Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (6 page)

Roland’s protesting hand fell feebly from her arm as she took three quick steps towards the neatly stacked wet suits and equipment. She flipped off her bikini top and, palms on thighs, slid her shorts to the deck as though she were the only person on the entire ocean. Every man there watched in silence, and noticed the slim scarf of untanned white between the oak-brown back and legs. If she sensed the silence, she gave no indication of it, and continued her briefing.

“We will approach the ship from the opposite side of that freighter and descend to the level of the dining room. Inside, we must all work quickly.”

One of the divers asked, “Will we need spear guns?”

Hely curtly replied, “No. And don’t waste time on junk. You all know decent pieces when you see them. Necklaces first, then brooches, bracelets, and rings.” She stooped to pick up her wet suit.

The excitement she had engendered amongst the divers was almost an audible hum. A boy of eighteen who only six months earlier had been expelled from his English public school exchanged winks with a young Frenchman, who then mimed a silent whistle. Johnny, arrested in some discomfort with his arms halfway through the straps of his oxygen kit, contemplated a delightful future. The already discomfited Roland had been rendered speechless by her display of nonchalant sexuality, and it was only the whispered reactions of the men beside him that jolted him, so that he interrupted her with hissing urgency, “For God’s sake, Hely, can’t you change in the cabin?”

He regretted it the moment she turned her head and he saw the coolly amused eyes through the thistledown hair. “Roland thinks I’m upsetting you boys. Are there any complaints?” For Roland’s benefit, she indicated their whooped denials and half cheers with a tilt of her head, and stepped into her wet suit. She rolled it up without hurry and was zipping up the front when she faced Roland and resumed. “Roland, darling, I’m worried. I’m beginning to think there’s just the faintest aroma of chicken about you,
mon amour.
And now you seem ashamed to let people see me.”

Roland tried for a cheery grin that emerged more as a wince. Johnny thought,
He’s cracking.

Roland said, “Hasn’t it occurred to you that you are corrupting these more or less decent young men?”

Hely picked up her oxygen cylinders and looped the first strap over her arm. She replied, “Oh yes, I know that, Roland. But isn’t it fun? Well, isn’t it, boys?”

Johnny led the cheering that greeted her question as Hely went on, “But don’t come if you don’t want to, Roland. Perhaps little Bobby here will hold my hand if I get nervous.”

The young Englishman started at the sound of his name. He promised, “There and back, Hely,” and Hely noted with satisfaction the brief scowl that touched Johnny’s lips at the encouragement of another contender.

Hely resumed her instructions. “Oh, and another thing. Those bodies have been in there eight hours or so and their fingers might be swollen. Don’t waste time wrestling.” She slipped her diver’s knife from the sheath she was strapping to her leg and made a small dropping motion with the blade that required no explanation. Grins gone, the diving crew agreed with somber nods.

“I’ll come.” Roland’s statement was flat and his face pale and grim, but Hely rewarded him with a birthday smile that seemed to belie all her earlier goading. “I didn’t like this from the start, when we heard the Mayday call. But I’ll come.”

It’s so easy,
she thought. The lessons of the slums operated with the same efficacy here or anywhere. She had administered the scare that Roland needed. She had teasingly half-promised Johnny, and then, when he became a little too confident, pushed him down a couple of rungs and warmed up the English boy. If they all died tomorrow, she thought, she would not waste a second’s grief on them. They were men, just men, easily found, easily fooled, easily dropped, and there was a whole world full of them. Then the old thought, the one that sometimes troubled her, swam into her mind. Was there one man in the whole world who was worthy of her respect? Even more, was there one man who could inspire in her the pathetic combination of adoration and lust which she saw in the faces around her? She provided herself with the answer, as she always did. No. Never. Even if there was, Hely’s ascent from the gutter to the stars could not be slowed for so intangible and profitless a business as love. It was an emotion that was best left to shopgirls in their blind dash to the miseries of motherhood that always ended in ugly, corseted middle age and anxiety over paying the rent. For Hely, the supreme emotion was power.

