in the wind. But what Ramirez doesn’t know is that you were suspicious of Kane right from the start, and this gives us a perfect opportunity. We string Kane along – employ him, feed him any information we want him to know and keep from him anything we don’t want him to know. We also keep him underfoot and don’t lose him again. That’s why you mustn’t ask him any awkward questions – not right now, anyway.’
I thought about it for a long time. ‘Does this mean you’re coming in with us? Putting up the finance?’
‘You’re damn right it does,’ snapped Campbell. ‘If Suarez-Navarro are going to all this trouble they must be on to something big, and I’d like to stab them in the back just for old times’ sake. I’ll put up half a million dollars – or whatever it takes – and I ask only one thing. That we get there, and do it, before they can.’
Geordie said gently, ‘It was a good idea of mine, wasn’t it?’
‘What’s that?’ asked Campbell.
‘Geordie’s recruiting a private army,’ I explained. ‘As he gets older he gets more bloodthirsty.’
A look passed between them for the second time that made me feel like the outsider. Without saying a word they were in full accord on many levels, and for a moment I felt very inexperienced indeed.
Campbell said, ‘There’s another thing. My doctor is troubled about my health, the goddam quack. He’s been pestering me to take a sea voyage, and I’m suddenly minded to accept his advice. I’m coming along for the ride.’
‘You’re the boss,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised.
He turned to Geordie. ‘Now, what kind of a ship have you, Captain?’
‘A brigantine,’ said Geordie. ‘About two hundred tons.’
Campbell’s jaw dropped. ‘But that’s a little sailing ship! This is supposed to be a serious project.’
‘Take it easy,’ I said, grinning at Geordie who was already bristling at any slight to Esmerelda. ‘A lot of research vessels are sailing ships; there happen to be a number of sound reasons.’
‘All right. Let’s hear them.’
‘Some of the reasons are purely technical,’ I said. ‘For instance, it’s easier to make a sailing ship non-magnetic than a powered ship. Magnetism plays hell with all sorts of important readings. But the reasons you’ll appreciate are purely economic.’
‘If you’re talking economics you’re talking my language,’ he growled.
‘A research ship never knows exactly where it’s going. We might find ourselves dredging a thousand miles away from the nearest land. Station keeping and dredging take power and fuel, and an engine powered ship would need a hell of a lot of fuel to make the round trip.
‘But a sailing ship can make the journey and arrive on station with close on full tanks, given careful management. She can keep on station longer and no one need worry about whether there’ll be enough fuel to get back. You could use a powered ship to do the job but it would cost you – oh, a million pounds plus. Geordie’s boat will be fine.’
‘The day’s not been wasted,’ Campbell said. ‘I’ve learned something new. I reckon you know your job, Trevelyan. What will you need in the way of equipment?’
So we got down to it. The biggest item was the winch, which was to be installed amidships, and storage space for 30,000 feet of cable below it. There was also to be a laboratory for on-the-spot analysis and all the necessary equipment would take a lot of money, and a lot of refitting.
‘We’ll need a bloody big generator for this lot,’ said Geordie. ‘It looks as though it’ll take a diesel bigger than the main engine. Lucky, isn’t it, that charter tourists take up so much space with luxuries.’
Presently Campbell suggested lunch, so we went down to the dining room to do some more planning over grilled steaks. It was arranged that I should concentrate on collecting equipment while Geordie prepared Esmerelda and got his crew together. Very little was said concerning the location, or the availability, of the strange treasure we were after, and I knew that I alone could come up with anything of use there. I had some heavy studying ahead of me as well as all the rest.
‘If you take on Kane it’ll mean we’ve got him in our sights,’ said Campbell, harping back to his favourite subject. ‘Not that it makes any difference. Ramirez is sure to have other scouts out. I’ll be watching him too.’
I’d been thinking about Kane.
‘Your review of the situation was very well in its way, but it was wrong on one point.’
‘What’s that?’ said Campbell.
‘You said that Kane spun me a yarn as cover, and that it didn’t matter what it was. That’s not entirely so, you know – we have independent evidence. The death certificate states the cause of death as appendicitis. Kane and Schouten both told the same lie and I’d like to know why.’
‘By God, you’re right,’ said Campbell. ‘We’ll get it out of Kane as soon as he’s served his purpose.’
Geordie grunted. ‘We’re going into the Pacific,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll get it out of Schouten. At all events, we’ll be at the root of it.’
It was nearly three months before we got away. You can’t begin a scientific expedition as though you were going on a picnic. There were a million things to do and we were kept busy on a sixteen hour day, seven days a week. The first thing I did was to hand in my resignation from the Institute. Old Jarvis didn’t take it too well, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it so he accepted the situation with reluctance. I wished I could have told him what I was doing but that was impossible.
Geordie assiduously recruited his crew and soon they began to turn up. He had kept on four of his own lads and had of course taken on Kane in place of one of the men he let go. Of the other six that he added, all were faces that I hadn’t seen since I had been a boy during the war, tagging around after my dad’s gang.
Ian Lewis detached himself from his croft with alacrity and Geordie made him first mate; he’d had years under sail and was almost as good as a professional. Ex-corporal Taffy Morgan came along; one night during the war he had killed six Germans with a commando knife in utter silence, earning himself the M.M. Danny Williams had also won the M.M., although I never found out what for since he was reticent about it. There was the burly bulk of Nick Dugan, an Irishman from the Free State. Bill Hunter turned up – he had made a name for himself as an underwater demolitions expert and was the only other regular sailing man among the team. And there was Jim Taylor, another explosives wizard – he had been very near my father when he was killed.
They were now all into their forties, like Geordie, but seemed as tough as ever. Not one had lost his fitness and there wasn’t a paunch among the lot of them. Geordie said he could have recruited twenty-five but he’d picked the best of them, and I almost believed him. I was confident that if we ran into trouble we could handle it.
Geordie was confident too, of welding them into a good sailing crew. What any of them lacked in knowledge they’d soon pick up and the enthusiasm was certainly there – although for the time being they knew nothing of the complications in which we were entangled. It was a straight research and survey trip to them all, including Kane, and any hints Geordie may have given his special team they kept strictly to themselves. As Campbell had predicted, Kane was sticking as close to us as a leech; Geordie had simply told him that there was a berth for him if he cared to cross the Atlantic with us, and Kane had jumped at the opportunity.
Campbell had gone back to Canada. Before he left