The Killing Ship

by Simon Beaufort

  Without a word, Graham led the way back across the beach, selfishly leaving Berrister to carry both daypacks and the clothes-filled tarpaulin by himself. They retraced their steps up to the glacier, after which Berrister was so tired he could barely stand.

  ‘You can’t stop here,’ hissed Graham, as Berrister slumped to his knees. He nodded towards the ship, where a boat could just be seen through the gloom. It was heading for shore. ‘We need to get back to the crevasse before the light goes completely.’

  ‘Help me, then,’ gasped Berrister crossly. ‘I can’t carry all this on my own.’

  Reluctantly, Graham took a corner of the bundle and hefted it up. ‘Crikey! It’s heavier than it looks.’

  ‘I know,’ said Berrister dryly. ‘Oh, shit! I think they’ve seen us.’

  Down on the beach, the boat had landed, and small figures were gesticulating towards them with stabbing fingers.

  ‘Run!’ cried Graham, dropping the bundle. ‘Forget the clothes.’

  ‘No,’ snapped Berrister. ‘We need them. Take one of the daypacks and I’ll—’

  He faltered when a sharp report rang out.

  ‘Gunfire,’ shrieked Graham. ‘No, don’t stand there gaping – keep moving! I bet this is what happened to Freddy.’

  ‘And Dan,’ gasped Berrister, refusing to relinquish what they had been to so much trouble to win.

  ‘Not Dan,’ spat Graham bitterly. ‘Not him.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  A second shot rang out, and Berrister saw a puff of snow to his right. The third thumped into the bundle. Graham promptly raced away, leaving Berrister behind. The biologist was more tired than he had ever been, and hunger and cold were beginning to impair his judgement. With the absurd notion that the bundle might protect him from bullets, he gathered it up and hefted it over his shoulder. It seemed heavier than before, and it was an effort to keep moving. And then he was past the steepest climb, heading for the more gentle rise of the summit. He was out of the killers’ sight – for now, at least.

  Graham was a good way in front – barely visible in the dying light. Berrister closed his mind to the possibility of crevasses, and concentrated on forging forward as fast as he could. Then his foot caught in a dip and sent him sprawling. From his hands and knees, he could just make out Graham running hard in the distance. He staggered to his feet, but when he next looked up, Graham had disappeared.

  He strained his eyes in the near darkness. Had Graham reached the others or fallen down a new crevasse? Berrister stumbled again, and this time, it was more difficult to stand. He thought he could hear voices on the wind, and glanced behind him, expecting to see the killers, but there was nothing but ice.

  He staggered forward with his bundle and daypacks, trying to gauge where Graham had gone. He set a course for one area, only to swerve away when he saw rocks poking through it – there had been no rocks near their hiding place. He looked around hopelessly, frantically searching for a clue that might help, but the ice was as hard as stone, and there were no tell-tale tracks. He was lost. In desperation, he struck out to his right, but the ice began to slope down, suggesting he was heading for the glacier’s edge, rather than the middle. He veered left, only to see the sea again. He had been running in circles!

  The voices were louder now, and he knew he was going to be caught. He thought he glimpsed the first of his pursuers, but as he started to run, still doggedly clutching his finds, the snow under him gave way and he plunged downward.

  Sarah was standing watch at the crevasse when she heard the gunfire. She poked her head up warily, and a few minutes later, she saw Graham lurching towards her, almost invisible in the gloom. She waved frantically to attract his attention, not wanting to shout in case the wrong people heard. He stumbled towards her and almost pitched headfirst past her in his desperation to escape. She checked the horizon to ensure no one had seen him, then followed him inside.

  ‘Where’s Andrew?’ she demanded, motioning Joshi to take over guard duty.

  Graham wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

  Above them, Joshi gave a strangled gasp before scrambling back down. ‘They’re coming this way. Six or seven, all armed to the teeth.’

  ‘They’ve got rifles this time,’ said Graham hoarsely. ‘The range of those things …’

  ‘Did they shoot Andrew?’ asked Mortimer tersely.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ replied Graham wretchedly. ‘He was behind me, and when they started firing, I just ran. When I looked back … well, I’d have seen him if he’d done what I’d said …’

  ‘Hush!’ hissed Lisa, casting a fearful glance upwards. ‘They’ll hear.’

