by Peter Tonkin
*
The third bullet thumped into the canister just beside Cappaldi’s shoulder. It should have ricocheted off in a shower of sparks, soft lead shrugged aside by the curved steel, but it smashed through the rotting, sub-standard metal almost as easily as its predecessors had slapped through the canvas. At the far side of the canister, flattened but by no means spent, it thumped into Cappaldi’s chest, straight through the centre of his breast pocket. The young man was hurled back, dead instantly, to lie on the bed of the truck. The canister, spewing its contents from the ragged wounds in its sides, rocked wildly in the captain’s hands until by a power only terror could have lent him, he pushed it over the tailgate and down into the roadway. The instant he did so, the fourth bullet smacked through his temple and the sound it made splitting open his head was the last thing Napoli’s captain ever heard.
The flat section of roadway ran over a low plateau of rock which lay like an enormous step between the desert and a deep wadi which led down to the coast. At the end of that flat step, the roadway turned through the first of three hairpin bends leading down the valley side perhaps fifty feet sheer. Malik braked fiercely here, aware that this would bring the Ford up closer behind him but governed by the need to keep the screaming Mercedes under some kind of control; then he accelerated away into the bend. The canister, toppling backwards out of the truck under the captain’s dead hands, was instantly thrown clear. Already ruptured, it hit solid rock and split further, sending a wave of its lethal contents out to either side across the road. On one side of it, the truck accelerated away down the valley side, turning into the first hairpin. On the other side of it, the Ford came thundering down, to collect the canister on its first bounce and complete its destruction with its radiator. Ali also braked fiercely, as Salah Malik’s truck revealed the bend before them. The Ford’s great tyres skidded through the mess on the roadway. A spray of toxic chemical came up through the open windshield, blinding Ibrahim at once. Ali fought with grim concentration to keep the bucking monster on the twisting road. Hand over hand he hauled the steering wheel round to his left while his feet, one on top of the other, both trod on the brake. Slowly the great vehicle answered his command and swung round into the hairpin, just barely under control.
The Mercedes seemed, if anything, even closer, for Malik was still driving with careful control. It was close enough for Ali to see who was driving. ‘Try another shot,’ he called to Ibrahim. ‘You can hit Malik easily. Even in the PLO there are those I know who would be pleased to see him dead!’ But Ibrahim made no response. ‘Try another shot!’ he repeated, glancing across at his brother. Ibrahim had dropped the rifle on to the floor of the cabin and was cradling his face in his hands. And there seemed to be smoke coming out between his fingers. Agony and the shock of realisation hit Ali simultaneously. He looked down. His skin was clinging to the molten curve of the steering wheel, like white gloves pulled off his hands. ‘Jump!’ he screamed to the men in the dumper’s back, to his brother, perhaps even to himself. ‘JUMP!’ But it was already far too late.
Then the front tyres exploded as the contents of that one canister ate through their rubber walls, and a strange sort of silence enveloped the Ford as it took a straight, smooth, short road through the air beside the cliff. Ali had time to hear the men in the back screaming over his elder brother’s quiet whimper and to mutter a prayer himself before they all crumpled against the valley floor and burst into red flames.
3
Salah swung the Mercedes round the second bend and the road sloped sharply down to the lowest hairpin which turned it back along the valley floor towards the coast. The picture the other trucks made, rolling forward through the night, froze in his memory as a dark shape dropped out of the sky and exploded like a bomb. The whole night seemed to light up and for an instant Salah thought the villagers must have got hold of some heavy artillery. But then he registered the shape of the projectile. It had been the Ford truck. It had landed just clear of the apex of the last bend, right in front of the lead truck.
By the time he had worked this out, he was all but upon it himself. The explosion did not seem to have done any damage; the convoy kept moving. Salah breathed a sigh of relief and braked. ‘We must look for survivors,’ he yelled at Fatima and she nodded curt agreement. They left the engine idling and jumped down. It took only seconds to establish that no one had survived. They leaped back into the Mercedes and left the great blazing funeral pyre behind them.
