The Iceberg - [Richard Mariner 05]

by Peter Tonkin

  The late afternoon was warm, wide and magnificent. Africa lay just below the eastern horizon beyond the bulk of the iceberg and, from Richard’s point of view, behind the bridgehouse. In a subtle way, however, the great continent still exercised its influence even though the harmattan was long gone, leaving only the sand and the sorrow. That subtle influence was part of the wider picture, subsumed into the size and colour of the sky, into the scents carried almost subliminally with the high-flying gulls on the soft easterly breeze. And, perhaps most of all, in the waters through which they were sailing. Ahead and all around lay a wonderland of water. Richard was used to wide, unvarying waters which remained the same day after day; here there was a kaleidoscope of textures and hues, their vivid contrast breathtaking. It was slightly disorientating, as though he was driving across the rolling patchwork fields of the downland around Ashenden, his home.

  But it was not the unusual beauty of the scene or the poignancy of the thought that made him slap the metal safety rail in front of him. For even with its colours, the sea spoke to him. He narrowed his eyes against the late afternoon glare and looked again. Then his walkie-talkie was at his lips.

  ‘You’re right, Yves. I’m going up to take a closer look. Want a ride?’

  ‘D’accord! I’m on my way.’

  Richard strode back onto the bridge and called across to Sally Bell, ‘Call the pilot. Tell him I want to go up asap, please.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ She crossed to the phone and punched in the pilot’s number while Richard ran down the stairs.

  With his return of memory had come all his old self-confidence and drive. The weather and the sailing conditions simply added to his new access of energy. He felt on top of the situation, in charge, and certain of success. He was well aware that this was a combination of chemical secretions in his recovering body - and probably some psychological reaction as well. Whatever it was, he was using it to his best advantage. He had been on the phone during the last few days, to Robin at length, soothing her and re-igniting her normal sunny cheeriness of nature; to Charles Lee in Heritage Mariner’s executive boardroom in London; to the Mau Club in New York, to whose number had now been added Sir William Heritage, his father-in-law, friend and mentor.

  He knew that his children were well and missing him almost as much as his wife, and that the autumn was glorious at Ashenden. He knew that the payments due were being met in full and on demand so that Heritage Mariner was standing tall in the City. The impact of their sterling work was the talk of the business world and Charles was currently being forced to turn down lucrative business deals, knowing that there were bigger ones in the offing -especially if Manhattan reached Mawanga safe and sound. Richard knew that waiting for him in Mawanga city itself was a team of UN experts, diplomats, and workers, all geared up to welcoming his massive cargo and putting it immediately to the best possible use, though the rest of that troubled state, especially upcountry, simmered on the edge of civil war still. He knew that in New York his reputation, and that of his company, stood even higher than it did in London. Even in troubled Moscow, Heritage Mariner’s standing was such that the whole of the late Russian Empire was considering making the company sole transporter of all nuclear waste due for disposal or reprocessing. To add weight to this, the only hard currency actually coming out of the Soviet Union was all heading his way. And he knew that also heading his way, as quickly as possible, was a Bell helicopter to replace the little reconnaissance craft which he had lost little more than a week ago.

  It did not even occur to him to wonder how radically most of these things would be affected if anything went wrong during the next week.

  ~ * ~

  Wally Gough was at the edge of the helipad talking to the French scientist when Richard arrived. ‘What are you up to at the moment?’ asked Richard. The cadet was under Sally Bell’s tutelage and not likely to be hanging around with both hands idle.

  ‘Just finished clearing this section of the deck, Captain. The last of the sand is gone now, sir, and I’ve dismissed my work team. The first officer is too busy to check my work at present.’ He looked at his watch a little glumly. ‘Navigation class after dinner.’

  ‘But nothing until then?’

  ‘No, Captain.’

  ‘Up you go then. All set, Yves?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The side of the Westland opened wide and the three of them clambered in. The pilot was already in the seat going through his pre-flight checks. Richard swung the sliding door closed as the other two strapped themselves in. He and Yves would share the copilot’s seat when the time came to check the detail of the sea and sky ahead. The Westland was not perfectly designed for this kind of observation, but it was a great deal better than nothing - and worth its weight in gold when it came to performing the functions it had been designed for.

  ‘Off!’ bellowed the pilot, and the rotors began to turn.

  They were airborne a moment or two later, with the two men leaning back lost in their own thoughts while the cadet strained excitedly to see everything there was to see around him, both inside the fuselage and outside.

  ‘Heading?’ bellowed the pilot.

  Richard stirred himself and went up into the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Due south,’ he answered through the intercom, then he set about strapping himself in place.

  The big chopper dropped its nose accommodatingly and ran them rapidly down towards the equator. From here they could almost see it, a fine black horizon-line sitting on the curved edge of the earth.

  Richard looked around, narrow-eyed against the afternoon glare, even though the silver-coloured pilot’s glasses he wore - a present from his pilot wife - had the darkest of Polaroid lenses. ‘More height, please,’ he ordered.

