The Snow Tiger / Night of Error (57 page)

Clare said thoughtfully, ‘Maybe Mark gave them a bum steer before he died.’

I shook my head. ‘No, if he’d done that they would have been out testing for it, and we know they haven’t. But
we’re not lost – at least we don’t think so. We’re here for a purpose.’

I glanced through the door of the lounge and saw the receptionist working at his accounts. I said, ‘Excuse me for a minute,’ and went into the foyer where I had an interesting little five-minute chat with him, which included the passing of a discreet backhander across the counter. I went back into the lounge, sat down and took a long, lingering draught of cold beer. Then I said, ‘We’re in the right place.’

They all stared at me. ‘How do you know? How can anyone know?’

I said, ‘One Ernesto Ramirez has booked half a dozen rooms in this hotel. He hasn’t turned up yet.’

Campbell looked startled and Clare let out a yelp of pure joy. Paula, on the other hand, visibly shrank back in her chair, and I made a quick mental note of that. I said, ‘I thought it a bit odd that the hotel should be so full right now, so I checked up on it. Ramirez booked the rooms and paid handsomely for them in advance; he wrote that he didn’t know exactly when he was coming, but that the rooms must be kept free.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ said Campbell. ‘But what’s he been doing in Nouméa?’

‘I think he’s been stooging around in this area all the time, getting slowly closer to wherever we were, and waiting to see where we’d go without being too close, so that he could follow easily from a distance.’

‘But now he is coming here, and we’ve not been in a day,’ said Clare. ‘How could he know? And why come so close now?’

‘We saw several ships as we came across, and we made no secret of our destination. My guess is that he’s been fed the information somehow. As to why he’s closing with us, that I can’t guess. But what he doesn’t know is that
we
know he’s coming, and we have a head start on him – we’re here.’

‘He must know we’ve arrived,’ said Campbell soberly. ‘He’s sure to have left a man here. I’ll bet they’re in touch right now.’

‘We’re not going to be in for long,’ I said. ‘We’ll be off dredging soon. But we could put it about that we are leaving for somewhere else – that might help draw him into the net. At close quarters we can at least do something.’ It was all very dubious though, and we weren’t at all sure what was happening around us.

‘What kind of a ship have they?’ I asked.

‘Pretty much the same as ours – a bit bigger. Her name is
Sirena.’

‘Then if he leaves now it’ll be over a week before he gets here.’

Campbell put down his empty glass with a click. ‘Then we’ve got to get going as soon as we can,’ he said.

I saw Geordie coming into the foyer and waved to him, and he came to the table. He was dirty and looked tired, and the half-healed scars on his face didn’t make him look any better. He put a little glass pot on the table with a hand stained black with grease, and said, ‘We’ve got trouble.’

I said, ‘Sit down and have a beer.’

‘What’s the trouble?’ Campbell asked.

Geordie sat down and sighed. ‘I
would
like a beer,’ he admitted. He unscrewed the top of the jar and showed that it was full of grease. He pushed it over to me and said, ‘Rub some of that between your fingers and tell me what it feels like.’

I dipped up some of the grease on my forefinger and rubbed it with my thumb. It wasn’t slick and smooth as grease should be but seemed gritty. Campbell reached over and tested it for himself.

‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded.

‘It came from the main bearings of the winch motor,’ said Geordie. ‘And the grease in the bearing of the winch drum is the same – all doctored with carborundum.’

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If we’d have used the winch the whole damn thing would have seized up. What put you on to it?’

‘Partly routine maintenance. But I also thought about what I’d do if I were Kane and I wanted to put a stop to Mr Campbell here. I wasn’t looking for anything definite, mind you, but I thought I’d have a look at the winch. I never thought I’d find grinding powder mixed with the bearing grease.’

Campbell swore violently, then looked at Paula. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘That’s all right. I know those words.’

I said, ‘How long will it take to fix?’

