by Peter Tonkin
In the sudden yellow brightness her curls lay tumbled on the pillow like a treasure trove, bringing thoughts of guineas and doubloons irresistibly to his mind, but his eyes lingered on this for an instant only. How pale she looked. Her face was wan and not a little drawn. Even after her sleep there were dark rings below her restlessly moving eyes and the lids which covered them seemed as fine as tissue and blue-stained themselves. The sight of her almost burst his heart. Gently, silently, he leaned forward until his lips just brushed against her eyelids like the petals of mysterious flowers. And, as though his kiss had all the magic such things possess in fairy tales, he felt her lashes sweep up across them as his lightest touch woke her at once.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said huskily. ‘I was dreaming … ’
Then she started up. It was lucky Richard drew back as soon as he felt her eyelids move or they would have banged their heads together very hard indeed. Now he sat uneasily right on the edge of the bed, leaning slightly towards her and frowning.
‘Richard!’ she said and he could not read the tone behind the word.
‘You came out after me,’ he said guardedly. ‘Huuk said you came through the storm of the century.’ As he spoke, his eyes dropped. On her movement, the sheet had fallen back to reveal the lightly gold-freckled slopes of her breasts. Even through the two sucklings her nipples had not really deepened in colour but retained their girlish rose as well as their saucy tilt. He had had nothing but Sally Alabaster’s nudity for God knew how long and yet the sight of his wife stirred him more deeply than anything. He looked up again and even in the bright electric light his pupils had expanded hungrily. And on a level far too deep for consciousness she responded.
‘It wasn’t as bad as all that, as storms go,’ she said. Then she added, almost in a whisper, as though the repetition was some kind of painfully dangerous spell, ‘They told me you were dead.’
He sat there, simply stunned. It had never occurred to him that she should ever have thought him dead.
‘Dead?’ he said hoarsely. ‘But why?’
‘All the others on the ferry died. You’re the only one … ’
‘There were three of us,’ he said automatically. ‘Sally Alabaster, she’s a sergeant in the American Special Forces, and Lawkeeper Ho … ’
That last name recalled them to themselves.
They did not kiss, or even embrace. Instead, he tried to update her on her command and the whole current situation including such information as he had gathered about the accident, Li’s death, and the aftermath from Triad puppet Daniel Huuk’s laconic story. While he did this she hopped in and out of the bathroom and searched for some clothing, pausing every now and then waiting for her head to clear, and he watched with quiet solicitude. As she dressed, they began to try and formulate some plans but they both knew there were too many imponderables here.
Then, as soon as she was dressed, side by side as always, as though no shadows had ever come between them, as though no real danger still threatened, they went back on to the deck. Here, as though fate was conspiring to bring about confrontation after confrontation, they came face to face with Daniel who was just returning to reassume his pirated command. He was a Fletcher Christian facing two Captain Blighs; but there was no word of recrimination. Both Richard and Robin knew that they were powerless here and that any confrontation would be embarrassing at the least, more likely ignominious and possibly even fatal.
But, typically, Richard could not leave it there. ‘We need to know your plans, Captain Huuk,’ he said, with hardly a trace of irony.
Daniel looked around the deck, calculating rapidly. He did not, in fact, want a confrontation with Richard and Robin. He had no intention of abandoning, marooning or hurting them in any way. He saw the use of Sulu Queen’s deck space for the transport of the Dragon Head’s cargo as a fair exchange. He wished to complete the salvage and set sail as soon as possible. He expected to tend the wounded and take all the survivors with him when he returned to Hong Kong and he proposed to use the return voyage to talk the Mariners round so that they made as little fuss as possible back in Kwai Chung. Even had he been less charitably orientated towards them — even had his passions and his dreams been less engaged — he knew them to be friends of Twelvetoes Ho and would never have damaged them without direct and explicit orders.
