Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure (6 page)

As Richard stepped down, the familiar sensations of being on shipboard swept over him. The throbbing of the deck as it vibrated to the movement of the engines. The subliminal feelings of movements and unsteadiness – though
Sayonara
was by no means either pitching or rolling. The stench of exhaust fumes, like the clatter of rotors, faded as soon as the Mil lifted off. Then the salt wind claimed them, with its clean tang of ozone and its gentle grumbling bluster. It was surprising how quickly it became quiet as the big chopper thrummed away towards the distant land lying invisibly below the starboard horizon. Then there was just the vastness of the ocean ahead – emphasized by the white cliff of steel standing sheer behind them. They were all turning to look at it – like tourists at the foot of an Alp.

The peaceful feeling of being at one with the great vessel and the natural world around it lasted for only the briefest of moments. ‘Let's go,' said Aleks. He led one team with his intelligence man Sergeant Vasily Kolchak at his shoulder and his communications man with his back-packed radio making a third. Senior Warrant Officer Konstantin Roskov led the other. He too kept his communications man close at hand. All of the soldiers had their guns at the ready. All of the techies held their equipment carefully and safely. They each stood by a door into the whaleback while one of the techies keyed in the access code, then the soldiers led the way into the cavernous blackness beyond as Richard silently thanked God that whoever was on board hadn't thought to reset the codes. Unless of course, they had – and this was an immediate trap.

The techies and the executive observers fell into their designated squads and were following their leaders, apparently oblivious to any second thoughts or dark suspicions. Part of the briefing in the chopper had been the detailing of who was going with which team, under whose command. Steve Penn was going with Konstantin Roskov and the port-side team. Richard and Dom DiVito were with Aleks, Vasily and their men. One after another, they stepped over the raised sill of the bulkhead door into the black throat of the starboard corridor.

Richard hit the infra-red on his eyepiece and found himself surrounded by orange figures. There was a straggling line of them ahead of him, bright against the vastness of the lightless cold with which they were surrounded. But there was also a sense of cavernous immensity. He could hear the sound of the wind, muffled, against the outer shell of the whaleback at his right shoulder. He had the impression of something vast and dark reaching up and over in front to his left, but there was almost nothing to see except his companions, burning so brightly through his infra-red. There was a dull
clang
as Vasily shut the door. He shook his head, feeling a little like a pot-holer lost at the heart of some huge cave system deep beneath the earth. Vastness and enormity stood invisibly all around him, giving itself away only by the promise of echoes and distant whispers. The knowledge that he was in something superhumanly gigantic, if only he could see it.

And then he could see nothing at all as searing whiteness burned into his brain. He gasped with agony and shock, hearing all those around him doing the same. It took him an instant to realize, but then he understood.

Someone – or something – somewhere had switched on all the lights.

R
ight at the moment when Richard – on the far side of the world – was thinking he ought to call her, Robin's cellphone rang. It was the middle of the day for him, the middle of the night for her. But whenever he was away, she found herself regressing to the sort of hours her children kept as university students. At eleven p.m., therefore, she had just put the finishing touches to her late-night small board videoconference with Heritage Mariner's associates in New York where it was six p.m., Vancouver where it was three p.m. and Sydney, where it was eight a.m. tomorrow. To be fair, it had been midday in Vancouver, three p.m. in New York and eight p.m. in London when the meeting had started, long before Sydney came online, but Robin had been a lackadaisical chairwoman and timekeeper because all she had to look forward to was a big, cold, empty bed. Furthermore, she had convinced herself that she needed to refer one or two matters to their head of design, the Australian ‘Doc' Weary. ‘Doc' was currently Down Under, but he was an early riser and had been happy to have a chat at seven a.m. his time – ten p.m. hers. Their chat had gone on for an hour.

