by Peter Tonkin
‘Lordsburg,’ said Agent Jones. ‘Isn’t that where John Wayne was heading for in the movie Stagecoach?’
‘I’m sentimental,’ said T-Shirt.
‘Surprised you don’t keep your funds in Tombstone, Arizona, then.’
‘Did once. Bank got robbed.’
‘So the final stage of the plan probably shaped like this,’ Jolene went on. ‘With Mendel there to see his end OK and help with any problems with the disk and its information, they probably reckoned on taking Mrs Agran’s deal, even though they only had her say-so for the money. Then they could get a ride back on Kalinin and disappear. Rich men. Footloose and fancy-free. No one any the wiser.’
‘No one except for you,’ said Agent Jones.
Jolene nodded. ‘Once they had taken Mrs Agran’s deal and saw a way out for themselves then I wasn’t coming back. I see that now far more clearly than I saw it at the time. The disks from Armstrong and I were just going to vanish into the Southern Ocean like Ernie Marshall. Clean shot through the left breast and immolation in the generator house before they all came back, repentant, under Mrs Agran’s and First Officer Varnek’s jurisdiction seems the most likely scenario. And your two crew members, Irene, would have been witnesses to my unfortunate, accidental, death. Unless they had yet another double-cross up their sleeve.’
‘Which we will never know now,’ said Agent Jones. ‘All we do know is that the Russian Space Agency stopped anyone receiving any details from the disk by crashing Mir into the South Atlantic just at the crucial moment, and that Killigan had primed enough of the detonators to blow up all the rest at once when the radio channel to Kalinin was opened. An explosive error, you might say.’ He paused for an instant. ‘Another round? J. Edgar Hoover’s still in the chair …’
‘Well,’ drawled T-Shirt. ‘Seems to me as though old J. Edgar’s the only one who’ll likely get the full story now, so I reckon the rest of us should just score it up to experience and get on with our lives. You got to admit,’ he continued, leaning forward with his widest grin, ‘it was one hell of a trip.’
*
From eight until midnight on Monday nights the occupants of the Hotel del Glacier bar provided much of their own entertainment, for Monday was karaoke night. The compere was well-practised in selecting victims and was expert in allowing just enough negotiation to get the best performance possible from each — even from those who had never sung with a dance band before. Tonight she had her eye on the big, boisterous group of foreigners who had arrived in the hotel at much the same time as Kalinin down in the harbour. Rumours of their adventures were rife around the port already and beginning to spread through the city even as far as the Hotel del Glacier. She watched the group go from dull quiet through increasing hilarity to their current cheerful state; thirteen extremely lucky people clearly coming to terms with the fact that they had come very close to death and lived to tell the tale. Soon, by the look of things, they would begin to split up into pairs and groups, drifting away from the party.
She was keen to get among them before that happened, however.
‘We’ll have to go up soon,’ said Robin regretfully. ‘The nanny service will be bringing the children back to our suite any time now. Nine thirty is their bedtime and I want them to have a quick bath before they tuck down.’
‘We’ll have to go soon too,’ said Kate. ‘Back to the Big White tomorrow. Tell me, Andrew, how were things in Faraday?’
But Andrew Pitcairn did not hear her, he was gazing at Irene, unable to stop himself mentally undressing her. Two double tots of Appleton over-proof rum hadn’t helped his self-control in that respect either.
‘Andrew!’ Kate’s voice interrupted some very intimate speculation indeed. He looked away from the object of his lust.
‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘Faraday. How were things there?’
On the other side of the table Dai Gwyllim was saying softly to Jilly, ‘Fancy a bit of a dance, darling? This karaoke stuff is dreadful to listen to, but all of the songs they’ve crucified so far have been great to dance to. Good little band, that is. What they really need is a good vocalist. Tenor maybe …’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said. ‘You promise not to sing and I’ll dance with you till dawn, you lovely man, you.’
Max, left alone when they began to move, looked speculatively around, but Jolene was deep in conversation with the smooth Special Agent and T-Shirt was watching them like a hawk. Colin Ross and the Mariners were exchanging what looked like a few final words. The epic Irene was looking at Andrew Pitcairn but he was telling Kate Ross about something. It was time, Max decided, to make the acquaintance of that little waitress from LA who had been making eyes at him since the incident at the Razor. He tensed himself to move when, with perfect timing, the compere arrived, all raven curls, burning eyes, flashing smile and skin-tight red frock.
Special Agent Jones offered to try Bruce Springsteen and T-Shirt boasted a pretty good Willie Nelson. The black eyes rested on Colin Ross who met them on the level. ‘I suppose you’ve heard of the great Kenneth McKellar?’ he said. ‘Andy Stewart? Do the band know “Campbeltown Bay I Wish You Were Whisky”?’
‘It is forties night. Fifties,’ said the compere, her smile nailed into place. ‘Big band. I have here the words to many famous American songs. Bing Crosby. Fred Astaire. Dean Martin. Tony Bennett …’
‘Go on, Richard,’ said Robin. ‘Go for it, darling. Give everybody a break.’
And off Richard went with the much relieved compere to talk to the band before he did his bit.
