The Killing Ship

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘I won’t be party to this,’ snarled Yablokov, drawing the curious attention of the other officers on the bridge. He lowered his voice. ‘And neither will my crew.’

  ‘Your crew?’ asked Hasim. ‘I always understood it was the captain’s. Am I mistaken?’

  Yablokov glanced out of the window to the foredeck, where Garik was trying to supervise the flensing. The barrage of contradictory orders stopped while he fortified himself with a nip from his flask. Then the hollering began afresh.

  ‘No,’ replied Yablokov stiffly, although he itched to remind Hasim of who was actually running the ship at the moment. He did not know whether it was Garik’s constant drunkenness or his unhealthy association with Hasim that had alienated the captain from his crew. Regardless, the last few hours dealing with the whale had lost him the final vestiges of any respect he might still have held.

  ‘Well then,’ smiled Hasim. ‘We’ll do what he says, shall we?’

  ‘But murder!’ Yablokov was still shocked. ‘That’s something else.’

  ‘Your pretty white hands will remain unsullied,’ said Hasim, disdain in every word. ‘So just sail the boat. Leave the rest to me and Garik.’

  ‘You expect me to look the other way while you kill scientists?’ Yablokov was outraged. ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘A man who wants to see his family again,’ replied Hasim coldly. ‘And who doesn’t want to spend the next ten years in prison – because that’s where you’ll end up if these scientists blab.’

  ‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ snapped Yablokov. ‘Your men said the island was empty.’

  ‘They were mistaken.’

  They were lying, thought Yablokov sullenly. It had been obvious from the way they had delivered their report that they knew the island was occupied, but had been under pressure from Hasim to declare otherwise. Like Hasim, all they wanted was to catch a whale before it was time to sail north again. And all of them would rather murder witnesses than look for different whales to kill.

  ‘Why can’t we just head north right now?’ Yablokov asked desperately. ‘We’ll make a clean escape, and that’ll be that.’

  ‘And our cargo? Do you want to take that home again?’

  ‘We’ll leave it somewhere else,’ argued Yablokov. ‘No one will know.’

  ‘I would know,’ said Hasim coldly. ‘Ergo, so would our employers. You’ve been paid handsomely to do a job, and I’m here to see you do it properly. It’s too late to “escape” anyway – if we let these people go, we might as well surrender right now. Is that what you want?’

  He turned abruptly as one of his team hurried towards him.

  ‘The scientists have disappeared,’ he reported tersely. ‘We can’t find them.’

  ‘Disappeared?’ echoed Hasim incredulously. ‘From six men with guns?’

  ‘They got one off us and fired back. Two are dead, and Ibram is hurt bad.’

  Yablokov closed his eyes. It was getting worse by the minute – a nightmare! When he opened them again, Hasim had gone and Nikos was there instead. The engineer was smoking, his movements jerky and agitated.

  ‘A dead whale’s one thing,’ he muttered. ‘But dead people is something else. I don’t like it at all.’

  Yablokov nodded. ‘We should forget the whole thing and go home while we can. I don’t want blood on my hands, and none of the scientists have died yet. It’s not too late to throw in the towel.’

  ‘Who told you none of the scientists have died?’ asked Nikos bitterly. ‘Because they have, and it is too late, Evgeny. We can either kill the rest of them or go to prison. Those are our only two choices.’

  Yablokov gazed at him in despair, cursing the day Garik had come to him with the ‘offer of a lifetime’. He should have known it was too good to be true, especially given that he had distrusted Hasim on sight. He should have disembarked the moment the man had come aboard.

  ‘The cargo’s ready,’ said Nikos, when the Russian made no reply. ‘Do you want to see to it, or shall I speak to Garik instead?’

  ‘God, no!’ muttered Yablokov. ‘I’m coming.’

  When he stopped falling, Berrister opened his eyes, then closed them again quickly. He was lying on his back at the bottom of the crevasse, its narrow walls rising to the slit of grey sky above.

  ‘Andrew! Hurry!’

