The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  At least, the layout and general disposition were the same. The atmosphere and the crew could hardly have been more different. They reported to the captain first and were graced with the curtest of welcomes. You would have thought they were bringing plague, not help, Jamie thought bitterly. Harry and Andrew were sent down to the engine room like plumbers going down to mend a broken lavatory. Jamie followed because the captain hadn’t acknowledged his existence and the enormously fat officer by the radar had met his friendly smile with a cold stare. He was glad enough to plunge into the dark corridor after his friends.

  It was uncanny to be aboard so silent a ship. Normally a ship was only ever this quiet when she was tied up in port, powered by land lines from the dockside, with only a harbour watch aboard. But this ship was miles from anywhere, full of people, stirring restlessly at the direction of deep waters and communing lumpily with ice. She felt dead and dangerous, like a ghost ship. Jamie hurried to catch up with his silent shipmates hurrying through the dim glimmer of the emergency lighting.

  In the wreckage of the engine control room, Andrew stood looking down. By all accounts things were pretty grim and dangerous down there. It was all very well for him and Harry Piper to stumble through it in the dark, but ... He looked at Jamie. The lad was eager and bright enough, but he wouldn’t be much use to them down here. ‘Laddie,’ said the engineer softly, fatigue tricking the accent of his Greenock childhood out of him, ‘go and find out how the chief and the second engineer are keeping, will you?’ He saw Jamie’s face fall, and smiled understandingly. ‘You can come on down and see what’s to do when you report back to me,’ he promised.

  The chief was in his cabin on C deck, just below the bridge. Jamie was like a spooked animal by the time he got there through the shadows and the unnatural silence, frightening himself further with the atmosphere which seemed to emanate from the unnaturally silent crew. He felt alien. Or, more accurately, like a boy lost in an alien, hostile, dangerous place. He tapped on the door and waited. He remembered Captain Mariner’s words, repeated from what Captain Black had said to her and repeated to him on the way over by a shocked Andrew McTavish: ‘Boiled alive.’ How could someone be boiled and still be alive? He didn’t really want to find out. But Jamie had been brought up to obey orders. He knocked on the door again, a little harder, and this time he heard someone move behind it and he steeled himself to meet a man who had been boiled alive. But when the door opened, a beautiful woman was standing there. Well, her face seemed lovely and also vaguely familiar. It was difficult to tell about the rest of her as she was bundled up in jeans and pullovers against the cold. ‘Who are you?’ she asked abruptly.

  He was dazzled, dazed. He thought of the figure he had seen on Atropos’s forecastle in the fog. That had been a girl too. Should he report that sighting to someone? ‘Jamie Curtis,’ he answered. ‘Officer cadet, Atropos.’ He explained what he was doing here and she smiled wryly.

  ‘So, you’re a knight in shining armour. A trainee knight. Come in.’

  Inside the chief engineer’s day room, a tall man was sitting. He and the woman had obviously been deep in conversation when he tapped on the door. Normally, Jamie would have gone through the full ritual of introductions but his orders were clear and his time was short; he was eager to see what was to be seen and make his report to Andrew. He went on through and looked at the heavily bandaged figure lying in the bunk. Only eyes, puffy and closed in restless sleep, could clearly be seen. He returned to the day room. ‘How is he?’ he asked the woman.

  ‘He’s badly scalded and he’s only asleep because he’s drugged up to the eyeballs,’ she answered. ‘But I guess he’ll pull through. First Officer Timmins is our acting medic but Henri here seems to know more about it. What do you say, Henri?’

  The tall man looked up and even in the shadowy room his natural charm seemed to glimmer. It was as though he was smiling, but his face was serious. ‘He’s hors de combat at the moment but it’s not bad enough to require hospital treatment. Not that he could have it out here anyway. He’ll be back at work in a few days, I guess. Stiff and sore, but functioning. Same with Don Taylor, but the chief took the full blast of the steam so he’s worse.’

