by Peter Tonkin
‘We know that, Ms—’
‘I know you know it, Dr Dyal, which is why it’s so frustrating that we’re still talking about it instead of doing something about it!’
‘But we are doing something about it. As of now. That’s why I have brought Captain Mariner to speak to us today.’
Richard’s dazed condition was threatening to return, but this time it was nothing to do with jet lag or airsickness. The passionate words of the tall, willowy, mahogany-skinned woman had opened his eyes to the dazzling prospect of what the United Nations was actually proposing to do. The irrigation system that Julius Karanga had planned to fill from the Karanga Dam was still in place. He was to try and get the iceberg into the harbour at Mawanga and then get enough of that one point five billion tons of water up the Mau River to fill the irrigation ditches.
He found himself on his feet, leaning forward across the table with his face surprisingly close to that of the vividly impatient girl who had just finished speaking. Her eyes were long and sloping - cat’s eyes as bright as copper. Her nose was long and spread generously at its end. Her lips were full and wide and sculpted like a model’s. He was so close to her he could smell her perfume, something light and exotic that he did not recognise. They were so close that he could smell the musk of her body beneath the perfume and the faintest scent of cloves upon her breath.
‘Emily,’ Dr Dyal was saying, distantly. ‘Emily—’
‘Sit down, please, Miss Karanga,’ Aziz cut in more forcefully, ‘and let the captain explain how he proposes to finish your father’s final project.’
~ * ~
Chapter Ten
Two days later, just as it was coming up to midnight local time, Richard, red-eyed, stood in the tiny cabin of the pilot’s launch as she pounded out of Galveston Bay into the Roadsteads where Titan had just finished discharging. He was swaying with exhaustion but his individual movements were lost in the general motion as the tiny craft jumped and butted through the waves. There was a southerly gale blowing and the hurricane warnings were out already further to the south. Though the weather was by no means as bad as it had been in New York, it was still a foul night.
The tiny cabin was hot and claustrophobic, crowded as it was with crew, pilot and two passengers, each of whom had brought two big suitcases along, and all the doors, windows and portholes closed against the wind, rain and spray. At the back of the cabin was a shelf with a hotplate which ran off the launch’s battery; it had just enough power to keep a pot of thick black coffee on the simmer and its bitter odour filled the air, adding to the uncomfortable atmosphere.
Dead ahead, the supertanker sat moored to an SMB, all lit up like a palace in expectation of their arrival. Her lights seemed to dance wildly up and down as the little vessel pitched and tossed until she came into the wind shadow of the great superstructure, extended to a considerable distance because she was riding so high.
As soon as she did so, the launch’s motion moderated. The thunder of wind and spray fell back sufficiently for conversation to be possible. ‘She’s a hell of a ship,’ shouted the pilot. Richard was too exhausted to reply.
‘He’s glad you like it,’ called back Emily Karanga drily. ‘He owns it.’
With no further ado, the pilot launch raced up to the towering side of the vessel and tied up at the foot of the accommodation ladder. The two men and the woman leaped over the restless little gap more or less nimbly. Their cases were swung across behind them. Richard picked up his and the pilot mutely offered to carry Emily Karanga’s. She mutely declined and hefted them up herself and began to climb aboard, so the pilot followed her up the steps covertly appreciating, every step of the way, the shape of her bottom and the manner in which it filled the seat of her black leather trousers.
At the top of the ladder they stepped up onto the deck and back into the power of the wind. An officer was waiting to meet them there with three general purpose seamen ready to take the bags. This time independence would have been sheer bravado so Emily relinquished her bags at the same time as Richard did and the little group ran up across the rainswept deck towards the high white brightness of the bridgehouse.
Emily had never been aboard a supertanker before and right from the moment that the big metal door was slammed behind her to shut out the stormy wind, she was struck by the quiet - the near silence, in fact, emphasised by die distant throbbing grumble she would come to recognise as the generators. She looked around as they waited for the lift to arrive, very much struck by the clean, functional lines of everything. And the size. In the pilot’s cutter she had been awed by die sheer size of the hull. At the top of the companionway she had been struck by the length and breadth of the deck she was stepping onto and by the scale of the pipes, conduits and deck equipment she could see. The bridgehouse looked to be about the same size as her apartment block from the outside and now that she was inside, it seemed like a huge plush hotel. Except that there was no luxury apparent, there was only linoleum on the floor and the walls were covered in cold white paint instead of wallpaper. So, not a hotel then; more like a hospital. She shivered. The lift came. Richard, the pilot and she got in. The officer and the seamen waited for the next car.
