Ship to Shore

by Peter Tonkin

  Richard took a step forward and the Russian reacted upon hearing his footfall — the man could hardly see, he was very nearly blind. ‘Do you mean that literally? Are they all dead?’ Richard persisted.

  ‘After the collision we had trouble holding the crew. The cargo. The warheads. The ghosts … Then they mutinied and killed the captain and attacked the Chinese. They were well armed but too weak. All the Geiger counters have been reading off the scale for more than a week now. When they could not get off that way, the strongest took the port-side lifeboats and abandoned … ’

  ‘Did you see them?’ Richard asked Su-zi.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did they go?’ he asked Grozny.

  The Russian gestured broadly and Richard crossed to the clearview, following the direction of Grozny’s hand. The outer edge of the reef curved away like a scimitar wound in the ocean, the placid heave of the sea broken into a red welter of surf by the leading edge of the rocks just beneath the surface.

  ‘They went out there?’

  ‘That is the last place I see them.’ Grozny’s voice lingered, enjoying. ‘Then I don’t see them no more.’

  Abruptly he was looking over Richard’s shoulder, his face utterly white. His mouth worked. A little red foam oozed out of it into the stubble on his chin. The stare was so fixed that Richard, too, looked over his shoulder. But there was nobody there. Nobody that he could see, at least.

  Grozny swung back to the video player, his face working wildly. But the screen was almost perfectly white now, the signal from the video tape nearby erased by the radioactivity all around the ship. The ghost of Anna Tatianova was finally released from its electronic prison and entered Grozny’s world.

  ‘No!’ screamed the murderer in Russian, hurling himself back into the watchkeeper’s chair. ‘No! Get back. Get back inside … ’

  Such was his fierce concentration on the spectral woman released so unexpectedly by a conscience he did not even know he possessed, that the wild Russian officer did not see his three visitors cross to the clearview, their own attention as utterly possessed as his own. But Lawkeeper, Su-zi and Richard were not riven by any ghastly woman come back from the dead for revenge. They were looking in simple wonder at the solid black shape of a freighter coming over the horizon towards them.

  ‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Richard quietly. ‘That’s Sulu Queen. I’d know her lines anywhere. Sulu Queen out looking for us. Well, I’m damned.’

  *

  Richard was at the head of the makeshift ladder hanging between the bridgehouse and the collision point to welcome Captain So aboard and congratulate him on a brave piece of humanitarian seamanship. His head was a whirl of speculation brutally confined within the strong restraint of urgent plans. He was bursting for news of Robin and the twins. He was full of questions as to how on earth Sulu Queen had got from near arrest in Kwai Chung to this of all places. What had happened to her cargo? Why were her decks empty?

  But what was far more important than all of this was the burning necessity of getting the wounded people off this death trap and away from the dangerously irradiated area as quickly as possible. This was his prime responsibility. But as the captain’s cutter from Sulu Queen approached, the speculation in Richard’s mind broke its bounds again, for the figure sitting in the captain’s place was not fat old pompous Captain So but the unexpected, whip-thin, intense figure that Richard slowly and unbelievingly recognised as belonging to Daniel Huuk.

  Daniel came aboard Luck Voyager strangely subdued and at first Richard thought this must simply be a result of his shock at the scale of the destruction he could see all around. All the crew who came up out of the captain’s cutter with Daniel were also strangers. ‘Where’s Captain So?’ Richard asked as the two of them went together up to the owner’s accommodation high in the battered bridge for a brief conference.

  ‘Resigned. Jumped ship. Said he would rather sit on the beach than come out in the storm after you.’

  ‘But where did you spring from, Daniel? It’s been such a long time … ’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘But how on earth did you get command of Sulu Queen? And where did all these strange crew spring from?’

  ‘Robin arranged it all.’

  Robin. Her name stopped Richard dead in his tracks, his mind suddenly full of his own concerns again. Surely Robin was in Sussex settling the twins into school. Even in the extremes of his adventures he had imagined her safely in Ashenden. ‘Robin,’ he whispered, moving forward again on the word. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’ll be all the better when she hears you’re all right.’ Daniel was aware that his answer was evasive but apparently not too much so; it did not alert Richard. Providentially, he had asked how she was and not where she was.