  He felt his shoulder shaken hard. Reluctantly, he forced his eyes open a second time and saw Graham’s anxious face looming over him.

  ‘Come on,’ the Scot hissed urgently, and was gone.

  Berrister sat up slowly. The base of the crevasse was just wide enough for a man to lie down, and was lit dimly by the light that filtered through the thin ceiling of snow above. He stood unsteadily. The crevasse disappeared into gloom in both directions, and the others had chosen to take the wider route to the left. Graham turned and made an urgent sound, begging him to follow. Despite the chill, Berrister felt himself break into a cold sweat, and it was not easy to make himself venture deeper into the ice, as memories of his accident assailed him.

  The crevasse bottom soon narrowed to a sharp v that caught his boots and made them difficult to extricate. It was slippery, too, and with every step he was sure that either he would be crushed by ice falling from above, or the ‘floor’ would collapse under his weight and send him plummeting to his death. Then, Graham stopped so abruptly that Berrister collided with him. The Scot raised a finger to his lips.

  There were angry voices just above their heads – their pursuers were arguing, although not in a language Berrister recognised. He held his breath, sure they would be able to hear his heart pounding in his chest. He gazed upwards in an agony of tension, expecting one to crash through the fragile ceiling at any moment.

  But the voices moved away after a while. Wordlessly, he and Graham caught up with the others, where Mortimer took the lead. It grew colder and darker as they ventured deeper inside the glacier, and their fissure intersected with others. For Berrister, every step was a massive effort of will – Mortimer had never been a very good glaciologist, so why was everyone trusting him to go first?

  Eventually, Mortimer determined that they had gone far enough, and motioned for them to stop. They were in a wider fissure now, which was big enough for them to hunker down and talk in low voices, although Berrister could do no more than sink wearily to his knees. He felt numb, not just from the horror of the last few hours, but because of where he was. He felt the walls pressing in around him, and was acutely aware of the danger from above and below.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Joshi, and Berrister realised that everyone was looking at him. He supposed he should not be surprised. He was camp leader, and had established the rules by which they had lived for the past three months, as well as making most of the decisions. Now they expected him to step up and take command again. He looked at them one by one.

  Sarah leaned against one wall, exhausted but quietly determined; Berrister envied her cool courage. Lisa and Graham were openly terrified but trying to hide it. Joshi was jittery and pacing restlessly, while Mortimer was still catching his breath.

  ‘Now what?’ Joshi repeated, as if he imagined that Berrister had not heard the first time.

  It was on the tip of Berrister’s tongue to point out that it had not been his idea to hide in the glacier, so someone else could decide how to proceed, because he would just as soon take his chances on the surface. Instead, he took a deep, unsteady breath, and pulled himself together.

  ‘One of us needs to climb that,’ he said, pointing at a part of the crevasse that should be easy to ascend, with plenty of hand- and footholds. The snow ceiling – roughly ten metres above – was so thin that it was almost transparent, and therefore perfect for scraping out a hole big enough for a head to fit through. ‘To see what’s happening above. The others should eat something and try to rest.’

  ‘Rest?’ echoed Lisa incredulously. ‘Here? With them prowling about above us?’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Mortimer firmly. ‘It�
��s as safe a place as any, and we’re all warmly dressed. We’ll be fine for a while.’

  ‘Let me go,’ begged Joshi, as Berrister prepared to climb. ‘I don’t think I can stay down here any longer. Not yet, anyway.’

  Berrister did not want to stay in the crevasse either, but sensed that Joshi was near the end of his tether. He nodded acquiescence and stepped aside, albeit reluctantly.

  ‘We’ll take it in turns,’ he said. ‘Half-hour shifts until it’s safe to leave.’

  Joshi had gone before he had finished speaking, clambering up the wall like a monkey. The others watched him poke his head cautiously through the snow at the top, then relaxed when he signalled that no one was there.

  ‘How long do you think they’ll stay?’ asked Lisa eventually. Her voice was unsteady.

  ‘Several days,’ replied Berrister. ‘Flensing a whale that size will take a while – especially as their ship isn’t properly equipped for it. It’s just a fishing vessel.’

