Read Online Seagulls in My Soup by Tristan Jones - Free Book Online

which were all silent and still. “I thought we were going to a hotel,” I said to Reynaud.
    â€œIt’s better if we go straight onboard,” he said quietly. “The weather’s very good for leaving tonight.”
    Tony spoke up. “What about fuel and stores?”
    Reynaud grunted. “Everything is taken care of.”
    â€œAre you sure that this is on the level?” I asked.
    Reynaud grinned. “It is for me, my friend. We all might just as well get on with it. You can’t leave the . . . job now. If the authorities find out you’ve come over here to work, without a work permit . . .
pouf!”
    Just then the van stopped and we all piled out of the back doors. I turned to Reynaud. “Well, thanks a lot. You could have told us about this in Málaga.”
    Reynaud took my arm. “Look, Mr. Jones,” he whispered, “I’ve told you, everything is all right. The boat is all ready for sea. I have good friends over here. All we have to do is leave.”
    â€œAnd what about when we get to France, with no exit permit from Algiers?” enquired Tony anxiously. “You know how bloody sticky the French customs are.”
    â€œPas de problème,
Mr. Rankin,” said Reynaud. “I’ve got plenty of friends in high places there. They’ll probably give you a medal!”
    â€œJesus,” I exclaimed in a low voice. Then I saw, out in the middle of the eastern end of the great harbor basin, under the sliver of a moon in the calm, windless night, the low profile of a whole flotilla of craft, all rafted together.
    For a moment I hesitated. Then I looked at Tony. “What do you think, mate? What he says is true. If we go to the authorities for a permit to sail . . .”
    Tony’s face, in the wan light, was serious. By now the van had left. Below where we stood, at the edge of the jetty, a small motor launch bobbed against the pier ladder. “I just don’t know, Tris . . . I’ll do whatever you think best.”
    â€œOh, shit. Well, in for a penny . . .” I picked up my seabag; “ . . . in for a bloody pound!” I dropped my bag into the launch.
    Soon we were alongside
Aries,
which was rafted up on the outside of a collection of about thirty pleasure boats of all shapes, sizes, and conditions. There were little eighteen-foot sloops, forty-foot yawls, ninety-foot ex-motor-gunboats . . . It looked a bit like the Dunkirk rescue fleet.
    Aries
seemed huge to me. Casting my eye over her upperworks I saw that she was splendidly accoutered with radar scanner, shortwave aerials, and searchlights. All her fittings were first-class. She was moored to small buoys fore and aft, and also tied up to the next vessel, which was almost as large.
    Reynaud climbed onboard first. As I waited for Tony to clamber up the boarding ladder I looked up and saw a young Algerian soldier, with a machine pistol slung over his shoulder, talking in low tones with Reynaud. Just as I reached the top of the ladder myself I saw Reynaud pass yet another envelope. The soldier grinned and saluted; then, after I had plonked down my seabag on the deck, he descended into the launch and disappeared in the direction of the main quay.
    â€œVite, vite . . .
Quick! There is not a lot of time. Put your gear in the wheelhouse. Tony, you come with me . . .”
    â€œWhere’re you off to?” I asked. I knew that Reynaud realized that I had seen that the soldier had not taken his machine pistol with him, even though it wasn’t anywhere around. My brain was by now working away ten to the dozen, trying to figure out a way of getting Tony and me out of this pickle all in two pieces. By now it was quite obvious, from the look of Reynaud’s face, that he was a very determined man indeed. A man who would stop at nothing—probably not even murder—to achieve his own ends.