She twisted the heavy ring off her finger and handed it to Yves. “Look after this for me, will you, Yves? Pierre will stay with you. We have an hour and a half of air. I don’t expect any complications. We will return before the time is up. If we do not, we have encountered something unexpected. Give us an extra ten minutes, and after that you are under orders to up anchor and get out.” She looked at Roland sweetly and added, “Where do you suggest, darling? Morocco? Tunis? Algeria? I should think they wouldn’t ask too many questions in Algeria.”

Gratefully Roland grabbed the chance to exert at least half his authority, and agreed, “Algeria, I would think. Sell the yacht and split what you can get.”

Hely’s beam of warm approbation swept the semicircle of men as they rose to their feet, oxygen cylinders in place, flippers on feet. “Good.
Allons!
Hely’s Heroes swim at five meters below the surface.”

It was Hely who was the first to drop her face mask and slip over the side, and as the six other divers in their impersonal black uniforms followed, their thoughts shared a highly personal but also uniform vision. Glittering jewels dancing in the light, and a silky ribbon wrapped round a brown body.

Klaas himself took the wheel to bring the
Magt
up under the lee of the wreck. It was eight-thirty in the morning. Then he handed it over to Piet, and climbed down to join Jason and Coby on the deck.

“Did you send the wire?” Jason asked.

Klaas nodded. He produced the sheet of paper from his pocket and read out loud: “Today, January first at eight twenty-seven, I, Captain Klaas van Zeevogel, master of the fifteen-hundred-ton freighter
Magt van Leiden
registered in Amsterdam, have made fast a line to the wreck of the
Poseidon.
I hereby claim rights of prime salvor.”

“Great,” Jason grinned. “That’s a smart move, Klaas. If you can’t help anyone here, you might as well have the benefit of salvage rights.”

“Possibly.” Klaas was not too enthusiastic. “It is a precaution, I suppose. But what really concerns me, Jason, is why that helicopter returned and those men got out. I think there were three.”

A frown also crossed Jason’s face, “I made it three too. I don’t get it. What makes survivors come back to a sinking ship? And one of them, that guy in the undershirt, looked like a cop to me.”

“You can tell a cop at that distance in the middle of the ocean?” Klaas looked even more worried.

“I could recognize a cop on a dark night in China,” Jason said. He saw the older man’s concern and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Klaas. If he is a cop he’ll keep an eye on me for you.”

The Dutchman looked up at the tall young man. “Frankly, Jason, I am not happy about the whole thing. I think it is about time you told us of your business on board this vessel too.”

The American’s face tightened as Coby echoed her father’s request. “Please tell us,” she said.

Jason moved to the deck rail, weighing in his hand a grappling iron on a length of nylon line. With a steady overarm swing he sent the iron lobbing through the air and over the hoisting bracket above the propeller.

“First time!” he called over his shoulder. He tugged the rope sharply, several times. It was secure.

Then he faced them again and said, “I told you. I have business on the
Poseidon.
One small part of that cargo belongs to me, and I’m going to have it. That may be enough for you, it may not, but it’s all I can tell you. Beyond that you’ve got to trust me.”

Almost too quickly, Coby came back, “We do, don’t we, papa?”

After a lifetime at sea, Klaas was not a man who made decisions based on flimsy facts. He liked the man. He liked the look of him, the set of him, and the way he handled himself around a boat. But he was still only a stranger they had plucked off the sea’s surface. He pushed back the cap on his graying, springy hair and the bewilderment was there, plainly registered on his face.

“I shall wait and see, Captain Jason. I hope I shall not be disappointed.”

Jason was leaning back on the line, testing its hold by bracing one leg against the side of the
Poseidon.
“It’s a fairly straight walk up to the top where those other guys got in. Let’s go see what gives in there.”

