Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘But why bother?’ asked the Pitman suddenly. ‘Why go to all this trouble to make the ship think it’s in one place when it’s really in another? I mean, shit, even if this is some kind of Mafia insurance scam like Ivan says his father and your London Centre people suspect, then it hardly seems likely that it all turns on this boat being a couple of hours ahead of where she thinks she ought to be.’

  ‘The prime directive,’ said Richard. ‘It’s buried so deep in the programming that not even these guys can get at it. No one can. If Sayonara gets within fifty miles of her destination and is more than a few hundred yards off position, she’s programmed to shut down, send out a distress call and wait for someone to come aboard and put her safely and securely where she’s supposed to be. She’s a bit like a super tanker, remember. She may behave well enough in the right hands and under the right circumstances, but she takes a hell of a long time to stop. Even longer to turn round. So, if there’s any danger, then she shuts down. Prime directive. We thought it was foolproof.’

  ‘Cool. Like Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics.’

  ‘We took every precaution we could think of. Well, that Rikki Sato could think of. I mean, look at how far advanced the Japanese robotics industry is. What was the name of the voice-controlled robot they sent to the International Space Station in 2013? Kirobo?’ He paused for a moment, then added: ‘But you have an important mission too, Pitman. You have to make sure that if and when Sayonara does dock at NIPEX tomorrow morning, that there’s nothing on board designed to go bang at an inappropriate moment. I mean, these guys have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to do whatever they’re doing. If we’re talking surprisingly simple, what could be simpler than fooling around with the programmes to distract us from the fact that there’s a socking great bomb somewhere on board? Remember, Kolchak said there was a whole network of bombs attached to the signal blocker up above our heads. Why shouldn’t there be something even bigger somewhere on board that we don’t know about? Perhaps you’d better check on that. Now, what was the second part of the message?’

  ‘Oh. Right. That was from Ivan. As we’re sure we’re dealing with the ’Ndrangheta, he’s got a list of people on board who have contacts with Italy. I mean, he threw the net pretty wide. Even counted this guy Aleks Zaitsev, just because he’s skied there a lot.’

  ‘Do you have the list?’

  ‘No. He needs to talk it through with you. I mean, fair enough, Doctor Sato’s daughter is in Italy and someone might well be able to pressure him through her. But does he count Zaitsev because he’s skied there? Or this other guy because he served with NATO in Naples, or the cocksmith who’s got an Italian firecracker girlfriend? I mean, where does he draw the line?’

  ‘He doesn’t draw the line anywhere. Steve Penn has Italian blood, I’ll swear. Not to mention Domenico Giancarlo DiVito …’ He massaged the crusted lump on the back of his skull thoughtfully. ‘If anyone on board even likes Italian food, I want to know.’

  ‘Well, you can start with me then. I’d live on pizza and pasta given the chance. But I’ll pass on the message.’ The Pitman became just another shadow, moving silently to the back of the bridge.

  ‘If you lived on pizza and pasta you’d be the size of a house in no time,’ whispered Richard.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ she breathed back as she oozed out of the door. ‘I have a lot of nervous energy. And I lead a very active life.’

  By the time the Pitman left the bridge it was coming up to nine a.m. on Sayonara, and dawn in the outside world. Richard returned to the helm. He tested the telegraph again but the engines continued doing their own thing. Or rather, the computer progamme’s own thing. He swung the helm hard over to port. And Sayonara continued on her pre-programmed course without deviation or hesitation, wherever that course may now lead them to. ‘OK, computers,’ he said. ‘You have the ship. I’m going out on the bridge wing for a breath of fresh air. As if I didn’t get enough when the windows came in.’ He strode past the pilot’s chair – which now looked a little the worse for wear having been blasted with shattered glass and hosed down with a considerable volume of the North Pacific Ocean. He opened the bridge-wing door, surprised at how stiff and unwieldy it was, and stepped out into the truncated tube-train carriage of the covered section. On his right was the doorway leading on to the external companionway, up which they had carried the wounded Kolchak uncounted hours ago. Straight ahead, at the far end of the covered section, was the door out on to the open area where the equipment necessary for docking was – if humans were doing the ship handling. There was a secondary heading readout, a slave telegraph for the engines and a gyrocompass. But Richard was planning to use none of these because they were all rendered redundant by the fact that the computers were back in control. Instead, he was going to take the binoculars from their pouch on the wall beside the bulkhead door that led outside and watch the dawn coming up.

