Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Robin crossed to it as he spoke. She nodded once, tight mouthed, picked it up and turned back.

  Then she did pause, for the first time, suddenly struck by the thought that she might well be sending him into unacceptable danger. He was shoeless and something about his bright Argyll socks made her feel poignantly protective towards him. But she had a responsibility to all the rest of them as well. And he would do a better job than anybody else aboard. So: 'Look ...' she began. As quickly and accurately as she could - given that some of it at least was guesswork - she explained what she and Martyr had learned. And what she wanted him to do.

  Within moments of her first word he was seated on his bunk, reaching for his shoes. By the time she was finished he was laced up and ready to go.

  They parted at the lift. He stepped in, to sink two decks. She ran on to the stairs and bounded up them.

  She burst on to the bridge and had handed Sir William's little radio to Quine before she noticed something was wrong. John was there alone. There was no other officers in sight. No sign of Richard or Martyr. Or of Ben.

  She went cold.

  John was at the helmsman's left shoulder. She strode quickly across to him. 'John!' She had to yell to make herself heard. 'Where are the others?'

  'Captain's on the starboard bridge wing.'

  'But Martyr? Ben Strong?'

  'Martyr's in the engine room if I know him. Ben bashed his head open and went below - what? - ten minutes ago?'

  'Oh God.'

  'Robin? Robin, where are you ...Number Three!'

  But she was gone.

  Sir William pushed open the door of the Cargo Control Room and very nearly panicked. He found himself confronted with a solid wall of smoke. There was no sound of flames, merely a tell-tale hissing. Nor was there any real sensation of heat; just the smoke: McTavish's wires were shorting out again, though Bill did not know this. 'Christ!' he muttered, hit the lights and plunged in.

  Bill Heritage paused in the centre of the room. His eyes were watering and, for all that he was holding his breath, the acrid smoke caught his throat. Forcing himself not to cough, he looked around, all too aware that his time was severely limited. But at the centre of the room the smoke seemed thinner and the light as it flickered on revealed the seat of the fire - a thinning column of smoke oozing oilily from behind a blistered, twisted tin panel. Bill kicked it twice, ruining some of Lobb and Company's finest work, and it fell back to reveal a black mare's nest of burned wires. McTavish had left a red can of electrical-safe firefighting foam on the nearest work surface and Bill used this to kill the last pungent clouds.

  His breath ran out then but instead of going out towards the open door, he crossed to the rattling sheet of board which was trying to wrench itself out of the blast-twisted window frame. It came free surprisingly easily and the storm wind burst in, blasting the smoke away.

  Bringing Bill Heritage almost face to face with a tall, yellow-clad figure who turned away before the old man could be certain who it was, to vanish down the deck.

  The storm bit Ben with full force the moment he stepped out of the A deck door. The solid ram of the wind blasted him back against the ravaged iron of the upperworks. A sheet of water, solid as ice, slid along the deck beneath his feet, almost sweeping him away. He turned and was suddenly blinded. He turned again, his back to the brightness, and staggered away from the bridge-house, feeling acutely the loss of his chance to summon up some reserves of energy and fortitude. He had to pause almost at once, fortuitously, in the first shadow; then, leaning forward into the brunt of the wind, placing his feet carefully as though planting them and willing them to grow safe roots into the throbbing deck, he began to walk down the length of the ship.

  It never occurred to him that the brightness meant that he had been spotted. It seemed unlikely that anyone from the bridge would see him, though he was dressed in the bright wet-weather gear they had broken out before turning to run for France. The bridge windows, plain glass without the benefit of clear view, would hide most of the deck under a vertical sheet of water. He had no intention, however, of using the raised catwalk above the pipes running down the centre of the deck. No. He would sneak down among the shadows of the manifolds and tank caps here at deck-level, and hope the hell be wasn't washed overboard. Danger of one sort saving him from the far greater danger of exposure.

