The Bomb Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  No. This could not be true. It was impossible that this should be true. He seriously considered going down to Jamie’s cabin and pulling him out of bed to go over the story yet again. And these thoughts filled his brain to such an extent that he did not notice the increasingly strange way that Clotho was behaving.

  To be fair, even had he been wide awake and sharp as a tack, he would have been hard put to distinguish much amiss. The north-easterly was winding up behind their left shoulder and it was cutting across the generally southwesterly set of the sea so that Clotho’s progress through the steep-sided waves was lumpy and ungainly in any case. And the sea lane between the icefields was by no means as clear now as it had been earlier, so, among the sharp swoops which had their origin in the sea conditions came the occasional juddering impact with a solid piece of ice. Finally, among all this ungainly, uncharacteristic motion, was the fact of the tow. It was inevitable under the circumstances that Clotho would run away every now and again only to be brought up sharp by the restraining leash tethering her to Atropos. This situation was now complicated by the fact that Atropos was upwind in a strengthening breeze and every now and then would be blown down towards Clotho, allowing her an unaccustomedly long run before jerking her back to heel.

  The collision alarm radar showed the ice to the south of them very clearly but the edge of the icefield to the north was increasingly vague and ill-defined as the wind pushed the floes south across their path. There was nothing in front of them big enough to register, however, so there ought to be nothing out there big enough to do them any damage. Because Atropos was so close behind, they had turned off the sound alarm which would have been screaming all the time, but this meant that the watchkeeper had to be particularly careful to keep a visual check.

  Nico looked up at the ship’s chronometer above the helm and noted the radar read all clear. Next, he checked their position according to the satnav, marked the movement on the chart and logged that too. He checked their heading on the automatic steering equipment. Biggs’s last modification of their course — too slight to be called a change — was holding good. If they were drifting south towards the ice there, then the ice, too, was drifting south at about the same speed.

  Idly he wondered what it was, that strange, unexpected area of ice. But then he shrugged. He was a Mediterranean man. Why should he care? The ship plunged and jerked. He slammed forward and winded himself on the tiny rally wheel of the helm. Jesu! That one felt as if they had run into a brick wall!

  He pulled himself back to the watchkeeper’s chair and sat. It could not be said that he dozed, for had the warning light on the radar flashed, he would have seen it and reacted. But as soon as he sat, he became lost in those thoughts which had kept him restlessly awake during the last four hours when his body would have given almost anything to sleep. How could she betray him? And so soon. They had been apart for little more than a fortnight. What manner of man was this Henri who stole women so easily and with so little thought? He drew up a mental picture, based on what the boy had said. Tall, magnetic, powerfully handsome. Irresistible.

  The first real sign of disaster would have communicated itself to Nico’s feet, had they been resting on the deck. Thence they would have sent warning messages flashing to his brain, had he not been so preoccupied. Even as things were, the tiny super-sensitive coils in his ears which attuned his sense of balance would have registered the first changes in the mean horizontal had they not been coping with the pitching and the rolling — and the fact that his head was thrown back against the headrest while he stared abstractedly at the shadows on the ceiling above him. And, just as there was no warning system to alert the bridge that the hatches to the water ballast tank in the forepeak were open, so there was no warning to alert the bridge that the ballast itself was flooding through the fractured and increasingly buckled bow. The only warning of that was the fact that the angle of the deck was sloping increasingly upwards and the activity of the ship was becoming increasingly frenetic as the ballast drained away.

  As the front of the ship was slowly battered from a sleek wedge to a rough wall, the automatic machinery overseeing their progress interpreted their increasing loss of speed as being due to sea conditions and the engine revolutions clicked up accordingly. An engine room watch would have noticed, but none of the automatic warning systems did because the increase was so slight and so steady. So, to begin with, nobody aboard Clotho registered the fact that her forecastle head was being beaten flat as though it had been made of tin, not steel, as though each succeeding wave was a huge hammer flanked with carbon and each floe was a titanium ram.

