Free A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison

individual who looked up when the captain entered for the second time. There was a bustle behind him as the first engi-neer, Alec, and the second officer came in, each holding firmly to the white-clad arm of a cook.
    He could be nothing else, a tall and solid man all in white, chef’s hat rising high on his head, sallow skinned and neat moustachioed with a look of perplexity on his features. As soon as the door had been closed, the tiny cabin was crowded to suffo-cation with this mixed company, the captain spoke.
    “This is Jacques, our cook, who has served with this ship since her commissioning and has been with the Cunard ten years or more. He knows nothing of the events of last night and is concerned now only with the croissants he left to burn in the oven. But he has served me many times at table and I do recall one thing.”
    In a single swift motion the cap-tain seized the cook’s right arm, turning it outwards and pulling back his coat. There, on the inside of his forearm and startlingly clear against the paleness of his skin, was a blue tattoo of anchors and ropes, trellised flowers and recumbent mermaids.
    Washington saw it and saw more as memory clothed the man with black instead of white, felt the strength of gloved hands again and heard the hoarseness of his breathing. Despite the bishop’s attempt to prevent him he rose from the bed and stood fac-ing the man, his face mere inches away from the other’s.
    “This is the one. This is the man who attempted to kill me.”
    For long seconds the shocked ex-pression remained on the cook’s fea-tures, a study in alarm, confusion, searching his accuser’s face for meaning while Washington stared grimly and unswervingly into the other’s eyes as though he were prob-ing his soul. Then the two officers who held the man felt his arms tremble, felt his entire body begin to shake as despair seized him and re-placed all else, so that instead of restraining him they found they had to support him, and when the first words broke from his lips they re-leased a torrent of others that could not be stopped.
    “Yes, I… I was there, but I was forced, not by choice, dear God as a witness not by choice. Sucre Dieu! And remember, you fell unconscious, I could have done as I had been bid, you could not have re-sisted, I saved your life, left you there. Do not let them take mine, I beg of you, it was not by choice that I did any of this—”
    In his release it all came out, the wretched man’s history since he had first set foot in England twenty years previously, as well as what his fate had been since. An illegal emigre, helped by friends to escape the grinding unemployment of Paris, friends who eventually turned out to be less than friends, none other than secret agents of the French crown. It was a simple device, commonly used, and it never failed. A request for aid that could not be refused—or he would be revealed to the English authorities and jailed, deported. Then more and more things to do while a record was kept of each, and they were illegal for the most part, until he was bound securely in a web of blackmail. Once trapped in the net he was rarely used after that, a sleeper as it is called in the filthy trade, resting like an inactivated bomb in the bosom of the country that had given him a home, ready to be sparked into ignition at any time. And then the flame.
    An order, a meeting, a passenger on this ship, threats and humiliations as well as the revelation that his fam-ily remaining in France would be in jeopardy if he dared refuse. He could not. The midnight meeting and the horrible events that fol-lowed. Then the final terrible mo-ment when the agent had gone and he knew that he could not commit this crime by himself.
    Washington listened and under-stood, and it was at his instruction that the broken man was taken away—because he understood only too well. It was later, scant minutes before the flying ship began her final approach to the Narrows and a landing in