Merrideth seemed to know the instant Richard arrived on the bridge and he touched Marshall’s arm. The three of them went into the radio room as the nearest relatively private place. Merrideth pulled off his balaclava, and with the wisdom of knowledge, Richard looked at his face closely. As well as the livid skin colour and flesh tones around the eyes, lips and nostrils that he had noticed earlier, he could see that the delicate bone of the eye sockets and at the bridge of that aquiline nose showed a strange thickening. A close inspection would no doubt reveal the same of cheekbones and temples — the onset of the disfigurement called leonine faces, lion’s face. Marshall, too, pulled off his balaclava and on his face Richard saw the full flower of the disease. Marshall’s nose was almost non-existent, his mouth was swollen, the mottled black ballooning stretching up towards the thick-edged hollows of his yellow eyes. It was hardly a human face any longer. It looked like something out of a horror movie instead; animal, monstrous. It took all of Richard’s fortitude not to step back or flinch away. It was only when he drew breath to talk that he realised he had not breathed since entering the room.
Both men were watching him quizzically, uncertainly, as though awaiting his reaction. Tm the first outsider who knows,” he said.
“First one other’n family,” agreed Marshall.
“And the odd quack,” added Merrideth.
“Have all of you got it? All of 13 Int.?”
“Even the dead ones. That’s why we tried to bring the doc. Ex-Special Forces men with advanced mutant Hansen’s disease. A bit of a give-away, wouldn’t you say?”
“But how did you all become infected?”
“It’s a long story,” said Merrideth.
“It was the Ras, wasn’t it?” prompted Richard. “Some lunatic sent you in along the Ras Al’I without warning you that it had been a leper colony for the better part of five hundred years.”
“It was right at the end,” said Merrideth. “Twenty-third of February, nineteen ninety-one. The day before Desert Storm was launched. We got a request to do some charity work. Protect a food shipment for UNICEF. They told us the Iraqis would let us through like they had the others. It was just charity, for God’s sake.”
“Charity and a smooth-talking s.o.b. called Hoover,” added Marshall bleakly.
“He convinced us it was a simple watch job. No worries. We went in along the Ras with no trouble at all and set up to watch the road, the main supply route from Mina Al Ahmadi to Kuwait City. But no one told us there was some kind of double bluff going on. The Iraqis had no intention of letting the UNICEF convoy through and Hoover knew it. Saddam’s elite guard units came down on it like wasps on a jam pot — and down on us as well, clearing the way for the whole Desert Storm invasion. We ended up in a fighting retreat all through that afternoon and night, forcing our way out along the way we’d come in, back along the Ras Al’I, through a full barrage, followed by every crack unit in the area. Inch by inch through a leper colony’s graveyard nearly five kilometres long while the whole lot went to hell in a handcart around us.”
“And the invasion of Kuwait started for real just along the road behind you,” said Richard, “with even Stormin’ Norman wondering why there were so few crack front-line troops standing against him…”
“And every mine, grenade, shot and shell threw up a kind of cold soup made of mud and blood and lepers’ dust. We were drenched in it; we drank it, breathed it, hour after hour after hour. We had no idea. Thirty-six of us went in. Sixteen of us came out and we thought we were the lucky ones. Until we came home. Found out. It’s a hell of a way to die, leprosy. The worst way there is, believe you me.”
“Let’s cut to the chase here,” snapped Marshall. “Time’s awasting and we don’t have a lot. We’ve all got it. There’s no cure. No one else has it. No one else will. It’s unique to us and our experience. A non-communicable form. You could only get it if you went through what we went through in the Gulf. You didn’t, so you’re safe. Same for the rest.”
“OK. But I still need to know what you think you’re — ”
“No you don’t,” interrupted Merrideth gently. “You already know more than you ought. We had an arrangement with Captain Dall. He got greedy and tried to double-cross us. We needed you to get aboard and we needed you once we got aboard. Your help’s been much appreciated but we can handle it all ourselves from here on in.”
This told Richard what he needed to know and confirmed his darkest speculations. They were not making this up as they went along. They had always planned to come aboard. Dall had pirated New England for them. He himself had only been pulled into the situation because Dall’s double-cross had necessitated some improvisation. But when Dall’s command failed to avenge his death, 13 Int.’s plan, whatever it was, had come back on track.
Richard looked from one man to the other. “May I tell the others?” he asked. “I assume I will be joining them now.”
“Oh, I think not,” said Merrideth. “There’s still far too much mischief a man like you could make. I shall invest one secure room and two guards in your good behaviour during the next few hours at least. Bruce,” he called. “Take the captain down, please.”
Merrideth was correct about the amount of mischief Richard might do if allowed to mix freely with the others. He had failed to calculate, however, the amount of ruthlessly clear thinking Richard could do when locked away alone, and the extent of the planning which could be based on that speculation. Much of Richard’s incarceration, therefore, was spent in bitter reflection on the absolute manner in which he had been fooled, in an unflinching examination of incident after incident in which Merrideth had succeeded in pulling the wool over his eyes, and in trying to work out a method of striking back.