  Robin still lay in lightly drugged slumber in the captain’s cabin aboard the Sulu Queen. Daniel had kept a careful guard over her, and had put his most trusted man beside her now while he was here on Luck Voyager. He had spent the last twenty-four hours ensuring that she enjoyed an unbroken slumber while he and his crew had worked like coolies. She would have a headache and a very short temper when she awoke but that would be the least of his worries. At least he would have had a chance to get the lie of the land well scouted by then, for he knew there would be a conflict, to put it mildly.

  Robin’s motive, apparently supported by Twelvetoes and by Daniel himself, had been simply to find and rescue Richard. She would take back anyone else who was with him, but that was all. She was a loving wife but she was also a businesswoman with a failing business and her own vital agenda. Daniel knew she had checked with the late First Officer Li which cargo could most swiftly be taken to its port of destination to get the China Queens back in business as soon as possible.

  Daniel’s actual mission was more complex than that, however. Together with the crew so obligingly supplied by Shipchandler Hip, he was to salvage as much of Luck Voyager’s cargo as could be recovered and return it to Hong Kong. Daniel had cleared the decks, literally as well as figuratively, over the last twenty-four hours and he would proceed with his mission at the earliest opportunity, for he too had no desire to linger in this ship’s graveyard an instant longer than was necessary.

  Richard might be the owner of Sulu Queen and Robin her legal captain but the man who actually held command in spite of them was Daniel and the man for whom the battered old freighter was really working was Twelvetoes Ho. And that was that. So the longer Robin stayed asleep and the longer Richard stayed off balance and ignorant of her proximity, and condition, the better. But this blissful situation could remain in place for only a limited time.

  Daniel did not actually want to see Richard at all but Song Sun-wah the captain. Wan Yin-yip the lading officer, and Ho Su-zi, the Dragon Head’s daughter and supercargo. He needed to see Su-zi most of all, for there would have to be a very detailed report written about this mess and it would have to be authenticated by someone the old man trusted or there would be very bad trouble indeed for all of them. As these thoughts were going through the grim ex-coastguard captain’s mind, Richard was filling him in on the background. Daniel saw that the lading officer for certain was beyond his reach. As soon as he realised that the captain, too, was badly wounded, he turned his steps to the ship’s medical facility.

  Richard’s own steps faltered, the wind taken out of his sails by the taciturn man’s unexpected action. He had hardly seemed to be listening to his words and so this abrupt reaction to them was utterly unexpected. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I need to see the captain and any of the officers at once,’ Daniel told him.

  ‘They’re not in a position to do you much good.’

  ‘They are the officers responsible in law.’

  Richard looked at him closely. ‘There’s no hope of salvage here. And in any case — ’

  ‘This isn’t about salvage,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s about something more dangerous than that. I would recommend that you stay out of it.�
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  The Dragon Head of the Invisible Power Triad had arranged for the vessel to come out to sea on its apparent rescue mission and that was the closest to a salvage fee he was likely to countenance. Smugglers, after all, do not carry much in the way of insurance.

  ‘Now look here. You’re on my ship. You’ll do what I — ’

  ‘Your ship is manned by Dragon Head Ho’s men, Richard. We do what the Dragon Head says. When we have done that, then you and I will talk.’ Daniel stopped, his mind racing.

  Then, with cunning calculation, he changed tack and added, ‘You and I and Robin.’

  ‘Robin? Where is she?’

  ‘Asleep in the captain’s cabin over on Sulu Queen. She had a slight accident.’

  ‘Robin … ’ There was sheer incredulity on Richard’s face. He was used to riding a whirlwind of events but things were moving too fast for him here.

  ‘It was she who came after you. Everyone else had given up. But she came after you, through the storm of the century.’

