Dead Sea

by Peter Tonkin

  At first, when the short hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle, Reona supposed it was simply his sensitivity to the way the all-male crew were watching the only woman aboard – and the man who was all too obviously doing what almost all of them would like to do with her. Even her more modest outer garments could not disguise the truth of that. And then there was the fact that the only man aboard they knew – and who they needed to rely on to show them the ship and explain the routines, was suddenly too preoccupied by his duties to deal with them. And there were little things that they really did need to get clear.

  One of the first was the laptop. Reona tried it in the cabin soon after he and Aika had satisfied several appetites by following their love-making with the food a surly crewman brought up to their cabin. He noticed two things at once. First, the reception was not strong enough to allow him vital Internet access, so he could not follow the progress of his priceless bottle nor of the two vessels racing towards it. Secondly, he was surprised to see that the battery had very little power. His first reaction to the second problem was to look around the cabin for a plug that would take his charger, but the sockets, although they were two-pin, seemed to be of a slightly different design to the charger he had brought, and it suddenly occurred to him that the ship would be running on its own power, as generated by one of the machines that made everything around him throb. It was in all probability on a different setting to the one hundred volt, fifty hertz he was used to in Tokyo. The last thing he needed was to damage the vital laptop now. Reluctantly, he switched off the power and closed the top. Then, a great deal less reluctantly, he went through to join Aika in bed.

  Reona was up and about early next morning, roused by the bustle of a working ship at sea. Aika responded to his advances by grunting, rolling over and beginning to snore, so he got dressed and went out to explore, taking his laptop with him. He was hungry, but the feeling was more than overcome by a desire to check up on the position of those three vital dots, if he possibly could. And it occurred to him that if the metal walls of the bridge house were thick enough to break his laptop’s communication with the Internet, then taking the machine outside – and ideally, up to somewhere high, might solve the problem.

  His first ginger sortie out into the corridor the first officer had brought them along last night revealed that it ended in a door leading out on to a balcony which reminded him a little of a fire escape on a city tenement. He opened the door and stepped out into a fresh and bracing blue morning. He paused to look around, distracted by the vastness of the view across the quiet ocean. During the night, Japan had dropped below the horizon and there was nothing to see but the sea. Closer at hand, however, he soon discovered that steps led up and down from the balcony, climbing the outside of the bridge house. Slowly at first, and then with growing confidence, he climbed up these towards the top of the bridge itself. Two levels up, he stepped through a kind of a gate on to a flat green area that seemed to him almost as big as a football field.

  There was a repainted funnel to the rear, which seemed to be giving out very little in the way of smoke or fumes. The front stretched sideways as the top of the two bridge wings which extended the bridge itself to right and left. In the middle, at the front, there was a tall, white-painted mast that looked surprisingly substantial. Placed between the funnel and the radio mast there were other white-painted housings that he was not certain about. Logic dictated that at least one of the big white boxes would contain the lift mechanism, but what the others might be he had no idea.

  Still looking about in wonder at the top of the bridge and the vast morning that his new position revealed, he wandered forward until he was standing near the mast, at the front of the green deck, looking down the length of the main deck at the four squat cranes and the five square hatch tops they stood above. Unlike last night’s brief glimpse in the drizzling darkness, this morning’s long look revealed clear lines, a purposeful precision. The distant bow cut through the huge green ocean with a solid certainty. The wake churned along the sides of the powerful vessel, then split into a wide V across the ocean behind it. Here, thought Reona, a little overcome, was a vessel with a purpose. A ship who knew where she was going.

  Then it hit him. He, Reona Tanaka, needed to know where she was going. Needed to know where she needed to go. Needed to dictate that course. He ran across to the nearest white housing that looked about as tall as a table. He put his laptop case on it and opened the side. He pulled out the laptop and opened it. Switched it on and put up a swift prayer to Un, god of Luck. The screen cleared. The lights above the keyboard all lit up. Including the one promising Internet access. With his heart in his mouth, he guided the cursor up to the icon for his search engine. Clicked on it. Continued to pray. But it too worked perfectly. He was safely over the first hurdle. Now all he needed to do was to access the cloud programmes that stored the vital information on Cheerio, Flint and Katapult’s locator beacons. ‘Come on,’ he whispered to himself, as the computer consulted the vital storage facility. ‘ComeoncomeoncomeON . . .’

  ‘Hey! What are you doing here?’

  The challenge was so sudden, so unexpected and so close at hand that he whirled round in a panic and nearly knocked the laptop flying.

  There was a low-browed young man in overalls glaring at him like a fighter just about to throw a punch.

  ‘I was trying to get on the Internet. I can’t access it in my cabin so I thought—’

  ‘Why didn’t you connect it to the ship’s system?’ demanded the young man suspiciously.

  ‘System? What? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Dagupan Maru may not be much to look at but she’s up with the twenty-first century!’ sneered the sailor.

  Reona blushed. ‘I didn’t know. I’ve never been aboard a ship like this one. And she seems a very fine ship to me!’

  The stranger seemed to relax a little. ‘Senzo Tago.’ He introduced himself. ‘Junior engineering officer.’

