Dolly
. She can take knocks if she has to.’ He shut the door on the wind and the rain, and came in doffing his cap, while Donovan opened the door of Johnson’s bar and began taking out glasses. The gin rummy cards lay on the table where we’d left them, with my winnings.

The owners of the speedboat were almost as well-rehearsed as we were. Two of them must have been in the master stateroom and two in the forward passage between Donovan’s room and the galley. Donovan had just removed the whisky when both doors to the saloon quietly opened.

Framed in each were two masked men, with cocked guns.

I screamed. In the forward stateroom Benedict suddenly wailed. One of the two men between his door and mine began speaking in distorted English, as if reciting by rote. ‘Put your hands up and stand still. We are taking the baby to ransom. The girl comes also to care for him. We wish no harm, only money.’ His mask, like that of the others, was only a black nylon stocking, inside which one could make nothing of his squeezed and distorted features.

‘What is this? How the hell did you come on board?’ said Donovan loudly, and without pausing, made a lunge for his jacket pocket.

They didn’t shoot him. The leader just swung his gun and clipped the side of his head; and despite his nice thick hair, which must have cushioned the blow quite a bit, Donovan went staggering into the mast and subsided with a crash on the saloon floor where someone, kneeling, began to tie his hands and feet together with great professionalism. ‘Anyone else,’ said the leader, ‘want to try anything?’

‘The child’s too young,’ I said. ‘You won’t get your money. I can’t look after a baby as young as this away from all the things he’s used to. You can’t expect me to.’

No one answered me. One of the two men from the state room had put a gun in Lenny’s back, and the other was preparing to tie him up also. They were all big men, and dressed alike in dark sweaters and trousers, with heavy jackets and sneakers. They smelt foreign and reminded me of none of the men we had met so far in the kidnap game: I thought it a pretty safe guess that they were all natives. Except perhaps the leader, the only one who had spoken, whose English was good, although stilted.

I said again, ‘You can’t take him. He’s too young. He can’t stand it.’

The mask moved to some change of expression. ‘Why,’ said the leader, ‘we’ve been waiting for him to grow. Pack. Take what food and bottles you have. Trifun will help you. The child will not starve. Unless no one will pay for him.’

I packed. Trifun helped me by standing masked at the door, playing with his revolver. I was still there when a spate of low, angry voices on deck told that someone was receiving, with disbelief, the tale of the vanished speedboat.

A moment later, the leader came into the cabin. ‘You. Where is the speed launch this yacht usually carries?’

My hands were shaking and I didn’t bother to hide it. I said, ‘In the boatyard somewhere, I think. There was something wrong with it.’

‘Then there is an outboard motor? ’ said the mask.

I straightened again from my packing. ‘I don’t know. Ask Mr Milligan.’

He walked away without answering, and when I struggled out shortly with my cases, I saw the reason. Both Johnson’s skipper and Donovan had been manhandled up from the floor and each was now lying apparently sleeping on opposite benches. On the table between them was a syringe.

I dropped the cases and said, ‘What have you done to them?’

In the cabin behind me Benedict, awakened again, started crying. The mask tilted, listening. The voice behind it, irritated, said, ‘They will sleep for twelve hours, that is all.’

Somewhere on deck a voice shouted, ‘Zorzi?’ and added a number of words in Serbo-Croat which Donovan, if conscious, could no doubt have translated with ease.

The leader, it appeared, was Zorzi. He shouted something back, and then turned again to me. ‘Take the child into the big cabin. Mihovil will be with you, with his gun. We sail.’

The mask told me nothing. ‘Where?’ I said. And when he didn’t answer, ‘But the baby—’

He cut me off. ‘The baby is nothing. You know it.’

He turned away, leaving me standing. The baby is nothing. Vindication at last, after all these ambiguous weeks, of what the Department had said, and my father, and Johnson. The baby is nothing. It is you, Joanna, they are after.

All that Johnson had planned was coming to pass. With no boat, they were trapped on the yacht. To go anywhere, they must use
Dolly
, conspicuous
Dolly
with all her cunning microphones. Except that these four men didn’t look much like seamen. And if they were not, they must be at least as anxious as I was. For Lenny and Donovan, who might have sailed
Dolly
, had been stupidly put out of action.