  That was one thing he really dreaded. He was a natural spy. Under the bland surface he presented to the world he could hide anything. Even this. But outer appearances were important to him. He enjoyed the respect of his peers. He needed to have standing in his community. He lived in an expensive little Surrey village where rich ex-Londoners played at being country folk. He kept his accounts at local stores. He was a churchwarden and attended services every Sunday when at home; following prayer with a drink or two at the local pub and an occasional slog with a bat on the village green for the village cricket team. Soon there would be a quiet, patient, biddable, preferably rich wife. A captaincy. Children. He had it all mapped out. And no one would ever know about his expensive little peccadilloes: the books, magazines and videotapes he bought in San Francisco and New York. The special nightclubs in Amsterdam. The child-brothels in Bangkok ...

  These were thoughts that occupied his mind as his body fought its way down the deck. Perforce they occupied only part of it. The rest of his consciousness was trying to deal with the physical sensations of the storm. The effect of it was intensified by the darkness. There was no sense of scale, as there had been off Durban. There was simply an unremitting personal attack, as though the wind hated him and were trying to wrestle him to the deck where the rain and spray could drown him. It had fingers which grasped any loose piece of clothing to use as a Judoka might to unbalance him. It had arms which wrapped around him, trying to lift him and throw him. It had legs which thrust against his legs, trying to trip him - and all too often succeeding. It had fists, armed with knuckle-dusters of hail, which pummelled his face until he couldn't feel his cheekbones and his slitted eyes seemed as bruised and swollen as his nose. He fought it as it fought him, unrelentingly. And so he proceeded down the deck.

  His preoccupation was nearly his undoing. The howl of the wind from the south broke and sobbed. He charged forward without thinking. As soon as he was in the open another squall - a rogue, from the east - hit his shoulder like a heavy tackle and sent him sliding, sprawling across the deck.

  The steel beneath his face was slick with inches of running water, the surface of it varnish-bright, like something preserved under glass. But as he slid over a section of it, the smooth water began to behave strangely, forming ripples, like a miniature mill-race, for no apparent reason. Ben was too stunned to notice. He pulled himself erect and staggered on down the deck. The glassy water behind his boot-heels rippled again along a line running from port to starboard right across the ship. Then the ripple was lost as the south wind returned with the rain.

  It was the first sign that Prometheus was beginning to come apart.

  Robin reached the Cargo Control Room door at a dead run, choking as her gasps for breath let some of the dissipating fumes into her lungs. She hung in the doorway as though crucified, watching her father turn tousle-haired from the empty, roaring window frame.

  'There's someone out there!' he yelled.

  She nodded, her mind running at frantic speed. Unlike her father she saw all too clearly the meaning of the smoke. The only reason for the wires to short out was that the computer was filling them with electrical impulses, trying to give self-destructive orders to the pumps.

  She endeavoured, with every nerve in her body from the soles of her feet to her blood-thundering ears, to sense whether the pumps were obeying. It was hopeless. She could sense nothing beyond the storm.

  At once she was in action again. She crossed to the VDU and snapped it on. It lit up. That was very bad.

  She tapped in the Lading Schedules. Worse and worse. Her father was at her shoulder, his face as pale and pinched as her
own. The four blue eyes scanned schedule after schedule. Under each neat, safe plan for the disposition of the cargo flashed one red phrase:

  OVERRIDE: THIS SCHEDULE CANCELLED

  They read the same phrase ten times.

  'What next?' she asked herself rather than him, concentrating so fiercely that she had all but forgotten his presence.

  'Keep going.'

  She had no alternative. She knew the machine only had ten pre-set lading schedules, but she pressed Eleven anyway.

  Up it came, good as gold. She went cold at the sight. The diagram of their ship with that sinister red box midships.

  And under it, the blessed words:

  POWER FAILURE: UNABLE TO EXPEDITE.

  They were hugging each other, still laughing with relief, when Martyr appeared in the doorway.

