Crude Carrier

by Rex Burns

  A small writing desk with two brass lamps, a worktable hinged to the wall, a couple of dull yellow sofa chairs with a veneer coffee table between them, and—below the square plateglass windows—a sofa bed. King size, he had been told, because officers, spending all but thirty days a year at sea, sometimes brought their wives along for part of a voyage.

  Even the two windows were not the little claustrophobic circles he had assumed they would be. They looked out over the broad deck that stretched ahead for a thousand feet. The wide surface—painted a dull, dark green—held the low bulges of hatches and inspection plates, spurs of upright stand pipes, port and starboard hose and cargo derricks, and, halfway down the deck, a cluster of pipes, valves, loading arms, and short ladders that made up the loading and discharge manifold. That was where the oil lading hoses were connected. The manifold crossed from port to starboard over steel tubes that ran like a spine from the ship’s island to the bow. In the distance, the vast flukes of an anchor and spare screw shimmered brassily. Almost out of sight near the distant number one fire hydrant platform, a couple of bicycles used by crewmen to traverse the deck lay on the sun-scorched steel. Beyond that, the curved black line of the vessel’s bow lifted into the band of silver heat-haze that masked the horizon.

  Unlike the navigation officers, Raiford was not assigned a watch. The most junior navigation officer, Suk Wan Li, had the third watch, the eight to twelve, which finished at noon and at midnight. It gave the Chinese officer his choice of either sleeping through breakfast and being hungry while on his first watch, or rushing through it before going on duty. Next senior, Second Officer Norman Shockley, had the four to eight, with a late breakfast and a warmed-over but leisurely dinner. First Officer Pressler took the first watch—the twelve to four and midnight to four—with all his meals properly served. Captain Boggs did not have an assigned watch; he appeared on the bridge periodically to check his junior officers when they were at sea, and he worked twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a stretch when the ship was loading or passing through dangerous waters. Otherwise, as Raiford discovered, the captain was seldom seen except occasionally at coffee in the wardroom after supper. Pressler, as first mate, ran the ship’s routine navigation operations.

  Raiford’s official duty schedule, his contract said, was from eight A.M. to five P.M., five days a week. It was the same schedule as the four engineering officers who relied on the automatic controls to run the ship at nights and during weekends. Except for the fact that the underwriters demanded a full complement of engineering officers for a vessel to be insurable, the turbines probably could have run on automatic for the rest of the time as well. That fact wasn’t lost on the younger engineering officers, the second and third mates, who viewed Raiford and his computers as their replacement in some not-too-distant future. They did not welcome that idea or the man who represented it.

  A phrase in Raiford’s contract stated that the supernumerary would be on call twenty-four hours a day while the vessel was under way. Captain Boggs, who interviewed Raiford in the ship’s office underneath the ship’s flag and drinking coffee from a ship’s mug, asked if Raiford clearly understood what those ship’s words, on call, meant.

  “It means I can’t go anywhere off the boat, right?”

  Boggs leaned back in the squeaking desk chair and stared hard at the big man. “You bloody well don’t know much about seafaring, do you, Mr. Raiford?”

  He answered cheerfully. “Not much, Captain. My job’s the electronics, and they’re the same ashore or asea.”

  “Yah—computers!” Boggs poured himself another mug of coffee from the glass bulb steaming on its small hot plate at the corner of his desk. “This is a ship, not a boat.” In the metal ceiling over his head, a slotted vent fluttered a small strip of cloth to show that the ventilation system was working, and a faint pattern of grime fanning away from the grill showed that it seldom stopped. The odor of oil tainted the cooled air. “Well, electronics is your job and your only job. You stick to your work and keep the hell out of the way of the ship’s company—officers and ratings both. Hear me?”

  “Suits me.” And it was pretty clear that it made no difference to the captain if it did or did not suit Raiford. “Care to point me toward the operations guides and manuals? I’d like to get checked out in the programs and hardware.”