  Jamie nodded and exited. At the door out into the corridor she stopped him. ‘How is Nico?’ she asked quietly.

  Echoing the strange drop in her tone he answered, ‘Fine.’ His mind was racing. How did this dazzling creature come to know his boss?

  ‘Will he be coming aboard too?’

  ‘I doubt it. Not unless you lose your deck officers as fast as you lose your engineers.’

  ‘We’ve lost one already. Third Officer Reynolds. Just before the propeller went.’

  He took that one in silently. Then he said, ‘He won’t come over unless the captain sends him. I don’t think she’ll do that unless there’s a bad emergency.’

  The woman’s eyes glinted. ‘They sound as though they have a very close relationship,’ she said.

  He was young. He was not a gossip, nor was he a lover of dirty talk. But he was callow and he wanted to say something which would have the same impact as the tall man called Henri could obviously command.

  ‘Very close.’ He gave an experimental leer. ‘Mistress and mate, you might say.’

  The nautical pun eluded her. The innuendo did not.

  Jamie Curtis would never know exactly what he had done. He noticed only that his witticism had made an impact on her and he turned away happily and bustled down to the engine room to make his report.

  Andrew next sent him down to the windlass to see the towing cable being winched aboard. Dawn was beginning to glimmer, the distant promise of the sun just starting to lighten the steely oppression of the clouds and spread across the face of the frozen north. Jamie looked around, stunned by the slow revelation of the white wilderness on their port bow, glancing up every now and then to look again at the wilderness stretching out and away towards the Pole. But the major part of his attention was held by the task of winching up Clotho’s towing cable. The smaller cable which they had brought was all but aboard now, and behind it, rising up from beneath the black surface of the water like the Loch Ness monster, came the main cable. It was thicker than two men wrestling chest to chest and, like the ocean, it was black. Belching great fountains and falls of water, it rose up towards the cleats in the forepeak, and as it did so the sheer weight of it started Atropos’s head swinging to starboard. Impulsively, Jamie ran across to make sure that Joe was all right in the boat beneath the swinging bow. But the canny old seaman had pulled the boat well back to avoid the motion which he had obviously expected and to keep clear of the tumbling water.

  Once the towing cable was aboard and safely attached, Jamie had only to report one last time to Andrew McTavish and get any last message to take back to his captain on Clotho. He found the chief together with the two more junior engineers going over the alternator with every evidence of satisfaction. ‘I’ll soon have this up and running, then we’ll put it in phase with the other one and give Atropos her power back. Tell the captain three hours at most.’ Andrew slipped his arm round the cadet’s shoulders and bluffly pulled him a little apart. He dropped his voice and added rapidly, ‘But tell her I’ll be staying aboard longer than that. I want to go over the engine room carefully. No engine sling I ever heard of broke three lines at once. Unless it was helped.’ Then the big Scot swung the stunned cadet back into the hearing of the Atropos’s second engineer and boomed, ‘Don’t forget to pay your respects to the captain before you leave his ship, either, young fellow-me-lad.’ And his gaze met that of Harry Piper with just the hint of a wink.

  On the bridge it was possible to see the full extent of the ice to the north of them now, but Jamie had little time to appreciate the view. He took his leave of Captain Black and received a grunt in reply. Then he was rushing down to the head of the Jacob’s ladder and on down into the lifeboat. ‘Just you, is it?’ grunted Joe Edwards.

  ‘Just me. Gosh, but that’s a fu
nny ship.’

  Jamie was big with news, but he had the good sense not to tell Joe too much as they bucketed and bounced back to Clotho. It was obvious to the old hand that the youngster was holding a great deal back, and precisely what that was would become a ripe topic for speculation in the crew’s wardroom in the not too distant future.

