CHAPTER TWENTY
I drive as close as I can get. Valletta rests on a hill. Once free of the car I run the final distance up towards the high ground. Ancient, old world fortifications peel away and expose a clear, panoramic view of the harbour. I stand, trespassing on a tourist perch, one adorned with flower beds, benches and canon. Before me, the harbour steals the horizon. Darkness blurs the finer details, although clusters of artificial light expose enough to give me options. A marina, a container port, a cruise ship terminal and a quayside can all be detected. Instinct draws me towards the quayside, where a single ship is berthed. The illuminated bridge, along with several spotlights fixed to the ship, emboss the surrounding darkness with animated human figures. I draw my binoculars and scour the ship for a name, but the lack of light keeps me blind.
Could the Fallen Fresco be a yacht, a container ship or a cruise liner? No. A bold guess, I know, but still, give me instinct over ignorance, and time, what time is there left?
I make safe the video memory card; it is more precious than me. Together with the passport, credit cards, Andrew’s and Henry’s phones and the remaining cash, I seal it in a plastic bag then bind it with lashings of gaffer tape.
Kneeling beside a flowerbed I use my hands to burrow into the earth. I then bury and hide my innocence. After committing the location to memory, I discard the now useless camcorder then stand and make my move.
Down to the quayside. A steep flight of ancient stone steps offers passage to yet another man, armed and hunting blood. Who were the Knights who fought for Malta? What was their cause? Was it better than mine? Did they, too, plead the good of man?
On the quayside all is quiet, no man-made noise just the lazy breath of a dozing sea and the whispered resistance of a casual breeze. The ship doesn’t fail the mood. The embossed human figures have melted away. A lone man, dispatched to smoke a cigarette, and cloaked in a military-style overcoat, stands on the quayside next to a gangway that connects to the ship to land. My presence is urgently sensed then casually ignored. The ship is large, a good seventy metres in length. Nearing the bow, I read its name, The Fallen Fresco. As I approach the man, he turns his back to me and slowly ambles away, waiting for me to pass. I make no apologies, draw the gun from a pocket and, with a point blank accuracy, aim, fire and kill. The silencer keeps the mood calm and still. Catching the man’s body as it slumps to the ground, I carry it to the edge of the quay and quietly feed it the sea.
To board the ship, I have a simple choice, walk the gangway or climb a mooring rope, I choose to climb. Twenty metres of rope is no easy haul, especially with rope too thick to wrap a good grip around. As the climb nears completion, cramp tears into my hands, and I barely manage to pull myself up and over the railing.
Without thought to pause and recover my hands, I snatch a gun from a pocket then move forwards over a small area of deck at the stern of the ship. Reaching the superstructure, I find a door. The handle yields to an angry force. As the door creaks open, a tunnel of darkness appears within. I duck inside and ease the door shut.
Touch tells of a low, narrow space contained by cold steal walls. Three steps forward and a dead-end is reached. Following the raised edge of what I hope is a door I feel for, and find, a handle. Pushing it down, the door is released, as is a loud clunking noise, which persists in an echo. I freeze, waiting for silence. With the echo dead, I slowly push the door open. Harsh, white light rushes in and rips sight back into my eyes. Another short corridor stands before me, a crossroads with the choice of another closed door, or a hatch in the floor that leads to a ladder and the deck below. A devil’s choice, so I choose to go down.
The ladder takes me to a long, deserted corridor. Two flickering fluorescent bulbs provide insufficient light. Several doors line the walls, and a hatch in the floor leads to a second deck below. If I have a plan it is to find the cheap space, space drenched with the roar of the engine and used for the cheapest of cargos. So again the ship sucks me down.
I descend the ladder with slow, forensic care. Into the guts of the ship. Pipes, tubes and wiring clog another corridor, another space devoid of people where the shadows have flushed the light.
In the air, the muffled beginnings of a song skim over silence - The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night sounding tinny and flat. I move quickly forward towards two closed doors. Reaching the first, I press my ear against the numb, grey metal. The music pulls from beyond the door. Is this their cell? Is this my trap? Has my path inside been too easy? I grab the handle, force it down then barge the door open. Inside lies the cheapest of cargo, men!
A bare room, a store room, fifteen by ten. Twenty black men are chained and shackled together. Not in irons but in shiny new steel. All sit listless and mute on the floor. Dirty, white canvas sacks mask their faces. Each one dressed in cheap blue jeans, a plain black t-shirt and new, white, brandless trainers. My entrance causes only a hushed, ripple of movement. The room is heated and warm. The music piped in from a single wall-mounted speaker, which faces a single CCTV camera.
And now, what now? Escape with men and disease? Free what? Save who? No one here! No one at all! Twenty-one bullets - twenty and me. Footsteps pound against metal - the tide rushing in. Twenty-one bullets to fight my way out or twenty-one bullets to stop the disease.
I move to pull a sack off the nearest man but stop, with the thought the eyes, too human the stare, I stop. I pull the second gun. I use it first. Without a silencer, the screams are mauled by the bang. One to the head, another to the head, one to the head, another to the head. Panic. The instinct to flee and protest. The listless and the mute, the gagged and the shackled. No voice to plea, no room for flight. The heated room no good for meat. The soiled white sacks shatter and burst. Brains explode the soul. One by one I commit to death.
All done, job done. But me? Twenty-one for twenty and me? The tide reaches the shore. The door opens sharply and spits in a grenade. Decision made; I have no will or movement, no flight or fight, just the blank sense of emptying.