  The bloodshot and slightly bulging eyes stared from beneath a single ledge of wiry gray eyebrows. “The first mate’ll show you around. Mr. Pressler. He’s up on the bridge deck. Follow me—we’ll see what he makes of you.”

  Despite his rounded shoulders, the captain was almost as tall as Raiford, but only half the weight. With a roll that swung his torso from side to side, he led up the central flight of stairs covered by a temporary canvas runner scuffed with oil stains. At the top of the stairway, he pushed through the polished brass of a wide door onto the navigation bridge. The enclosed wheelhouse, also air-conditioned but smelling more strongly of oil, ran the full width of the island and, at each end, heavy weather doors led to open wings that protruded out over the sea almost a hundred feet below. In the center of the bridge, unmanned, a tall ship’s wheel stood before the dome of a compass. But that was almost the only nautical touch. The rest of the decor consisted of banks of monitoring lights for the engine room and loading control room; control stations for various machines and their readouts; indicator panels for collision avoidance, navigation, and the sea depth measured port and starboard as well as fore and aft. Other panels monitored and controlled docking and maneuvering, on- and off-ship communications, and even personnel administration. Raiford had a glimpse of what his daily routine would consist of: checking and rechecking the reliability of the hundreds of sensors and connections and the miles of wiring that fed information to the processor units on the bridge and to the loading and engine control rooms below. Each major panel had its own Teletype machine for a written record of activity by the computers; and a variety of toggle switches, buttons, and dials allowed operators to interrupt the programs in case of emergency. It could have been the control console of a large and complex airliner.

  The bridge’s only occupant peered tensely through wide sheets of scratched Plexiglas down at the green deck. Beyond the ship’s rails, a level sea looked dwarfed and harmless. As the bridge door clicked shut, the stocky figure muttered, “Ham-handed little barstids! Call themselves goddamn sailors!”

  “Mr. Pressler.”

  “Sir!” The man did not turn from what he watched. Raiford noted the heavy muscle of a sun-scorched neck that disappeared into a white linen jacket taut and unwrinkled across broad shoulders. A hand seemed to have pressed on a once tall man to mash his body thick and wide.

  “Here’s Mr. Raiford. He’s our supernumerary for Mr. Pierce.”

  Irritably, the man turned to look and then rocked back to take in Raiford’s height. His expression shifted from irritation to a coldness verging on enmity. Raiford had seen it before in men whose sense of self was suddenly dwarfed by his size.

  “Mr. Raiford, is it?”

  “Call me James.”

  “I’ll call you any goddamned thing I please. Is that clear?”

  Raiford’s eyelids drooped in that sleepy look that masked the flash of anger in his eyes. “Clear.”

  The captain gave a little hissing noise that seemed to be a laugh. “Mr. Raiford is new to the sea, Mr. Pressler. A supernumerary, remember. We’ll have to make some allowances for his lack of shipboard manners.”

  “A goddamned landlubber. Is that the best they can send us now?”

  “He’s qualified in electronics, our Mr. Raiford is. That’s what his papers say, anyway. I leave him in your hands, Mr. Pressler. Acquaint him with the bridge controls.” Another hissing laugh and the door clicked behind the captain’s rolling lurch.

  “See that!” Pressler’s thick finger jabbed toward the deck below. “Bloody sodding slant-eyed yellow barstids can’t handle­
a fucking hose coupler without spilling a dozen barrels­ of goddamn crude!”

  Raiford leaned toward the Plexiglas that radiated heat from the outside air. Far below at the manifold halfway down the expanse of dull green, three tiny figures in dark overalls wrestled frantically at the stubby boom that lifted a stiffly awkward orange hose more than three feet in diameter over the ship’s side. Around their feet and among the lateral pipes that twisted to join the long central spine of tubes spread a widening pool of foamy, chocolate brown liquid. Pressler grabbed a microphone, his voice bouncing back in a metallic echo from a loudspeaker somewhere below, “Hose that goddamn deck right now, you bleeding spastics—get water on that now! Chop chop!”

