by Peter Tonkin
Second only to the speculation as to precisely the nature of the services Daniel Huuk performed for Captain Mariner was the debate as to how effective such a commander could possibly be. This speculation was less enjoyable than the former but much more important, for it was unlikely that her sexual predilections would get any of them killed. Given the nature of the conditions and their destination, however, not to mention the possible problems arising from their actual mission, her competence was of paramount importance. And of course she knew this as well as they did.
Robin made the acquaintance of Chief Steward Fu at 07.00 on the dot when he brought her her first cup of cha made the English way with Indian tea. The barbarian woman seemed grateful enough and was courteous to the thoughtful old Oriental. He was one of the few aboard who had worked with Westerners, and that fact would prove a boon to Robin, for the chief steward found the routines she took for granted to be familiar and easy enough to meet, though they were different in every respect from the routines which might be expected from a civilised captain. It was Chief Steward Fu who instructed the ship’s cook in the galley to ease back a little on the spices and add barbarian foodstuffs such as milk, butter, potatoes and baked bread to the captain’s eccentric diet. It was he who discovered the Indian tea and the instant coffee; he who opened the raspberry jam and the Old English marmalade — though he got the order they should be served in wrong at first. It was Fu who, in a moment of almost psychic genius, recalled from the depths of his past experience precisely what needed to be done with porridge oats. It was apt enough that the chief steward should pamper her just enough to keep her sane during the next few days, for it was an old chief steward who had got her out here in the first place.
At eight hundred hours on that first morning, replete with tea, toast and raspberry jam, Robin decided it was time to start her campaign to win the hearts and minds of her crew. ‘You game for a little deck work?’ she asked Daniel, who was toying with a grain or two of white rice and a thimbleful of black Chiu Chow tea. He looked up at her, his face registering surprise. He had been expecting her to hand over to the watch officers and retire to the little cabin next door. He had in fact been thinking wistfully of his own snug berth below. He thought he knew her so well; she never ceased to surprise him.
‘Deck work? Is that necessary?’
‘Vital. We have to check the deck cargo anyway. I have to lead the team even though I will require the lading officer to be there as well. I have to lead the team because as soon as I come in off the main deck I am going to call lifeboat drill and I will be at my muster station first, no matter what. I have to know that these men can perform their emergency duties better than any other duties, regardless of the circumstances. Even under normal conditions, being good at the emergency drills is important. Now and in the near future it’s going to be vital. It’s the one area I have to be absolutely sure of them. And of course they have to be sure of me too. They have to know I can perform my duties better than they can at any time. It’s the way I handle leadership.’
‘Deck work it is then,’ he said, feeling vaguely privileged that she had taken the time to offer such a complete explanation of her motives.
They crossed to the clearview. Daniel looked out at the impenetrable darkness then up at the ship’s chronometer. ‘“By the clock ’tis day …”’ he observed.
She did not rise to his quote from Macbeth. Instead she said to the third officer, ‘Deck lights on, please, Mr Ping.’
At once the deck was flooded with yellow brightness which served to illuminate the sweeping force of the storm. Walls of spray like spectral tidal waves crashed across the cargo and furniture, exploding upwards briefly before being snatched away by the furious wind. Everything out there seemed to be in violent motion. The lines vibrated, the containers seemed to flex and settle, even the great white-painted cranes seemed to be leaning like trees in the blast. The deck, under a thin, scurrying skim of water, seemed to be lifting and rippling like a long carpet on a draughty floor.
‘I thought this was supposed to be moderating,’ Daniel said.
‘The forecasters forgot to check with Tin Hau,’ she said grimly, referring to the Chinese goddess of the sea. Both the helmsman and Third Officer Ping looked at her with new respect.
Robin crossed to the tall stem of the mike and pressed the tannoy button. Automatic chimes rang throughout the ship. ‘Good morning, everyone,’ she said. ‘Jou sahn. This is your captain speaking. I would like First Officer Li to assemble a party for some deck work at once, please. Captain Huuk and I will meet them at the port-side A-deck door in ten minutes and we will need wet-weather gear as well. I say again, port-side A-deck door, ten minutes. That is all, thank you. Mgoi.’
Unlike the experience of Richard and Sally, Robin and Daniel found everything aboard fitted them very well. This included the boiler suits they changed into in their cabins and the wet-weather gear they clambered into at the bulkhead door leading out on to the side of the deck most sheltered by the bridgehouse.
‘I hope you rigged your safety lines tight, Mr Li,’ said Robin grimly, cinching her emergency harness tightly round her slim waist, ‘or this will be the shortest command of my career.’
‘And,’ hissed Daniel in Li’s ear as Robin stepped out into the mad bluster of the black morning, ‘you will have to answer to the Invisible Power Dragon Head with your arms, one tchuen at a time.’ He made a grim, graphic pantomime of forearms being chopped into one-inch pieces as he passed the young officer. Whether this enhanced the captain’s reputation as much as her use of Cantonese and her understanding of Middle Kingdom goddesses remained debatable, but it certainly improved service and safety all around her.
