The Coffin Ship (20 page)

“We’ve got time now, lass…” He spread his hands wide, holding the whisky firmly in the left.

“Thames, Dover: seven to gale eight, south-southwesterly, strengthening. Intermittent rain. Poor…”

“Not too long. I’m going back up onto the bridge in a minute or two.” Already she sounded distracted. She sipped her whisky.

“Nay, Robin. What good can you do? And you’re worn out. Look at you.”

“I’m third officer here, damn it, Dad. I can do my duty…”

“Wight, Portland, Plymouth: gale eight to severe gale nine. Strengthening. Heavy rain. Poor…”

“Don’t you swear at me, my girl! You’re mixed up in something pretty dirty here. Dirty, and, by the look of it, dangerous. I’m your dad. I want you safe out. It’s only natural…”

Erect now, she put her glass on his bedside table and turned. “Don’t you patronize me, Father. As I have already said, I am third officer here and I…”

It hit her then: the weather forecast.

“Biscay: severe gale force nine gusting to storm ten, southerly, strengthening. Heavy rain. Visibility poor and worsening…”

“My God! Did you hear that?”

“What…”

“South Finisterre…”

“
That!
There’s a southerly storm coming and we’re anchored on a lee shore. Jesus!”

She crossed to the door.

“Robin,” he called.

She turned in the doorway. A vibrant, controlled, competent person he had never seen before. “Make it quick, Dad,” she snapped, “or we’ll all be sitting hard aground on Exmouth promenade long before the dawn.”

The VDU screen flickered. A column of figures appeared then vanished in the twinkling of an eye. “Nearly there,” exulted Ben. “McTavish, is that circuit going to hold up?”

“Aye. There’s nothing uncou’ complex about it, Mr. Strong. It’s just been blown tae hell and gone. That’s all.”

“Well, if we pull this one off, my bonny boy, we’ll be able to hand in our papers here and get a job with IBM.”

“And gie up the sea, Number One?”

“And give up the sea indeed.”

They worked for a while in silence; then McTavish ventured, “But what’d there be tae catch the lassies af I’d no ma uniform tae wear?”

They were working in the Cargo Control Room as they had been since the anchor went down. The two of them, with occasional help from Quine, had been at it for nearly eight hours solidly and were quite prepared for eight more. But there would be no need: if this last circuit held up without shorting out, the end was in sight at last.

Fortunately, the computer’s memory banks did not seem to have been damaged by the explosion. Richard had sealed the room against wind and weather once it had been cleared of debris, and now Ben and McTavish were hoping to get it ready for the inspection later this morning.

“That’s it!” called McTavish from under the console.

“Right. I’ll try it again. Come out…”

McTavish needed no second warning. His face was a rash of burn spots from their last such experiment, which had shorted like a Roman candle an inch above his nose. But Ben didn’t even see him move. Even as he spoke, he pressed ENTER and now the whole screen lit up again. And stayed alight.

“Good…”

Ben’s nimble fingers moved across the keys, rattling off the entry codes that would bring up the memory index. He would check that, then the file headings. And if they were all still there, the files themselves.

But the machine was already answering perfectly:

By 02.30 he knew for certain that the bulk of the memory was intact. He sat back and cracked his knuckles, satisfied for the moment. “I’m finished with the first part of this, McTavish. You all tidied?”

“Just about, Number One. Screwing down the last panel now.”

“I know someone I’d like to
screw down:
the S.O.B. who did all this in the first place.”

“Aye.” McTavish picked himself up and dusted off his knees punctiliously. “It’s nothing short of criminal, ruining all this expensive equipment.”

“Still, it’s working now.”

“That it is, Mr. Strong. I’ll tell the chief so too. Do you want tae tell the captain?”

“I’ll clean up first. You run along.”

“Aye. It’s been a dirty job.” The young Scot paused at Ben’s shoulder, looking across the room. “But it’s done now. And well done.”

Then he was gone.

Ben’s hands hovered over the keyboard an instant longer. Then he, too, left.

He did not go to the bridge, however, but to his own quarters. He wanted to check that everything was ready. He was still busy there when Robin arrived.

Bang Bang Bang!
The hammering at his door was so unexpected that he nearly fainted. He answered as quickly as he could, still pale from the shock.

“Lord!” said Robin. “You look terrible!”

“I’m okay. What is it?”

“Where’ve you been for the last few hours, Number One?” she demanded, taking a leaf out of his own book. “It’s a bloody great storm is what it is. Got us trapped against a lee shore. It’s either hard aground on Exmouth Prom or safely afloat in the Seine Bay—so we’re off to France, says our less-than-happy captain. Off to France. Right now!”