With the benefit of hindsight, Richard was able to trace the pattern of Merrideth’s actions. Dall had collected the arms in Ireland at 13 Int.’s instigation and put them on Calcutta as planned, always with the intention of pirating New England and delivering her, fully armed, into the hands of the embittered Special Forces men either in Ireland or in America, perhaps even at the destination they were bound for now. But something — the Stingers, perhaps, which had featured in that bitter exchange between Dall and his killers — had prompted Dall’s double-cross. This was a double-cross about which Dall, for reasons of security, paranoia, greed, had not warned his command. Certainly, he had not warned Pitman at least; and she was different from the others only in gender and intelligence. But the double-cross — typically, Richard now realised — prompted pre-emptive action from Merrideth himself.
Dall, Pitman, whoever, had left the dead bodies and other clues behind in Ireland. These had rung genuine alarm bells and Bull had been called in. Merrideth, on the old school net, perhaps, had heard a hint and found himself the perfect springboard for an improvisation. Getting Bull’s co-operation had gained access to Richard — or, more importantly, at that stage, to Hero.
Merrideth’s briefing at the Army and Navy Club had been inspired and yet, looking back on it, Richard saw all too clearly that the maps, faxes and so forth which had so impressed him could actually have come from other members of 13 Int., waiting, thwarted and beginning to recognise the double-cross, in Eire — and not from the authorities in either country at all. Leaving the briefing early and getting Bull himself to put the final proposition was inspired. How perfectly effective it had been! Richard would have lengthy words with Bull when he got home.
But to be fair, Richard could understand all too well how his old friend had been hoodwinked, for ever since he had heard the code-word “storm”, he had been completely fooled himself. How could he have delivered his ships, officers and crew, good name and expertise to these men? It seemed incredible now that he should have been so foolhardy and yet there had been something about Merrideth, Mac, Op, Tom and the rest which had simply swept him along with them. Little by little, with details apparently fed in by “Green Slime” and “Intelligence” adding their weight, he had come to believe in them witho
ut a second thought. Nuggets calculatedly slipped past Merrideth’s spurious “need to know” which established a completely fictional but all too convincing official network behind them all the way up to the Kremlin at Stirling Lines and the Cabinet Office itself. Nuggets of apparently genuine intelligence like details of the PIRA arms cache, Pitman’s identity, and, later, Dall’s.
But they had genuinely come to need him; Richard was sure of that. His continued survival was probably proof positive. In the end, Merrideth had been lucky as well as inspired in his choice of patsy. Unless the major had seen all the little news-snippets of information about Heritage Mariner’s pre-eminence in the fields of advanced shipping on both sides of the Atlantic and had targeted Richard specifically because he knew he had access to Hero and experience of New England herself … But the supposition that such a man as Merrideth might have been watching his every move so closely made such speculation too uncomfortable even for Richard Mariner.
Sufficient to say then that Merrideth had got him hooked and decided to take him along — particularly after he revealed so artlessly that he knew who the ex-Special Forces team really were. That one slip — Ras Al’I — had been enough. It really had shaken Merrideth — perhaps more than Doc’s death. Richard could see now all too clearly that they would have been no more willing to leave him behind after that unthinking revelation than they had been willing to leave Doc’s body; and yet to kill him as they had snuffed out Dall would have been impossible on Hero before the transfer — and after the transfer he had proved all too invaluable all too quickly. Now, however, things were different. 13 Int. had no need of him now at all; no need of any of them, in fact. Another avenue too unpleasant to explore for the time being. But, even so, Richard felt that these men were not conscienceless. They reserved their full, lethal anger for those they thought had betrayed them. Men like Dall, and the other man they had mentioned, the man who had duped them into going onto the Ras in the first place, this man Hoover…
But that line of thought led to a dead-end, too. As did all reflection which focused so clear-sightedly on the past. The only line of speculation Richard was really interested in following was one which guided him into the much more murky waters of the future. One which would build on the past with the founded certainty of an Egyptian pyramid and point unerringly to the answer to the most important questions of all. Why had 13 Int. caused the IRA arms to be appropriated? What did they need New England for? Why were the Stingers so important? Just what, exactly, were the Jellicoe Boys up to?
Always more able to think better on his feet, Richard pulled himself erect, clasped his hands behind his back, thrust his chin a little forward in an unconsciously bellicose expression, and began to pace, going over his thoughts again, looking for answers to the fundamental questions, and ways to extend those answers into action — any action which would stop whatever 13 Int. were up to without putting himself or anyone else aboard at further risk, if it could be helped.
*
While Richard was locked in the captain’s cabin with a guard beside him and another at the door, the rest of New England’s complement sat in another kind of close confinement.
Twenty-five people could easily fit in the officers’ lounge, which had the conveniences of comfortable chairs, toilets adjoining, and plenty of alcohol. The tables had been pushed together to form two large tables. Round one sat New England’s crew, and round the other her officers and passengers. The Charlestons sat close together, almost as close as Ann and Bob Stark. Between the couples was Harry. Professor Miles sat between First Officer Dix and Chief Bligh. O’Reilley was conspicuously some distance from the others, though seated at the same table.