The Dutchman moved across and touched his sleeve. Klaas said, “Well? Will I be disappointed?”

With no more effort than he would make to walk across the deck, Jason moved quickly up the line, legs stiff against the hull, hands working alternately. He was near the top when his answer carried down, “It’s a disappointing world, Captain Klaas.”

Klaas shrugged his shoulders at Coby. What was he to think? He had asked the man for some sort of promise, and been repaid with cynical flippancy. There was too much mystery here. He did not like mysteries. The whispering men in waterfront bars who wanted undisclosed consignments dropped off near the coast at night. Nameless passengers who wished to travel without the formalities of customs and passports. Klaas had turned his back on them all. His workworn freighter with its limping engine provided him with an honest, uncomplicated trade that matched his nature. Jason and his mysteries could only mean trouble.

“Please, papa.” Coby had followed his tumbling doubts. “He is a good man, I know it. Please?”

Klaas struggled with three emotions, his life-long instinct to avoid trouble, his love for his daughter, and a curious but irritating doubt that he might have misjudged the American. They looked up and saw Jason astride the propeller-shaft housing. “Hey, there. Come on up here, and bring the rope ladder and the lanterns with you. Or do you need a bosun’s chair?”

Klaas stuffed his pipe into his pocket, and tucked the ready-rolled rope ladder under his arm. “Who does he think I am—Rip Van Winkle?” Coby’s relieved laughter followed him up the rope. The possibility that there might still be people to be saved on board had tilted the balance in his mind. But, with every heave of his hands, he thought,
Klaas van Zeevogel, you are becoming careless and stupid in your old age.

Coby had no such doubts. She loved her days on the
Magt,
she loved the sea, and she loved her father. But the excitement that boiled inside her came from the man with one name who had just sailed into her life. She felt the clean, unquestioning confidence in this shining new emotion that dies at the first lie, the first deceit, the first mistake. She knew, and that was more than enough. She wriggled up after them, and when Jason’s arm around her shoulder steadied her for a second all her shapeless fantasies merged into one face.

Klaas began to lower himself into the opening in the propeller-shaft housing. He said, “Now we shall see what hidden treasure lures survivors back to a sinking ship.”

Jason grunted agreement, but his eyes were on the
Komarevo’
s industrious approach in the distance. He was more concerned to know what hidden treasure there was aboard the
Poseidon
that would interest Captain Ilich Bela, and how many bodies he was prepared to step over this time to get to it.

MINDING THE STORE

4

The fear which had spurred them in their climb up the tangled mountain of wreckage when they were fleeing the ship had gone; now the three survivors struggled laboriously down to the ceiling which had become the floor of the inverted engine room. Without the adrenaline fired by that terror, they saw all too clearly the drop beneath them to the saw-edged wreckage of the gigantic machinery. Turbines, dynamos, reduction gearing, everything of any size and weight, torn away from its bolts, now lay in tangled turmoil below, and Martin whistled his shocked surprise when he realized what they had achieved. Manny saw nothing but the shadowed corner by the pool where he had left his wife’s body.

Rogo refused to look down to the silent pool where Linda and Scott had both died. He was the cop again, back on the job. “C’mon you guys, move it.” It was the first lesson learned in a street accident: keep ’em moving. Driven by his words, they edged out into the crazily distorted web of metal which had been their final ascent to salvation. The lighter metalwork of the room, the platforms and handrails and catwalks and steps, remained, but they had been smashed into an erratic lacework pattern that stretched from the curved, studded interior of the hull to the jungle of shattered machinery and weird pools that was now the floor. First James Martin, then Manny Rosen, and finally Rogo moved step by cautious step across and down the mutilated scaffolding. Manny, his eyes still searching for his wife’s body, lost his footing on a catwalk greased with the oil that coated almost every surface. For a moment he teetered on one leg, hands frantically scrambling in the air for a hold; the rock-solid arm of Rogo caught him.