THURSDAY'S ORCHID

by Mitchell, Robert

  Tired though I was, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just the pain from the bruises that made me toss and turn all night. The nightmares kept recurring: the bursting bales, the grinning skull and the dark, broad-brimmed, feather-plumed hat.

  I awoke exhausted, and drenched in perspiration.

  By mid-morning the news was all over the ship. The contract had been given to the Dutch tug. It made nonsense of the captain’s contention that the salvors and underwriters would argue for days over terms and conditions.

  Pacific Ranger was brought around and took up station astern of us. Men and equipment were ferried over and the work began.

  The next four days were spent in shifting and ditching cargo.

  The sugar was the first to go over the side. There were still a great many layers of bags which seemed to be dry, but the whole lot was condemned to be cast into the sea. It was a basic rule of salvage. If there is a chance of cargo being rejected by underwriters as damaged beyond commercial value, then it has to be dumped. The salt-water contamination had threatened the whole shipment and it all had to go.

  If the deck-boards had been put in on loading in Cairns it would have been only the bottom layers that would have been dumped. I was glad that they hadn’t, for with all the sugar thrown overboard there was more chance of getting the Syrius off without having to trans-ship any of the wool.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. I was now an unpaid labourer, sweating in the forward hold, dragging bags of wet sugar into the centre of that deep steel chamber and dropping them into the cargo nets. The winch-men, sitting in the shade of the winch-houses, moved the levers that raised each load and swung it over the gunwales, dumping the sodden mass into the surf.

  For two days I did nothing but drag and lift bags of sugar. My muscles no longer belonged to my body. They screamed at me for rest; begged me to stop, and refused to go on; but there was no way I was going to quit; no way I was going to give the crew the satisfaction of watching me crawl away, beaten, to my cabin. If they could hack the pace, then so could I.

  Two days and nearly to the bottom of the stack. A metre of water in the floor of the hold, rising with the tide: dirty, thick, oily water, brown from the contents of a hundred or more burst bags; smelling of bunker fuel and dead coral; and still more bags to be removed, dragged along by hand, two of us to a bag, up on to the island of sugar in the middle of the hold, up on to the slings; slow, filthy, and tedious.

  The midday whistle blew. My shift dropped the bags they were hauling and shuffled through the thick syrup towards the foot of the ladder leading up through the well to the deck. There was no need for me to hurry. The food would still be there when I arrived. I waited until they were out of sight and sat down on the mound for a moment to catch my breath. It was good to rest and do nothing for a couple of minutes.

  A shadow passed across the bags in front of me, but it meant nothing to my tired brain. It stopped and grew larger, and I waited for the voice to call down and remind me that it was time for lunch. The shadow disappeared and then came back. I looked up to see who it was, and was just in time to see the bag of sugar as it toppled over the hatch-coaming high above my head. For that split-second I was rooted to the spot and then finally my brain passed on the message to move, and to move fast. I ducked sideways, rolling on to my back, and stayed there, staring up at the sky, gritting my teeth, trying not to move a muscle as the bag hit the mound beside me with a sickening thud.

  He would either run or look down to see if he had been successful this third time. I waited. A mass of dark hair came into view and then the face, peeping over the edge. He had looked: a Malay; a member of the deck crew, one of the winch operators.

  The bastard had made his second mistake. The first was in killing Pete, and not me.

  He disappeared and a second sack came hurtling down, missing me by centimetres as I sprang to my feet and ran to the side of the hold beneath the overhang. He was a calculating son of a bitch; intending to make sure of me; one bag to stun and a second to kill. He would look again, and know that he had failed. It wouldn’t be long before the hunt started again. But this time I would be the hunter!

  I moved along the wall of the hold towards the ladder-well, knowing that he could be waiting for me at any one of the stagings. I gripped the warm steel rungs and began my climb, eyes tilted upwards, watching the square openings far above my head, watching for anything else that might come crashing down. At every step I was ready to jump for my life, not that it would have done any good, for the well was so narrow that he couldn’t have missed. I hardly dared breathe for fear that he might hear me approaching. The last stage would be the worst. The sudden glare of sunlight might momentarily blind me. But would he think of that?

  He hadn’t. The decks were clear.

  And now it was my move. Let him be the one to guess, to wonder, to look over his shoulder.

  I stood and took a long, slow look around, shaking my head as though still stunned from that first bag, and then walked to the other side of the hatch-coaming from where he had thrown the two bags.

  There were several bags lying on the deck, bags that had fallen out of the slings as the winch-drivers had dragged the loaded slings across the top of the coaming. I looked down at them and scratched my head, then winced as though touching a tender spot.

  Let him think I was still groggy and uncertain of what had happened. I wanted him to believe I hadn’t seen him, hadn’t recognised that darting face. Let him believe he was safe, that I wasn’t after him in a blinding fury. The fury was there, but it could wait; and I would watch my back, keeping well away from the rising nets and their loads of sugar.

  The last of the sugar was unloaded as the sun slipped below the horizon. That final hour had been a misery; slipping and sliding about in the greasy water; our legs and backsides covered in muck; the fumes of bunker oil from the holed double-bottom tank heavy in the air.

