Knife Edge (2004) Read online

  A hand on the shoulder. “Something up, Peter?” Calm. Even. No impatience or annoyance. Not like some.

  “This boat alongside. What’s the point?” He sounded sharper than he intended.

  Ross replied, “Saw it a bit earlier. Bound for the regatta, I thought.” He had trained his own glasses on the barge, but Hamlyn did not feel him move.

  “He can see the boundary fence, and will know what’s going on here. There’s enough barbed wire to scare off the Red Army. It’s their boat right enough. They can lay hands on everything without looking.”

  It was like hearing him thinking aloud. Hamlyn said, “They couldn’t carry much of a cargo in that, sir.”

  Ross looked again. The girl had stepped down into the forepart of the cockpit by the cabin door. He saw her fully before she turned away again. Hamlyn was right. No room. No speed, either.

  But more than that. The girl’s face. She was worried. He touched Hamlyn’s arm again. “Pass the word, Peter. Stand fast, but it’s a go.” He held his arm and added quietly, “That girl is scared out of her wits.”

  He saw the question in his eyes. “A try-on, just to see if it’s safe to go ahead.”

  He heard Hamlyn move away. Probably thinks I have too much imagination. Maybe he’s right. Pleasure craft came and went every day here. And it was regatta time. And it was Sunday.

  Perhaps the plan had fallen through. Or some one had grassed, or had just been unable to keep his mouth shut. The explosives and weapons might have been smuggled to an entirely different location. There were a million ifs and ors filling his brain.

  But the long-haired girl in the bright red jersey remained. He knew terror well enough to recognize it.

  He tensed, and held his breath. Another man had climbed on deck and was preparing to jump across to the barge. A big, athletic figure dressed in a sort of track suit, and deck shoes. Ross levelled the glasses with extra care. He could see sunlight on the water. No time to take chances. But the face was fixed in his mind. Square, tight-mouthed. Thinning hair; not one of the faces he had studied. But I will know it again.

  He was standing beside the man in the sailing smock, almost touching him, saying something and peering at his watch. Looking at the demolition site. At me.

  He knew Hamlyn was coming back, the sergeant called Norris close behind him.

  Afterwards he remembered that Hamlyn had his mouth open, an unspoken question hanging in mid-air. It was an explosion, somehow muffled, and far away. A sensation more than anything dangerous; you could barely feel it. He looked up and across the nearest wire fence. But the birds had heard it well enough. More gulls, slivers of white, scattered like feathers in the sunlight.

  Timed to the minute. Every police car and ambulance would already be racing to the scene of the latest incident.

  Hamlyn made as if to move. Ross said, “Stay!” Quietly, but it was as if he had shouted it. “It’ll be soon now!”

  He saw Hamlyn flinch, caught off guard by the sound. Like a champagne bottle being clumsily uncorked. Their eyes met. Or a pistol fitted with a silencer.

  When they looked again, the burly figure in the track suit and deck shoes was still standing on the barge. Alone.

  Hamlyn gasped, “Jesus Christ, he killed him! Just like that! Can’t we . . .”

  Ross kept his eyes on the barge and the boat alongside. Hamlyn was shocked, unable to accept what had happened. That I’m doing nothing about it. He stared at the figure on the barge, turning now, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. Unreal, as if he had imagined it. And what about the girl?

  His fingers were suddenly dragging at his holster, his mind rebelling against every warning. “I’ll get the bastard!” But he did not move, could not. He stared at Hamlyn’s hand gripping his wrist, pressing it down, his eyes half closed in concentration or despair.

  He whispered, “They’re coming.” Then he twisted round and stared fully at him. “It must be them!”

  Ross tried to calm himself; every fibre of instinct was fighting his will.

  Hamlyn said sharply, “What we’re here for, sir!”

  Only then did Ross hear it. Another craft approaching, faster and more powerful. A work boat of some kind, a company name and number painted along one side of the squat wheelhouse. Men too, half a dozen, maybe more below deck, some looking at the land, others crouching with grapnels. In another world Ross could hear sirens, but no louder than the church bells. Timed to the minute. It seemed to mock him.