  The speaker popped off and he said as much to himself as to Raiford, “Sand all over the goddamn deck and they start spilling crude. All we need’s a fucking explosion.”

  “Sand? Out here?”

  “Blown aboard from the desert, Mr. Raiford. The desert’s made of sand, in case you didn’t notice. One spark from a grain of sand in that hot oil on that hot metal deck and you can bend over and kiss your arse good-bye.” He looked quickly at Raiford’s feet. “And take off your street shoes, you stupid lubber. Don’t you know enough to wear plimsoles when we’re loading tanks?”

  “Plimsoles?”

  “Rubber-soled shoes—sneakers—tennis shoes—whatever the hell you goddamn Yanks call them. Take those off, damn your eyes—we’re loading. No leather shoes worn when we’re loading! Absolutely no smoking aboard when we’re loading. Off—now!”

  Under his stocking feet, Raiford felt a quiver in the canvas that temporarily covered the wheelhouse deck. “I suppose the evening barbie’s called off too?”

  “The—!” Pressler wheeled about to stare up at Raiford for a long moment, jaw slack. Then he threw his head back in a guffaw. “The evening barbie! Haw!” From anger to laughter as if some switch had suddenly changed his mood. “The evening barbie! By God—!” He slammed his palm against the painted steel ledge inside the windows and shouted another laugh at the overhead. “Come along, Mr. Landlubber. I’ll have the steward give you the Cook’s tour of our floating goddamned barbecue!”

  VII

  Through the window of the banking airplane, Julie made out familiar landmarks in the dusk: the tapering spike of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building’s graceful silver thrust, the obsidian box of what used to be the TWA Building with its heliport on the flat roof, and, near that building’s foot, the domed grayness of Grand Central Station. And the sudden emptiness where the World Trade Towers once stood.

  Then they leveled off to glide over a marshland already dim with twilight and clotted with white specks of resting birds. Ponds and rivulets flickered red from the setting sun, then, with a blur of concrete and a solid thump of touching wheels, the engines began to reverse. The brakes launched her against the seat belt with an impetus that carried her impatiently through the covered ramp and toward the faces waiting to meet friends and family. At the back edge of the small crowd, a balding man of medium height and anonymous appearance, wearing an equally inconspicuous tie, caught her eye with subtle question.

  “Stanley Mack?”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Campbell.” His eyes, slightly bloodshot, glanced up her tall figure and then to her hand. “Any luggage?”

  “Just what I’m carrying.”

  “Good. They’re waiting for us.”

  They were the representatives of Marine Carriers Worldwide, who had urged Julie, as the representative of Touchstone Agency, to fly to New York for consultation. The only name Julie recognized was Mrs. Fleenor’s. Her face and voice betrayed a lot of strain as she stood to shake hands. The two other representatives at the conference table were men in their fifties or early sixties who were able to mask their anxiety with some success—their careers weren’t at stake. “It’s a lot of money, Miss Campbell. Not that Marine Carriers Worldwide cannot guarantee its policies, of course. But you must understand that we have to be very aggressive in defending ourselves against any and all false claims.”

  The one who spoke like a lawyer was in fact the company’s senior attorney, Herbert Ferguson. He spent the first ten minutes making the point that bona fide losses were one thing, but that insurance fraud was something else. It hurt the whole shipping industry, drove up policy costs, and if successful, established an unsavory precedent that might entice other owners to attempt fraud. Consequently, every claim had to be thoroughly investigated and malefactors prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The idea wasn’t new to Julie, and she felt a touch of dismay as it dawned on her that Ferguson’s pep talk might be the real purpose of the long flight to New York. The man was worried that Touchstone Agency would not take the Golden Dawn case as seriously as Marine Carriers wanted them to. And perhaps that a woman might not be able to do the work that a man could.