Mihovil was the third masked kidnapper, and one of the obvious land-lubbers. While the other three tramped back and forth over our heads Mihovil sat with his gun in my back in the master bedroom. He showed no interest when I lifted Ben up for some orange juice and no relief when, the crying stopped, I finally tucked him up in his carrycot again. I didn’t say anything either because I was listening. But despite the temptation, no one tried to send for a launch through the R/T.

Radio telephone calls could be traced. Instead of a launch, Zorzi and his friends were going to have to sail fifty-four tons of gaff-rigged ketch to our destination and return before daylight. And it must be at least ten o’clock, maybe later.

Dinner on the
Glycera
would be over, but the night’s programme hardly begun. I wondered, if we were sailing south, how soon we would begin to bump into champagne bottles. I had another thought and turned to my taciturn friend with the gun. ‘I’ve just remembered. We were badly bumped by another boat. If your friend Zorzi is going to sail, he ought to check out the damage.’

The only answer I got was a wave of the gun and a grunted word or two in Serbo-Croat. Mihovil didn’t speak English. Then the boat suddenly drummed to the sound of the engine, followed almost at once by the grind of the anchor cable being wound up. I thought of all the receivers tuned in along the coast through which our voices were speaking, and I looked down at the sleeping face of Benedict, and I thought of my father. Then I saw the lights of the coast rocking past the porthole and knew that we were travelling south, in the wake of the
Glycera
, over a short, steep sea with a strengthening wind over our port quarter. We pitched suddenly and Mihovil swallowed. I raised my voice and shouted, ‘Zorzi!’

He came at once, the grotesque flattened face lodged in the doorway. I said, ‘Your friend here is going to be sick. And I need to lash the baby, too, if it’s going to be rough. Do I really have to have a gun in my back? There are four of you. And surely I can’t do much harm now we’re sailing.’

I finished up in the cockpit, with Ben lashed safely once more in our own forward stateroom. Also Petar, the fourth man, had been dispatched to look for damage with a hand torch. He returned with news of some surface splintering and little else. From the look of him, he had been in no trim for a vigorous examination, even had there been decent light, but Zorzi had a torch beam thrown into the bilges, and it was quite plain that we were tight and dry so far. The noise of the wind in the rigging jumped another tone or two, dropped and rose again and with an imprecation, Zorzi changed hands on the tiller and as I watched him, peeled off his mask. Then, leaning forward, he switched on the chart light and pulled the chart towards him.

His face, despite the stubble of beard, looked the thick, dark texture of the peasant’s but carried lines that hinted at city articulacy. An educated man, a professional perhaps, with the city man’s superficial experience of pleasure craft. He could have run a launch successfully in to its landing-place, but instead he was sailing the Adriatic with
Dolly
, standing off from the shore to avoid the resorts with their bright, busy lighting.

The wind whined. I said, ‘I suppose I’m going to meet your chief anyway, wherever we’re going. Are you allowed to tell me who he is?’

He didn’t reply that time either. I told myself it was better than over-friendliness, the other thing I’d been afraid of. I found it hard to convince myself.

A spatter of rain hit the deck and then, like a pail of cold water, a sudden sharp wind that cut through my green English serge and sent
Dolly
heeling to starboard, so that I fell headlong against Zorzi.

From the impatient violence with which he thrust me out of his way, I might have been a shelf-ful of books. He was swearing, his fists cramped on the wheel and his eyes lifted up to the rigging. It had been a powerful squall, to catch our bare poles so sharply. And from the north-east, as the others had been. I said, ‘Zorzi. Do you know what to do in a Bora?’

As before, he made no reply. But I knew by his face that he didn’t.

The thunder began at eleven.