  But as soon as he stepped off the command bridge, Richard was aware that something was out of kilter, literally. For the bridge wing was at a slope now, where it had been level and square when they carried the wounded soldier out here. He found himself looking up a slight slope, aware that the deck on his left was slightly uphill from the deck on his right. He remembered the strange noises during the typhoon and the moment Macavity had leaped out of the pilot’s chair to appear at his side while he still held the helm. The wing had been hit by a wave big enough to warp it. He remembered reading about how the first Queen Elizabeth had been pounded by a rogue in the North Atlantic when she was working as a troop carrier during World War Two. The impact had been so colossal that it had torn the whole superstructure back by two clear feet. Without further thought, he jumped up and down on the spot. Everything seemed solid enough. So he continued with his excursion as planned. With all his attention focused on the far door he walked forward, compensating for the slope so he could keep in a straight line. His attention was fixed on the door, and it wavered only for the second it took for him to flip up the top of the binoculars’ pouch and pull them out. Then he twisted the handles on the outer bridge-wing door, swung it wide and stepped out into the morning.

  Richard had been paying no attention to the gathering brightness, nor the widening vistas in the windows of the covered bridge wing on purpose. Like a child, saving all the best-looking presents to be opened last at Christmas, he had been anticipating this moment. After the darkness of the prison cell followed by the dimness of the typhoon and then the total obscurity of the stormy night, he had planned that he should be overwhelmed by the enormity of the dawn. And so he was, even more so than he had anticipated.

  The sky above him seemed unimaginably vast. From the horizon away on his left a veil of thin cloud rose up to the very top of the dome. Then it stopped and there was dark blue curving down from the deeps of space towards the invisible Japanese coast away on his right. The cloud stopped in a straight line. Richard turned slowly, through one hundred and eighty degrees, using his eyes alone at first, then his binoculars. It was as though the sky had been painted in two different colours. And the straight line which was the edge of the cloud led directly along Sayonara’s path, as though the computers guiding her had somehow arranged for the whole world – the entire universe – to help guide her home. The wind gusted steadily from behind him as he faced forward again, pulling the binoculars away so that he could appreciate the enormity of the phenomenon. The northerly wind blew gustily but persistently, as though trying to push him – as well as his command – forward along that predetermined line. It smelt of freshness, of ozone, of new paint and metal. It carried, within its rumbling gusts, the sound of distant gulls at their morning feed.

  And the ocean seemed to catch colour from the strange sky. On Richard’s right, from where the waves were running in, the water was deep blue, the troughs between the tall rollers as dark as the deeps between the stars. Their faces, though, were pale, almost steely, taking their colour from the clouds on his left towards which they were runn
ing. But as they passed the ship, their backs caught blue from the sky on his right, dragging flashes of periwinkle, lapis, sapphire and ultramarine into the pale grey expanse of the eastern ocean dominated by the cloud cover. For a moment the waters around the gently rolling vessel looked like a huge blue opal. Distractingly like the Pitman’s pale, opaque blue eyes.

  But then, away on the eastern horizon, at the very point where the grey clouds closed down on the curve of the sea, a bright green light appeared. It was the moment Richard had come out here to enjoy. The sun was rising, past the eastern curve of the earth. Shining through the thickness of the North Pacific Ocean and igniting the whole of the watery eastern horizon in shades of gold and emerald, as though there was some huge, almost nuclear explosion being detonated in slow motion far beneath the distant waves.

  It was dawn, thought Richard, uplifted alike by the beauty of the moment and the promise of the new day, completely oblivious to the fact that the image of the rising sun came all too close to the possible fate of this vessel as he had just been discussing it with the Pitman. He was far too focused on the fact that it was eleven a.m. on board. Seven a.m. in Japan. Seventy-seven hours since the first alarm went off.

  Twenty-three hours to go.

