Dead Sea

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘What put that in your head?’ asked Nic quietly.

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s something here. Something not quite right.’

  Nic nodded, frowned and shrugged, used to Richard’s sudden flashes of insight. Feeling a little like Dr Watson sitting opposite Sherlock Holmes.

  But after a moment’s silence, their discussion resumed. For they had to assume that someone aboard the sinister container ship – someone at the very least – knew very well what a colossal fortune the bottle might represent.

  And then, like the extra odds always skewed in the house’s favour in Las Vegas casinos, there was the fact that Tanaka’s predictions turned out to be true beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The weather around the Pacific Rim had clearly speeded up the currents of the North Pacific Gyre so that there was in fact a small but expanding continent of floating garbage, a plastic Sargasso Sea, gathering here. A Sargasso that was not yet solid enough to present a hazard to shipping in terms of blocking progress or hard enough to make collision damage likely – unless someone was unlucky enough to run into one of the containers – but which was sure to be full of other, as yet uncalculated, dangers.

  After breakfast, the two men returned to the bridge and stood side by side with the captain and her navigator for a while, as three quiet chimes Warned that it was nine thirty a.m. aboard Poseidon, only two-and-a-half hours from their projected rendezvous. The four of them stood watching as the vessel pushed its way with increasing caution through the slowly thickening trash. Richard’s unease continued to mount and he found himself limping out on to the outer bridge wing where he could come closer to the strange conditions they were sailing through, as though experiencing them with all five senses would also bring him closer to understanding the danger.

  As Nic, less seawise than his battered friend, went below and started looking into business of his own, Richard leaned against the forward rail of the bridge wing, his whole aching body seeming to yearn forward as though some part of him could fly far ahead of Poseidon and come aboard Katapult to Robin. But it wasn’t long before his fatigue-enhanced fancifulness gave way to the need for urgent physical action and he hurried below again, as fast as his bruised and battered body would allow.

  On A deck, he found Nic deep in conversation with Ironwrist Wan and Fatfist Wu, controllers of the submersibles on the foredeck. And it didn’t take long for the four of them to agree that action – any action – would be better than this relentless waiting, made infinitely worse by the amount of decisive energy that it had taken to get two of them here in the first place. And that decision seemed to lift a weight from each man’s shoulders. For, given where they were, there was only one course of action open to each of them.

  But before either Richard or Nic could take anything like the action that they agreed, they were called back up on to the bridge by a peremptory summons broadcast by Captain Chang. ‘What is it?’ demanded Richard as he limped through from the lift abaft the bridge. Captain Chang did not answer. She simply gestured. And there, heaving over the port-quarter horizon was the massive bulk of Dagupan Maru, black against the wide grey sky.

  Richard grabbed the binoculars from their holster on the console beneath the clearview and was limping out on to the port bridge wing even before Nic arrived on the bridge itself behind him. This was the first time he had seen the freighter with his own eyes. And her picture on the laptop files that Jim sent from London Centre – let alone the photo of her name on the drifter’s camera phone – came nowhere near to doing her justice.

  Dagupan Maru was a bloody big brute of a vessel, he thought. Not quite the size of his three-hundred-metre, quarter-of-a-million-ton supertankers like Prometheus, but bigger than any other vessels in the Heritage Mariner fleet. She looked every one of her two hundred metres in length, each of her twenty-five metres beam. And her deadweight tonnage could even be more than Prometheus’s, let alone Poseidon’s. Her command bridge, six decks above her weather deck, watched the watery world ahead of her over the tops of four blunt cranes that seemed like roughly squared oak tree trunks, the arms of their gantries squared away fore and aft in a line above the centre of her deck. There was a forest of satellite, GPS and communications equipment on top of her bridge house which served to make her radio silence more sinister still. There was a tall mast at her forepeak, festooned with radar equipment. And, focusing in on the massive flare of her bow at the foot of this foremast – a broad bow which seemed to him to be little more than a brutal black wall smashing arrogantly through the relative scum of waste – he could all too easily see how its larger sister had ridden down an eight-man Transpac without noticing the impact. How it could equally easily grind down Katapult, or Flint – or both. She was certainly not bothering with Poseidon’s increasingly careful approach. She must be running at full speed, Richard calculated, relying on the huge ram of her bulbous bow to get her safely through the rubbish. But even taking Chang’s caution into account, Poseidon could outsail Dagupan Maru any day of the week.