‘He’ll sing until I stop him,’ said Robin. ‘Any of you who want to have a dance, do it now.’
With the exception of Colin and Kate they simply stared at her, trying to weigh the seriousness of her tone. The precise meaning of her words. But then the music struck up, swinging easily into another familiar standard. Richard began to sing and as soon as his voice crooned surely out of the loudspeakers, the little dance band itself seemed to be transformed. They might have been under the baton of Nelson Riddle or Billy May. They gave the music that extra style and swing which the performance deserved.
Richard opened with ‘Come Fly With Me’.
With one accord the group at the table swung round, half of them certain an old record had been put on a turntable somewhere and this really was Sinatra’s voice. But there was Richard, eyes half closed in concentration, singing with practised ease.
Dai and Jilly, already on the floor, swung easily into an intimate dance of their own. The magic of Richard’s perfect, unfussy impersonation was pulling other couples onto the floor with astonishing speed. The compere beside the little ensemble simply glowed, her millennium made already.
A hand fell on Andrew Pitcairn’s shoulder and he stopped midsentence to look up. Irene was staring down at him, her eyes fathomless.
‘Dance with me,’ she said.
He stood, entranced, and she swept him into her arms. He was happy to let her lead.
Her head came down towards his shoulder. ‘I have dreamed of you,’ she said. ‘With your icy reserve and your iron control. You are men of steel, you English. I’ll bet you have never looked at a woman and seen skin instead of clothing!’
‘Well actually,’ whispered Andrew, his blood like drums in his ears, ‘now that you mention it, Irene …’
The tempo eased a little. Richard stepped into ‘London by Night’ as though it were a pair of shoes.
‘What do you say, Dr DaCosta?’ purred Special Agent Jones. ‘How can any red-blooded American sit this one out? The Brits might think we were rolling over.’
She smiled civilly enough but he knew he didn’t stand a chance. Even in his Armani suit he was outclassed. She didn’t even have to answer. Her clear-water gaze, as limpid as the drops he had added to her bourbon, turned towards T-Shirt, and T-Shirt, of course, had been watching Jolene all along. They were moving sensuously across the floor even before the band swung into the instrumental heart of the song.
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When Richard started spreading his velvet singing tones over ‘You’d be so Nice to Come Home to’, even Colin and Kate were up. Intensely sensitive to the personal relevance of Richard’s choice of song, Robin leaned back in her chair, avoiding Max’s eye until, abruptly, the stunning muchacha of a compere was there, asking Max not to sing but to dance. Then Robin was alone. The only one without a partner because, as always, her partner was centre stage, under the limelight, in charge of the action. Still, she thought, closing her eyes and leaning back to listen, he was an exceedingly good singer when, as now, the mood took him. And the message was still coming in loud and clear.
‘Excuse me, ma’am.’
Robin looked up. And there was the young, eager, Armani-clad figure of Special Agent Jones. She smiled.
‘You look like a lady who could use a dance partner,’ he said. In the romantic gloom his eyes seemed almost luminous, as green as emeralds.
Richard finished the song. Then, really enjoying himself, the band well behind him and the atmosphere right, he started his final one, ‘It’s very nice to go trav’lin’. As he sang, he opened his eyes, confident of the rhythm, the words, the band and the delivery. His bright gaze swept across the room to the empty table, then quartered the faces of the dancers as though he was on a forecastle head, on the lookout for ice. He knew half of the people dancing there, but they were all wrapped up in themselves and their partners and not one of them was looking at him.
Except there.
There on the heart of the floor. Over the shoulder of an Armani jacket. One pair of level grey eyes which watched him all the time. As Robin danced with Special Agent Jones, Richard fixed that bright stare with his own and he sang to her alone. And she hummed along, falling into indulgent agreement with his choice of lyrics, their meaning and their particular relevance. No matter where they went travelling, on ice or ocean or foam, it was oh so nice to go home.
Acknowledgements
Going back over my notes I am struck by the way the subject matter of Powerdown has coloured the research materials. I read far fewer books than usual. They could not supply me with the information I required at the speed I needed it. Almost all of the research for the final third of the story came in the form of newspaper articles (more than thirty on the millennium bug from the London Daily Telegraph alone) from television, from the radio and from other media information sources such as phone-ordered pamphlets, and from the Net itself. There are websites on the bug, on NASA, on Deception Island, on Base jumping, to name but a few.
The book as it stands began not with the bug but with the Key Stage 3 English paper of a couple of years ago, which featured a travel brochure for Antarctic tourism. Its shape grew with the article T-Shirt refers to, in Volume 193, No. 2 of the National Geographic Magazine, published February 1998, about climbing hitherto unconquered peaks in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. I had been looking for a backdrop against which to set a contained story dealing with the predicted effects of the bug, and here it was.
Horton Griffiths travel agents, Sevenoaks office, Noble Caledonian Limited and Marco Polo World Cruises all supplied details of actual cruises, though the ships described of course bear no resemblance to any of the ships actually booking now for cruises in the South Atlantic and Antarctic Oceans during the millennium summer. Kelvin Hughes, as always, then supplied charts and Admiralty Pilots of the area. The next step after Kelvin Hughes was onto the Net.
