Hunter Killer Read online

  our hero.'

  I saw the reason now for his small-talk—he had saved me from contributing one more of the kind of histrionic gestures which I had so deplored.

  Thanks,' I said. Thanks very much'

  The clear grey-green eyes were expressionless. He said, with an almost conspiratorial air, Come on—let's give it to them—a smart double salute from two old comrades.' He flicked the cigarette-stub into the water. There's a fag-end for friend Peace—it's all right, don't look so startled, we're not being broadcast. Now!' He jumped smartly to attention and pistoned a salute which would have been the envy of a stars-in-the-eyes midshipman. I saluted too.

  Well, that's that,' said the DNI. Wish we could get a Pink Plymouth in the wardroom, but I don't suppose everyone is as broadminded as to pour Glenfiddich into a dead man's face.'

  I went cold. Glenfiddich! Only Mac and I had been there. Had the DNI heard from the CIA agent? What was the tie-up? I turned from watching the two fleets' complicated man-oeuvre to bring them back to port to find the DNI's eyes on me, unsmiling, hard. You came to see me a couple of evenings ago?'

  It was a statement, a demand..

  Yes.'

  Why come to me?'

  I wanted you to help stop this silly charade.'

  I? A retired naval officer living quietly among the back-,

  blocks of the sea?'

  Yes. You still carry a good deal of weight in high places'

  My dear boy, you overrate me.'

  I don't think so.'

  He said quietly: ' The petty officer underrated Mam'zelle Adele.'

  You mean to say—?'

  Oh, come, Garland!' He was impatient, but pleased at his minor triumph in disconcerting me. I naturally heard

  all the petty officer said about myself and my young lady—I had him dismissed from the guard.'

  How?'

  29

  ` You can't live all your life surrounded by cloak-anddagger listening devices without taking some into retirement,' , he replied. I had an ultra-sensitive mike in the post-box which recorded everything the petty officer said. There are others in the garden, too.' He was pedantic. ' Your outburst and character delineation of the late Commander Peace was apt, penetrating and very touching. You must hear the tape. I regret that the petty officer's Eliza Doolittle exclamation is a little blurred. But I was delighted to have the negrillons' patois—

  a patois within a patois, as it were. Mam'zelle Adele says the language is perfect.'

  The petty officer didn't seem so very far off the mark, the way he enthused about his Mam'zelle Adele. She must be a

  cut above the ordinary Seychelles good-time girl, though. A teacher of languages—well, that was as good a cover as any, even though it didn't deceive the locals.

  He watched me closely. ' I couldn't make out why you

  suddenly went back without pressing your desire to see me.'

  I could not tell him why. I improvised something about

  his being part of Peace's funeral circus, but I could tell he was not deceived.

  The fleet split up for the difficult North Passage past St

  Anne's into the main harbour. The lush green hills of Mahé

  were so close that I could pick out the DNI's cottage. Come and have a drink with me tonight,' said the DNI, with the peculiar type of authority the experienced clubman conveys with an invitation not to be refused. A drink and some dinner. I have some excellent turtle steaks from Agalega—the real thing, not the sort of mush they pass off as turtle in Mahé. Varra-varra to start with—I've never seen a fish look more like copper. Mam'zelle Adele will be delighted.'

  3 M A M ' Z E L L E A D E L E

  Mam'zelle Adele's smile was welcoming, but her eyes were

  shadowed. It seemed almost as if a light had been deliberately dimmed above the high cheek-bones and it gave to the sensitive, volatile face and expressive lips a strangeness which, in the unusual tropical half-light before the dark, set my pulses racing. She answered my knock at the DNI'S cottage door and stood holding it open for me to enter. With her was a Limuria creature as strange and elegant as she was—a small pale-grey ring-tailed lemur. I was later to know him as

  30

  Nossi Be. He rubbed himself gently against her unstockinged legs, watchful, friendly, but with reservations, like Mam'zelle Adele herself. She could not have been thirty and the pinkish cotton dress—a flushed coral colour favoured by the islanders—did nothing to hide her exquisite figure.

