by Peter Tonkin
‘Pulau Baya, yes. I am Prince Sailendra...’ Sailendra’s mind raced like a caged mongoose in an exercise wheel. What help could a mere freighter somewhere between here and Japan offer them? Effectively, no help at all. But then the surging crackle of the dead air warned him that the little chopper’s radio was losing the freighter’s signal in any case. And if they lost this contact, who knew when they would be able to make another one. And send another plea for help out to the world. ‘Miyazaki Maru? Please listen. We have suffered a catastrophic landslide. We have lost half our city and all our communications. Please pass this message out. Tell everyone that you can contact that we need help most urgently. Do you understand? Get the word out as fast as you can! It is vital! Miyazaki Maru, can you hear that? Miyazaki Maru?’
But there was only the surging silence of dead air in answer.
Sailendra handed the headset back to the pilot, who slid it back on his head and listened, frowning with concentration. ‘Lost the signal,’ he said at last.
‘Do you think they heard us?’ asked Sailendra, his voice shaking slightly.
The pilot shrugged. And as he did so, Parang leaned forward. ‘There!’ he said. ‘I think you could set down there.’
Miyazaki Maru lay at anchor in the shallows off Pulau Baya’s northernmost headland. The last light from the full, fat pirate moon bathed the still-running wetness of her decks, covering her with silver. Her battered bridgehouse looked like a precious ornament. The rusted sides gleamed like some unimagined Cellini salt dish. The piles of teak and mahogany tree trunks, so recently ripped out of the forests on the not-too-distant mountain and stowed on her deck, looked like the purest ingots.
The captain glanced down across their cargo, seeing only profit there, no beauty at all. He turned back to the radio operator, his hard face twisted with ready anger. That this imbecile should have answered the distress call in the first place. That he should have made contact with the prince whose island they were raping. That he should even faintly consider retransmitting the desperate message beggared belief.
‘No, you will not pass the message on, you moron!’ snarled the captain. ‘Forget you even heard it and erase all the records that you can. Then get on to Luzon Logging and tell them we’re coming home!’
Chapter 12: Impact
Most of the jet-skis slowly surged to a standstill, losing power as their riders’ hands no longer pushed the throttles wide. Two, however, were clearly malfunctioning. Even riderless they came onwards and, as luck would have it, they came on side by side. The others wallowed off-line and settled into the regular swell of the sea, steady enough for one or two of their more athletic riders to be attempting to re-mount them. But not the last two. These two seemed to be guided by some invisible hand. Sod’s law dictated that they should each turn off-line in the opposite direction - leaning into each other and straightening their combined course with the accuracy of torpedoes.
Richard looked first to Robin in the Zodiac. It would be the work of a moment for her and Eva Gruber to upset the precarious equilibrium of the last two skis if they could get to them in time. But they were all too obviously preoccupied, trying to reach those erstwhile riders still floundering helplessly in the water before whatever had scared the flying fish decided to come after larger, juicier prey.
Dismissing Robin’s help in a twinkling, therefore, Richard turned to fend for himself, his mind racing. What he needed was knowledge. He racked his brains to remember the design plans of Tai Fun’s after sections that he had pored over so carefully in preparation for this trip. Where was the control that would raise the hydraulic platform before the swiftly approaching jet-skis rode up and on to it? Where might there be something that might fend them off before they came aboard and exploded? Where was there a hose? The last question was easily answered for he remembered clearly where the nearest fire point was and he was crossing purposefully towards it before he realized he had come to his decision. The only thing slowing him was the care with which he had to place his feet on the thin carpet of twisting, flapping fish. If he could get the hose off quickly enough, its powerful jet would be enough to stop the jet-skis. But the gathering snarl of their approach warned that time was getting very short indeed.
