My stomach muscles knotted in panic. Silly really, because once I knew that a girl was involved I guessed where they were leading.
"She was your goddaughter," Ross said, "Suzy Katoul."
Despite the whiskey, my mouth went dry. I sensed a nightmare about to come true. Confused, and more in an effort to make sense of the story than anything else, I asked: "And what was in the container?"
"In non-scientific language?" Ross was reaching for another cigarette. "Plutonium, Mr. Brand - enough plutonium to make an atomic bomb five times bigger than the one dropped on Hiroshima."
There was no moon and the light from the stars was diffused and patchy through the overcast. Low clouds scudded across the night sky, driven by a bitter north-westerly which snagged the waves in passing and laced black water with an edge of white foam. Not that it was a rough sea. Once he had crossed this ocean in a force ten gale. He had worried himself sick about that. Bad weather would make their task impossible. Months of work would be wasted. A chance of a lifetime missed when time was against them in any case. But tonight the forecasts were right for once, the sea was relatively calm and conditions could hardly be better.
Next to him one of the Irishmen lit a cigarette and the acrid smell of cheap tobacco soured the air-conditioned atmosphere of the bridge so that one of the officers stiffened, twitching his nostrils with disapproval as he stood poised over the radar scanner. But nobody said a word.
The huge tanker barely moved through the water, its speed reduced to less than five knots. They were as good as in position now. He glanced at his watch. Four minutes past three. It should be all over. Suzy should be on her way. He stared out through the glass, his gaze drawn south where ten miles away lay some of the busiest shipping lanes in British waters. Not long now. He steeled himself to wait out the last few minutes, his face impassive beneath his kaffiyeh. Alongside him the four dark-haired crew members were clad in navy-blue uniforms and the two Irishmen wore heavy-knit pullovers above rough trousers pushed into sea boots. But he had chosen to wear the traditional dress of the Palestinian, a kaffiyeh head-dress above a long black-striped djellaba, stretching down to goat-skin sandals. Later, if all went well, he would change into the Western work clothes of an Irish fisherman, but it was important to greet Suzy as he was now - the symbolism was important - for her, for him, and above all for the success of the mission. He grunted. Symbolism - wasn't that what they taught at the Psychological Studies Centre? Brainwash your subject well enough and after that control was easy. Just say the right words, paint the right pictures and the response was guaranteed - just like Pavlov's dogs.
A sudden burst of chatter drew him back from the darkness and two quick steps took him to the radar scanner, source of the excitement. His knuckles whitened on the brass rail surrounding the instrument panel as his gaze fastened on the fast-moving blip dancing across the green background. Only the one tiny blip raced in their direction. Nothing followed, nothing gave chase. The larger, more shadowy dots at the edge of the screen adhered to routes miles apart, oblivious of what had happened. He sighed with relief and returned to the window, to where the others peered into the night, watching and waiting for the boat from the south.
In flagrant breach of maritime regulations, the tanker lay in almost total darkness. No red and green navigation lights, no white spot atop the mast-head, even on the bridge the lighting was dimmed and muted. An entry in the ship's log falsely described how a massive electrical failure had caused almost complete loss of light and rendered the ship's radio inoperable. As a result, the Captain had steamed north to a position well clear of normal shipping lanes until the fault could be traced and repaired. Utter nonsense of course, but it would serve if there was an inquiry later. With luck that would be avoided. With luck an hour should see everything completed and an hour after that the tanker would be back on her registered route, lights and radio fully "operational" again, with only that one small entry in her log to mar an otherwise uneventful voyage.
It was comfortably warm on the bridge, but on the ship's rails thirty feet below it would be cold. Bitterly cold, with an air temperature of two centigrade and the sea near freezing. The hoar of frost would have made the decks slippery and any seaman whose bare flesh brushed freezing metal risked the agony of frostbite. Biting cold and noisy too, as the wind moaned and the waves crashed against the giant steel hull, and the spray hissed and spat up at the watchers in the night.
