The Heart of Hell Read online

  The coffee was hot and strong, and the night was still and deep. Now and again Miranda would alter their course as if steering by some other sense, like the smell or the feel of the breeze and damp air. Even with the caffeine, della Torre felt himself fading.

  “I’m fine to stay at the helm until the morning. I always go to bed at dusk — saves on paraffin. So I had a decent sleep before you showed up,” she said. “Why don’t you go down and get a couple of hours’ rest? I imagine you haven’t slept at all night.”

  He was grateful, and did as she suggested. The sound of water flowing past, the odd syncopation of waves slapping the thin boards that separated him from the Adriatic, the boat’s slight roll, the bow’s dip in and up, his tiredness — all combined to create the odd sensation that he was floating inches above himself.

  He woke with a start not long after daybreak, pale light spilling into the cabin. He climbed the four steps into the cockpit. The sails were up and the engine was off, and they were a couple of hundred metres off a rocky shore.

  “Did you sleep well?” Miranda asked.

  “Yes, thanks,” della Torre said. “Where are we?”

  “Off the Pelješac. The current was pushing us back towards Korčula last night, but I didn’t want to run the engine any harder, so we haven’t gone as far as you might expect. But we’ll make four or five knots now that it’s light. It’s a decent breeze, southwesterly. Have you done any sailing?”

  “Once.”

  “Do you know what a jib sheet is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s that red rope. It controls the front sail. Sit on the windward side of the boat and let out the jib sheet opposite you a little until I tell you to stop.”

  He did as he was told.

  The little boat slipped neatly through the water, bouncing on the waves. They were moving at the pace of a leisurely bicycle ride, but for della Torre the speed was somehow exhilarating. Clouds scudded over the steep, high rocky ridge that crested the peninsula. The dinghy took the waves at a canter but the air felt deceptively still, as if there were no wind at all. In the anemic light, he could see warships — a corvette out to sea and a pair of gunboats in the waters towards Dubrovnik — but none seemed to pay them any attention.

  They turned slightly towards the southeast. Miranda had him pull in the jib, and she did the same for the mainsail. It was hard to believe heavy guns were firing no more than fifty kilometres away. The wind now came over the starboard gunwales, and della Torre could feel it whipping through his hair, spray coming over the bows as the little boat bounced across the waves, making him glad of his waterproofs.

  A couple of fishing boats were on the water. They were Orebić-based and didn’t matter to them, Miranda said. She kept an eye out for any vessels appearing from the direction of Korčula. Skeins of smoke rose above the mainland mountains, washed out and drab, until they faded into the gloomy skies.

  “We’ve got a head start on anybody following us,” she said. “The fishing boats wouldn’t have come out at night without lights. They’ll have a couple of knots on us, but we’ve got around twenty kilometres on them. And they’ll be reluctant to travel beyond Šipan Island. The mainland side is vulnerable to artillery fire; the Serb gunners in the hills have been getting better at hitting moving targets. On the seaward side the patrol boats have taken to running vessels up against cliffs. It seems to be a game for them. Anyway, that’s the limit of the blockade.”

  “What are we going to do, then?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. “We’ll need some breakfast first, though.”

  They sailed until they reached a small fishing village, little more than a couple of rows of red-tiled white stone houses set behind a breakwater under the steep, raw white hills. Miranda took Gypsy in under sail. The wind, as long as it didn’t swing, would guide them back out of the harbour.

  There was a shuttered restaurant on the waterfront, set back from the road under the shade of bushy palms. But the village’s little grocery store was open. The girl behind the counter made them sandwiches from local ham and freshly baked spongy white bread, and a couple of strong coffees that she served in heavy china cups that at one time must have belonged to a hotel. They ate sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the harbour wall, della Torre feeling a vestigial rocking sensation from being in the boat.

  He wondered whether he had been right to abandon Anzulović, knowing there was no way the older man could have made the rooftop crossing but feeling half guilty for having left without saying a word. Had he made an escape? Or was Grimston driving him? Was della Torre the rabbit chosen to flush out the ultimate game?

  He felt the chill air slip down past the top of his shirt and over the back of his neck, reminding him it was late in the season. Not many people lived in the village year-round, and many of those who did had left when the Serbs got a foothold on the peninsula, less than thirty kilometres down the road. But a few came down to inspect these strange out-of-season tourists who seemed oblivious to the war. No one was forward enough to ask them what they were doing.

  The wind blew steadily from the southwest.

  “Looks like rain,” Miranda said. “We’re going to get wet.”

  They pushed the boat off the harbour wall. The onshore wind made Gypsy heel hard as they went out, both of them throwing their weight onto the seaward gunwale to keep the boat as flat as possible. Spray flicked at them, salty and cold. The clouds had boiled up, filling the sky, and della Torre saw that Miranda was right about the change of weather.

  They sailed along a hostile shoreline. Small waves broke against white rocks overhung by low, broad pines. The rain was a steady blowing drizzle that filled the air so that they breathed water.

  The mountains’ scalloped skirts at the water’s fringes made a string of coves. For a margin of safety from shallow rocks, Miranda took Gypsy farther out.