And, wisely, he knew he would only get the pair of them out of his hair if he gave them an element of control over at least part of the situation. Then they would get on with their task and leave him to get on with his. And it so happened that he had a post of responsibility he urgently needed filling. Su-zi could no longer be left in charge of the wounded on Luck Voyager because he needed her to go through the cargo with him and help him decide the priorities for salvage. Her role as supercargo would have made this task important even had Luck Voyager’s own lading officer not been so badly incapacitated. And he knew that both Richard and Robin had kept their first aid certificates — originally earned when they were first officers and medical officers on ships without doctors — up to date.
And so, confident of his unquestionable face and unchallengeable command, apparently buckling under the weight of Richard’s confrontation, Daniel opened his arms like a bishop blessing them and swept them back down the deck and up on to the bridge where he explained the position and begged their help while he manoeuvred their ship every bit as adroitly as he was manoeuvring them.
*
Richard had left the Geiger counter retrieved from the Russian ship beside the window of the sickbay nearest to the nuclear warheads. It was the first thing he checked as he entered the busy room and its read-out still sat calmly in the green. At the top of the green to be sure, but still within acceptable limits.
The next thing he checked, by looking past the Geiger counter on the windowsill, was the bridgehouse of the Okhotsk. But all was still and apparently silent there. He and Daniel had discussed the one Russian officer left alive over there but Daniel had been too preoccupied to take much account of one lone man at the point of death. Had the officer been wounded and lying within easy reach, it would have been worth getting him over to Luck Voyager and adding him to the wounded in the sickbay. But sending a team of men into a dangerously radioactive environment to seek out a lunatic who was as likely to kill them as talk to them was an extra problem he simply did not want to add to his list. In any case, moving between the ships remained a pretty difficult affair and it was extremely unlikely that the maddened cripple Richard described would be able to get down from the deck of the Okhotsk on to the deck of the Luck Voyager — unless the tide went right out, uncovered the reef and allowed him to step down and climb round. Richard could see Daniel’s point. But he had also seen Gregor Grozny and he was not so sure that the man might not find a way across if driven hard enough by his devils. But his searching glance across the two decks and the jumble of cargo upon them assured him that there was no immediate danger from the Russian, and so he put him out of his mind.
Robin was talking quietly to Lawkeeper, who was increasingly restless about being treated as a medical orderly. Sally Alabaster lay on the operating table in a deep sleep. Daniel had mentioned that he had managed to relocate her hip and a quick check revealed to Richard that the only swelling left there now was due to bruising. The hip would no doubt need a strong support bandage at the earliest opportunity, but applying such a complicated thing was far beyond his ability so he decided to leave well alone. His eyes told him enough.
He did not need to risk a further, tactile, examination of the spectacular body parts in question. As he looked up, his eyes met Robin’s and he smiled. An answering crinkle at the outer comers of her eyes made his smile broaden almost foolishly, then she was looking down. ‘And this is your Special Forces sergeant?’ she asked.
‘Yup.’ He was suddenly a little sheepish. He fussily rearranged the sheet.
‘It’s as well they told me you were dead. If I’d known you were marooned alone with this creature I’d hav
e been really worried.’
‘I thought you were only jealous of my ships.’
‘You never had a ship designed like this one,’ she riposted easily.
‘That’s true enough.’ He looked away, suddenly bored with Sally and this game. He had not really been tempted by the beautiful young soldier and it disturbed him now to be teased over a reaction he had never felt. Robin saw the truth of the matter in his eyes and smiled a little more widely to herself.
Through the rest of the day as they worked among the restless patients in the crowded little ward, they eyed each other like lovers on a first date. No matter what each was called to do, when they looked up, the other was watching them with pupils wide and dark. And so the day passed. There was no question of doing anything other than tending to the immediate wants and needs of the patients while Su-zi and Daniel finished moving the cargo up out of Luck Voyager’s three undamaged holds and on to Sulu Queen’s expansive deck. As the afternoon arrived and then began to draw itself out, it began to seen that they would not be moving their patients to Sulu Queen today after all.