  He attempted to sharpen his senses, shut out everything else. The marines were in position. It was too late to change anything. If they slipped up now, they would lose everything. And a man had been murdered. Butchered.

  There were two crates, wrapped in canvas with rope handles at regular intervals so they could be easily carried. Like coffins. Not heavy; the explosives were smaller and lighter than most. His mind fought against it: the details and the diagrams, the new menace from a reputable arms dealer. Two of the men were carrying long cases like golf bags. Mortars, which had already made their mark against police stations and other soft targets.

  He glanced at Hamlyn, who must have been thinking the same. Patriots or terrorists, others were making money from them, no matter who died as a result.

  The ‘coffins’ were on the barge. A few steps to the shore, and then the final journey past the wire barriers. Transport? More armed men waiting for the next, and last, signal?

  Ross stood up and jumped on to the bricks, the sun suddenly in his eyes like the lights in the beer cellar. For an instant nobody moved or spoke. Frozen. As if he was completely alone.

  Then Steve’s voice, harshly, on the loud-hailer most of them had thought would never be used.

  “Stand still! Stay exactly where you are! We are the Royal Marines!”

  He heard the one called Marsh, somewhere to his left, mutter, “Go on, make my day!”

  Figures dashed past and down the slope toward the water, sun on the stubbled faces, the green berets, the glint of weapons.

  Somebody must have made a run for it. There was a scuffle, and the thud of a heavy blow. A man sprawled into the shallows, gasping, perhaps only just realizing what had happened. A marine walked toward him. Ready. And maybe, despite all the training, eager to fire.

  More shouts, glass breaking, something splashing in the water alongside. A gun, an identity, who would care?

  Ross seized the wire guardrail and leaped on to the boat which had initiated the action. It was pale green in the strengthening light, the hull showing the scars and knocks of a long life. He peered into the cabin where a man sat, back against a locker, hands on his head as he stared at the marine who had just searched him, the muzzle of an automatic inches from his mouth.

  He did not look at Ross, but said, “The girl’s all right, sir. She’s spewing up in the heads right now.” He was watching his prisoner. “She keeps asking about her friend.”

  Ross thought of the clenched fist he had seen protruding from the muck and rubbish in the barge. Like a last plea, or a curse.

  “You’re doing fine, Burgess. Keep it up.” He saw the question still on the young marine’s face and was glad he had remembered his name. “If this one tries anything, let him have it!”

  Voices called to one another, a hand reached out here and there to slap a friend in passing. More than any words. Hamlyn was shouting something, wiping his face with the back of his wrist. Some one else called, “One of ’em in the wheelhouse, sir!” and there were insults or obscenities, too muffled to distinguish.

  Ross climbed on to the other boat. One of the canvas coffins was still there, and he saw Steve peering across at him, giving him a thumbs-up.

  No more resistance. Nothing. Just empty faces staring at the marines and their trained weapons. All it needed . . .

  The wheelhouse was rough and ready, clothing and personal gear lying everywhere. The boat had been stolen, too. Another story.

  “Watch out!”

  He swung round, aware only of the fi
gure beside some hanging oilskins. Where he must have been hiding when the loud-hailer shattered the silence.

  Not a face, but a photograph. It made no sense. Movement, too, and the sound of breaking glass, and maybe a shot.

  The sun had gone. And he was falling. Like a tunnel, darker and darker.

  Then nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  He sat quite still, deliberately so, his palms pressed on the arms of the chair, his feet flat on the floor, his heartbeat and his breathing regular.

  It will take time. How often had he heard that? Or was that all part of the unreality?

  He gazed across the room, moving his head without pain. If he closed his eyes it would all come back. The hands, groping, tapping, squeezing. It will take time.

  Hours, weeks, yet sometimes it seemed like yesterday. Now. Other memories. White jackets, patient and sometimes anxious voices. More pain, then sliding away. Like swimming underwater. Or dying.