Salah carried the lurid vision of it in his mind’s eye all the way down the dry wadi to the coast. Luckily, the driving here was much easier, for there were no villagers lining the road, and no pursuit, although the cracked windscreen had by now shattered and both the headlights were gone.
Down to the coast the convoy limped under a rising crescent moon, following the twists of the dry stream bed through the interlocking teeth of the steep valley sides until suddenly the hills rolled back and the land spread itself out. It stretched flat and featureless on either side, reaching down on the left towards the Israeli border, many miles to the south; ahead it sloped gently down to the mirror-smooth Mediterranean Sea.
At the coast the hill slopes did not fall back to leave a flat beach; instead they gathered themselves up into a plateau ending in a low cliff above a natural anchorage deep enough to admit a medium-sized vessel. The container ship Napoli had anchored alongside the cliff, her port side snugged up safely against sheer rock.
Salah swung the steering wheel viciously right and sent the Mercedes up to the anchorage at full speed. He joined the short rank of vehicles all facing inland towards the desert, their tailgates as close to the Napoli’s loading system as possible. The occupants of the first trucks were helping the crew and white-suited experts manhandle the steel drums and concrete boxes out into the floodlit night. The drums and boxes were then sorted and the drums were loaded into big wooden containers at the cliff edge by the black metal wall of Napoli’s port side. As each container was filled and sealed, it was marked and consigned. The concrete boxes went directly into the freighter’s holds, the containers full of barrels to her deck storage. Her own cranes were more than enough to move both the boxes and the containers.
With Fatima at his side, Salah went to join First Officer Niccolo in the main work area. The square, reliable officer was in full command, overseeing the rapid disposition of the contents from his own truck. ‘We have very little time,’ yelled Salah over the dockside clamour.
‘That much became obvious when they stopped throwing stones at us and started throwing Ford earth movers instead,’ answered the Italian grimly. ‘I have to get this lot sorted out, however. Perhaps you could find Captain Fittipaldi—he must be in the back of one of the trucks. He can get the departure procedure underway while I get the last of this filth aboard.’
He turned away, already filling his massive lungs to yell another order, but Fatima impulsively caught at his arm and he swung back.
‘I take back what I said earlier about the villagers having the right to kill you all,’ she said to him. ‘Not many people would hang around to pack up the last of this stuff, under the circumstances.’
‘It is my job. It is what I think is right.’
‘Nevertheless, it is brave.’
They might have said more, but at that moment, a white-suited form came panting up. Salah recognised the man he had spoken to earlier—the professor. ‘You must come,’ the scientist said. ‘We’ve found Signor Cappaldi and Captain Fittipaldi.’
They had taken the barrels out of the back of Salah’s truck and found the two corpses lying side by side. Niccolo and Salah first climbed up into the stinking cave at the back of the truck. ‘Damn, this is bad!’ was Niccolo’s first reaction when he saw the bodies. And a fairly tame one too, thought Salah who had spent much of his life around sailors. The back of the truck was dark after the brightness of the lighting outside but there was quite enough light to see that both men were dead. The massive stain on the breast of Cappaldi�
��s jacket told its own story and received hardly a second look from either man. Instead they gave their attention to the much more important casualty. But, again, what they saw allowed no room for hope. The right side of Captain Fittipaldi’s silver-haired skull had been blasted open from temple to ear and it seemed that half of his brains were on the wooden floor. ‘Look closely, please, before we move either of them,’ rasped Niccolo at last. ‘I may need your help when I make up the accident report later.’
Salah stared at the dead men on the bare boards before him, but he knew it was unnecessary; he would remember every detail of the back of that truck, from the broken strut and the bullet hole in the canvas, to the strange stench and oily taste of the air. He had seen much of death one way and another, and he had never forgotten one detail of any corpse that he had seen; these two would join the others, unchanging, in the nightmare picture gallery of his mind. ‘I will give you my version of events later too,’ he said. ‘That will be important, though I don’t think it will be particularly helpful.’
‘You sound as though you have done this sort of thing before.’
