Murdo's War (13 page)

A powerful light suddenly sprang out of the darkness, dazzling him. Murdo screwed his eyes up against it, twisting and struggling against the hand that held him so tightly. The light flashed towards him and something struck him violently across the side of the head.

‘Keep still!’

His head ringing, Murdo could dimly make out a black figure before him. The light shifted and he found himself looking straight into the face of Carl Voss.

‘So now you know,’ he said roughly. ‘Bullets! And explosives! And guns!’

THE HAND THAT
held Murdo by the throat thrust him back violently, so that he stumbled and fell against the sharp corner of the pile of crates. In an instant he was on his feet, but Carl Voss already had a heavy service revolver levelled at his chest. The torchlight gleamed along its wicked barrel.

‘So now you know,’ Voss repeated, his voice quieter. ‘You young fool, what good do you suppose your meddling is going to do you now? Who do you think you are to set yourself up against us – against the might of the German Reich? An ignorant Scotch boy and his whisky-smuggling friend!’

Murdo remained silent, hypnotised by the revolver.

‘I should shoot you now,’ Voss mused, his voice cutting through the roar of the storm. ‘It would save a lot of trouble.’ His lips came together and his nostrils flared as he considered the idea for a moment. Almost with reluctance he shook his head. ‘No. We might need you yet.’ He sighed, then gestured with the revolver towards the pile of crates. ‘Come on! Get them put away. Then we’ll see what ‘Henry’ wants to do with you.’

Murdo bent, horribly aware of the gun at his back, and began repacking the shavings and brown paper into the box of ammunition. He laid the splintered boards across the top and hammered them down as well as he was able. The broken steel band nodded in the wind. Glancing up at Carl Voss, Murdo saw that the revolver had fallen to his side.

He lifted the heavy cartridge box into place and turned to the case of rifles. Carefully he wrapped the waxed paper around the Mauser ·303 and set it back in its slot. He laid the boards on top and hammered them home. From the corner of his eye he saw Carl Voss shrug his shoulders against the snow; he was cold. The revolver still hung at his side. Shaking with fear, Murdo reached across casually for the heavy steel marline spike as if to lever the bands back into place. Then suddenly, acting before he had time to think about it, he whipped round, flung the metal spike with all his strength into the shins of the man behind, and dived to one side.

There was a loud cry of pain and a deafening bang. A bullet ripped past his shoulder and thudded into the boxes. Like a cat Murdo leaped at the lantern. A violent kick smashed the glass and extinguished it. He flung himself headlong into the snow. There was another shot. In a split second he had regained his feet and was scrambling behind the stack. Keeping it between himself and Carl Voss’s torch, he raced behind the boat and disappeared into the darkness.

Gasping with the pain in his shinbone, Voss struggled to regain possession of himself. It took a few moments. Then he limped around the corner of the pile of boxes. The light from his torch flooded through the falling snow. He turned it on the cliff face, illuminating every cranny where Murdo might be hiding or attempting to climb. The boy had not made a break across the open shore, of that he was certain. He was somewhere down that black tail of crag at the edge of the beach, hidden at the moment from his torchlight.

Murdo reached the rocks by the sea. There was no shelter, no way up. Without pausing, he plunged into the turbulent waves and waded out along the foot of the crag, seeking a way over the rocky spur to the hidden shore beyond. It was a sheer buttress, yet the ragged crest rose no more than twenty or thirty feet above him. The water swirled about his thighs, then a wave surged in more than head-high, lifting him from his feet.

It sank, and he was standing waist-deep. He scarcely noticed the clutching chill of the water. Still there was no way up. He panted and held against the crag for support. Another wave surged past, throwing him backwards. In the following trough he found bottom again and looked up. In the dark and stormy confusion a black streak four or five yards ahead looked like a cranny. Pressing his hands against the rock and barnacles, feeling no pain as his fingertips tore against the sharp white shells, Murdo fought his way through the sea.

