Crude Carrier (16 page)

XX

The single beep of his alarm clock woke him at 02:00. In the dark room, he dressed and listened to the sounds of the ship. Something was different—not in the hiss of the ventilation system or the tremor of the steel bulkhead. It was in the fundamental rhythm of the entire ship. Under his bare feet, the gentle sway of the carpeted deck had also changed; the pitching motion was slower now and seemed to include a slight sideways roll as if the waves came at the ship from a new angle.

Squeezing on the canvas shoes that, without their laces, almost fit, he muffled the sound of his door lock with a folded washcloth. In the passageway a row of dim lights showed the white paint of walls and ceiling, the vacant dark carpet, the closed weather doors at each end that led to small outside wings. Through their portholes was only blackness. Alert for sounds, Raiford went swiftly to the lower bridge deck. Pausing again to listen before he pressed open the wardroom door, he softly closed it behind him. The only lighting in the empty room was a night lamp turned low. A dot of orange glare said the coffeepot stood ready for service at any time.

Raiford settled in front of the Inmarsat terminal and groped around for its telephone. Nothing. The handset was gone. Where it usually rested, a pair of empty chrome forks smiled at him. He peered into the darkness behind the machine, but neither wire nor handset rested there. Running his hands along the sides of the metal housing, his fingers stumbled on a missing panel and he tilted the heavy box to bring the cavity into the dim light. Where the cord for the handset was supposed to enter the terminal, the bright and cheery colors of disconnected wires dangled loose. The small brass slots for the shoe connectors were shiny with the scratches of recent wear: the handset had been taken out and replaced several times. Raiford guessed those times that it was replaced were at night and the purpose of taking it out was to cut off unmonitored communications from the ship.

The services of a temporary electronics officer were still needed, but the captain and first mate wanted to keep that officer incommunicado. And that hinted what would happen when they no longer needed Raiford's expertise. What it didn't tell him was exactly when that would be. Nor how he could get his information about the smaller tanker to Julie or Mack.

He sat in the half-light and considered the possibilities. His cell phone was of no use. The shortwave radio was monitored continuously on the bridge; any use of that would be heard immediately by the officer on duty and—if necessary—cut off. Same for the ship's fax and the telex. … Taking the Inmarsat's handset was a good move … an effective one, unless …

He stared into the darkness, tracing in his mind the relays, transmitters, connectors, and wiring diagrams. Voice or computer, it was all electrical impulses. The
Aurora
had its own modem … the ship's computer had a built-in modem somewhere. … It, too, would be monitored. But the ship's e-mail messages went out three times a day, and one of those times—a satellite connection at cheaper, off-peak hours to save the company money—was due in half an hour. The trick would be to put a message in the queue unnoticed. All e-mails were relayed through a server at Hercules Maritime. But maybe they wouldn't be screened if there were no alert. Eventually, the message log would be read over by the home office for the purpose of billing individual users, but by then it would be too late.

How … ? Raiford closed his eyes to see better his memory of the ship's wiring diagrams. The backup unit. The
Aurora
was an old vessel. It had a half-duplex transmitter for a backup unit. Its messages only went one way at a time, and that's where the gamble would be. But if he could patch through to that half-duplex transmitter …

Raiford headed belowdecks for the loading control room. He didn't know if what he had in mind would work. There were few reasons why it should, and many why it should not. But all he had was a gamble, and he'd better take it—time was passing quickly.