  ‘Shit,’ came Nic’s voice at his shoulder. ‘So that’s her, is it? She’s sure an ugly-looking brute. Sparks is trying to contact her but she’s not answering.’

  But no sooner had Nic said this than Sparks, the radio officer, was on the bridge wing beside them. ‘I have Katapult,’ he said. ‘Captain Mariner’s on.’

  ‘Richard,’ said Robin’s voice in the radio headphones an instant later. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Only a couple of hours away, closing up behind you in Poseidon,’ he replied.

  ‘What? Why ever are you doing that?’ she demanded.

  ‘In case this garbage gets to be anything like as dangerous as it looks.’

  ‘You’re fussing over nothing! We’ve got this far without needing any help and we’ve no intention of starting to ask for any now. This is a race, not a regatta! We’re being careful. The radio’s been playing up and the sonar’s on the blink but the radar’s fine and we’re tracking the bottle and Flint clearly enough. We see Poseidon’s echo and identification numbers clearly enough, now you mention it, though I can’t get over the fact that you’re aboard her! And anyway, if anything goes wrong, there’s a bloody great freighter just pulling over the northern horizon. I haven’t managed to raise them yet but I’m sure they’d be happy to help.’

  ‘Well, my love, about that . . .’

  Richard was in the middle of his explanation – though he hadn’t got to the bit about the lottery ticket yet – when the four bells gently announced that it was ten a.m. ship’s time midway through the forenoon watch, and the most unexpected thing happened. Suddenly Nic’s cell phone started ringing. He got it out, shaking his head with surprise. And froze.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said. ‘It’s Liberty!’ Then suddenly he was locked in a conversation with his daughter that was in many respects the same as the one Richard was having with his wife.

  Neither man had made any real progress with the fiercely competitive women, when their attention was called to the next stage in the chess game that seemed suddenly to be evolving with disturbing rapidity out across the dead sea ahead of them. For, no sooner had Dagupan Maru settled into their field of vision than a helicopter lifted off it, leaping up from behind the solid wall of the bridge house and skimming forward with disturbing speed.

  Richard broke contact with Robin and crossed to the bridge wing once again, grabbing the binoculars as he went. Then he was out in the stinking morning with the glasses glued to his eyes, scanning the skies for a close-up of the machine. As soon as he focused on it, he started swearing under his breath, for before he could even register the make or model, he saw that it had been fitted with floats. ‘Nic,’ he called, without taking the glasses from his eyes, ‘get Ironwrist and Fatfist to fix floats to Poseidon’s chopper . . .’

  ‘Already done! That was one of the things we were discussing when you joined us on A deck. The pilot’s ready too. You want to go up and see what’s going on out there?’

  ‘Yes,
’ Richard growled. ‘And soon. I hate being caught on the back foot . . .’

  He turned and as he went back through the bridge, he asked, ‘Straightline, can you guide us to Tanaka’s bottle if we go up in the chopper?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. I can get you to the location, but from the look of things it would be too risky for you to land and pick it up.’

  ‘OK. We’ll see when we get there . . .’

  Ten minutes later, Poseidon’s Changhe lifted off with floats attached in case a landing on the water was possible and both Richard and Nic aboard. Richard was happy to occupy the co-pilot’s seat and direct the pilot according to Straightline’s advice from Poseidon’s bridge.

  As soon as Dagupan Maru’s chopper saw the Changhe, it speeded up and so both aircraft sped low across the littered water. Richard’s rotors nearly took the tip off Katapult’s mast as he raced due east and she tacked northward one, maybe two, tacks away from her goal. And for a moment, Richard thought he could hear Robin’s howl of protest at this underhanded cheating.

