I lowered the gla.s.ses and whispered softly to Chubby, "Change your piece for mine," and he pa.s.sed me the longbarrelled FN and took the AK47I wanted the accuracy of the FN to command the deck of the crash boat. Naturally there was nothing I could do to intervene while Sherry was unharmed, but if they did anything to her - I would make sure she didn't suffer alone.

I squatted down beside the palm tree, adjusted the peep sights of the rifle, and drew a careful bead on the head of the deck guard. I knew I could put a bullet through his temple from where I sat and when I was satisfied I laid the rifle across my lap and settled down to wait.

The mosquitoes from the swamp whined around our ears but both Chubby and I ignored them and sat quietly. I longed for a cheroot to soothe the tension of my nerves, but I was forced to forgo that comfort.

Time pa.s.sed very slowly, and new fears came to plague me and make the waiting seem even longer than it was but finally, a few minutes before the promised hour, there was a renewed stirring and bustle on board the crash boat and once more Suleti -man Dada was helped up the ladder by his men and he took his place at the bridge rail looking down over the after-deck. He was sweating heavily and it had soaked the area around the armpits and across the back of his white uniform jacket. I guessed that he had pa.s.sed his own period of waiting by frequent recourse, to the whisky bottle, probably from my own stock that had been plundered from the cave.

He laughed and joked with the men around him, his vast belly shaking with mirth and his men echoed the laughter slavishly. The sound of it carried across the water to the beach.

Suleiman was followed by Manny Resnick and his blonde lady friend.

Manny was well groomed and cool-looking in his expensive casual clothing. He stood slightly apart from the others, his expression aloof and disinterested. He reminded me of an adult at a children's party, seeing out a boring and mildly unpleasant duty.

In contrast, Lorna Page was excited and shiny-eyed as a girl on her first date. She laughed with Suleiman Dada and leaned expectantly over the rail above the deserted deck. Through the powerful gla.s.ses I could see the flush on her cheeks which was not rouge.

I was concentrating on her so that it was only when I felt Chubby move suddenly and restlessly, and heard his grunt of alarm that I swung the gla.s.ses downwards on to the deck.

Sherry was there, standing between two of the uniformed sailors.

They held her arms and she looked small and frail between them.

She still wore the clothes she had thrown on so hurriedly that morning and her hair was dishevelled. Her face was gaunt and her expression strained - but it was only when I studied her carefully that I saw that what looked like sleepless dark rings below her eyes were in fact bruises. With a cold chill of anger, I realized that her lips were swollen and puffed up as though they had been stung by bees. One of her cheeks was also fatly distorted and bruised.

They had beaten her and knocked her about badly. Now that I looked for it I could see dark splotches of dried blood on her blue shirt, and when one of the guards dragged her around roughly to face the sh.o.r.e I saw that one of her hands was bandaged roughly - and that either blood or disinfectant had stained the bandages.

She looked tired and ill, nearly at the end of her strength. My anger threatened to wipe out my reason. I wanted to inflict hurt upon those that had treated Sherry like this, and I had already begun to lift the rifle with hands that shook with the force of my hatred before I could control myself. I closed my eyes tightly and took a long deep breath to steady myself. The time would come - but it was not now.

When I opened my eyes again and refocused the binoculars, Suleiman Dada had the bullhorn to his lips.

"Good evening, Harry, my dear friend, I am sure you recognize this young lady." He made a wide gesture towards Sherry and she looked up at him wearily. "After questioning her closely, a procedure which alas caused her a little discomfort, I am at last convinced that she does not know the whereabouts of the property in which my friends and I are interested. She tells me that you "have hidden it." He paused and mopped his streaming face with a towel handed to him by one of his men before he went on.

"She is no longer of any interest to me - except possibly as a medium of exchange!

He made a gesture, and Sherry was hustled away below. Something cold and slimy moved in my guts at her going. I wondered if I would ever see her again - alive.

On to the deserted deck filed four of Suleimans men, Each of them had stripped to the waist and the floodlights rippled on their smooth darkly muscled bodies.

Each of them carried the hickory wooden handles of a pickaxe, and silently they formed up at the points of a star about the open deck. Next a man was led into the open centre by two guards. His hands were tied behind his back. They stood on each side of him and slowly forced him to turn in a circle -and show himself while Suleiman Dada's voice boomed through the bullhorn.

"I wonder if you recognize him?" I stared at the stooped creature in canvas prison overalls that hung in filthy grey tatters from his gaunt frame. His skin was pate and waxy with deep-set dark eyes, long scraggly blond hair hung in greasy snakes about his face and his half-grown beard was thin and wispy.

He had lost teeth, probably knocked from his mouth with a careless blow.

