by Peter Tonkin
The ship’s movement eased and Borodin tore his hands free. There was a phone at the top of the ladder, where the steel rungs met the hatch cover. He ran towards it, oblivious of the fact that he was hitting his head against the unforgiving metal just above. His knees actually gave as he reached the hatch and he knelt there as though he was praying, as indeed he might have been. He ripped the ancient handset off the rest and rammed it against his ear.
It sounded as though he was sitting beneath a waterfall.
‘Bridge?’
The static on the line was like a deafening tropical downpour. He could hear nothing else. Except, like an approaching locomotive, the howling of the next squall.
‘Bridge!’
Too late.
The ship’s head dipped. Dived. The wooden floor beneath Borodin shifted forwards, heaving slightly, reflecting the roll of the waves outside. There was a clear, crisp, cracking sound like the snapping of dry branches, then a choking sound, soft as a whisper.
There was a sobbing sound, which Borodin realised he was making himself.
There came the most sinister hissing of cold crystal surfaces rubbing against each other; nothing solid was impeding their movement any more.
When Borodin turned back, Sholokov had vanished and the only evidence of his existence was the fact that the black glass in the broken crate, displaced by the bulk of his body, had geysered up to spew out over the boards around it like rough-hewn ice cubes carelessly dropped.
~ * ~
Chapter Four
The storm came out of the east hard on the heels of the final squall and, much against his will and wishes, Borodin was forced to batten down the hatches and leave Sholokov’s body where it was. Any regrets he felt - and they were many and bitter - were soon outweighed by the situation Leonid Brezhnev found herself in. The freighter was less than a day out of Murmansk when the full force of the storm hit. She had made ten knots due north for a couple of hours after leaving the coastal ice and then come to a north-westerly heading, designed to take her across the thousand kilometres to Novaya Zemlya in about one hundred hours’ further sailing. Even with the force of the storm pushing so powerfully against her, she should have made die passage within a week.
At Borodin’s order, the crew first tried running directly into the teeth of the storm and for the rest of the day after Sholokov’s death they plunged doggedly north-east along a rough heading of 60 degrees. It was hard work for all aboard as the wind slowly intensified through gale to severe gale and storm force. The watch officers had to be ready for any flaw in the wind, prepared to meet any of the cunning side draughts the evil pressure system enjoyed throwing at them. A couple of degrees to port or starboard seemed to give the storm the purchase it needed to push them wildly off course when it returned to the north-east - as it always did in the end. They also had to keep a weather eye out for ice as the storm centre was perfectly placed to break up the edge of the winter pack and send all sorts of danger down upon them. The chief and his engineers had done a lot of work on the radar while the ship was laid up in Murmansk and it had been functioning perfectly. This was no longer the case, however, and the radio was producing nothing but static. The watch officers were literally living up to their title, watching for dangers which the safety equipment could no longer see.
The deck officers were equally busy. They had to make sure that the lethal cargo was safe against the increasingly wild motion of the ship. This required constant and diligent attention. No system of ropes and stays could hope to keep the restless cargo safely in place as the ship was hurled up and down and from side to side. Every line and support had to be checked and re-checked at least once during each watch; everyone aboard was all too well aware that if the cargo of decommissioned ammunition in Number Two hold behaved like the cargo immediately forward of it, then the whole ship would be blown to pieces.
The engineers had to ensure that the labouring engine continued to deliver sufficient power to keep them moving along the captain’s dictated course, in spite of the wilful imperatives of the wind. They also had to guarantee that the auxiliaries were all ready to fulfil their functions immediately and faultlessly, from the temperamental central beating system to the centrifugal falls of the lifeboats, which it looked as if they might need to use at any moment.
Nobody aboard got any sleep and precious few got any rest.
Borodin was so tired that he could not stop his eyes from streaming. It seemed that he had been crying almost continuously since Fydor Sholokov’s death, though in all truth he had been too busy to do much mourning. He had remained on the bridge throughout all the watches, not as a gesture of mistrust in his officers but because he knew that the next mistake, the next piece of bad luck, was going to be their last. He sat in the watchkeeper’s chair, comatose with increasing exhaustion and almost uncontrollable nausea. It was not until after midnight, twenty-four hours out of Murmansk and little more than a hundred kilometres along their course, that he suddenly began to wonder whether he had picked up some kind of infection.
He hoped not. He had seen how incredibly rapidly a virulent bug could go round the closed society of a ship at sea, and with what devastating effect. But he was certainly not well. He had eaten almost nothing and normally would have been ravenous, yet the importunities of the unusually excellent cook had been turned away. Even the promise of his favourite mixed vegetable borscht and bitoks had failed to rouse him.
‘Are you well?’ Tatiana Bulgakov had asked - he had refused the food during her second watch. ‘Borscht is exactly what you need. It is hot and bracing. It will give you strength and energy.’