Easing the door shut, he tucked his shirt along its bottom crack before turning on the control room lights. The wall of dials, indicator lights, readouts, and gauges was silent and cold. At the end, anchored to its metal shelf, sat the slave-terminal that provided access to the ship's main computer. Glancing at his watch, he turned it on and punched in codes that took him deeper into the programming menus. Keys rattling swiftly, he tried first one track, then another, tracing out sequences to dead ends. Finally he found the series that led to the ship's off-board communications system. Intent, aware of passing time, he studied the numbers and symbols that filled the screen. Gradually—too gradually—with gaps, guesses, and luck, patterns fell into place and he began to read the strings of programming language. There it was: a connecting sequence to a cellular-ready modem. And it had a configuration almost identical to one he was familiar with—an old RJ-14 unit manufactured by Multi-Tech. It worked the same way as many commercial airliners that had modems available for passengers who wanted to tap into the Internet while in flight. And, yes, he could transmit through the unused half-duplex. But the ship's scheduled transmission time was coming up fast. With luck, the officer on the bridge wouldn't notice an extra e-mail going out. But he needed more luck to time the transmissions. Dial the Internet … pause for the connection. No screen to show a reply—not with a half-duplex. Five seconds. Ten … twenty—that should do it. He hoped that did it. Access code … account number … personal code … address. Each one-way transmission required him to wait until he thought his message was acknowledged. He hoped the responses were timed right. Timing was important. He forced himself to let the second hand on his watch swing around the dial. Then he entered a long message, typing quickly to make the deadline for the ship's e-mail transmission now just minutes away: the story of the
Aurora
's overload, the rendezvous at sea, a description of the smaller tanker's dimensions, the amount of money involved. “The functions for the loading programs come from Hercules's home office, so someone there is in on it too. I don't know if Rossi died accidentally or was killed, but it happened out of their approved sea-lane at the rendezvous, and that's why they had to be vague about the cause and especially the place of his death.” He glanced at his watch again and hurried to finish, “Julie, I hope you get this. I think they're on to me, but don't worry. Things are under control.”

He typed in the code for “send.” There was no confirmation—the ship's e-mail could not talk back to the half-duplex. But his message should queue with the other e-mails waiting for satellite time. He hoped. And that deadline—23:35 GMT—was right about now: 02:35 local time.

Sighing, Raiford sagged against the creaking chair. His message would either go out on schedule among all the others, or it wouldn't. There was nothing he could do now except wipe the sweat from his face and keep hoping.

XXI

Raiford felt something in the air at breakfast: an edginess, a preoccupied silence among the deck officers gulping their porridge and kippers, their eggs, toast, and coffee. It was more than the usual shunning of him; rather, it was something that seemed within each of the officers and that, for the most part, did not include Raiford.

The exception was the first mate. Once, Raiford looked up to catch Pressler staring at him. Above the corner of the man's tight mouth a fresh, maroon scar creased the flesh. Hatred made the man's eyes hard, and his muscular shoulders were tensed around his neck.

Raiford grinned and offered to pass the Thermos pot. “Care for a cuppa?”

The mate whipped his face away, the side of his thick neck turning dark red. No one at the long table lifted eyes from their plates. Shockley, who had been stuffing down a large bowl of porridge, suddenly seemed to lose his appetite and stared blankly at the tablecloth. Then he blinked and looked up. His eyes touched on Raiford and then jerked away. He wiped his mouth and shoved his chair back.

“Duty calls.” His voice was hoarse and no one replied.

Raiford was last to leave the table. Johnny bustled around while the steward cleared the dishes. Shockley had not yet passed on to Raiford the first mate's orders for the day. The absence of a duty station felt odd, as if, already shunned, Raiford had now become invisible as well.

In the empty passageway, he half listened to the clatter of dishes in the dining saloon and felt another subtle shift in the
Aurora
's pulse. Up in his quarters, he was staring out his window at the long stretch of vacant green deck when he heard a key in his lock.

“Come in.”

“Oh—very sorry!” The deck steward, Woody, held the week's fresh linens over his arm. “Thought room empty. I come back.”

“That's okay, Woody. Get your work done.”

“Okay.” He quickly stripped the bed and folded it back into the day couch. “Much work today, yes?”

“Why's that?”

“Offload. Eleven hundred hours. Must get cabins done and get down to deck station.”

“We're off-loading?”

“Yes. Tanker comes alongside at eleven thirty hours for lightering. Crew at stations eleven hundred hours sharp.” He gave a couple swipes at the toilet bowl with a brush, then hung the towels. “Very busy today.”

“How's old Charley doing? I haven't seen him in a couple days.”

The steward paused as he emptied the wastebasket, a frown pulling his black eyebrows together. “Still a little sick. He works okay, but much coughing. Coughs up some blood. Maybe leaves ship at Cape Town.”

“Won't he lose his job if he does that?”

An unhappy shrug. It wasn't something Woody wanted to consider.

“Do you help off-load?”

“Yes. Everybody must work then.”

“Same ship every time?”

“Oh, yes.” An angry, rising screech of rapid Chinese floated up the stairway. Woody snapped back to his work. “Must go, Mr. Raifah. Very busy now. Chief Steward is very angry.”