  She wore coconut fibre sandals. Her face was tanned, her

  light hair sun-bleached. That perfect vignette of her standing at the door in the half-dusk is with me yet. You're staring.' She smiled. As she said it, I knew that it was important for me to remember every detail about her. Her voice had a strange, dammed-up quality, like a current race through a reef passage. When I did not reply, there was a touch of light somewhere in the back of those shadowed eyes, like sun striking on the flash of a frigate bird's wing. You'll be John Garland, Commander Peace's friend.'

  Somehow the voice had drawn a subtle distinction between

  myself and Peace by using his title. I was glad of it.

  Yes,' I said, at a loss under her scrutiny. Yes, that's

  right.'

  A silence fell between us and she said, I'm Mam'zelle

  Adele.' ,

  Not Adele someone or other but—just Mam'zelle Adele?'

  She laughed a quiet, easy laugh which met my query halfway.

  ' In the Grands Carreaux—those are the big fishing-grounds

  north of St Brandon—there's a poison-fish which they call

  Mam'zelle Adele. So it's difficult for anyone in these parts to say simply, Adele—they must add Mam'zelle.' She looked

  hard at me. A title gives status, you know.'

  Was she perhaps trying to explain her relationship with the Dm? I didn't want to discuss it, looking at that unusual face. St Brandon—I like that better than the Portuguese Cargados Carajos.'

  Before she could reply, there was a soft tap-tap from inside the bungalow, like a blind person's cane.

  My father—I'm French, you know—held the oil puissance for St Brandon.'

  Jouissance?'

  Concession.' She gave a soft value to the syllables, like a pirogue's keel on sand.

  She added, St Brandon has a ring about it.'

  I shared her warmth, remembering a grey old ruined abbey

  on the Atlantic shore of Ireland, where once I had made a

  pilgrimage to St Brendan's grave. When the squadrons of

  clouds come to obscure the mountains above the saint's grave, they will tell you in the soft Connemara tongue that it is St 31

  Brendan's angels bringing him safely home across the sea from America 800 years before Columbus. I wanted to tell her. The soft tap-tap came to my ears again. It reminded me of the intruder's stethoscope against Peace's coffin. It broke the chain. She sensed it.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  You've been there, then?' Her voice was flat, as if she already knew the answer.

  Commander Peace and I called there on our way from Mauritius here,' I replied. An ancestor of his, Sir John Peace was the first Englishman there. He charted it. Peace thought it might be fun to do the same.'

  A bit of fun!' she exclaimed ironically. Yes, that is what Commander Peace would have said.'

  So Peace had been in touch with the DNI. The shadow of his death lay between us.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  She looked at me, a little puzzled, then said formally, ' Sir George is expecting you.'

  Sir George!—the DNI to me. I wondered less now that I saw her why he had set up with Mam'zelle Adele, but it left me with an inexplicable resentment, nevertheless.

  She led the way into the fair-sized bungalow. Pressurelamps gave a comforting sizzle. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  Steel against steel. Mam'zelle Adele opened a door. Taptap. Tap-tap. The toughened steel punch was against the white bone. He was tapping it
with a tiny hammer: tap-tap, tap-tap. The skull lay on a cushion, surrounded by blue-grey chips. The

  DNI did not look up but tap-tapped again. A flake came away and the bone stood out, dirty-white.

  Got it!' he exclaimed with satisfaction. He blew the chips away. ' Isn't he a beauty? Scarcely distorted at all—look at those teeth.'

  The skull was the size of a horse's, bat the teeth were predatory—as long as a man's finger—and hooked. Above the eye-sockets its shape broadened like an aeroplane's tail. If he's not an Aulacephalodon, I'll eat blue shale,' the DNI remarked.

  I drew closer to the grotesque thing on the cushion. Much

  of the bone was free of its stone matrix.

  Aulacephalodon?' I queried.

  This chap was a reptile which wandered about Africa two hundred million years ago. Up to now specimens have been confined to the semi-desert Karoo region of South Africa32

  never found anywhere else. Now I'll rock them—here's blue Karoo shale among the corals of the Saya de Malha Bank.'

