Tanner's Virgin

I caught a few words here, a few words there. They were talking about guns and supplies and explosives and revolution. I listened intently while the wind blew up and died down, blew up and died down again. It was extremely frustrating. My Russian is fluent, but with the noise the wind was making I would have had trouble understanding them whatever language they spoke. On top of that they seemed to be speaking a dialect of Russian with which I was not familiar, so that of those words which were intelligible there were some I had trouble understanding.



Still, I got the gist of it. They were on their way to some country where the groundwork was already being laid for a revolution.



They were set to overthrow a government.



When they went away, leaving me with no idea of just what government they were overthrowing, or when, or why, I pulled the mackintosh over my head and thought about frying pans and fires. It occurred to me that all of this was some extraordinarily involved put-on concocted for my benefit. This was a tempting theory, and in a way it made as much sense as anything else. Because why on earth would a batch of Russian agents be sneaking across the English Channel in a smuggler’s boat? And what government were they going to overthrow?



“Ah, there ye are!” It was Daly, my Irish friend, with a leather-covered flask in his hand. He sat cross-legged beside me, opened the flask, and took a long drink. “Bedad, there’s no better remedy for the cold.”



He sighed and passed the flask to me. “Slainte,” I said, and drank. It wasn’t just what my stomach had in mind, but by now I was used to the roll of the sea. Besides, the hell with what my stomach had in mind. A good draught of Irish whiskey was certainly what my mind had in mind, and right now that seemed the most important consideration.



He said, “Bloody Rooshians and Ukrahoonians and God knows what-all.” He took another drink and passed the flask to me again. I drank. “The lads ye have to work with in this bloody business. A couple of fine boys like you and myself, there should be a better place for us than this slogging old tub and this mucking ocean. Sure, and half an hour more and we’ll be in France.”



“A long way from County Mayo,” I said.



“Too far to walk, eh?” We laughed, and he had a drink and I had a drink. “Oh, a good long walk from County Mayo, and more than a hop skip jump from Liverpool, too. But France is still a damn sight closer to home than Afghanistan, I’d say.”



I went numb. I said, “How did you know I was going to Afghanistan?”



He looked at me, and I looked at him, and that went on for longer than was entirely comfortable. “Bejasus,” he said finally. “Then you’re for it, too, are ye?”



“Uh-”



“Those bloody Rooshians. Here we are like McGinnis and McCarthy, two Irishmen in on the same show and neither bloody one knows that the other one’s there. Do ye believe it now? Have ye ever heard its like?”



Oh, I thought, stupidly. He hadn’t meant that Afghanistan was a long ways from Ireland for me to be. He had meant it was a long ways from Ireland for him to be. Which meant that he and the bloody Rooshians were on their way to just that spot, which in turn meant that I suddenly knew what government it was that they intended to overthrow. And which also meant, now that I had opened my idiot mouth, that he thought I was a part of the group, bound for the same destination with the same purpose, and-



Oh.



“And here’s everyone saying you’re only a paying guest the captain was greedy enough to take on, and you not knowing about us or we about you. Why, I’ll let them know how things stand.”



“No, don’t do that.”



“What, and contend with these foreigners meself? Let the bleeders know from the start they’ve two Irish lads to deal with.”



“Have another drink first,” I suggested.



“Have it for me,” he said, passing me the flask. “I won’t be a minute.”



I took a long drink, shuddered, capped the flask. I had made a grave mistake, but now that I thought about it I could see how it might work out for the best. If they were really a crew of spies and saboteurs en route to Afghanistan, and if they were fool enough to accept me as one of their own, things might be infinitely easier. I could forget about the headaches of border-hopping. I’d just tag along with them, and when the whole bunch of us got to Afghanistan I could slip away and find Phaedra while they were busy billing and couping. I didn’t know very much about the government of Afghanistan, but I’ve long felt that most governments are better overthrown, and if they put up with slavery, that makes them even better candidates for a coup d’etat. So if my shipmates would get me into the country, they were then welcome to do as they pleased with it.



I had another drink, a long one, and by the time Daly came back with four of his friends in tow, I was feeling positively giddy.



“So we’re all of us bound for Afghanistan,” I said. “Fancy that.”



“No one tells us of you,” the bearded one said.



“Nor I of you, for that matter. I received my instructions, how to cross the Channel and where to go. I thought I was to meet up with you on the other side.”



“Where?”



“I was to receive further instructions at a drop in Cherbourg.”



They looked at each other. “From whom did you receive orders?”



“A man called Jonquil. I do not know his actual name.”



“Which section are you?”



“Section Eight,” I said.



“You are in Section Eight and you were assigned to this operation?”



“I was requisitioned for it. Through Section Three.”



