The Saint and the People Importers (19 page)

Without the wind, the sun was warm enough for the Saint to enjoy taking off his shirt, and for Tammy to peel off her jeans and sit in the short shorts which she had providently worn underneath. The martinis, lunch, and cold beer made a happy interlude that was only incongruous when either of them had a recollection of the mission that had brought them out there, of what had preceded it and what grim climax could be waiting at the end of the day. But Simon Templar could enjoy any pleasurable intermission for itself alone, and for him there was unalloyed pleasure in contemplating the sunlight on Tammy’s shapely legs, and the spontaneous expressions that chased over her impish face.

They were far enough north of the main navigation channels to be untroubled by the regular passage of lighters, freighters, tankers, and an occasional passenger steamship bound in and out of the Port of London. A few small sailboats, to the north, attempted to offer canvas to the unseasonable lull, but most of their potential masters and crew seemed to be less hardy souls who were already trending towards their regular autumnal retreat. A speedboat of two creamed ostentatiously over the inshore mud flats … And after many long lulls, Tammy suddenly cried “Look!”

She was gesturing towards a new silvery point in the water. Simon had missed seeing it before because he had not been urgently looking for it, and in any case the sail had been in his way. He let his craft come about into the weakly reviving wind while he focused his binoculars on the object. It was near the eastern horizon, and he half expected it to be another boat. But a combination of tide and current must have carried them farther than he would have estimated. What he was looking at was distinctly not a boat, even though it bobbed so much in his field of view because of his own motion that he could not make out any details.

“That must be it,” he said after consulting his chart again. “Now all we have to do is get there.”

He looked at the position of the sun as he got the boat under control again. There would still be plenty more daylight. It now seemed possible-if the wind did not give out again-that he could reach the fort before Fowler did, or at least before he left with his cargo. Assuming that Shortwave was right when he said that Fowler would not make his coastal landing before dark. But there were still plenty of dicey unknowns in the equation: one was that Fowler might already be there, and the other was that he might arrive by fast boat while the Sunny Hours was manoeuvring for a landing.

“Do you know how to sail?” Simon asked Tammy.

“I can do anything,” Tammy said. “Why? Are you tired?”

“No, but I was thinking that no matter when we get to Fowler’s halfway house you’re going to have to take over. If I’d come alone I’d just have set the boat adrift when I got to the fort and either tracked it down later or lost my hundred and fifty pounds. But now you can take it over when we get there and then move off to a safe distance while I become a one-man boarding party.”

“I don’t think I like that idea very much.”

“Would you rather assume Fowler is so shortsighted that he won’t see a sailboat tied up to his own hideout?”

“I’d rather come with you.”

“We’ll see when we get there,” he said. “Meanwhile, you may be the greatest female sailor in the world, but it probably wouldn’t hurt you to freshen up your technique.”

He handed over the tiller and sheet, and it was only after she had turned the boat completely around twice without making head way in any direction that he intervened.

“I thought you said you could do anything,” he said blandly. “It’s a good thing there isn’t much wind or you’d have swamped us.”

“I meant I could learn to do anything,” she said. “I didn’t say I knew how already.”

“We’d better have some lessons then. Just try to stay directly between the sun and the fort. In case somebody’s out there with binoculars or a telescope the glare will keep him from making out too many details.”

The slowly rising breeze was fitful but still powerful enough to fill the sails, and for an hour Tammy learned the rudiments of handling a small boat on a very big body of water. Her studies were cut shorter than they might have been when the Saint caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye which was not the slowly growing fort on the horizon. He turned quickly and saw that it was a small speedboat racing towards them from the west. Without wasting time to explain, he took the tiller and sail away from Tammy and turned the bow of the Sunny Hours away from the fort, and also away from the approaching speedboat.

“What have I done now?” she demanded angrily. “I was just getting the idea.”

“You see that boat? Take a look at it through the binoculars and tell me all about it.”

“You don’t think it’s somebody after us?” she asked in alarm.

“There’s no harm in finding out before they get here,” Simon replied. “Take a look.”