“Can’t you get anyone on that radio, Mr. Quine?” snapped Richard.

“No, sir. It’s not really powerful enough to handle all this atmospheric interference.”

“Then our departure will have to remain unannounced. What’s our bearing, John?”

“One twenty.”

“Steady at that. What are we?”

“Slow ahead. Making five knots.”

“Okay. But I want more speed as soon as possible.”

It was the earliest part of John’s watch, and he stood by Salah Malik’s left shoulder while Ben stood at his right, both peering through the fogged glass. Robin was guarding the Collision Alarm Radar, which, though set at its lowest calibration, was mercifully quiet. The first
big seas thundered into her, beam-on, black and hard as coal. She lurched a little, not liking this at all. Richard remembered the last time he had put her through anything like this, sitting confidently in his captain’s chair. Before bombs; before anyone had mentioned anything about sister ships breaking their backs on the long seas of the Roaring Forties.

Another big sea hit her. She moved only infinitesimally, but Richard knew all her ways now, and that one felt as though it had come more from head-on than beam-on. Richard went forward and pressed himself close to the glass, wishing he had a clearview in front of him. He could hardly see the deck. He couldn’t see the sea at all.

“Quine?”

“Yes, sir?”

“It’s getting increasingly important…”

Just as Richard spoke, Quine at last got something on the portable radio he had brought aboard. The World Service News.

“…And the hurricane-force winds which have devastated Southern France today turned north, against all predictions, and are currently blowing over the Channel. Coastguards fear considerable danger to shipping. And now, sport…”

Richard exploded. “Hurricane force! That’s no bloody use at all, Mr. Quine! I need facts, not journalistic horror stories. I want reports from weather ships and coastal stations. I want accurate wind velocities. I want exact atmospheric pressure readings. I want state of sea and sky, and I do not need the blasted news and sport.”

“N…No, sir!” stuttered Quine, unnerved by the injustice of the attack. But Richard had slammed out onto
the port bridge wing where he could vent his frustration on the elements, and not on innocent bystanders.

The wind out here was thunderous, breathtaking. It buffeted him with a cold fury, numbing him almost at once. He strode forward and gripped the handrail. Only that unrelenting grasp kept him upright as the wind tore at him, pushing icy fingers through the apparently impenetrable cold-weather gear he was now wearing. This was the last thing on earth he wanted to be putting
Prometheus
through, but he had no choice. The storm, approaching from this direction, simply turned Lyme Bay into a lee shore and threatened to blow him aground off Exmouth. He had to run for the shelter of the Seine Bay, off the north coast of France opposite.

It was a matter of mere miles—little more than a hundred—before the Cherbourg Peninsula would start giving a mea sure of protection. In these conditions, perhaps ten hours’ sailing time. So little and so short a time after their voyage so far. But there was something that made him more than a little uneasy; and it was not just the thought of the use Demetrios’s man might put this weather to. Perhaps he thought the old girl had had enough. Perhaps he felt that this was one test too many.

Certainly, it was the one final test he now most dreaded facing with her. Even as he stood there, lost in thought, the first great column of lightning striking the wavetops far ahead showed him the worst.

As it sometimes does, the Channel, under the storm conditions, had pulled in the great Atlantic rollers from the Western Approaches; it had steepened their sides and lengthened the distance between their crests. It had swung them round and was hurling them head-on at
Prometheus:
a perfect facsimile of the seas of the Roaring
Forties. It didn’t happen often but it had happened now. To get to the safety of northern France,
Prometheus
must sail through a flawless replica of the seas off Valparaiso. The seas that had broken her sister’s back. On a clear day. In a calm.

Richard remained outside on the bridge wing for fifteen minutes, expecting to be summoned momentarily as Quine managed to contact the Coastguards. When no such thing happened, his patience ran out quickly. The occasionally glimpsed seas looked too dangerous for him to allow the boy much indulgence.

After the icy rigor of the storm, the bridge was almost suffocating. He paused for an instant to reorient himself, streaming water. Nothing much had changed. Quine was palely wrestling to extract sense from his radio. Without success. Richard bit back further recrimination and turned to Robin.

“Number Three. Go down and ask your father if you can bring his radio up here. It may be open to less atmospheric interference than Mr. Quine’s.”

“Aye, sir,” snapped Robin and exited at once.

Robin was quite pleased at being asked to go to her father. Her bladder was about to burst, courtesy of that unwise whisky at midnight, and the mission at least saved her from having to ask to leave the bridge. Really she should have gone straight to the owner’s cabin, but her need was too acute. She ran down to her own cabin first and let herself in with a sigh of relief. It was pitch dark in the little vestibule, for the only light bulb in her
quarters lit her cabin, perpetually dark now that the windows had been boarded up.