  *

  The stowaway had come through the rough weather of the rescue dash relatively unscathed, although conditions had been pretty extreme. There was something about the way Clotho was smashing into the steep waves now, however, that she was finding most distressing. All thoughts of going back down to check the timer in the Semtex were put aside as, with dogged determination and absolute practicality, she sought to make sure that her increasingly uncontrollable mal de mer did not soil her clothing or sleeping bag. The operating cab had been well made, and then well repaired after the bomb. It was utterly weatherproof even under these conditions and as long as she stayed wrapped up and dry, the slim saboteur was snug enough. But bouts of uncontrolled vomiting made it difficult to ensure the snug dryness and threatened to overcome entirely the makeshift toilet arrangements she had been forced to employ since Clotho had plunged into the stormy Labrador Sea. The ten-gallon plastic water drum she had stolen from the lifeboat and adapted was filling with disturbing speed and, had she been feeling stronger, she might have been tempted to drag it out onto the little balcony outside the cabin door and empty it down onto the deck where the rain and spray would scour it away in no time. The roll of toilet paper purloined from the same place was nearly used up too. If things went on like this, her paperback edition of Les Travailleurs de la Mer was going to come to an ignominious end indeed.

  Because she was lying acrossways, with her head to starboard and her feet to port, she did not notice the increasing cant of the deck as the lightened bow strove to rise. Because it was still dark in any case, and because the ten-gallon drum was wedged between the end of the operator’s bench and the wall above her head, she had no longer any view at all down the length of the deck. She did not realise that, beyond the stubby forward communications mast, immediately forward of the firmly founded engines comprising the split windlass, the deck of the forepeak was slowly buckling upwards, pointing towards the stormy sky as the wreck of the bow beneath it was being battered relentlessly back against the unyielding forward wall of Clotho’s number one hold.

  *

  Robin knew there was something wrong, and had her sleep been less deep and exhausted, she would have reacted more quickly. She was in the cabin down on C deck, not in her day room on the bridge. Down here she had the luxury of a double bed and the privacy to undress and pamper her exhausted body with a shower which was just this side of boiling, before slipping into silk pyjamas and crawling between fresh starched sheets. All these things she had done beginning at 23:00 hours last night, but the six hours’ sleep she had enjoyed in the meantime nowhere near made up for the effort of the days before.

  Her bed lay along the length of the ship, so that she slept with her head towards the bow and her feet towards the stern. Her body was perfectly attuned to the disposition of her command in the water and it filled her dreams with images of mountain slopes. Her ears were equally well attuned to the steady throbbing of the engines, and as the revolutions rose to force the damaged bow yet harder against the almost solid sea, so their urgency also fed into her subconscious until she had visions of Richard and the twins standing distantly atop some piecipitous, never-ending alp while she hurled herself up the vertiginous slope towards them at ever increasing speed but with ever dwindling hope of reaching them.

  She jerked awake into the instant knowledge that something was badly wrong. There w
as no bleary, half-awake time when she wondered where she was or what was going on. Her brain switched from the mountainous dreamscape to the cabin’s reality in a micron of time. She sat up and reached unerringly for her bedside phone, her thumb automatically folding over to press the bridge button. Nico answered on the third ring, by which time she had switched on the bedside light, checked her watch and swung herself out of bed.

  ‘Bridge here.’

  ‘This is the captain. What’s the matter?’

  ‘What? I —’

  ‘Nico! Can’t you feel it?’

  Now that he was on his feet, yes, he could certainly feel it. ‘Jesu, Capitan! What —’

  ‘I’m on my way. Get Johnny Sullivan up. Tell him to roust out a work team. I want them up at the sharp end reporting to me in bloody short order.’