The boat was a mile or more away, and Tammy had to look for some time, adjusting the focus, before she felt certain enough of anything to start giving a report.

“It’s not a very big boat but it’s moving fast,” she said. “It’s open. No roof. I think there’s … one man. Just one.” She brought the eyepieces of the binoculars away from her eyes and looked at the Saint. “Do you think it’s Fowler?”

“You tell me. I’m busy making like an agonised amateur trying to sail around the world backwards.”

The girl squinted through the glasses again.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

“Fowler?”

“No. I can’t really make out his face, but I’ve got a strong feeling … I’m sure it is: Kalki!”

“Ah, the Flying Hindu,” Simon said. “And he’s alone?”

At the same time, he was quietly taking his automatic out of an inner pocket of his discarded windbreaker, and double-checking its load and readiness for action.

“There’s nobody with him,” Tammy said. “That’s something anyway. Perhaps Fowler’s already on the fort-or coming out later.”

“Isn’t he headed for us?” Simon asked, turning to look for himself.

“No. I don’t think so. He’s curving around in the direction of the fort.”

“That’s good news.” He tucked his gun back under the folded jacket. “But now we can’t risk getting too near the fort in full daylight. I’ll make a long sweep around and come up on it towards sunset from the southwest, when the sun will be right in their eyes.” He was talking as much to himself as to Tammy. “I seem to have thought of everything except bringing a couple of false beards for us to disguise ourselves if anyone starts watching us with a good pair of glasses.

“May I practise some more?” Tammy asked.

He offered her the tiller.

“Be my guest. Keep the fort well to your left, and try to keep your face turned away from it. Not that it isn’t a pretty face, but why give the Ungodly a treat they don’t deserve?”

“Aye-aye, Commodore.”

“I’ll stand watch … from here.”

And with that the Saint stretched out on the bottom of the boat with his head on a lifejacket, and to all appearances fell promptly fast asleep.

2

The insignificant white form of a sailboat off his starboard side did not even remotely influence the rush of Kalki’s thoughts as he bore down on the fort. Fowler would be infuriated to see him racing out in broad daylight, but there was no choice. When the giant wrestler had learned that the Saint was free and on his trail-undoubtedly, Kalki’s inaccurate imagination told him, with a sizeable entourage of newspaper reporters and policemen-his first impulse after venting his rage in the execution of Shortwave was to run for his life.

One thing in particular stopped him: the cash which he and Fowler had stored at the fort. It amounted to the proceeds from the last several shipments of immigrants. As long as things had been going smoothly there had been no need for either him or Fowler to distrust the other; it was too profitable to both of them to continue their partnership. But now that crisis was upon them, the cash, in several national currencies, suddenly became very important. Kalki liked fine clothes and expensive Soho ladies. He was not a thrifty man. If he was to fly away to some haven across the sea, perhaps in the West Indies, he would need his share of that money. He would also have to be sure that no evidence-say in the form of a dozen talkative Indians and Pakistanis-was left wandering about the littoral to further threaten his future.

He was not particularly worried about Fowler’s running away with all the money for a very simple reason: both men, by mutual understanding, had deposited with their separate lawyers in sealed envelopes small but damning sheets of paper on which incriminating facts about the opposite partner were detailed. Each lawyer had instructions to open the envelope in his possession in the event of the death of his client through other than unmistakable natural causes. While full of hazards, the arrangement had given some stability to an otherwise even more touchy situation.

But like all such arrangements it had its limitations, and Kalki saw this as the get-out point.

When he piloted his outboard up to the fort there was no trace of life on the big platform. The deck of the structure rested on six huge round supports which were sunk into the sea bottom. Even at high tide the water level did not ever approach the platform, and at this stage of rising tide a foot or so of barnacles still showed on the round legs. The shelters on top of the platform looked as disused as they were supposed to be. Their metal walls were etched with red rust where the greyish silver paint had chipped away.