  Richard took a step forward, seeming to tear himself through a solid wall, as though the air all around him was glass. ‘What happened to her?’

  Daniel told him, embroidering it slightly.

  ‘But she’s all right?’

  ‘Take the cutter. See for yourself.’

  Richard did not think twice. He turned and almost ran down to the ladder with the little boat snugged at its foot.

  Daniel took a deep breath and turned to his own urgent business. This situation was worse than anything he and the Dragon Head had discussed. Well, not quite as bad as total loss, perhaps; and the old man loved little Su-zi well beyond the bounds of wisdom in one of his age and his position. But it seemed quite clear to Daniel what needed to be done.

  The medical facility was more like a MASH unit than anything else but everyone Daniel needed to see was there. Lading Officer Wan was feverish but Captain Song was clear-headed. Lawkeeper Ho was coldly suspicious in a way even Richard had not attained yet, and Su-zi was in charge of far more than the nursing. A word or two established in Daniel’s mind just how completely she was in charge of everything. And her priorities were, interestingly, slightly at variance with those of Daniel and her father the Dragon Head. Infected no doubt by Richard Mariner and his gweilo morality, she too put the ship’s personnel before the cargo. And it was she who explained to Daniel the danger presented by the Russian vessel stuck like a poison dart in the Luck Voyager9s side.

  In the event, their discussion was interrupted before it could get to argument. A patient on the operating table began to groan with distracting urgency, writhing, stirring, finally kicking off the sheet and half sitting, very nearly falling off altogether. Daniel crossed to see what the matter was. The picture which Sally Alabaster presented stopped him dead in his tracks. He asked no questions as to who she was or why she was here. He simply ran his hands down the outside of her flank, testing the disposition of the bones and probing the rigidity of the muscles. ‘You have been using relaxants on her?’

  Su-zi told him the name of the relaxants and the painkillers they had been pumping into her.

  ‘It’s traction you really need. But … ’ Sally’s white body spasmed again and Daniel, sidetracked out of his hardline Triad soldier persona, shook his head. ‘Put her on the floor.’

  The GP seamen doubling as nurses looked to Su-zi and she nodded. As Sally was lifted off the table, her eyes opened. Lent some extra fire by the fever of agony, they blazed at him like the eyes of a terrified tiger, tugging at something deep within him — deeper within him that anything he had ever known.

  Her lips parted, a whisper of breath came and went. They placed her gently on the sheet she had kicked off earlier. As they arranged her, Daniel kicked off his left shoe and flexed his naked toes. Their eyes remained locked. He did not even look away as he stooped and took hold of her ankle. He raised her leg until it was directly up the front of his body. ‘Su-zi,’ he said gently, ‘I’m going to fall backwards. I want you and young Lawkeeper to catch me, please.’

  He placed his right foot exactly at the distended point of Sally’s hip. Gently, his eyes never leaving hers, he raised his left foot and placed the instep on the springy pad of curls which crested her pelvis. Then, as good as his word, he leaned backwards, his grip on her ankle firm, his left leg slowly straightening so that all the force at his command and the full weight of his wiry body came down upon the joint. And as he fell backwards into Su-zi and Lawkeeper’s hands, the rigid cap of muscles slowly yielded and the round end of the displaced thighbone slid smoothly back into the cup of Sally’s hip joint. Her eyes became large enough to consume him utterly, body and soul; and as the joint slipped back into place she uttered one last guttural sound — but there was no way to tell whether it was a groan of agony or of ecstasy.

  19

  The little cutter bobbed through the water between the ships. There was a dead calm and a clear sky, but the backwash of the surf from the reef kept things lively enough down here. The whirling water was an apt reflection of the state of Richard’s mind as he tried to unravel the ramifications of his current situation. But the more he tried to focus on the implications of Daniel Huuk’s grim revelations, the more absolutely was his mind distracted by visions of his wife.