  She hung up before he could even acknowledge her order. The silk pyjamas were expensive and well made but the buttons rattled like hailstones against the wall as she tore the jacket off and the seam in the seat of the trousers yielded to her impatient hands. It had long been her habit to leave clothing ready for quick dressing before she turned in, no matter how exhausted she might be. She pulled on the strengthened sports bra and hooked the cups together down the front while she strode across the little room. Then she caught up a thick quilted vest from the end of the bed and pulled it over her head without pausing. Tugging it down, she stepped into the circles of her trouser legs and pulled up briefs, long johns and trousers all at once. Pausing only to tuck each layer above into its equivalent below, she sat and pulled on thick socks, smoothing the longjohns’ elasticated ankle cuffs into them and pulling down the turn-ups to her trousers before pulling on her thick-soled foul-weather boots. Moving without pause again, she caught up and pulled on a heavy polo-neck sweater in oily natural wool. By the time her tousled head burst out of the tight neck, she was at her cabin door. She shoved it open and jogged out into the corridor, tugging the thick, warm, waterproof wool into place. The rest of her foul-weather gear was in her day room on the bridge. She made it to the bridge within four minutes of waking up.

  ‘Andrew McTavish has Harry Piper on Atropos with him,’ she rapped out, walking through the door. ‘Get Lloyd Swan up and ask him to check the engine. The revs are higher than they should be and I want to know why, if he can tell me. If he needs any help, send Jamie down with him.’

  Nico was ringing the third engineering officer before she had finished speaking and had spoilt the cadet’s beauty sleep before she dumped herself into the creaking leather of the watchkeeper’s chair. Nico stood at the helm, rocking up and down on the balls of his feet, feeling the tilt of the deck beneath them. He was silent, but he was inwardly cursing himself for his failure as a watchkeeper. Well, he thought, at least he had rigged the extra safety lines this afternoon; Sullivan and his team wouldn’t have too rough a ride up to the bow, though he noticed the wind was freshening fast now. He should be going down there himself, really. He wasn’t a practising Catholic but he was Italian enough to appreciate the concept of penance.

  Robin’s walkie-talkie squawked and she spoke into it. Sullivan’s voice answered. ‘They’re on the way out onto the weather deck,’ she told Nico. ‘Hit the lights.’

  He strained to see all the way down to the forecastle, but the gantry was in the way and the clearview was spray-spattered and salt-grimed and he couldn’t make anything much out. Except when the spray exploded up from the bow wave, there was something wrong with the shape of it. He shivered and shrugged his shoulders, suddenly nervous. Could this be real trouble? Abruptly he felt an overwhelming desire to turn to his captain for reassurance. But he did not. It was not sexism, it was a more deep-seated pride than that. He would not have turned to a male captain either. Not even to his father, had he known who his father was.

  The walkie-talkie squawked again and Robin said, ‘Yes?’

  Sullivan’s voice came gabbling out too fast for Nico to make out exactly what the second officer was saying. All he could hear clearly was the howling sound of the wind and the hollow thunder of water and the panic in Sullivan’s voice.

  ‘Calm down,’ ordered Robin. ‘Just tell me what you can see.’ She kept her voice gentle, and the fact that it was obviously an effort for her to do so made Nico more nervous still.

  Robin looked at him. ‘Nico, I think you’re going to have to take over while I go down there and see for myself. Sullivan’s not making too much sense but it sounds as though there’s something the matter with the bows.’

  *

  Eventually, when the shaken Sullivan had assumed his watch and held the con, after Robin had had an exploratory look in the last of the dark, Nico at last accompanied his captain onto the deck. They both went down and stood side by side between the crouching metal of the split windlass in the first light of the grey, gusty dawn. The green deck immediately in front of them was buckled, then it rose steeply into a disturbing copy of Robin’s dream alp, the peak of it pointing upwards. The little flagpole at the very front of the ship seemed to be immediately above their heads. The forecastle head railings were twisted and several uprights had torn out of their footings. The wind howled mournfully through these and buffeted against the flat metal in front of them as the waves thundered in below. Keeping her hand tight on the loop where her personal safety harness hooked over the deck safety lines, Robin crossed to the nearest solid railing and craned over as far as she could. ‘I can’t see much without going right over,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t see what state it’s in at the moment and I can’t see whether or not it’s getting worse.’