The only breaks in this orderly progression came when food arrived, Sally awoke and orders came from on high that Lawkeeper should support Captain Song on to the main deck. Fortunately, Richard had saved a substantial helping of fried rice and lemon chicken with steamed vegetables against Sally’s inevitable stirring. But in fact her first demand was for neither food nor a bedpan. ‘Who was that masked man?’ she drawled, announcing her return to the land of the living with a line that only the Western buff Richard recognised.
Fighting the urge to look around the room in case the Lone Ranger was actually there, he asked, ‘Who do you mean, Sally?’
‘The guy who stood on my tush and slid the old hip back in.’
‘Captain Huuk.’
Now it was her turn to look around the sickbay. ‘What, we have Peter Pan now? And who is this? Tinkerbell or Wendy Darling?’
‘My name is Robin Mariner,’ said Robin before Richard could answer. ‘And I understand you are Sergeant Sybelle Alabaster.’
Grey eyes met tiger eyes and there was an instant of absolute silence. Then suddenly, calculatedly, Sally looked across at Richard, who had eyes for only one of them. Sally grinned ruefully. ‘So this guy really is called Captain Hook, huh?’
‘Huuk,’ Robin corrected the pronunciation.
‘Whatever. I sure as hell owe him one big thank you.’
Just the way she said this made Richard observe, ‘Perhaps it’s as well I didn’t manage to fix you up after all.’
Sally’s grin broadened. ‘Oh no, Richard. I don’t think you’d want to play doctors and nurses with me, no matter what. Now, what’s a girl got to do to get some room service in this joint?’
After she had eaten, Sally went off to exercise the ship’s plumbing. She was able to move only stiffly, but her hip held up well enough for the time being.
‘That’s lucky,’ observed Robin drily. ‘I think that particular joint may get a little exercise when your Sally gets her claws into Daniel.’
‘Daniel in the tiger’s den,’ agreed Richard; and Robin suddenly remembered how much she preferred playing these sorts of games with him rather than with the object of Sally’s unnerving gratitude. She smiled and turned to face Daniel’s messenger, who had just arrived to request that Captain Song should make his way to the main deck. Lawkeeper was glad to help him, not because he was by nature a nurse but because Su-zi was up there too. As soon as Sally had found something to wear, and sorted out a walking stick, she joined the nursing team. She was, after all, a fully trained army nurse. She checked all the work Richard and Robin had done and announced herself satisfied; she set up simple treatment timetables and agreed that it would soon be time to start preparing the patients for the night.
But Lawkeeper returned with Su-zi who informed them that the cargo had now been moved and Captain Song had been moved with it. Captain Huuk would now like to move some of the other patients too. Sally and Robin set up a kind of triage, deciding who could best be moved at once, who needed to stay and get a little more treatment. Sally went across with the first batch of patients to look over the facilities on Sulu Queen, though both Richard and Robin had described them in detail, down to the last bandage and medicine bottle. When she returned, she declared herself satisfied. Satisfied in more ways than one. As well as checking on the facilities and the ability of the mixed crew from the two ships to accept their wounded colleagues, she had managed to meet her mysterious saviour; and she had managed to imprint her personality, and gratitude, on Daniel Huuk’s consciousness with some force. Now she had a secret little smile of her own, and the ghost of a tune to whistle as she began to prepare the next batch of patients to be swung across the two-metre gap between the ships.
‘Are we going to transfer them all tonight?’ asked Richard, more than a little worried at the prospect.
‘It would make sense if we could,’ answered Su-zi. ‘Daniel wants to leave as soon as possible. These people are all that are holding us up now. And if we leave even one behind then we have to leave nurses and crew to keep them tended, comfortable, safe and fed. With the power here down, we’d also need a generator for light and heat. All sorts of stuff.’
‘I take your point,’ said Sally, ‘but you tell Daniel Huuk that if we move this guy tonight then he’ll die as like as not. And there are a couple of others in the same shape. If all he’s worried about is a deadline then I’d advise him to give us another twelve hours if he can. Especially as this is the little guy who saved our bacon in the dinghy. What’s his name? First Officer Wan?’