‘A little more than ten years ago I was on a tanker called Prometheus. Almost all her officers were killed in an accident in the pump room. I did my share of helping to fill in accident reports then. It is not something one easily forgets.’
‘Any advice you feel you can give will be gratefully accepted,’ said Niccolo as they climbed down. ‘I’ve not had as much experience as you have, clearly…’
He let what he was saying drift off into silence. All the bustle of loading the Napoli had stopped. The ship herself still needed tidying up, her cranes needed to be secured, her hatches battened down, but the rocky plateau beside her was empty of all except the four battered Mercedes trucks and those few lights not standing on the laden decks. The ship was ready to up anchor and everyone was waiting. Salah could see Fatima on the deck. She had pause to lean against the deck rail. In the bright lighting, the bruised half of her face looked almost black.
Niccolo stood still, his eyes carefully travelling over the faces around him. He was silent for so long that Salah swung round, thrusting Fatima out of his mind, thinking he had frozen at the prospect of his sudden assumption of command. But as he moved, the Italian called out to the second officer, ‘Cesar, the captain’s been shot. Dead. I’m taking over command. Consider yourself first officer from now on. Get a party to carry two corpses aboard and send someone to break the news to Gina. Then get ready to cast off. Be ready to cut the shore lines if necessary. I’ll be on the bridge or in the captain’s quarters. Report to me there when we’re ready.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ a voice called down from the deck.
‘Captain…’ Niccolo said the word over to himself, as if trying it on for size. Then he squared his shoulders and went to board the freighter.
Salah followed Niccolo’s purposeful stride. He and Fatima had little option but to depart with the ship. If they stayed ashore and fell into the villagers’ hands, they hadn’t a prayer. They had driven down from Beirut. The car they had used was parked outside the Ibn Sir farmhouse, still packed with the clothes and papers they had brought down with them. He would have to find some way to report to headquarters. In the meantime, both he and Fatima, he suspected, would have to earn their keep until they could find some way of getting safely off this ship and back to Beirut. Under Niccolo’s command—no matter how temporary that might be—everyone aboard the Napoli was likely to have to earn their keep. But where could an ex-bosun of supertankers and a woman fit into what should be the well-oiled machine of a fully-trained freighter’s crew? Lost in these thoughts, he followed Niccolo down the length of Napoli’s main deck and, besides being slightly surprised at how quickly they reached the bridgehouse, he noticed very little about the ship.
He was struck at once, however, by the smallness of the bridge. He was used to the vastness of supertankers with deadweight tonnages in excess of 250,000. Napoli was little more than 20,000; she seemed cramped, confining. Struck by this, he stood quietly in the doorway while Niccolo crossed to a figure standing beside the helmsman, looking away into the distance. Salah’s gaze was also drawn beyond the confines of the ship. A blaze of headlights was coming up the slope from the wadi mouth, and moving with them was a crowd in vivid chiaroscuro. Salah crossed to the front of the bridge where Niccolo was speaking in low Italian to the officer of the watch, who in turn was speaking into a hand-held radio. Salah had hardly started to try a rudimentary translation when Niccolo’s hand went to the engine room telegraph. Figures down on the deck moved at the winches securing the anchors. ‘Good,’ said Niccolo after a moment. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ As he spoke, over the sound of the generators, the engines, and of his quiet voice came the first familiar firework popping of automatic gunshots from the shore.
*
Half an hour later, they were well out to sea, riding easily through a dead calm. The moon had vanished behind thickening clouds and the shoreline was no longer visible from the bridge. Niccolo, who had been poring over the radar bowl, swung wearily erect and gave a series of orders in Italian. Immediately the engines reversed and, as the way came off the ship, went to idle. ‘Come,’ he said to Salah and Fatima. The two Palestinians were in a bright corner of the bridge behind the chart table; Salah was in the process of checking Fatima’s bruised face—much to her obvious and increasing impatience. At Niccolo’s word, she broke away and followed him off the bridge. Salah followed too, but more slowly.