‘A week,’ said Geordie definitely. ‘We’ll have to strip the winch right down, and that’s a big job. But it’s not what I’m worried about.’

‘Isn’t it enough?’ grumbled Campbell. ‘What else is on your, mind?’

‘I’m thinking of things Kane might have done that we haven’t found yet. I don’t think he got at the engine – but what else has he done?’

I said, ‘He can’t have done much. He was under observation all the time.’

‘He got at the winch,’ said Geordie obstinately.

‘Geordie’s right,’ said Campbell. ‘We can’t take anything on trust. The whole ship must be checked out.’

The girls sat silent through this but I could sense their frustration matched ours. If the intention had been to foul up our operations it might have succeeded. But if it was also intended to dishearten us then Kane had read his man wrongly – Campbell of all of us was the most determined to put things right and carry on.

I drained my glass. ‘Let’s get to it. I kept the laboratory locked but I suppose I’d better give that a going over too.’

We went back to
Esmerelda
, rounding up crewmen along the way, and I went immediately below to the laboratory. A
couple of hours’ work showed nothing wrong – the spectroscope was in order, and the contents of all the bottles seemed to agree with their labels. It was a waste of time from one point of view, and then again it wasn’t. At least I knew my lab wasn’t gimmicked.

Ian came down with fuel oil samples from the main tanks. ‘Skipper wants these tested,’ he said.

‘Tested for what?’

He grinned. ‘Anything that shouldn’t be in fuel oil.’

I poured the samples into Petri dishes and burned them. The sample from the starboard tank left little deposit, but that from the port tank left a gummy mess on the bottom of the dish.

I went on deck to see Geordie. ‘The port fuel tank’s been got at,’ I told him. ‘I think it’s been doctored with sugar.’

Geordie swore a blue streak. ‘I thought we were using a hell of a lot of sugar. So that’s where it went. How’s the starboard tank?’

‘It seems all right.’

‘Kane couldn’t get at the starboard tank without being seen – it’s right by the wheel. The port tank is different. I remember he used to sit just about there quite often, when he was off watch.’

‘It wouldn’t be difficult – a pound of sugar at a time.’

‘We’ve been sailing a lot, too. If we hadn’t we’d have found out sooner – the hard way. But all the fuel we’ve used has come from the ready use tank in the engine room, and we just kept topping that up in port.’

Campbell came up. ‘What are the long faces for?’

I told him and he cursed violently.

‘We dump it,’ I said. ‘We can’t dump it in harbour – they’d scream blue murder – so we go to sea and dump it.’

‘All right,’ said Geordie. ‘I’ll fill the header tank from the starboard main tank. We’ll need some power to be going on with.’

‘Nothing doing,’ said Campbell. ‘Kane might have been clever enough to put something else in there. Fill the header tank with new fuel from the Shell agent here.’ He paused. ‘It’s going to be difficult. There’s probably a lot of undissolved sugar lying on the bottom of the tank. When you put in new fuel you may be just as badly off.’

I said, ‘I can test for sugar in water. We’ll keep washing out until we’re clean. How are their water supplies here, Geordie? I’d rather use fresh than salt.’

‘We’re lucky. In the dry season they can run short, but I think right now is okay. We’ll have to pay through the nose, though.’

He thought about the job. ‘We’ll have to wait until the tanks dry out. Maybe I can rig up a contraption that’ll pump hot air into the tanks – that should speed the dry-out.’

‘Do that,’ said Campbell. ‘How long do you think it’ll take us to get ready for sea again?’

We did some figuring and the answer was again not less than a week. Campbell shrugged. ‘That’s it, then. But we’ve lost our lead. We’ll be lucky to get out of here before Ramirez pitches up.’

‘He may wait until we go,’ I said.

But guessing was futile, and we left it at that.

Next day we went to sea and pumped out both main tanks and refilled them with water from the fresh water tanks. I checked for sugar and found an appreciable quantity in the water of the port tank, so we pumped out again and went back to Nuku’alofa. We filled up with fresh water again, both in the water and the fuel tanks, much to the surprise of the suppliers, and then put to sea again.