"Yes, Harry?" Suleiman laughed fruitily over the loud hailer. "A sojourn in Zinballa prison does wonders for a man, does it not - but the regulation garb is not as smart as that of an Inspector of Police."

" Only then did I recognize ex-Inspector Peter Daly - the man who I had pitched from the deck of Wave Dancer into the waters of the outer lagoon just before I had escaped from Suleiman Dada by running the channel at Gunfire Reef.

"Inspector Peter Daly," Suleiman confirmed with a chuckle, "a man who let me down badly. I do not like men who let me down, Harry. I really take it very hard. I brought him along for just such an eventuality. It was a wise precaution, for I believe that a graphic demonstration is so much more convincing than mere words!

Once again he paused to mop" his face and to drink deeply from a gla.s.s offered him by one of his men. Daly fell to his knees and looked up at the man on the bridge. His expression was of abject terror, and his mouth dribbled saliva as he pleaded for mercy.

"Very well, we can proceed if you are ready, Harry," he boomed, and one of the guards produced a large black cloth bag which he pulled over Peter Daly's head and secured with a drawn string around his neck. They dragged him roughly to his feet again.

"It's our own variation on the game of blind man's bluff."

Through the gla.s.ses I saw the liquid flood soak through the front of Peter Daly's canvas trousers, as his bladder emptied in anguished terror. Obviously he had seen this game played before during his stay in Zinballa prison.

"Harry, I want you to use your imagination. Do not see this snivelling filthy creature - but in his place imagine your lovely young lady friend." He breathed heavily, but when the man beside him offered him the towel again Suleiman struck him a pa.s.sionless backhanded blow that sent him sprawling across the bridge, and he continued evenly, "Imagine her lovely young body, imagine her delicious fear as she stands in darkness not knowing what to expect."

The two guards began to spin Daly between them, as they do in the children's game, around and around he went and now I could faintly hear his m.u.f.fled shrieks and cries of fear.

Suddenly the two guards stepped away from him, and left the circle of half-naked men with their pick handles. One of them placed the b.u.t.t of his weapon in the small of Daly's back and shoved him, reeling and staggering across the circle and the man opposite was waiting to drive the end of his club into Daly's belly.

Back and forth he staggered, driven by the thrust of the clubs.

Slowly his tormentors increased the savagery of their attack, until one of them hefted his club and swung it like an axe at a tree. It smashed into Daly's ribs.

It was the signal to end it, and as Peter Daly fell to the deck they crowded about him, the clubs rising and falling in a fearsome rhythm and the blows sounding clearly across the lagoon to where we watched in disgust and revulsion.

One after the other they tired, and stepped back to rest from their grim work and Peter Daly's crumpled and broken body lay in the centre of the deck.

"Crude, you will say, Harry - but then you will not deny that it is effective."

I was sickened by the barbaric cruelty of it, and Chubby muttered beside me, "He's a monster - I've never heard of nothing like that before!

"You have until noon tomorrow, Harry, to come to me unarmed and reasonable. We will talk, we will agree on certain matters, we will make an exchange of a.s.sets and we will part friends."

He stopped speaking to watch while one of his men secured a line to Peter Daly's ankle, and they hoisted him to the masthead of the crash boat where he dangled grotesquely, like some obscene pennant. Lorna Page was looking up at him, her head thrown back so the blonde hair hung down her back and her lips were slightly parted.

"If you refuse to be reasonable, Harry, then at noon tomorrow I shall sail around this island with your lady friend hanging like that-" He pointed up to the corpse whose masked head swung slowly back and forth only a few feet above the deck, "--from the mast. Think about it, Harry. Take your time. Think about it well."

Suddenly the floodlights were switched off, and Suleiman Dada began his laborious descent to the cabin. Manny Resnick and Lorna Page followed him. Manny was frowning slightly, as though he was pondering a business deal, but I could see that Lorna was enjoying herself.

"I think I'm going to throw up,"muttered Chubby.

Get it over then," I said, "because we have a lot of work to do."

I stood up and quietly led the way back into the palm grove. We took it in turns to dig while the other stood guard amongst the trees. I would not use a light for fear of attracting attention from. the crash boat and we were both exaggeratedly careful to maintain silence and not to let the clank of metal sound through the grove.

We lifted the remaining cases of gelignite and blasting equipment, then we did the same with the rusted pay chest and carried it to a carefully chosen site below the steeply sloping ground of the peak. Fifty yards up the slope was a fold in the ground thickly screened with goose-bush and salt gra.s.s.

We dug another hole for the chest, going deep into the soft soil until we struck water. Then we repacked the pay chest and reburied it. Chubby climbed up to the hidden fold above us and made his arrangements there.

