men, and I can see blazing anger in his eyes. He barks a sudden order to our captives. “Drop your guns, every one of you.”
No one moves. Then one, bolder than the rest, speaks up. “We’ve no guns, honestly, sir. No weapons at all. We were just told to load six boxes onto a ship, sir. We were told that the gate to Pier 59 would be open…”
“I know what you were told. And I bet you’re being paid handsomely for this little stunt. The men who paid you: they told you, did they, that you were smuggling whiskey?”
“Yes, of course that’s what they said. What else could it be? We weren’t told anything else, except that we were to pick up the packages from a truck parked off Eleventh Avenue, bring them across the road to Chelsea Piers, come through the gate, bring the boxes through onto the pier, and then wait on this spot here. They said someone would come along to guide us onto the ship. That’s why we’ve been waiting here. But no-one’s come.”
Bouchard doesn’t bother speaking again to the group of men. He’s already giving orders to his officers, co-coordinating, re-grouping. I hear him telling two of his officers to take the arrested men and put them in the room we were in, keep them under guard. Then under his breath, I hear the lieutenant say to himself “I’m goddamned tempted to just let these men go, save ourselves the bother of looking after them. But there’s just a chance that they might be useful as witnesses.”
Then, he turns to the professor and me. “Professor Axelson and Miss Frocester. You must follow my instructions now. Follow these two officers and the men we’ve arrested. Professor, while my officers guard them, can you please question them? Find out anything you can. And although we’ve not yet caught Nolan, you must go along with my officers and the captives too, Miss. That’s an order. I’m telling you for the sake of your own safety.”
I look at Bouchard, and perhaps he sees the defiance in my eyes. He speaks again.
“If I’m right, the real Gophers – who paid this bunch of goons to carry out this charade – may at this very moment be stowing the explosives aboard the Olympic. In which case, we’ll get them as they come back down the gangway. There may be a fight.” Then he starts barking orders again. “Back to your original positions alongside the Olympic, men. We’ll get these scum, if we have to work all night at it.”
24.A volley of gunfire
The storeroom seemed tiny before, with five people in it. As the professor and I follow the police officers and their prisoners towards it, we can see that it’s now mayhem. The two policemen are trying to push their captives, all bunched together, through the door. The police are shoving roughly to make the men go inside – but once in there, there’s no light, and I hear noises from inside the room: the prisoners are falling over cases and tables, uttering shouts and curses. The professor can’t help it: he challenges the police officers. “Don’t push them like that; can’t you see it’s crowded in there? Let them go in quietly, one by one.”
One of the policemen turns and gives him a sharp reply, and then keeps on pushing at the remaining captives, forcing them into the storeroom. I whisper “It’s hopeless, Professor. Let’s leave them to it.”
“No. They will gain nothing from treating these men like this. These men are petty criminals at worst, not gangsters. The police are treating them worse than cattle!” He turns to rejoin his argument with the two officers, and I step away, trying to feel a moment’s peace in my brain. I blank out the dispute going on behind me, the professor’s stubborn voice as he continues to dispute with the officers. I leave them to their argument, and instead I look along the side of the Olympic: the million rivets in her black hull catch the faint light, like lines of tiny jewels. Alongside the ship’s flank runs the flat stonework of Pier 59, and I can see, like ants, the figures of Bouchard and his men, Chisholm and Trench as they walk towards where a white gangway descends from one of the lower decks near the stern of the ship down onto the pier. Beyond the men’s tiny silhouettes, I see flickering lights out on the Hudson, cargo ships and coasters, moving ceaselessly in the unsleeping night.
I’m peering down the full length of the pier in anxious fascination, wondering how Bouchard’s team will regroup after the mistake. I wonder if the rest of his officers share the lieutenant’s anger, frustration and, I guess, embarrassment. I see the policemen separating from each other, fanning out in a sort of semi-circle around the base of the gangway. Each of them takes up a position in the cover of the packs and bales that line the pier: within a minute, none of them is visible. They’ve disappeared, as if they were never here. I think: each will have his gun ready to fire, and each gun will be pointed at the gangway.
