The Coffin Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  He paused. Richard watched him silently.

  “All I had to do was get the ship around the Cape. Nurse that clapped-out old motor along then look the other way while they scuttled her. There’s a circuit—I’ll show you—opens all the sea-cocks at once. One flick of the switch and she’s gone.”

  “You willing to say all this at a court of inquiry?”

  “No way. No way at all. I’ll help you get home, but that is all I’ll do. I’ve got scores to settle and I’ll do that my own way. But I won’t stand up in court: if I go to jail, who’ll watch over my Christine?”

  After Martyr had gone, Mariner lapsed into a brown study. What was due to happen to Prometheus’s hull was only part of the problem: what was due to happen to her cargo was important too. And the extension of that problem led to very murky waters indeed.

  If the oil had been taken off at Durban without his knowledge then Bill Heritage might be in the clear. But if the oil was still aboard, still part of the fraud, then it looked as if the owner of the oil had to be a party to the fraud as well. If only he felt able to run the risk of looking in the tanks. The loading programs on the computers probably held a clue, but they were unavailable until the computers themselves were fixed—if they ever could be. And even the most cursory examination had already revealed that all the tank tops down as far as the Sampson posts were damaged by the blast. Should he get a team of seamen and a huge dipstick and run the risk of opening the forward tank to see what it contained? It was tempting. But in the end he decided to wait because to do so, to run the very great risk of opening the tank at sea on a damaged ship whose safety systems seemed to be working but were—to put it mildly—unreliable, would solve little and might force him to take action he would rather avoid.

  For that oil was owned by a desperate, bitter old man. And by his daughter, who had arrived so conveniently, remained so insistently, fallen in love so precipitately and so convincingly, and who perhaps—just perhaps—had deceived them all so completely.

  Until now.

  It was not until that evening, partway through John’s second watch, that the fifth ship they had passed during the last twelve hours made the cheerful, unexpected reply:

  HELLO PROMETHEUS STOP SOMEONE OVER THERE PRACTICING FOR THEIR ELEMENTARY SEAMANSHI EXAM QUERY

  “Cocky bugger’s missed his P off,” growled John.

  Richard chuckled, still half winded by his dash to get up here. “Make: RADIO OUT STOP SOME CREW WOUNDED IN ONBOARD EXPLOSION STOP…What else?”

  They were outside on the port bridge wing. John was using the lamp himself, and Robin was taking down the messages as the second officer growled them out.

  “Contact my father,” she said without thinking, and then stopped, confused. For the first time in a long time, she had spoken as Robin Heritage: a different person from the lean, hard Third Officer, Prometheus, she had become. The difference between what she had been and what she was now came as a shock. So little time had passed: so much had happened.

  The other two continued speaking without pause. If they had noticed her momentary confusion, they gave no sign.

  “Better Heritage than Demetrios at this stage, surely,” agreed John. Robin’s confusion lasted long enough to miss the linking of the two names. And the cold glance that passed between the two men: so John was thinking along those lines too, thought Richard.

  “Yes…” Richard temporized. No matter who they contacted, Demetrios would know soon enough. But what would the wily owner do next? He couldn’t relay orders to his henchman—or men—aboard until they got a radio in, and even then it would be dangerous; perhaps impossible.

  But, from Demetrios’s point of view, Prometheus still had to sink. His man—or woman—aboard knew that. Their only real hope was that he—or she—would find it harder now.

  If only he could trust Martyr…

  “Richard!” John jerked him out of his reverie. “They’re signaling again: PROMETHEUS STOP RELIEVED TO SEE YOU STOP INFORM YOU YOU ARE OFFICIALLY LOST WITH ALL HANDS STOP LUTINE BELL RUNG FOR YOU AT LLOYDS TODAY STOP”

  The three of them looked at each other. A chill seemed to settle on them all at once. Robin actually shivered. They had just read their own obituary.