  Vague memories of being driven somewhere, in a vehicle so well sprung that it was like being in a boat of some kind. Ironic, that . . . An ambulance. Another hospital. More pain. Somehow trying to hold on. Keep a grip. It will take time.

  Then the first steps, with an orderly holding his arm. A wild sense of triumph after crossing this room unaided.

  Visitors too, vague and unrecognizable. When he had felt only their pity. Uniforms and voices; he should have known them.

  He turned his head carefully and looked at the other wall. A uniform hung from a rack, neatly arranged, a green beret on the top. It would be a new one. The other one, once they had cut him out of it, must have been a bit of a mess.

  He pressed his back against the chair. He could face it. Accept it. This was now. The smart Lovat uniform was not an illusion. Major Ross Blackwood was here.

  He was surprised that he could remain so calm. It was real. The rest was the nightmare.

  He saw the flowers on a table. Sharon had brought them whenever she came to visit him. And all those other times when she had been prevented from seeing him, even from holding his hand. And on that first clear visit, which had seemed like a reunion in its quiet intensity. Sometimes he had fallen asleep, fatigue, drugs, he was never certain of anything, except of the strength she had given him.

  Even now, after his steady improvement, it was impossible to accept the tricks his mind had played on him. From despair to absurdity. Like the moment when he had realized that the figure at the bedside was his mother, Joanna. Holding his hand, very still. All he had been able to grasp was that she had somehow reached him in an instant, as if by crossing the road from Hawks Hill. And another time, when he had since learned his condition had been critical, she had been beside him again, one hand on his face, exactly like the day when he had been knocked off his new bicycle on his way to school. He had been wanting to explain that it was an accident, nobody’s fault, so that she would not worry about it. She had been crying then, too.

  He had seen her sitting with Sharon. Were they friends now, or rivals? Joanna had stayed in a hotel near the hospital. Now she was back in her house beside the stables. She must have dreaded it. Reminded all the time of her husband’s death, and the brutal formality of the telegram. It is with deep regret that I have to inform you . . .

  Even his sister had managed to get in touch with him by telephone from some obscure location in Scotland where she had been covering a story for Focus. She was still with Howard Ford. Perhaps for his own reasons, Ford had kept the news of her brother’s confrontation with death from her until the crisis had passed.

  Perhaps. Maybe. Like a puzzle which might never be solved.

  He still wondered how Sharon had managed to remain in Londonderry at such short notice. She had been about to leave for London when the world had exploded.

  And later, the official visits. Major Fisher’s successor, a grave-eyed officer who kept his conversation to a minimum. Captain Seabrook, alert and cheerful; ‘relieved’ might have been a better description. And Corporal Harwood, another firm handshake which he remembered so well from that last time he had seen him.

  He looked at the uniform again. Today, this afternoon, he would put it on, and resume his identity. He allowed his mind to explore it, confront it. He had nearly died. There were times when he had believed he was dead. Blurred faces, the soundless explosion. The pain. He had pieced it together deliberately, sharpening the edges, pushing the shadows aside, like those last moments in the pub cellar, and amongst the bricks and scaffolding. The pistol with its silencer, and the girl who had lost her man in a callous murder.

  But the ambush had been a success, and they had not lost a single life. Even Colonel Sir Aubrey Souter had sent his congratulations. Ross found he could smile again, and it felt like life returning. Souter would have been just as correct in sending his condolences.

  So what now? Back to England, to face possible discharge. Unfit for active duty, no matter what the medical gurus said.

  “Are you ready to make a start, Major?”

  It was the duty sister, fresh and very clean in her uniform. She had, apparently, been here when they had brought him in. She had probably forgotten that, shut it from her thoughts. Had to, in her work.

  He recalled when she had first spoken to him, changing his dressings, telling him he had called her ‘Glynis’.

  He said, “Yes, I’m ready. I can’t thank you enough, but you must have been told that many times.”