  ‘Grab as much as you can carry and go deeper into the glacier,’ ordered Sarah. ‘Now they know roughly where we are, they’re going to search more carefully. The darkness will help – hopefully it’ll slow them down and give us more time.’

  The others scurried to take what they could, then set off, Graham in the lead. Joshi followed, holding Lisa’s hand, while Sarah and Mortimer were last. After a few metres, the tunnel became wider, deeper and much darker. Fortunately, Joshi had a pocket torch, and a little light went a long way in a place that was almost pitch black.

  It was impossible to run. The bottom of the fissure was littered with ice, slick and uneven. Sarah fell once, wrenching her ankle painfully, but forced herself to keep moving.

  ‘Brace yourself against the walls with your hands,’ advised Mortimer.

  Lisa stifled a scream as the ice under her foot collapsed, opening up a sinister black hole. For a moment, she was paralysed with fear, but Joshi hauled her forward. Then their crevasse forked, two equally unappealing tunnels of ice leading away in different directions. At the same time, they heard something behind them. Voices! The hunters had found the gear they had abandoned.

  ‘Drop anything that’ll slow you down,’ ordered Sarah. ‘We’ll have to split up – it’s our only chance. Geoff and I will take the left one, you three take the right. Go!’

  She was away before they could argue, aware of Mortimer puffing behind her. He was more likely to slow her down than the others, but there was something about Graham’s brazen selfishness that repelled her – she disliked the fact that he had abandoned Berrister so readily – and she realised she didn’t want him with her. He wasn’t a team player.

  She could hear the enemy’s voices behind her, getting ever closer. It was easier for them – they had torches, whereas she and Mortimer were obliged to stumble along in the pitch dark. She tried to move faster, conscious of Mortimer’s rasping breath as he fought to keep up. She grabbed his hand, and pulled him on.

  Suddenly, the tunnel narrowed to a slit. Sarah managed to fight her way through it sideways, but Mortimer was too big, even without his bulky clothing. Desperately, Sarah glanced up, assessing their chances of climbing out, but the sides of the fissure were too sheer. With anger and dismay, she saw it was over.

  ‘Go,’ urged Mortimer. ‘I’ll hold them here for as long as I can.’

  ‘No,’ said Sarah tightly. ‘We’ll meet them together.’

  ‘Like hell we will! Now run, for God’s sake. Someone has to tell everyone what happened.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said softly, thinking it was better to die with someone who cared enough to cover her escape than be gunned down like an animal.

  ‘You can. Please do this for me.’

  She looked at him in the gloom. He was pale, but calm. She reached out and touched his cheek gently, before turning to sprint down the narrow tunnel.

  Chief engineer Nikos had been put in charge of the hunters, and he had divided his party in half when the fissure had split: he and two sailors had gone left, while Zurin and three other crewmen had gone right. Nikos was the first to catch his quarry. He found a very large man jammed in a crack that was far too narrow to accommodate him. The Greek watched him struggle for a moment, then went to help him extricate himself.

  Shortly afterwards, Zuri
n’s party caught up with the others. The right-hand tunnel ended abruptly when it met another, far deeper crevasse that sliced diagonally across it. It was of undetermined depth, and a good ten metres across. Graham, Lisa and Joshi had only just avoided plunging down it, and now stood at its edge, backs towards it as they faced their pursuers with a mixture of fear and dismay.

  They had seen it before, because Wells had discovered it back in December, and had brought everyone to see it – or everyone except Berrister who had declined with a shudder. Joshi had dubbed it the Big Crevasse, a name that had stuck, despite the others’ scathing remarks about his lack of imagination. Mortimer thought it reached bedrock, some two hundred metres or more below, although he could not be sure. One thing they did know, however, was that it led nowhere but down.

  Zurin also stopped, alert for tricks. Then he moved forward slowly, and what happened next was a blur. With a terrified scream, Lisa was gone – although whether she had slipped, the ice had collapsed beneath her feet or she had jumped was impossible to say. For several moments, no one moved, then a soggy thump sounded faintly as her body hit something a long way below.