  “Well, sod him,” swore Richard, suddenly enraged. “He’s just a little too sure of himself. Let’s spoil the bastard’s day. Make: PLEASE INFORM OWNER STOP KOSTAS DEMETRIOS STOP NEW YORK STOP AND HERITAGE SHIPPING STOP LONDON STOP PROMETHEUS COMING HOME STOP ALSO PLEASE INFORM SIR WILLIAM HERITAGE STOP HERITAGE SHIPPING STOP ROBIN ALIVE AND WELL STOP CAPTAIN STOP PROMETHEUS STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”

  Back on the bridge, Robin asked, frowning, “Are you sure we should be warning Demetrios?”

  “He’ll get to know soon enough in any case. At least this way he might be fooled into supposing we don’t suspect him yet.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “I don’t know. But every little bit might help.” He was going to say more, but John came in from the bridge wing and interrupted him.

  “They’ll inform everyone. I gave them an ETA for the Channel Approaches. There’ll be some Coastguards waiting, I expect.”

  “At the very least.”

  “But what exactly do you propose to do?” asked Robin. It was a subject they had skirted but never really discussed. The Manxman looked speculatively at him, but he probably knew the answer as well as did the anxious woman.

  “I’m going to park her in Lyme Bay and invite a full inquiry,” he said. “Like it says in the Bible, ‘All hearts will be open and all secrets known.’”

  Robin looked at him and shivered. “Judgment Day,” she said.

  —CHANNEL—

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “There!” called Robin in from the port bridge wing. She took the glasses from her eyes and pointed to the shadow line between the brightening sky and the sea. Richard came out and joined her at once, leaving John beside the helmsman. He took the binoculars she was thrusting excitedly into his hand and looked through them in the direction of her gesture.

  At first he thought she was mistaken. Then he thought it was only a shadow. But soon his vision cleared and his heart came close to bursting. It was the Lizard. No doubt of it. They were in home waters at last. He put his left arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him with all his strength. “Number Two,” he called through the open door to John Higgins on the bridge, “you may reset the chronometers now.”

  It was dawn on September 9. He had brought them back exactly as he had said he would, and surprisingly easily. The weather in the Bay of Biscay had been rough enough to ensure that Richard would have been unable to open the forward tank tops even had he changed his mind, but it posed no real danger. There had been no further action by the secret saboteur. Nothing had changed. They had signaled passing ships but requested no further help—Richard wanting to keep Demetrios guessing as long as possible. So now they were entering the Channel Separation Zone still without the ability to contact other ships with anything other than the signal lamp. Still with only John’s trusty sextant to pinpoint their position. But, to be fair, that sextant together with Richard’s legendary powers as a theoretical navigator, had brought them exactly where they wanted to be, precisely when they were due to be there.

  Richard suddenly remembered first reading as a boy, rereading on his journey to Prometheus, of Horatio Horn-blower’s great feat of navigation, guiding his Brittanic Majesty’s ship Lydia to a perfect landfall off the Gulf of Fonseca after seven months out of sight of land. Five days across Biscay hardly compared, but the feeling of achievement was the same. He knew now why the normally imperturbable Hornblower, hero of his youth, had rushed onto the deck to see the twin volcanoes that marked this miracle of dead reckoning.

  John appeared by his side and punched him lightly on the shoulder in unspoken congratulation.

  “Ha-h’m!” said Richard.

  The first rays of the rising sun struck across the long gray seas and glistened on som
ething tiny and silver lifting busily from the distant land: a helicopter. Richard watched the silver speck growing larger, his mind racing. So much was going to have to be faced now. He had planned it all with infinite care. But now he would just have to see if the plans were going to work. Or whether his suspicions were going to tear the team apart.

  Every single off-duty person aboard was standing by the helipad as the copter landed. They looked at it with strange intensity, as though it were something from another planet. Although they had been out of touch for only a short time, they had become so fiercely insular, so closely welded by the power of their experiences, that this came as a shocking intrusion. So the cheerful ball of a man in a blue Coastguard uniform who stepped first onto the deck might just as well have come from a distant galaxy.