He reached the spot. His groping fingers caught a good hold above head height, his scrabbling sea-boot found a support. A heave, and he was half out of the water. Another crevice, another foot-hold. Spreadeagled against the rock face, the leaping waves now reached only to his knees. Twisting his head to look, he saw the light of the torch slowly moving down to the water’s edge. It flashed up as Voss searched the darkness above him. Murdo turned his face away and reached for another hold.

He was fifteen feet above the water when the ledges ran out. Desperately he cast about, scrabbling now with his left hand, now with his right, scraping his rubber boots along the rock, but there was no cleft, no protruberance, no hold at all. Below, the light of Carl Voss swept across the sea as though he suspected Murdo might be trying to creep past him in the waves. Slowly it moved back and along the seething foot of the crag, then up.

He did not see Murdo at first, dark and wet as a seal, pressed into the spray-swept buttress. Murdo hid his face against the rock wall, so that the whiteness should not give him away. Twice the light passed over him, but the third time it moved more slowly, and returned, and stayed.

Voss was taking no chances. He waded into the sea himself, keeping back from the crag so he had a clear view.

‘All right!’ he shouted, his voice harsh and loud above the storm. ‘Come down!’

Murdo looked at the leaping waves below him and wondered for an instant, about jumping, but Carl Voss was too close, and in those clinging clothes he would never have made it in such a sea.

‘I will count. If you are not down by the time I reach five, I
will shoot you dead. Now! One…’

Murdo reached down with his foot and began climbing. Two minutes later, wide-eyed and shivering with fear and the beating he had taken in the sea, he stood once more on the beach. Carl Voss stepped up to him, and Murdo reeled full length as a savage blow struck him above the ear. Suddenly he was frightened no longer. He pulled himself to his knees and looked up, eyes blazing in the torchlight.

‘That’s more like it, my little Scotch boy!’ the man taunted. ‘Now we’re seeing what you’re really made of.’

He lifted a boot as if he would kick Murdo to the ground, but
Murdo raised a guarding hand and the boot fell.

When Voss spoke again his voice was cold and full of menace.

‘Get those boxes packed up. And don’t even think of another trick like that. Get up!’

In ten minutes the job was finished and Murdo was tying the rope around the awkward tarpaulin. By this time he was so cold that he could hardly grasp the ends of the rope. Carl Voss watched from a distance of two or three yards, the heavy revolver in his hand, his powerful torch illuminating every move Murdo made.

‘There’s no need to put your precious tools back in the boat,’ Voss said, as he made a step in that direction. ‘Push them under the edge of the canvas. That will do for the present.’

Murdo did as he was told.

‘Now.’ Carl Voss motioned towards the track with his revolver.

‘You first. Don’t go too fast.’ He smiled thinly. ‘If you want to try any more of your clever tricks – remember, I’ll be right behind you.’

It was Peter who let them in. Pushed from behind by Carl Voss, Murdo lurched into the room where the cosy atmosphere had been replaced by an ugly tension.

Carl Voss came in behind him. He was smothered in snow. He flung his black revolver with a clatter on the polished dresser, and put a foot on the edge of Sigurd’s armchair. Carefully he pulled up a trouser leg to examine his damaged shin. A dark, painful-looking split was still oozing blood down the front of his leg.

Shocked, Hector looked from the shin to Murdo. A lump of snow fell from the boy’s black hair and slithered down the side of his face. One of his eyes was blood-shot. A dark bruise spread across the cheekbone. There was a wild look in his face, a fierceness, that Hector had glimpsed before but never seen so nakedly revealed.

‘Get over there beside your friend.’ Carl Voss said contemptuously. ‘We’ll decide what to do with you later.’ Then he turned to Henry Smith. No longer did he bother to use English, but spoke in his native German. Arne butted in and suddenly Voss was angry. He burst into a torrent of words, his eyes burning, finger pointing at the two Scots and then away in the direction of the cliffs.

His own voice icy and authoritative, Henry Smith cut him off abruptly. Speaking in German himself he asked a question. Carl Voss calmed down with an effort and replied. Soon they were talking among themselves.