  23 Hours to Impact

  Austrian Airlines flight OS51 completed its short finals and approached Narita airport more than half an hour ahead of schedule. The sun was lost behind a high overcast away to the right over the North Pacific, but it was strong enough to give a strange, pearly luminescence to the oddly two-toned sky. From this angle, it was possible to see that the wall of cloud that ran straight across the crest of the heavens from north to south was edged with tall battlements of cumulus. And that, above their rounded, almost woolly tops, the sky was clear and already a strikingly dark blue. The land and sea beneath this odd arrangement were an unsettling mixture of light and shadow which caused many of the passengers to crane their necks as they looked out of the windows, simply awestruck by the view. Robin Mariner did not look out of the window at her right shoulder to gawp at the atmospheric anomaly or the spectacular lighting effects that resulted from it. She did not turn her golden head to admire the burgeoning floating city of Kujukuri in the bay beneath the starboard wing. She didn’t even glance at the brightly lit Bashnev/Sevmash floating nuclear facility Zemlya, though her company had long been associated with it and actually owned and crewed the two tugs Erebus and Terror that were secured to either side of it. Zemlya needed Erebus and Terror to move her, for the huge facility was simply a nuclear power station that had been built on a barge. It could – and did – give out thousands of kilowatts of heat and energy, but was unable to move itself. In that way, the power station was a perfect symbol of the symbiotic relationship between the British shipping company and the Russian energy giant. Without the Heritage Mariner tugs the Bashnev/Sevmash power station was, effectively, powerless. But such thoughts were far beyond Robin’s capability at the moment. In her head it was still eight hours earlier – ten p.m. London time – but in her slowly wakening body it was far too early for her to be facing a new day. The whole experience was disorientating at best. Distressing at worst. And downright irritating in the absence of her morning cup of fragrant English Breakfast tea.

  The flight from Vienna had taken eleven hours, and Robin had toyed with the idea of doing some work to distract herself from her worries about her bloody husband and his bloody ship. But then she had decided that the best refuge lay in what she needed most in any case – sleep. If she slept during the flight, she would arrive in Tokyo bright-eyed, bushy tailed and raring to go. Ready to face whatever crisis loomed and overcome whatever disaster Richard had got himself mixed up in now. Or that was the theory, at least. But then, as Robin was making her plans, the chef came around with menus and she was at once distracted by the thought of food, for she had eaten nothing since the previous evening. Even the tea at her breakfast meeting seemed incredibly far in the past. Her most recent gastronomic memory was of talking herself out of buying those wonderful strudels in Vienna International. Fool that she was, how she regretted her self-discipline now. So, when the crew had taken orders for the meal, Robin found that hers was a surprisingly lengthy one. Although in her head it was only half past two, she treated the late lunch as though it was a full dinner, hoping to fool her subconscious into believing that after dinner time came bed time.

  Her meal made her feel full but not in the least bit sleepy, in spite of the wine that went with it. In her head it was still early evening – her subconscious had not been fooled at all – and in Richard’s absence her body had become used to keeping student hours. So in the end she had taken a couple of Zoliclone tablets and they had simply poleaxed her, in spite of the fact that her seat was not the most comfortable she had ever sat in and the legroom felt a little cramped, especially as her slim ankles were wedged between her laptop case and her handbag. Now, eight hours later, she was regretting the combination of dinner, wine and sleeping pills, even though it had meant the equivalent of a full night’s deep and dreamless unconsciousness. The promise of being bright-eyed and bushy tailed seemed a long way off. Never a morning person, she blinked sleepily awake as the flight attendant leaned across the silent Japanese couple in the middle and aisle seats to her left and shook her gently by the shoulder. The plane was lining up for the landing. It was too late to visit the lavatory – and her mood was further darkened by her pressing need to do so.

  An irritatingly ebullient pilot came on to the tannoy, reminding them that he was Captain Ernst Mach, and announcing in jolly Germanic tones that they would be landing more than half an hour ahead of schedule at seven a.m. Japan Standard Time. The weather in Tokyo was clear and sunny, he informed them cheerily. It was currently twenty-five degrees Celsius, though thirty-one degrees was predicted. The humidity was a sticky seventy-six per cent and there was a light, northerly wind blowing at approximately eleven miles per hour. The unbearable Captain Mach said more but Robin was too busy setting her watch to Tokyo time as a distraction from the demands of her bladder. She pulled her handbag up from beside her ankles, put it in her lap and pulled out her compact. She flipped up the mirror section, studied her face and hair and gave a groan that made the young Japanese couple beside her glance over in silent concern. ‘Oh you bloody, bloody man,’ she snarled. ‘This is all your flaming fault!’