  If he felt their intense strangeness, he gave no sign, but bustled over to Richard at once. “Captain Mariner? McLean, Coastguard. Heard of you of course: pleasure!” This said, pumping Richard’s hand enthusiastically. “Pleasure and a privilege. Shall we?”

  He tried to turn Richard away toward the bridge, but the big man refused to move and McLean had no choice but to turn back, still talking, and perform some sort of introduction for the other passengers climbing down onto the deck. “Brought you all the usual offices and then some. Radio and radio officer, of course. Quine, his name is. Senior Trinity House channel pilot: excellent man called Moriarty. Chap from Lloyd’s called Watson and…”

  “DADDY!” Robin’s voice broke off the monologue.

  Sir William Heritage paused at the top of the steps. When his eyes met Richard’s they narrowed and the two men might have been separated by inches rather than feet, face-to-face like duelists.

  The moment lasted a long second, and held everyone in its power. Richard was taken off balance by the strength of his emotion. It was almost as strong as it had been in that moment when Robin appeared on his bridge like a ghost. He saw through the tear-bright haze of the dawn, the tall, broad-shouldered, soldier-straight frame of the man he most respected in the world. The clear blue eyes; the straight-clipped salt-and-pepper mustache. The steel-gray hair. And, at his side now, arm entwined through his, reed-straight until her golden head easily topped his shoulder, his daughter whom Richard loved.

  How could he ever have suspected these two of anything dishonorable? How could he ever have considered standing against them, no matter what they had done? He strode forward decisively, moving for the first time since the helicopter landed.

  The older man saw in his eyes something of what was in his heart. They met at the foot of the steps and what started as a handshake somehow turned into an embrace, with Robin’s strong arms around them both. Richard was home again, in more ways than one.

  He found he had to clear his throat when formality returned. “Welcome aboard, Sir William.”

  “Thanks m‘boy, but it’s been Bill to thee this many a long year. Let’s not change that now.”

  Only Sir William would dream of calling Richard “m‘boy”; only Richard had ever actually called Sir William “Bill.”

  Richard turned away from his old friend and looked up at the two men in the helicopter’s doorway. A stocky man in uniform: the radio officer. A tall angular man beside him: Watson from Lloyd’s. “Gentlemen,” he said, and they sprang to attention like naval cadets.

  Behind them, descending in stately consequence, came the portly, spade-bearded figure, again in uniform, which could only be the channel pilot, Moriarty.

  When the group was all together, Richard led them up toward the bridge. The silent crew parted, like the Red Sea parting for Moses, and closed silently behind them as they passed. They lost Watson before they reached the A deck door. The Lloyd’s man lingered behind them, gazing with awed wonder down into the gaping wound in the deck that the others hurried by.

  On the bridge, there was an almost embarrassed pause. It was past 08.00, so Robin went about relieving John. Richard hardly knew where to start. But the others did. The radio officer opened the black case he was carrying and began to set up his portable radio on the shelf between the port windows and the captain’s chair, having almost apologetically placed the captain’s binoculars, cast there in the excitement, back into their holster on the chair itself.

  McLean turned toward Richard and started talking again. “Should we have brought medical help? The message we received wasn’t too clear on that point, and space on the helicopter was limited. We can radio…”

  He said more, but Richard hardly heard him. In many ways he was the least important visitor. As soon as the radio was working, Richard would offer the con to the Channel pilot and let him get on with his job. Then he could talk to Watson, in private. He had also to talk to Bill Heritage—did the man have any idea of what he was really caught up in? He ought to talk to Watson at once, show him the logs and Accident Report Books; to do anything else would look suspicious. But he had to know what Bill was up to first. He would not run the risk of damaging him or the Heritage Corporation through an unwise word.

