Operation Manhunt Read online

  “It could be Pobrenski, I suppose,” Headly said. “But a steward on board some sort of charter yacht in the West Indies makes it unlikely.”

  “Now, Charles, surely the first thing you learned about our business is that nothing is ever unlikely. And this is not even so improbable as you may think. Pobrenski found his way to the West Indies, the playground of the western world, where everyone would be looking twice at the beautiful girls and the wealthy men, and the expensive yachts and the exotic scenery, and no one would ever look once at a humble steward.”

  “By the same reasoning, life for the humble steward is on a fairly low level,” Headly said. “Why should he want to disappear so completely, when, as you say, any Western government would be glad to give him asylum?”

  “That is what we are going to find out, Charles.”

  “And how did he get there?” Jonathan asked. “Barbados is a fair distance from Warsaw.”

  “Indeed it is. And that is something else we would like to find out. However, you do understand that this is a very delicate matter. As you may recall, the Poles threw out some dark hints this spring that we or the Americans were responsible for Pobrenski’s disappearance. They refused to concede that he might have defected, claimed he hated and feared the West, and suggested rather that we might have kidnaped him. We denied this, of course, and for once our denials were perfectly genuine. So you see, while we would very much like to get our hands on General Pobrenski, we must not appear to do so.”

  “You make it sound delightfully simple,” Headly said. “And as you have just pointed out, the Poles, and the Russians, would like to regain possession of him even more.”

  “Quite so. Fortunately, this particular magazine does not circulate behind the Iron Curtain. Which is not to say that one or two of their more alert embassy officials over here may not make a practice of glancing through the glossies. So haste is of some importance. You are booked on a B.O.A.C. flight to Barbados tomorrow afternoon, Jonathan, arriving the day after tomorrow. I am in the process of arranging suitable hotel accommodations for you.”

  “Me? Tomorrow? But I say, Mr. Craufurd, this isn’t really in my line.”

  “Meaning that had I requested you to go and knock the general on the head you would have been happy to oblige? I know you’re very young, my dear boy, and almost totally inexperienced. But you know the area and the people. That’s an important point. It would be the most natural thing in the world for you to revisit the scene of your happy boyhood. You will confess that your career in England has been rather disappointing. Oh, you graduated, but with something far less than first-class honors, and so you are faced with a long haul up some uninteresting profession, and before doing this, you have opted for seeing a bit of life back in the old West Indies, your idea being to ship as crew on board a charter yacht. You can navigate?”

  “Coastal stuff.”

  “The Caribbean is almost entirely coastal stuff. And I am told that the absence of large tides makes it possible to proceed by, ah, what is the word they use, Charles?”

  “I imagine you’re thinking of dead reckoning.”

  “A rather sinister phrase. In any event, your objective is to gain a place on board this vessel, not to earn plaudits from your skipper at the end of the voyage.”

  “And just how do I find this ship?”

  “You look for it, my dear boy, starting in Barbados, as we have reasonable cause to believe she was there for a day or two last month. But the situation is not quite so opaque as you seem to suppose. For instance, you will observe that the credit for this print goes to Tom Crater. This gentleman is a resident of Bridgetown, I understand, and may be of assistance. And then, even a landlubber like myself can see that this is an unusually large ship, and my information is that these are scarce, because of the cost of chartering such a vessel. Smaller ships, ketches and yawls and motor cruisers, are more generally preferred. So that will narrow your field. And then, you are looking for a name ending in der, and for a yacht which rather unusually has a European as a steward. That alone should be a fruitful field of gossip.”

  “So I find the ship,” Jonathan said. “Let us suppose, however, that they have no desire to employ a navigator. I’m afraid it would be extremely unlikely that they should be looking for an extra crewman at the very moment I appear.”

  “That is a point, certainly. But of course you will then use your limitless resources of inventiveness and ingenuity. The important thing is for you to get on board, for at least a visit, and talk with the ship’s steward.”