  'He's gone out on to the deck,' the American yelled. Robin turned towards him, a mass of conflicting emotions. But her reassessment of Ben was complete. She hated him as a woman for what he enjoyed seeing done to women. As an officer for what he was trying to do to her ship. As an individual for what he was trying to do to those she loved.

  Crisply she answered, 'Let's go get him.'

  And for the first time in their brief acquaintance, she saw the American smile.

  The storm took hold of them just as it had taken hold of Ben. It buffeted them together, however, and they gave each other strength. Four legs moved faster than two under these circumstances, and they fell over less often. Like Ben they avoided the catwalk: to catch him they would have to follow in his footsteps. At this intensity, the storm would hide anything but the most massive deck-feature from fifteen feet above: the First Mate would be able to move easily unobserved unless they were much closer than that. It would take luck to find him. But one positive factor was obvious to both of them: he was heading for the fo'c'sle head.

  That being said, locating him on Prometheus's vast deck on a night like this was likely to be a lengthy, dangerous process, if it could be done at all. But Ben clearly had a plan he thought would succeed, or he would not be out here now. If ...

  If ... thought Robin. She could hardly believe that it was Ben. Less than twenty minutes ago she had been thinking of the First Officer as fundamentally harmless. Now here she was, bound by the massive power of the wind to the one man she had suspected most of all, looking for this 'harmless' man, trying to prove his guilt.

  The night closed its fist around them, crushing them together. It was as though the wind had ceased its movement but acquired solidity, muffling them. The rest of the storm seemed to recede. Even the ship became distant. All that really existed was the huge, water-filled, choking power all around them. It carried them forward for ten feet before it released them, dazed and disorientated, onto the forward section of the deck.

  So they, like Ben scant yards before them, failed to notice the widening cracks in the deck.

  Richard could feel it, though. Nothing definite. Nothing he could put his finger on. Nothing even in his conscious mind, yet. He felt the movement of his ship beginning to change beneath his wide-spaced feet and he reacted to it viscerally.

  He stood by the helmsman, hands clenched behind his back, glaring out through the semi-opaque glass which was all the storm had left to him. John stood at the Collision Alarm Radar. There were watches out on the bridge wings and fo'c'sle head armed with night glasses and R/Ts. He was seriously thinking of sending someone else to the fo'c'sle head. But he was two officers short, and there was something he couldn't quite pin down making him grind his teeth together hard enough to cramp the muscles in his jaw.

  Robin saw him first, crouching on the edge of a shadow - head, arms and legs in darkness, shoulders and back bright - on the port side, just short of the fo'c'sle head. Speech was impossible so she beat upon Martyr's arm and pointed. He followed her gaze and broke into a shambling run. She went with him.

  There were no niceties. None of the expertise the Chief had shown earlier, when fighting Salah Malik. The big American simply threw himself upon the crouching Englishman. It was all the storm would allow. They rolled together, all arms and legs, upon the slick, slippery deck.

  Robin was not one to stand around. She thought about warning the man on the fo'c'sle head. It was Kerem Khalil and she was worried that he might be hurt should anything go wrong here. But that would mean leaving these two alone. And that was not why she had come. She threw herself forward and landed squarely on the wrestling men.

  At once she became entangled in the fight. A fist slammed into her ribs. A knee dug into the pit of her stomach. She disregarded the pain and lashed back, pausing only to make sure that she wasn't hitting Martyr by mistake. Then after a few wild but utterly satisfying punches, she concentrated on the safer and much more sensible stratagem of trying to capture and hold Ben Strong's right arm.

  She was not doing all this in a vacuum. As well as the fight, there was a broken, gasping, expletive-filled conversation going on. At first it seemed to her that it was just a case of childish name-calling But a pattern emerged: Martyr was trying to get information out of Strong. Some kind of confession. For her benefit. She began to listen carefully. No: not some kind of confession. A full confession. Everything Ben had done, in breathless, broken detail.

  '... 'course it was me ... sodding torch ... should have made a better job of you ... Like whatsisname ... Nicoli ... extra couple of grand to see you didn't come back ...' The attempted murder of the Chief.