Around ten hundred hours, the sun-glinted white of a ship's superstructure, like the tip of a distant iceberg, broke the line of horizon off the starboard bow. Gradually, the white speck drew nearer, swinging in a wide arc to a parallel course as its hull lifted above the curve of the sea. The
Aurora
had slowed, taking miles to coast to a speed that scarcely created a bow wave. Each throb of its giant screw was a distinct shudder that trembled the ship like a slow heartbeat. Cautiously, gingerly, the two vessels neared each other as the
Aurora
's crew rigged heavy, thick fenders alongside. Raiford, his small digital camera busy, leaned on the rail of the covered promenade at the side of the main deck. Four brightly colored signal flags blossomed from the mast of the other ship and fluttered for twenty or thirty seconds before being replaced by another string. Raiford could not read the flags, but he read their implication: neither vessel was using radio communication because they did not want to take the chance of being overheard.

A moment later the signal flags bobbed out of sight, jerked down the mast by unseen hands. A semaphore light winked pairs of dots followed by a message. It was straight Morse code and Raiford had no trouble deciphering that: “Verify three knots 185S.” After a pause, the shorthand blink for “Roger, message received” followed by another shorthand signal that Raiford could not decipher.

It probably meant Continue Course or Exercise Maneuver. Within minutes the smaller ship began to drift closer, its hull's rust-streaked red paint standing so high out of the water that the black paint above it was barely washed by the heave of the blue seas. Thickly woven mats protected its flank against any impact with the
Aurora
, and a fast stream of water showed that she was still pumping ballast and rising even higher in preparation for on-loading. If he had a printout of the transfer plan, Raiford could have said exactly how much water was coming out of which compartment, because he had computed the smaller ship's loading program yesterday.

It was a delicate and dangerous maneuver for both vessels. It wasn't just the wakes or the wind that could swing the smaller ship against the low-riding
Aurora Victorious
. Like all VLCCs, the
Aurora
was so large that smaller ships which carelessly ventured too close could be drawn into a collision by its magnetic field. Raiford appreciated the time-consuming care with which the captains inched their vessels closer and closer.

Now he could make out faces scattered along the ship's rail and staring back across the narrowing sea churning with the two ships' bow waves. As Raiford took more photographs, he heard the bridge door open behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Third Officer Li.

The man, surprised to find Raiford, glanced over his own shoulder down the passageway. But the work parties had already mustered and the bridge deck was empty.

“Thought you'd be asleep, Li. Not your watch, is it?”

“No. But I never see this done before. Very interesting.”

“This isn't usually done?”

“Oh, no—not at sea. Usually it's done in safe water. Calm water. Tie up to a mooring and off-load to a lighter ship using very long hoses, like in the Virgin Islands.” He shook his head, intent on the closing vessel. “Doing it under way is very difficult, very dangerous. Must keep headway to steer both ships, but much—” He held his hands out palms down and waggled them from side to side. “Makes steering very difficult even for the automatic pilot. And one rub”—his hands whisked together—“boom!”

“You've never seen this done before,” Raiford asked again.

“No. But it saves time, the captain says. Time is money, yes?”

“Confucius said that too?”

He laughed. “No. Mr. Pressler.” The laugh went away. “You have a big fight with him, yes?”

“I guess that's no secret.”

“No. Not much secret on a ship.” He stood beside Raiford, head not quite as high as the big man's shoulder. “Pressler is a very angry man inside. Captain Boggs is … weak. He's not strong like a captain should be. Listens all the time to Pressler, does what Pressler says.” A shake of his head. “This is not a happy ship.”

They both agreed on that. “What do you know about this other tanker, Li? Where does it take the oil it loads?”

“Maybe Rangoon. Maybe Singapore. Maybe that's why we sail way out to the middle of the Indian Ocean. Makes eighteen, maybe twenty hours longer to Cape Town for us—very expensive for us. So the offload to this other ship must make a lot of money.”

Raiford nodded: twenty million or more. On a maneuver far out of the main shipping lanes, using radio silence. Eighteen or twenty hours' sailing time lost—just about the same amount of time needed to shut down at sea and tighten the steam fittings, according to Henderson. If Raiford was writing a mystery novel, he'd say the plot was getting thicker. “How much do you get paid, Li?”

