Free At Risk by Stella Rimington Page B

beginning to subside? He pressed the Indiglo light button on his watch. It was a little past 2 a.m., UK time. In the watch’s tiny glow he could see the pale, fearful faces of his fellow travellers, huddled like ghosts. To rally them, he suggested prayers.
     
    At 2:30 a.m., Ray Gunter finally saw it. The light that the Susanne Hanke was showing was too muted to register to the naked eye, but through the image-intensifiers it showed up as a clear green bloom near the horizon.
    “Gotcha,” he muttered, flipping the butt of his cigarette to the shingle. His hands were frozen but tension, as always, kept the cold at bay.
    “We on?” asked Kieran Mitchell.
    “Yeah. Let’s go.”
    Together they pushed the boats into the water, felt the spray at their faces and the icy water at their calves. As the more experienced seaman, Gunter took the lead vessel. Cracking a lightstick so that it glowed a fluorescent blue, he placed it in a holder on the stern; it was essential that the two boats did not get separated.
    Yards apart, the two men began to row through the choppy offshore swell, correcting against the hard eastern blow. Both of them were wearing heavyweight waterproofs and lifejackets. A hundred yards out they shipped their oars and pull-started the Evinrude outboards. These burbled into life, their sound carried away on the wind. Locking into Gunter’s wake, his eyes fixed on the lightstick, Mitchell followed the other man out to sea.
    Ten minutes later they were alongside the Susanne Hanke. Clutching their meagre baggage items, and divested of the fouled overalls (which would be washed in preparation for the next consignment of illegals), the passengers exited the hold one by one, and were helped down a ladder to the boats. This was a slow and dangerous process to undertake in near darkness and high seas, but half an hour later all twenty-one of them were seated with their baggage stowed at their feet. All except one, that is. One of them, a courteous but determined figure, insisted on carrying his heavy rucksack on his back. And if you go over the side, mate, thought Mitchell, it’s your bloody lookout.
    Kieran Mitchell knew only one word of Urdu— khamosh, which means “silence.” In the event, though, he had no need of it. The cargo, as usual, looked cowed, fearful and properly respectful. As a self-styled patriot Mitchell had no time for raghead illegals, and would have been much happier sending the whole bloody lot of them home. As a businessman, however—and a businessman in the full-time employ of Melvin Eastman—his hands were tied.
    The return journey to shore was the part Mitchell dreaded. The old wooden fishing boats could only just manage a complement of twelve, and sat terrifyingly low in the water. Superior seamanship kept Gunter’s people more or less dry, but Mitchell’s were not so lucky. Waves broke almost continuously over their bows, drenching them. In the end it was a shivering and bedraggled group which helped him drag the boat up the beach and—as every consignment did—fell to its collective knees on the wet shingle to give thanks for its safe arrival. All except one, that is. All except the man with the black rucksack, who just stood there, looking around him.
    Once the boats were in place Gunter and Mitchell removed their lifejackets and waterproofs. As Gunter unlocked a small wooden shed at the beach’s edge and hung the gear inside, Mitchell lined the men up and led them in single file away from the sea.
     
    The shingle gave way to a turf path, which in turn led up to an open ironwork gate, which Mitchell closed behind them. They marched upwards, and the shapes of trees appeared against the faint illumination of the false dawn. These gave way to formal hedges and the flat plane of a lawn before the path led them to the left. A high wall appeared in front of them, and a door. Gunter opened this with a key, and Mitchell pulled it shut behind the last man. They were now in a narrow side