  Upwards they swooped, the nose still staying low, the fuselage still tilted forward to give him a grandstand view of the sea. With the glasses high on the fine beak of his nose, his vision swept from horizon to horizon, from far Atlantic to the first dark bulge of Africa. Then he took the glasses off and, frowning, looked back, his mind busy. Yves had been right to draw his attention to this, for it was striking. Strange.

  The water around the berg was blood-red. He had expected that, it was the sand washing off. The red puddle had absolute edges. It did not fade into the green sea around it like wet watercolours running. It had an edge defined almost with a solid line, as though it was contained in some huge submerged glass. Beyond it, level with the ice itself, away to the west, the sea was deep green. From the heart of the Western Ocean it came in a series of majestic waves. And when the water’s motion reached the red outwash from Manhattan, the strangely coloured water took it up, but here the faces of the waves seemed blue, although their foundations were of disturbing ruby. And blue as well were the waters to the south and west. Blue and utterly different in form.

  Richard’s hair stirred as he was carried back to the last few moments he had spent in the company of Doug Buchanan in the ill-fated Bell. There, too, the sea had behaved in an unusual way, with a band of different form and colour revealing the existence of a major current. As it did here, too. For the strange water formation in the west was the counter current coming in. Away to the east, under the dark swell of Liberia and the pale watery outwash below it, die long blue ribbon of water surged on, gaining depth, darkness and strength. Surging eastwards, as strong as the Stream along the eastern Maritimes, all the way to Mau.

  Richard looked back over his shoulder and saw Yves beginning to stir. ‘Wally!’ he yelled. ‘Get up here now!’

  The cadet was slim and quick; he was out of his seat far more quickly than the French scientist and rushed unsteadily up the length of the fuselage.

  ‘Steady!’ called Richard, and he caught the boy’s hand as he came up to the back of the pilot’s seat. He guided the cadet’s grip to the curve of plastic-covered metal, giving the boy a chance to hold on and steady himself. As he did so, something caught his eye and he took a closer look at the hand he was holding.

  Th
e back of Wally Gough’s right hand was a mass of small white blisters where the skin was beginning to fall away.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The boy would not stop shaking. He sat at the examination table clad in a hospital gown, still blushing with the thought of having been seen naked by Dr Higgins, and trembled like a leaf in Richard’s gentle grip. His arms shook, making his hands almost impossible for Asha to examine. His shoulders shook and his torso jumped. He could not keep his legs still and the sound of his slippers drumming on the lino of the deck almost drowned out the low grumbling of Lamia Lykiardropolous and the rest in the isolation rooms next door. Just as he seemed incapable of keeping his body still, so he seemed incapable of controlling his tongue.

  ‘Is it serious, Doctor?’

  ‘Let’s just see, shall we?’

  ‘I don’t know how long it’s been there. It doesn’t hurt. Does that matter? I’ve heard your hands and feet go numb with some diseases. Like leprosy. It isn’t leprosy, is it, Doctor? I mean ...’ He stopped. He could not remember what he meant.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Richard said quietly, imagining his son William sixteen years older. He held the terrified boy more tightly. Wally was doing all right.

  ‘I mean I can feel my fingers and everything. Know what I mean? I can feel the top of the table here and everything, I just can’t feel the blisters. Is that important? Does it mean anything? I mean, I haven’t got leprosy, have I?’

  ‘No, of course you haven’t. Don’t you worry.’ It was Richard who spoke. Asha was busy.

  Then, ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been in the helicopter,’ he answered, literally, childlike with shock.

  ‘During the last week or so,’ she prompted gently.

  ‘On deck, mostly,’ he answered ruefully. ‘During the day at least. I’ve been in charge of one work party after another. Ding-dong likes a clean ship.’

  ‘ “Ding-dong”?’ asked Richard, though he suspected what the answer would be.

  ‘First Officer Bell.’ Wally paused, then fired up in his own defence. ‘I don’t call her that! Well, not usually. And anyway. . .’

  ‘Anyway?’ prompted Richard.

  ‘Anyway, Ding-dong is nothing. Some of them ... the engineers, I think. . . well, they call her Hells.’

  Richard’s eyes met Asha’s. The corners of each pair crinkled. Hells Bells. She was tall, she was blonde, she was in charge of the sexist so-and-sos. What could you expect?

  ‘In my day,’ said Richard, ‘they would have called her “Is-a”. Times change.’

  ‘And not for the better,’ supplied Asha. ‘Can you feel that?’ She pushed a sterile needle into the tip of the most heavily blistered finger.

  ‘OUCH! Yes, I can.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘OUCH!’

  ‘It’s probably not leprosy, then,’ she informed him, bracingly.

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘The same as the others have got, as far as I can tell. Whatever that is. Now, where have you been?’

  ‘On deck during the day, getting that sand cleared away. With First Officer Bell in the evening, learning navigation.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ teased Richard, trying to lighten the situation a little.

  Wally looked at him, eyes wide with shock. ‘Captain!’ he breathed. ‘She’s an officer!’