  With a wail of anguish, Joshi peered down into the blackness. Zurin’s habitually impassive face crumpled with shock, and he was unable to tear his eyes away from the yawning chasm. Graham said something, but Zurin couldn’t understand him, and only shook his head.

  Lisa’s plunge to death had badly unsettled the helmsman, and he desperately wanted to leave the ice tunnels and their sinister blue gloom. He wanted to be back on Lena, with the familiar heave of the ocean beneath his feet, and he wanted Hasim and his nasty team to disappear into oblivion. Like Yablokov, he was having serious second thoughts about what he had got himself into. Indeed, he’d only signed up because Yablokov had, loyally assuming that the first officer knew what he was doing. Well, they had both learned the hard way that he didn’t.

  Eventually, he gestured for Graham and Joshi to follow him back up the tunnel. He had been surprised when Hasim had ordered him to take them alive, but vastly relieved. He was no killer, particularly now he had seen the intended victims – they were kids, and the younger one was regarding him with such fear that Zurin experienced a disconcerting wave of self-loathing.

  ‘He wants us to go with him,’ said Graham, trying to pull Joshi away from the crevasse.

  ‘Then he can go to hell,’ sobbed Joshi, tugging away from him.

  ‘We have to,’ urged Graham. ‘They’ll kill us otherwise.’

  ‘They’ll kill us anyway,’ wept Joshi. ‘And Lisa … I’m not going anywhere with them.’

  But a few minutes later, he and Graham were stumbling back the way they had come, confused and dejected. Joshi was still crying, and the only sounds other than their footsteps were his sobs. They waited several minutes at the fork, and then Nikos’ group emerged with Mortimer.

  ‘Bit of a tight squeeze,’ said Mortimer to Graham and Joshi, indicating his ripped jacket. ‘Stopped me dead in my tracks. Good thing you weren’t behind me.’

  He smiled but his eyes held a warning. Fortunately, it had not occurred to Nikos to look for anyone else, which was lucky, because the Big Crevasse sliced across the left-hand tunnel, too. Sarah had crouched at its edge in an agony of tension, listening to Mortimer being prised loose, and expecting at any moment for someone to come and nab her, too.

  When Lisa’s scream had come, she had covered her ears and huddled into a tight ball. It took a long time for her grief-numbed mind to accept that no one was coming to get her, by which time she was so cold that she could barely move. She stood unsteadily, and forced herself to stumble along the tunnel to the fork. The abandoned supplies still lay there. Mechanically, she gathered them up and continued towards their first hiding place.

  By the time she reached it, the dull, helpless feeling had receded somewhat. The effort of clambering along the crevasse had warmed her, and her customary confidence was beginning to return. The fact that the killers hadn’t looked for her suggested that they didn’t know she was still alive – or even that she existed. As long as the others kept quiet, she might yet be able to tell their story when rescue came.

  She advanced on the hiding place warily, anticipating that the whalers might have left a guard. But no such precautions had been considered necessary, and the place was deserted. She climbed up to the surface, and crept across the now-dark ice to where she could look down on South Bay. Torches lit Mortimer, Joshi and Graham on the beach, surrounded by men with guns, while two boats buzzed from the ship to collect them.

  With a piercing sense of loss, she saw them clamber slowly aboard. As she watched them go, she had never felt more alone. Of her seven companions, three were being spirited away by pirates, while Berrister, Lisa, Wells and Freddy were dead. As the boats drew further away, she was assailed by the terrifying conviction that it was the last time she would ever see Mortimer, Joshi and Graham alive. The tears that had been threatening to overwhelm her ever since Mortimer had helped her escape burst, and she sank into the snow to weep.

  FIVE

  As the snow bridge gave way, Berrister plunged straight down to land with a bone-jarring thump on a ledge about the size of a kitchen table. It knocked the breath out of him, although the bundle of clothes saved him from serious harm by cushioning his fall. Warily, he sat up. It was too dark to see anything, but he recalled a torch in one of the daypacks. He rummaged for it and then clicked it on. What it illuminated made him turn cold with horror.