  Della Torre shivered. He’d pulled on his waterproof hat only after his hair had already been drenched, and now he felt the chill.

  The wind became a squall, rain driven in bands across the water, while the waves picked up. Miranda strained at the tiller and sails, keeping the boat on course in conditions that had become difficult.

  Della Torre worked the ropes controlling the forward sail, shifting his weight in the cockpit according to the orders Miranda called out. He saw a steeliness in her; she seemed practised at escaping, though maybe not under these circumstances.

  “It’s miserable sailing in these conditions,” della Torre said.

  “It keeps us out of sight.”

  They sailed like that, hour after hour, until della Torre saw in the distance the long green shadow of Mljet Island.

  “All around the island there are these green forests and hills, and the lake is as blue as a crayon,” Miranda said. “Then there are these tall stone walls and red roofs — a fairy-tale friary.”

  “Do you get friars in fairy tales?”

  “I don’t know. Castles and ogres, yes, but I don’t know about friars.”

  When the wind gusted, rain swept into them, making Gypsy heel right over, leaving della Torre scrambling up the side and over the edge. His misery grew the colder he got, and he hungered for nicotine.

  Miranda seemed immune to the weather, pressing on, holding firmly on the tiller and the main sheet, making small adjustments, and smiling against the wind and rain.

  The morning drew into the afternoon and still they sailed.

  “Šipan.” She pointed ahead to the island’s green-grey humps rising out of the water.

  “How long will it take us to get there?”

  “We’ll get there,” she said.

  And then, over her shoulder in a break in the rain, he thought he saw something. At first he couldn’t be sure, but over the next hour he saw it again, once, twice more. As time went on, it developed into a motor cruiser,
a fast luxury boat.

  “That’s not a fishing boat,” della Torre said.

  “No, it’s not. Go down into the cabin and get my binoculars. They’ll be in the shelf opposite the galley.”

  When he brought them up, she had him take the tiller while she trained the binoculars on the boat.

  “Hard to tell, but she looks like something called Dim — ‘smoke’ in Serbo-Croat, not ‘stupid’ in English,” Miranda said. “If it is, Korčula’s her home port. I don’t know how they got hold of her. Maybe they bribed someone at the marina, because there’s zero chance the owner would have let them have her. I know him. He’s a bigwig in Belgrade. Most pompous man in the country, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of competition.”

  “How long before they catch up with us?”

  “She makes around thirty knots. But they won’t want to travel that fast. Fishing boats go at twelve to fifteen knots. Anything moving much faster will have the patrol boats onto them in double-quick time, thinking they’re blockade runners. We make six. The horizon’s about two miles back. We’re about half an hour away from where we want to be. It’ll be close.”

  They crossed a narrow channel by a squat, square lighthouse. The small islands they passed looked uninhabited. There were no safe landing places, just rocky shores. It was early afternoon, but the light was difficult, the distant mainland disappearing into the general gloom as they slipped into a deep, long inlet between two hilly promontories.

  Here the wind fluked, making the little boat dance, but it also blew less strongly. By the time they got to the harbour wall, della Torre could see the motor cruiser distinctly, towards the mouth of the bay.

  Miranda moved with extraordinary speed, uncleating the main and jib halyards so that the sodden, heavy sails spilled into the boat as she went back to the tiller to steer into the landing in one deft move. She had della Torre grab the mooring line and guide it to a rust-worn ring on the harbour wall, where he tied it up.

  “Wait here,” she said. “They’ll either come in slowly or launch a dinghy. Dim has a pretty deep draft, and the bay shallows quickly, but they can get in on sonar. If we’re lucky they might just decide to blockade us until the weather clears. But we ought to hurry anyway.”

  A few people braved the drizzle, drawn to the harbour wall by curiosity. Miranda, still in her heavy raincoat but stripped of her sailing overalls and down to her shorts, disappeared into a building not far from where they’d tied up.

  Della Torre watched the big motor cruiser slip in and out of the mist, waiting. An albino assassin with windows of smoked glass. He wondered if it went for anything less than a million marks. Or maybe dollars. Only people with the most serious pull in government could afford conspicuous wealth like that. How had Grimston gotten hold of it?

  The American had them cornered in this deep bay. Šipan wasn’t big. If he couldn’t get off the island, they’d track him down soon enough. Only three hundred or so people, mostly old, lived here. Della Torre knew the island well enough to know there were few places where he could hide for more than a few days. Strumbić’s secret villa, where the other Americans had died not even two months ago, was on the other side.

  Miranda came back shortly and hopped into the boat. “We’re going to give that motorboat the slip,” she said.

  “How? What?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  With a practised hand, she rolled the mainsail around the boom and lowered it into the boat. Then for a few minutes she tinkered with a metal collar at the base of the mast.

  “Hold this,” she said. “Now, when I say so, help me walk the mast down the length of the boat.”

  It didn’t take long to get the long aluminium spar down along the length of the vessel and beyond.

  Della Torre wondered whether she might try to hide the boat but realized what a ridiculous notion that was. Then, from behind the shuttered hotel at the end of the bay, a Massey Ferguson tractor appeared, ancient but massive and still robust, towing a long trailer along the harbour wall. He watched it swing around to face the hill that led from the waterfront. And then it reversed down a stone ramp, slowly easing the trailer into the water until it was fully submerged.

