The Pirate Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  She crossed straight to the telephone and dialled the captain’s cabin. lWai?’

  ‘It’s the first officer, Captain.’

  ‘I call lifeboat drill.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Is there any specific reason?’

  ‘Still no sign Fat Chow. Fat Chow taken afternoon off before, but Fat Chow never missed bringing my evening meal at nineteen thirty. Never before. I call lifeboat drill then “Man Overboard” maybe.’

  Robin took a deep breath. If Fat Chow had gone overboard, he could have gone as long as ten hours earlier. Calling Man Overboard now was not going to help anyone, least of all the chief steward. Ten hours. He would be, quite literally, shark bait. If the barracuda hadn’t got him first. Particularly as, she now remembered all too vividly, the man had cut himself quite badly looking for valuables in the Vietnamese sampan. ‘Captain!’ she snapped.

  Robin’s thoughts had flowed so fast, Sin was still hanging on. ‘Yes?’ he answered.

  ‘Do you want the men in the sickbay moved to lifeboats? They haven’t been assigned places yet.’

  ‘No. Leave them. Everyone else up and out.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  Alone of all the crew, except for Wai Chan who was on watch, Fat Chow did not show up at his lifeboat place. If he was aboard, he was incapacitated somehow. ‘Organise a search,’ ordered Sin.

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ answered Robin at once. ‘I will order Wai Chan to keep his watch until the search is over. The engineers will search their own areas and the cargo decks below. Sam Yung and I will take the GP seamen to search the weather deck and the bridgehouse. We will report back to you as soon as we are finished, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you, missy. Please to proceed.’

  She had to rely very heavily on Wai Chan and Sam Yung to detail reliable teams. Although she had the experienced officer’s facility for remembering names and faces, it was far beyond even her capacity to differentiate between all the dark-haired, broad-cheeked, long-eyed Asiatic faces after only four days. All the seamen and most of the officers were at first glance indistinguishable, a collection of wiry men in white boiler suits. But, taking the advice of her number two and number three officers, Robin soon got things sorted out and for the next hour or so the whole place was a bustle of men working singly, in pairs and in teams, hurrying hither and yon in their frustrating, fruitless search.

  Within the hour it was clear that the chief steward was nowhere obvious aboard. Robin accepted reports from the other team leaders and then reported to the captain herself. Captain Sin was strongly of the opinion that they should declare Man Overboard, but Robin persuaded him that it would be useless to do so. On the other hand, in order to seal the bargain, she had to agree that, as soon as her men had gulped down a late supper, she should take them out again, to search all the places which had not been checked so far; for this was a large ship and there were many places in which a small man might end up hidden, either on purpose or by accident.

  Robin herself did not get the chance for a sedentary supper. Grabbing a sandwich, she went along to the sickbay. If Fat Chow had been missing for more than ten hours, then she herself must have been the last person with any medical expertise to check on the Vietnamese. She was not unduly worried for she knew that Sam Yung’s nursing watch would have alerted her if there had been anything to worry about. But when she reached the sickbay, she found the two patients unattended. They were both still comatose, but they had clearly been looked after in her absence. Full bedpans had been placed in the surgery in front of the doors of the cold storage containing the dead women. The beds showed signs of having been disturbed and hastily remade. Both men seemed to have had their drips replaced again and she checked the needles once more. The crooks of both arms were bleeding slightly, but neither showed any great evidence of blood loss. ‘You ought to be waking up soon,’ Robin told the men as she bathed their torsos with cool water and wet their lips with distilled water once again. Then she went in search of Sam Yung to ask about the nursing watch.

  The third officer was on the bridge, having at last relieved Wai Chan. He told her that the two men he had found who were competent to do the nursing work had both reported to the lifeboat drill with everybody else and he had not made a point of telling them to return to the duty.

  ‘I’ll look after things up here,’ said Robin. ‘You go and find them, would you? Those poor Vietnamese have been very lucky to make it this far and I think they’ve pulled through in spite of what we’ve done rather than because of it. If Fat Chow has gone by the board then I’m in charge of the sickbay now and I want a round-the-clock watch until they wake up, or until we come into Kwai Chung. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, missy,’ said Sam Yung and thundered off to carry out her orders.