  She looked at him. “From you, it means something. After what you did.” She shook her head. “I hope they remember when all this insanity is over and done with.”

  And she was Irish.

  She was leaving. “Your car will be here soon. If you need anything else . . .” She was gone.

  Ross glanced at the neat pile of clothing. He was going to the same high-security hotel as Clive Tobin’s team had occupied, ‘Fort Amazon’. It might be the last time he met Sharon before he was ordered back to England, and she continued with her contract wherever events dictated. He felt some of his resolve crumble. It took more than a uniform . . .

  It will take time. Mocking him.

  He touched his side, feeling one of the scars. Cheated because he could recall so little. The face, full of hatred, changing to a mask of agony, the one he had imagined was a photograph even as the blast had smashed him down. And the other twisted scar now on his chest, where his binoculars had been shattered by a splinter, and had saved his life. He pulled on the clean shirt and saw himself in the wall mirror, the scars and the uncertainty.

  Then we’ll make time.

  Leaving the hospital was harder than he had expected. It was a large, busy establishment which he had seen a few times when being driven past it, but no closer. Behind him he could imagine the room, the same room which had taken so long to show its personality. The bed changed, the fresh flowers taken away, the military policeman gone from the passageway. Maybe a new occupant already installed.

  The last part was different again. The staff nurse smiling, but dabbing her eyes when he had said good-bye. The sister he had called Glynis, turning her cheek to receive a kiss. Enough; there were no words at all.

  And the surgeon who had hurried from somewhere to shake his hand: the man who had done most of the repair work. Only a blurred image above a white mask, until today. All smiles. Mere pleasure or professional surprise, who could say?

  And other vignettes. A couple leaving, pausing to look back at the curved stairway, as if unwilling to abandon some last hope. The woman in tears, the man gripping her around the shoulders. No words needed there, either.

  Then, signing some sort of register, a porter watching him do it. Seen it all.

  A few visitors, some turning as the uniform passed. He felt himself straighten his back, the chill running through him. Like hearing the orderly again, the taskmaster, urging him to take those first steps across that same room. And again.

  His transport was waiting by the main entrance, not a Land Rover this time, but a staff ca
r. Harwood was standing by the open door, throwing up a salute that would have done credit to an admiral’s guard, but unable to control a great grin of pleasure.

  Lieutenant Peter Hamlyn was here too, although Ross had heard that all of the original section had returned to England some days before, including Steve Blackwood, who had visited him several times in hospital. Probably sick and tired of all the official reports and interviews. You’d think we were the bloody villains.

  Hamlyn said, “Good to see you, sir.” They shook hands, and again Ross felt eyes watching them.

  As Harwood put a suitcase in the car boot, Ross saw several other bags already stowed, his own belongings from the H.Q. on the other side of town. So it was final. They were sending him home. No speeches or boozy farewells. For him, it was over.

  The car moved away from the entrance, as an ambulance was about to enter. Perhaps that same room . . .

  Hamlyn said, “Just wanted to see you before we were split up. To say thanks, as much as anything. I thought I knew most of it.” He almost shrugged. “That day on the river changed a hell of a lot. Not just for me, either. The other side of things, which we so rarely see . . . then suddenly you’re bang in the middle of something you’ll never find in any drill book!”

  Ross glanced at him. Quick-thinking, reliable: only once had he given way, when he had seen an unarmed man gunned down, and his killer turning from the wind to light a cigarette. Like the young marine who had been so concerned for the girl, sobbing for her friend or lover, who had been killed without pity or remorse.

  Steve had told him that the same girl had been seen outside the police station where the prisoners had been taken, screaming and damning the marines for what had happened. As if they were the culprits. Leaked information, or a double betrayal; the truth would remain buried forever in the official records.

  Hamlyn said abruptly, “I’d like to be considered for active duty, sir.” He turned in the seat and met Ross’s eyes directly. “When you need a good, hard-working gun dog!”

  Harwood braked carefully as a woman pushing a pram crossed the road in front of the car.