  ‘Tanaka Reona,’ bowed Reona formally. ‘Greenbaum Professor of . . .’ his voice trailed off as he realized that in fact he wasn’t Greenbaum Professor of anything any more.

  But, ‘I know who you are,’ said the engineer. ‘You’re famous! I’ve seen you on the TV and on the Net. And you and your girlfriend are the talk of the ship in any case. Now, what’s the matter with your laptop?’

  ‘Nothing. Except it needs charging. I . . .’

  ‘Hey, is that the new Sony? I’ve heard about these but I’ve never seen one. Awesome . . .’

  An hour later, Junior Engineering Officer Senzo Tago had overseen the incorporation of Reona’s laptop into the ship’s systems, and Reona was happily tracking the signals given out by the three locators he was most worried about.

  He was so preoccupied – and had been so during the whole process – that he had entirely failed to notice several things. He remained ignorant of the fact that Tago had kept looking through the half-open doorway at the bedroom where the sleeping Aika had rolled on top of the covers and now lay absolutely naked and clearly visible. Had he noticed either this fact or the expression on the sailor’s face, he would have been deeply disturbed.

  He did not know either – could not be expected to know – that engineer Tago had actually been sent on to the bridge on purpose by the first officer. Had been given orders to do with the laptop exactly what he had done. And to be sure he did not explain to the all-too trusting ex-professor that now his laptop was part of the system, everything he could see on his screen could be monitored on the bridge.

  And, that it could, in fact, be transmitted to the private office high in the Luzon Logging Building in Quezon City, Manila, where another professor – one who still held his post, his position and his power – was able to see it all quite clearly too. Almost as clearly, in fact, as he was able to observe the video footage from the cabin that the naked Aika Rei was sleeping in.

  Flags

  Richard Mariner and Nic Greenbaum made it back from the docks to the Mandarin
Oriental in time for the dinner which Nic had won and Richard was to pay for. They made it by the skin of their teeth, with hardly time to freshen up before they were rushed to the thirty-eighth floor. Service at Sora began at eight thirty local time or not at all, for it was a performance as much as a meal.

  ‘This is even worse than going to the theatre,’ said Richard mock mournfully as they hurried past the truncated gymnasium, the end of which had been adapted to house the sushi restaurant whose name meant ‘Sky’ in Japanese. ‘I turned up five minutes late in Stratford once and was locked out of the first act of Hamlet. I never did work out what on earth was going on! Spent four hours trying . . .’

  For just about two seconds, Nic believed him. Then, ‘Yeah,’ drawled the American. ‘I had the same problem at a cricket match. Place called Lord’s.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Richard innocently. ‘How much did you miss?’

  ‘None of it. I just couldn’t work out what the hell was going on. Spent five days trying . . .’

  The restaurant was exclusive as well as time-specific. There were eight seats grouped around an L-shaped wooden bar which looked priceless, ancient and lovingly maintained. What was it about the Japanese and their wood? thought Richard. Six of the guests looked out over the night-time vista of Tokyo lights through floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows. From this height, Richard really could see why they called it ‘Sky’. Richard and Nic sat in the pair with their backs to the window, lucky to be here at all. The whole room was tiled and flagged in dark grey, onyx on the wall, marble on the floor and the theme was taken up by the grey, black and white of the mats, cutlery and chopstick rests in front of them. The lighting was overhead and, to put it mildly, theatrical. Even the bonsai tree got its own spotlight.

  ‘What’s the next move now that we’ve found out where Professor Romeo and his Juliet went?’ asked Nic more seriously, as he opened the exquisitely tied white box in front of him to find that it contained a perfectly folded napkin.

  ‘Find out about this ship, Dagupan Maru,’ answered Richard at once. ‘What flag it’s flying; where it’s registered and who owns it; what it’s carrying and where it’s bound for.’ Then, more sensitive to atmosphere, perhaps, than Nic, he added in a lower voice, ‘But we’ll leave that till tomorrow. This show’s about to hit the road. Remember Hamlet. Remember Lord’s.’

  They fell silent and faced forward.

  The beautifully suited and tailored Japanese men and women in the six seats beside them stopped frowning and tutting. The two young men in brown chefs’ outfits and flat hats bowed – and the meal began. Began, in fact, with a drink. A young woman in a jade-green kimono asked each one what they would prefer. She approved of Nic’s choice of sakes and frowned over Richard’s choice of waters and teas, but he had worked in Hong Kong and Shanghai: he knew what it was to be viewed as a round-eyed barbarian. Then the young men behind the counter began to introduce, discuss and prepare the fish. One spoke Japanese, the other English. They were both, although youthful in appearance, masters of their art, though they shared as much with Richard Burton as they did with Raymond Blanc.

  For the next three hours, the two sushi masters delivered bite-sized course after bite-sized course, each designed to build upon the last in an ever-growing mountain of taste, each produced with a flourish, like an elegant magic trick. Almost every member of the fish and crustacean families available in the waters on and off Japan was served in one form or another – raw or marinated, in shell or out, with wasabi or with ginger – most of them laid on a bed of rice and wrapped in seaweed. Richard drank thimble-fuls of water while Nic sipped his sake icy from a glass and thimblefuls of tea while Nic sipped it steaming from a porcelain cup. Apart from that, he matched his companion course for course. If not from soup to nuts, at least from amuse to miso. Which was in many ways, Richard thought with sleepy contentment as he drained the miso bowl at last, almost the exact opposite.