  I had left the hold several times during the afternoon, and wandered over to the main hold where the wool had been stowed. He watched me from the winch-house. I felt it.

  Most of the bales had been removed from the hold and been rolled along the deck to the stern where they were now piled high and covered with huge canvas tarpaulins to keep out the salt spray. The weight had been transferred aft to shift our point of balance and relieve the pressure of the bow upon the reef. The stern was afloat, with the ship aground from midships to the bow.

  There were still five or six hundred bales left to be lifted out; enough for my purpose. I peered in to the hold, trying to appear anxious, worried; knowing I would be arousing his curiosity. I had to make him believe that the marijuana was in the bales still remaining in the hold. I looked at my watch and then to the sky.

  A torch was lying nearby. I waited until I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and then picked it up, furtively burying it under a pile of rope. If this wouldn’t bring him out onto the deck with me after dark, nothing would.

  The whistle blew, sounding the end of a long day. It would be dinner and then rest. They would all be in bed early; all except two, and for one of those – never.

  The meal was a blurred affair, with my mind far away on other things. I picked at the food, eating, but not hungry. Killing is best done in the heat of the moment, not something to be planned and rehearsed.

  Thirteen

  I stayed in the officers lounge for a couple of hours after dinner, once more giving the impression of getting quietly drunk. There were two portholes in the far bulkhead, looking out on to the boat deck, and I was sure he would be out there, watching me.

  On the stroke of nine-thirty I left the lounge and made my way to my cabin, tripping over one of the chairs on my way out. I didn’t want to appear too drunk, just unsteady; the perfect target for another accident.

  I changed back into work clothes and added the turtle-neck sweater. A tin of shoe-polish went into my back pocket, together with a length of strong nylon cord I had found lying on the deck.

>   It was dark outside, with clouds obscuring the moon, what little there was of it. I was staking myself out as the goat. But this time the bait had sharpened teeth.

  It was deathly quiet on deck as I moved stealthily past the main hold and down into the shadow of the winch-house. The torch was where I had left it. I was shaking, terrified, my palms sweating. What if he had friends? What if there was more than one of them? It was a chance I had to take. If I didn’t get him now, he would probably get me; maybe not tonight, maybe not for days, but he wouldn’t give up.

  I took a deep breath and crept over to the main hold, and gazed down into the blackness. There was no sound from below, no movement; but behind me I heard the scuff of a boot on the deck, the noise faint but unmistakable. It was only sheer will-power that kept me from turning my head.

  He was there, but still some way back. I could feel his eyes watching me, burning into my back.

  Putting the torch into my pocket, I swung down into the ladder-well and moved fast. I didn’t trust him not to try and get it over with quickly. All he had to do was hurl a bag of sugar down after me. It would have sent me tumbling and crashing to the tank-top far below.

  It was only luck that kept me on the ladder, my palms greasy and slipping before I was even half-way down. But I reached the bottom after an aeon of time and sped into the cover afforded by the overhang of the hold, and switched the torch on.

  It was a great jumble of bales, piled up like children’s bricks; huge building blocks; a ruined temple, the stones cast down by some angry god. I closed my hand over the lens of the torch and concealed the turmoil, my presence, and my position.

  On hands and knees, over bales and between, I raced to the other side of the hold – the sweat on my hands cleaned by the sacking. Working with an urgency upon which my survival depended, I began to set the trap. The torch came apart into two sections, as I knew it would. I drew two single bales close to one another, with the gap between them being the same as the length of the torch. Then, with the two halves unscrewed, but not separated, I jammed the torch between the two bales and switched it on. With the lens pressed hard against the flat side of the bale it gave off hardly any glow at all; but it would be enough to bring my friend to me.

  A matter of seconds was all it took to unravel several strands from the nylon cord and tie them together to form a single line. I fastened one end to the torch and took the other with me as I withdrew back into the darkness to cover my face with the black shoe-polish; and waited.

  He hadn’t wasted any time. The smell of curry and sweat – too strong to be smothered by the lanolin – reached my nostrils. He was there, but exactly where I couldn’t tell. There had been no more scraping of boots. I crouched down and held my breath, waiting for him to come. A black shadow reached the corner of my vision. Slowly and yet solemnly he moved towards the faint torchlight, following the path I had laid out for him.

  The knife in his hand glinted once in the weak light, the blade wicked and sharp.

  He passed me and stopped, separated from me by a single pack of bales. I sensed that he was gathering his strength for the attack, that now was the moment he would launch himself forward, stabbing out with the knife. I took up the slack in the line and tugged gently. The torch fell from between the bales, the two halves falling apart and clattering to the floor and the batteries rolling away.

  It was pitch dark.

  Neither of us moved. I could smell the garlic every time he breathed, and hoped my whisky wasn’t as pungent.

  Slowly the darkness cleared as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Would he still make his move? Or would he freeze, believing that I couldn’t stir without him seeing me?

  Then he spoke. It was eerie; like a cat toying with a mouse; the executioner making peace with the condemned. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled.

  “Mr. Rider,” the two words soft and clear; terror at hearing him call my name. “Mr. Rider,” a trembling, faint, but audible in the closeness - the sound of fear.