“Ah, that has more sense to it.” Thank heavens for that, I thought. “But this is most remarkable.” The man with the spade-shaped beard turned to a chunky man with a bald head and cheap false teeth. “Get Yaakov,” he said, in Russian.



“He sleeps.”



“He has slept since he boarded this garbage scow. Wake him.”



“He will be displeased.”



“Tell him such are the penalties of leadership.” He turned to me. I looked blank. In English he asked me if I spoke Russian. I told him I did not, and he told me that Yaakov, the leader of the expedition, would come to have a look at me. While we waited, we chatted pleasantly about the wind and the condition of the sea. The crossing was slower than anticipated, I was told, but in another fifteen minutes we should be reaching shore. I looked for France out ahead of the boat, but I could see nothing but inky blackness.



And then Yaakov made his appearance.



He didn’t look as though he was in charge of anything. What he really looked like was Woody Allen, small and skinny and ineffectual. He peered myopically at me through thick horn-rimmed glasses, while the man with the beard explained in Russian who I was and what I was doing there.



Yaakov asked if I spoke Russian. I looked as blank as ever, and the bearded man said I didn’t. Yaakov nodded, fastened his eyes on me again, and smiled shyly.



I returned the smile.



In Russian he said, “You are all fools. This man is not Irish but American. His name is Evan Tanner, he is an assassin who killed a man in London. He is not one of us at all. He is a spy and an assassin.” He was still smiling the same shy smile, and his voice was very gentle. “I am going below now,” he went on. “I will not be disturbed again until we reach the shore. Have the sense to kill this man and throw him overboard.”



They were all looking at me. My friend Daly had evidently not understood the speech. The others had, however. Their faces showed that they had altered their opinions of me.



So I spun to my right and bellowed, “Man overboard!”



They turned to look. I shrugged my mackintosh off my shoulders and looped it over the head and shoulders of the man immediately to my left. While he was clawing at it I dodged around him and raced for the rail. I had time for another fleeting thought of frying pans and fires, and then I vaulted the rail, and then I was in the water.



Chapter 6



The water permanently dispelled thoughts of frying pans and fires. If it had been any colder I could have played hockey on it. I left the rail in a lifesaver’s jump, body bent forward, legs apart, arms wide, but at the last moment I must have done something wrong, because instead of staying above water I sank like a brick. Eventually my brain sent a night letter to my arms and legs and I made furious scrambling motions while waiting for my whole life to pass before me. I guess that only happens if you really drown. I broke the surface and breathed out and in a few times, and then I heard shouts and saw a spotlight swing laboriously around toward me. I drew a last breath and went under again just as the first bullets began slapping at the water’s surface.



I tried swimming underwater, which is something I don’t do awfully well under optimum conditions, which these clearly weren’t. I surfaced and dove again before they could bring the guns around. Movement was very difficult, and at last I realized that it was my clothes which were causing the difficulty. But I’ll be cold without them, I thought. Then it occurred to me that they were doing nothing to keep me warm underwater.



Years ago, when I took a lifeguard course, they taught us to strip completely before entering the water. It only takes a few seconds on land and you more than make up for it in improved swimming speed. But I hadn’t had the time to spare when I left the ship. Now I worked my way out of jacket and shirt, kicked off shoes and socks, ripped open a stuck zipper and squirmed out of trousers. I would have left my undershorts on – they can’t slow one down much, certainly – but I hadn’t had them on to begin with. As far as I knew they remained in Julia’s room in London. So I swam on without them and worried about sharks.



The sharks in the boat were a more immediate source of danger. They must have circled for half an hour, playing that damned spotlight over the water and popping away with their guns in my approximate direction. As far as I know, none of their shots came particularly close. It was pitch dark out, I was underwater more often than not, and the sea was sufficiently choppy to make observation tricky, not to mention marksmanship. After maybe thirty minutes of this I guess they decided that if I hadn’t drowned already I would sooner or later. They stopped circling and went rapidly away. I treaded water for awhile until I couldn’t hear their engines any longer. Then I closed my eyes, and some of the more recent moments in my life passed before me, and drowning, now that I thought about it, seemed like a pretty good idea.



Virgins, white-slavers, smugglers, spies. I sighed heavily. The waves rolled on, as waves are apt to do. I remembered which way the boat had gone and pointed myself in that general direction and set out to swim the English Channel.



It took forever. I used to swim a lot years ago, and they do say it’s one thing you never forget, and evidently I hadn’t. Even so I kept expecting my strength to give out, and I figured that sooner or later a wave would spill me under the surface and I wouldn’t have anything left to pull myself back up again with. But I kept on going. The water didn’t get any warmer, but I stopped feeling it before long.



Until finally there was a point when I knew I was going to make it. The waves were going the same way I was, which helped immeasurably. Whenever I got sufficiently exhausted I could roll over on my back and float for a while. It wasn’t quite as restful as a few hours in a hammock, but it helped.