  Peace and I had skirted Saya de Malha after St Brandon on our way to the Seychelles. It is a vast collection of shoals, atolls and cays scarcely above water-level, extending over thousands of square miles in the Sea of Limuria.

  You're talking Greek to Captain Garland and me,' Mam'

  zelle Adele chided him gently.

  The DNI laughed. ' Why yes, I am—Aulacephalodon is Greek for a winged head: look at the winged formation of the back of his skull'

  Mam'zelle Adele was reproving. I think we all need a drink, don't you, Sir George?'

  Usual, please.'

  I asked for whisky, wondering at his commanding tone. Well, he'd been used to ordering people around all his life. He got up and sat on the edge of the table, swinging a leg. He asked didactically, You realize what this means?'

  I'm afraid I don't.'

  The Karoo,' he said with a schoolmasterish air, is a unique semi-desert area of South Africa which is the richest repository of reptile fossils in the world. Man, of course, had not yet appeared on the scene when they lived.' He looked

  at me penetratingly. Man is still young in the scheme of things—only a million years, maybe—and some of these creatures were adaptable enough to survive for sixty million. But in man's short stay on the face of the earth he has evinced one characteristic which may cause him to survive longer than any other creature—there has never been a killer like him. There is nothing man will not kill, has not killed. He knows the lesson these creatures never learned—kill first, have the best weapon, and you live.' His voice was precise, prim. Man must kill in order to survive.'

  Geoffrey Peace's philosophy,' I replied. But before the words were out, I knew I was wrong: Peace had learnt his killerphilosophy from this man. I looked away. The room commanded a panorama of the

  fleet anchorage, the isles, and the sea beyond. There was still enough light to see the white tip of Récif where we had buried Peace. The full-width glass doors were closed against the sea-breeze and below them stretched lawn and flowerbeds. Was it coincidence that the DNI was in the Seychelles for the mighty resurgence of British naval power, the Limuria Squadron? What had been his part in restoring the Royal Navy's power and prestige?

  Mam'zelle Adele's arrival with the drinks broke the spell. HK. 33

  You see what this means?' he repeated. Although the

  didacticism was there, the fervour had gone from his voice. I sipped the whisky. No.'

  It contradicts all previous theories that Saya de Malha

  was due to subsidence, not upsurge, of the land mass underneath.' I winced at the academic sophistries. Mam'zelle Adele said, with that odd pitch to her tone,

  He's trying to say, the Karoo and Saya de Malha are related.'

  What did it matter to me whether the Karoo was or was

  not related to a bank in the Indian Ocean? At that moment I was more interested in Mam'zelle Adele.

  ' Where do you figure in this?' I asked her.

  The DNI replied before she could answer. Mam'zelle Adele knows the islands. She speaks Creole like a native.

  She is my guide on my fossil-hunting expeditions. St Brandon . . She sipped a cloudy drink. It wasn't alcohol but her own

  mixture of fruit juice and the nectar of coconut-flowers.

  The silence was oppressive.

  The DNI went on, ' You find these fossil reptiles only in blue shale. This piece was overgrown by coral at Saya de

  Malha. It had enormous implications.'

  I waited politely. If it had not been for that flash of his while Mam'zelle Adele was fetching the drinks, I would have been bored stiff.

  Implications?'

  , Why, yes—it means I have definitely proved the existence of Limuria.

  ' I'm afraid I'm not with you.'

  He sat swinging a leg. The presence of blue shale in midocean thousands of miles away from the Karoo itself proves the existence of a common tie hundreds of millions of years ago. Here I've found a Karoo creature in Limuria.' He tapped the skull. It shows that Africa was once linked to

  Limuria—by land. It is not fantastic now to speak of Limuria as an Indian Ocean Atlantis. Of course, there's a great deal yet to be done, but I am inclined to think the same upheaval which threw up the Karoo mountains was the one which

  drowned Limuria: under the sea'

  Very interesting,' I murmured.

  He went off at a tangent, speaking rapidly to Mam'zelle

  Adele, asking if dinner was nearly ready, offering me another drink.

  She took my glass. There was a lot in her eyes I wanted to understand.