He craned his neck, trying to see the decks below, but the black of the night defeated him. A pace away the Captain's murmured order was relayed by the First Officer and relayed again, until a muffled bell sounded in the far distance. Action stations! He tensed, feeling the vast ship pitch and knowing that all over the giant hull men were scuttling into position. How many times had they practiced this manoeuvre? Two dozen, three perhaps? All those rehearsals for just one performance - a performance he hoped played without an audience, an act done once and never repeated.
He looked at his watch. 3:22 a.m. Rendezvous time and still no sign of them - but on the screen the blip raced onwards and was dosing fast.
"There!" One of the Irishmen pointed to a spot on the starboard bow. A thin pencil of light split the darkness, prodding forward like an accusing finger. On, then off— on and off again. He stiffened in alarm. They were off course! Suzy was off course. Or else the tanker was? He swung round to the Captain, accusations already forming on his lips. But his panic was unnecessary, long hours of training were paying dividends.
Twelve feet below the bridge, a signaller was already clattering out the call sign on an Aldis. The arc lamp bathed the forward structure of the ship in brilliant light interspersed with split seconds of darkness, like a scene in a film shown on a faulty projector; a moment later came the answering shaft of light, already turning, shifting course, homing in on the tanker like a racing pigeon to its loft.
As if in welcome, a sudden pool of light danced on the waves to the tanker's starboard side. The docking lamps swung into position - six telescopic poles suspended beneath a canvas canopy to hide the light from any searching airplane. Even from his eyrie on the bridge, he saw only a thin strip of black water as light spilled from beneath the cover of the awning. But it was enough to register the scene, a section at a time. First the prow of the motor launch, then a seaman with a line in his hands, his legs bowed to steady himself as the boat manoeuvred alongside; next midships and more seamen, some still wearing hoods, their eye-slits clearly visible as they looked up to the tanker's deck. Then the girl Suzy, standing with one hand on the wheel, leaning forward to issue an order, absorbed in the detail of command. The watching man caught his breath as he waited for the open hatch to appear. For an agonising second he contemplated failure. All this effort, the grinding practice sessions, the endless planning. To fail now for the raiding party to return empty-handed? But then, with relief mingled with rising excitement, he saw it. The twelve foot cube of the rust-red container which meant the raid had succeeded. Sight of it was the only signal needed for the men on the bridge. Muted bells rang, buzzers rasped and all over the ship men sprang forward to perform tasks perfected by months of hard training.
Fresh light appeared - a ghostly green incandescence which lit the tanker's forward decks in a way subtle enough to be almost invisible from the skies above - especially when, as now, black cloud and night mist rolled low over the ocean's surface.
"Mary, Mother of Christ! Will you look at that?" the Irishman hissed.
But the man in Arab costume was already watching the long black crack appear down the centre of the huge forward deck. A split ninety feet long, widening slowly to a gap half as big - a great, yawning crater opening to the very bowels of the leviathan. Now he could hear the hum of machinery and he began to count the seconds, knowing that sixty-eight should pass before the whine of the hydraulics swamped everything. He pictured the frenzied scene below decks as the crew cleared the restraining tackle needed during the voyage. Still counting, he turned to starb
oard and peered down to the deck below, dimly visible now in the light cast by the docking lamps. The crew from the launch had disembarked, half a dozen of them sheltered from the wind at the top of the gangway, talking and smoking and beating gloved hands together to keep warm. He watched the girl clamber up to the deck. She paused to share a brief word with the crew before glancing up at the bridge, then waved and hurried away. His count reached forty-two. The First Officer was telephoning again, this time with orders for the scuttling party, so that a moment later six men walked briskly across the deck and disappeared from view down the gangway onto the launch. For them too, time was precious.
The unmistakable whine of the hydraulics interrupted his count at sixty. Either he had been a fraction slow or the crew below decks had set another record? He checked his watch and smiled, sharing their triumph at producing something special on the big night. Ahead - from the gaping hole in the forward deck, the long white tip of a spar emerged. It rose slowly, purposefully, at the precisely controlled speed of a foot for every fifteen seconds. His gaze traveled forward to the prow to estimate the rise and fall of the ship as she stood into the sea. Four feet, five maybe? He prayed it would stay that way - at least for the next thirty minutes. Beneath him the spar was well clear, below that he distinguished the shape of the deckhouse and behind that the raised storage hatch, with the wooden crates of fish roped securely into position.