Kalki cut the boat’s engine and drifted up against one of the steel legs of the fort. A series of ladder steps, towel-rack style, were welded on to the leg. He made the bow line of bis boat fast to one of the rungs, let the boat swing round under the shadow of the platform, and then hauled his great bulk up the ladder to the platform.

Fowler stepped from beside the wall of a metal shed.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled.

“The Saint is loose,” Kalki said without preface. “Shortwave told him you were coming out here.”

The two of them stood back against the wall while Fowler delivered himself to some choicely worded opinions of Shortwave, the Saint, and the nature of the universe in general. Kalki filled him in on such parts of the story as he could.

Fowler grated his bottom teeth against the top ones and looked at the lowering sun.

“I don’t know,” he said tensely. “If it was dark … or we had a fog … What the devil am I going to do with that cargo in there? I can’t run them to shore now.”

Kalki had already pondered that problem.

“We got to get rid of them,” he said.

Fowler snorted.

“You’re the magician, then. Go right ahead and make the whole lot disappear in a puff of smoke.”

“Put them in your boat and take them out and sink it,” Kalki said. “It is too dangerous to take them ashore or to leave them here. Nobody will ever know what happened if you sink them in the sea.”

Fowler’s mind, which had long ago adjusted itself to an essential killing here and there, as long as somebody else did it and he was not around, was so unprepared for the thought of mass murder that he automatically began to protest.

“You listen to me!” Kalki interrupted, bringing his face down close in front of Fowler’s. “You can stay here and be a nanny to them if you want to, but I want my half of the money and I want to get out of here before the Saint shows up.”

Fowler glanced towards the sun again. There was a bank of haze and clouds coming to meet it from the west, turning the sky a deep yellow-red.

“All right,” he said in total desperation. “It’ll have to be done that way. Go watch for anything coming this way while I get the men in my boat.”

“Now?” Kalki asked, following Fowler’s eyes towards the sun.

“Now. I’ll lock them below and tell them we’ll go ashore as soon as it’s dark.”

“But you will take them out now?”

“Not unless we see trouble coming. I’d still rather wait until after dark. Keep an eye open for any fast boats coming this way. As soon as it’s dark I’ll run them out while you follow in the outboard. You pick me up as soon as I’ve made a good-sized hole in the hull.”

Kalki followed him towards the door of the shed.

“You’d better watch out for boats,” Fowler told him again..

“I want my half of the money.”

“And to leave me stuck in a sinking ship? I’ll take it all out with me. You’ll be right behind. We’ll divvy it up when we’ve got this job finished.”

Fowler’s hand was in his blazer pocket, and Kalki knew that Fowler would not let the price of some invisible mending keep him from firing through the fabric and putting a very visible hole in Kalki.

“All right,” the Pakistani said. “I’ll stay out here.”

“And I’ll go tell these twelve poor buggers they’re bound for the Promised Land …”

3

“Simon …” Tammy said. “Simon?”

The Saint lifted his head from his makeshift pillow and looked at her. He had never been in a deep sleep. He had been continuously aware of the gradations of changing light which had now left the sky grey with the dusk.

“How are we doing?”

“I think the breeze is getting stronger.”

“It’s probably just the backwash from a passing seagull.”

“No, seriously, it is.”

He sat up and moved to take over control of the sailboat. The fort was only a few hundred yards away, marked with dim red warning lights.

“I don’t see how you can relax at a time like this,” Tammy said petulantly. “What if they’d got away?”

“You’d have told me. But our relaxing hours are over now. I’m heading straight in to the stronghold of the evildoers. I’m just surprised no other boat has come out there.”

“Why?”

“Well, I assumed that Fowler must already be there. Otherwise why would Kalki be dashing out in the middle of the afternoon just to sit around and wait until nightfall.” As the Saint was speaking he was setting the Sunny Hours on a direct course for the fort. He would bear to the north of it and come in against the wind. “But if Fowler’s out there, why isn’t there a bigger boat? That pea pod that Kalki went out in isn’t big enough to carry the owl and the pussy cat in addition to Kalki and Fowler-much less a mixed bag of assorted grown men.”