  “Here’s our ride,” Miranda said, starting up the boat’s engine.

  She steered Gypsy to the end of the trailer and then, with a burst of speed, drove it onto the middle of its now-submerged bed. The moment she cut the engine, she hopped off the boat onto the edge of the trailer. Working in the water, she fixed a big strap to the boat’s bow and hooked it to a yoke attached to the back of the tractor. And then, hopping off to stand on the harbour wall with della Torre, she watched the tractor pull the boat out of the water.

  It was a relatively slow business, but the operation went smoothly. And the moment the boat was out, she said, “Come on,” and they sat on the big mudguards on either side of the driver as he towed the boat along the harbourfront and up the road.

  They were partway up the hill when della Torre looked back to see that the motor cruiser had launched a Zodiac RIB. He couldn’t see how many people were on board, but he knew they’d land before long.

  “Can we go any faster?” were his first words to the tractor driver. He was a farmer, in blue coveralls and a blue rain slicker. His hair was grey and stubbly, and his thin face was heavily creased. He looked a bit like Libero and, like Libero, he smelled of the farmyard, straw and muck.

  “This sort of job is lots of wear and tear on a tractor,” the man said.

  “I told him you’d pay a hundred dollars to get us to the other end of the island,” Miranda said in English. “This counts as expenses.”

  Della Torre was about to protest at the cost. A hundred dollars to cross eight kilometres was outrageous. But it was their only way out. So instead he asked, “Would another ten dollars encourage you to go quicker?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then for god’s sake, speed up.”

  “Oh, I will,” the farmer said. But he kept the tractor at its pace.

  Della Torre could hear the RIB’s engine echoing in the harbour below. How long before Grimston’s men found a car and overtook them?

  “I thought we had a deal to speed up.”

  “Oh, we do. When we get to the top of the hill. Then you’ll be asking me to slow down,” the farmer said.

  “Don’t worry,” Miranda said, looking back at the town. “Nobody else on the island has any petrol. Your friends might be able to find some bicycles, but even that’ll take them a while.”

  The farmer was right. Once they’d climbed over the crest of the low hill overlooking the fishing port, the tractor sped up, propelled in part by the weight of the boat behind.

  The single-track road stretched along a shallow green valley that ran the length of the island. They didn’t pass another vehicle on the way. Centuries before, Šipan had been a holiday island for Dubrovnik’s nobility, but now the Renaissance palaces on their once-manicured grounds were ruins, their roofs long gone, their windows hollow-eyed, the stone columns that had held avenues of shading vines reduced to scattered bones protruding from the damp earth.

  The trip took no more than half an hour, even at tractor speed. There was no further sign of their pursuers. The village at the other end of the island was smaller than the one they’d arrived in, and more tightly built around a narrow bay. Turning the trailer was tricky in those confined spaces, but the farmer seemed well practised, and in short order he was backing down a little sandy beach and from there into the water, where they refloated the boat. Della Torre paid the man, who shook his head at their madness.

  Miranda found a woman at a guest house to feed them sandwiches made with her home-cured ham and a coarse loaf of mixed cornmeal and wheat she’d baked that morning.

  Della Torre helped as much as he could to rig the boat again. While Miranda finished the preparations, he smoked
a soggy cigarette and gazed at the walls of the harbour’s small, dilapidated castle and their arabesque crenellations — another of Šipan’s forgotten palaces.

  “I suppose we should hurry,” he said. “That farmer has probably gone back to collect the people who are after me.”

  “He’s not collecting anyone else tonight. Your hundred dollars wasn’t just to get us here. You hired the tractor and trailer for your exclusive use until the morning.”

  “You made that arrangement?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll keep to it?”

  “He’ll keep to it.”

  “How do you know? If the Americans can afford to make use of that big boat, they’ll have enough money to persuade your farmer friend.”

  “Because they’ll pay as much tomorrow morning to get their Zodiac across. But even if the farmer does break his promise, the Yugoslavs will shoot at the boat as soon as they hear it. Look around.”

  It was only then that he noticed there were no other boats in the harbour.

  “This is where the blockade starts,” she said. “Anyone with a boat has already taken it to the other harbour, or it’s been sunk or stolen by the Yugoslav navy.”

  “So why won’t they sink us?”

  “They might, but we’re not going to be on the water long.” She pointed in the direction of the next island, which was lost in the drizzle. “It’s getting late and we’re not going far. I’d rather have gone in the dark, but we’ll take a risk. We’re not going to motor; they’d pick that up quickly. The rain cuts visibility. By the time anyone notices we’ll be in Lopud . . . I hope.”

  As they set off, della Torre could make out a nineteenth-­century sea captain’s villa. It was a child’s drawing of a house, a square structure of white stone, two storeys high, with a steep-pitched red-tile roof. The front was symmetrical, with the main entrance in the middle, three windows on each side, and seven above. The building was framed by mature cypresses on either side. Strumbić’s villa now had the look of a tomb.