He had shaken his head like a pettish infant and she had shrugged and returned to her duty. She was first lieutenant after all, not babushka here.
Through the night watches, he had found it more and more difficult to contain the sickness demanding so insistently to be released from his heaving stomach, and at four, just when the watch was changing, he had found himself hurrying down to the latrine as the little food inside him, forbidden egress one way, demanded it the other way. After the first convulsion, he found that he suffered uncontrollable bouts of diarrhoea every couple of hours and, although he said nothing - and his crew naturally respected his icy solitude - he found the strain of each attack increasingly enervating.
At eight o’clock next morning he called a meeting of his senior officers while he still had the strength to conduct it.
‘The storm is growing stronger,’ he began, ‘but I seem to be growing weaker. There is no doubt I have contracted an illness of some kind. I do not think it could be food poisoning, but if it is, it cannot be from anything aboard I have eaten, as I have eaten nothing since we sailed. It could be from my samovar, I suppose. That would be difficult to check, however. The only other person who drank from it was Sholokov. It may be an infection. How do the rest of you feel?’
None of them admitted to being in the best of health, but to his jaundiced eye they all seemed fit enough. With one major exception.
‘Like you, Captain, I fear I may have contracted some kind of infection,’ admitted the chief engineer. He certainly looked pallid and ill. He had dark rings under his streaming eyes and lines of strain running down from the corners of his mouth to the scraggy skin of his neck. ‘And at least one of my junior engineers seems to have contracted the same thing. I’m afraid we will find it difficult to run the engine room as efficiently as—’
He broke off abruptly and half rose, obviously fighting to control the contents of his rebellious stomach. His lined face was dead white in the grey light of the stormy dawn. A big sea hurled the freighter’s head to starboard and a vicious gust made her roll to the first red band on the gauge of the clinometer.
The captain’s intercom buzzed and he lifted the handset. It was impossible to make out what the watch officer on the bridge wanted, so he sent Tatiana Bulgakov up to see what the problem was and dismissed the rest of them.
He was in the latrine when
she returned and he was so concerned to hear what she had to report that he hurried out into his cabin without even flushing.
‘The radio officer has managed to get some intermittent traffic past the static,’ she reported. ‘Apparently things are pretty bad up ahead. There’s a lot of ice and a lot of very bad weather between us and Novaya Zemlya, both heading our way about as quickly as we’re heading up towards them. The ship isn’t riding all that well. The cargo will have to be watched even more closely if we’re to continue on the current heading. And the watch officer says he feels too sick to continue his duty and asks to be relieved so that he can go to bed at once. What are your orders, Captain?’
Borodin stood, swaying, like a boxer about to hit the canvas. There was just too much for him to come to terms with. Through the nauseated haze, only one course of action seemed to make any sense at all.
‘Come about. One hundred and eighty degrees,’ he said. ‘Reverse course completely. We’ll run before the storm until things get sorted out one way or another.’
First Officer Bulgakov nodded once, decisively, in agreement. ‘Come to two forty and run before the storm until I receive further orders. Yes, Captain,’ she said, and was gone.
Borodin remained swaying where he was for a moment or two after she had gone, trying to remember what he had been doing before she came in. Then he remembered, and returned to the latrine. When he got there, he stood for several moments looking down into the bowl, his long face folded into a frown of deep concern. Rough squares of toilet paper were floating in what seemed to be a puddle of watery blood.
What in the name of God was going on here? he wondered. He staggered across to the washbasin and stood for a moment, the only clear thought in his head that if this was some kind of infection he had better wash his hands very carefully.
Above the metal basin was a mirror and, for the first time since they had left Murmansk, Borodin found himself looking at his own reflection. It came as a stunning surprise. His skin was white and lined. There were black rings below his bloodshot, streaming eyes. At the corners of his mouth and nose there were lines of pale, crusted sores. The vomit had left an iron taste in his mouth which seemed to be clinging to his teeth and he sucked at them speculatively, then spread his lips in a slow grimace, careful lest he split the sores open. His teeth were edged in blood from his gums.
He looked at himself. He knew what this meant. He knew what this meant and it was important.
The ship heeled and rolled as she began to come round. He lost his grip on the basin and staggered. He made it to his bunk and collapsed. His mind would be clearer after some sleep, he thought. He would work out what to do about everything after he had had some sleep.
~ * ~
Tatiana Bulgakov was an excellent first officer, dedicated, able and decisive. But the next few days proved far beyond her capacity. With the captain increasingly feverish, and the chief and a growing number of engineers, deck officers and crew going the same way, she found herself run to the edge of utter exhaustion. In common with the majority of Western ships, Leonid Brezhnev relied upon the first officer to act as medic for routine problems and a Pan Medic call for emergencies. But the radio wasn’t working and the radio officer could find nothing wrong with it. Unable to summon aid, she had to intersperse increasingly long watches with ever more frenetic sick calls. There was no real question of controlling the ship - she certainly stood no chance of getting back into Murmansk - and she was content to keep running with the storm, trying to maintain some kind of idea where they were. Her measurements and calculations became increasingly approximate as her exhaustion grew deeper and, in the constant scurrying overcast, any sight of sun or stars remained impossible. The navigating equipment was no more reliable than the radio and all too soon they were effectively lost in the vast eastern approaches to the terrible Denmark Strait.