She knew, as soon as she stepped in, that she was not alone, and she swung the door behind her wide again, to let in light from the corridor.

The layout of the cabin was similar to Richard’s except that there was no dayroom or office on her left. Only the curtain before her into the shower and toilet, and the door on her right led out of the little cubicle where she now stood, not even breathing, trying to make her ears overcome the bluster of the wind, the rattling of the window-ply. What was it that had warned her? Some fragrance on the unquiet air? Some sound half hidden in the wind? Some more subtle sense?

It was probably only one of the stewards after all. “Who’s there?” she called, as though she hadn’t hesitated, being careful to open the door to her sleeping quarters before the door behind her closed.

The cabin was empty. There was no one visible and nowhere to hide: even the doors to her wardrobe had gone to fix the windows. She gave an angry sigh, irritated with herself for acting like a ner vous child, frightened of her own shadow.

She went back out to the toilet, vexed.

Sitting in the dark, with the shower curtain eerily caressing her as it moved in the draft, her room suddenly became very clear before some inner eye, and she realized just how many things were not quite in the places she had left them.

Her room had been very thoroughly searched.

And the unease that this shock realization brought started another train of thought. Why had Ben looked so shaken when he had answered his door? She let her
mind go back and looked at his face in her clear memory. Something was wrong there. She checked her luminous watch. She might just take a further moment to find out what was going on before she fetched her father.

As soon as Heritage was in her quarters, the door opposite across the corridor opened and C. J. Martyr crept out on silent feet. That English policeman hadn’t fooled him with his slow speech and hesitant manner. Heads were going to roll over this, and Martyr’s was closest to the block.

Bodmin had brought this home with a vengeance. Martyr had been so wrapped up in what he was doing, and why, it simply hadn’t occurred to him how it would look from the outside. But now he saw all too clearly. He was the only survivor of the original crew—which had joined willingly in the fraud. He was a party to a huge insurance swindle, sanction-breaking, something damn near piracy, and murder. Again. They were going to lock him up and throw away the key. The only hope he could see to try to prove his innocence was to try to find Demetrios’s man. That at the very least might make them reduce his sentence.

It was amusing, in a grim sort of way. Fate had placed him in the same old position—in the middle and at risk from both sides at once. If only he could be certain about Mariner…

Well, Heritage had nothing incriminating in her cabin.

Who was next on the list? Strong.

No. Higgins would just have taken over the watch. Check Higgins first. Leave Strong till later.

* * *

Robin came out of her room and hesitated in the flat brightness of the corridor. It was enough to make one believe in ghosts, even in this bland atmosphere, but she had the feeling again that someone had just been there. And, as if to emphasize her fears, the draft in the corridor suddenly brought the soft, otherworldly song of Nihil’s strange flute from the crew’s quarters. Perhaps it was just the storm, but little currents of icy air were everywhere, disturbing the normally tranquil ambiance of the accommodation areas, as though the ill-fitting boards were giving access to a lot more than mere storm wind. She shivered, tightened her cold-weather gear around her, and hurried down to Ben’s cabin.

Richard would be wondering where the hell she had got to, for she had spent some moments checking through her cabin again, completely mystified as to who would want to search it or why. She began to jog down the corridor, possessed of a sudden urgency, moving silently on her Wellington-ed feet, the only sound the whisper of her waterproof leggings.

When she got to his door she didn’t even bother to knock. She knew well enough where he was. He was on the bridge.

Or was he?—The light in his cabin was on!

She hesitated in the dark vestibule of his quarters. They were laid out like the captain’s: curtain in front, dayroom office on the left, light-edged cabin door on her right.

If the light was on, the man was in, she reasoned. And he would have heard her come in this far. No help for it, then: she turned the handle and entered the cabin.

“Ben…”

The cabin was empty.

Richard forced himself to sit at ease while every nerve in his body was agonizingly taut. He was used to meeting tension with action; he had forgotten how hard it could be simply to sit and be in command.

He had opened the bright yellow waterproof jacket but had made no other concession to the stifling closeness of the bridge. He might well have to go outside again—perhaps in a hurry—and fighting his way into recalcitrant cold-weather gear would only slow things up. The closeness was not simply a matter of atmosphere, either, he realized suddenly: though the air in here was too warm, too full of unexplained currents of tension, it was really the nature of the storm itself. There was no visual element to it. It was as though the hurricane winds were themselves coal-black. They forced themselves against the windows like the flanks of monstrous animals and it was impossible to see. Off the coast of South Africa, the storm, terrible though it was, had at least been visible—had at least attained some scale and grandeur. This was a much more personal—disturbing—thing; and the fact that it had wrapped the howling shroud of itself around the bridge windows made the normally airy place seem constricted, confining.