Suddenly he was distracted by a noise and a gust of wind as the door to the bridge slid back on its runners. He swung round and every man on the bridge turned with him. For a moment Suzy just stood there, in a pool of light inside the door, her raven hair glossy and damp from the spray and her dark eyes widening as she took in the details of his costume. Then she was in his arms, his fingers stroking her hair, his strength already steadying her.
"Oh Abou, we did it!" she pulled away, her eyes shining with excitement. "We did it - we did it!"
He exulted at her dependence on him. It had taken time; time, cunning and money, but now she was his, programmed on drugs and sex, and kindness and cruelty. Withhold one, substitute another, subject her will to his until she was no more than a puppet.
He was about to answer her when the whole ship shuddered with enough force to throw them off balance. Collecting themselves, they looked down to the floodlit forward decks. The hydraulic lifts had reached their full upward thrust and the huge locking mechanism had clamped into place. Now, sitting in a cradle high above the steel decks; higher even than the guard rails, was a seiner, an Irish fishing boat. Eighty feet long and thirty-eight feet wide at midships, with a sixteen-foot beam and measuring sixty-eight feet from the tip of her mast to the edge of her keel, the seiner Aileen Maloney was almost ready to begin her historic voyage.
"Was ever a sight more beautiful?" asked the Irishman of nobody in particular.
Abou cast a critical look over the restraining cables, examining the chocks and the steel hawsers which held the fishing boat in position. If anything worked loose, if the launching party had been careless, if just one of the safety checks had been overlooked, danger lurked for all of them. Especially for the two seamen who hurried around the apron of the tanker's decks and began the ascent of the rope ladder which swung from the seiner's bows. Abou checked his watch. Sixteen minutes since the floodlighting had been switched on. They were forty-two seconds ahead of schedule. But still to come was the perilous task of launching the Aileen Maloney. Meanwhile they were at their most vulnerable - exposed to a search plane dipping from the cloud, or a patrol vessel slipping through the mist to find them.
The shortwave radio crackled as the seaman now in the deckhouse of the seiner commenced the countdown. Below decks huge valves opened and the high-speed pumps began transferring two thousand gallons of crude oil from port side tanks to those on the starboard. A minute passed. Rapid-fire dialogue continued between the First Officer and the Aileen Maloney as the countdown progressed. Five minutes passed. The Second Officer nursed the radar and the Captain drummed nervous fingers on the chart table. The tanker began her controlled list to starboard as the shifting crude changed the centre of gravity. A bell sounded and the crew member to the Captain's right answered a telephone. The scuttling party had finished and were rejoining the tanker. Abou glanced down to the starboard rails, the angle already different from when last he looked. Now he was twelve feet nearer the waves and the launch alongside was fully visible as the telescopic arms of the canopy withdrew into the tanker's superstructure. For a moment nothing happened to the small boat. It rose and fell rhythmically in a parody of the huge ship. Then, quite suddenly, its bows rose sharply and the stern settled more deeply in the water. It stayed that way - suspended, undecided - until those watching began to suspect a miscalculation by the scuttling party - but then it happened - the bows rose clear of the water, the stem fell and the waves broke over the cargo hatch to lash angrily at the precious red container. Quickly the water level rose to the tiny deckhouse and as relentlessly as an auctioneer's hammer, she was going. Going, going, gone! The black waves closed over her and the boat was no more - as if she had never been.
Suzy stirred at his side. "It seems such a waste. The risks we took, and now - just to dump it—"
"It's the safest way," he said gruffly, discouraging discussion. "This way we're certain—"
"A man was killed tonight for that cargo."
"Killed?" he stiffened. "You didn't tell me."
"Oh, don't worry," she sounded almost bitter. "Not one of ours. One of the Marisa's officers tried to jump me - Kalif shot him - through the head from five feet away." She shuddered at the memory and his arm tightened about her shoulders. Killing would not have bothered him. He had seen enough, done enough, to be immune to the sight of death. Anyway, the stakes were too high to be concerned about the death of one man. But her reaction had to be dealt with.