Richard had just torn open the front of the fire point when Larsen arrived. The big sailing master seemed in the grip of some almost inexpressible rage. He exploded on to the deck with the unexpected force of a paratrooper landing. He kicked the dying fish aside and hurled himself towards Richard almost as though he wanted to attack him, his massive fists swinging as though they held a pair of invisible axes. His Viking beard bristled beneath his flame-red cheeks and his blue eyes actually seemed to spark. Richard did not speak any Scandinavian languages and so he had no idea what Larsen was saying to begin with - and that was probably just as well. Side by side, they tore the hose free, Larsen twisting the controls with fearsome power. Then they turned, and tensed themselves to run, side by side, down to the lip of the hydraulic platform. Larsen’s brutally obscene monologue slid into something approaching English. And Richard realized it was peppered with orders and suggestions, pleas and exhortations, some of them addressed to him.
Water gushed out of the brass nozzle and washed the fish back on to the sea as Richard and Larsen staggered forward. ‘These bloody children have put my beautiful ship at risk. I will swing for them, I really bloody well will. Christ! How could they be so stupid. We will never get there in time. We will never turn the jet-skis. Look! All we are doing is washing away the fucking fish! We should let them fry at least, the stupid things. We must get the water jet on to the accursed jet-skis and hold it there. They will come aboard but we may at least stop them from exploding. If we are lucky! Lucky, HA!’
On that spectacularly unamused ‘HA!’, the jet-skis did indeed come aboard. With a power that surprised Richard at least, the solid little vehicles - each the size and weight of a motorbike - powered in. Their slick undersides rode up over the lip of the platform which sat at water level, and they slid aboard on the bow-wave of their own relentless progress. They were moving at a speed well in excess of five knots and that, together with their considerable mass, was enough to do some considerable damage. They exploded through the shower of the water from the hose and slid forward with almost disorientating rapidity.
‘Aim!’ howled Larsen and the pair of them wrenched the water jet back on target. But all they succeeded in doing was knocking the jet-skis over. And the moment they fell, the swanlike elegance of their progress turned instantly into a train wreck, a car crash, as the forces that had been holding them together set about tearing them apart. The least robust parts of their construction were those around the fuel tanks. Lines, hoses, thin metal sides. And at the same time, with their motors racing past maximum revs, there remained, in all too close proximity to the spraying fuel, pistons that were hot from overuse, overheated gears and spark plugs that were still sparking. Even under the deluge from the fire hose, the whole twisted mess, still sliding rapidly across the platform towards the white stern of the ship itself, exploded into flame.
Robin saw the explosion. It looked to her as though Tai Fun had become some kind of rocket-propelled vessel, belching fire out of her stern. She shouted in shock, before she even began to realize that Richard was trapped, perhaps fatally, somewhere on the far side of the flames.
Eva Gruber was not looking at the ship, however. She was looking at the water and by the happiest of coincidences Robin’s shout alerted her to something more primeval than rocket propulsion. For there, in the water, just beyond the struggling jet-ski riders, was the creature that had scared the flying fish and started this whole adventure in the first place. What sort of shark it was, the young officer could not be certain. But it measured a good four metres from dorsal to tail-tip and that made it big enough to eat swimming people as well as flying fish. And it seemed to Eva in that horror-struck moment that the shark was making an all-too-purposeful line directly for the owner’s daught
er Inge.
So Robin, still gaping at the outpouring of bright gold fire that obscured the last place Richard had been standing, found herself suddenly being tossed about like a puppet in the bows of the Zodiac and whirled away on a new tack altogether. The throttle was opened as wide as it would go and the solid little vessel roared across the water with desperate purpose. Robin had taken part in too many rescues not to sense the urgency and start looking for trouble dead ahead. So she too saw the sinister pair of triangles that were the shark’s main fins. ‘It’s big,’ she shouted back to Eva.
‘I see.’ Eva answered tersely. ‘Do you know what sort it is?’
‘Not the foggiest. But we’d better assume it’s dangerous.’
‘And hungry...’
The Zodiac smashed from wave-crest to wave-crest, showering Robin with cool salt spray as she looked around for some kind of weapon should they have to tackle the shark. But there was nothing more threatening than an old-fashioned wooden oar. She caught this up, thinking that it would be as useful for giving swimmers something to hang on to as it would for bashing sharks on the nose with. But when she looked up again, with the solid piece of no doubt recycled ecologically friendly timber across her chest, the shark had vanished, the triangles of its fins lost among the sharp-edged shadows of the waves. And Inge Nordberg was right beneath the scudding rubberized canvas of the firmly inflated bow.