So Robin was still standing in the boardroom looking down at her papers when the phone rang and she answered almost automatically, her mind still on business. Very few people other than Richard and her children had access to this number, and very few indeed would ring at this time of night, but it was not in her nature to expect bad news, so she activated the handset without a second thought, actually expecting another ‘catch-up' call from her errant husband. The face on her cell's screen told her who was actually trying to contact her and she paused before accepting the call with a slight frown of distaste. It was from a man she disliked, but whom she felt she had to treat civilly, if not warmly, as he was important to her company if not to her personally. His name was Tristan Folgate-Lothbury and he headed up a Lloyd's of London syndicate which insured a good deal of Heritage Mariner's fleet.

She pressed the little phone to her ear. ‘Good evening, Tristan.'

‘Hello, Robin. Richard about?'

‘If he was, you'd be talking to him. What can I do for you?'

‘Well, there's a bit of a problem, you see …' His oily voice drifted off without adding,
And a problem for your major insurance syndicate is a problem for you.

‘A problem, Tristan? Nothing serious, I hope?'

‘Well … I'd have liked to have talked it over …'

‘With Richard.'

‘Precisely. But you say he's …'

‘Unavailable. Yes.'

‘… out of touch … Hmmm … Look, darling, how are you fixed for dinner? I know it's a bit
aprez
theatre at this hour, but I'm meeting someone who is, actually, at the theatre. Well, the opera. Verdi's
Macbeth
at the E.N.O …'

Robin looked around Heritage Mariner's big boardroom. She was alone in the Victorian splendour, with a mixture of paintings, prints and flat-screen televisions on the walls – except for the one on her right, where a discreet hatchway communicated with the boardroom kitchens. Beyond the little mahogany hatch was a fully-equipped kitchen where, twelve hours ago, a top-flight chef had been preparing light luncheon for the London directors. She hadn't eaten since and was ravenous now. She suddenly felt listless, lonely; as though the wind had been taken out of her sails. Many of the vessels whose models filled the display cases round the room were insured by Tristan Folgate-Lothbury's syndicate. He was a bore, but better than nothing. Better than no one.

‘I'm not fixed at all, Tristan,' she said. ‘And I'm famished.'

‘Well, you couldn't pop across to the Intercontinental, could you? This dinner's set up at Theo's. You can join in.'

The eyebrows beneath the carefully coiffed gold curls rose into arches of surprise. Theo Randall at The Intercontinental was one of the most exclusive restaurants in Mayfair. Tristan was out to impress someone. Clearly not Robin herself – invited as something between an afterthought and an understudy. But someone Tristan wanted to impress would be someone Robin wanted to meet. And Theo Randall by all accounts cooked like an Italian angel.

Characteristically, she refocused her eyes so that instead of looking at the model of
Sayonara
she was looking at her reflection in the glass of the case that contained it. Thank heavens she had chosen to dress up for the board meeting, she thought. At least she wouldn't have to go up to the penthouse to change into an outfit worthy of the venue, though it was daywear, rather than eveningwear. But it was Alexander McQueen and it would do.

‘I'll be there in half an hour, Tristan,' she said. It was during that half hour that Richard finally came through, catching her in a taxi halfway along Pall Mall, so she was unusually short with him – something she would come to regret.

Tristan Folgate-Lothbury was seated and waiting as Robin arrived. He was tucked away at an exclusive little table meant for two but set for three in a cosy alcove in the more muted, brown-on-brown section of the restaurant. He did not appear to realize that Robin was approaching his table in the wake of the maître d' until the very last moment, for he was clearly keeping an eye out for someone else entirely. But when he finally registered her existence, he leaped to his feet and gave her his most winning and welcoming smile. The crowded table heaved. The silverware chimed. A wine bottle reeled. He would have offered to shake her hand but he was too busy keeping the bottle upright. In the moment it took him to fuss the maître d' into seating her with her back to the room, she observed him. And was unimpressed by what she saw.

He had put on weight since their last meeting and would have been unhealthily corpulent even had he been a man of twice his years. For an ex-rugger blue approaching his mid-forties, he was positively portly. His blond hair was greying already and thin on top. His eyes were bagged and watery. His cheeks were flushed. Although the restaurant was perfectly air-conditioned, he was sweating – perhaps because he had been caught out by the warmth of the evening outside, for he was dressed for the day, like she was. He wore a pinstriped three-piece suit that looked to be on the tweedy side of gabardine. The buttons of the waistcoat strained alarmingly, and the gold watch-chain he affected seemed to be all that was holding the two sides of it together. His tie was slightly askew and the fact that he had tied it in a full Windsor knot was clearly a mistake, given his choice of shirt and collar. The size of his collar was, indeed, another miscalculation, given the thickness of his short neck, the number of his chins and the way his jowls were maturing.