“Two hundred fifty dollars a month. Plus bunk and mess. Good pay.” A slightly less happy smile. “Well, pretty good. Not so good as you English or Americans, but it's okay for now. Pretty soon I can work up to second officer. Someday captain. Then I make good money!”

Somewhere on the foredeck the Tannoy bleated for the work parties to stand to their transfer stations. Raiford leaned out to photograph along the ship's rail. A half-dozen sailors far down the green deck clustered around the stubby boom at the loading manifold. Another two or three sprinted toward them on ship's bicycles. The semaphore on the smaller ship flashed again, but Raiford caught only the latter part of the message, “for loading.” He glanced at his watch—11:08. Eight minutes behind schedule and that cost the
Aurora
's owners another thirty or so dollars. He murmured into the small camera's microphone “Tankers connected, oil transferring.”

Then he asked Li, “What would happen if someone moved the Plimsoll mark up on that tanker over there?”

“The Plimsoll?” Li, eyebrows lifted, stared at the ship. “Be very dangerous! The safety margin's gone and ship can swamp very easy. Maybe even break apart in rough water. Too much stress on the hull, yes? Would want damn good insurance on the hull, yes?” He squinted. “The Plimsoll looks okay.”

“Would you sail on a ship with a false Plimsoll?”

“Oh, no! No way, José! Raise the Plimsoll, and the ship swamps. Lower the Plimsoll, and the ship rolls bottom up. No—too much danger!”

Raiford decided Li would sleep better not knowing about the
Aurora
's false Plimsoll. On the deck below, the crew became active. The roll and pitch of the lighter vessel made transferring the hoses an intricate maneuver. Struggling in the sea's turbulent heaving and the
Aurora
's massive but almost submerged bow wave, the smaller vessel tossed and bobbed while one of its crewmen tried again and again to throw a line across the ocean foaming and hissing between the ships.

The black dot of a weighted monkey's fist sailed out, fell short, and skipped crazily across the ridges of boiling foam as it was repeatedly hauled back. Finally a sailor on deck leaned far out to snag the pilot line with a boat hook, like, Raiford thought, Rossi might have attempted. It was quickly drawn tight to lead the heavier cable attached to it. Then a pulley was attached to the heavier cable and used to lift a hose from the empty vessel to the
Aurora
's manifold.

This close, his camera's telephoto could pick out details of the ship as Raiford loaded the camera's memory chip. Her name, under a coat of rust and grime, showed that even oil pirates had a touch of wit—the
Stormy Petrol
. From her taffrail flew a flag of three broad horizontal bands—red, yellow, green—with some kind of design in the center: a lion or a palm tree. Like the
Aurora
, that vessel's island was at the stern and its hull stretched toward its bow. Unlike the
Aurora
, the
Stormy Petrol
had several pairs of cargo masts—forward, center, and just in front of the island. A row of six cargo hatches had covers mounted on tracks to open laterally. The pipes that moved liquid cargo were placed at the sides along the ship's rails. A single stack above the bridge slanted back.

The offload went through the lunch hour without a break for chow. A figure—it looked like Pressler—continuously ran a long measuring stick in and out of various inspection plates to monitor oil levels. It was early afternoon before the
Stormy Petrol
's Klaxon gave a brassy howl that was answered by the deeper, hoarse steam of the
Aurora
's whistle. The hoses and lines were dropped from the
Aurora Victorious
into the churning sea, and, even while they were being hauled aboard, the
Stormy Petrol
veered sharply to starboard away from danger. The signal light on the wing of its navigation bridge flickered a brief message and its wake deepened in a sharp arc toward the eastern horizon. Raiford felt the
Aurora
's engines throb harder and faster.

As the
Stormy Petrol
became smaller and smaller, he sensed relief among the crew and realized that his own shoulders, tight with anxiety while the two vessels had run so dangerously close, were now drooping with weary relaxation. The complete transfer maneuver had taken almost five hours, not counting the hours to slow the
Aurora
. It was time enough to deliver the
Aurora
's foul-weather jettison plus the illegal overage. Far down the deck, a work party secured the fenders that had been placed over the side as feeble protection against a collision and explosion. Another group, nagged by the Tannoy, had begun to hose spilled oil from the deck. The loudspeaker bleated again, this time singling out Raiford: “Electronics officer to the loading control room—electronics officer to the loading control room.”