  Alone on the bridge, Robin first glanced up at the ship’s chronometer above the vacant helm. It was well after twenty-two hundred hours now, less than two hours before she was due to take over the middle watch. How on earth was she going to arrange a decent search for Fat Chow now? Idly, she crossed over to check the log. Feeling slightly out of place because she was really only minding the store and was not really on watch or in charge, she fiddled with bits and pieces of the equipment, checking the probable distance to Kwai Chung, getting an update on the weather, looking morosely in at the useless radio. While she did this, it occurred to her that she had better sort out one of the lifeboat radios. They would need a radio in the morning in order to call up the Hong Kong port authorities, if nothing else.

  It was strange, Robin mused, how they had managed to settle nothing in the last twenty-four hours — get nothing fixed, explained or sorted out. It was almost as though they were being manipulated, somehow, for some sinister purpose. With a shiver, she wondered whether Richard had felt like this eighteen hours out of Hong Kong, just before everything had blown up in his face. Even now, in spite of all that had happened, she still could not bring herself to believe that everything was just about to blow up in her own face. The thought of Richard’s dilemma took her across to the collision alarm radar. Unusually, it was switched off, and the round bowl was absolutely dark. In the dim light of the bridge, she felt for the little switch which activated the machine and depressed it. At once, the bowl glowed green. The bull’s-eye circles reached out, and the straight lines of the directional grid sprang to life. And there, in the south-eastern quadrant, shockingly close behind them, was a pattern of tiny bright green dots. The collision alarm made one urgent, strangled chirrup and the whole machine died. Robin jumped back as though she had been stung. She looked around the bridge as though disorientated and wondering where she was. ‘This is simply not happening,’ she said aloud, then she crossed to the internal phone. After an instant’s hesitation, she punched in the captain’s number.

  ‘Wai?’

  ‘First officer here, Captain. I’m on the bridge. The collision alarm radar …’

  ‘Why you not conducting second search for Fat Chow? Why you disobey my order?’

  ‘I’m not disobeying you, Captain. I’ll be conducting the second search in a few moments. I’m on the bridge keeping watch while the third officer arranges a nursing watch on the patients in the sickbay for me. In the meantime, I called to warn you that the collision alarm radar has just gone down.’

  ‘Why you tell me? You tell Sparks. He fix same as usual. Is pile of junk anyway. He fix radio yet?’

  ‘No, Captain.’

  ‘Is other pile of junk. You get him up and out. He fix radio and fix radar, pretty damn quick. I not going into Hong Kong deaf, dumb and blind, missy!’

  Robin found herself nodding — her own thoughts of a moment before. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, I can sort out a shortwave two-way from one of the lifeboats for you, Captain. It would have more than enough power. But in the meantime, just before the radar went down, I was certain I saw some signals on it. Vessels, quite close behind us. It could have been a fishing fleet, but I’d like your permission to post lookouts all around
the ship. After Sulu Queen, we don’t want to be taking any chances at all.’

  ‘You find Fat Chow then you post lookouts, missy! I want lookouts on forecastle if the radar’s down in any case and you had better cut speed. Go to Slow Ahead.’

  ‘Slow ahead, aye, Captain.’

  ‘But you remember, missy, no lookouts and no nurses until you complete one more good search. But you get Sparks up first, and that lazy Chief Chen Hang to look after motor while we go on low revolutions. You tell Sparks to fix all that lousy junk equipment up there pretty damn quick! I not taking my ship into Hong Kong Vessel Traffic Management System using only lifeboat radio! I should bloody think!’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain!’

  She punched the chief engineer’s number. ‘Chief, the radar has just gone down and the captain wants the revolutions cut to Slow Ahead. He wants you on watch until we can go up to our usual speed.’

  There was a reply, but she pretended not to hear it.

  She punched in the radio officer’s number. ‘Wai?’

  ‘Sorry, Yuk Tso; the captain wants you up and out. He wants you to take another look at the radio, and the collision alarm radar’s just gone down too.’

  Yuk Tso made a hawking sound and muttered something about Japanese junk. ‘I come on up right now, missy,’ he promised.