  He had fallen down the fissure the others had dubbed the Big Crevasse. Shakily, he pointed the torch over the edge, and saw only inky blackness. Although he did not know it, his friends were doing exactly the same – Graham, Lisa and Joshi at one point, and Sarah nearby.

  The ledge on which he had landed was just an irregularity in the wall, although he sensed it was not an especially secure one – he could see shards of ice breaking off it and spiralling into nothingness. As he looked, a scream ripped through the air, making him start so violently that he had to clutch at the wall to stop himself from falling. He experienced a stab of despair. It had sounded like Lisa.

  He fought the urge to leap to his feet and scale the wall above him as fast as he could – sudden movements might send the ledge crashing down, taking him with it. And anyway, what awaited him on the surface was not necessarily any improvement on his current situation.

  He glanced up. The sky was a dark blue smear about five metres above his head. He tried to look at his watch, but it was broken. Taking several deep breaths to calm himself, he stood, staying as close to the wall as possible. More ice clattered downward as he twisted around to shine the torch up. The crevasse was ancient, and its walls had melted and refrozen over many summers, so they were slick and as shiny as glass. Climbing them would be impossible.

  Struggling to quell his rising panic, he held the torch in his mouth and began to untie the canvas bundle. Perhaps one of the dead men had pitons or ice-screws in his pockets. These specially designed pins used by mountaineers would be his best hope – he could drive them into the ice to form a ladder.

  The coats yielded a variety of items, including a wallet stuffed with American dollars and a sausage in waxy paper. The daypacks brought forth a length of thin rope, a computer game, a knife coated with fish scales and a box of matches.

  He fingered the knife, wondering if he could cut toeholds. He tried one, but quickly found it was impossible with such hard ice. He shone the torch to the opposite wall. It was too far to jump, and, if anything, was even more slick than the one above him. Then he shone the beam to the sides, and felt his spirits rise.

  To the right was nothing but sheer ice, but to the left was another ledge, perhaps two metres away. Beyond that was a third one, and above it, the ice was rougher, perhaps enough to allow him to climb. He could not do it in the dark – he would fall for certain – but he could try in the morning. Resolutely quelling the horror he felt at spending six hours on an unstable platform over a bottomle
ss chasm, he sat on the canvas bundle and huddled deeper into his coat to wait for dawn.

  As they drew closer to Lena, Mortimer squinted up at the hull that towered above them, noting that the anchor chain was thick with rust and seaweed, and that some of the rivets were missing. The air around her was thick with the rank stench of blood, while skuas and other gulls bobbed on the waves, resting after a day of feasting on titbits of whale.

  Zurin steered the Zodiac to the loading hatch and tied it off, indicating that the prisoners were to go up the rope ladder that dangled down the side. It was badly frayed and the two bottom rungs were missing.

  ‘Crikey!’ muttered Mortimer, regarding it apprehensively. ‘Up that?’

  Zurin’s only reply was a firmly pointing finger. Mortimer stood carefully and reached for the ladder, but it was not an easy ascent for a man his size, and it took Zurin pushing from below and two seamen hauling from above to get him up. Joshi and Graham followed more agilely, after which the three of them stood looking around uncertainly.

  They were in a loading bay that ran the width of the ship, a shabby, beige area that reeked of dead whale, sweating bodies and oil. Opposite, the starboard hatch was also open, and slabs of meat were still being manhandled through it, even though it was dark outside. A line of barrels stood against one wall, large black ones with no identifying markings. Two crewmen grabbed one and rolled it towards the port-side hatch, where they struggled to heave it out. It appeared to be very heavy.

  Zurin poked them and nodded to some stairs to the right. They clambered up them and emerged into a mess hall. It was thick with cigarette smoke, and half a dozen men sat there, one watching a subtitled video, while the others played cards.

  They were directed along a narrow corridor that someone had tried to brighten up with pages torn from calendars. Miss July lounged seductively between a pensive kitten and a dinosaur wearing a bow tie. At the end of the corridor was a row of doors with numbers.

  Zurin opened one and gestured that his prisoners were to enter. When Mortimer started to demur, Zurin gave him a hefty shove that sent him staggering inside. Graham and Joshi were pushed in after him, and the door was slammed shut. Then came the snap of a key being turned in a lock.