  His captain welcomed Jamie back aboard hardly more warmly than the other had dismissed him, and he was slightly hurt, even though she was clearly preoccupied with the mechanics of getting the tow under way. She was not in fact on the bridge itself, so Jamie reported in the first instance to Nico Niccolo. It was clear that the Italian wanted to ask the boy some questions of his own, but there were other priorities to be met. ‘Captain’s out on the bridge wing,’ he said and Jamie went out to find her standing at the rear of the open space, looking down over the stern of her ship to where Johnny Sullivan and his team were keeping an eye on the tow rope. She was talking quietly into a walkie-talkie, in communication with Sullivan and Nico on the bridge as well as with Captain Black on Atropos. As he arrived, breathless and self-important beside her, she said, ‘All right, Nico, dead slow ahead and take the strain.’ Even as she spoke, Jamie felt the ship begin to move.

  ‘Johnny, how is it down there?’

  ‘Fine, Captain. Settled down and holding nicely.’

  ‘Captain Black, we are at dead slow ahead and taking the strain.’

  ‘I can see that. We’re coming round.’ There was a hiss of static, then the chilly, abrupt voice was back. ‘My first officer tells me the tow is holding well.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. When we’ve pulled you free of the ice, I propose to proceed eastwards towards Greenland. I have received word that Frederiksdale is currently free of ice and I propose to shelter there until help arrives. I have been warned that we are likely to be in another storm by nightfall.’

  It was clear to Jamie that he would have to make his report a little later and so he wandered away across the bridge wing to get a good look at what was going on. The wind was almost still now and the air was clear. The clouds were a lightening grey overhead with the most distant hint of blue away to the north where the moon had peeped through the overcast. Far to the west, on the other hand, the sky was black and threatening. The sea beneath Clotho was still running tall with the memory of yesterday’s storm and the threat of today’s. There was enough light now for the water to be brightening like the sky, but the waves were still strangely dark, as though clear green pigment had been poured over deep grey crystal. The waves rolled northwards, past the rocking hull of Atropos coming slowly round at the messy edge of the ice, tugging sulkily at the whipping, straining tow rope. Beyond her, the icefield proper began. As the waves passed under the ice, they lifted the floes until their sheer sides rose out of the water to reflect the sullen daylight in shades of blue and green.

  After a few moments of watching the apparently random restlessness, Jamie began to see a pattern in it. The waves rolled north in majestic series without seeming to diminish in size. As they did so, they moved into lighter air, brighter conditions. Here it was dull but the millions of ice mirrors along the flanks of the floes seemed to multiply the light so that in the middle distance his narrowed eyes could see the occasional dazzling ultramarine gleam. And right at the far end of the horizon, at the extreme edge of his vision, blinding searchlight gleams of pure sapphire showed that the floes were stirring under clearer, brighter skies. The gleams brought tears streaming across his vision with their power and their beauty.

  All around was the sound that their movement caused. The wash of the water disturbed in its progress by the floating blocks. The splash of their rising, the plunge of their falling. The hiss of the spray from their landing. The thud of the smaller pieces thrown together, the hush of the plates and lily pads big enough to slide over each other. The crash of those small anvil-headed floes large enough to hit against each other, the thumping and cracking of the medium-sized floes being ground down like pebbles on a shore; and the distant, never ending roar of the big floes, the thick ice, driven to war with itself by the motion of the waves.

  ‘Welcome back aboard, Jamie. Anything to report?’

  ‘What?’ He swung round, still dazzled, to find his captain standing just behind him.

  ‘Anything to report?’ she repeated.

  ‘Oh. Sorry, Captain. I ... Yes. The chief says he doesn’t think the damage was accidental ...’