The captain’s cabin, bathroom and dayroom made up a small suite of rooms on C deck and to this Niccolo led his guests. The rooms were as anonymously neat as an hotel room, though someone seemed to have recently searched through the captain’s clothes, for they alone were untidy behind half-open cupboard doors. ‘Drink?’ asked Niccolo. Both Muslims declined. Niccolo crossed to the captain’s little bar fridge and took out a bottle of chilled white wine. As he opened it, he glanced at Fatima. He could see why Salah was worried—she was badly bruised—her left eye almost shut. But her right eye looked bright and alert. He poured himself a little and sat on the bunk, waving his guests into two seats. No sooner had he done so than an abrupt rattling came from outside, making both Salah and Fatima jump. It took Salah an instant to realise that it wasn’t gunfire this time. It was chain. Napoli’s anchors had gone back down.
‘Now, let’s look at the situation we have here,’ said Niccolo quietly. ‘Napoli is without a captain. There is no one aboard with the necessary papers to take this sort of cargo a hundred metres more, let alone to Italy. I hold command only because there is no one else to do so, not because I have the qualifications or the right. If I take her any further, we could be summarily arrested. If anything went wrong—if we collided, say, or even broke down—God alone knows what would happen. I would never sail again, that’s for sure. Always assuming I wanted to, after I got out of jail. Of course, in these circumstances, I should refer to the charterers’ agent, but he is currently lying dead beside the captain. I can phone Rome in the morning, but it seems unlikely that speaking to Signor Cappaldi’s bosses will get us much further, especially as I understand this commission was to be completed under the strictest secrecy. So, here we are. We cannot go on and we cannot go back. And I rather fear our respite at anchor will be brief. There are a lot of deeply upset people ashore and they will be looking for us at first light, your organisation, Mr Malik, among them, I should think.’
‘I can get through to the PLO in Beirut as soon as you allow me access to the radiophone. I will explain.’
‘But even so, the people you contact will have to act fast if they are to stop the local people attacking us, even out here. We need someone who can take this ship to Italy, and we need them here at once.’
‘I can get a captain to you within twenty-four hours,’ said Salah slowly, with a glance at Fatima. ‘Where could you be in twenty-four hours, if you risked setting sail again at once?’
‘That’s easy. The old g
irl can deliver about ten knots if we push her. We could be two hundred and fifty miles west of here.’
‘North-west, perhaps…’
‘But Salah,’ Fatima burst out, ‘today of all days!’
‘You are right,’ he answered. ‘I had forgotten. They will all be at the wedding. Nevertheless—’
The cabin door burst open to admit a woman of about Fatima’s age, as dark as the Arabian woman, but full-bodied where the freedom fighter was slim, and as turbulent as Fatima was calm and calculating. ‘What have you done to him?’ the woman screamed.
‘Gina!’ Niccolo was on his feet.
‘Come with me! See what you have done to him!’
She was gone and Niccolo began to follow her out of the cabin. ‘Perhaps you could come too,’ he said to Fatima. ‘You are the only other woman aboard. Why he had to bring her, I cannot imagine. She is his daughter. Captain Fittipaldi’s daughter.’
The three of them followed at once, out into the corridor where Gina Fittipaldi awaited them. Silently, except for her sobbing, they went down to the infirmary together.
They had laid the captain out beside Cappaldi. It had been sensitively done. The pale forehead was bound with a bandage and the captain’s cap disguised the odd shape of the right temple almost perfectly. Dressed in full uniform, the old man looked perfectly peaceful, as though he had dozed off at some official function and might awaken at any moment. But this reassuring illusion was utterly destroyed by the state of his hands. Folded respectfully on his breast, they were at terrible odds with the rest of him. From wrist to fingertip they looked as though they had been bathed in the most virulent acid. The skin was all gone and most of the flesh along with it, dissolved into semi-liquid matter that ran in dark stains down the serge-clad curves of his ribs. All that lay folded on the cooling corpse’s uniformed chest were two skeletal claws of chalky calcium and yellow sinew, as though his hands had died and rotted to bone an age before the rest of him.