Robin clipped her safety harness on to Li’s tight lines and pushed off into the howling murk. What had been a spectacular light show from the bridge became an all-pervasive, deeply invasive personal battle at once. The spectral waves of spray attained enormous force and, with the aid of the wind, began to try and overwhelm her. Her feet were swept out from under her and it was fortunate that years of experience dictated that she kept her hands as well as her quick-release fastened round the line. For an instant her body felt like a banner flapping in the vicious wind. Then by sheer force of will she placed her feet back on the deck and toiled about her task like a mountaineer surmounting the topmost peak of Everest. Her task, and that of the rest of the team, was simple enough. It was to check a section of the deck cargo to ensure that the lines were tight and the containers safe. In fair weather it would have been the work of a moment or two to be completed by some junior deck hand or trainee. The massive force of the storm reversed all that. Simply to walk required dogged effort verging on the heroic. To observe the immediate environment through an element streaming past at seventy miles an hour, thickening and thinning according to the intensity of the blast or the admixture with water — fresh or salt — was incredibly difficult. Eyes would not focus except for the closest and most minute of examinations. And the lines themselves — thick wire or nylon sections with metal tighteners — were vibrating so much that even could eyes focus, it was possible to see detail only if numb hands held on like grim death, forcing the wild vibration to momentary stillness.
Concentration was the key, and yet it was all but impossible, undermined as it constantly was by the disorientating, buffeting roar of the storm wind, the thunderous barrage of the rain and spray striking every surface in semi-solid drops the size of golf balls travelling at a hundred miles an hour. And through the explosive force of all this noise came the screaming howl of the lines themselves, each producing a wild, keening note, out of tune with both each other and the booming bass of the wind as it thumped between the containers themselves. All of this would have been hard enough to contend with on land. But the Sulu Queen, large as she was, could no more sit still in this hurricane than a cockleshell. She heaved and dived, pitched and corkscrewed, threw herself wildly about the ocean. And, as Robin discovered the instant she set foot o
n the foredeck, the skim of water whistling across the steel was as slick and slippery as ice.
Half an hour later they were all back again, their job done and the cargo well and truly checked. Robin paused for an instant inside the bulkhead door, watching the rest of them troop off exhaustedly. She was simply trying to catch her breath and dispel that strange sense of personal invasion that a strong wind can bring as it forces its icy fingers like those of a frozen ravisher into every nook and cranny. Then she slopped over to the nearest phone and called the bridge.
Third Officer Ping answered smartly enough, and with the handset wedged against a soaking bright yellow wet-weather shoulder, she set the stopwatch function on her wristwatch and gasped, ‘Mr Ping, this is the captain speaking. Sound emergency stations please.’
They were impressively slick in this as in all else and Robin was hard put to it to get to her muster station first. All of her team were there within two minutes, and she was handed a radio to check on the others. Standing foul weather orders allowed them to assemble at their interior muster stations and the radio was the only way to check on their arrival at various far-flung sections of the bridgehouse. Two and a half minutes and they were all reported in and ready. Then, having established that Daniel was sure of his place in her boat, she went across to the first officer’s muster station. She had the crew list and Li had the emergency station list, and together they slopped from station to station, checking in detail that every member of the crew was in exactly the right place. The next step was to assemble them outside the bridgehouse and swing out the lifeboats as though they were about to be used. Sometime in the not too distant future she would detail each team actually to get aboard its boat and time that too. But this was enough for now.
At eleven, Chief Steward Fu found her in the day room behind the bridge with First Officer Li, going through the cargo manifest. He did not disturb her, he simply left at her elbow a tray containing a cup of black coffee, milk, sugar and four chocolate digestive biscuits. When he came back half an hour later, the coffee was gone and so were the biscuits. His simple pleasure at this fact was somewhat undermined by the smear of chocolate at the comer of the first officer’s mouth, but the grateful little smile his captain bestowed on him more than compensated for any passing irritation.
At noon on the dot, as the first officer signed on to the log, the chimes went and the captain’s voice, raised slightly to carry over the continuing cacophony all around them, read out a list of carefully practised names of the men who carried current first aid certificates. They were to report to the dining saloon at fifteen hundred hours precisely. When Daniel appeared after a snoop around the bridgehouse to ask perhaps unwisely if there was anything he could do to help, he was asked to take the end of the afternoon watch and the beginning of the first dogwatch so that Li and Yung could report to the dining saloon as well. Now that she knew the crew were fast on their feet in an emergency, Robin wanted to create the closest she could manage to four paramedic teams, one for each of the big lifeboats.
She took luncheon in the officers’ dining saloon, which was due to be emptied in two hours’ time for her meeting. Daniel observed with some amusement a slight failure of communication between the chief steward and the ship’s cook as Robin was served a meal fit for a gweilo princess — vegetable soup with spring rolls, stir-fried steak and kidney from one of the Fray Bentos tins below, served with plain rice, and spotted dick with Korean ginseng honey. Robin ate it all with quiet if weary amusement and sent her compliments to the chef and her thanks to the chief steward.
‘Now I do need some advice,’ she said over coffee while Daniel sipped his usual hot water with lemon juice. ‘How do I get those two to stop spoiling me and let me eat like the rest of the crew without upsetting them?’