As they had been silent in the pilot’s boat for the most part, and silent since they came aboard, so they remained silent in the lift. It powered up to the bridge and the doors opened automatically. The two men stepped out and Emily followed because she didn’t know what else to do. She found herself in a long corridor which stretched away on either hand to end in a heavy door closed tight against the storm. The walls behind her were of painted wood or metal, but the wall in front of her, from the waist up, was glass. There were doors in it across on the right and left, standing open. But she could see what lay behind them by simply looking straight ahead. She knew it was the ship’s bridge but it was nothing like she had expected it to be. It was more like something out of a science fiction movie, all flashing lights and glowing screens. And it was so big. And so empty.
She jumped a little and hurried forward to join her two companions who had been moving forward as she had been standing staring. The three of them entered, to be greeted by one of the three people in charge of the massive, spacious bridge. The man who rose to greet them was tall and white-haired. He wore an overall but he carried himself with authority and although they were all on first-name terms, Richard and the pilot treated him with such respect that it was obvious to Emily who he was even before Richard turned courteously to say, ‘And this is Emily Karanga. Emily Karanga, meet Captain Tavistock. He’s in command at the moment but will be going ashore with the pilot after he’s handed over to me.’
The captain smiled and shook her hand warmly. ‘I’m in command,’ he said, ‘but here’s the officer who’s really in charge. First Officer Sally Bell.’
A second figure in white overalls looked up from a book in which she had been writing and flashed her a wide smile. ‘How’re you?’ she said.
Emily smiled back, ‘Exhausted, thanks.’
The first officer’s smile became a grin. Then her face became serious as she crossed to the captain, the pilot and the owner.
‘We’ve clearance to leave at once, as you know,’ said Richard. ‘I’ll drop the pair of you in due course, but the first order of business is to get under way.’
Emily watched the female officer cross to stand by the third boiler-suited occupant of the bridge. She spoke quietly to him and then spoke quietly into a microphone beside him. Emily looked more closely, her interest caught. The man was holding a tiny steering wheel - what did they call it? The helm? It was smaller than the steering wheel on her car, for heaven’s sake.
The first officer lifted a walkie-talkie radio and spoke into it. At once it hissed in reply and an indecipherable answer exploded noisily into the quiet air.
Sally Bell looked up at the three men standing silently observing her routine. ‘Casting off now,’ she said.
‘Right,’ said the pilot. ‘I have her.
Slow ahead, if you please, and come to a heading of. . .’
Emily heard nothing more. Suddenly gripped by an excitement which was almost childish in its intensity, she crossed to the window and looked out. The lights of Galveston, so bright, so close, were trembling and beginning to swing away. The ship was moving. They were off.
~ * ~
Ultimately it was Richard’s own decision to go from New York straight on down to Titan. Titan was the first of the supertankers which it was proposed to lease to the United Nations and he had decided to make her his flagship, as though he was an admiral in command of a fleet. From the moment he had agreed the contract, he had effectively been working for the UN, and he had no doubt that even if the lawyers changed small details of the agreement, the project - now officially named Manhattan after the iceberg itself -would proceed full steam ahead. Titan would be his headquarters until he delivered Manhattan to Mawanga and it seemed to him that no matter what else he had to organise between now and then, he could do it best from here. The great ship had a communications centre which would enable him to communicate fully and easily with Heritage House and almost as fully by radio and telephone with the United Nations building, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. For die next few days he would be making his way back up the coast of the United States and he proposed to collect anything or anyone else he needed on the way.
Apart from her availability, Titan had three other advantages. Captain Tavistock was due for some furlough dirtside, so Richard would be able to assume command with a minimum of fuss. She had a good helicopter. This was important because now that he was on the ship and heading up towards his rendezvous with Manhattan, he had a week to arrange everything; maybe ten days before the tow got under way. If he had to be anywhere else physically during the next five days, then he could helicopter ashore to the nearest airport and catch a flight from there. And the third advantage lay in the fact that if he was forced to leave the ship for any reason, Sally Bell had the papers to assume command. She should have been captain of her own ship already, but there were simply no berths available and so she was, perforce, content to sit and wait. But he had no intention of leaving the ship unless he was forced to. He planned to bring people to him as he made best possible time to the rendezvous.
Before the tow got under way, they would all be there, on the ships or on the ice, summoned from all over the world if necessary. Men and women from any walk of life whose expertise could be of use to him in the execution of this project. Money was no object, practically speaking, and his power was absolute - and awesomely effective. He would call and they would come: onto Titan, onto Manhattan, into the offices on the 38th floor of the United Nations building, wherever they were required to be by him. Some were in place, like Colin, Kate and Emily. Some were on their way already. Some had no idea as yet that they belonged to his team, but they would find out during the next few days.
As nobody else was going to do so, Richard sat in the watchkeeper’s chair then dreamily watched the lights of Galveston disappearing into the murk. No, not a team, he thought to himself, contentedly, just on the edge of sleep, a Club. A United Nations Club. Like the famous Congo Club of the sixties. Like the Mau Club from which it was an offshoot. Richard’s Club.
The Manhattan Club.
~ * ~
‘No,’ said Charles Lee, his voice distant but all too distinct over the radio link. ‘It’s simply not possible, Richard. We cannot let them have Hero or Dido for this project.’
‘But we’re contracted to supply six supertankers, Charles. We can’t control the movement of one hundred kilometres of ice with less than six.’
‘I see that, Richard. I have read the schedule which the Secretary-General’s office sent with the contracts. All I am saying is that it is simply impossible for us to let you ... let them have these two hulls.’
The ether between the two men went silent for a moment and Richard sat, lost in thought, deep in the grip of bitter frustration. It was eight o’clock next morning local time. The day beyond the windows was bright and clear, scrubbed clean by the storm last night. The pilot and Captain Tavistock had departed in the early hours and Titan had been making twenty knots under his command since then while he grabbed six hours’ sleep. Sally Bell had given over her watch to the second officer, grabbed four hours’ sleep herself and now stood behind the helmsman while the second officer handed over to the third.
Richard was able to see this activity through the open door of the radio shack while he considered his response to the executive chairman of his own company. He had not missed the way in which Charles had calculatedly linked Richard with them, as though he had traitorously joined the other side.
He leaned across and swung the door shut. ‘What are we talking about here, Charles? The United Nations aren’t our enemies. They’re just trying to get a job of work done. We’re trying to help because it makes good sense in a bad market. I thought we had all this agreed.’
‘We do, Richard. I apologise if I led you to think anything different. I am not saying I am disinclined to send Hero and Dido. I am just saying it will be impossible in the time. Physically impossible. Hero is due to dock in Nagasaki in three days’ time. It will take her at least another day to turn around even if she can discharge at once. Dido is in the Malacca Strait, also bound for Japan. Even at optimum speed, she will take more than a week to get there, say ten days including discharge and turnaround. And even then, they are on the wrong side of the world. If we started them from Nagasaki now they would still have to cross the Pacific and come through the Panama Canal and that has to take anywhere between three weeks and a month, depending on weather. It puts them outside the time frame altogether. I’m sorry, but you must see that.’
Richard pursed his lips and sighed. ‘Yes, you’re right, Charles. I’m sorry. I do see that all too clearly. So. All we can offer of the current fleet are Titan, Niobe which is discharging at Mobile tomorrow, Achilles which is currently in Georgetown, Guyana . . .’
‘But which will be turned around tonight.’
‘Right, good. And Ajax at Stavanger.’
‘That’s correct.’ Charles Lee’s voice picked up a little more warmth. Richard had no doubt that the Hong Kong Chinese businessman basically disapproved of all this gallivanting around the world, and Richard was bitterly inclined to agree with him. Because he had not been in the office since the executive board meeting more than a week ago, he had effectively lost track of his ships and so had promised two hulls which he simply could not deliver. It was galling to say the least. But the fact that he had such a firm grasp of the disposition of the rest of the Heritage Mariner tanker fleet had obviously gone some way towards mollifying Charles, hence the thaw in his chilly tone.
Hence, in fact, rather more than that. ‘Richard, are you still there?’ came the distant voice.
‘Yes. I was thinking.’
‘Of course. But Helen, Sir William and I have had more time to think than you have and we may have come up with something.’
‘Yes?’
‘We think we can get you Kraken and Psyche.’
‘What? But they’re in mothballs off Piraeus. Have been for five years and more.’
‘Quite so. But the situation is this. We understand from the Lloyds agent there that the hulls are still sound. It would take less than a week, we believe, to test and certify the engines if the last report on them is accurate. If it is not or if there is a major breakdown then that will be a different matter of course but in the meantime it seems possible to proceed. And there are several advantages to this course of action.’
Richard could see them all too clearly and his heart raced as Charles went carefully through what he and Helen had discussed.
The two ships had been purchased by Heritage Mariner in the balmy days of the early eighties when their business had been booming. They had got them at a knock-down price and when the oil shipping market had collapsed, they had mothballed them. It would have been uneconomic
to sell them, incurring a massive loss, and moored off Piraeus as they were, they remained at least tax deductible. A paper loss. Heritage Mariner would probably never bring them back into commission. It would cost them too much to update their certificates of seaworthiness, to bring their engines up to scratch and to get them certified. The independent shipping company would find it crippling even to insure them, let alone crew them. But none of these would be particular obstacles to the United Nations. In fact they were insisting on doing the latter in any case. The contract stated that the UN had to supply three crews and all of the insurance cover.