In the meantime I reloaded the machine-gun and wrapped it lightly in one of my old shirts, the five full magazines placed with it, and I buried the lot under an inch of sand, next to the stern of the nearest palm tree where the recent rain waters had cut a shallow dry runnel down the slope.

The water-torn trench and the tree were forty paces from the spot where the chest was buried, and I hoped it was far enough. The trench was little more than two feet deep and would provide scanty cover.

The moon came out after midnight and it gave us enough light to check our arrangements. Chubby made sure I was in full view from his hideaway up the slope when I stood beside the shallow runnel. Then I climbed up to him and double-checked him. We lit a cheroot each, sheltering the match and screening the glowing tips with cupped hands, while we went over our planning once again.

I was particularly anxious that there should be no misunderstanding in our timing and signals, and I made Chubby repeat them twice. He did so with long-suffering and theatrical patience, but at last I was satisfied. We dumped the cheroot b.u.t.ts and sc.r.a.ped sand over them and when we went down the slope we both carried palm-frond brooms to sweep out all signs of activity.

The first part of my planning was complete, and we returned to where the golden tiger and the rest of the gelignite was cached. We reburied the tiger and then I prepared a full case of gelignite. It was a ma.s.sive overdose Of explosive, sufficient for a tenfold over-kill - but I have never been a man to stint myself when I have the means to indulge.

I would not be able to use the electric blaster and insulated wire, and I must rely on one of the time-pencil detonators. I have a strong distaste for these temperamental little gadgets. They operate on the principle of acid eating through a thin wire which holds the hammer on a powder cap. When the acid cuts the wire the cap explodes, and the delay in the detonation is governed by the strength of the acid and the thickness of the wire.

There can be a large lat.i.tude of error in this timing which on one occasion caused me a nearly fatal embarra.s.sment. However, in this case I had no choice in the matter - and I selected a pencil with a six-hour delay and prepared it for use with the gelignite.

Amongst the equipment overlooked by the looters was my old oxygen rebreathing underwater set. This diving set is almost as dangerous to use as the time pencils. Unlike the aqualung which uses compressed air, the rebreather employs pure oxygen which is filtered and cleansed of carbon dioxide after each breath and then cycled back to the user.

Oxygen breathed at pressures in excess of twice atmospheric becomes as poisonous as carbon monoxide. In other words, if you rebreathe pure oxygen below underwater depths of thirty-three feet, it will kill you. You have to have all your wits together to play around with the stuff but it has one enormous advantage. It does not blow bubbles on the surface to alarm a sentry and give away your position to him.

Chubby carried the prepared case of gelignite and the rifle when we went back to the beach. It was after three o'clock when I had donned and tested the oxygen set, and then I carried the gelignite down to the water and tested that for buoyancy. It needed a few pounds of lead weights to give it a neutral buoyancy and make it easier to handle in the water.

We had reached the water from the beach around the horn of the bay from the anch.o.r.ed crash boat. The point of sand and palm trees covererd us as we worked, and at last I was ready.

It was a long tiring swim. I had to round the point and enter the bay a distance of almost a mile - and I had to tow the case of explosive with me. It dragged heavily through the water and it took me almost an hour before I could see the lights of the crash boat glimmering above me through the clear water.

Hugging the bottom I crept forward slowly, terribly aware that the moonlight would silhouette me clearly against the white sand of the lagoon bed, for the water was clear as gin and only twenty-five feet deep.

It was a relief to move slowly into the dark shadow cast by the crash boat's hull and to know that I was safe from discovery. I rested for a few minutes, then I unrolled the nylon slings that I had on my belt and secured them to the case of gelignite.

Now I checked the time on my wrist.w.a.tch, and the luminous hands showed ten minutes past four o'clock.

I crushed the gla.s.s ampoule of the time pencil, releasing the acid to begin its slow eroding attack on the wire, and I returned it to its prepared slot in the case of explosive. In six hours, more or less, the whole lot would go up with the force of a two hundred pound aerial bomb.

Now I left the floor of the lagoon and rose slowly to the hull of the crash boat. It was foul with a hanging slimy beard of weed and the hull itself was thick with a rough scale of sh.e.l.lfish and goose-neck mussels.

I moved slowly along the keel, searching for an anchor point - but there was none and at last I was forced to use the shank of the rudder. I bound the case in position with all the nylon rope I had - and when I was finished I was certain that it would resist even the drag of water when the crash boat was travelling at the top of her speed.

Satisfied at last, I sank once more to the bed of the lagoon and moved off quietly on my return. I made much better speed through the water now without the burden of the gelignite case and Chubby was waiting for me on the beach.

