by Peter Tonkin
'Come on, Ben, don't be coy ...'
'All right, Dick, I know what you mean well enough. But have you thought it all through right to the bitter end?'
Silence settled between them. A spiky, uncomfortable silence. Then, 'Right,' said Ben. 'I'll go back to my patients.' And he left Richard to the thoughts he had brought his Captain unwillingly to face.
In spite of the last desperate bungles, this had been an immaculate plan, perfectly executed by someone aboard. Reacting to the disaster and death of Levkas's crew, some terrifyingly efficient double bluff had been enacted upon them all. Far more complex than he had stated on the lifeboat as he prepared to bring them back aboard.
Far too clever, and too precisely targeted against the weaknesses of those now aboard simply to be the distant machinations of an Owner greedy for insurance on a cheap, untrustworthy hull.
No. Ben was right. None of it had happened by accident: perhaps not even the precipitate departure of Slope which had brought her aboard in the first place.
Who really stopped off in Bahrain on the way to the Seychelles and then slipped down to Dubai on the off chance?
And the food poisoning. That was part of it too: Prometheus had always been destined for the hospitality of the oil-hungry, Arab-embargoed South Africans. All that had ever been destined for the floor of the Atlantic was a cargo of Cape seawater.
And just where the hell did you pick up perfect little numbers by Chanel in Durban without a little prior notice; a little forward planning?
The bitter end, the inevitable conclusion, was this: the fraud was being perpetrated by the owner of the oil as well as by the owner of the ship.
That oil was owned by a bitter, desperate 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.
CHANNEL
Chapter Twenty Two
'There!' called Robin 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 home. He put his left arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him with all his strength.
It was dawn on 9th September. He had brought them back exactly as he had said he would, and surprisingly easily. There had been no break in the clement weather as they ploughed through Biscay; nor in the sullen peace which had descended after the fight between Martyr and Malik. There had been no further action by the secret saboteur. Nothing had changed. They had signalled passing ships but requested no further help - Richard wanting to keep Demetrios, and Bill Heritage, 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 - or to be contacted by anyone. 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 Hornblower's great feat of navigation, guiding His Britannic 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 on to the deck to see the twin volcanoes which 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 grey seas and glistened on something tiny and silver lifting busily from the distant land: a helicopter. Richard immediately forgot about Hornblower, John and even Robin. Here was something more important. Contact. Someone was coming out to them at last.
He 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.
Martyr had certainly been in it somewhere, but had he actually done more than turn a blind eye? How far would Demetrios dare push the big New Englander, even for the sake of his daughter? And Malik; was his continuing search for Levkas's mysterious, perhaps mythical, American, explanation enough for his involvement? What precisely was Levkas's motivation for returning to a ship which had already tried to kill him? Were all these men working alone or as a team? And if they were part of a conspiracy, did it stop with them? Tsirtos must have been one of them. Richard felt in his bones that there must also be one other aboard. Perhaps two.
Richard was soon going to have to voice his own opinions on these matters, and the prospect of doing so was not enhanced by the fact that, in truth, everything that had happened so far led him to suspect most deeply the other two people on the bridge wing with him now, also looking eagerly at the helicopter as it neared.
But no matter what he felt, guilt or innocence would soon be determined by due process of British law. That was the true significance of the silver speck speeding towards them through the dawn.
Every single off-duty person aboard was standing by the helipad as the helicopter 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's uniform who stepped first on to the deck might just as well have come from a distant galaxy.
If he sensed their feelings, 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 towards 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 on to 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 duellists.
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 moustache. The steel-grey hair. And, at his side now, arm entwined through his, reedstraight until her golden head easily topped his shoulder, his daughter whom Richard loved.
How could he ever have suspected these two of anything dishonourable? 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 h
andshake 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.'
'Thankee, m'boy, thankee, 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 into motion. 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 towards 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 which the others hurried by.
On the bridge, there was an almost embarrassed pause. It was gone 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 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 towards 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 towards 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 coloured 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 ...'
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 agonised 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 seemed 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 whatever was going on before it dragged the old man down. But 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. And her strength was about to be tested further.
Horror showed on Sir William's face as he recognised 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. 'Then who did you sell it to?' Richard asked. Robin went forward to lay her hand on one bowed shoulder. She glanced back and shook her head: later. Richard went back on to 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 which 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 was tall, angular, intense. He had clouded blue eyes 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 on to the starboard bridge wing; Robin and Sir William were still out on the port. 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 towards 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. Yes. There it was. The narrowest possible band of mackerel cloud, preceded by some high, feathery wisps of mares' tails. He remembered the doggerel John had quoted in the blue waters north of Durban where he had last seen such a cloud formation:
Mackerel skies and mares' tails
Make tall ships wear short sails.
He suddenly realised he hadn't heard a weather forecast in well over a week.
Just then, the helicopter lifted off again and Richard followed it with his eyes, forgetting briefly about the weather. It was gone out of his sight in a few moments and his eyes turned south again, remembering the storm.
But Watson had started his inquisition and he readily turned his mind back to the present. Over the next half hour, each contributing knowledge and speculation beyond the other's ken, they began to reconstruct the bare bones of the fraud.
They discussed Lloyd's history of Kostas Demetrios, a lieutenant in the US Navy, lucky to be in Naples instead of Vietnam, retiring at the end of his tour of duty apparently clean - though medical supplies kept vanishing from the Italian port - retiring rich, but not lazy. He worked his way through business school and moved into shipping, rapaciously ambitious; infinitely greedy. The purchase of Prometheus was his first big venture in the most lucrative market of all. Running it legally, he would have been well in profit, and able to build his fleet slowly and safely. If the
fraud paid off, his profits were likely to be colossal.
The crew selected for Prometheus might just have stood up to scrutiny, even had she sunk. There was nothing concrete against Levkas, the registered Master. Only Gallaher, the ship's electrician, had a serious criminal record as an IRA terrorist, still wanted for bombing an army patrol. Checking over the last few days had raised the possibility that he might have been employed not only by Kostas Demetrios but also by a firm called Americorp, though this was speculative and probably irrelevant.
Had Demetrios's plan gone unhindered, it would have been fool-proof. Prometheus, under an assumed name, with the full knowledge of the original officers and complicity of the crew, would have sold her oil in Durban. She would have blown up and sunk off Senegal. Insurance would have been collected. Everyone would have been paid off. Kostas Demetrios would have been very, very rich.
Everything that had happened to Richard and his crew had been an increasingly desperate variation on that simple plan. Desperate, but not wildly so: there was still no absolute proof.
Until the tanks were opened and their contents checked - a lengthy, dangerous business. And it wouldn't be as simple as that either, thought Richard. They couldn't just open the tanks and look in. Well they could if the correct procedures were followed - but that would be little good in this case, because all that they would see would be oil. Oil scum left clinging to the sides and floors of the empty tanks - thousands of gallons of it, probably - now floating on top of the South Africa seawater, looking to all intents and purposes just like the real thing.
'But if you couldn't drain the tanks?' asked Richard. 'If we hadn't brought her home?'
'We'd have paid up. Simple as that. Still might have to, if anything goes wrong.'
'But the suspicion ...'
'A story. Nothing more. The sort of thing you find in novels. Our lawyers doubt it would stand up for long in court. Unsubstantiated hearsay, most of it. No damn good at all, without proof.'