  ‘A fishing vessel with a private army,’ remarked Sarah.

  ‘And a harpoon on the front,’ said Berrister. ‘Which I suppose will be dismantled and stowed away when they leave.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’ asked Sarah. ‘The risk of being caught … they must be mad!’

  Berrister did some quick calculations. ‘At the current rate, the meat alone is worth roughly four and a half million pounds on the black market. Not to mention the oil and—’

  ‘They killed Freddy and Dan, didn’t they?’ said Lisa in a small voice, not much caring about whale economics. ‘It wasn’t the ice fall.’

  The others’ silence was all the confirmation she needed.

  ‘You heard a boat,’ said Sarah. ‘I can only surmise that they landed in South Bay, where they killed Dan and Freddy. Then, while we six were still out working, they came to our camp, where they destroyed our communications and stole our supplies.’

  ‘They’re thorough,’ said Graham gloomily. ‘We’re likely to die anyway, with no food and no shelter, but they still made sure we couldn’t summon help. They thought of everything.’

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ whispered Lisa softly. ‘Not here.’

  Mortimer reached out to pat her knee, a gesture of kindness that brought tears. No one said any more. Half an hour later, Joshi ducked down from his vigil, and Berrister took his place. The student went to Lisa, and held her while she cried herself to sleep.

  FOUR

  ‘We’ve eluded them so far,’ Mortimer said three hours later. ‘It’s like a maze down here, so why shouldn’t we continue to do it until they leave? And when they do, we can return to camp and see what can be salvaged.’

  ‘You mean hide down here indefinitely?’ Berrister was unable to keep the horror from his voice. ‘But a glacier is a dynamic force – it moves. New fissures are opening and closing all the time, and we’ve pushed our luck by staying here this long.’

  ‘This part is relatively stable,’ said Mortimer. ‘We’ll be alright.’

  He met Berrister’s eyes, daring him to contradict. Both knew that the glacier edge was exactly where most movement occurred, so Berrister was right to be concerned. But Lisa did not, so why tell her? To avoid further discussion, Berrister went to relieve Graham again.

  The wind blew steadily and sharply on the surface, making his eyes water and the tears freeze on his cheeks. By mid-afternoon, there had been no further sightings of men with guns, so they decided that someone should venture out to see if they were still at large. Berrister offered to go, and picked Graham to accompany him. Joshi regarded Berrister doubtfully.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ he asked baldly. ‘You never like hikes normally – you prefer to stay in camp.’

  ‘He knows more than you do,’ said Mortimer, before Berrister could defend himself. ‘And more than me.’ He turned to Berrister. ‘If you do manage to reach the camp, look in my tent first. I’ve got some food stashed there – in the box at the far end. Bring that and any clothes you can carry.’

  Berrister and Graham began to prepare themselves. Graham swapped his bright red parka for Joshi’s whitish one, while Berrister turned his yellow coat inside out, so that the pale brown lining was on the outside. In that way, they would be less easy to spot from a distance. They considered taking the gun, but decided against it when Mortimer discovered there was no more ammunition.

  Berrister climbed out of the crevasse with relief, and stood slowly. The ice was smooth and white, with no dark-clad killers to mar its bright surface. Acutely aware of the maze of fissures below his feet, he made his way gingerly towards the escarpment, Graham at his heels. When they reached it, he lay on his stomach and wriggled forward until he could see South Bay.

  The ship was still there. So was the whale, with long, reddish-purple slits along its side, where the flensing process had been started. The killers had made scant headway, though, suggesting that they were either incompetent or inexperienced. Or both.

  ‘I knew something was wrong when I heard those gunshots,’ whispered Graham for at least the tenth time since the nightmare had started. His voice held a strong note of censure. ‘You should’ve listened.’

  ‘Yes,’ acknowledged Berrister shortly, tired of hearing it. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’

  ‘We shouldn’t even have been here,’ the Scot went on bitterly. ‘We should’ve been off on a nice jaunt to celebrate the end of the season. But oh, no! You had to work to the bitter end.’