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “So let us pretend everything goes entirely according to plan, and I find myself on board this schooner, locked in private conversation with this steward, and let us even pretend that this steward happens to be named Vladimir Pobrenski, and is prepared to acknowledge as much to a complete stranger. What then?”

  Craufurd lit a fresh cigar. “My dear Jonathan, I am giving you a chance to prove yourself. I will be honest with you. There was a considerable degree of embarrassment in Whitehall over that Guernsey business. As I have told you before, we are at war with no one, least of all with the Soviet Union. An operative who rushes around the place taking over Russian trawlers by means which can only be described as piracy on the high seas could well be a liability. It so happens, however, that no one in Whitehall has been able to suggest exactly how he would have handled the situation in which you found yourself, so that you are still with us. Now here is an occasion for tact and persuasion. Find Pobrenski, keep him in your sights and, if possible, get him off that ship, and wire me. I will give you the necessary code. Use your arts on him. Particularly, suggest to him that if we, using a single photograph, could find him, so could lots of other people. But we, of course, are his friends. We can offer him things like a flat in St. John’s Wood, and a new car—a small one, of course—all in exchange for a chat with the War Office. Go to it, boy. And bring him back.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Craufurd had booked Jonathan into a hotel in Worthing, on the long sweep of sandy coastline stretching southeast from Bridgetown. Here the hotels sat shoulder to shoulder, ranging in size and appointments from the Hilton down, Jonathan suspected, to his own modest establishment. But if his bedroom overlooked the street rather than the beach, from his window he could look between two enormous buildings at the expanse of yellow sand which dwindled almost imperceptibly into the gentle green of the shallows, for one of the great attractions of this coast was its safety for nonswimmers; one had to wade out nearly half a mile before the pale green began to turn to blue. The blue out there was the Atlantic Ocean, reaching all the way to Africa. A sinister ocean, at this time of the year, because no one could tell for sure what tropical storms might not be brewing away in the azure distance. Barbados was on the edge of the belt where the hurricanes formed; Barbados always felt the force of the wind first. This morning the trade winds blew steadily and sweetly, but memory suggested to Jonathan that in August this was itself a bad sign.

  He changed into a pair of tropical pants and a cotton shirt, thrust his feet into sandals, and went downstairs. He decided to walk into town, both to reaccustom himself to the heat, and to give himself time to think, to plan his moves. But calculation was intensely difficult as he strolled along the scorching pavement, gratefully accepting the occasional shade from glowing poinciana or rustling palm, nodding his greetings to the passersby, members of this most friendly of nations. Instead he found himself more inclined to remember.

  In many ways, Barbados reminded him of Guernsey. Both were lonely guardians on the end of an island chain. But everything that could be said about Guernsey could be quadrupled for this island. Barbados was several times larger, and its chain consisted of more than a score of islands, as against half a dozen. And from Barbados none of her neighbors was visible, while from Guernsey all the other Channel Islands could be seen more or less clearly.

  He concluded that his desire to draw a comparison between the two was accentuated by a
mixture of apprehension and nostalgia. Guernsey had been his first assignment, and it remained his only previous assignment. It had come unexpectedly, with his training only half completed, so far as he had been aware. But then his very entry into this most peculiar of professions had come with a total unexpectedness.

  He had been enjoying himself in his third year at university, playing far more chess than was compatible with successful studying, uncertain what he wished to do with his life, haunted always by those inner uncertainties which he now realized in the main arose from his loneliness. He could not remember his mother; Alice Anders had died of malaria fever when her only son had been three years old. She had contracted the illness while the family had been stationed in Venezuela. Donald Anders was a career diplomat, who at that time had been working his way through the succession of junior posts which would give him the necessary experience eventually to become an ambassador. The loss of his wife had made much of the effort pointless, but like most men in similar circumstances, he had merely worked the harder, and with increasing success. That he would be Sir Donald Anders and a full ambassador in the near future seemed certain. But in reaching for the top of his profession he had lost his son. For a while they had been very close, but then Jonathan had had to go to school, and their meetings had become less and less frequent.