‘Grab hold, Inge!’ Robin pushed the oar into the water and the Zodiac seemed to swing right round it, coming to rest with its solid bottom firmly between the girl in the water and the last position of the inquisitive shark. Then Eva was there at her shoulder and the pair of them pulled the gasping Inge aboard. She came out of the sea like a young seal in a shower of drops, and slid gasping into the scuppers. The only real damage done by the adventure so far seemed to be to her already minuscule bikini, thought Robin wryly. Inge’s popularity as a pin-up would be vastly enhanced if many of the men aboard could see her almost total nudity now! She turned to Eva Gruber, her mouth open to ask whether they had any kind of towel or blanket aboard, only to stop, her good intentions side-tracked by the impact of the look on the young officer’s face. It was unconscious, Robin was certain, and was gone in a fleeting second. But just for that instant, Robin thought that she had never seen such awed wonder mixed with such naked desire in all her life.
Richard was hurled on to his back by a combination of searing force and fish-slippery footing. Larsen came down like a tree half on top of him. The hose whipped away like an escaping anaconda. Something smashed against the stern wall disturbingly close above them and crashed down on to the deck beside the fallen men. The impact seemed to shake the ship to her keel. Richard dazedly expected the masts and sails to join the sailing master piled on top of him. There was a searing smell of blazing petrol overlain with a much more intimate stench of singed hair. The masts stayed miraculously upright. Larsen rolled over, stunned. Richard gathered himself to rise, but the wild writhing of the hose brought the heavy brass nozzle back and it knocked him down again before he could pull himself anywhere near upright. He scrabbled the bludgeoning, throbbing, all-too-lively weight to himself and discovered how hot he had become when the blessedly icy coolness of the water jet inundated him. Only now did he open his eyes.
Past the foaming fountain of the pulsing hose, Richard was able to make out the still-blazing lake of petrol that surrounded the skeletal wreckage of the jet-skis and gave birth to a pirate’s banner of thick black smoke that trailed away across the wind. Someone’s swung her head round a good few points or all that smoke would be smothering us about now, thought Richard as he began to fight the jet back on to the blazing wreckage. It was only when Larsen began to pull himself erect that Richard realized he was still down on his knees. But knees was as far as Larsen could achieve, and the pair of them leaned together like a pair of ancient octogenarians looking for their Zimmer frames, and held the hose steady. From very, very far away, Richard could hear a stream of Nordic swear words occasionally larded with something more familiar. It was Larsen, of course, bellowing at his shoulder. But, like reality, hearing was slow to return, though blasted away in the merest instant by the explosion.
The power of the hose’s water jet began to bite then, and it started to sweep the blazing petrol off the back of the vessel and into the water of her wake. And, as with the smoke, the intelligence of whoever held the helm or directed the course was revealed. For as the floating flames oozed off the deck and into the water immediately behind it, so the carefully controlled motion of the hull ensured that the fire was contained in a gentle curve of wake. There was only just enough to keep the fire underneath its own black plume of smoke and keep it from flooding across the water, but it pulled the flames away to starboard as safely as possible - allowing the Zodiac to skim in to the clear port section.
A distant, raucous cheering erupted as the chubby black rubberized side settled home, and Richard glanced upwards in shock. It was unsettlingly as though a flock of seagulls had taken the voices of a gang of football hooligans. But then the first of the rescued jet-skiers clambered aboard, led by an apparently stark naked Inge Nordberg.