  Berrister rubbed his head. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Freddy was desperate to go. If only we’d done what he suggested. Then we’d all be over enjoying the Byers Peninsula, and he’d still be alive.’

  Berrister regarded him covertly. Could he smell whisky on Graham’s breath again or was it his imagination? He hoped he was wrong – he did not want a drunk with him while he played hide-and-seek with armed men. Yet he was sure Graham would not be saying such things if he were sober.

  He made no reply, and Graham eventually fell silent. They took it in turns to watch the ship through the binoculars. People moved about on it, but what caught Berrister’s attention were the two Zodiacs that bobbed near the stern. Did that mean that the men had given up their search and were back on their ship?

  They remained where they were for an hour, trying to count the number of crew. All they learned was that there were a lot of them. At the stern, a hatch was open, and drums were being rolled into the sea. It was against international maritime law to dump rubbish in the Antarctic, and Berrister despised them all the more for what they were doing.

  He was about to suggest that they cross the scarp to look down at the camp on the other side, when he heard a sound. Graham heard it, too, and gazed at him in horror. It was laughter. Berrister glanced behind him and saw two men coming their way. Now what? He and Graham could not hide in another crevasse, because they would be spotted long before they could reach one; and they could not go forward, because that would mean crossing the exposed crest of the scarp. They were trapped.

  But Graham had a plan. He inserted himself in the gap between ice and rock at the glacier’s edge – where the ice had melted away, leaving a hollow underneath.

  For the first time since they had left the camp, Berrister regretted wearing so many clothes. The ice broke as he tried to squeeze beneath it, sending shards skittering down the rock face. He winced, wondering if the men could hear them. Then his coat snagged, leaving him halfway in and halfway out. The voices came closer. With a strength born of panic, he squirmed sideways, tearing his sleeve. Then he was free. He wriggled further in, squeezing under the ice until he was jammed tight between it and the rock beneath him.

  The voices were very clear, and he thought they were speaking either Arabic or Turkish. Then there was a soft creak, and the ice pressed down on his chest. The men were directly above him! If the ice snapped …

  One of the men laughed again, and boots crunched down to his left – two pairs of them, side by side. There was more laughter, and so
meone spat. Then Berrister smelled smoke. They were sitting on the ice above him, enjoying a cigarette. Berrister tried to ignore the sense of being crushed beneath their weight, wondering when the nightmare would end.

  Back in the crevasse, Joshi was on watch again, and Sarah was growing restless. Lisa and Mortimer had managed to fall asleep, but she was too agitated. She hated waiting, doing nothing. She thought about Berrister’s accident three years before – something that had been the subject of much gossip at the university, mostly because he had steadfastly refused to tell anyone what had happened. Had it left him incapable of moving about the glacier safely with armed men on his heels?

  He made no secret of the fact that he considered the Antarctic dangerous and unpredictable, and was also probably the least physically fit of them, with the obvious exception of Mortimer. She wished she had insisted on going with Graham instead. Of course, the Scot had hardly risen to the challenge. He had been hired for his mountain rescue experience, but he had proved himself to be morose and defeatist. He had been right – the sounds he had heard had not been cracking ice – but his ‘I told you so’ attitude was unhelpful, and Sarah had expected him to be above such pettiness.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost six o’clock, which meant they had been gone three hours. She sat on a lump of ice, then stood again, thinking about all the work she had done that season. Had it all been for nothing? Would Berrister get the professorship, just because the micro-transmitters on his seals were already amassing data at home, whereas all hers had been burned by criminals? Or would it not matter, because neither would see home again? They could not survive for nine days inside the glacier without supplies – and that was assuming Worsley came on time – the thing might be late. She grimaced. Worse, the whalers might still be there, and a research vessel was unlikely to win a confrontation with armed men.

  She sighed. It was shockingly cold, and her empty stomach was not making things any easier. She looked at her watch again: six-ten. Maybe, Berrister and Graham had been caught and were never coming back, so how long should she wait? Until nightfall? The morning? A week?