by Paul Gallico
He stood up slowly and flicked the neat two-inch barrel at the French officer.
“Okay fella. Tell the driver to turn around. I’m going back.”
The tidal wave which eight hours earlier had been launched by an underwater earthquake was almost entirely directional. The huge wall of water which spun the S.S. Poseidon over like a leaf tore across the Mediterranean destroying everything in its path. Fishing vessels and millionaires’ yachts, motor cruisers and simple weekend boats were obliterated by that rampaging flood. Even when it hit the northern shores of Africa, it pounded angrily at the land.
Although it struck most savagely to the south, the effects were felt in varying degrees all around the Mediterranean. Tall yachts in safe harbors bucked like thoroughbreds in their stalls; halyards chattered in terror to the metal masts. Tax exiles with sea views dashed to their shutters as they heard their blue and kindly waters suddenly ravage the tourist beaches.
In the wardroom of the Dutch freighter Magt van Leiden, Captain Klaas van Zeevogel and his sixteen-year-old daughter Coby were sent spinning from their seats and crashed against the wall, wide-eyed with fear.
A few miles away, the young American at the helm of The Golden Fleece felt his thirty-foot Bermudan sloop wrenched from beneath him like a rug and turned into matchwood within a minute.
Then that one huge wave was gone. The seas stilled to an almost unnatural calm under the clear unseeing eye of the moon.
In those moments of high danger, all the practice and training in the world counted for nothing, and you had to fall back on pure instinct. Sharpen your reflexes on dangerous living all you like, but it was instinct that governed split-second action when there was no time for the rational processes of thought.
Before the wave, he had been at peace. The hours he spent in The Golden Fleece seemed to be his only time of true contentment. All day he had enjoyed clear skies. His twenty-five-year-old sloop had cut through the water on a broad reach, genoa and mainsails full, at a good six knots. The sun picked out the laundered whiteness of the patches around the batten holes and the bits of peeling varnish, but nothing could conceal the fact that his was a classic boat of beautiful performance and design, the perfect reflection of a man with taste and spirit. And if such a man should not really have his dinghy inflated and skimming behind the stern, well, it was a relaxed sort of day, everything was going well. As it turned out, his laziness in not bringing the dinghy on board and deflating it saved his life.
Then the wave had hit, and in that moment of atavistic instinct, all he could hope was that his body did the right things. It was exactly the same when he boxed at college. He would see the right cross coming over and, almost as a theoretical exercise, wonder if his left arm would rise to block it and his own right swing over. It was true, too, out there in those jungle-strewn hills. The black leaves against the piercing blue of the sky. One patch would be too black, too solid, and he would drop to one knee and feel the shudder of the automatic in his arms, and after he fell there would be another of those faces, brown and meaningless as the face on a coin.
He had been beating to windward under the clear night sky and watching the bow. In this tideless sea, wind and weather came together. He had heard the noise, turned, and caught a glimpse of that white-capped avalanche roaring through the darkness. Quickly he had thrown the tiller to starboard and brought her through the eye of the wind so that she took the wave across the bow. Even as he did, and felt the sloop tossed like a scrap of paper, he knew it was no use. Not even his yacht could weather that one. Then he was flying over the water and dragged in a great gulp of air before he felt himself rolled and tumbled powerlessly in the all-engulfing dark of the wild waters. He struck upwards through the tumult and his lungs strained when it seemed he would never see the sky again. Then, just as inexplicably, it had gone. He paddled on the rapidly calming surface. The dinghy was there, waiting like a well-trained dog.
He was alive. He had a boat under him. But The Golden Fleece, his home, his office, and his love, had gone. With it the highly refined radio equipment that was by no means standard on a sloop of that size, the documents entitling him to collect a shipment of oranges, and the Navy .45 automatic hidden in the cabin sole.
The wooden oars squeaked in the plastic rowlocks. It was a long way to Athens. At this rate, he told himself, he might just make it by next New Year’s Eve. In the meantime, any dockside worker who fancied stealing an orange was in for a considerable surprise.
Across the black water, he thought he saw faint lights. He reached for the flare pistol and muttered three cheering words to himself.
“Happy New Year.”
The fifteen-hundred-ton workhorse freighter Magt van Leiden, out of Amsterdam sailing on a course of north by northwest which would take her to Athens, split the extraordinary mirror surface of the Mediterranean with her chugging, even progress. Only the almost negligible waves from her stubby bow disturbed the reflection of her own lights on that plate-glass calm.
She was a typical small coaster, with the usual central island from which protruded a short, nondescript buff-colored funnel, double derrick arms fore and aft, a forward well giving access to the crew’s quarters, and a single deck encompassing the island and the bridge.
Tramp she may have been, but only by name. She was as neat as a liner, her hull painted black, her superstructure the same buff color as her funnel and the housing of the bridge and quarters an immaculate white. At her stern flew the horizontal red, white, and blue tricolor of the Netherlands.