  Now Donald Anders supposed his son had dropped out of university and found himself a totally unrewarding and unambitious post in a London antiquarian bookshop. Presumably he was bitterly disappointed; Jonathan had not heard from him for over a year, not since immediately after he had accepted Indman’s offer.

  Indman! Of all the shadowy figures in this new world in which he found himself, Indman had the least substance. A charming, knowledgeable man, a friend of one of the tutors, apparently, down on a visit to the university and anxious for a game of chess, he had been given the promising young Anders to play against, and had shown a remarkable intimacy with Jonathan’s background and scholastic record and obvious inability to concentrate on his present studies. How he had learned all this remained his own secret, but he had made it very clear during the course of a long evening’s chess that talented but insecure young men, possessed by a genuine feeling for their country and unhampered by any excessive family ties, were what he was searching for.

  With what in mind? Indman’s smile had been enigmatic. “Let’s say that if James Bond had existed, he might have begun just like this.”

  Indman was a shrewd psychologist; at the right moment he had interjected that powerful hint of romance coupled with infallibility. “Of course,” he had hastily added, “James Bond doesn’t exist, and I’m afraid we don’t have any operatives who resemble him or who are allowed to behave like him, even remotely. We prefer to use our brains more than our hands. You could look on the profession as a fast-moving, eternal chess game, in which you never see your opponent at all, and you never see the piece he is actually moving, either. You will have to draw your deductions from the actions and attitudes of the other pieces on the board, and hope you’ve not only figured his move correctly, but have made the right one in reply. It’s quite a challenge.”

  But to be a spy. Because however glamorous the words official, this was what it boiled down to. And here again Indman had stepped in with his flawless psychological timing. “Of course,” he had said. “We’re not asking for a definite decision now. We wouldn’t accept one, as a matter of fact. After all, you might not measure up to our requirements. But, if you’re interested, we will offer you a three-year contract and provide you with a suitable cover activity, during which period you will undergo some pretty thorough training. At the end of your training, you and I will reassess your future, and if you’re not happy with its appearance, you can walk out of the door with no strings attached.”

  That had been the clincher. The word “spy” still gave him an uneasy feeling, but three years of pretending to sell books—and he enjoyed old books in any event—and spending his time learning the many secrets of successful espionage was too attractive to be resisted. Of course, he knew now that he had been tricked. Indman’s job was to select candidates who he was quite sure would never use the escape clause, and Indman was very good at his job. Nor had Jonathan been allowed the three years. He had actually trained for only eighteen months, had learned, for all Indman’s deprecation of violence, how to shoot and how to take care of himself without a weapon, how to break and enter and how to break a code, how to convey messages and how to shadow. He had made the acquaintance of men like Headly, seemingly ageless, retired army officers who in reality were the best agents in the world. He had enjoyed himself, while haunted always by the suspicion that he was not quite measuring up to Indman’s required standard. But this in itself had been a safety valve, used to disguise it, agent, operative, courier, even consular suggesting that the real world of espionage was beyond his reach, and would never have to be faced.

  And then suddenly he had met Craufurd, so mild, so soft-spoken, so utterly ruthless, who had almost apologetically found it necessary to use Jonathan in the field before the completion of his training. On the surface it had been a routine matter. Instead it had developed into a desperate chase which had cost more than one life, and which had planted his feet firmly on the path he now knew he was going to follow for the rest of his life. So he was an agent, an operative, a spy. And there was no turning back.

