Sad Wind From the Sea - Jack Higgins [61]
For a single moment Hagen was about to say no. To tell her that Mason at least had been honest with her, but the moment passed. Somewhere near at hand Mason seemed to smile sardonically and Hagen said: 'Everybody was in on it. They all wanted a share.'
She smiled harshly and stared blindly into space. 'What a fool I was. What a fool I was to believe you.'
He felt the thrust of that barbed charge as though it had penetrated his flesh. She held no one responsible but him. For her, the others were of no account. For a moment an unreasoning anger moved in him and he turned and poured coffee into his cup with an unsteady hand. 'Did you really imagine that men would risk suicide for wages when they could have so much more?'
'No - I was never so simple.' She stood up and placed the mug on the seat beside her. 'From the beginning it was an unbelievable dream. You were the reality. I believed in you - no other. I thought you were doing it because you loved me.' She walked quietly back into her cabin and closed the door.
For a little while he sat staring into space and thinking, and then he sighed and said, half aloud, 'What a damned pity it had to come too late.'
He finished loading the sub-machine-gun and the carbine and then he primed the remaining grenades. He counted them in satisfaction. There were eight and he smiled slightly. Kossoff was not going to take them so easily. As he stood up the door opened and the girl returned. She was wearing a spare pair of his pants with the bottoms rolled up and an old sweater. There was a subtle change in her appearance and it was nothing to do with clothes. She said briskly, 'What happens now?'
Hagen tucked the box of grenades under one arm and picked up the weapons. 'I think you'd better make a meal,' he said. 'I'll take these to the wheelhouse.'
'Where's O'Hara?'
He smiled tightly. 'Drunk. I left him on watch and he's sprawled out on deck.'
She turned to the stove and said: 'You'd better bring him down here. I'll make more coffee and try to sober him up.'
When he had stowed the weapons safely in the wheelhouse he returned to O'Hara. He crouched down and shook him and, as the old man groaned, slapped him several times in the face. O'Hara came awake and struggled for a moment and Hagen held him firmly and said: 'Shut up, you old bastard. I don't want to hear a peep out of you.'
He jerked O'Hara to his feet and half-dragged him through into the galley and deposited him on a seat. The old man blinked and ran a blue-veined hand over his face. 'I don't feel very well,' he said.
'You'll feel a damned sight worse if you don't sober up,' Hagen told him.
Rose handed the old man a mug of strong, black coffee. 'Drink it. You'll feel better.'
He took the mug with trembling hands and spilled half of it down his shirt. Hagen snorted with disgust and said, 'I can't trust you for five minutes at a time.' Rose laughed lightly and when he looked at her she was smiling in a peculiar fashion. He turned quickly and went up on deck.
He went into the wheelhouse and turned on the tiny light above the chart table and began to make calculations. It was two-fifteen and the rendezvous with Charlie's boat was for six o'clock. He examined the chart again and then went out on deck and gazed at the water. The mist had thickened appreciably and swirled up from the marsh in ghostly waves. He flicked his cigarette into the night and a smile creased his face. He looked up at the sky and could see only half the stars that had been visible an hour before. When he went down into the galley there was hope on his face.
'You look pleased with yourself,' Rose said as she put a plate of beans in front of him.
He nodded. 'Things are looking up,' he said. 'There's a heavy mist beginning to rise.'
'Won't that make it more difficult for us?' she said. 'How will we ever get out of the marshes if we can't see where we're going?'
He helped himself