The Killing Ship

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘Perhaps it’s more dangerous not to find us,’ murmured Drecki soberly, leaning over the side to paddle with his hands. ‘Go left.’

  Again Berrister did as he was told, easing into a cave that was so narrow there was barely enough room to clear the sides. The larger boat would be unable to follow. It was darker there, full of blue shadows. The roar of the other engine sounded horribly loud, and Berrister flinched when a large hunk of ice dropped from the roof and fell into the water behind them.

  ‘Here they come!’ hissed Drecki.

  Holding his breath and expecting to be discovered at any moment, Berrister watched the gunmen pass the entrance to their tunnel. Incredibly, none of them looked left. Berrister and Drecki sagged in relief and exchanged a quick grin.

  But they had celebrated too soon. The main cave had come to a dead end, so the driver began to reverse out. And this time, one of the men did glance in their direction. He gave a triumphant yell.

  Even before Yablokov had closed the door of the scientists’ cabin, Hasim had whisked Graham further down the corridor and was plying him with a barrage of questions. The Scot answered unsteadily, his voice low and secretive. Yablokov strained to hear, but both spoke softly, and Graham’s thick Scots accent was difficult for a man whose English was no better than adequate.

  ‘Return him to his friends, will you?’ Hasim said when he had finished. ‘And inform them that his common sense has saved their lives.’

  ‘So it’s you, is it? said Yablokov to Graham in distaste, when Hasim had gone. ‘I thought it was the fat man, but you’re the one who’s been helping us.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Graham shortly.

  He pushed past Yablokov, opened the door and shut it firmly behind him, leaving the first mate standing in the hallway. Yablokov watched the guards lock the door, and went to look for Hasim. He found him in the communications room. Hasim scowled when he walked in.

  ‘I need to contact Galtieri,’ Hasim said irritably. ‘In private. Close the door on your way out, will you?’

  ‘Galtieri?’ asked Yablokov with a frown of his own, not moving. ‘Why? She’s miles away – nowhere near the Antarctic.’

  Galtieri was a retired Argentine warship, and Yablokov had voiced reservations about an association with her when they had met ‘by chance’ off the coast near Buenos Aires. What they were doing was risky enough, and they certainly didn’t need to compound the danger by consorting with a vessel like that. Hasim had assured him that she was no different from Lena, but Yablokov had known then that it was a lie. Perhaps Galtieri’s holds had been adapted to take special cargoes, but enough of her superstructure had been left to let her revert to her original purpose without too much trouble. Moreover, her crew weren’t fishermen, but mercenaries like the ones that Hasim had brought aboard Lena. He saw he had been a fool to accept Hasim’s smooth assurances that Galtieri would stay further north, well away from the area where Lena would be working.

  ‘She had to come,’ said Hasim. ‘To solve a problem involving some Poles.’

  ‘What kind of problem?’ Yablokov felt sick. The situation was getting way out of hand.

  ‘Don’t worry – it has already been dealt with.’ Hasim grimaced. ‘For an uninhabited wilderness, this place is positively seething with people. It was supposed to be empty.’

  ‘And Galtieri was supposed to stay up north,’ said Yablokov accusingly. ‘She has no business being down here.’

  ‘Nor does Lena,’ Hasim pointed out with impeccable, if annoying, logic. ‘Now please excuse me. I’m busy.’

  He propelled Yablokov through the door before slamming it in his face. Yablokov was aware of the Norwegians smirking at the insult, although Zurin kept his eyes fixed on the course he was steering. Yablokov clenched his fists. If it were not for his family, the money he would earn and the fact that Hasim had armed men at his command, he might consider quietly dispatching the man and taking Lena home, where she belonged.

  Inside the iceberg, Berrister regarded the other boat with weary resignation. It was too bad, after all he’d been through, but at least he could die in the knowledge that he had done his utmost to escape and save his friends.

  He watched the four men engage in a low-voiced, agitated discussion. He knew what their dilemma was: if they opened fire inside the cave, the chances were that the inevitable collapse would kill them as well as their victims. But it was not long before there were nods, as a consensus was reached. The driver began to turn his boat.