Everything about the Magt suggested decency and probity. The same was true of the chunky, powerful man in his mid-fifties who leaned on the railing of the ship and contemplated with concern the unbroken surface of the sea. He was a solid man, physically as well as temperamentally. He was not tall, but his chest and arms had a heavy, serviceable look about them. The head, well set upon a strong neck, was grizzled, and on the back of it was perched a white yachtman’s cap. The gold badge embracing intertwined nautical insignia proclaimed him captain.
A small sticking plaster covered the cut on his chin where he had been flung across the cabin.
He lifted his head and seemed to be sniffing to several quarters like a dog orienting himself. “I do not like it, Coby,” he offered, eventually. “I do not like it.”
“Why not, papa?”
He looked down at his daughter and saw his own far-seeing dark blue eyes. Her blue-black hair, braided and coiled over her ears, enabled her to ape the angle of her father’s cap. But instead of the badge of office, she had pinned on a cheap gilt replica of one of her native country’s windmills.
“It smells of earthquake weather,” he replied.
“Smells? It actually smells?”
He smiled a little. “No, not really a smell. It is a feeling, a sense. That tidal wave that nearly capsized us, it must have been due to some disturbance of the earth. It is the only possible explanation.”
“But it’s calm now,” she said.
“Too calm. It is not often when the earth shakes like that. I know little about earthquakes, but I shall be happier when we reach Athens. In the meantime, goodness knows how many smaller boats must have been capsized. I will keep watch. You go to bed, Coby. It’s long past midnight.”
“In a moment,” she said. They were quiet for a while, listening to the uneven chugging of the old engines. From time to time he turned and examined the unbroken black of sea and sky.
But it was Coby who saw it first. “Look, papa,” she cried and pointed. There was a sudden flame, a rocket trail, and a blinding burst of white light. For two minutes, half a square mile of sea was brilliantly illuminated, and they saw quite clearly a small black boat in the middle of the shimmering light.
Urgently Klaas called up to the bridge. “Bear off six points to starboard, Piet. There’s a boat. Make for it.”
The light died, and in the dark the Magt came upon the dinghy a shade too quickly.
“What the hell are you
trying to do, save me or swamp me?” The accent was unmistakably American and the tone amazingly nonchalant for a man stranded at sea.
Klaas called to the bridge again. “Reverse a few turns and then shut down.” He switched on his lantern and for the first time they saw their shipwrecked mariner. He looked about as frightened as if he had been walking a dog around the park. He was wearing the denim shirt and worn jeans that is the uniform of every harbor bum hanging around the moneyed ports of the Mediterranean. But there was something about him that suggested the unkempt blond hair was a lack of vanity, nothing more. His face was crinkled into a mass of well-practiced laughter lines in the lantern’s glare, and they saw skin stretched over high cheekbones and a long, tough jawline.
“My apologies . . .” Klaas shifted the lantern to case the glare on his face and waited for him to complete the sentence.
“That’s better,” he said. “Captain Jason.”
Klaas was slightly piqued at the rower’s dig at his seamanship. He called down, “If you’re looking for the golden fleece, Captain Jason, I am afraid you are going in the wrong direction. It’s the other way, to the west, isn’t that right, Coby?”
Eagerly she joined in. “Yes, Colchis is on the east coast of Turkey.”
The lone figure was bending over tying the oars to the thwarts. “Wrong,” he said. “That’s where it was until Jason and the Argonauts took it. It ended up in Thessaly.”
Then he turned round and rose, balancing on spaced feet. “But I’m the Jason who lost The Golden Fleece. My sloop.” He waved a hand behind him. “She went down in that wave.”
“We nearly did too,” said Coby. She could hardly believe it. Even in her girl-woman dreams she had hardly dare imagine finding a handsome stranger in the middle of the sea at night. And here he was, talking easily, without any apparent concern over what had happened. She was fascinated.
The American hooked his thumbs in his jeans pocket and with a nod towards the flag at the stern said, “But if I know my flags, this looks like just the sort of place where a fella could get himself a Bols. Right?”
THE FRIGHTENED MEN
2
The New Year was little more than two hours old when teleprinters in every major city began clattering out the first details of what looked like the greatest disaster in the history of shipping. But the wave of shock and fascinated horror that the news engendered was felt nowhere with the impact it had in two boardrooms thousands of miles and six international time zones apart: in the offices of the Ionian International Shipping and Finance Consortium in Athens and the International Conglomerate and Worldwide Trust Company in New York.
The scenes were almost interchangeable, save for the clocks. The discreetly muted tones of the decor, the heavy gloss of the polished tables, the dull photographs on the walls of paper mills, factories, distilleries, and industrial plants that indicated the reach of their commercial tentacles. Even the principals had the same plump, well-fed look that comes from the seldom disappointed expectation that doors will always open, and wine come at the correct temperature. They were among the most influential men in the world. They were also among the most frightened.