There being nothing in the Margaret Beaseford College rules about wearing your uniform when caring for your employer’s kidnapped child or children, I had changed into pants and sneakers and sweater, with a thick quilted jacket on top. Mihovil, who was occupying Donovan’s bunk with a basin, was uninterested in my activities. Then back in the cockpit with Zorzi and Petar and Trifun I heard above the noise of the big Mercedes-Benz engine an explosion of sound which seemed to come out of the sky all about us. A moment later there was another loud crack, and then the peaks to our left were outlined twice in a blue sudden glimmer which might have been a major explosion, but was more likely, I thought, to be lightning. A rolling peal, and then another proved me right. Thunder. Another of the first signs of the Bora.

By that time I knew exactly where we were, although not yet where we were heading for. I had learned my lesson well, from the books Johnson had supplied me with. I had watched the Rat Porporela diminish on the southern mole of Dubrovnik and the breakwater light open up from Mlini in the bay of Župski to the south with Strebeno beside it. Then the village of Plat, and the lights marking the shoals and harbour at Cavtat. The current here was strongly to the north-west and the resulting jopple against the increasing gusts of north wind had been the coping stone of Mihovil’s misery. Petar, I guessed from his face, was beginning to suffer the same sort of uneasiness. Zorzi at the wheel and Trifun his lieutenant appeared so far quite unaffected. They had all, by now, taken off their stocking masks and the three other faces, quite unremarkable, were as unknown and unrevealing as that of Zorzi.

We heard the thunder first just south of Cavtat, and as we pitched southward steadily in the dark I sat with my eyes on the land, watching for each flash of lightning. That way I saw the church at the airport, and then the aircraft light south of Rat Veliki Pač and a long time later, far ahead, the peninsula of Molunat, with its lights.

Beyond that, unseen as yet was Ostri Rat, the western entrance point of the Gulf of Kotorska. If we left Dubrovnik at ten, we would reach it somewhere round one in the morning. If, that is to say, my kidnappers intended to sail so far south.

On the other hand the further south, the safer they would be. All the signs were that Johnson had been right. The original plan had involved nothing more than taking Ben and myself to some quiet stretch of shore near Dubrovnik, whence a car would have driven us swiftly up the winding mountain passes to some obscure hovel. With all the wild Montenegrin mountains to choose from, to hide us would be simple.

But the roads were barred because of the smallpox. Wherever they moved, they would be stopped and looked at and questioned, and commanded to deliver their papers. Their only hope now was to make their journey by sea, and to contrive a landing as near as possible to the fresh place they had chosen to hide us. And by the time they needed to move out, the emergency might well be over.

From time to time Zorzi or the others exchanged a few words but I didn’t talk, nor did I give away, yet, that I knew where we were. They were edgy, and inimical. I didn’t want to be drugged or silenced or blindfolded before I had a chance to speak aloud the name of the place we would stop at, for all those hidden microphones to pick up. Soon after that, Ben woke again, fretful with oversleeping, and minus a bottle. Zorzi gave me leave to go below and warm up a feed for the baby.

This time Trifun came with his gun and watched me and after a bit played with his foot against mine. I put up with it. I was going to be in his power for an indefinite time, and only a fool would arouse his resentment. With Zorzi above, he was unlikely to go further.

In fact it helped because Ben, unhappy with his new surroundings and my joggling lap, turned the feed into a marathon, with the yacht’s motion increasing every minute. Eventually it was Trifun who got up hastily and bolting open the door, sat and guarded me from a bench in the cockpit.

With Ben bringing up wind on my shoulder, I watched the lights through the porthole. Ostri Rat, and we were veering east and north. We were going into the Boka Kotorska.

The gulf of Kotor, twenty nautical miles from end to end, consists of three enclosed basins connected by narrows, the whole being set among mountains. At the top of the range there is snow, and at the foot, palms, dates, vines, and every kind of sub-tropical foliage grow by the water.

The finest fjord scenery outside of Norway. The deep-water gulf which could hold in safety the whole of a large Mediterranean fleet. The perfect site for Peter the Great’s naval academy. The indented wandering coast where still remain the crumbling relics of Rome and of Venice; the mosaic floors, the pillars, the palaces. And above all, the towering mountains, between which pours down the cold winter air from the eastern plateaux, driving faster and faster until, whirling down into the water, it strikes the small boats who unwisely or for their own good reasons have not fled to tie up in harbour.