They all wondered what was keeping Richard, but since there was no way of finding out, the talk moved on to speculation about why the ship had not been stopped by the American authorities. O’Reilley unexpectedly revealed, albeit grudgingly, that the SAS men had used their own communications to convince the Coastguard and other interested authorities that the ship was now back about legitimate business and in the hands of its lawful crew. The emergency was past, they had announced, and all would be revealed when she docked in Philadelphia. As the Coastguard could not catch her and therefore could not board her and the only other option was to attack her, the authorities had apparently declared themselves satisfied, for the time being at least.
“So that’s where we’re bound,” said Senator Charleston. “Philadelphia.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” said Bob. “I don’t think these men intend to hand her over. I mean, the lawful crew is all here, isn’t it? So we are clearly not in charge, contrary to what 13 Int. want the Coastguard to believe.”
“So we only have until the authorities’ patience runs out,” said Senator Charleston.
“And that will be pretty soon after we don’t show up in Philadelphia,” concluded Ann.
“We could be in Philadelphia within six hours from our position when I was last on the bridge,” said Bob.
“Doesn’t give them much time,” observed Dix uneasily. “But wait.” He held up his hand and there was silence. “Aren’t they cutting speed?”
“Yes! You’re right! They are,” said Bob.
And Ann of course asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question: “What in God’s name are they up to?”
The door opened and Bruce and one of his men entered. “O’Reilley and Newbold, come with us,” said Bruce quietly, his voice somehow managing to drip with threat.
“Why?” snapped Senator Charleston at once. “What do you want them for?”
“Major wants them on the bridge. Couple of questions, that’s all. They’ll be fine. You all will. Unless you disobey.”
“It’s all right,” said Harry, sensing the others squaring up dangerously. “I expect it’s just a question about the computer or something. Come on, Oh Really. You should be safe as houses up there. Any problems and you can just change sides again. If you can remember which side you’re actually on, of course.”
Harry came back alone an hour later. “No sign of Captain Mariner, I’m afraid, but we’re almost down to normal cruising speed for coastal shipping,” she announced as she joined the others. “Though I have to say there’s precious little shipping actually about. I sneaked a look at your radar, Mr Dix. We’re not far off Atlantic City and still heading south, Captain. Maybe we are bound for Philadelphia. Who knows?”
“What did they want you for?” asked Bob.
“Nothing much. They wanted access to some navigation program and I showed them the way in. Didn’t seem all that important. Though it’s funny, I’ve never seen it before. You remember a ship-handling program called HG, Captain? Mr Dix?”
Both men shook their heads.
“When was it put on the system?” asked Ann.
“A few days ago. In Ireland, probably.” Her brow furrowed in thought.
“What does it do?” asked Ann.
“Handles the ship. It’s in among the docking programs. Handles the ship in restricted waterways, ports and harbours, I guess.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance for a closer look later,” suggested Bob.
“Maybe,” said Harry doubtfully.
“Could be something to do with where we’re going,” suggested Senator Charleston.
O’Reilley returned, big with news. They would be arriving at their destination within half an hour and they were all due to be put ashore there.
They spent the intervening time at the windows, straining for the first view of land, Bob particularly keen to try to regain some initiative, some element of control in this strange situation. Both he and Richard carried in their memories charts covering half the world. And Bob particularly was familiar with the East Coast since he had trained there.
*
It could hardly be said that there was a line of armed guards to shepherd them out of New England and into the cell which had been prepared for them in one of Great Egg Head’s derelict facilities, but the ex-Spec
ial Forces men were positioned at every tactical point and oversaw the line of silent prisoners out of one confinement and into the next. They came out of a door in the side of New England, down a short gangplank onto the quay and along to a brick extension to a cavernous corrugated-iron warehouse. Within the warehouse, lights burned and vehicles stood, and shadows moved about industriously. As they reached the iron-bound door of the brick building with its faded lettering “Port Authority. In Bond. Secure Area. No Entry”, the first big petrol tanker began to grind down the quayside behind them.
Their new place of confinement had basic toilet facilities but no running water. There was electric light and the bedding was thick and soft. A table held cold food and a range of drink. Twenty-five or thirty people could stay here relatively comfortably and very securely for a couple of days. It was only when they had all arrived and the door was closed behind them that they realised Richard was still missing and O’Reilley was no longer with them.
“I guess this is where mercenaries and assorted turncoats get their pay-off,” said Ann from her position close beside Bob, a position she had assumed and maintained since the moment of their reunion. It was clear to everyone that the only thing keeping their hands off each other was their audience.
“I guess it is,” said Harry. “Did anyone else see a bank truck out there? That must be their money.”
Bob’s mind was on something else. “That looked like Cape May in the distance to me,” he said.
“Yup. Mouth of Delaware Bay without a doubt,” agreed Dix.
“So we’re south of Atlantic City, round about Great Egg. But why? What is there here?” asked Senator Charleston.
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 26