Medusa by Hammond Innes Page A

turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘You are indeed fortunate. Except for the Americans, who have so many ships, like the Russians, all our navies are in the same boat, eh?’ He smiled, looking pleased at having achieved a touch of humour in a foreign language. ‘Myself, I do not have a ship since five, no six years now. Already I have been ‘ere three, stuck on a little island where nothing ever happen.’
    â€˜But at least you have the biggest guns in the Mediterranean,’ I said.
    â€˜That is true. But what use are they, those big guns? They belong to another age and we have so few ammunition … Well, you know yourself. We fire them once a year and everybody complain because windows are shaken all over Mahon, some broken.’
    â€˜Are these the guns out on the northern arm of the Mahon entrance?’ Lloyd Jones asked.
    â€˜On La Mola, yes. If you wish I take you to look at them. It is a
Zona Militar
, a prohibited area, but there is nothing secret about those guns, they ‘ave been there too long. Everybody know about them.’
    They started talking then about the problems of island defence and after a while I left them to see that the girls were being looked after, Soo in particular. I didn’t want her standing in the queue and maybe getting jostled. In any case, she was becoming a little self-conscious about her figure, I think because all our friends knew very well she had lost the first. But she was no longer at our table. She was at Manuela’s. Petra, too, and they had already finished their soup and were tucking into steak and mashed potato, Gonzalez Renato sitting between them and everybody at the table flushed with wine and talking animatedly.
    I went to get myself some food then and Miguel joined me in the line-up for the barbecue. He had his cousin with him, both of them in dark suits, their hair oiled and theirfaces so scrubbed and clean I hardly recognised them. They hadn’t booked a table so I took them to mine. They had their wives with them, Miguel’s a large, very vivacious woman with beautiful skin and eyes, Antoni’s a small, youngish girl with plump breasts and enormous dark eyes that seemed to watch me all the time. I think she was nervous. I danced with her once. She moved most beautifully, very light on her feet, but she never said a word.
    It was as I took her back to the table that I saw Soo dancing with Lloyd Jones. She shouldn’t really have been dancing at all, but by then I’d had a lot to drink and I didn’t care. Petra joined me and we danced together for the rest of the evening, and whenever I saw Soo she was with the Navy, looking flushed and happy, and talking hard.
    At midnight the band stopped playing and Manuela lit the train that set the fireworks crackling. It was a short display and afterwards everybody began to drift off home. That was when Petra announced that I was going to drive her over to Cales Coves.
    I should have refused, but the moon was high, the night so beautiful, and I was curious. I did make some effort to discourage her. ‘It’s almost midnight,’ I said. Too late to go messing around in those caves in the dark. And you’re not dressed for it.’
    â€˜That’s soon remedied,’ she said. ‘Oh, come on. You promised.’
    â€˜I did no such thing,’ I told her, but she had already turned to Soo, who was standing there with Lloyd Jones close beside her. ‘Why don’t you come, too – both of you?’ And she added, it’ll be fun, going there now. The moon’s almost full. It’ll be quite light. Anyway, it won’t matter in the cave itself. If it were broad daylight we’d still need torches.’
    I thought Soo would be furious, but instead, she seemed to accept it. Maybe the two of them had already talked about it when they had gone off together to the girls’ latrine at the end of the meal. At any rate, she didn’t