Dead Sea (22 page)

There was the narrowest of spaces for Aika Rei to squeeze into. It was deep and blessedly dark. She made herself invisible. Willed herself silent. Imagined herself undiscoverable. The largest of the four men swaggered past. His footsteps echoed confidently enough until they were stopped abruptly by the ringing, almost bell-like sound of a metal bar being slammed across his skull. There was a softer crumpling sound as he slumped unconscious to the deck. ‘One down, three to go,' bellowed First Officer Sakai. ‘Don't make me come in and get you!'

The next two tried to run out as a pair but they didn't get any further than Nagase. They too went down with that telltale crumpling sound as the cracked-bell tones were still ringing in the air. ‘Come on, Izumi! Don't keep us waiting!'

‘Fuck you, Sakai! I'm not going to let you crack my skull open so easily!'

‘You can't stop it, Izumi. You know that. You've broken the rules. You suffer the consequences. You're only drawing it out, making it worse for yourself.'

‘I didn't! I didn't break any rules. I wasn't going to steal anything!'

‘That's only because there's nothing in here small enough to steal and you know it! What did you think? A palace was going to be made out of neat little nickable sections just right for you to try and smuggle ashore? You'd better thank your lucky gods that it's not. Have you any idea what would have happened to you if this had gone any further? You know nobody crosses the company. Nobody pisses off the professor. Our professor – not that sad little git with his sorry slut in the owner's suite. And let me tell you this, Seaman Izumi, while you still have ears to hear with,
our
professor's
coming aboard
! Did you know that? The man himself! And you do not want to be in anybody's bad books when the professor comes aboard. That's why Nagase here did the wise thing. His dick's not as big as a roof beam but at least he'll still have one when this is all over. Which is more than you'll have if the professor hears anything about this, and you know it!'

Still the coward Izumi hesitated, and Sakai added those last, few, fatal words: ‘Come on, for fuck's sake, Izumi. You know the professor only wants to play with the two in the owner's suite after he gets the lottery ticket. Well, with the slut, at any rate. Don't make him waste his time on you . . .'

Izumi capitulated. The cracked bell sound was preceded by a whimper and followed by the soft crumpling sound. The door slammed shut. Aika Rei threw up her
soba
noodles and
dashi
broth all over the deck at her feet.

During the time it took her to stumble to the bulkhead door and release the inner handles, she began to see her whole existence in an entirely new light. But, try as she might, she could not begin to see any kind of a way out of this suddenly terrifying situation either for herself or for her poor Reona.

Her professor was not in their suite when she finally made it back. A couple of hours earlier she would have assumed he had gone to lunch without her. Now she was at once terrified they might have murdered him already. She went into their bathroom and used a dry towel to rub the sickness off her shoes. The main door opened and she ran out, almost weeping with relief to find Tago there. Her revulsion was so great that she spat, ‘You know they all call you
Scumbag Tago
?'

He looked at her like a surly child. Then he sneered. ‘You should hear some of the things they call
you
!'

‘I
have
, you little shit! Now get out! And tell whichever sick fuck turned the water off in here so you could spy on me showering downstairs to turn it back on again. I'd
rot
before I washed down there again. I'd go to the toilet out of the
window
, you sick scum!'

He went, apparently more than a little shaken by the venom and profanity of her outburst. Alone – really terribly alone, now – she collapsed on the chair she put her coat on the first time she had walked in here as innocently as a child, and really began to wonder what was actually going to become of herself and her beloved professor Reona Tanaka.

But if Reona was
her
professor, she thought, then who was this other professor? The professor that even the fearsome First Officer Sakai seemed to be terrified of. Why was he threatening to come aboard the
Dagupan Maru
? And what on earth did this other professor want with
her
?

Aika Rei was still stuck at this point when Reona reappeared the better part of an hour later. He didn't notice her expression, for he was bursting with news.

‘Good news,' he said as he came in. ‘I bumped into First Officer Sakai and he says the bathroom's been fixed. We're back to our own private en suite!'

‘Reona,' she began, a little weakly.