  There was only one course open, no matter how suspicious it looked. He hesitated no longer. “Bill,” he said quietly, gesturing with his head toward the bridge wing.

  Sir William paused, holding the heavy door wide for his son-in-law, but before Richard could step through it, Robin was out into the bright, clear morning. This looked damned suspicious. Richard could feel their eyes on his back. Well, a captain answered to no one on his own bridge. Let them think what they liked. He stepped out, and Sir William followed, closing the door tight.

  “Right. What is it you want to know so desperately, Richard?” The slightly flat vowels of Sir William’s northern childhood colored his speech, showing that he was not quite as relaxed as he seemed.

  “How much do you know about what’s going on here, Bill?”

  “Nowt. Nothing at all. Smells fishy to me, though…”

  “You know it has to be fraud, Daddy. You know the oil must have been…” Richard watched her narrowly. Of course, with her lively intelligence she would have worked it out too, even if she hadn’t been implicated.

  The bridge wing door opened. Moriarty pushed his massive frame through. “They’ve given us the all clear on the wireless, Captain. I’ll be taking her down to a safe anchorage in Lyme Bay now, with your permission.” There was a chilly note in his precise Edinburgh accent.

  “Yes, Captain Moriarty, you have her,” snapped Richard. “I shall be back on the bridge in a moment.”

  He turned away as the door closed with a decided slam and took up Robin’s surprising accusation. “You know the oil has to have been taken off at Durban. That this is all a fraud.”

  “That seems quite obvious, now, yes.”

  “That the idea has always been to break the embargo by selling the oil to South Africa, then to sink the ship and claim full insurance on both cargo and hull.”

  “Seems logical.”

  Richard took a step forward, forced near the edge of his self-control by Sir William’s calm agreement.

  “But it’s your oil!” The agonized accusation rang out in Robin’s voice.

  Suddenly Richard understood her involvement completely and clearly. Her arrival at Dubai, her presence aboard, all the things that had seemed so suspicious because they couldn’t be as pat as they appeared in spite of what she said. She had been lying; lying all along. But not because she had come as part of the plot. She had come because she, too, suspected her father and was trying to stop what ever was going on before it dragged the old man down. But of course she had found herself working with the one man she could not bring herself to trust in this one matter alone. As far as she knew, Rowena still lay between her father and her lover, making them the bitterest of enemies.

  God! She had been strong to hold together through this tangle.

  Horror showed on Sir William’s face as he recognized the accusation in their eyes. “No!” he cried. “No. It’s not true. I knew nothing. Nothing at all. I bought and sold that
oil in good faith. I’ve done nothing. How could you…Either of you…”

  He turned away, overcome by sorrow and rage.

  They looked at each other, shocked. That one word sold raising the terrible weight of suspicion from their minds. Robin went forward to lay her hand on one bowed shoulder. Richard went back onto the bridge. He felt a new man. He met each suspicious gaze and held it till it fell.

  Now he could deal with Watson, though he suspected the tall young man was only the vanguard of a full Lloyd’s team that would descend upon them once they were safe in Lyme Bay. That would be in a little less than twelve hours’ time. Sunset. Then they could all relax—all except those guilty of complicity.

  It would all be over with the day.

  It seemed hardly possible.

  Watson’s clouded blue eyes were set deep in a face composed principally of chin and cheekbone, framed with unfashionably long hair. He carried a small Dictaphone tape recorder. They went out onto the starboard bridge wing; Robin and Sir William were still out on the port one. Watson started talking into the little machine at once, giving day, date, exact time; but Richard’s mind was elsewhere. On this side of the ship he was looking toward the south rather than the north, and, as is sometimes the case, the different side meant different weather. It was only the slightest imaginable difference, but it made him narrow his eyes looking away over France nevertheless. Yes. There it was. The narrowest possible band of mackerel cloud, preceded by some high, feathery whisps of mares’ tails. He remembered John’s doggerel said in the blue waters north of Durban where he had last seen such a cloud formation: