‘Not Shanghai, not Shanghai,’ he thought she said.
‘You don’t want to go to Shanghai? I know.’
With an effort she shook her head. ‘Not Shanghai,’ she repeated, gradually mastering herself. ‘They stop you, make you go Hong Kong . . . Phan . . . the gun. They catch ship . . .’
‘Catch ship? You mean seize the ship? When, for God’s sake? When?’
‘Now!’ she almost shouted at him, ‘Now! He help them!’
Comprehension dawned on Stevenson. He looked forward at the extension of the bridge-wing, pale against the already lightening sky. What the hell was going on up there?
‘Come,’ he said with a sudden, harsh urgency, ‘I take you my cabin. You have wash, take my clothes, lock door. You’ll be quite safe.’
The habits of half a lifetime spent as a watch-keeping officer die hard. Despite his years as Master, Mackinnon could never sleep longer than seven hours without waking. Moreover, a man with a problem which has pierced him to his soul will wake the moment his tired body lifts from its deepest slumber, not stopping at that dreaming plane of shallow sleep from which most of us emerge every morning. In Captain Mackinnon’s case, with several problems claiming his attention, he rose like a breaching whale to lie anxious and wide awake in the first grey glimmer of dawn.
His initial anxiety for the ship was thrust aside the instant he knew from her motion that the typhoon had passed and they ran through nothing more than a near-gale. It was swiftly replaced by a deep anger. He felt demeaned and insulted by James Dent’s message, not merely because it would cause ructions amongst the majority of the crew, but because it was manipulative, dragging Shelagh into the matter of the disposal of the Matthew Flinders. He began to suspect some skulduggery attendant upon the sale of the ship, in which the unplanned arrival of the refugees had somehow served James Dent to his profit.
It was the sort of luck fate doled out in abundance to his ilk: Mackinnon did not like James Dent. Putting aside an old man’s prejudice against a younger man set above him, he disapproved of Dent’s cynical attitude to his company’s ships. Bent on preserving Dentco as a viable commercial house, James Dent had diversified into other fields, bought into other interests, none of which had anything to do with shipping. His ships had receded from the forefront of his business; they had been flagged out, their crews subjected to an erosion of their conditions of service and their quality of life. In competition with the cheap labour of the Third World, his employees, many having given long years of service with the proud tradition of being part of Britain’s Merchant Navy, were unashamedly reduced to Third World status.
For Mackinnon such a thing was unforgivable, an arrogant disregard of a great trading house’s responsibilities; a squandering of a national asset in the squalid name of profit and, worst of all, a betrayal of the thousands who had died in war.
Musing in the twilight, Mackinnon could hear Able Seaman Bird’s tirade against shipowners as the lifeboat tossed on the heaving bosom of the grey Atlantic. It had not proved the rantings of a crank Bolshevik, after all . . .
Whilst Mackinnon did not trouble himself to fathom the scam Dent was working, beyond the obvious reason that the Matthew Flinders would have fetched a better price sold for further trading than for scrap, it disturbed him to realise how they had unwittingly played into Dent’s hands by their humanitarian rescue. Of course, Mackinnon reasoned to himself, humanitarian acts were inimical to the cold logic of profit. By complicating the arrival of the ship in Hong Kong with the presence of the Vietnamese, Mackinnon was in no doubt Dent had enlisted the weight of the authorities by way of counter-measure. He would have played the game of influential contacts so that the Hong Kong government would refuse entry to the ship. There was no evidence for Sparks’s hunch, but Mackinnon’s instinct endorsed it and now he feared the worst.
But what of the refugees themselves? How could he, complaining of Dent’s capitalist logic, deliver them to Shanghai? On the grounds that it was his duty? Duty to whom? To Dent? Was Dent so powerful that the fate of those wretched people depended upon John Mackinnon’s sense of obligation to James Dent?
What exactly was his duty? He had built his life upon duty and obedience; to duty and his obligations to his owners just as he had expected obedience from those who served under him. But the pure responsibility of a Master for his ship and its people were ineluctable. This very obligation had sustained him and his men in the past hours and, with God’s help, brought the ship and all but three of the souls confided to her, through the typhoon. Any dereliction of such a duty was a spiritual matter for his conscience, and a temporal matter for the Department of Transport . . .
No, it was not! He realised that the formal apparatus of government to whom he was responsible was no longer that of Britain; Sparks had pointed that out. Furthermore, Dent himself had flagged the ship out and he, Mackinnon, was answerable to a government in Central America!
Surely then the duty he was now laid under by Dent’s signal was a different matter. The company as Mackinnon knew it was finished, the Matthew Flinders their last ship. When the voyage ended James Dent would wash his hands of all her people; they would, in that term of disposal hallowed by usage, be ‘discharged’.
And among those luckless people, among whom even the detestable Macgregor was a prince, were one hundred and forty-six Vietnamese refugees.
How could he deliver them to the cousins of their Communist persecutors?
He found sleep had increased his desire to do something for the refugees. It would doubtless be confounded, the unfortunate boat people would end up in a wire cage on Stonecutter’s Island in Hong Kong harbour, but he had to make some gesture, no matter how quixotic. Nor could he remain detached for much longer; his influence over their lives would last only until the ship reached port, and if he chose to flout Dent’s order and go to Hong Kong, that time diminished rapidly.
It struck him with poignant urgency, so much a part of him had it become, that he would cease to command the Matthew Flinders when they arrived – and Hong Kong was less than twenty-four hours away . . .
Mackinnon threw off his bedclothes and drew back his window curtains. A grey daylight revealed a grey sea, the streaks of spume no more than old scars and no threat as the ship ploughed doggedly along, throwing out her bow wave as she plunged and drove northwards. Overhead the cloud was breaking up; the cold fire of fading stars showed against the sky.
Where exactly were they? Had Rawlings got his star sights?
Mackinnon was seized with a sensation of sudden panic. He shoved his feet into his slippers and reached for his red silk dressing gown. It occurred to him with a sense of gut-wrenching haste, this was his last morning in a sea-going command, perhaps his last at sea. He wanted to be on the bridge, to draw the stars down to the horizon and swing the arcs of their altitudes against the rim of the world and find that most exciting thing a navigator can: exactly where in all the wide oceans of the globe they were.
He struggled into his dressing gown, cursing the fact that he had drawn one sleeve inside out when last he had taken it off. The crepuscular moment when star and horizon were visible did not last long. Stumbling out of his day room he squelched on the wet mess of his cabin carpet. The book about the Uffizi lay face down, its glossy paper ruinously welded by the water. Stupefied by fatigue, he had not noticed it last night. He felt a momentary pang of conscience for Shelagh, picked up the sodden book and put it on his settee. He must hurry!
His last dawn . . .
In his haste he fumbled with the girdle of the red silk dressing gown. How many dawns had he spent taking star sights as Chief Officer? And afterwards, before the news of the child’s death, how many hours had he paced the bridge, cock of the walk, amid the smell of bacon and eggs floating up from the galley, waiting for the Third Mate to relieve him at eight o’clock, recalling Akiko’s quickly responding body arching with pleasure as he made those last thrusting movements before the torrent of release . . .?
He stepped into the alleyway and collided with Stevenson.
‘Thank God they haven’t caught you, sir!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Signs of the Times
‘What the hell . . .?’
Mackinnon staggered back white-faced as Stevenson thrust the Captain into his cabin.
‘Not much time to explain,’ hissed Stevenson urgently, ‘but please listen, sir.’ The Second Mate flung himself to his knees before the ship’s safe, as if suddenly mastered by an impulse to pray. For a moment Mackinnon thought he had taken leave of his senses, seeing the bruise and broken skin on his forehead, then the younger man looked up at him, anxiety etched in every muscle of his face.
‘Best get some clothes on, sir.’ He turned back to the safe, explaining in a torrent of words as he twisted the combination lock. ‘A small group of Vietnamese have seized the bridge. Tam, the girl, told me. I stuck my head over the after end; they’ve got a gun up there, it must be the automatic we were looking for. Two of them are somewhere around; I thought they were after you. Macgregor’s in with them . . .’