  ‘And a very good one too,’ interjected Asha severely, frowning. ‘Is that all? I mean, you haven’t been upon the ice?’

  ‘No, Doctor.’

  ‘Or in the outwash from the glacier?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t come out as far as Titan. And—’

  ‘And you haven’t been swimming in the sea?’

  ‘Doctor! I mean, there are sharks . . .’

  ‘Right. ‘Nuff said. Now, I’m going to spread this ointment onto your hands and bandage them lightly. Then you’ll have to stay here for a while, but I don’t think it’s serious and I don’t think you have anything to worry about. OK?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Good. Anything you want?’

  His wide, defenceless eyes looked up at Richard. ‘All my stuff. My book on navigation. The first officer’s going to give me a test on it tomorrow ...’

  Richard smiled. ‘We’ll bring your stuff across. Just write a list, OK? If you can hold a pen with that stuff on your hands. And I promise you, First Officer Bell will definitely not give you a test tomorrow. You just get some rest, and try not to worry. That’s an order. All right?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain.’

  ~ * ~

  In the corridor outside he said at once, ‘Well?’

  ‘Impossible to say. He’s got the same thing as the others, but he hasn’t been in any of the same places. They’ve all been at least wetted by water from Manhattan, but he hasn’t been anywhere near it. They’re all convinced that it’s to do with the ice or something in it.’

  ‘Something radioactive.’

  ‘Precisely. But Wally’s had nothing to do with any of that. And anyway...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No doctor worth her salt listens to the opinions of a patient. You have to make up your own mind; you’re die doctor, after all.’

  ‘Quite. I see.’

  ‘So, we take with a pinch of salt the suggestion that this is in fact anything to do with the iceberg, and we keep looking for an alternative which also fits the facts as we know them.’

  ‘When you have eliminated all the probabilities, the alternative, no matter how improbable, must be true.’

  ‘That sounds like a quote.’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes, I believe. Or Hercule Poirot, perhaps . . .’

  ‘True, nevertheless.’

  ‘As long as you are clear about what the one remaining alternative actually turns out to be.’

  ‘I take your point. But I cannot see, if there is an infection and the iceberg is the source of it, how the cadet caught it if he never went anywhere near the iceberg in the first place.’

  ‘Unless,’ said Richard without thinking, ‘unless it is contagious.’

  ‘Don’t,’ begged Asha. ‘I’ve had nightmares about that for a week and I don’t want to think about it any more, thank you very much.’

  ~ * ~

  Richard had had no choice but to bring Wally to the ship’s hospital but he knew it was doing no good at all to add one more infected soul to the already frightened crew of Psyche. Peter Walcott made no secret of the fact that he was finding the situation difficult to control.

  As he walked up towards the navigation bridge deep in conversation with Asha, Richard could not help but recall the power of the moment he had pulled the juju doll out of the dead Russian woman’s body bag and the unexpectedly fierce reaction from the apparently cool Major Tom Snell. There was an atmosphere aboard this ship which would have graced the supernatural opening of Macbeth. He was well aware that the crew was muttering with superstitious discontent; now it was as though the very shadows were whispering. He realised that he had been a little too dismissive of the Guyanese captain’s worries. Well, not dismissive exactly; perhaps he had just been preoccupied. But there was no doubting the power of the atmosphere now that he was aboard.

  He decided to stay aboard, at least until Asha gave him some idea of how the cadet was likely to progress. He hoped that someone would prove equally careful with the welfare of his son William or his daughter Mary if they fell into a similar situation in due time. He remembered all too clearly what his father-in-law had told him of a visit to a quiet terraced house in Portsmouth a year or two ago, when the old man had gone to tell a quiet pair of parents called Mr and Mrs Curtis how their only child Jamie, also a Heritage Mariner cadet, had died at the hand of a terrorist on a Heritage Mariner ship. Bill had talked it over time and again with Richard, trying to explain away the hurt he had felt at innocently inflicting so much pain. Richard would always remember that Bill had said he could actually see the joy die out of their
life during the minutes he had sat and talked to them. He had destroyed their happiness for ever and they had given him chocolate biscuits and tea. Not long afterwards, Bill had succumbed to a colossal heart attack, and Richard could easily see why.

  The murderous terrorist in question had been the associate and lover of the last man found frozen on Manhattan, the dead man lying stiffly in Titan’s cold storage, the thrice accursed Henri LeFever, long may he burn in hell.

  Wally Gough had two brothers, so if he was infected with anything fatal, at least his poor parents would not have their lives utterly destroyed. In any case, it wouldn’t be Sir William bearing the news this time, because he was in New York. No, it would be Robin. She was the senior executive in place. She was den-mother to the Heritage Mariner cadets. She would have been the one to go to Portsmouth last time to break the tidings to Mr and Mrs Curtis, but she had been at sea when the boy was killed. Now, she would not hesitate. She would go and tell the Goughs herself. And Richard could not bear the thought of that.