A Twist of Sand

I glanced at the heavy wrench. I'd toy with him a moment. I don't think he was offended, even while he thought I was about to leave him to drown. It was what he would have done in my position. We understood each other perfectly. My action, as he saw it, didn't even violate his code of loyalty to me.

He jerked his head at the chart.

"Going back to where all the fuss was over the court martial?"

"Yes, Mac," I replied evenly.

He hadn't got my drift, but he had assessed the measure of the lure that Curva dos Dunas had for me. He did not know, however, on the one hand the age-old challenge which old Simon Peace had faced -- and won up to a point -- and which he had bequeathed to me, and on the other the material prospects of a valuable harbour to which I held sole title.

Mac looked at me squarely.

"With some men it is women, and with some it is whisky," he said. "With me it's machinery. With you, skipper, it's some God-forsaken piece of land or sea, I'm not quite sure which. It's ruined you once. Why not leave it alone now?"

Mac would be in this now, I decided: up to his neck in it with me. There could be only one way to get his assistance and that was by telling him everything.

I took the battered King's Ransom carton from the suitcase and locked the door. Mac looked interested as the key turned, but he knew he could batter me into submission with the wrench. I tipped the contents, the dull uncut stones, on to the table.

Mac made a curious gesture as he flattened the pile down with the palm of his hand.

"That's very expensive whisky," he said. It was the only time I had ever seen Mac shaky.

"Enough," I said briefly.

"You taking them out?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm taking them in. You and me Mac. Two hundred thousand quid's worth, if I guess right. Maybe more."

"Do you want me to open the valves?" he asked cryptically. I knew he was in on it now as much as myself.

"No, Mac," I said, as if we were discussing a minor engine defect and not the biggest thing in diamonds since Cullinan. "In a little more than twenty-four hours from now you will stop the engines and report to me that something has come adrift in the steering gear -- the rudder pintles have gone, or any other bloody technicality you like. You'll think up something, or you'll put it wrong yourself."

Mac grinned.  He knew exactly what I meant.

"I'll lay the Phylira against the current. The Trout current, I call it, just for old times' sake."

Mac winced.  I didn't think it would touch him so deeply.

"If you've got some real whisky somewhere, I'd find it useful," was all he said.

I pulled a bottle of my special Johnny Walker Black Label from a locker. Mac took it straight.

"You've a lot of very fine whisky in this cabin," he muttered.

"The Trout current sweeps down here at anything between four and six knots, close inshore," I told him. "You'll have to leave enough way on her to cope with that. It swings and weaves through these rocks and shoals like a matelot on a bender. It'll be damn tricky, even if the weather is calm. This swell is enough in itself."

"I don't get it," said Mac. "I've stopped the engines with just enough way on to hold her against the current and I report to you on the bridge that the steering gear's amiss. What then?"

"We go over the side to inspect the fault," I said crisply.

Mac tapped the edge of the whisky glass with the wrench until it rang dully, like a bell of doom.

"What time is all this?" he said slowly.

"About three-thirty a.m." I said.

"And then?"

"I'll have this old wreck lying a bit to the nor'ard of where I intend to land," I said. "As soon as the boat hits the water, the Trout current will sweep it away from the Phylira. In two minutes we'll be lost in the darkness. I know the way after that. I'll give a course of three-one-oh degrees just before we make our ' inspection.' That'll take the Phylira well out of the way."

Mac shook his head. "They'll simply turn round and search for us. A couple of hours and it will be full daylight. They'll find us, sure as nuts."

"You're wrong, Mac," I said quietly. "The Royal Navy never found the U-boat I sank. And no one in this rotten old tub, let alone that soak Olafsen, will find you and me where we are going." I smiled grimly at his set face. "I give you my assurance of that, Mac. I know."

Mac eyed me for a long time. "So it was a U-boat then? You never said so at the court martial."

"No, Mac," I said. "And the reasons still hold good to-day. There are others also."

Mac was as sharp as quicksilver.

"The . . . whale noises . . . special machinery?"

"Special machinery," I said, looking hard at him. "A lot of men died because of that special machinery."

"But you never fired a shot," Mac protested.