  The two helicopters arrived at the same point at almost the same moment, saw the same thing and made the same decision – as though they had a choice. For both Chang and Straightline were correct. The sea beneath them was thick with thousands of plastic bottles. Only a very detailed search at sea level would show precisely which one was Tanaka’s Cheerio bottle. But such a search was forbidden to the helicopters by the heaving thickness of dangerous rubbish that the armada of bottles surrounded. There were more containers, clashing together like bergs on the restless Arctic Ocean. Oil drums half the size of tree trunks rolled restlessly in the choppy water. Swathes of commercial netting swirled, waiting to wrap themselves round the choppers’ floats and drag them down. There was no clear water here – none in fact closer than either Katapult which they had just overflown or Flint which they could see approaching on a southerly tack.

  And yet neither chopper wanted to be the first to leave. They circled round the place, watching each other like duellists, as soon as they realized landing was out of the question. And Richard, the earphones clamped over his ears, looked straight into the cabin opposite and saw his opposite number quite clearly. And it took him a moment to register, with a frisson of icy shock, that the man in the Dagupan Maru’s helicopter was not wearing headphones like his own. That the black boxes on those distant ears were permanent fixtures.

  That the unaccountably shocked and angry face opposite did not belong to Professor Reona Tanaka. It belonged to Professor Satang S. Sittart.

  Endgame

  ‘Right!’ snapped Richard. ‘We go back. Now. If Sittart’s involved personally and directly then that changes the game. Gets rid of the rule book, for a start. And makes our car accident, Nic, look a lot less accidental. But Sittart’s not going to risk drowning himself – even for a fortune in lottery winnings! He might be ruthless, sadistic; murderous, even. But he’s not barking mad!’

  The Changhe lifted, turned, began to race back the way she had come. Sittart’s chopper did the same. As they sped towards their next move in this strange, deadly chess game, Richard continued planning aloud. ‘But he’ll have other tricks up his sleeve. Lucky that chopper of his doesn’t look powerful enough to carry anything heavy, or he’d be dropping one of Dagupan Maru’s lifeboats right on top of the bottle next. But he can’t. He could drop a swimmer or a diver I suppose but he’d have a hell of a job retrieving them – even if they could survive in that mess for long enough to find the bottle. So if he wants to go in at sea level he’ll have to wait till the freighter’s closer and lower a boat from there. And lifeboats aren’t noted for their speed. Which explains why the freighter’s running at the top of the green. Straightline, do you think we could risk one of Poseidon’s Zodiacs? They’re faster than lifeboats.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to put an inflatable into that,’ cut in Captain Chang decisively. ‘Even the Kevlar-reinforced sides would stand very little chance. I would hesitate to permit you to try it – and I would forbid my crew outright.’

  ‘Right,’ said Richard. ‘That settles that! Flank speed for the moment, please, Captain and get ready to try Plan B as soon as we land.’

  ‘Flank speed?’ spat Chang across the airwaves. ‘Not through this, Captain Mariner. I go safe speed, thank you very much. Still plenty fast though!’

  ‘No,’ said Richard gruffly twenty minutes later, sounding a lot like Captain Chang. ‘Even if you have got her prepped and ready, it’s too risky for you to take her out, Nic, even after Liberty. We stick with what we discussed at breakfast and on the flight back in. I don’t mind running the risk of dropping Neptune overboard without slowing down but if you go out in Salacia, we’ll have to heave to. And you know we can’t afford the time. Not only that, but Salacia is our camouflage. She’s positioned between Neptune and Dagupan Maru. She’ll mask what we’re doing and give us an element of surprise. But if we deploy her, that will simply give our hand away. Besides,’ he continued, moderating his tone, ‘you know we’ll be more flexible if we’re all still aboard. Far more use to both of our girls if push comes to shove . . .’