  The breeze had dropped, now he was over the shallow hill and approaching Bridgetown itself. The heat seemed to redouble and sweat trickled down his neck. Trafalgar Square loomed in front of him, and then the Careenage, where the schooners and trading steamers moored alongside the very street, in the midst of a kaleidoscope of races and odors and conversation. How ideal if among these ancient, rusting, interisland ferries there could be a luxury three-master whose name ended in der. But he did not think he needed luck like that, here in Barbados. As Craufurd had said, he knew this part of the world, and for all its constantly expanding tourist industry, Barbados had not changed that much.

  He crossed the bridge on to Broad Street, turned left, and found himself in the maze of little shops and ships’ chandlers which crowded the waterfront. He threaded his way through the thronging people, of every possible shade of brown, who bargained or gossiped or just sat in the sun, mostly poorly dressed and perhaps undernourished, but all blessed with the health which comes from a constant sea breeze and an ever-present, glowing sunshine.

  He came to halman’s chandlery, the sign barely recognizable under the flaking paint. The interior of the shop smelled like a ship’s forecastle, and coiled warps lay everywhere, surrounding tins of paint and barrels of tar, halman’s chandlery had always looked like this, and yet old Seth Halman had always been able to find whatever you wanted in a matter of seconds. But the Negro behind the counter was hardly older than Jonathan himself. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “And what can I do for you?”

  “You’ll be Joey Halman,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s right, man. But I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.” Jonathan held out his hand. “I’m Jon Anders. Remember the Seabird? An old ketch with a rusty diesel? Oh, must be twelve years ago.”

  “Jon Anders?” Joey Halman squeezed Jonathan’s hand between powerful fingers. “But you are looking well, man.”

  “And so are you, Joey. You used to take me skin-diving, remember? And that was the real thing. We’d never heard of masks or flippers, or oxygen lungs or spear guns. Just what breath we could hold and a sharp knife.”

  “Man, I still dive just like that,” Joey said. “Hey, Dad, you come out here and meet Mr. Anders’ son. You remember Mr. Anders, man?”

  Seth Halman’s hair was white and his shoulders were stooped. But his grip was still firm. “But this is good, man. And how is your daddy?”

  “Well, I hope,” Jonathan said. “He’s in Japan.”

  “And you are on holiday?”

  “Well, actually,” Jonathan confessed, “I’m looking f
or a job.”

  “Eh-eh? A job, here in Barbados? Man, that ain’t easy. Not unless you got qualifications.”

  “I thought I might find a berth on one of those charter yachts. I’ve done a lot of sailing in England.”

  “Well, now, that is possible,” Halman said. “But they don’t sail out of Barbados, man. You want to go to Antigua. English Harbor, that is where the charter yachts mostly operate from. It is a good place for them to lie up in the hurricane season.”

  “But you know all that, man,” Joey said.

  “I’d forgotten.” Jonathan looked suitably disappointed. “Don’t they ever come in here?”

  “Oh, well, yes, this is a place to visit, all right. But at this time of the year we don’t see many. People don’t want to be caught out in a storm.”

  “I was thinking more of a biggish ship,” Jonathan said. “Some of them are fair-sized, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yes, man,” Joey said. “We had that three-masted job in here only last month, eh, Dad?”

  “She sounds ideal,” Jonathan cried. “What was her name?”

  The Halmans exchanged glances. “Well,” Seth Halman said at last, “she was called the Sidewinder. But if I can give you a word of advice, that is one ship you don’t want to mess with. No, sir.”

  “The name’s a bit odd, I’ll agree,” Jonathan said. “I think it means some sort of a rattlesnake.”

  “Is that a fact?” Joey asked. “But it ain’t the ship, it’s the crew.”

  “What about the crew?”

  Again the Halmans exchanged glances. “Well,” Seth Halman said, “the word is that two of the deck hands did time in Dominica for beating up another guy. And the skipper, he was tougher even than them. I’ll tell you, they had a couple of fights right here in the Careenage. Funny thing, since she left here there’s been a chap around asking questions about her. Only a couple of days back, in fact. Not looking for a berth or anything like that. The word around here is that he was a copper.”