Gibraltar Road by Philip McCutchan Page B

fingernails for a moment; then he’d looked up, and his voice had become tauter, less plummy after that, and Shaw had known he was going to tell him something fairly startling. Carberry had that technical mind—unlike Shaw—and knew what he was talking about.

    They approached the Straits a day or so later under a cloudless blue early-morning sky and a hot sun which warmed away the chills of the outward run in a grateful glow of penetrating heat which made Shaw sweat into his thin suiting of tropic-weight cloth.
    Shaw watched the coast slip past the cruiser’s port side. Cape St Vincent, on the south-western tip of Portugal, faded astern, and after that Cape Trafalgar brought him the first sight of Spain. Then Tarifa, and they were in the Straits, with Cires Point, in Spanish Morocco, to starboard, Gibraltar riding high into view, vast and rocky, looming above Carnero.
    By courtesy of the cruiser’s captain, Shaw was on the bridge as the Cambridge turned up for Algeciras Bay.
    Captain Hugo Kent-Thomas was a vast bull of a man; the eyes, small and rather glittering, seemed sunken and lost in an expanse of red-leathery skin above the rolls of pink, bristly flesh which overlapped the stiffly starched high neckband of his white uniform. Legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, he stood and took up most of the available room in the fore-part of the navigating bridge, a solid chunk of opaqueness round which navigator and officer-of-the-watch had to peer as best they could. Owing to the weather, Kent-Thomas had been up there nearly all the time since leaving Portsmouth, and when he hadn’t been there he’d been snatching an hour or two of sleep. He’d taken such meals as he’d needed on the bridge. The result had been that he’d had no time to yam with Shaw except very briefly just after the agent had embarked, and once even more briefly when they’d met on deck at sea. He was making up for this lack of hospitality by giving Shaw the freedom of his bridge now.
    His voice rumbled out. “Well—there you are, Shaw.” A heavy arm made a sweeping gesture towards Gibraltar. “Safe delivery of the all-important Admiralty Inspector—and won’t they be pleased to see you! Gib’s all yours now.” He sighed, memory of his soaking hours on that bridge still too fresh. “Wish I had your job, Shaw.”
    Shaw didn’t comment.
    “Damn-all to do and all day to do it in—what?”
    Shaw answered that with a laugh. “Don’t underestimate the Admiralty civilian, sir. I’ll probably find I’ve got to do a fuller day’s work than ever I did when I was in the Service.” (That ‘when I was in the Service’ came off his tongue quite easily, Shaw was glad to note.)
    Kent-Thomas grunted. Shaw had gathered already that he had a prejudice against pretty well all civilians. Kent-Thomas asked, “Where did you get to in the Service, Shaw? Odd we never ran across each other, y’know.”
    Shaw said, “I . . . spent a good deal of time in the Admiralty.”
    “Oh—really?” The Captain looked round, raised his eyebrows disdainfully. “What department?”
    “Just messing around,” said Shaw vaguely. He was watching the Spanish coast.
    “H’m. About all they do in the Admiralty, isn’t it—mess around?”
    “That’s right, sir.” Shaw knew well enough that such was the general opinion in the Fleet; but he thought of Mr Latymer, and Carberry, and the others in the outfit, those who had died and those who still lived a little longer . . . then, shortly before they began making in for the entrance to the inner harbour, Kent-Thomas said suddenly, “Sorry not to have seen more of you, Shaw. Pity you’ve become a damn’ civilian.” He hesitated. “We’ll be in Gib for a while . . . come aboard again for a meal and a yarn sometime if you feel like it.”
    “Thank you, sir. I’d like to do that if I’m here for long.”
    “You don’t know how long the job’ll take?”
    “No.”
    “Where d’you go when it’s