At the end of the bridge there was a flashlight moving. I wondered if the whistles were going. I couldn’t hear anything above the sound of the outboard motor. The flashlight was reflected suddenly in the driver’s door of the ambulance. The boat lurched violently as we left the harbour and entered the open sea. I looked at the Chinese sailor at the helm. He didn’t seem frightened, but then how would he look if he did? I looked back. The figures on the quay were tiny and indistinct. I looked at my watch: it was 2.10 A.M. The Incredible Count Szell had just killed another canary, they cost only three francs, four at the most.
39
Three miles out from Ostend the water was still and a layer of mist hugged it; a bleak bottomless cauldron of broth cooling in the cold morning air. Out of the mist appeared M. Datt’s ship. It was a scruffy vessel of about 10,000 tons, an old cargo boat, its rear derrick broken. One of the bridge wings had been mangled in some long-forgotten mishap and the grey hull, scabby and peeling, had long brown rusty stains dribbling from the hawse pipes down the anchor fleets. It had been at anchor a long time out here in the Straits of Dover. The most unusual feature of the ship was a mainmast about three times taller than usual and the words ‘Radio Janine’ newly painted in ten-foot-high white letters along the hull.
The engines were silent, the ship still, but the current sucked around the draught figures on the stem and the anchor chain groaned as the ship tugged like a bored child upon its mother’s hand. There was no movement on deck, but I saw a flash of glass from the wheelhouse as we came close. Bolted to the hull-side there was an ugly metal accommodation ladder, rather like a fire-escape. At water level the steps ended in a wide platform complete with stanchion and guest warp to which we made fast. M. Datt waved us aboard.
As we went up the metal stairs Datt called to us, ‘Where are they?’ No one answered, no one even looked up at him. ‘Where are the packets of documents – my work? Where is it?’
‘There’s just me,’ I said.
‘I told you …’ Datt shouted to one of the sailors.
‘It was not possible,’ Kuang told him. ‘The police were right behind us. We were lucky to get away.’
‘The dossiers were the important thing,’ said Datt. ‘Didn’t you even wait for the girl?’ No one spoke. ‘Well didn’t you?’
‘The police almost certainly got her,’ Kuang said. ‘It was a close thing.’
‘And my documents?’ said Datt.
‘These things happen,’ said Kuang, showing little or no concern.
‘Poor Maria,’ said Datt. ‘My daughter.’
‘You care only about your dossiers,’ said Kuang calmly. ‘You do not care for the girl.’
‘I care for you all,’ said Datt. ‘I care even for the Englishman here. I care for you all.’
‘You are a fool,’ said Kuang.
‘I will report this when we are in Peking.’
‘How can you?’ asked Kuang. ‘You will tell them that you gave the documents to the girl and put my safety into her hands because you were not brave enough to perform your duties as conducting officer. You let the girl masquerade as Major Chan while you made a quick getaway, alone and unencumbered. You gave her access to the code greeting and I can only guess what other secrets, and then you have the effrontery to complain that your stupid researches are not delivered safely to you aboard the ship here.’ Kuang smiled.
Datt turned away from us and walked forward. Inside, the ship was in better condition and well lit. There was the constant hum of the generators and from some far part of the ship came the sound of a metal door slamming. He kicked a vent and smacked a deck light which miraculously lit. A man leaned over the bridge wing and looked down on us, but Datt waved him back to work. He walked up the lower bridge ladder and I followed him, but Kuang remained at the foot of it. ‘I am hungry,’ Kuang said. ‘I have heard enough. I’m going below to eat.’
‘Very well,’ said Datt without looking back. He opened the door of what had once been the captain’s cabin and waved me to precede him. His cabin was warm and comfortable. The small bed was dented where someone had been lying. On the writing table there were a heap of papers, some envelopes, a tall pile of gramophone records and a vacuum flask. Datt, opened a cupboard above the desk and reached down two cups. He poured hot coffee from the flask and then two brandies into tulip glasses. I put two heaps of sugar into my coffee and poured the brandy after it, then I downed the hot mixture and felt it doing wonders for my arteries.
Datt offered me his cigarettes. He said, ‘A mistake. A silly mistake. Do you ever make silly mistakes?’
I said, ‘It’s one of my very few creative activities.’ I waved away his cigarettes.
‘Droll,’ said Datt. ‘I felt sure that Loiseau would not act against me. I had influence and a hold on his wife. I felt sure he wouldn’t act against me.’
‘Was that your sole reason for involving Maria?’
‘To tell you the truth: yes.’
‘Then I’m sorry you guessed wrong. It would have been better to have left Maria out of this.’
‘My work was almost done. These things don’t last for ever.’ He brightened. ‘But within a year we’ll do the same operation again.’
I said, ‘Another psychological investigation with hidden cameras and recorders, and available women for influential Western men? Another large house with all the trimmings in a fashionable part of Paris?’
Datt nodded. ‘Or a fashionable part of Buenos Aires, or Tokyo, or Washington, or London.’
‘I don’t think you are a true Marxist at all,’ I said. ‘You merely relish the downfall of the West. A Marxist at least comforts himself with the idea of the proletariat joining hands across national frontiers, but you Chinese Communists relish aggressive nationalism just at a time when the world was becoming mature enough to reject it.’
‘I relish nothing. I just record,’ said Datt. ‘But it could be said that the things of Western Europe that you are most anxious to preserve are better served by supporting the real, uncompromising power of Chinese communism than by allowing the West to splinter into internecine warrior states. France, for example, is travelling very nicely down that path; what will she preserve in the West if her atom bombs are launched? We will conquer, we will preserve. Only we can create a truly world order based upon seven hundred million true believers.’
‘That’s really 1984,’ I said. ‘Your whole set-up is Orwellian.’
‘Orwell,’ said Datt, ‘was a naïve simpleton. A middle-class weakling terrified by the realities of social revolution. He was a man of little talent and would have remained unknown had the reactionary press not seen in him a powerful weapon of propaganda. They made him a guru, a pundit, a seer. But their efforts will rebound upon them, for Orwell in the long run will be the greatest ally the Communist movement ever had. He warned the bourgeoisie to watch for militancy, organization, fanaticism and thought-planning, while all the time the seeds of their destruction are being sown by their own inadequacy, apathy, aimless violence and trivial titillation. Their destruction is in good hands: their own. The rebuilding will be ours. My own writings will be the basis of our control of Europe and America. Our control will rest upon the satisfaction of their own basest appetites. Eventually a new sort of European man will evolve.’
‘History,’ I said. ‘That’s always the alibi.’
‘Progress is only possible if we learn from history.’
‘Don’t