The current beneath the weary hull was moving sluggishly south, and the heading on the compass read 240 magnetic unvaryingly, but the storm and the circumstances were playing tricks. Degree by degree the wind moved round to the south, though it moderated not a jot. By dawn on the third day, Leonid Brezhnev’s course was coming up to the better part of 330 degrees and nobody aboard knew a thing about it. And even if they had, they would hardly have had the power to do anything much about it.
~ * ~
Captain Borodin awoke on the morning of the fourth day since his sickness - the fifth since they left Murmansk - with his head a little clearer. Tatiana Bulgakov’s careful ministrations had filled him with warming, heartening borscht; increasingly his system had accepted the bracing liquid which was at once nourishing food and drink. She was, in fact, sitting next to his bed gently taking his pulse when his clouded blue eyes flickered open.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
‘Eight.’ Her thick blonde eyebrows arched in surprise that he should be awake and apparently so alert. ‘I’m just going to watch.’
‘You look dreadful.’ He was still too groggy for tact.
‘You should see yourself.’ So was she.
Her information sank in and he struggled to sit up. ‘Your watch doesn’t start at eight,’ he accused.
‘Does now. Has done for two days. Eight to four, morning and night.’
A whole series of questions clamoured. He didn’t know which one to ask first, but the logical one came out first. ‘Where are we?’
‘Somewhere in the Denmark Strait.’
‘How are we heading?’
‘As per your last order. Two hundred and forty degrees magnetic.’
‘How long have I been out?’
‘Four days.’
His eyes flickered with the shock. ‘Weather?’
‘No change. North-easterly storm running down behind us.’
He licked his lips. They felt swollen, simian, edged with crusted craters. He took a shuddering breath.
She put his hand down and he lifted it off the blanket and looked at it as if it belonged to someone else entirely. There were blisters on it and he knew exactly what that meant. He raised it and ran the fingers across his scalp, closing them into a loose fist. When he lowered his hand he found he was shaking. His fist was full of black hairs and he had felt no pain as he pulled them out by the roots.
‘Get out the dosimeters,’ he said.
‘I have,’ she answered. ‘I did it yesterday when I saw the pattern in the sickness. But they don’t work properly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re all stuck on maximum. That’s all they read.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them.’
‘No variation?’
‘None.’
‘No matter where on the ship you are?’
‘I haven’t been everywhere, but pretty much. I think they’re broken.’
‘All four of them.’ He remembered that somewhere recently he had heard of something like this happening. Now where… Ah, yes. At Chernobyl. The firemen at Chernobyl had thought their dosimeters were broken because they were all stuck on maximum. Chernobyl was still fresh in his memory, though in common with the rest of Russia he had very little idea of how serious the incident had actually proved. It had been only six weeks since the explosion.
‘All four. I hope they’re broken.’
They looked at each other, two blue eyes and two brown ones. All weeping. He noticed that she, too, had sores at the corners of her lips. He knew then with a kind of numb certainty that the dosimeters were not broken at all. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked softly.
‘Tired. Sick.’
He nodded.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked softly.
‘I could be wrong,’ he answered, ‘but I think we’re going to die.’
~ * ~
He had to be carried up to the bridge, but once he was there he found he was quite comfortable in the watchkeeper’s chair. The spasms of diarrhoea had calmed during his long sleep and he had time to review their situation an
d talk to the few crew who were still fit and functioning, before the first spasm overtook him. When he returned, weaker but doggedly determined, there was time to begin to make some kind of plan.
The continuing savagery of the storm made it impossible for them to dump the cargo overboard, even had they the individual or collective strength to do so. They hadn’t even got the strength to control the ship, really. Certainly it was far beyond the bounds of practical possibility to reverse course again and run back towards home. But he could not bring himself to view the prospect of continuing to run along their present course with any degree of satisfaction. At this rate, according to his calculations based on Tatiana’s scribbled notes in the log, they would simply be spewed out into the North Atlantic somewhere to the west and south of Iceland. From the look of things, they would be past Cape Farewell before the weather moderated. For a nightmare moment he envisaged them ending up marooned with their lethal cargo somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States. But then, he thought grimly, if they did have radiation poisoning from leakage in their cargo, the United States was the best place they could possibly be. The only place where they stood a chance of immediate survival. But that was a hopeless fantasy. They would do far better to look for some shelter.