And I dared not suggest that we ought to put into harbour, or turn aside, or take any action which would jeopardise my captor’s safe landfall in darkness at their chosen rendezvous. Because for my father’s purposes the kidnapping had to proceed without hindrance.

Only, I wished that Lenny Milligan and Donovan had been conscious, to help and advise. What was more, I suspected that my captors rather wished it as well.

They had apparently reached the conclusion that I wasn’t dangerous. Having lashed Ben’s carrycoat afresh to the sole in my stateroom, I aroused no protest when I crossed to the galley and washed up Ben’s litter and stowed it. In the next cabin Mihovil was now snoring; and an empty bottle laid at his side explained why the bar doors were banging. There were books and cushions on the saloon floor as well and Donovan, sleeping still, had shifted nearer the edge of his bunk-seat.

I finished my business quickly in the galley and then moving about as best I could with the increasing motion, I began to stow gear, and to close and snib all the cupboards and drawers. I left Mihovil alone but found some rope in the fo’c’sle with which to moor the two drugged men to their benches. Then I checked the hatches and portholes and last of all, found and pulled out all the life jackets and harness I could find, as well as a couple of ship’s jackets from the hanging locker.

By then the whole cabin was heaving, and I was sore with being banged about, and weary, and frightened. Up in the cockpit, the two men with Zorzi appeared to be having some sort of argument: it ended with Zorzi’s voice speaking sharply in Serbo-Croat: so sharply that the other voices were silenced. He kicked the door and it swung open, revealing his legs in long rubber boots as he sat with both fists on the wheel. A blast of cold air swept into the saloon and the freshness of it confused me.

It took a moment to pin down the reason. The air below decks on
Dolly
smelt different.

It was two in the morning, and I had just flown the Atlantic and lived through a long, tiring and difficult day, or surely I would have diagnosed it before Zorzi did, leaning down from the cockpit and sniffing. As it was, his raised voice told me nothing. I had to draw a long breath as he had, and then another. Then there was no doubt at all. A distinct and increasing aroma of diesel oil, permeating all the air and rising with fair certainty from the bilges.

I said, ‘We have a leak,’ in the same second that Zorzi, his gaze on the instrument panel, emitted a string of undoubted obscenities. There followed the clamouring speech of the other two, cut off by another sharp order. The lined face of Petar appeared and they pressed back as he knelt in the cockpit, in process of uncovering the engine.

Zorzi turned the wheel. Coming round to the wind, the yacht sagged and lurched. On the floor Petar coughed, and then rising, lunged for the lee rail. Then
Dolly
was round, pitching and rolling, and Zorzi cut the engine and picking up Johnson’s big torch, directed it to where Trifun knelt in Petar’s place, uncovering first the engine, and then the fuel tanks.

Then he began replacing hatches and floorboards and I said, ‘Well?’ with my hand on the steps.

Zorzi favoured me with a glance. ‘The deck tube has been fractured at the joint, and possibly the tank itself as well. There is a great deal in the bilges. The tank is almost empty.’

I said, ‘I don’t see how you can go through the Boka Kotorska under sail in this weather. Where are you making for?’

There was no point now in secrecy. Petar was vomiting still over the side and Trifun’s face, cramped in the well of the cockpit in the reek of the oil was sweating and pasty. Zorzi said, ‘You and the child are to spend the night on Gospa od škrpjela, an island off Perast. There.’

He threw the chart down and pointed, and I swallowed too. The innermost basin of the Boka Kotorska is shaped like a butterfly on a pin, the pin being the narrows leading into it. And in the centre of the basin is a shoal with the twin islands of Sveti Djorje and Gospa od škrpjela. Each had a church, I seemed to remember. And each, otherwise, was uninhabited.

I probably knew more than any of them about the narrows which led to that basin. They were named Tjesnac Verige, after the chain which, legend says, once stretched across them. Legend is probably true: at its narrowest point, the channel is only one and a half cables wide. And there is over a mile of it to navigate, facing directly north-east all the way.