  Sam Yung returned, closely followed by the radio officer. ‘Just before the radar went down,’ Robin said, as she and Yuk Tso looked down into the dead black glass bowl and Sam Yung wrote up a new section of the log, ‘I thought I saw some signals quite close behind us. Could that have been a ghost of some kind? Part of the fault which closed it down?’

  Yuk Tso looked at her as though she was insane. ‘What you think, missy?’ he said derisively. ‘If the radar shows you contacts, then is because there are boats out there.’

  With the disturbing vision of that ant colony of green dots clustering close behind the ship on her mind, she arranged for the more detailed second search for Fat Chow. But she was her own woman with her own agenda. She led the search but dictated the areas she herself examined. Firstly, she had the lifeboats winched down and checked in them. The radios were not kept in the boats themselves, but in secure storage in the bridgehouse, ready to be brought aboard as part of any emergency procedure. There were emergency beacons in the boats, however, which would broadcast a broad band, high-frequency distress call incorporating the ship’s call sign. The beacons were just about the most up-to-date things on the ship. She slipped one into her pocket.

  Fat Chow was not in any of the lifeboats. There was nothing untoward in any of the lifeboats, in fact. Except that in the one which hung nearest the A-deck door out onto the main weather deck, there was a white suit, such as they were all wearing. It had been bundled up and stuffed out of sight, only to fall free when the boat was moved. Robin looked at it with hardly a second thought. Seamen could be a sloppy lot, she thought; someone simply too lazy to take it to the laundry. She folded it automatically, as though it was a piece of Richard’s clothing, or William’s or Mary’s, ready for washing. And that was how she noticed that on one sleeve, just where the crook of the elbow might have been, there was a bright trace of fresh blood. But, preoccupied with the bright dots on the dead radar and the need to post watches in spite of her orders, she sent it down to the laundry without another thought.

  Next, she led her longsuffering little team onto the poop deck. There were two high piles of containers here, with a walkway round to the after rails and the little flagpole there. Although it was soon obvious that Fat Chow was nowhere back here either, Robin lingered, looking into the absolute darkness behind them. She strained her eyes, and ears but there was nothing to be seen and, apart from the rumble of the motors, the grumbling thrust of the big single screw and the hissing tumble of the wake, nothing to be heard. ‘You two,’ she said decisively, pointing to a pair of pale figures visible largely because of their white boiler suits, ‘I want you to keep watch here. I’ll have you sent something to eat and drink, and a couple of walkie-talkies as well. You’ll be relieved in an hour or so.’

  The two men shrugged accommodatingly and went to stand where she directed.

  Back in the bridgehouse with her depleted little team — which would have been nonexistent had it not contained the two men Sam had detailed for the nursing watch in the sickbay — Robin organised the last quick search while she pounded up to the bridge and asked the tired and increasingly grumpy Yuk Tso to send walkie-talkies down to her watchkeepers on the poop. He would do so, he said, just as soon as he was finished here — or, more to the point, as soon as he gave up here. ‘This stuff couldn’t be more dead,’ he said bitterly, ‘if some bastard had killed it on purpose!’

  It was coming up to midnight, so Robin popped down to the meeting place she had arranged with her exhausted team and dismissed all but two of them. These last two she took to the officers’ galley where she found some food and filled a thermos with hot chocolate for the men on the poop. She checked briefly on the patients and pounded back up to the navigation bridge. Before she dismissed Sam Yung, she gave him strict orders to rearrange a watch on the sick men and a relief for the watch on the poop before he turned in.

  By twelve thirty she had dismissed Yuk Tso with orders that he supply her poop-deck watch with walkie-talkies as promised, and was all alone on the navigating bridge, drifting exhaustedly in the wash of all the activity which had so suddenly come to a dead halt. Of all the things she had planned to do this evening, she had omitted to get a lifeboat radio up here to replace the main set tomorrow if push came to shove. Well, she had better just bustle about early and get it sorted out before breakfast. John Shaw would have alerted the authorities and warned Kwai Chung, but the Hong Kong authorities would still demand a detailed report — name, flag, tonnage, draught, call sign, length, contents and state — a good many hours before they were due to dock.