  ‘That’s the most important thing,’ he answered, dazed by the amount of damage he could see. ‘But how are we going to be able to tell? How can we be sure?’

  ‘We’re going to have to heave to and turn until the bow is more sheltered. I’ll have to go over and take a close look, unless there’s someone better qualified.’

  ‘We could get Andrew McTavish to have a look from Atropos,’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes, we could, but I’ll need to have a close look too.’

  ‘You’ll certainly have to go over the side to do that. There’s no way in from here any longer.’ He gestured at the useless inspection covers which, had they been open, would have been little more than makeshift portholes now. ‘I’ll go down into the number one hold and see what it’s like down there.’

  ‘Good.’

  They had slowed Clotho right down until she was making little more than steerageway, which meant they were effectively being carried back along their course by the current. Invisible below the horizon, Greenland and their hope of safe haven were getting further and further away.

  ‘Well, let’s get started,’ she said decisively. ‘I think it’s about time I had a word with Captain Black. Then I’d better call the office in London. Dear God, this is a mess.’

  Not a mess, thought Nico. More like a curse.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Day Eight

  Wednesday, 26 May 09:00

  Andrew McTavish stood on the forepeak of Atropos and looked at Clotho’s bow with absolute horror on his usually open, cheerful face. The sight of his ship in this state drove everything else from his mind and all the nagging worries of the last few watches were swamped under the impact of this new nightmare.

  It had taken him a little longer to fix the alternator than he had calculated, but bringing it up to power and phasing it in with its partner had gone smoothly enough. Then he had taken a fresh work crew and gone to work on the fractured pipe. Four hours of careful metal cutting and spot welding had fixed that and he could turn his attention to tidying up the engine room. This was what he had wanted to do right from the beginning, not because he was house proud or because he thought Chief Lethbridge ran a dirty workspace, but because the simple task would allow him to look around for clues.

  As he had stated in his message to Robin, he was convinced that the accident could only have been caused by sabotage. It seemed impossible to him that three lines
could all have failed like that. They must have been weakened on purpose. And the more he thought about it, the more it seemed an ingenious way of crippling a ship. The cradle containing the spare engine would only have been moved under normal circumstances if the spare engine was required. It would only be required if one of the other engines was damaged or faulty. So the effect of having the spare engine come crashing down onto the heads of engineers with a motor already out of service would be devastating — two dead engines and a fair chance that the third would be damaged in the incident, engineers dead and wounded, as now, and the whole ship crippled.

  But he was not a trained investigator and although he had a lively imagination, he did not have the analytical mind of a detective. When he had reported to Captain Black last night that the engine room was spick-and-span and ready to work as smoothly as the alternators whenever it was required, he had been sent down to a tasteless dinner and a spare cabin without a word of thanks. He had spent a restless few hours in shallow sleep, convinced that he had missed some vital clue down there, for he had found no evidence of sabotage at all. A restless sleep from which he had been awoken ten minutes earlier with the news that there was yet more trouble.

  Harry Piper came puffing up the deck clutching a walkie-talkie. ‘Tightship says Captain Mariner wants you,’ he said, handing the machine over.

  ‘Who says?

  ‘Captain Black. It’s what they call him.’

  Andrew shook his head in displeasure. But Harry was too senior a man to be corrected over such matters as proper respect. And anyway, in the Scot’s experience, captains generally got the respect they deserved.

  He brought the walkie-talkie to his lips and pressed the SEND button. ‘Captain Mariner, chief engineer here.’

  ‘Andrew, what can you see?’

  ‘Well, it’s a hell of a mess, Captain. I’ll start with what I can see of the deck, then work my way down towards the waterline.’