There had been a wife somewhere in the picture the last time they had met, Robin recalled. She was clearly gone now – or as good as. No self-respecting woman would let a man she cared about go out in this state. And perhaps she had better mention that to Richard at their next contact – which should be happening soon, she thought with a frown. For the woman who so clearly no longer cared for Tristan was the source of his fortune. Daughter of a shipping magnate from … Greece, was it? No, from Italy; somewhere in the south. Calabria, was it …?

‘Lovely to see you, darling,' he said, subsiding and cutting into her thoughts with a nasal drawl. He waved a hand once more and seemed surprised to discover there was an empty wine glass in it. ‘Good of you to come. Mario, another bottle of this
Brunello di Montalcino
, there's a good chap. And, for the lady … Ah, Robin? A …
a pair o' teeth
?' Tristan emptied the bottle into his glass, much to Mario's disapproval, and waved the empty in the air.

It took just a moment for his meaning to register. ‘
Aperitif
? Yes, of course. Prosecco, please.'

‘We have the
Colle del Principe
, madame …' the maître d' offered, without bothering to call the wine waiter or his boss the sommelier. It was hardly surprisingly – the place was packed and heaving. Patrons were dressed in everything from black ties to T-shirts; Robin and Tristan were by no means out of place.

‘Perfect. A glass …'

‘Oh, bring the
bottle
, Mario. And that's the
2004 Brunello
, d'ya hear?'

‘Of course,' said Marco, in a voice that would have frozen
gellate
.

‘So, Tristan,' asked Robin, her tone dangerously silky and her voice only a little warmer than Mario's. ‘What's the panic?'

‘Panic?' Robin's host jumped as though she had stabbed him. Wine slopped out of his glass and ran over his hands like blood. ‘Oh! I see what you mean … No. There's no
panic
. Just a little … failure of communication
.
'

‘Between whom? About what?' asked Robin as the maître d' sent the sommelier into the firing line after all with Tristan's
Brunello di Montalcino 2004
and Robin's
Colle del Principe.
‘And what has it got to do with Richard or with me?'

‘Ah. Well, thereby hangs a tale, you see …' Tristan rumbled, frowning over the length of time it was taking to get to his bottle.

‘I'm all ears, Tristan,' prompted Robin, sipping the icy Prosecco.

‘Well, as one of the chaps at the centre of the insurance – and reinsurance of
Sayonara
, I was asked to arrange a little test of security …'

‘I see,' said Robin, suspecting what was coming at once, or the start of it at any rate. Had Richard been sitting in this chair, she knew, he would have taken up the story like Sherlock Holmes.
So you asked around and someone recommended a bunch of chaps who could really test out
Sayonara
's defences. And you arranged to send them aboard …

‘… rounded up this bunch of chaps to go aboard and test the defences out, so to speak, and sent them up to Hawadax Island, in the Aleutians. Place called Rat Island Pass. Convenient for boarding, apparently… .'

‘That's right,' said Robin. ‘They went aboard earlier.'

Tristan jumped again. More blood-red wine slopped over his hands.

‘You don't say so?' Tristan sounded relieved, and looked as though he had won the lottery.

So that was what this was about, thought Robin. Tristan was under some kind of pressure – in some kind of funk – because he'd lost contact with the men he'd sent aboard
Sayonara
. And he needed Richard – or her – to bring him up to speed. But why? Why the panic?

‘We lost contact, you see. Not a peep out of them in sixty hours and counting. Silent as the tomb since just after they got to Rat Island. We were expecting a call to confirm that everything was … ah …
ship-shape
, if you follow me. But they're on board after all! I had no idea! On board already? Well I'd better tell …'