‘Oh, and we're to have a visitor!' he interrupted her, too full of boyish enthusiasm to be stopped. ‘Apparently the CEO of the company wants to come aboard himself; be there in person when we catch up with the
Cheerio
.'

‘Darling,' she tried again.

But he overrode her again. ‘And he's not just the chairman of the shipping section; he's the guy who runs the whole thing. Luzon Logging – the lot. He sounds really important, incredibly powerful – maybe even more powerful that Mr Greenbaum and Captain Mariner. Professor Satang S. Sittart's his name and Sakai says he can hardly wait to meet us!'

L
iberty was in action without a second thought. The minute the picture from Maya's camera settled at that strange angle she was up out of the cockpit and running across
Flint
's warm, polystyrene and composite deck towards the side of the derelict vessel so ironically called
Luck
. ‘Maya!' she called into the two-way. ‘
Maya!
Can you hear me?'

There was the hissing of an empty channel. Liberty's whole long body went cold, even though she was in frantic motion.

‘Hey!' called Bella, looking up from the laptop, shocked by the suddenness of the disaster and by Liberty's explosive reaction to it. ‘You take care!'

‘I will,' called back Liberty. But she didn't really believe her own words. ‘Maya?' she called again. ‘Emma?'

There was only quiet hissing in reply.

The deck of the ghost ship was a quick scramble up and its look and layout were already familiar from the pictures Maya and Emma had sent back. The only thing the pictures had not revealed was the fact that, like
Flint
, the derelict vessel was stirring rhythmically as the big ocean rollers passed beneath her keel. That explained the unexpected movement she had been so swift to dismiss, she thought. And the heaving seemed to be intensifying. She glanced up at the hard blue sky as she stepped over the rotting safety rail, suddenly aware that the weather might be on the change.

But Liberty had much more immediate concerns. She ran across the green non-slip and the grey section behind it. She did not pause until she reached the starboard bridge-house door, then she swung it wide until it slammed against the wall behind it and clipped wide open, shaking in its retaining clip as the echo of the bang it made faded into the moaning of the wind. She gulped a deep breath of relatively clear air and stepped over the raised section into the bridge house itself.

Sunlight streamed in behind her, lighting the lateral corridor to the top of the companionway, but the warmth of the outside vanished immediately into a clammy chill. The pictures had not prepared her for the stink, any more than they had for the restless movement, and even that quick eye-watering breath she had caught when the wind backed hardly prepared her for the stench. She hadn't thought to bring a torch – hadn't really thought at all – so she slowed a little as she plunged into the shadowy stairwell like a reluctant bather entering an icy pool.

No sooner had the shadows closed around her than the composition of the dark air changed. The sickening aroma of rotting fish was all but lost beneath the eye-watering smell of diesel gas. As though she was swimming in petrol, Liberty plunged on, taking the shallowest breath she could, praying that she could hold out against the deadly fumes, forewarned and forearmed.

The turn of the stairwell was the darkest part of the journey, for as she went on down into the wreckage of the crew's mess, the light cast by two torches illuminated where she was walking. They did so, she noted grimly, because they were shining along the deck from the sides of the two fallen women at the far end of the engine room corridor. Even so, the low, lateral beams made it easy enough for her to pick her way through the rotting filth on the deck.

Emma had made it almost to the door of the crew's mess. She lay on her face with the torch out ahead of her, as though she was pointing the bright beam at some danger hidden in the dark ahead of her. Maya lay immediately outside the half-closed engine room door with the camera and the second torch. Liberty stepped past both women and pushed the cold metal door closed then slammed the handles into place. Only then did she turn.

Liberty had already calculated that she would have to take Emma first because she would never get Maya past the American-Japanese woman's stocky body. Not in a passageway as narrow as this one. Wearily, feeling the weight of her own arms and legs beginning to drag her down, she took Emma by the back of her life vest and lifted her as though she were some kind of suitcase. The torch rolled free of Emma's slack grip and continued to point urgently through the mess into the wreckage of the galley with its tank of cooking gas. The rolling of the beam gave the whole thing a weird, unsettling movement, adding to the motion of the hull, seeming to set it swinging more forcefully still.