I had said to Zorzi what anyone with sailing experience would have said. Under sail, it couldn’t be done. And yet he had no real alternative. With the use of the engine, we might have got through the narrows and arrived at the island between three and four in the morning, with an hour to spare before it became light enough for the yacht to be noticed in the vicinity.

Long before the narrows, the supply of fuel would have run out; and we should be on a lee shore under sail with all the signs of a major storm brewing. To find shelter and wait out the storm was the sensible course. But there was not enough of the night left to do it in. I said, ‘You are risking your lives and the ransom.’

He lifted the map, watching me. ‘You are not seasick, I see.’

I said, ‘I used to sail with my father.’

‘In the Mediterranean?’

‘We kept a small boat at Malta.’ It was true. And it explained how I recognised the Boka Kotorska. Or so I hoped.

Zorzi said, ‘As you see, my men are not mariners. You know how to sail?’

I said, ‘I know enough to tell you that you won’t get through the narrows.’

‘I didn’t ask your opinion,’ he said. ‘I will show you where we are to go, and you will tell them how to get the sails up. After you have made some food. Can you feed men, or only make messes for babies?’

‘I can sail,’ I said, ‘or I can cook. I shall put some soup in a pan and you can order one of your puking friends to go below and watch it. He might try and sober up your other friend at the same time. We’re going to need all the help we can get.’

The hard, dark eyes stared at mine. ‘I do not recommend,’ said Zorzi, ‘that you speak to my men as if they are children. They might forget themselves… And what are you proposing to do?’

‘See if there are any storm sails,’ I said. ‘Get up a sea anchor, if there is one. Cover the hatches with canvas. Put on a life jacket and harness, and see that you do the same.’

‘So now you care for our health? ’ he said.

‘Only because I can’t steer and look after sail on my own,’ I retorted. While I was speaking he had switched on the engine and turned
Dolly
back on her course again. The waves were big, but he knew enough to luff into them. I pursued it. ‘We ought to keep some fuel for emergencies. How much do we have?’

His teeth flashed briefly under the coarse, swollen nose. ‘The gauge shows empty. If you wish to save fuel, I recommend you raise sail without wasting more time. Trifun will heat soup. Petar will look for the storm sail.’ He grabbed for the chart as the deck tilted and then righted itself to another squall. We were all shouting.

I looked below, as I flung on my life jacket, at the bright, orderly, expensive interior of
Dolly
where a short time before Donovan and I had been sitting, whisky in hand, peacefully playing gin rummy. Where before that, Johnson had been entertaining the Booker-Readmans. Where long before that Johnson had been living himself, with his own chosen company in other days, in other waters. Below the fear and the weariness I was aware of a dull kind of fury that I should be the one to foul up the
Dolly
with strangers, and bring to her boards nothing but violence and inferior seamanship.

Even Trifun was frightened. I got up on deck and shouted at him, and that made me feel better until under my feet I heard Benedict’s awakened wail and remembered.

I don’t know why I wanted to be a nurse. I don’t want to be a nurse any more.

I’ve said that
Dolly
was beautiful, and that was immediately evident both in her profile and in her creature comforts. She was also beautiful in another sense, of which the closest parallel was the smooth-running orderliness of Johnson Johnson’s painting arrangements.

In a white canvas bag clearly marked there was a storm jib and trysail, and next it an excellent drogue. The trysail was already bent to its own pinewood gaff, with its sheets shackled on; and it was coloured a soft Venetian red, and had been boiled with linseed and beeswax to keep it supple and light in the wet. The storm jib, its sheets ready bent on to it, was dressed in the same way with a wire span spliced to the head cringle to stop the sag between the head of the sail and the purchase block. I got them on deck and with Trifun with a lamp beside me, began issuing orders.

With Mihovil senseless below and Zorzi at the wheel holding the yacht hove-to, facing the wind and the sea, there were only three of us; and Petar didn’t have English. In the dark and the wind and the violent pitching and rolling of the idling yacht I had to get the sail out of the bag without allowing it to catch the wind, and bend the peak and throat halyard blocks on to the strops on the trysail gaff, ready to hoist.