Nor was he alone in this thought. Ben stirred at last from his brown study at the helmsman’s side. “I’ll stand out on the bridge wing. Check the lookout,” he yelled. Richard nodded.

Ben slopped through the puddle Richard had made on his last entrance and took the door handle.

Several things happened at once.

Ben opened the door. A large sea gave
Prometheus
a right hook that caused her to jump. The squall responsible for the rogue wave took the door and flung it open, then closed.

Ben was hurled backward over the slippery floor. He lost his footing and crashed down, striking his head against the edge of the chart table. He rolled over and lay still.

“Ben!” Richard was at his side immediately, gentle fingers probing along the scalp line to discover a large gash oozing blood. But Ben’s eye flickered open at once, bright and clear. “You okay?” Richard asked.

“Yeah!” Ben’s own fingers traced the wound. He sat up. “Fine.” But even as he spoke, a bright worm of blood began to crawl down toward his right eye.

“Better get that looked at,” said Richard, turning toward John, who was looking anxiously across from the Collision Alarm Radar.

“No,” said Ben at once. “You can’t spare anyone here. I’ll slip down and see to it myself.”

Richard hesitated, then nodded. Ben was right. If he could see to it himself it would be better. With Robin still below, he could ill-spare John. And Quine knew nothing of first aid. So he helped Ben to his feet and guided him a step or two until his godson could cross the rest of the bridge unaided.

At the door, Ben turned and looked back, but the others were already preoccupied. He wiped the blood back up into his hairline and allowed himself a grim little smile. Couldn’t have arranged it better, he thought. Now no one would suspect a thing.

Robin hesitated in Ben’s cabin, thinking fast. Under other circumstances what she was about to do would be
absolutely unacceptable—and extremely distasteful—but the memory of that look on his face drove her on. She started to search the cabin, but the search revealed nothing untoward. This was hardly surprising, since she had no idea what she was looking for. Committed to doing this now, she moved into his office quickly. And there she found what she had been looking for—just enough to make her suspicious. By his desk was a small safe. As first officer, he was responsible for any valuables aboard. The safe was open. Empty. And, above it, on the desk itself, stood Ben’s only real treasure, a photograph of his dead parents.

Except that it wasn’t there. The frame remained, lying dismantled on the desktop, but the photograph was gone. She was standing, holding it, thinking like lightning when the door slammed wide.

Ben hesitated on the stairs, a wave of nausea threatening to overcome him. He held on to the banister and wiped the back of his right hand over his forehead. It came away thick with blood. Impatiently, he pushed the congealing liquid back into his hair. It wasn’t as bad as it looked but it was worse than it was meant to be. He hadn’t felt as bad as this since the night of the explosion going down to try to sink her for the first time.

But the time and the circumstances were too good to be missed now. The storm would cover the sound of the pumps—he had set them low and quiet anyway, expecting them to be doing their deadly work in a quiet anchorage. The storm would cover the loss of the ship—like the bomb was supposed to. It was a cataclysm so large that it would cover everything, no questions asked. He did not pause to consider the loss of his
shipmates—right from the start he had known most of them were doomed.

As soon as his head cleared, he ran on down the stairs. He considered going to his cabin—he had enough medication there to staunch the blood—but he went to the Cargo Control Room first.

There was no need to switch the lights on. His deft fingers found the control-console keys in the dark and tapped in the secret code. The screen flickered and lit up:

He typed in: EXPEDITE and pressed RETURN.

At once the screen went blank, also according to the original program.

He paused, listening with every fiber of his being, but he could not hear the pumps begin their deadly work. They were lost in the sound of the storm. But he knew well enough what they would be doing. The extra schedule he had programmed the machine to accept in Durban, called for all the cargo to be transferred to one tank. And as the pumps tried to obey the computer’s order, so the forces they obediently unleashed would tear the ship apart.

He went out and paused again. Should he close up the wound in his head?

No. Like the storm, it covered up so much. If he alone survived, it would look so impressive at the court of inquiry. And, after all that had happened, he would need to look impressive there.

Or, if any of the others survived as well, then the wound, deep enough to bring mild concussion, would
explain why he wasn’t on the bridge—why he was doing the apparently irrational things he needed to do if he were going to survive.

The first of which was to get to the forecastle head, where his own personal life raft was hidden beneath the spare anchor.