"Fixed up?" he asked quietly, as he helped me shed the oxygen set.

"Just as long as that pencil does its job."

I was so tired now that the walk back through the grove seemed like an eternity and my feet dragged in the loose footing. I had slept little the previous night, and not at all since then.

This time Chubby watched over me while I slept, and when he shook me gently awake it was after seven o'clock and the daylight was growing swiftly.

We ate a breakfast cold from the can, and I finished it with a handful of high-energy glucose tablets from the survival kit and washed them down with a mug of chlorinated water.

I drew the knife from the sheath on my belt and threw it underhand to pin into the trunk of the nearest palm. It stood there shivering with the force of the impact.

"Show off!" muttered Chubby, and I grinned at him, trying to look relaxed and easy.

", just like the man said - no weapons," and I spread my empty hands.

"You ready?" he asked, and we both stood up and looked at each other awkwardly. Chubby would never wish me good luck - which was the worst of all possible hex to put on someone.

"See you later,"he said.

"Okay, Chubby." I held out my hand. He took it and squeezed it hard, then he turned away, picked up the FN rifle and plodded off through the grove.

I watched him out of sight, but he never looked back and I turned away myself and walked down unarmed to the beach.

I walked out from amongst the trees and stood at the water's edge, staring across the narrow strip of water at the crash boat. The dangling corpse had been removed from the masthead, I saw with relief.

For many seconds none of the sentries on deck noticed me, so I raised both hands above my head and gave them a loud "Halloo'. Instantly there was a boil of activity and clamour of shouted orders on board the crash boat. Manny Resnick and Lorna appeared at the rail and stared across at me, while half a dozen armed seamen dropped into the whaleboat and headed for the beach.

As the boat touched- they leaped out on to the sand and surrounded me with the muzzles of the AK47's pressed eagerly into my back and belly. I kept my hands hoisted at half-mast and tried to maintain an expression of disinterest as a petty officer searched me with deliberate thoroughness for any weapon. When he was at last satisfied, he placed his hand between my shoulder-blades and gave me a hearty shove towards the whaleboat. One of the more eager of his men took this as a licence and he tried to rupture my kidneys with the b.u.t.t of his AK47 - but the blow landed six inches high.

I made briskly for the whaleboat to forestall any further martial displays and they crowded into the boat around me pressing the muzzles of their fully loaded weapons painfully into various parts of my anatomy.

Manny Resnick watched me come in over the side of the crash boat.

"Hallo again, Harry,"he smiled without mirth.

"The pleasure is all yours, Manny," I returned the death's head grin, and another blow caught me between the shoulder-blades and drove me across the deck. I ground my teeth together to control my anger, and I thought about Sherry North. That helped.

Commander Suleiman Dada was sprawled on a low couch covered with plain canvas cushions. He had removed his uniform jacket and it hung heavy with all the braid and medals from a hook on the bulkhead beside him. He wore only a sweat-soaked and greyish sleeveless vest, and even this early in the morning he held a gla.s.s of pale brown liquid in his right hand.

"Ah, Harry Fletcher - or should it be Harry Bruce?" he grinned at me like an enormous coal-black baby.

"You take your pick, Suleiman," I invited him, but I didn't'feel like playing word games with him now. I had no illusions about how dangerous was the position in which Sherry and I were placed, and my nerves were painfully tight and fear growled like a caged animal in my belly.

"I have learned so much more about you from my good friends," he indicated Manny and the blonde Lorna who had followed me into the main cabin. "Fascinating, Harry. I never dreamed you were a man of such vast talent and formidable achievement."

"Thanks, Suleiman, you really are a brick, but let's not get carried away with compliments. We have important business - don't we, "True, Harry, very true."

"You have raised the tiger throne, Harry, we know that," Manny cut in, but I shook my head.

"Only part of it. The rest has gone - but we salvaged what there was."

"All right, I'll buy that," Manny agreed. "Just tell us what there is."

"There is the head of the tiger, about three hundred pounds weight in gold-" Suleiman and Manny glanced at each other.

"Is that all?" Manny asked, and I knew instinctively that Sherry had told them everything she knew during the beating they had given her. I did not hold that against her. I had expected it.

"There is also the jewel chest. The stones removed from the throne were placed in an iron pay chest."

"The diamond - the Great Mogul?"demanded Manny. "We've got it," I said, and they murmured and smiled and nodded at each other. "But I'm the only one who knows where it is--" I added softly, and immediately they were tense and quiet again.

"This time I've got something to trade, Manny. Are you interested?"

"We are interested, Harry, very interested," Suleiman Dada spoke for him, and I was aware of the tension growing between my two enemies now that the loot was almost in view.

"I want Sherry North," I said.