I still found a little undissolved sugar in the port tank, so we did it all again. By this time I reckoned we were clean so we put back to port and Geordie rigged up his hot air contraption to dry out the tanks before we put in new fuel oil. A couple of days was spent on this and we used partial crews each time, spelling the others to have time ashore. God knows what stories were put about in the port, but our lads had orders to remain quiet and ignorant.

While Geordie and one team were checking the winch and its auxiliary equipment, aided by Campbell, Ian set another group to stripping
Esmerelda.
They took down all the rigging, both running and standing, and inspected everything. They found nothing wrong and we were sure we were fit for sea when they had finished. But it took time.

No more of Kane’s sabotage came to light. He had carefully selected the two things which could do us the most damage – doctored grease and sugar in the fuel. If he hadn’t been watched he might have got away with a lot more, and as it was he’d done more than enough.

Campbell was Napoleonic about the food stores. ‘Dump the lot,’ he said.

‘We’ve no need to dump the canned stuff,’ objected Ian, his thrifty Scot’s soul aghast.

But Campbell insisted. ‘Dump the lot. That son of a bitch was too clever for my liking. I’ve no hankering for cyanide in my stew.’

So on our last run out to sea for testing we dumped the food supplies, and also recalibrated the echometers against proven and charted soundings. They were all right but it was as well to make sure. The local tradesmen were delighted at our liberal purchase of fresh food stocks, and no doubt it all added to the gossip concerning the
Esmerelda.
Seven days after we had discovered Kane’s sabotage Geordie said, ‘That just about does it. We’re ready for sea.’

‘Let’s hope Kane hasn’t left any surprises we haven’t found,’ I said. ‘I’d hate to start dredging and then find the bottom falling out of the ship. How’s the engine, Geordie?’

He grimaced. ‘Nothing wrong there. But we had to pull everything down to make sure.’

‘That’s the hellish thing about sabotage. Not being sure.’

When we assembled in the hotel lounge that evening Campbell asked me about the next move. ‘How do we go about it?’

‘I’m working on the assumption that there may be something between Falcon and Minerva. That’s a distance of three hundred miles. We go to Falcon and take a bottom sample every ten miles on a direct course to Minerva. If we don’t find anything, then we sample on parallel courses east and west.’

‘So our first step is to find Falcon Island.’

I became thoughtful, shook my head and presently said, ‘No, I’ve changed my mind. I think we’ll start at Minerva – do it the other way around.’

They were interested. ‘Why would you do that – why should it matter?’ Campbell asked.

‘Mark was an oceanographer and he was presumably working on the same lines as we are – volcanic theories much like the ones I’ve postulated. If the high-cobalt nodules are anywhere near Falcon, why should he mention Minerva at all? I think the nodules are quite a distance from Falcon, quite close to Minerva perhaps. And when Mark indicated them in his diary he thought of the source – which is Falcon – and the vicinity, Minerva.’

‘That sounds logical,’ said Campbell. ‘But it might mean that the nodules aren’t placed on a direct course between Falcon and Minerva. Hell, they could be on the other side of those reefs.’

‘Or scattered all the way along,’ suggested Clare. Which was also feasible.

I said, ‘This is what we do. We leave here and sail due west until we hit the track between Falcon and Minerva. We turn towards Minerva and take samples every ten miles. If we don’t find anything then, we come back to Falcon and on a parallel course, sampling all the way, go round Falcon and move back again further out. How’s that?’

We talked it over for a while and then went in for dinner. I was glad we were going to sea again; every time we put into port something seemed to go wrong, whether it was arson, wrongful arrest, sabotage or just plain bad news.

During the meal Clare nudged me and murmured, ‘Look over there.’

I looked around but couldn’t see anything out of order. ‘What’s the matter?’

She said quietly, ‘The waiters have just put two tables together over there, and laid them for dinner. There are places for eight.’