  Mr. Mohler, the company vice president overseeing casualty assessment, nodded in agreement. Fortunately, he didn’t have much to add.

  Mack nodded also, and murmured a time or two that he was certain Miss Campbell understood the seriousness of the issue, that the Touchstone Agency has a sterling reputation, and that he—Mack—would still be the supervisory investigator. But Ferguson listened to himself more than he listened to Mack.

  Mrs. Fleenor kept her attention on the papers in front of her.

  Julie listened and watched.

  Finally, Mr. Ferguson stated that it was an immense pleasure to have met Miss Campbell, that he was gratified to have this opportunity to air the concerns of Marine Carriers Worldwide, and that he had every confidence that she would do her utmost to bring the issue to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion. He didn’t add “or else,” but the firm handshake and tight-jawed, challenging smile made that clear. Mr. Mohler nodded and shook hands just as firmly and then they were gone.

  After a brief silence, Mack, embarrassed, said, “He wanted to meet you in person. Like he says, it’s a lot of money.”

  Julie had run across the type. They swarmed at the lower levels of senior executives, anxious to prove to those under them that they deserved to be where they were, and to those over them that they deserved to be promoted. “Is Mr. Mohler your boss, Mrs. Fleenor?”

  She had pale blond hair that might have been dyed to hide early gray. It was bobbed in a fashion that accentuated rather than softened the length of her bony jaw. Thick glasses perched on her narrow nose and made her violet eyes look large and blurry. If she ever smiled, she might have had a wide mouth; right now it was pursed with worry. “Yes.”

  “Did he authorize issuance of the policy on the Golden Dawn?”

  “His signature is required, yes.”

  “But you do the real work and he usually goes along with your findings?”

  A faint smile acknowledged how often a male fool was placed above a woman with talent. Then she shrugged. “Until now.”

  Mack asked, “Does he blame you for the claim, Dorothy?”

  “He hasn’t said it in so many words.”

  Julie watched the woman’s long fingers slide absently across the small stack of papers in front of her. “Have you found out any more about Hercules Maritime or the Golden Dawn, Mrs. Fleenor?”

  “I’ve managed to speak with some sales representatives in other insurance firms, people I’ve met over the years. But I’m not sure how much they can help.”

  “Have they told you anything at all?”

  “No one I spoke with has had any trouble with Hercules Maritime. I did find out that about five years ago they filed a claim with Coleman and Thorstein on the loss of a medium-sized tanker, seventy thousand tons, the SS Indian Flyer. Apparently she broke apart in heavy seas off northern Spain. The cause was determined to be structural deterioration, and the claim was paid. The person I spoke with said there was no finding of culpability against the crew.”

  Mack
added, “Most hull insurance covers negligence of master, officers, crew, or pilots, since human error’s the cause of most accidents.”

  “Does that clause apply to the Golden Dawn?”

  Mrs. Fleenor replied. “It does. Unless there’s willful culpability by owners or operators. That is, if the operators did something to cause the Golden Dawn to sink, or refused assistance that might have saved the ship, then all or a portion of the insurance would be voided. We don’t know anything about that, since all hands on the Golden Dawn were lost. But if the owners knowingly employed operators with a record of unsafe practices or who were not properly certified for their position, then willful culpability can be charged against them by the insurer—by us.” Her fingers traced across the manila folder. “From what you tell me, Miss Campbell, Mr. Herberling’s thoughts had been in that direction. I understand he had been looking into any pattern of carelessness by Hercules Maritime in hiring officers for their other ships?”

  She nodded. “It looks that way. And, please, both of you call me Julie.”

  “Julie—” She wasn’t comfortable with first names. “Well, that suspicion does not seem to fit the loss of the Golden Dawn. The vessel was old, and I discovered that one of her sister ships had also broken apart not too long before.”

  “Was the sister ship owned by Hercules, too?”

  “No. Another independent. But I didn’t ask who. I can call back if you want me to.”