No movement is visible. The scene is oddly peaceful: no different from every other night the Olympic spends in port, sitting silently and serenely alongside the quay. Straining my eyes in the blackness, I watch for the slightest sign of movement from the door at the top of the gangway.
I feel a cold line across my throat. A knife.
“Well well, Missie. So Jimmy’s suspicions were right after all. I never trusted you, or that fancy man of yours. I should have slit both your throats back in Hell’s Kitchen.”
I recognize the voice. It’s Malone who jumped Chisholm and I that first day in New York. His other arm is around my chest now, a grip like iron. He carries on talking. “See, I was put down here to watch what happened to our stooges there with the whiskey. To see that they played their part right. I was worried that the cops might catch me, when they came back down here. But it was easy enough to sneak away in the dark. Sadly for me, all our boys are aboard the ship now, so I haven’t had the chance to warn them that the police are here – and armed. Armed to the teeth, in fact. I think your cop friends want a fight.”
“What – are you – going to do with me?”
“Well, I think that first of all, you and me should just move along there now, away from that storeroom and all your police chums.” He pushes me along, my feet scuff on the flagstones of the pier. We’re near the edge of the pier, where the stonework goes straight down into the deep gap between the pier and the Olympic’s hull. He pushes me again, and to my left I can look over the edge. I’m gazing down into a huge slot, walled by stone on one side and iron on the other, and so deep that no light penetrates it: it looks bottomless. But I know of course that down there are the black waters of the Hudson. Is he going to push me over the edge?
“Now then Missie, you and me are going to walk straight ahead. You may as well walk, rather than try to fight me. We’re going along the pier.” Ahead of me I see, beyond the cases and bales of cargo, the slanting white line of the gangway near the stern of the ship. I guess that’s where he’s taking me, but I don’t want to make it easy for him. The blade keeps grazing my throat, I can feel its sharpness, but in response to his pushing I move as slowly as I safely can. I can sense him getting angry with me, but perhaps that’s good. If he gets cross, perhaps he’ll make a mistake.
We’re closer now, the last of the Olympic’s four funnels towers into the sky above us, and the gangway, its canvas sides glowing white in the gloom, suddenly seems much closer. There’s a big square object next to the foot of the gangway. For a moment I think: it’s the explosives. But it’s a single big wooden packing case, the size of an automobile. Obviously, the Gophers haven’t carried that from Eleventh Avenue; it’s been sitting there all night. I hear Malone’s voice whisper harshly to me again.
“You and I are going behind this packing case, and we’ll get as close to the gangway as we can.”
“Are you trying to take me onto the ship?” It’s a struggle to get any words out at all, but I guess if I talk to him, it might make him less willing to slit my throat. And indeed, Malone answers me: we’re having a conversation.
“No, my darling girl. We’re not going aboard the ship. We’re going to wait, out of sight, down here. Jimmy and the boys will likely be coming down the gangway soon. My guess is that your friends are planning to ambush them. But if the cops see you and me, and maybe the flas
h of this knife on your pretty white neck, then they might strike a bargain. To let us Gophers get away without a gunfight.”
“But you haven’t got a hope. They will never do a deal with you. The arrest of your gang – it’s too important.”
“We’ll see about that. Gophers don’t like to kill a woman – and even New York cops won’t want to watch an innocent woman die. Not on one of their own operations.”
All this time he’s forcing me along behind the packing case, edging to near the foot of the gangway. Some movement overhead makes me look up. I see a dark figure at the top of the gangway, then maybe ten or so other men behind him. In silence, they start to step down the sloping ramp towards us.
Instantly the figures descending the gangway are lit by a blinding light. The cops have had this ready all along: it’s like a stage-set at a theatre. The powerful beam of a spotlight shines on the gangway, illuminating a bright circle, like the disc of the sun, on the ship’s side: at its centre is the black square of the E Deck door, the white wood and canvas of the gangway, and a cluster of men’s faces, shielding their eyes and blinking in shock. Standing there in the spotlight, the massed faces, ranked in tiers down the slope of