"Kalif did right," he smoothed her hair. "You could have been hurt - injured perhaps—" he stopped abruptly, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, cursing an uncharacteristic clumsiness. Everyone in the raiding party had known the rules, but knowing never made them easier to talk about, not even afterwards. Knowing that if Suzy had been in danger of capture, the others would have killed her. Just as she would have killed any other member of the crew, rather than lose them as prisoners.
The growl of the buzzer distracted him. The countdown had finished and the Aileen Maloney was as ready as she ever would be. She swung in her cradle, buffeted by a strengthening wind which added strain to the hawsers holding her, while below her the tanker increased its list to starboard. Nineteen degrees, twenty, so that standing upright was impossible without holding a rail or leaning against the side of the bridge. The Captain snapped an order and the First Officer punched a button. More hydraulics whined as the specially designed stabiliser slid slowly down from the tanker's port-side hull and into the ocean. From habit, Abou began to count, knowing that twenty seconds would pass before the steel fin, acting as a second keel but sinking twelve fathoms deeper than the main one, reached its full extent. He glanced at the gauge in front of him. Fifteen thousand gallons had been transferred to the starboard tanks. Five thousand to go. The deck tilted another degree and the wind freshened to pitch the tanker an extra foot into the swelling sea.
At last they were ready. The buzzer rasped the final alert. The tanker rode the sea with a twenty-two degree list to starboard and the Aileen Maloney swung out from above the steel decks to hover thirty feet above the white-capped waves. Inch by inch the hawsers unwound. More than at any other moment the sheer seamanship of the Captain would be tested to its limits. In theory, the Aileen Maloney should be set down ten yards clear of the tanker's starboard rails. In theory. But all the theories in the world never accounted for the unpredictability of the elements. A rising, gusting wind, an exceptional wave, a combination of both and the Aileen Maloney her murderous cargo would be smashed against the giant slab side of the tanker.
Seamen lined the starboard rails, placing fe
nders into position at one yard intervals, while casting nervous glances upwards as the Aileen Maloney hovered above them. On the bridge anxious eyes measured the pitch of the sea, knowing it ever important as the Captain struggled to manoeuvre the fishing boat down on an even keel. Twenty-six minutes had passed since the phosphorous lamps had first cast their glow over the forward decks. The Aileen Maloney swooped nearer to the ocean. Twenty-seven. Now she was level with the starboard rails and the crew clustered there could see their two compatriots on the deck of the smaller vessel. Twenty-nine minutes. The drop to the boiling sea had shrunk to less than twelve feet. The worst was over.
Then, as tensions eased, the hawser snapped. It was one of eight running to the bows of the Aileen Maloney from the cradle above. Nobody ever knew why it snapped. It was doubtful that the seaman forward on the fishing boat even knew what hit him. But tightly-bound strands of steel weighing twelve pounds to the foot cut the air like a stock whip. Just the end of the hawser reached him, the very tip. Had he been a foot nearer the deckhouse it would have missed him completely, as it was it caught him just below the chin, snapping his neck like a broken match and tossing his body the length of the boat.
The Captain slammed a lever and the Aileen Maloney dropped like a stone. With one hawser gone, the others would fracture like rotten gut. A plume of water rose thirty feet high, drenching the men on the rails like an exploding shell and signalling action everywhere. The First Officer threw the high speed pumps into reverse. A seaman punched buttons to withdraw the stabiliser. Below, on the rails, men threw themselves down ropes to the fishing boat to release the hawsers. The pulleys atop the cradle began to rewind at full speed. The hydraulics screamed as the cradle itself began its descent to the bowels of the ship and thirty seconds later it had disappeared from view. The huge ship began to correct its list and the steel forward decks started to close. Five seconds, ten, fifteen. The green light faded as the phosphorous lamps were extinguished. Decks met with a thump like a guillotine chopping bone, and once again the tanker lay in almost total darkness. It had taken exactly thirty-one minutes and five seconds to launch the Aileen Maloney.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 2