‘I’ll tell him,’ said Su-zi. ‘Twelve hours, you say?’
‘I guess. Lieutenant Wan and these four. They’ll either pull through or go down in that time. It’s not much to ask, sail at dawn instead of at dusk, but it’s up to him, I guess. Depends on how important that deadline is.’
Su-zi took the message and returned with Daniel’s reluctant agreement. It soon became clear that she had won this by insisting that she was going to stay behind herself. And so, as darkness began to settle over the wrecked Luck Voyager and shadows began to creep through the powerless caverns of her bridgehouse, the last nets of cargo were swung between the ships and Sulu Queen withdrew into deeper water for the night. The nets that swung on to Luck Voyager contained a generator and the lights and heating needed to get through the night.
There were five patients left on board Luck Voyager, plus the nursing team of Richard and Robin, Sally, Su-zi and Lawkeeper. There was also a small team of crewmen from Sulu Queen, and Richard recognised among them the two who had guarded the doors into Robin’s quarters. Daniel had managed to turn things to his own advantage; Luck Voyager had become an overnight prison containing all his problems under the eyes of his most trusted guards.
But there was a wild card in the situation that Daniel had not included in his calculations. As the night fell and the moon began to rise, Gregor Grozny was driven out of the haunted corridors of Okhotsk. In his own mad world he was being pursued by the vengeful ghost of the no longer lovely Anna Tatianova, who was much more real to him than the cargo containers on the deck of his ship or the people on Luck Voyager. It was fortunate that he had already discovered that shooting at her only made things worse, for her restless body simply added each gunshot vividly to the mounting tally of horrific damage it had sustained and kept coming relentlessly after him. So, when he did break down and run away, at least he came unarmed.
Never in his wildest dreams had the pragmatic, sadistic Russian officer imagined that he would prove to have such a fatally vivid conscience. But, like many tightly-controlled, manipulative people, he had always been hesitant to look too deeply inside his own mind. Whatever flaws lay within him had been widened to fatal weakness by the combination of loneliness, sleeplessness and radiation sickness to which he had been subjected for uncounted hours.
All the clocks on Okhotsk had stopped long ago, and it was by th
e most ancient of night calculators, the zenith of the moon’s track, that Grozny was finally stirred. Hunched, twisted, moving through the weird, monochrome world like a monster from an old horror film, Grozny came out of the deckhouse, muttering. Unaware either of his madness or his physical deformity, he scuttled down the slope of the littered deck into the shadow of the great container which held the BTR-80 armoured personnel carrier. Here he hesitated, looking fearfully around the shadows, knowing only too well that Anna Tatianova would be standing all too close behind him and he would see her if he looked round fast enough. So heavily irradiated were his body and clothing now that, in the absolute blackness of the moon shadow, the dying man actually emitted the faintest, ghostliest of glows. Then, with a whimpering gasp, he scuttled forward and leaped across to Luck Voyager’s deck.
Had Grozny been less close to death, less madly preoccupied, he might have wondered how this step had suddenly become so simple. Until this evening he would have been hard put to escape from his irradiated prison. But his mind was on another level of reality altogether and so he was unaware that the simple leap downwards had been made possible for him because the level of the water beneath the intertwined hulls of the wrecked ships was dropping rapidly but silently, making the two of them mesh together more intimately as they settled more securely on to the sharp-fanged reef. The process was mysterious, rapid, and absolutely soundless.
The guards on the Luck Voyager were the best men Daniel had but they were ill-placed to defend the deckhouse from an external incursion, standing ready as they were to stop the people within from breaking out. They were tired and perhaps a little slack because the bulk of their prisoners were too wounded to present a threat and the others, gweilos for the most part, were too obviously concerned for their patients to want to escape anyway. As the moon slid silently up the velvet sky, therefore, and the water slid away like a ribbon of washed silk, everyone aboard the Luck Voyager fell into a deep slumber. Even Richard and Robin slept, an alarm set for midnight when they planned to do their rounds.