Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Even so, he put his hand to his belly first, expecting to find the holes there, still sluggishly pumping blood. His fingers came away dry. Only then did he put them to his head, gently exploring the soft new contours around the hairline and underneath the stubble of his hair. From the feel of things, he was lucky to be alive.

  The very phrase carried him back to Florida. It was what the young paramedic had said, kneeling by his side on the cocaine-dusty, hardwood floor while several of his colleagues had checked on the other seven men there. None of them were as lucky as the big Engineer, though he would gladly have swapped with any of them then. Even though he had killed them all himself.

  He sat up and his head swam, pulling him back to a nauseous present. He rested for a few moments, gathering his strength. Then he tried to stand. His first attempt wasn't too successful. He staggered like a terminal drunkard until his feet crunched on something unexpectedly and the surprise made him lose his footing again.

  Sitting on the floor, he explored in the absolute darkness with his fingers, trying to find what had caused him to fall. It was the broken torch. More than broken, by the feel of it: smashed to pieces. The memory flashed into his head of a figure cloaked in darkness behind a blaze of light, throwing itself at him, wrestling him down, bludgeoning him about the head with a torch in the shadows.

  Rage came. Sheer, overwhelming, bone-deep, blood-hot red rage. It was a feeling he knew well. It was part of him more than any other feeling in the world. 'I'll get you, you son of a bitch,' he said. And the rage gave him the strength to stand.

  He felt his way to the door and opened it. He was just about to step outside when his dazed mind warned him that he did not know which door this was. There were several doors opening from the engine control room. One led to the corridor. The others led to balconies overlooking the engine. If he walked off one of those in the dark, he would simply fall to his death. He laboriously knelt, feeling sick and slightly foolish, and checked with his fingertips. The linoleum of the corridor: not the patterned metal of a balcony, he was safe so far.

  His mind had been suggesting subliminally for a time that the battering about his head might have affected his ears. Now he consciously took on the problem and found the logical answer: he was not going deaf, the fire was miraculously dying down. He must have been out for hours; perhaps all night. He stood again and walked purposefully out into the corridor. Apart from the fitful roar, the ship was absolutely silent. He felt his way along the corridors and up the eerie stairways, whistling to himself but not too loudly.

  There was dawn light enough to see the charnel house of the crew's quarters. By the time he made it up on to the deserted bridge, the sun was coming up, bringing the first ghostly tendrils of fog. Martyr sat in the Captain's chair and wondered what he should do first. Wondered what he should do, period. He was the only man left alive on a drifting, half-derelict hulk. It seemed unlikely that she would blow up now, but in becoming less of an immediate danger to Martyr, she at once became a terrible hazard to other shipping. She was drifting, without lights or horn to give warning of her presence, through busy sea lanes in a thickening fog. If the watch officers of passing ships weren't very wide awake indeed, there could be a major catastrophe here. Which would be all the better for that murderous little bastard Demetrios.

  He sat for a long time, thinking dark thoughts about his relationship with Kostas Demetrios, such as it was, and the Greek's fail-safe scheme. While to Richard the Owner seemed American, to Martyr he seemed Greek. Still, the Greek had paid the American's share up front, quite a lot of money, simply to ignore one out of the ordinary circuits - and make sure nobody else got too suspicious about it, if they found it - and the money was performing its designated function now; so that even this way the sea was giving back a little of what it had stolen from him. Obviously, the first thing to do would be to get the alternators working again. Without them, Prometheus was worse than helpless. And there was clearing up to be done. He would need light for that. And after. Plenty of light. He needed those generators. It never occurred to him that he should finish the job himself - simply shut that circuit, sink her and sail away in one of the port lifeboats. That was something Demetrios could never pay enough to buy - no one could. In any case, things had changed now: the bomb had seen to that. The Greek had promised that it would be clean, that no one would die. Now there were dead men all over the ship, and a reckoning had to be made.

  But the alternators were down in the engine room where the sun never shone. So, step one was to find another torch. Simple.

  Why the alternators should have chosen to switch themselves off when they did was something that Martyr was never able to fathom. There seemed nothing wrong with them when he looked at them closely under the bright beam of a battery-operated lantern some twenty minutes later, and they started with ease. After the first kick and bellow of sound, light flooded the engine room and he felt comforted somehow. He patted the bellowing machine and turned away. He had taken four steps precisely when the realisation of what he might actually have done swept over him.

  When it came right down to it, his involvement, expensively bought, consisted only of one thing: turning a blind eye to the one circuit down here which could not be explained. The one circuit which the real accomplice would close in order to open the sea-cocks, if the alternators were still running.

  He stood there, frozen with the certainty that this is what his mysterious assailant had been doing down here the better part of twelve hours ago. The sea-cocks had obviously remained closed then, but what if that were only because the electricity had failed? What if they were opening now?

  Impulsively, he turned back and killed the power, plunging the engine room into echoing silence and darkness again. He strained his ears. Could he hear the sound of water gushing into her? He could hear little. Not enough to distinguish between imagination and actuality. Cursing quietly to himself; he reached down and lit the lantern again. Was it enough just to cut the wires? he wondered. Possibly. But even in these circumstances his natural professionalism overcame him. He laboriously followed the wire to the hidden switch and checked that it was in fact turned off before he would allow himself to feel satisfied or safe.

  He was just about to go back and restart the alternators when the beam of his torch fell upon something which had been hidden in the pipework above the switch itself. It was a magazine. He pulled it free, knowing that it could not be here by accident; hoping it would furnish some kind of a clue to the saboteur's identity.

  By the greatest of good fortune, he pushed it into his overalls pocket rather than trying to read it here, for its effect on him when he looked at it after starting the generator, in the bright engine room, was bad enough. As soon as it fell open, towards the end of the sequence of photographs, Martyr felt as though a nail was being driven into his head The girl and several partners were involved in acts of the utmost obscenity. He felt as though red-hot skewers were being pushed into his eyes. He had seen pictures like this before. Like this, but less perverted. The pain in him was so terrible that he cried aloud, dropping the pornographic magazine and clutching his face. His stomach jerked and he nearly vomited. 'Oh, Chrissie!' he choked. Blindly, he staggered from the thing. Almost beyond control, he ran up the ladders and out on to the fog-shrouded deck.

  But he had to return. No matter how long he paced the deck raving - and he would never be able to guess how many hours he spent there between the cooling volcano mouth and the fo'c'sle head - he had to go back down into his personal hell and retrieve that garish record of just some of the things his only child Christine had done to support her cocaine habit.

  As he was putting it away, his eyes half closed to avoid seeing his daughter again, something fell from between the pages. It was the photograph of a boy with a faintly familiar Palestinian face. He actually snarled as he bent to pick it up, for he recognised the family likeness, and it seemed to him to be absolute proof of the saboteur's identity.

  Then
he turned to other tasks.

  He was a man well acquainted with death and it seemed to him fitting that, above all the others, he should have been chosen by fate as an undertaker. He moved the bodies and pieces of bodies - mostly Palestinian - into the ship's cold room. His inclination was to throw them overboard, but some glimmer of rational behaviour stayed alive during those hours, hazed as they were by shock and concussion. Some certainty that at last Prometheus would be found and taken in tow, as she had been to Durban, and then there would be full reckoning for Demetrios, and the devil to pay.

  He lost a day altogether, working like an automaton at instantly forgotten tasks. He slept, without knowing it, wherever his legs gave out, and woke to take up where he had left off, apparently mere seconds later. Night drove him below decks because one of the more eccentric side effects of the blast was that, while the equipment seemed untouched, every light bulb in the front of the bridge was smashed. He spent hours, mercifully hazy, rechecking through the rest of the pornography secreted in the officers' library, looking in vain for Christine's face. He woke at noon on the third day and found himself, much to his surprise, on a chair in the library, looking at the haze on a hissing video. His overalls were stiff with filth. His long, aching body stank foully. He badly needed a shave. He was nursing an empty pint bottle of bourbon and the mother and father of all hangovers. His mind, for the first time since the murderer clubbed him with the torch, was absolutely clear.

  During the next three hours he showered, shaved, changed, toured the ship from stem to stern, giving her a thorough inspection; surprised to find how clean and tidy she was. Surprised to find just how much he had done while concussion blanked almost everything out. The tour, unsurprisingly, ended at the engine, and, as far as he could tell, this, like the generator, was undamaged and would start again, if asked. As long as there was enough oil in the bunkerage. He read the gauges in the engine room: there was plenty. But it would be pointless to get under way. He could not hope to control Prometheus on his own. Far better to let her drift and hope she kept out of trouble. But the idleness, once his elementary engine checks were complete, drove him up to the bridge once more, to keep an eye out for any passing ships.

  And so it was that he, standing high and armed with powerful binoculars, though looking almost directly into the setting sun, saw the forlorn specks of the lifeboats long before anyone aboard them had any idea that the stricken giant was drifting down on them. His first impulse was to let them know he was here, but it was dismissed instantly. Instead, he veiled his eyes calculatingly and returned to the Captain's chair. Here he sat, lost in thought as the sun set and the three craft closed together. By the time Richard saw Prometheus the Chief was in the fo'c'sle head watching through carefully shaded binoculars, taking careful note of who was there.

  He had just pulled up the rope ladder when the lifeboats came buzzing in and paused, like strange water beetles, puzzled at the point where it should have been. He gave a lean smile. Good. Now they would have to wait for him to welcome them aboard in his own way. As far as he was concerned, after all, one of them had tried to kill him and the rest had simply left him to die. He found he was deeply disappointed in Richard Mariner, though. He would have reckoned on the tall Englishman for at least one search party. It never occurred to him that the search party might have been fooled by the murderer's lies. So he busied himself as they explored the other side, and was in position when they came back, with his next few moves at least worked out.

  As they passed beneath the accommodation ladder, he hit the button on its electric motor and silently, on desertbooted feet, he ran for the shadows of the black-windowed bridge.

  The accommodation ladder clanged down to its fullest extent and stopped. They sat and looked at it in an awed, superstitious silence. Then Ben stood up in the first boat's bow. 'Someone alive up there after all,' he called cheerily. 'Hope it's the Chief. Still feel bad that we didn't manage to find him.' Then he sprang nimbly out and up. John automatically took his place, leaning out and holding the boat still, looking up after the First Officer with the ghost of a frown.

  Ben vanished up on to the deck, hallooing cheerfully, but there was no reply, and after a moment his tousled head was shoved out over the side. 'Nobody here. No hide nor hair. Damnedest thing.'

  Richard sat for a moment longer, face like a mask, mind racing. More mystery. He too hoped it was the Chief, but this behaviour was too eccentric for the American - unless Martyr was motivated by something as yet unknown to him. But there was certainly someone left alive on board. He would find out soon enough who it was. In the mean time it was nearly full night and he had to get the wounded aboard. He rose stiffly, raising a hand to Robin to warn her that he wanted her to stay where she was for a moment, then he stepped carefully down the boat past John and climbed swiftly up the ladder.

  Stinking, strange-atmosphered, inhabited by mysteries or not, it seemed to him as he came on to the deck that Prometheus was glad to see him. But that was perhaps mainly because he was so pleased to be back.

  Ben was busily examining the top of the ladder. 'Might have tripped as we passed under it ...'

  They both listened in the silence above the muttering from the boats below. The ladder was powered by electricity. That meant the generators had to be on, but it was hard to tell down here. And the bridge was in darkness. They looked at each other, already almost lost in the gloom. Then, unexpectedly, with a sort of silent explosion, all the navigating lights and most of the forward deck lights came on.

  'It has to be Martyr,' said Richard decisively. 'You oversee the unloading of the boat. I'm going up to the bridge at once.'

  Ben hesitated. 'He's acting pretty strangely, Dick. Maybe I'd better come up with you.'

  'No. I'd say he tripped the ladder then ran back to get the lights on before it got absolutely dark. Nothing strange in that.'

  'If you say so. You're the boss. All the same, I'll get a couple of Malik's heftiest up here first in case anyone needs restraining.'

  Richard walked briskly down the deck, his mind switching from speculation to planning; his eyes wringing the last drop of information out of the gathering shadows as the deck lighting, also smashed by the explosion, sought to hide the wounded deck and bridge-house in darkness. But a simple sense of equilibrium told him of some of the damage, for the deck canted up increasingly steeply on his right, as he came past the last of the three tank caps nearest the bridge. Unable to resist, he walked to the edge of the gaping pit where the Pump Room hatch had once been and looked down into the black void. There was nothing to see. The stench was overpowering. He did not tarry long.

  The lights in the A deck corridor were on and the brightness nearly dazzled him. There was no doubt here: he could hear the generators clearly and even feel the hum of them through his feet. Even so, he did not trust the lift, preferring to pound up the stairs two at a time.

  The instrument panels, most of them miraculously still working, lit the bridge with an eerie green glow, in which he could just make out the figure of Martyr sitting in the Captain's chair. At once he thought about Ben's concern. What if he had cracked during the last three days? But his voice sounded calm enough. 'Hello, Captain. Welcome back aboard.'

  'Evening, Chief. You the only one here?'

  'Only one alive.' Martyr turned and Richard gasped. The Chief's face was a total wreck. Brows thrust out above swollen eyes. The nose was out of line. The lips, simian in their thickness, were split in several places. The high forehead was welted and raised in mountainous lumps. There was dried blood at the corner of nostrils and eyes, and in the ears.

  Without thinking, Richard was in action. As First Officer, he had acted as medic on enough ships to know the basics. His hands gently took the ruined face and probed with infinite care, checking for tell-tale tenderness which would tell of fractures. There seemed to be none. Martyr's bright eyes watched him quizzically. 'Teeth?' he asked.

  'Still in place,' answered Martyr. 'You should have
asked about my heart. The shock I got when I first looked in a mirror damn near killed me.'

  Richard laughed dryly, his mind a whirl of questions. He would ask them later. In the meantime, he had the oddest feeling that he had just passed some kind of test.

  Chapter Twenty One

  In the event, Martyr's revenge, like Hamlet's, had to wait. The others came wearily out of the lifeboats, carrying up the wounded. There were too many for the sickbay, so lights and bedding were replaced in the ruined crew's quarters and the overflow was bedded there.

  Nobody except the sedated got much sleep that night. Martyr's job of cleaning had been rudimentary. There was still much that needed immediate attention even before the bridge could be properly manned or the engine restarted.

  Richard's dream of bringing the great ship to port in better condition than when she sailed had necessarily gone by the board, but there was some tidying and painting which had to be done. All the windows needed boarding or replacing. Electrical light was needed at any price, and it returned to the bridge-house little by little. Only the places which needed to be used regularly were illuminated, as and when necessary, for light bulbs were now few. The radio shack was sealed and left in darkness, finally, because there was no way of fixing the ruin in there.

  Martyr, with his team, who were shaken to a man by the sight of his face, but warily silent and apparently incurious, had the engine started before first light next day, so the new dawn found Prometheus under her own power, sailing determinedly north, back onto her old course.

  All the navigating equipment had survived excepted the suspect Sat Nav, so John cheerfully brought up his beloved sextant to replace it, and, because the chronometers also seemed undamaged, this was quite good enough.

  Richard jolted awake and automatically looked at his watch. 07.30. Last half-hour of John's watch. Half an hour until Robin took over. He looked down at the golden crown of her sleeping head lying lightly on his chest. The emotion which swept over him as he looked at her was so poignant it made him feel like a boy again, stunned by the beauty of a world which could contain so much happiness; so much excitement. For the last few days he had lived on a plateau of contentment above any he had ever known, knowing that she shared it with him.