Emma's arms and legs dragged along the floor of the passageway as Liberty pulled her out. Her wrists and knees slithered through the filth on the mess floor and bashed against every stair on the long upward haul. Little by little, one step at a time, Liberty's mind closed down until only her iron will was keeping her going. Her long legs only just functioned. Her back and shoulders seemed to be on fire. Her hands, and especially her fingertips, were points of almost incapacitating agony. She didn't dare breathe too deeply so she couldn't call for help. Her head sang and her heart thundered so powerfully that it felt as though her chest was going to explode. But somehow Liberty managed to pull Emma up into the dazzling brightness of the lateral corridor and out on to the windy weather deck.

‘Bella,' she croaked into the two-way, the moment she dared fill her lungs with the wonderful air that had almost made her puke ten minutes ago. ‘Double-check the way
Flint
's secured and come aboard. I'll never be able to do that again. Not alone.' She rolled Emma over on to her back, sank to her knees beside her and tried to check for signs of life. Her adrenaline-filled hands were shaking so much she could hardly hold her friend's warm throat, let alone find a pulse. Besides, the strain on her fingers of treating the rubberized canvas of a life jacket as though it were the handle of a suitcase had left her nails torn and her fingertips utterly numb. She put her ear to Emma's lips. Could not hear breathing. Could not feel anything other than the steady wind on her cheek.

‘That's really fucking risky, Liberty,' warned Bella. ‘And the weather's on the turn . . .'

‘It's really fucking
vital
, Bella!
Get here now!
' Liberty pulled herself back up and turned towards the clipped bulkhead door. ‘You really don't want to finish this trip three-handed,' she emphasized. ‘Maybe two-handed –
with a couple of corpses for company
! Get here or it'll be too late.'

She paused, leaning against the doorway, willing herself to hurry up, feeling as though she was wearing a suit of lead. Then, with startling suddenness, Bella was there beside her and, shoulder to shoulder, they went in. ‘Goodness!' whispered Bella. ‘It's cold in here! And that
smell
!'

‘Don't breathe,' grated Liberty. ‘Take one deep breath and hold it. It gets worse.' She did what she advised, then took the lead down the dark companionway, feeling Bella close behind her. She had to put her hand on the wall to steady herself several times before she stepped down on to the lower deck once more. They went side by side through the crew's mess, with the torch beams lighting up their feet among the rubbish, then Liberty took the lead again stepping into the narrow corridor. She slowed carefully so she could stoop and retrieve Emma's torch without Bella bumping into her, then she gestured to her dark-haired companion to pick up Maya's torch as well. They paused for an instant as Liberty tried to work out the best way for two women to carry a third along a corridor only just wide enough for one. Then she stooped and took hold of Maya's life jacket just as she had taken hold of Emma's. Bella stood back and Liberty heaved the inert mass of Maya's head and shoulders past her knees. Then, blessedly, Bella stooped and grabbed the waist section of the sturdy vest, taking half the terrible weight.

Liberty swung the torch beam dead ahead and began to stagger forward. As she did so, she realized with simple horror that the gas tank in the kitchen did not just seem to be swinging. It was actually swinging. Quite wildly, in fact. And even as the two would-be rescuers pulled Maya into the filthy mess, the tank finally tore free of its fixing and crashed to the floor. But one more horrified glance was enough to tell Liberty the worst. It was the pipe that had broken – not the connection. And that realization was confirmed at once by the fact that the roaring in her ears became real – the roaring of escaping gas. Cooking gas was pumping out of the bottle and through the broken pipe to mix with the already lethal fume-filled atmosphere. The smallest spark would set the whole lot off now.

Simple horror seemed to lend Liberty even more strength. She heaved Maya on to the steps of the companionway so fiercely that for a moment she was pulling Bella as well. Then Bella caught something of her terror and the pair of them bundled Maya up the companionway, round the bend and up again into the brightness of the corridor. Side by side with Maya dragging between them, they raced down the wider A deck passageway and out on to the deck.