Stevenson yanked open the safe door, pulled out the pistol and closed it again. Mackinnon was struggling into shorts in the doorway of his night cabin, trying to digest what Stevenson was telling him after a moment’s total incredulity.
‘You don’t have any more slugs, sir?’ Stevenson asked, looking down at the handful of dull brass cartridges.
‘No.’ Mackinnon pulled on socks and shoes. ‘Where’s Macgregor now?’
‘I left him laid out in the radio-room. He’d wrecked the place.’
‘The bastard,’ Mackinnon swore. ‘They’ve got Rawlings, then?’
‘Yes, Macgregor was his first lookout . . .’
‘Christ . . . what do they want, the Vietnamese? Did the girl know?’
‘I know what they don’t want. They don’t want to go to Shanghai, sir.’
Something in Stevenson’s voice caught Mackinnon’s attention. Buttoning his shirt heavy with the stiff epaulettes of Master, Mackinnon asked, ‘And where exactly do your sympathies lie, Alex?’
Stevenson paused. He had been relieved to find Mackinnon unmolested. He was now anxious not to be delayed, to rush back to the bridge ladder and storm it as quickly as possible. Mackinnon’s cool appraisal steadied him; besides, the Captain had never addressed him by his Christian name before.
‘Me, sir? Why, I . . .’ He dropped his eyes.
‘If you’re fond of the girl you can’t want her given back to the Communists.’
Stevenson looked Mackinnon squarely in the eyes. ‘No, I don’t. How did you know?’
A faint smile curled Mackinnon’s weathered features. ‘I guessed that at six in the morning with you not in your bunk.’
‘Ah,’ broke in Stevenson ruefully, ‘it wasn’t quite like that.’
‘The thing is, Alex, I have no intention of taking this ship to Shanghai. Ironically, I had already decided that a wire compound on Stonecutter’s Island was probably preferable to turning them over to the Chinese.’
Stevenson’s face brightened. ‘That’s fantastic, sir.’
‘Up to a point, perhaps,’ Mackinnon said drily. He ran his thumbs round his waistband, pulling the front of his shirt tight across his paunch, ‘but Hong Kong or Shanghai, it’s my decision, and my responsibility; not some bloody Glaswegian cowboy and his unlikely allies.’ Mackinnon paused, then added, ‘So are you with me?’
‘Of course, sir.’ Stevenson grinned, then held out the gun.
Mackinnon shook his head. ‘No, you hang on to that, just tuck it out of sight.’ With a kind of fascination Mackinnon watched Stevenson’s brown forearm bend as he stuck the dully gleaming pistol into his waistband. He remembered his earlier vision of a world full of gun-toting young men. It was tragic that now among them his own Second Mate had to be numbered.
God, he was becoming an old fool! Had he not long ago decided the lot of the world was turmoil and tragedy? How could he stand dithering philosophically when a few feet overhead his ship was in alien hands?
Perhaps he was already unfit for his job.
‘Come,’ he snapped with sudden harshness, ‘let’s go and see how to get out of this mess.’
Macgregor came to his senses through a red blur. The whole of his face throbbed and his exploring hand pulled back reflexively from the sensitive bruising. He stared at it, his eyes focussing on blood. Stevenson’s battering had broken the skin over his cheekbones and his nose felt huge on a face he sensed was grotesque.
‘The bastard,’ Macgregor groaned, but the venom had gone out of him: he had been beaten yet again. He lay back, one of life’s perpetual underdogs, only then becoming aware of what he had been cheated of. His bare loins, the jeans twisted round his ankles, the sheer discomfort of his position, gradually spurred him to movement more than any motive for vengeance.
Standing, hands on the desk he had smashed earlier, he remembered the fire axe. Very slowly it seeped into Macgregor’s brain that with such a weapon he could bring an overwhelming superiority to bear upon Mister Fucking Stevenson.
For, in Macgregor’s battered brain, Stevenson had had only one purpose in intervening: he wanted the girl. The lassie would never grass on what was going on on the ship, for she had no more desire to go to Shanghai than the others, so she would either let Stevenson screw her or fight him off – and Macgregor flattered himself that she had little fight left in her. But the thought brought him no comfort: Stevenson was a winner and the bitch would let him have her . . .