Suddenly there were white-clad legs all around Richard, his head level with the hips of four men. He looked up, still dazed, to see le Chef frowning down at him. The sturdy French chief engineer had brought three more good old-fashioned seafaring men along with him, and suddenly Richard and Larsen were relieved of the hose by an entirely competent fire crew. A couple of sheepish lifeguards appeared and helped the pair to their feet, then lingered, staring across at the spectacular sight of Inge taking her own sweet time about getting to safety and decency. Larsen pulled free without so much as a thank you and limped across to the stern wall of the ship, apparently oblivious to the spectacle presented by the owner’s daughter. Richard followed him, amused. Impressed. The white paint was seared and smoke-blackened, but there was no blistering, warping or melting evident. A heavy metal section from one of the jet-skis had smashed into it with enough force to make a dent. Richard remembered hearing the impact. It had been moving at quite a speed when it hit. He stirred the still-smoking culprit with his foot - it was pretty massive, too. He looked up again, surprised that the dent was so small. But other than that, the vessel seemed to have survived the drama surprisingly well, he thought.
Robin appeared. ‘Look at you!’ she said severely, though her words seemed out of synch with the movements of her lips as though she were acting in a badly dubbed movie.
Richard glanced down then and was surprised to find that his clothes were filthy as well as soaking. Dazed, he looked at his forearm and discovered that he seemed to have been mildly sunburned. He looked at Larsen, whose face was even redder than Richard’s arm, and his beard bristled with an almost brittle wildness. He had survived the adventure much less well than his beloved ship, thought Richard.
Then he turned and followed Robin stiffly across the hydraulic deck to the gangway leading back up to the poolside. The cheering began again. This time it was louder and less raucous than it had been for Inge’s arrival. And it was not until the first hand clapped him on the shoulder and the first fist closed to shake Robin by the hand that he realized that the cheers were all for them.
Chapter 13: Pontianac
Tai Fun swung at anchor, her hull moved by the flow of the Landak River so that her sleek prow looked up south-eastwards towards the bridge at Jalan Gajah Mada with the glittering roofs of the Mesjid Jami and the Istana Kadriyah on the point to the left just below. Sailing Officer Larsen had little time to enjoy the view, however. He was overseeing the bustle of workmen who had come out - as soon as they could do so without unduly disturbing the passengers - to effect repairs to the damaged stern. They had been summoned from the local shipyards further down river, and seemed a thoroughly competent crew, made up of ethnic Kalimantanese and Chinese workmen. As befitted his elevated position, Larsen oversaw them from the upper deck - while le Chef got down and dirty, rubbing
shoulders with them as he made doubly sure that the hydraulic platform had survived yesterday’s accident.
To be fair, in any case, the air-conditioned confines into which Larsen was happy to retreat so regularly came as a blessed relief. The glittering bustle of the all too modern and municipal city generated an atmosphere that was absolutely stultifying. The air seemed as thick as the muddy river water, and just as difficult to breathe. There was no wind of any description and the temperature combined with the humidity to make the recently singed officer feel that he was flying alive whenever he stepped outside, in spite of much good work done by Dr Hirai yesterday evening. Just as Pontianac stood astride the river, so it also stood astride the equator itself. The shade temperature was in the mid-forties with the humidity more than twice that.
Captain Olmeijer and the owner were on the bridge, entertaining local officialdom over aromatic local coffee and freshly baked croissants while Navigating Officer Eva Gruber, nursing a mug of coffee and eyeing the croissants hungrily, went through the sailing plans with them once again. Apart from the workmen and the officers attending them, these were just about the only senior people left aboard. Indeed, apart from those crew members making sure that the accommodation was up to standard and that the entertainment facilities were ready to go this evening, they were the only people left aboard.
Dr Hirai was at the hospital, trying to restock the salves and ointments that she had used upon the blast victims yesterday afternoon and evening, torn between the Chinese herbal remedies on offer and the much more expensive Western alternatives. The chief steward and his minions were down in Kapuas Indeh market, restocking with everything from cutlery to coffee. The lesser of the chefs de cuisine had been with them to begin with, but he had moved on. He spent more of the day restocking the galleys with local delicacies. These ranged from tender goat and suckling pig available at the Pasar Daging meat market to crabs pulled out of the river and prawns brought across the sea from the fisheries at Bandar Laut Bay on Pulau Baya Island, available at the Pasar Ikan fish market.