He paused and looked deeply into her eyes, then, with more wisdom than he realised, he said, ‘You can’t. You’ll just have to grin and bear it.’
‘It’ll all go straight to my hips and all points south,’ she said mournfully.
‘A price you’ll have to pay,’ he said gently. ‘Call it comfort eating.’
‘You’ll be tucking me up with a teddy bear soon,’ she teased.
He forbore to comment. ‘What’s next?’ he asked.
‘A bit of basic ship-handling. See how she’s heading, check where we are, readjust the course, get her settled down a bit.’
The way she said it was enough to raise his eyebrows. ‘That means you’re going to be doing something even riskier than swanning around on deck.’
‘Not really. You must know what we’ve got to do next.’
‘After the deck cargo, the holds.’
‘Got it in one. And if the deck is anything to go by, everything will be shipshape down there, too.’
‘That’s really the lading officer’s province.’
‘I’ll take him down with me.’
‘We’ll take him down with us. But be careful of his face. He’ll be no good to you if the crew think you don’t trust him to do his job.’
‘I do trust Li. He’s very good.’
‘Even so. You have to make it obvious you trust him.’
‘I’ll do my duty. Then I’ll make it obvious how much I trust him.’ Perhaps it was because she was tired and impatient, but the phrase came out all wrong. She meant it innocently enough and intended no comparison between the two men but the way she said it made it seem that she had swiftly come to trust First Officer Li more than she trusted Daniel.
Immediately beneath the bridgehouse and stretching back to the poop were the engineering sections. In front of these was a double-skinned cofferdam. Then, under the main deck, were four great holds. Each was discrete, sectioned off from the others by sheer steel walls with only a minimum number of doors for inspection purposes. It was technically possible to fill one hold completely with water and keep the others dry. In the forward section of the first engineering deck, heavy steel doors led into a narrow tunnel. This tunnel spanned the cofferdam and then opened into a gallery running along the ship’s side above the cargo holds. It was steel-floored, steel-walled and steel-roofed and there was just room to walk along it and do a basic check on the disposition of each hold. More detail could be gleaned by climbing through the safety gates and shinning down the ladders which allowed access to the floors of the holds four full decks beneath the gallery.
This was only possible where the cargo was in containers and the containers did not fill the hold entirely. In this case the central block of the cargo would be secured in position not only by lines., ropes and shackles like the deck cargo, but by great balks of timber wedged like flying buttresses against strengthened sections of the hold’s side. Li had in fact used this method only in the forepeak hold, number one, right out at the bow, where the cargo was small and extremely heavy — machine tools and engine parts mostly — and the ship’s side had extra strength. This further allowed him to judge to a nicety the buoyancy of her head — within the limitations dictated by the laws of sheer. Any infringement of those inexorable rules would lead the weight of one hold to come up against the buoyancy of another hold along the line of the wall dividing them, so breaking the ship’s back and tearing her apart.
At thirteen thirty on that first day, Li led Robin and Daniel into the starboard gallery and they began their inspection of number four hold. In the good ship Okhotsk, currently lying wedged on the north-eastern battlements of the Rifleman, number four hold contained illicitly smuggled nuclear warheads leaking radiation at an incapacitating rate. On the Sulu Queen number four hold contained very much more innocuous stuff: not-quite Muddy Fox BMX bicycles from Guangzhou destined for the international markets in Japan and America; umbrellas and sewing machines; televisions and personal stereos; a new type of clockwork radio designed to rival the world-beating original still pouring out of South Africa.
It was all packed in boxes, square or flat, polystyrene-filled or swathed in plastic bubbles. The boxes for each product were all the same
size, packed neatly into the interior of the containers, ready to be offloaded into warehouses, trans-shipped on to the backs of lorries and opened at retail outlets around the world. The hold was not quite full; in fact the cargo was one complete level of containers short and there was a good three metres between the top of the cargo and the underside of the hatches above.
All Robin could see was a flat internal deck of container tops; apart from slight variations in age, state and colour, each was as anonymous as the next. Somehow here, so close to the foot of the bridgehouse, the hull seemed to be having an easier ride. Things were deceptively steady and their progress seemed to be much smoother now that they were down here. Robin opened the safety gate, stood on the top rung of the ladder then stepped out on to the top of the nearest container. The other two exchanged a peculiarly masculine look and followed.
It was as important that this cargo stayed safe and secure as it was that the deck cargo did. More so, in fact. If the deck cargo went by the board it would be dangerous, possibly damaging and very expensive. If this lot broke loose then the ship would sink and they would all die. Robin stood in the centre of the cargo, eyes closed, feeling the way the ship was moving around her and judging with the soles of her feet the manner in which the well-packed cargo was reacting to it. When she was satisfied that it was all safe and sound, she opened her eyes and looked at the copy of the manifest she had brought with her. At random, she crouched down and released the clips on a section of a container, lifting a little trap door which allowed her to see into the container she was standing on. She knelt on one knee, frowning as she looked into it. Then her face cleared. ‘BMXs,’ she called across to Daniel. ‘The twins’d kill to get hold of these!’