But I did read books without which this story could not have taken its current form. Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita (Jonathan Cape 1996) gave a woman’s view of the ‘Big White’ and influenced, I am sure, both incident and character. Captain Nick Barker’s Beyond Endurance (Leo Cooper 1997) gave me the ship upon which Erebus was based so loosely — and no characters at all. The intrepid Captain Barker and his men would never, I am certain, behave in any way as disgracefully as Andrew Pitcairn’s command. Nor, it must be emphasised, would the men of the British Antarctic Survey — or NASA, come to that — behave in the way some of the characters in this book behave.
Richard Adams and Ronald Lockley’s Voyage Through the Antarctic (Allen Lane 1982) touched on many of the landfalls mentioned in the book, including the penguin rookery and Deception Island itself. The history of the BAS can largely be discovered in Sir Vivian Fuch’s Of Ice and Men (Antony Nelson 1982). I researched southern ocean storms particularly this time, and much of the best work seemed to me to be in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm (Fourth Estate 1997), although it is set in the North Atlantic, and Lyall Watson’s Heaven’s Breath (Hodder & Stoughton 1984).
The only published work I found immediate enough to mention with regard to the computer technology (apart from that published on the Net of course) is Patrick Douglas Crispen’s Atlas For the Information Superhighway (South Western Educational, Cincinnati 1997).
Apart from these, and a range of others on Antarctica too numerous and long-used to mention again, including Scott, Shackleton and Fiennes, naturally, it was the papers, the videos, the phone and the Net. And people, of course. Almost exclusively on this one, I must thank people from The Wildemesse School. I must thank John Wright and Paul Clarke from the geography department for their help with a range of matters from southern hemisphere weather systems to modern Russian time zones. I must thank at least three of my old boys for information supplied — one as an engineering cadet on board a computer-controlled vessel, one as a computer engineer employed on making systems bug-proof (Y2K compliant, they call it) and one working now as a ship’s entertainment officer. For obvious reasons they are happy to remain anonymous. Finally I must thank Roger Hood for sharing with me all his research into the likely effects of the bug on our own school and any other computers, systems and networks he could find out about; for guiding me around the Net where necessary and for acting as a down-to-earth sounding board for some of my more outrageous flights of fancy.
Peter Tonkin
Sevenoaks and Port Erin, 1998.
The Coffin Ship
Peter Tonkin
© Peter Tonkin 2013
Peter Tonkin has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Headline Book Publishing PLC in 1989
This edition published by Sharpe Books in 2018
For Cham
COFFIN SHIP: A ship sent to sea in an unseaworthy condition, destined to sink before the end of its voyage as part of an insurance fraud.
(First used 1833, Oxford English Dictionary)
'A ship has happenings according to her own weird. She shows perversities and virtues her parents never dreamed into the plans they laid for her.' H M Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle
Prologue
By a coincidence neither man would ever be aware of, they were both in the same place, doing the same thing at exactly the same time a week before it all really started, as though they were bound by something more elegant than the rough chains of circumstance already tightening around them.
The tall Englishman sat in the window corner of the first class compartment watching the familiar countryside blur by with tired, almost dead, eyes. On his lap lay a paperback novel, open but unread. Opposite sat four Japanese, dividing their intelligent, excited scrutiny between England's southern scenery and this huge native; far more awed by the man than the moorlands.
Three of the Japanese - two men and a woman - were tourists from a remote province and were more used to Westerners on television than in the flesh. The fourth, a second woman in her early twenties, was a student at London University supplementing her grant by acting as a guide. They spoke animatedly in Japanese, just loud enough to be audible above the rhythmic clatter of the train.
'Are all Englishmen so tall?'
'No. This one is taller than most.'
'And his bones stretch his skin - one can almost see the skull beneath his face ...'
'It may be that he is tired. He is certainly thin for his
age and height. He seems tired ...'
'But look at his eyes! Like a summer sky. Do all barbarians have such ...'
'Many have pale eyes but few have eyes of such a colour. I believe, however, it would be incorrect to call this man a barbarian. Observe. He is reading a work by one of the masters of Japanese literature. In translation to be sure. However ...'
'Oh! A Japanese novel! Pray, you who can read English so well, tell us which novel it is?'
'It is the work by Yukio Mishima. It is called The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea ... Oh!'
The Englishman did not hear the conversation or the horrified exclamation. Utterly unaware of the shocked faces opposite, he was ripping the book to pieces, from top to bottom along the spine. Then he stood, his actions ugly, abrupt, violent. He opened the carriage window and hurled the fluttering pages away.
Every once in a while Richard Mariner would come south to Rowena's grave, his actions dictated by something deeper than time. It would never be when it was convenient, or on the anniversary of their meeting, of their marriage, or of her death. He would suddenly find himself prey to nightmares. In his dreams, great ships would blow apart. Then sleep itself would become a dream. He would become moody and violent. Unable to concentrate. Unable to work. Surrounded by ghosts wherever he was. Until at last he would find himself travelling south. South and west from London. Down to the graveyard at Land's End.