  When he was facing the exit, he gave a mocking wave and drove out. Berrister and Drecki exchanged a glance of incomprehension as he disappeared from sight. But their bewilderment did not last long. There was a tremendous rattle of gunfire, and they saw ice flying off the cave roof.

  ‘Clever,’ murmured Drecki in the brief silence that followed. ‘To leave before they collapse the ice on us.’

  There was a moment when Berrister thought the ploy had failed, but then a huge lump of ceiling dropped so close to his stern that water slopped over it. There was a crack, and he saw a larger piece set to follow – one that would land right on top of them.

  ‘Drive!’ screamed Drecki, grabbing the oar and trying to propel them forward.

  Berrister yanked the engine into life. He glanced back as they chugged away, and saw the ice plummet down, blocking the way they had come. There was no other direction to go but forward now. With the roof crumbling all around them, they began to speed down the narrow tunnel, walls flashing past them. Then it opened into a sizeable cavern, and Berrister saw daylight ahead. He hurtled towards it, flinching as an enormous icicle crashed into the boat, narrowly missing his leg.

  Above them, a crack of sky had appeared, while the inside of the cavern was filled with a mass of ice flakes, like dust. The iceberg had split, and the two parts were slowly falling in opposite directions. Berrister twisted the throttle as far as it would go, desperately trying to coax just a little more speed out of the labouring engine.

  Suddenly, there was a loud boom that momentarily drowned out the creaking and groaning of the splitting berg. It was the third time that day that Galtieri had launched missiles.

  ‘They’re firing at it, to make sure it collapses,’ shouted Drecki – unnecessarily because Berrister understood exactly what was going on. ‘They’re crazy! Their own men will still be too close.’

  Berrister had already seen that the commander of Galtieri did not care about his minions. There was another boom, and more ice fell. A piece struck Berrister’s shoulder, and with horror, he saw that while the crack above them was growing wider, the arch of daylight ahead was shrinking – and they wouldn’t survive if they were inside the berg when it came apart. He swerved to avoid a huge chunk that crashed down in front of him, almost flinging Drecki out.

  The opening was getting smaller with every passing second, and the motor had no more power to give. Berrister urged it on, his eyes fixed ahead. Another boom tore at his ears, and the engine coughed as ice fouled the propeller.

  ‘Duck!’ he yelled, throwing himself down as they reached the now-tiny arch at a speed that was far from safe.

  The propeller hit ice, killing the engine, but they were going fast enough that they kept flying forward anyway. He was aware of the top of the opening skimming past his head. If they stopped now, they would drown, pressed under the water by the roof above. But then, incredibly, they spurted out of the gap and plopped into the frothing water beyond.

  ‘We’ll capsize!’ screeched Drecki. ‘Get us away!’

  ‘The propeller’s gone,’ Berrister shouted back. ‘Row!’

  Drecki grabbed an oar and began to paddle, kayak fashion, from the bow. Berrister did the same from the stern, struggling to keep his balance as the boat pitched and tipped. Then the two halves of the berg finally broke apart with a great creaking hiss, bobbing and rolling until only their very tips protruded above the surface. Moments later came the waves – huge ones, caused by the displaced wate
r.

  ‘Hold on!’ yelled Berrister, and grabbed a safety rope.

  The first wave tossed their boat high into the air, then hurled it forward. The second spun them around and deluged them with icy water. Berrister felt his grip begin to slip as the little craft lurched one way and then the other. Water slopped everywhere, dashing into his face and drenching his clothes.

  Just when he thought he could hold on no longer, the buffeting eased. He blinked water from his eyes. Where there had been one mammoth iceberg, there were now two, along with a great mat of smaller pieces that heaved up and down, hissing and chinking together.

  ‘Look,’ whispered Drecki, pointing. ‘The other boat.’

  He had been right to predict that it would not have enough time to reach safety. It undulated among the mass of bergy bits, but was empty, its occupants washed overboard.

  ‘We can’t see the ship, which means it can’t see us.’ Drecki pointed. ‘If we can reach that beach undetected – by keeping the ice between them and us – we might escape yet.’