  34

  ` What were we talking about?' he asked when she had

  gone.

  Here was my cue. The clear eyes watched me intently.

  Killers,' I replied. Man the killer.'

  Good,' he said. Good.'

  There had been a message and I had got it. The voice

  became more precise, and I knew I was in deep waters.

  All man's long tale of killing—' he tapped the grotesque

  skull—' from this fellow onwards has one short moral: kill, first—' he tapped the hooked fangs with a finger-nail'

  have bigger and better teeth.'

  Or—' I said it very slowly= the weapon to end all

  weapons.'

  The voice was gentle, almost prim. The ultimate weapon—

  yes.' The words came from deep inside the man. The soft

  tones belied the steel beneath.

  I put the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. In this

  age?'

  The clear eyes probed me, assessed. Then he walked over

  to the glass door. It was dark now and the lights of the

  fleet stood out. The DNI jerked his head towards them. In this

  A cold thrill went through me, for Peace had spoken of

  that slightly world-weary, compassionate tone which the DNI was given to use in times of great crisis.

  I joined him. We stood, saying nothing.

  Then he sighed, glanced at his watch, and threw open the

  doors.

  A lovely night! I wonder if one gets nights like these

  anywhere else in the world except South Africa?'

  I did not hear Mam'zelle Adele in her soft sandals. She

  handed us new drinks. The DNI stood looking. No one spoke. Then he said, Turn out that light, will you, John—it rather spoils the effect.'

  It was an order, not a request. John, not Garland, or Captain Garland, but John. For him to address me like that, I knew I had surmounted some obstacle he had laid in my

  path. I was surprised to see Mam'zelle Adele put out a bottle of Glenfiddich and a glass. I turned out the pressure-lamp. My eyes were blinded by its closeness. A soft arm was slipped through mine and Mam'zelle Adele said, Let me guide you.'

  She was close. I smelt the sun-smell of her and was glad I

  had come. I stumbled to the doorway, still half-dazzled.


  I didn't see him, only the gleam of the knife.

  I jerked aside, dragging Mam'zelle Adele with me. I can35

  noned into the door-frame. Then, as he laughed, I froze. It was Geoffrey Peace.

  He pulled off the black rubber cap and grinned at the DNI. " Nothing much wrong with John's reflexes, is there?'

  I blinked in disbelief. Peace stood on the terrace in the same black rubber suit in which I had seen him in his coffin. A long diving-knife was in his hand. I tried to speak, but the words would not come.

  Peace said ruefully. Next time you want an arse-overelbow stunt, you'd better give me some astronaut training beforehand. I thought the bloody thing would never stop cartwheeling.'

  The DNI laughed too. You went up a lot higher than I expected.'

  Peace said, I'm black and blue, despite the foam rubber.'

  The ejector gear work all right?' asked the DNI.

  Peace laughed again. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here

  now.'

  The DNI said, Get inside, will you, Geoffrey? Nobody saw you?'

  Peace shook his head.

  I gasped, Geoffrey!'

  Pour me a whisky, boy, will you, if there's such a thing in the house? Christ, to watch that bloody MacFadden pour the stuff all over my face and I dying for a drink!'

  Mam'zelle Adele was still on my arm. Peace's greeting to

  her was level, comradely. Hello, Mam'zelle Adele.'

  She detached herself. Good evening, Commander. Was it a good trip?'

  Get me a drink and I'll tell you,' he replied.

  Geoffrey — I started again.

  He cut me short. The funeral act must have been pretty

  convincing, judging from your reactions then—and now.'

  The DNI locked the glass doors and drew the thick coconutmatting sunblinds. He relit the lamp. Peace glanced at the bottle. Hmmm, Glenffiddich for the

  returning prodigal.'

  My hands shook so that the drink slopped. What is all

  this about?'

  Later,' Peace grinned. What I need is whisky, food, and lack of adulation—in that order.' He swallowed the smooth spirit at a gulp.

  Your clothes are in your room,' said Mam'zelle Adele. '

  What's to eat?' he demanded.

  Varra-varra,' replied the DNI. Varra-varra and turtle steak.'