In Athens, Mr. Stephanos Stasiris stood beside a detailed model of the S.S. Poseidon which was on a table in the corner. The giant passenger liner was the Consortium’s latest acquisition, and it was Stasiris himself who had organized something unique in big ship operations. His ship visited ports in which, unknown to the passengers, substantial shipments of cargo could be transported to the next landing. That caused frowns among those who valued the old liner’s unimpeachable reputation for passenger service and quality, but it was a lucrative trade, made more so because the company was not too insistent that the details listed in the manifest should accurately reflect the cargo itself. This pleased the accountants, and that, as Mr. Stasiris liked to say, was what business was all about.
One brief telephone call had brought him from a New Year’s Eve party to the top-floor boardroom in the seven-story office building, and he still shivered in his thin dinner jacket from the cool night air. He watched as the others straggled in. Several were shiny-eyed from drinking; one, he noted with displeasure, was quite unsteady on his feet. They all came dressed in the silk and frilled shirts of the celebrations. So did the two specially invited guests to that exceptional board meeting: the hard-eyed, hard-nosed Minister of Defense, Pularnos, and, his chest coruscating with medals and ribbons, General Dravos.
Stasiris took his seat at the head of the table and rested plump jowls on one broad palm. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I think you all know what has happened.” His voice was steady, but the rustling of the sheet of paper in his hand betrayed his anxiety.
He continued, “We only have the sketchiest of reports so far, but it appears that at midnight the Poseidon was capsized by some form of freak wave. If our latest information is correct, she is floating upside down.”
The man who had walked so unsteadily through the door furrowed his brow and tried to work out the significance of the statement. He belched. Stasiris gave a slow, tired blink of the eyes. It was an older man on the president’s right who put into words the one question that troubled them all. “Are there . . . ahem . . .” he coughed and looked round apprehensively, “I mean, how many survivors? And how long can the ship stay afloat?”
Stasiris nodded, almost in gratitude that someone had mustered sufficient indelicacy to raise the two crucial issues. There were sixteen hundred lives at stake, twelve hundred passengers and four hundred crew. There were also many more subtle issues involved, questions of international power politics, not to mention the future of every man in that room and a good many outside it. Stasiris was responsible for weighing the balance between the two, and there could be no doubt on which side the weight was heavier. He decided to make that plain from the start.
“To enlarge,” he said. “We must of course concern ourselves with the welfare of our passengers and crew, and most particularly must be seen to do so by the rest of the world. But what we are gathered here for, gentlemen, is to consider the consequences if the unusual nature of the Poseidon’s cargo is revealed. I feel sure you all understand me.” He looked around. Even the unsteady drunk seemed sober now. Each face registered a struggle to contain panic.
Stasiris went right in. “I have taken two steps which I trust will meet with your approval, against the eventuality of the Poseidon staying afloat. Our office is issuing a request to any nearby shipping to leave well enough alone, together with an assurance that a full rescue and salvage operation has already been launched. We must hope in this way to keep off all scavengers.”
He noted an approving nod from Pularnos. “And have you,” the minister asked, “launched this . . . operation?”
“Indeed,” Stasiris picked his words carefully. “I have instructed Captain Ilich Bela to proceed to the scene.”
“Bela!” It was the man who had belched earlier. Drink had loosened his reactions too much. “Good God, you know what that man is!”
Stasiris snapped back immediately, “Of course I know what he is. We all do. What do you think this is, you fool? We cannot be too careful.”
The drunk slumped back and straightened his lolling head. “That’s what you get for playing with politicos,” he muttered defiantly.
Stasiris glared at him and reverted to more measured tones. “Captain Bela has a reputation for handling difficult work. And I am afraid we must all face the fact that this operation has now become difficult work. So we must use people with appropriate experience and discretion.”
There was a long silence. No one appeared to have any further ideas on the subject. Then General Dravos gave an authoritative tug on his moustache and boomed, “Why bother? I will send in six fighter-bombers and shoot the hulk down.”
Stasiris threw back his head and laughed. There was no amusement in the sound. “Excellent, General, excellent. Will you also notify all the photographers and television cameramen too so that the w
hole world may know what we are doing?”
A sunset colored the general’s face.
Stasiris went on, “All we can do for the moment is wait. I would suggest you do not leave the building. Food and coffee will be available. And I must thank you, Minister Pularnos, for joining us tonight.”
Pularnos raised a fine, lean face and his intelligent eyes pinned Stasiris. “You must know, of course, that in the event of any failure to maintain security in this operation, the government will deny any form of involvement.”
The president did not bother to answer for several seconds. Then, speaking softly, he replied, “I know that, Minister. I also know that no one will believe you.”
The scene in New York, enacted on the forty-eighth floor of the Conglomerate building, was a little less tousled and rather more clear-headed. It was mid-evening. The men present were also wearing dinner jackets, velvet bow ties, and cummerbunds of celebration, but they had been dragged here before their festivities had begun.
With them were two nonmembers of the Conglomerate: the Secretary of Defense and an admiral.
They listened carefully, with the occasional expostulation of horror, as the president of the company, Arthur Haven, outlined the situation. He concluded, “So you see, all we can do is sit it out.”
“Sit it out!” The admiral looked for support from the worried faces around him. “This is national security, almost global security, you’re dealing with. Leave it to the military. We can slip a couple of fish into that old scow and no one will ever know.”