Tremor of Intent

'That sounds religious,' said Clara.

'It is religious,' said her brother. 'Everything he's told us is religious.'

III

1

The flour king snored on, with increasing feebleness, towards his own black sea. Kraarkh kraarkh. Their memento mori tucked away, the voyagers tucked in. The _Polyolbion__ dodged among the Cyclades. Kraarkh. The ham had been cooked in equal parts of chicken stock and muscatel, sliced to the bone, each slice spread with chestnut purée, ground almonds and minced onion. Covered with puff pastry, browned, served with a sauce Marsala. Kraarkh. Milos, Santarin. Roast chicken Nerone, with potatoes romana. Siphnos, Paros. Here the Nereids sing, their hair as gold as their voices. Tournedos truffés with a sauce bordelaise. Kraarkh. On Sikinos the Nereids appear with donkey or goat hoofs. Steak au poivre aflame in brandy. Master Walters frowned over the coded message. ZZWM DDHGEM. Kraarkh. Ariadne's island. Pommes Balbec. Kythnos, Syros, Tinos, Andros. EH IJNZ. Parian marble, wine, oil, gum-mastic. Kraarkh. Hominy grits. Egg nog ice cream. OJNMU ODWI E. Kraarkh. The Northern Sporades. Sherry bisque. OVU ODVP. Kraarkh. Veal cutlets in sour cream. To starboard, Mytilene, then the Turkish mainland. Kraarkh. Miss Walters, excited by what was to come, quietened her nerves with a sex-book. The _Polyolbion__ delicately probed the Dardenelles. _Swell the march__. Kraarkh with olive potatoes and juniper berries. _Of England's story__ with kraarkh and courgettes. Hillier kept to his cabin because of Clara Walters. This was no time for cramming that honeycomb into his mouth.

Spare bread and cheese and bottled ale fed that mouth which spent much time testing its Russian accent, re-acquiring facility. Wriste was worried: was he perhaps not well? Wriste sat with him sometimes while he ate, telling tales of when he was a muckman in Canberra, a brutal stretch in jail in Adelaide, sheilas on Bondi Beach. The salt of the earth, Wriste. _Of England's story__. Kraarkh. The Sea of Marmara. A mere wave at Istanbul to port: they would be visiting Istanbul on the way back. The Bosporus, Beykoz to starboard. Kraarkh. He was still alive, a mere vat of feebly bubbling chemicals. He might last till Istanbul. It would be easier there to arrange his transport to a British crematorium. The ship moved firmly towards the Crimean peninsula. Yarylyuk smiled equivocally ahead.

Nightfall; landfall. The evening was all plush, studded with Tartar brilliants; the air like soft and snaky Borodin. Some instinct told Hillier to greet his danger in underpants and dressing-gown. His L-shaped cabin was on the port side; from the light or deck-window above the washbasin he could see the harbour nuzzle up without himself being seen. He was in the dark, really in the dark. The horror was that he had no plan. He faced his fate, the fat laughers on deck their fun. There was always something inimical about the approach of land after long days at sea, even when that land was home, whatever home was. It was like the intrusion of the sforzandi of hearty visitors into the quiet rhythms of a hospital ward, or like the switching on of a raw electric bulb as the cosy afternoon of toe-toasting in the shadows, by the hypnotic cave of a Sunday fire, became church-going evening. The quay lights of Yarylyuk were naked enough; the go-downs were ugly with smashed windows. A dog barked somewhere in comforting international language. Tamburlaine and his sons, shabby in washed-out worker's blue, looked up at the British ship: cruel Tartar faces with papirosi burning under ample moustaches. There was a shouting handling of ropes. Hillier heard the gangplank thud down. Some of the passengers cheered. He tried to think beyond the piled packing-cases, trolleys, oil-slicked stones, cracked windows, YARYLYUK in Cyrillic lettering and yellow neon glowing from a roof, to the distant hills, cypress, olive, vine, laughing teeth – sempiternal i

Three jaunty Slavs, not Tartars, passport-stamping men in uniform, stamped past Hillier's light, talking loudly. All intending shore visitors, it had been loudspeakered earlier, must report with their passports to the bar on C-deck. And would there be stripping for the thi

'Never mind about that now. Where's your sister?'

'She's just finishing dressing. She'll be here in a minute. Look, about this code. The November goddess is Queen Elizabeth I. She came to the throne in November, 1558.'

'1558?' That had something to do with Roper. The family-tree on the wall in Didsbury, Manchester. The ancestor who died young for his faith.1558: an Elizabethan martyr. 'I'm begi

'If you mean alternate letters belong to alternating systems, yes. In one system the first letter is the fifth, in the other the fifth letter is the eighth. It's quite simple, really. But I haven't had time to do it all. They call you by a different name. I suppose it stood to reason your name couldn't be Jagger. It begins: DEAR HILLIR. That's a foreign-sounding name. Are you sure,' he said accusingly, 'you've been telling us the truth?'

'They may have spelt it wrong. It should be Hillier.'

'I didn't get much further than that. But it's full of apologies, as far as I can see. They're sorry about something or other.'

'Perhaps the amount of my terminal bonus. Anyway, I can have a look at it later. Thanks. You'd do well in this game.' There was a knock at the door and Clara walked in. She looked ravishing. Hillier knew he had been right to go into retirement this last day and more, subsisting on bread and cheese and Russian. Infirm of purpose. She was in a cocktail dress of silver lamé with cape back and treble pearl-diamanté collar necklace, her shoes of silver kid. Perfume of an older woman clouted Hillier's nostrils, making him salivate. He yearned for her. Damn work. Damn death. 'How is he?' he asked.

'About the same.'

'And that bitch,' said Alan evilly, 'is going ashore with that muscled Scandinavian bastard, God curse them both.'

'Language, language,' reproved Clara. She shook her head in sorrow at him and then went to sit on Hillier's bunk. Her knees showed; Hillier knew, but did not show, an accession of agony. He said briskly: 'To business. I want a Russian police uniform and I want it now. This means that a policeman will have to be lured in here-'