  Jamie’s report to Robin took five minutes. Her exhaustive questions fifteen more. The whole process was completed in the warmth of the bridge while Clotho slowly continued pulling Atropos clear of the ice. It was well into Johnny Sullivan’s watch now, but Nico had stayed on the bridge. Obviously, he wanted to be available until the second officer was called back up to the bridge from his oversight of the tow, something which would happen when both ships were in clear water and the tow was properly under way. Also he wanted as much as the captain did to hear Jamie’s report and he had a few shrewd questions of his own. But mostly he wanted news of Ann Cable. Jamie’s report made it clear that he had met her without having any idea of who she was, or of the fact that she and Nico Niccolo were lovers of long standing. But the news, when it came, was not what he had expected to hear. She had asked about him but sent no message to him. Jamie seemed surprised that the first officer should think she would. Especially as she was so obviously carrying on some kind of relationship, said Jamie, with the incredibly good-looking man called Henri.

  So it was that something of Atropos’s dark atmosphere began to seep across into her sister.

  The tow started in earnest and the two ships began to move at five knots due east towards the shelter of the southern tip of Greenland. As they passed through that wide channel of fairly clear water with thick ice on either side of them, the dark clouds of the next storm chased them like coursing hounds. In the crews’ quarters, the men talked darkly of what might be going on aboard the crippled ship behind. And in the places where he performed his duties, Nico would pause to indulge in viciously jealous thoughts. In her day room, Robin tossed in restless sleep, wondering who had sabotaged the engine sling on Atropos and why.

  And in her eyrie on the gantry halfway down the deck, Clotho’s saboteur reviewed the changing situation and began to redraw her plans, wondering whether to risk another chancy visit to the bomb in the water ballast tank. Down at the waterline, right at the most forward part of the ship where hard waves hit and increasingly massive chunks of ice rammed home increasingly frequently, the first signs of buckling began to show on metal fatally weakened three months earlier by the blast of the Belfast bomb.

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Day Eight

  Wednesday, 26 May 04:00

  Nico signed on for his watch at 04:00 the next morning more exhausted than he had ever been. The day had not been particularly hard, but they seemed to have made barely any headway at all. Their progress eastward had proceeded at a snail’s pace. It was fortunate that the westward current had moderated from its earlier fierceness or the two ships would have remained stationary, pushing eastwards at five knots through water flowing westwards at the same speed. Now for every five knots they went eastwards, at least they only fell back one. And drifted south one more, he noticed, glaring blearily at the figures in the impeccable record before him. In eighteen hours, the distance sailed had been less than one hundred miles. The distance actually covered was about seventy. There were another couple of hundred miles to go before they sighted the forbidding cliffs and fjords at the southern tip of Greenland. It was going to be a long, hard slog by the look of things. And the weather was closing in again.

  Nico checked Rupert Biggs’s neat notes with frowning concentration. The glass was falling with increasing rapidity and it looked as though there was a sharp north-easter rushing down from Hudson Bay to overtake them. It would be at its worst around dawn at the end of his current watch if the weather reports were correct. It would make the daylight hours pretty foul and then it would clear.
Even if it pushed them along at a better pace, it should still be over some time before Greenland presented itself as a lee shore. Unless there was a lot more bad luck in store.

  And there probably was, he thought to himself morosely. Over a week ago, on the day she sailed, Richard Mariner had asked him if he thought Clotho was an unlucky ship. He had indeed thought so, but he had underestimated the damage such bad luck could do. And he had been ignorant of the fact that Atropos was worse luck still. From the sound of Jamie Curtis’s report, Atropos had been slaughtering her complement with vicious regularity since she had set sail. And poisoning the relationships between those who had survived. It made him feel at risk even to be tied to her. But that feeling was nothing compared to the feeling that the rest of Jamie’s news had stirred up in him. For all he hated and perhaps even feared Atropos and her bad luck, he would have given almost anything to be aboard her so that he could find out the truth about Ann and this Henri. The thought of them together putting the horns on him was more than he could bear. He was a modern man. He saw himself as being liberated. Not for him the quiet, half-educated girl from his home town living under the eye of his parents, made pregnant at each homecoming and existing in the abject expectation of those homecomings. No. He had found the mate of his dreams in this intelligent, articulate, modern woman. But now, at their first time of testing, what had he found? Infidelity. That Ann, with her face of an angel, had the soul of a whore.