  All too clearly Richard remembered the weary discontent with which Robin and he had parted at Chek Lap Kok. He had lost track of time and so he did not know exactly how many days had passed since then, but his whole outlook had changed in the interim. He was, he suddenly realised, a very different man to the world-weary, bitterly frustrated, deeply discontented executive who had driven Robin and the twins so grumpily out to Lan Tao Island. If it had done nothing else, the adventure so far had re-ordered his priorities. And it had, he suddenly realised, allowed him to rediscover his simple passion for her. Like the jewels which had slowly revealed themselves on the gold handle of that strange knife Sally had found, his love for Robin had been revealed still untarnished once the excrescences of dirtside business had been washed away by the cold clear waters of the Rifleman Reef.

  If only there could be something down there among the cruising sharks and the ocean-going crocodiles which would take away the financial weight of the failing company as well, Richard thought grimly.

  But then the dark side of the Sulu Queen was towering over him and he suddenly realised he was more than a little nervous. One of the seamen in the bow of the boat reached up to steady the Jacob’s ladder hanging down from the deck, but Richard hesitated, still sitting on the midship seat. He knew Daniel Huuk well enough to trust that nothing untoward had happened to Robin — though he would never know how close a call that had been — but he suddenly found within himself a schoolboy with a fluttering heart. He had changed; what if she had not? What if his newly effulgent love met the grim resentment his behaviour at their last meeting warranted? What if she had done this wonderful thing and come out after him to save the company and not their marriage? What if he was to be rescued simply as the man who would pay the alimony she required to keep her darlings at boarding school?

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ he said to himself, and was surprised when the seaman holding the Jacob’s ladder turned. To cover his embarrassment at speaking aloud, he stood at once and walked down to the bow. With practised ease he swung himself up on to the ladder and swarmed up on to the deck with little more than an extra gasp to show that he had been doing this on and off for more than forty years.

  As soon as he arrived on deck, however, a strange atmosphere seemed to claim him. He was aboard a familiar vessel, perhaps the most familiar of all to him from recent years, and yet the crew were all strangers. He was a stranger here himself now, he realised, and yet all the wise Oriental eyes seemed to know him well enough. This was a crew, on his own ship, owned and answering to a Triad society and yet they yielded to him like smoke in a dingy room. No one tried to stop him as he walked purposefully across the empty deck, noting the repairs to the forward hat
ch as he went. No one spoke to him either in welcome or inquiry as he opened the bulkhead door into the A-deck corridor and crossed to the lift. There was a guard, armed with a Kalashnikov AK-74, standing outside the door to the captain’s accommodation but he moved aside silently at Richard’s approach.

  The door into the day room was not locked and Richard went through, straight into the line of fire of a second guard. This man also stood up and back as recognition dawned. Richard gestured silently with a tense flick of his head and the man went outside to join his colleague. With his heart in his mouth, Richard crossed to the bedroom door.

  He had no idea what he was expecting to find on the other side and he staunchly refused to speculate. Instead he simply turned the handle and stepped in.

  Stepped in and stopped dead. The room was in darkness, the curtains drawn against the early day. It was silent, or as near as could be found on an operational vessel. Robin’s restful breathing was blanketed by the grumble of the alternators and the whisper of air conditioning, and so it was the scent of her that hit him first. Something beyond the Chanel perfume which she always wore, something deeper, more feral, which even the fussy fans could not sweep away; some personal odour special to her, which salt air, island breeze and Sally Alabaster’s vital tang had come close to wiping from his memory.

  Frozen there, just inside the doorway, Richard drank in that elusive, beloved essence until it seemed that his very pores were soaking it up. When he moved, it was unerringly to her bedside. He knew this cabin perfectly; dark and light. He crossed to her side in four firm steps and stooped. This close he could hear her. There was a bone-deep familiarity about the timbre of her quiet breathing which constricted his ribs. Like a sorcerer’s apprentice entranced, he knew that only the feel of her would release his frozen muscles, so his rough and trembling fingers brushed the soft down of her cheek as he took one painful, shuddering breath. She stirred slightly, whimpering like one of the twins, childlike, utterly defenceless, agonisingly beloved. He blinked away a tear and reached for the light.