  Nic turned mutinously and strode across the foredeck until the port-quarter safety rail stopped him. He stared out into the gusty grey morning as though he could see Flint in the distance racing towards them along her southerly tack. But all Richard could see over his friend’s shoulder was the restless ocean with Dagupan Maru still well to the north smashing relentlessly southward, and Katapult running up towards her, ready to change tack – perhaps for the last time before she reached the bottle. The wind battered fitfully under the upturned hull of Poseidon’s port-side Zodiac and howled in the equipment supporting Salacia above Nic’s head. The starboard gantry above Richard groaned as it jumped into motion, swinging Neptune out over the littered surface. Then Nic turned back. ‘When you’re right, you’re right,’ he said, decisively. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  He joined Richard at the starboard rail, and they felt the deck angle slightly as Neptune swung out over the water. Then the pair of them watched with sharp-eyed concentration for a relatively clear bit of ocean. Richard didn’t mind taking the risk of dropping Neptune while her mother ship was still running, but he was not about to drop the precious remote vehicle on to a solid container or into a cat’s cradle of tangled netting.

  Then, ‘There!’ called Nic, and Richard saw what he was pointing to: a patch of water that seemed to be soiled with nothing more substantial than a rainbow skim of oil. Richard raised his hand and the team in charge of the gantry tensed at his signal. ‘Three . . . Two . . . One . . .’ he growled, then slammed his arm down. And started swearing at the sudden pain that seared through his shoulder. Neptune dropped.

  Richard hurried down to the control room in Poseidon’s bulbous bow where Ironwrist sat waiting for him to fill the second operator’s chair. The Chinese controller was flooding the submersible’s tanks at the same time as running through the speediest of start-up routines.

  Richard took over as soon as he arrived, pushing the throttles to maximum even as the lights came on and the video-feeds from the on-board cameras went live. The first thing the submersible saw was the stern of her mothership departing in a swirl of bubbles as Poseidon raced on forward. Richard and Ironwrist angled Neptune’s crablike body like the well-practised team they were, following Poseidon as faithfully as a duckling chasing its mother, checking for a safe depth without losing too much forward motion, but staying on the surface for the moment. At full speed, Neptune could manage ten knots, a fantastic pace for a submersible, and one that Richard had found useful in the past. Ten knots was about half the velocity the cautious captain was currently allowing Poseidon to do. And just comparable with the ten knots Sittart’s freighter was capable of. But they needed more of an edge than that.

  ‘Monitors on,’ said Nic’s voice in Richard’s headphones, confirming that they had visual on the bridge.

  ‘Looks like we’re clear from about three metres down,’ said Ric
hard, checking the range of readouts on the screens in front of him while pushing Neptune forward in Poseidon’s churning wake, relying on the adapted frigate’s hull to keep things clear ahead for the moment. ‘There’ll be one or two containers and maybe some drifts of netting sitting that deep, but not much.

  ‘Now, let’s get to work. Straightline, you keep me updated on the location of the bottle and I’ll get that precisely factored in to Neptune’s GPS guidance. Nic, you keep me up to speed with both what you can see on the red-dot display and out of the clearview. I suspect we’re getting close to the point where eyes in your head will be more useful than eyes in the sky. Or eyes under the water, for the moment. Going for a basic series of remote arm and gripper tests as long as they don’t slow us down any. Fatfist, are you ready with the after line?’

  ‘Ready,’ came the crisp reply.

  ‘Engage,’ ordered Richard. And three decks above his head, the whole length of the sleek hull astern, Fatfist Wu fired the magnetic bolt on the end of the long line that would join Neptune to Poseidon until Richard chose to break contact and set his little command free to do her underwater work. The bolt flew like a harpoon from an old-fashioned whaling gun and hit squarely on the magnetic link pad on Neptune’s broad yellow bow where it held as though superglued in place. At once, Neptune was jerked forward through the water at twenty knots as Poseidon pulled her forward. And at last, having calculated the safe depth for their vessel, Richard and Ironwrist angled the planes and finished flooding the tanks while Fatfist played the ungainly remote vehicle like a fish on the end of the towline. ‘It should be me up there,’ mourned Ironwrist. ‘I’m the big fisherman aboard Poseidon!’