  She signed in on the log, and began to pace restlessly, feeling disturbingly alone at the heart of the vast night. She was struck, not for the first time in her twenty-odd years at sea but more poignantly than ever before, by how big and how empty the accommodation and navigating areas could become late at night. Once Yuk Tso had given the walkie-talkies to her watch men and turned in, she would effectively be all alone up here. The bridge was five decks high. Each deck contained more than ten rooms — galleys, saloons, offices, cargo-handling rooms, sickrooms, day rooms, rest rooms, bars, library, video room, recreation room, cabins, chart rooms, radio rooms, the navigation bridge itself. Immediately abaft the bridge was more accommodation — storage rooms, cold rooms, all the rest. Aft of these were the upper engineering areas around the thrust of the funnel itself. These areas all interconnected in one way or another. All available to a man who wished to hide, or who was lost or hurt, and all of them except the cabins empty now.

  The crew were packed two or sometimes four to a berth on A deck, four huge decks down from the navigation bridge. Then, on the next deck up, B deck, were the junior officers, navigating and engineering. On the third deck, C deck, were the cabins and day rooms of the senior officers, including her own cabin, although her office was down beside the cargo handling room at main-deck level. On D deck, immediately below the navigating bridge, were the cabins and day rooms set aside for the captain and the chief engineer, the owner and one important guest. Two of these spacious suites were empty too. There were forty people — thirty-nine men and herself — in a block of flats which on land would easily accommodate one hundred and fifty. Never had the bridgehouse seemed so huge, so lonely.

  When the walkie-talkie in its pouch beside the watch-keeper’s chair squawked, she jumped. ‘You’re getting far too nervy, my dear,’ she told herself out loud as she crossed to it.

  ‘Bridge,’ she snapped. ‘First officer here.’

  ‘Radio officer here. Where did you say you had placed your watch?’

  ‘On the poop. By the stem rail.’

  ‘They gone, missy. Nobody here.’r />
  ‘What —’ The bridge phone rang. ‘Wait.’ With the walkie-talkie still to her ear, she crossed to the shrilling instrument. ‘Wait a minute, Sparks.’ She lifted the handset of the internal phone. ‘Bridge.’

  ‘They’ve gone, missy!’

  ‘What? Who is this?’

  ‘Third Officer in the sickbay. The Vietnamese men have gone.’

  She closed her eyes then. Her mind should have been racing but it was not. The truth of their situation was absolute and obvious. So obvious, it was as though she had always known it. She saw dead women drained of blood so that they would not attract shark or barracuda to the five men on the sampan. She saw two men miraculously alive in spite of impossible odds, able to signal to the approaching ship. Two men who had not been properly watched except by Fat Chow who had vanished. Who showed signs of moving and slipping the needles out of their arms in spite of their near catatonia. She saw a crook of ivory-skinned elbow with a pool of blood in it. She saw an ill-concealed, all too anonymous boiler suit with a trace of blood on its crisp white sleeve. She saw a pattern of green dots on a radar bowl which was broken, which stood beside a radio which had been sabotaged. And she remembered how devastatingly effective the Wooden Horse of Troy had been, also the brainchild of a cunning sailorman.

  ‘Get up here, Sam. Drop everything and get up here right now.’ She put the phone down and pressed SEND on the walkie-talkie. ‘Sparks. Get up here. Now.’

  She put the walkie-talkie down on the equipment shelf beside the automatic steering equipment. She took a deep breath, then she hit the Emergency siren. As the first piercing notes blasted out, she hit the tannoy button. ‘This is the first officer speaking. All officers and crewmen report to the navigating bridge at once. I say again, all officers and crewmen report to the navigating bridge at once. This is not a drill. The ship is under attack.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The final day of Richard Mariner’s trial, Saturday, 21 June 1997, began as early for the prosecution as previous days had begun for the defence. And it began badly. Po Sun Kam, unmarried if highly eligible, lived with his mother and had promised, perhaps unwisely, to escort her to the People’s Celebratory Party on Shek O today. Although the old lady was fiercely ambitious for her son, the disappointment resulting from Judge Fang’s decision to continue the trial on a Saturday had upset her considerably and amends had been time-consuming and expensive. Only the fact that Po had beggared himself to get a pair of tickets to next weekend’s even greater party on the Peak itself had mollified her and allowed him to get back to his work.