  It was midnight when they left the restaurant, and although Nic had slept well the night before, he had sipped his way through a fair amount of sake tonight. Richard, though sober, was tired. They both went straight to bed.

  Richard’s final thought before sleep claimed him was, unusually, not of Robin.

  It was of a mysterious bulker called Dagupan Maru.

  Richard woke with the name of the runaway lovers’ ship still in his head and as he showered and shaved, he tried to work out where he should start to look for her. In the old days he would have started with Lloyd’s of London, for most of the working ships in the world had been registered there at one time or another. But that venerable institution nowadays really only kept records of vessels that the members’ agents had checked and insured. And increasing numbers of owners in the current financial climate insured their own bottoms – and prayed they’d never have to replace them.

  There was the British Department of Transport List but that only contained details of British registered vessels that fell under the aegis of the UK Authorities. But even here there was a certain amount of uncertainty about vessels – and businesses – registered in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Each of the major maritime nations had the equivalent, also with its individual anomalies. But there was no central database, even of the major players and their vessels, let alone of the anomalies and theirs. And in any case, just because a vessel sailed from a certain country’s ports and was crewed with a certain nation’s seamen it no longer guaranteed that either one was the vessel’s home country. That it flew their flag, as the saying went. A literal saying, however, for by maritime law all ships had to have the name of their home port written on their hull and the flag of their country of registration flying at their masthead.

  But names and flags told you little, for flags of convenience were the modern norm as canny owners tried to overcome union rules and national laws about working conditions and safety procedures. There was certainly no central list of vessels under the nearly forty flags of convenience currently in use – from Panama, where the American ship owners had gone in the early days to break the powerful US shipping unions – to Liberia, the more modern favourite. Countries (sometimes little more than island states) whose ‘flags’ had broadened into offshore havens for all sorts of things – businesses, real and fake, working or shell, that didn’t want their records checked by taxmen or financial authorities any more than they wanted their vessels and their crew conditions checked.

  Richard gave a wry, lopsided grin, as he began to run the familiar list through his head, starting, aptly enough, with the legendary old pirate ports of the Spanish Main: Antigua, Aruba, Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman . . . If Captain Jack Sparrow were alive today, he thought grimly, he knew where The Black Pearl would be registered; what flag she would sail under, besides the skull and crossbones.

  He would just have to hope that the Japanese Transport, Port and Pilotage Authorities had the details he wanted – and that they would be willing to share what information they actually had with him. The word Maru, whether it meant ‘circle’, ‘completeness’ or ‘castle’ also meant that the ship was Japanese. He would have to start with that and see where it got him. But where was she registered? Whose flag fluttered at her forepeak or her jackstaff? By the time he had slapped Roger and Gallet aftershave on his lean cheeks, he had decided that the best place to start was at the twenty-four-hour secretariat at Crewfinders. He glanced at his Rolex. Seven thirty a.m. in Tokyo meant eleven thirty p.m. in London. Audrey would be on duty.

  Richard flipped up the top of his laptop and hit the email button. Crewfinders was in his electronic address book. He sat, still steaming with a towel wrapped round his waist, double-checked that Skype was down, and started typing:

  Dear Audrey: This hasn’t happened, but please imagine it has and act accordingly. Bulk Carrier Dagupan Maru several days out of Tokyo (destination unknown but current position presumably somewhere in the North Pacific) wants a replacement captain/first officer. I need to know everyth
ing about this vessel. Cargo, command (if possible), flag and owners as soon as you can. If you run into any difficulties, get Jim Bourne’s Intelligence Section at London Centre involved. Reply to this address or call my Japanese cell on the number you already have. I will be starting with the Tokyo Harbour and Shipping Authorities and seeing what they will put on public record. Richard.

  He flagged it urgent and pressed SEND.

  Then he had a thought. He logged into MarineTraffic.com and put in Dagupan Maru. After a moment, the vessel’s basic details came up beside a blurred photograph, snapped from some distance by the look of things. He scanned swiftly through the details. Ship type, year built, length and breadth, tonnage and so forth. His eyes leaped down the screen looking for more up-to-date information. Something to get him started. Flag: Barbuda. Last position: Vancouver. Current position: blank. Last known port: Vancouver. Information received: thirty days twelve hours sixteen minutes ago. Not currently in range. Voyage-related info: departed Vancouver. Destination: blank. Recent calls: none.

  He scrolled down to the next page, eyes narrow and busy. Vessel’s Wiki: Type – bulk carrier. Owner, Manager, Builder, hull number, class, service status, all blank. He hissed with frustration. Tonnage and dimensions: no new information. Communications, capacity, cargo, engines, officers, crew: all blank.

  ‘She’s a ghost ship, near as, dammit, sailing under a flag of convenience,’ he said to Nic half an hour later as they craned over the laptop sitting amid the wreckage of their breakfast.