  ‘How?’ asked Berrister wearily. ‘We don’t have a propeller – and they’ll certainly see us if we row, because it’ll take too long.’

  ‘Then we’ll use their boat,’ determined Drecki, beginning to paddle towards it with the oar he had somehow managed to keep hold of. Berrister’s had been lost when the first wave had hit.

  It did not take long to reach it, and they had soon clambered aboard, taking with them Tadek’s spare fuel and a bag of emergency supplies. Careful to stay out of sight, they aimed for the little cove Drecki had chosen. It was impossible to move at speed through the litter of ice, but that was no bad thing – it would just make them more difficult to detect on radar. When they arrived, Berrister drove behind a rock and cut the engine.

  ‘We made it,’ crowed Drecki, although Berrister was too cold, numb and exhausted to feel any exhilaration. ‘We fooled them. Now we have a better Zodiac and two spare tanks of fuel.’

  He unscrewed the caps to see how much they had, while Berrister watched indifferently, his mind dull from shock and tiredness.

  ‘Pity,’ sighed the Pole. ‘One tank is empty, one has just a dribble, and only the spare from Jacek is full. These men are stupid, driving around with virtually no fuel.’

  The enemy had been stupid in several ways, telling Berrister that they were unfamiliar with the Antarctic or they would not have been so recklessly complacent. He wanted to say so, but the effort of speaking was simply too great. Drecki took a flask from his backpack.

  ‘Drink some tea. It’ll do you good.’

  It did. It was black, strong, hot and sweet, and Berrister wished there was more. They exchanged some of their wet clothes for dry ones from Drecki’s pack, after which he gave Berrister two soggy meat sandwiches and a hard-boiled egg. Berrister wolfed them down, and gradually his trembling exhaustion began to recede.

  ‘So,’ said Drecki, when he had finished. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’

  Berrister told his story haltingly, including the details he had left off before, and his theories about the deadly ships and what he thought they were doing. Then Drecki explained why he had persuaded the captain of Jacek to land him illegally in a Specially Protected Area.

  ‘Although my Coniopteris wasn’t worth this,’ he whispered wretchedly. ‘Maria, Tadek, Captain Anders … so many good people.’

  ‘Your base will be worried about you,’ said Berrister, not sure he would describe Maria or Tadek as good, given that one had wanted to shoot him, while the other had driven off to save his own skin, leaving Drecki to fend for himself. ‘They’ll send someone to look, so all we have to do is sit tight until they arrive. I can’t see Galtieri hanging around here after what happened. These men can’t keep killing everyone they meet – they’ll have to stop at some point.’

  Drecki winced. ‘Jacek will be missed, but Arctowski won’t look for her here. They think we’re at Greenwich Island – which is where I told them we’d be.’

  Berrister silently cursed the geologist’s maverick antics, but remonstrating with him would do no good, so he decided to change the subject by asking what had happened by the hut.

  ‘Why didn’t they shoot you straight away when they caught you?’ he asked. ‘What were they waiting for?’

  ‘I think they hoped to make our deaths look like accidents – to take us out to sea and sabotage the inflatable so that we’d drown. The same is true of Jacek – if wreckage is found now, everyone will assume there was an explosion in the engine room. It’ll never cross anyone’s mind that she was blown up deliberately.’

  Once again, the whalers had proven themselves to be ruthlessly thorough in covering their tracks.

  ‘Maybe the crew sent a message before Jacek went down,’ suggested Berrister hopefully.

  ‘They didn’t,’ said Drecki sombrely. ‘I’d have heard it on my handset. Whatever we decide to do, we’re on our own.’

  ‘How could you?’ demanded Sarah accusingly when Graham re-joined them in the cabin. The Scot’s face was flushed and his eyes were bright with defiance. ‘You heard what he said – the captain wants to kill us, and he’s the one running the ship. Hasim was lying – they have no intention of letting us go.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Graham, and leaned towards her. ‘But—’

  ‘Get away from me!’

  She snapped on the radio and grabbed a fork, intending to vent her rage on the porthole. Mortimer closed his eyes, while Joshi looked stricken at the bald declaration that their fate was sealed. Undeterred, Graham went to stand next to her again.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ he whispered. ‘It was our chance!’

