LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Nine

      Less than ten minutes after McKinnon’s arrival on the bridge the phone rang.

      ‘Jamieson here,’ the voice said. ‘Things do keep happening aboard this damned ship. There’s been another accident.’

      ‘Accident?’

      ‘Accident on purpose. Incident, I should have said. Your pal Limassol.’

      ‘Limassol’ was the name that McKinnon had given to the man whom he had discovered to be the radio operator of the Argos. Apart from this discovery, the only other thing that the Bo’sun had been able to discover about him was that he was a Greek Cypriot from Limassol.

      ‘What’s happened to my pal Limassol?’

      ‘He’s been clobbered.’

      ‘Ah.’ McKinnon was not a man much given to exclamatory outbursts. ‘Inevitably. Who clobbered him?’

      ‘You should know better than to ask that question, Bo’sun. How the hell should I know who clobbered him? Nobody ever knows who does anything aboard the San Andreas. The Chief Officer was more prophetic than he knew when he gave this ship its new name. It’s a bloody disaster area. I can only give you the facts as I know them. Sister Maria was on duty when Limassol sat down to have a look at the transceiver. After a while he stood and made the motion of screwing his forefinger against the palm of his other hand. She guessed, correctly, that he wanted tools and sent for Wayland Day to take him down to the engine-room. I was there and gave him the tools he wanted. He also took a bridge-megger with him. Gave every impression of a man who knew what he was doing. On his way back, in the passageway leading to the mess-deck, he was clobbered. Something hard and heavy.’

      ‘How hard, how heavy?’

      ‘If you’ll just hang on for a moment. We have him down here in a bed in A Ward. Dr Sinclair is attending to him. He can tell you better than I can.’

      There was a brief silence, then Sinclair was on the phone. ‘Bo’sun? Well, damn it, confirmation of the existence of Flannelfoot number two – not that any confirmation was needed, but I didn’t expect such quick and violent proof. This lad doesn’t hang around, does he? Dangerous, violent, acts on his own initiative and his mind’s working on the same wavelength as ours.’

      ‘Limassol?’

      ‘Pretty poorly, to say the least. Some metallic object, no question, could easily have been a crowbar. I would guess that the attacker’s intent was to kill him. With most people he might well have succeeded but this Limassol seems to have a skull like an elephant. Fractured, of course. I’ll have an X-ray. Routine and quite superfluous but mandatory. No signs of any brain damage, which is not to say that there isn’t any. But no obvious damage, not, at least, at this stage. Two things I’m pretty certain about, Mr McKinnon. He’ll live but he’s not going to be of much use to you – or anyone – for some time to come.’

      ‘As Dr Singh said about Lieutenant Cunningham – two hours, two days, two weeks, two months?’

      ‘Something like that. I’ve simply no idea. All I know is that if he does recover rapidly he’ll be of no possible use to you for days to come, so you can rule him out of any plans you may have.’

      ‘I’m fresh out of plans, Doctor.’

      ‘Indeed. We seem to be running out of options. Mr Jamieson would like to have another word with you.’

      Jamieson came back on the phone. ‘Maybe this could have been my fault, Bo’sun. Maybe if I’d been thinking a bit more clearly and a bit quicker this wouldn’t have happened.’

      ‘How on earth were you to know that Limassol was going to be attacked?’

      ‘True. But I should have gone with him; not for his protection, but to watch him to see what he did to make the set work. That way I might have picked up enough to have some knowledge – rudimentary, but some – so that we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on one man.’

      ‘Flannelfoot would probably have clobbered you too. No point, sir, in trying to place the blame where none exists. The milk’s spilt and you didn’t spill it. Just give me enough time and I’ll find out it was all McKinnon’s fault.’

      He hung up and related the gist of his conversation to Naseby, who had the wheel, and to Lieutenant Ulbricht, who had declared himself as feeling so fit that he no longer qualified as a bed patient.

      ‘Disturbing,’ Ulbricht said. ‘Our friend seems to be resourceful, very quick-thinking and very much a man of decision and action. I say “disturbing” because it has just occurred to me that he may have been Flannelfoot number one and not Dr Singh, in which case we can expect a great deal more unpleasantness. In any event, it seems to rule out the crew of the Argos – none of them speaks English so they couldn’t have known about the fake cardiac unit being in A Ward.’

      McKinnon looked morose. ‘The fact that none of them appears to understand a word of English – they’re very good with their blank stares when you address them in that language – doesn’t mean that one or two of them don’t speak better English than I do. It doesn’t rule out the crew of the Argos. And, of course, it doesn’t rule out our own crew or the nine invalids we picked up in Murmansk.’

      ‘And how would they have known that the tampered cardiac unit had been transferred from the recovery room to Ward A? Only – let me see – only seven people knew about the transfer. The seven at the table this morning. One of us could have talked,

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