  Robin came out of International Arrivals like a Valkyrie heading for a battlefield. Anastasia was waiting for her, and it was fortunate that the pair of them were old friends, but nothing fazed the Russian, so she would probably have handled the wild woman who was unexpectedly confrontational without too much trouble. ‘Lavatory!’ was Robin’s first word, for the facilities in the baggage collection area had been out of order. Anastasia obligingly led the way, making no comment at all about the state of Robin’s travelling outfit, make-up or coiffure. She stood guard over Robin’s luggage trolley for the better part of fifteen minutes before a very much more cheerful and presentable woman emerged to greet her friend with her second word so far: ‘Tea.’

  Unfortunately the only café nearby, Ikkyu, did not sell English Breakfast tea, so Robin contented herself with a cup of coffee that turned out to be very pleasant indeed. Fortunately so, for the smell of noodles in fish stock was not the sort of thing Robin liked to expose herself to at breakfast time, and the young Japanese couple from her flight were partaking of the restaurant’s famous Kansai-style soba noodle breakfast. But as the caffeine hit her system, the day began to take on a much more positive aspect. ‘What’s the news?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Sayonara seems to have come through the typhoon all right,’ Anastasia answered. ‘There appears to be a bit of a conflict between the last GPS report we’ve had from the ship itself and the position as reported by the Japanese coastguards, but apart from that things are looking more positive.’

  ‘So I’ve come rushing out here for nothing?’ Robin’s expression darkened.

  ‘Not quite,’
soothed Anastasia swiftly. ‘The NIPEX board has called a meeting for midday local time in their new Choshi headquarters, and both Bashnev/Sevmash and Heritage Mariner have been invited. I thought I was going to have to go alone. But now I don’t.’

  ‘OK,’ said Robin. ‘So we need to discuss what that’s all about, and plan how we’re going to play things. I’m booked out at the Radisson. Where are you?’

  ‘The Radisson,’ answered Anastasia. ‘It’s high end, Western-friendly and does not do Japanese scale micro-accommodation. Moreover, it’s convenient for the airport. But it’s twenty-five miles or so from Choshi.’

  ‘OK,’ said Robin, finishing her coffee. ‘Radisson first, Choshi in due course. Cunning plans on the hoof as we move. Let’s go. Shuttle or taxi?’

  ‘You kidding me?’ Anastasia’s brown eyes were wide with outrage. Her hands made an elegant gesture that emphasized the breathtaking little Chanel two-piece business suit under her Peter Jensen black lace coat, all accentuated by a white quilted Chanel shoulder bag that matched her white-piped black kid stiletto pumps that had Christian Louboutin written all over them. ‘I’m not some penny-conscious British businesswoman worried about tax returns and expenses. I’m a biznissman! I do not shuttle anywhere. Come on. I have a limo waiting. And a guy who’ll take care of all this baggage!’

  A uniformed chauffeur was waiting patiently at the nearest meeting point and he relieved Robin of her trolley before leading them out into the car park, where a gleaming black Toyota Century limousine sat looking a lot like a Rolls Royce waiting to transport the queen. And, thought Robin, glancing enviously at her stunning companion, that was just as it should be. It was a fifteen-minute ride to the Radisson in a blissfully air-conditioned silence that smelt of fine leather and wood polish, then the chauffeur handed Robin’s cases over to a bell boy who accompanied her to the airy white marble reception and helped her check in while Anastasia made sure that the driver and his limousine would be ready to run them over to Choshi at eleven. The women and the bell boy rode up in the capacious lift together to Robin’s top-floor suite. ‘Now this is more like it,’ said Robin as they followed the bell boy into her accommodation. She had been booked into a junior suite with business-class upgrade. The room was huge for a Japanese hotel, with more than fifty square metres of airy space. As they came past the bathroom, the little entrance corridor opened to reveal a big double bed, a free-standing mahogany wardrobe, armchairs, a coffee table groaning with complimentary fruit and flowers and a work area with a desk, lamp, chair and laptop port. The decor was a quiet and tasteful mixture of browns and creams. Robin felt herself relaxing as she took a deep breath and let the atmosphere soak in. ‘I’d stick with coffee,’ said Anastasia. ‘There’s a Nespresso machine over here.’