  The masterly poisoning of the one food they were guaranteed to eat in the wintry Cape waters: the Thick Vegetable soup; no matter who it might kill ...

  The pretended coma in Durban while he had actually been overseeing the unloading of the oil ...

  Walking away from Haji Hassan watching the life dying out of his eyes ... That had been the best. That had been the most exciting moment of his life so far ...

  Except, perhaps, for the instant, all too brief, alas, when he had pushed Watson down into the Pump Room ...

  He has gone right over the edge, she thought.

  And she was right. What did it matter to Ben now, one way or the other? He babbled on, listing everything he had done, a detached part of his mind listening in horror-stricken incredulity, stunned to find all the years of duplicity spilling out like this. One great confession.

  It was glorious.

  Of course, if they didn't kill him now he was going to have to kill them. But then they probably realised that.

  He twisted more viciously, butting the American in the face, pressing the point of his right elbow into the woman's chest and digging it home with all his strength.

  He couldn't last much longer. He could feel his energy slipping away. He would have to break free and destroy them both. There was a gun in his life raft hidden nearby. The idea of telling them everything and then killing them began to amuse him enormously.

  He slammed his head up into Martyr's face again and bore down with his elbow even more.

  He had no idea whatsoever that he was screaming with laughter.

  It was that indefinable feeling of unease, so vague but so overpowering, which called Richard off the bridge at last.

  He did not go willingly, too well aware that if the grounds for his almost subconscious suspicions were of any real consequence, then his place was here; but for once John Higgins let him down. John could feel nothing wrong at all, beyond the night and the storm.

  'There's more to it than that ...'growled Richard.

  'Only the absence of Robin and Ben.'

  'They'll be here soon. Sidetracked, probably ...' In all honesty, Richard was so deeply wrapped up in his internal search for what was wrong that he hadn't noticed the time pass. He was completely unaware just how long it had been since Robin left the bridge.

  He prowled up to the helmsman's shoulder, peering out vainly into the whirling, screaming murk. Able occasionally to see the glimmer of a navigation light; once in a while the distant ghost of a Sampson post. And, as he looked down the i
nvisible deck, the feeling in him grew.

  Until he could stand it no longer. 'Quine, get onto the R/T, if you please. Warn a team of GP seamen to wait for me at the port exit from A deck. Get one seaman up here to take over a watch. John, you have her.'

  He stepped out on to the port bridge wing. The wind hit him like a sledgehammer, sending him staggering back before he angled his solid body and fought his way across the pressure as though he were crossing a river in flood. At the far end of the bridge wing was Salah Malik, night glasses round his neck, solidly on watch. He jumped when Richard crashed into him.

  Richard thrust his lips against a cold, wet ear. 'There's something wrong,' he yelled, gesturing at the deck. 'We've got to go and check.'

  The big Palestinian nodded vigorously. In spite of everything else going on around him out here, he had felt it too, that formless chill of unease.

  At the A deck door, a group of half a dozen waited. Tersely, Richard explained that there was nothing he could put his finger on, but they must check the ship from stem to stem. He split them into teams. They checked their R/Ts. They went out into the night.

  Out here, the storm was a little more restrained than it had been on the bridge wing. Here there were all the protuberances of the deck, from tank tops to pipes, catwalk-capped, to break the power of the wind. But up there, there had been safe rails, the gap between each upright closed with a steel plate. Here there was nothing small to hold on to; nothing safe. They felt exposed, as though they were on a mountainside, and they gathered together, like animals afraid.

  Slowly, painstakingly, they began to work their way down the deck. Every now and then, when they reached some kind of shelter, Richard and Salah would crouch side by side, one checking with the teams, the other with the bridge. Richard was becoming seriously disturbed by the non-arrival of Ben and Robin. And, while it did occur to him that they too might be exploring the ship, subject to the same formless fears as he was himself, never once did he imagine them locked in a life-or-death struggle less than one hundred yards away.