Unable to follow a word, Hector and Murdo listened for several minutes. In the heat of the room the snow melted on Murdo’s coat and fell to the floor, making puddles on the linoleum and soaking into the rug. After the cold of the night wind and blizzard his face flushed scarlet.

Quietly he told his old friend what had happened. Hector listened until he had finished, saying nothing. His face was set, no more than a slight shadow of anxiety about his blue eyes. It expressed nothing of the turmoil of distress that was raging within him at the danger and violence into which he had led Murdo. He raised his eyes to the purple bruise across the boy’s face, saw the cut fingers and torn nails where he had dragged himself out of the waves. There was no need to say how he felt.

At first Murdo did not notice that the Germans had fallen silent. Then he was aware of their eyes upon him, and he stopped talking. For a while no-one spoke. Sigurd reached across to the bucket at the side of the hearth and put a couple of peats on the fire, thrusting them into the glowing heart with the sole of his thick sock. Carl Voss went through to the other room and took off his soaking trousers and hung them in front of the fire. He came back in his shirt tails, wrapping a blanket around his waist. The trail of blood was drying into a thick, dark streak down his shin.

It was Henry Smith who spoke first. ‘Well, Mr Gunn, while you try to make us all drunk, your young friend goes exploring. He has
– er – put the cat among the canaries, as they say.’ He glanced, not without a certain reluctant admiration, at the sodden, steaming figure of Murdo. ‘He is a resourceful boy. But it would have been better if he had stayed in his bed. We would have completed the shipment, you would have been well paid. Everybody would have been happy. Now…’ He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference. We will still finish the operation. You will not be paid. All we have to do is keep an eye on you, and then, when the last of the cargo is in the cave… well, we will decide what to do with you when the times comes.’

Hector smiled ironically. ‘Do you imagine I am going to run German guns for you? In the
Lobster Boy
? He shook his head.

‘I don’t think there is much doubt about it,’ Henry Smith said calmly. ‘As you said yourself a few minutes ago, there is a war on. You don’t want to run the guns for us – we want you to. If it came to the point, we could run the boat ourselves. It is unlikely that anyone would interfere with us. Sigurd there is about your build; near enough to pass for you, at a distance anyway, wearing your oilskins and hat. Everyone knows the boat well enough. But it would be better if you took us yourself.’

‘Never,’ Hector said. ‘I would run the boat on the rocks first.’

‘With the boy in it?’ Henry Smith said. ‘It’s not hard to tell how much he means to you. It would be a pity to end a life so young, especially as it really makes so little difference. We would bring the guns across anyhow.’

‘You wouldn’t touch him,’ Hector said. ‘You’re not the type. Kill a young boy!’

‘You don’t know much about me, do you Mr Gunn? Would you take the chance? And even if you are right – well, what about Mr Voss, there? We are at war. Desperate times require desperate measures. It would be a pity, but what is one boy when so much is at stake? No Mr Gunn. You will run your boat for us.’

Murdo looked across at the ruthless face of Carl Voss. The brooding eyes met his own. For a few moments he held them, then looked away.

Henry Smith waited for Hector to speak, but the old fisherman said nothing.

‘Well, so that is settled,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We will wait here for a day or two until the storm dies down, then we will bring the rest of the guns and explosives across to the mainland in your boat… I take it you do realise by now that that is what you have been carrying: guns, dynamite, grenades, ammunition.’ He smiled.

‘Good! Now I really do suggest that the young man changes out of his wet clothes. He will be catching that pneumonia you keep talking about, and that wouldn’t do at all.’

Hector looked up. ‘Aye, go and change, Murdo. Get another blanket off the bed for yourself. I’ll put the kettle on.’ Suddenly seeming very old, he heaved himself out of his chair and started across the room towards the door. He had gone no more than a couple of paces when Carl Voss pushed him back roughly. He caught Hector off balance; he staggered, tripped, and fell half in and half out of the armchair.

The blood rushed into Murdo’s face and he started forward. Hector flung out an arm to keep him back.