  “Mr. Rider. We make arrangement.”

  There was no way I was going to answer him. He knew I was there where the torch had dropped; or thought he knew. Was he trying to make sure, or did he really have a proposition?

  I kept silent, letting the air rise slowly from my lungs, pushing it down towards the floor. There was no way I was going to give my position away to this bastard. One word and he would have been over the bales and on to me. I was no knife-fighter; no fighter at all.

  We were no more than two metres apart.

  “Mr. Rider. I not want to kill you. All we want is share of heroin.”

  Heroin!

  The stupid son of a bitch thought I had a shipment of heroin on the ship! He probably thought there were a couple of bales of the stuff, and that was why he was prepared to put the ship on the reef; so he could search for it. He had gone through my cabin in Cairns looking for papers, probably for details of bale markings, and found nothing. No wonder he wanted me out of the way. With me dead he would have had a free hand and plenty of time. Bastard!

  He had some information, that much was certain. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Pete had been killed because of it, and we were stuck on the reef; all because this bastard believed I was carrying heroin.

  He had mentioned others. Was he alone, or was there more than one out there – waiting for me? I stayed still.

  “We know you have partner in Australia, Mr. Rider. We know about Mr. Cheh. We do a deal. They not know a thing about it. You take your share and disappear.”

  Yes, I thought, to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Your partner never know. We want Mr. Cheh’s share, the share of the lion.” Naturally he did. “Take your life and many dollars, Mr. Rider. More better than death and nothing.”

  So he knew Tek’s name, but he didn’t know Nick’s, which meant the leak must have been in Singapore. But how?

  “Please, Mr. Rider. There is no other way for you. Come with me. We launch one lifeboat. No-one hear us. We take one lifeboat and be on other side of island before sun come up. We go to Samarai, hide heroin on beach and sink lifeboat. I have money. We can hire one aeroplane to take us Port Moresby. They never find us. They not even look for us.”

  It sounded convincing, except for one point; he couldn’t keep the strain out of his voice. That, and the fact that we couldn’t transport four thousand bales of wool in a lifeboat.

  “Mr. Rider. You like see your little orchid again? My boss say she looking more beautiful.”

  Mee Ling! The bastard knew about Mee Ling. But how? The leak had to come from Tek. It had to come from his house. It must have been bugged, even with all his electronics. But if the house had been bugged, why didn’t they have the story right? Why did they think it was heroin?

  “We not got much time, Mr. Rider. It take more than one hour to load lifeboat. We must be on other side of island before sun come up.”

  Then I realised that he was alone; that there was no-one behind him ready to join in the attack. No wonder he was nervous. His previous attacks had been from behind, against unsuspecting victims, but this time it was to be face to face.

  There was no way this villain was going to do a deal. I was for the high jump as soon as he had the opportunity. But right now I was vital to him. He believed I was the only way he was going to find the heroin. He must have searched and searched, and found nothing. He still needed me to point it out to him. Or did he?

  He had seen me peering down at the remaining bales during the afternoon and looking worried; which could only mean that his imaginary heroin was still there. And now here I was, down in the hold, examining one particular bale of wool. He would think I was checking on the shipment, making certain that the bale hadn’t been damaged; and he might believe that he didn’t have to search any further. He wouldn’t need me to help him carry it up to a lifeboat. All he would have to do would be to split the bale open and carry the stuff up bag by bag. He could hide it in one of the lifeboats
overnight and make his getaway later.

  Perhaps the line about the lifeboat was just that, a ruse to get me to show myself. With me out of the way he would be able to take charge of the imaginary bale of heroin, or bales, if he thought there were more than one, then change the marks and quietly off-load them in Singapore.

  He didn’t need me at all. The bastard was out to kill me, just as soon as he could stick the knife in.

  I could see him clearly now. He had moved up from his crouching position, the crown of his head just showing over the top of a bale a metre to my left. I gave the string a gentle tug, stirring the barrel of the torch, and he ducked down again. He thought he had me fixed. His head slowly came into sight once more.

  My limbs were aching, stiff, crying out for movement. Any second now and cramp would knot the muscles.

  He edged closer and then closer still, his shoulders now above the level of the bale. My throat was choking, gagging. I couldn’t breathe, the smell of him overpowering – the stink of sweat and chillies and garlic. Then I felt the bale in front of me shift backwards, only a fraction, but it moved.

  I dropped the string tied to the torch and tightened my grip on the cord stretched between my hands. He slid backwards up on to the bale, peering towards the sound the torch had made, and then drew his legs up so as to slide along the bale, and to pass in front of me.

  At the instant of raising his legs he was off balance. I stood up and threw the cord around his neck, and, with the backs of my fists against his shoulder blades, thrust him forward – down over the edge of the bale; then pulled tight against the cord as his shoulders slid below the top of the bale; pulling with all the force I could raise, my rage bursting forth, the adrenalin pumping wildly. His feet bashed and slid against the floor of the hold as he tried to gain a foothold. All I could see was the back of his head, and the rope, taut to my straining wrists; his body dangling over the other side of the pile of bales, held there by the power of the nylon cord pulling him back into the wall of wool.