  She glared at him. ‘Our chance to what? Help those bastards in return for being murdered?’

  Graham moved even nearer, to avoid being overheard. Sarah elbowed him back in distaste. Stoically ignoring her anger, he edged closer again.

  ‘To escape.’ Graham smiled at her immediate suspicion. ‘I think I’ve just managed to alert Rothera – to send them a message that we’re in trouble and need help.’

  NINE

  Berrister stared out across the ice-littered bay, trying to decide what to do. The nearest occupied base was too far to reach with the available fuel, and waiting for rescue was obviously out of the question – Drecki’s people would be looking in the wrong place and his own still thought all was well, or there would have been a plane. He remembered Worsley, due to arrive in six days. Clearly, he had to warn her, lest she meet the same fate as Jacek.

  ‘I have to help my friends at Hannah Point,’ he said eventually. ‘Assuming they’re still alive, of course.’

  ‘How?’

  It was a perfectly reasonable question, but not one Berrister could answer. Any ideas he had were dependent on being able to contact a base – or having access to more fuel.

  ‘Freddy,’ he said eventually, when no amount of brain-racking brought a solution – or at least none that was sensible. ‘Maria claimed she heard him talking to Rothera the day after he died. Why did she lie?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ said Drecki. ‘Because I heard him, too. However, all Australians sound alike to us, so I imagine he’d be easy for a native English speaker to imitate.’

  He was, and Berrister had done it himself several times to make the others laugh. It would have been easy for the whalers to listen to Freddy’s brief daily broadcasts, then take over once he was murdered. Berrister had insisted that Freddy be concise, so Rothera would expect nothing more than a terse message saying that everything was fine.

  Of course, there was another possibility: that the mimic was Graham or Wells, as Sarah believed. But that was an unpleasant thought, and one he was disinclined to share with anyone else.

  ‘It couldn’t be done for long,’ he said. ‘We know the guys at Rothera, and they know us.’

  Drecki shrugged. ‘Perhaps the mimic claimed there is something wrong with the radio, limiting him to short transmissions.’

  ‘That wouldn�
��t satisfy Noddy Taylor – I’ve been sending him regular reports on krill, and when he doesn’t get one, he’ll be clamouring to know why.’

  ‘He can clamour all he likes – it won’t mend a malfunctioning radio.’ Drecki sighed. ‘We’re in a fix here – the two of us against warships and an undetermined number of armed killers. It doesn’t look good.’

  To Berrister it looked hopeless. ‘I can’t think,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I know I need to do something, but I can’t think …’

  ‘Then sleep for an hour,’ suggested Drecki. ‘We can’t go anywhere, so why not? I’ll keep guard, and who knows? Perhaps something will occur to you when you wake refreshed.’

  Sleeping would take time away from helping the others, but Berrister’s weariness was crippling, so he curled up in the bottom of the boat, thinking a few minutes’ rest would do no harm.

  Some hours later, he jolted awake with a start. He had never been so stiff and cold in his life, and every joint ached from his trek across the glacier. He looked for Drecki. The Pole was atop the rocky bluff that hid them, watching Galtieri. He turned when he heard Berrister climbing towards him.

  ‘I’m afraid we have a problem.’

  Berrister lay beside him and looked into the bay. What he saw filled him with horror. Two dead minke whales floated there, tethered by ropes to Galtieri’s side. Men swarmed over them. But that was not the worst of it: two more ships had anchored nearby.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Sarah, eyeing Graham coldly. ‘How have you warned Rothera by cooperating with these bastards? And you’re in my way. Stand back, or you might find yourself stabbed with a fork.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Mortimer, hope surging. ‘I see exactly what he’s done.’

  Sarah scowled angrily. ‘Then explain.’

  Mortimer smiled. ‘If Rothera thought we were in trouble, they’d send help, right? There’d be ships, planes and all sorts coming. Even the tourists you heard over on Deception would have made a detour.’

  ‘Right,’ said Joshi. ‘So?’

  ‘So either Rothera suddenly got careless or they’re still receiving messages from “us” – or rather, someone pretending to be from our camp.’