With ponderous intent Macgregor went in search of the fire axe he had discarded earlier.
On the bridge Phan Van Nui awaited the return of his two confederates. He had told them that before they dealt with any of the sleeping crew, the engine-room door had to be secured. It was at the after end of the main-deck alleyway, abaft the galley and not far from the saloon. It was from there they had heard and seen it open and close, felt the blast of warm, oily air as the boiler-suited engineers went in and out. They needed no assistance from Macgregor to devise a way of lashing the outer dogs so that no one could get out. In fact it was the simplicity with which they had discovered this fact that had led them to conceive the plan, once the rumour of their destination became fact. In the circumstance it was of no great importance. Phan did not know of the other means of access to the engine-room. The small door in the funnel was not commonly used, and although the shaft tunnel had provided entry and exit during the typhoon, Phan Van Nui did not appreciate it.
As soon as his men returned and reported the task completed it would be time to take the Captain hostage. Then they could dispense with Macgregor’s help altogether. Phan Van Nui did not trust Macgregor. Giving him the girl got him out of the way and would occupy him for long enough to complete their stratagem. Afterwards . . .
Phan Van Nui lit a cigarette and smiled. Far away in the east, unseen behind rolls of thick cloud, the sun rose.
Mackinnon left his cabin with no plan as to how he intended to recapture his ship. He was motivated by outrage and anger that anyone should have the effrontery to take it from him to the extent of leaving the pistol in Stevenson’s possession. It was an irrational act in itself, but to Mackinnon the very thought of dispossession was so inimical that he wanted no fuss, no risk, no misunderstanding to attend the simple fact of his reassuming what was rightfully his.
He was not in any doubt at all that morally and legally he was in the right. He had no intention of delivering the boat people to Shanghai, but he was damned if the flouting of James Dent’s ‘order’ was going to be perceived by anyone as anything other than his own decision. He strode towards the foot of the ladder to the chart-room, reaching it at the same moment Phan’s confederates ran up from securing the engine-room door.
The confrontation was brief. The panting Vietnamese saw before them the bulky figure of Captain Mackinnon. The alleyway light gleamed on his epaulettes and the gold-braided peak of the cap that he had seized insti
nctively as he left his cabin. They paused briefly at this formidable apparition and lost any initiative their sudden appearance might have gained them. The affronted Mackinnon let out a bull roar and drove at them. His huge fists reached out and each grabbed a handful of singlet, thrusting the wearers back against the bulkhead with a jarring impact. The two Vietnamese howled as their heads cracked against the steel and then, down the stairwell from the dark shadows of the bridge above, came the ear-splitting rattle and the zip and clang, the sparks and wild ricochet of automatic gunfire.
Maddened by this further outrage, his hands still on his two would-be captors, Mackinnon twisted to one side and hurled them both down the stairs to the promenade deck. They were small men, light from under-nourishment, out of breath from their exertions and fearful of the furious strength of the starched white figure assaulting them. They fell in an ungainly bundle, bruised but not seriously hurt in their ignominious tumble.
As he disposed of them, Mackinnon turned back and roared at the man on the bridge. ‘Stop firing at once!’
Stevenson had been a yard or two behind the Captain and had never made the turn round the bottom of the bridge ladder. At the terrifying burst of machine-gun fire, he had drawn back towards the Captain’s cabin. The noisy effect of the ricochets in the confined space paralysed him as flying wooden splinters were flung from the door frame of a cabin in the athwartships alleyway. Already aware of the situation and fearful of the outcome, he was not encouraged by Mackinnon’s fury. In the wake of the Captain, the stream of automatic fire seemed specifically directed at himself. He found himself sitting, his legs kicking back up the alleyway until he felt the coarse coir of the doormat outside Mackinnon’s cabin rasp his bare thighs. At that moment Mackinnon roared out his command to cease fire.
Miraculously Phan Van Nui obeyed. His thin, reedy voice floated down into the officers’ flat.
‘Who speak?’
‘This is Captain Mackinnon. I want you to know ship not go Shanghai. Ship go Hong Kong. You savvy?’
Endangered Species Page 26