Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Maria was careful never to ask where the money came from when he came out of the navy; with whom the deals were made when he set himself up in business. She never had the slightest idea how close to financial ruin they had actually been on their wedding day when, a couple of thousand miles south of them, a half-crazy Chief Engineer had wiped out several Miami drug dealers and destroyed Demetrios's first big financial gamble in his new civilian career.

  But he had fought back. He was not a man to do deals without making firm contacts. And these stood him in good stead. He had enough Palestinian money left to keep him ticking over while he deserted the drugs scene and returned to what he knew best - the sea. But he was a sailor no longer. Now he was an entrepreneur. He began to put deals together, widening the web of contacts which he had built up during his naval service. Spreading his organisation beyond the Mediterranean. Building up his capital again for the next great gamble.

  When he came up with the Prometheus scheme, the idea proved so good that this time he didn't even have to shoulder all the risk himself. In fact, of course, it had proved too good in the end.

  Americorp had always been there, behind this friend, leaning on that friend. Which friend had actually told them, he never found out. Perhaps he had simply cast his net too wide. But suddenly there they were, and everything began to change, to sour.

  The idea had come to him almost fully-fledged while he was watching the six o'clock news. There had been an item on the OPEC embargo of oil to South Africa and he had called to Maria in derision, 'But how can they enforce that? Jesus! They can't even police it! Anyone can just sail right in ...'

  And that was where it started.

  All he needed was a tanker, enough money to fit it and run it for a few months. And a cargo of oil - which didn't even have to belong to him, for heaven's sake! And a crew willing to sail secretly into Durban and illegally offer the oil for sale.

  But then what? You couldn't bring the ship home. Not with empty tanks. No. The ship had to sink so that no one would ever know. Which meant there would be insurance to be collected on the ship ... and on the cargo, because no one could ever know that there was no oil aboard when she sank. That was it! There had to be two insurance claims: one on the ship and another on a 'cargo' which had already been sold!

  He was awed by the simple glory of it. Why weren't people doing this all the time? You could make a fortune. But then, few people had Demetrios's contacts at sea or ashore - he thought of Levkas immediately. And you could only do it once. No one was going to insure you if you kept losing ships.

  No. He could only do it once. So he better do it right.

  Now, how much did a supertanker cost? $10,000,000 ...?

  He had started asking around. A little advice here, a little financial help there. Never giving too much away - never asking too much of any one person. Naturally secretive. anyway, but wishing to maximise his own profit. A system of fixed rates payable for the little individual elements making up the whole scheme. A fixed return for every little loan and no one any the wiser. Or so he thought.

  Until the day his phone rang and a smooth voice said, 'Mr Demetrios? My name is Diavo. I represent a firm called Americorp, and I think we have business to do ...' And everything went sour.

  The original plan was elegantly simple. Demetrios could afford to buy the tanker. It was not particularly expensive. He flew down to Valparaiso and took his pick. He chose the hulk he was later to name Prometheus. He started looking for a crew, going back to the contacts he had made in his navy days - going back to Levkas, a tanker captain now. But not to Levkas first: he had a score to settle and an elegant part of this elegant plan was that it allowed him to settle that too. The man who, unknowingly, had nearly ruined him, that Chief Engineer who wiped out his first drugs shipment, was on the beach, wanted, desperate for money. It was easy to get him aboard; easy to arrange he would not get off again.

  But then Americorp took over. While Demetrios scoured the Mediterranean, building up a crew for her, his mysterious associates sent her to Lisbon and somehow ensured that the work which apparently brought her up to A1 standard for insurance looked as good and cost as little as possible. They also negotiated the embargo-breaking deal with the South Africans. Demetrios's considerable profit from the deal would mainly come from the fact that a cheap and cheaply fitted supertanker would be heavily overinsured and would yield several million dollars extra when she sank. Perhaps ten million. He would also get five per cent of Americorp's profit on the sale of the oil in Durban as an agreed finder's fee: another million at least on top of his profit from the tanker.

  Americorp's profit would come not only from the payment the South Africans would make for the oil, but also from the insurance on the oil when their claim was met, though they would have to be patient. No matter who owned the cargo when it was loaded at Kharg Island, or who bought it on the 'spot' market during the voyage, Americorp would own it when the ship was lost and would collect the insurance on it too. And Demetrios should also get five per cent of that second payment too, he said. No, said Mr Diavo: they would bear the risk; they would have to wait until the insurers paid up. Demetrios would get none of that.

  They had a fight.

  They went to a graveyard on Cape Cod.

  The scheme began ...

  Pulling it all back together after the disaster in the Pump Room had been oddly exhilarating. He was by no means addicted to danger, but he was the sort of man who enjoyed pressure and the fact that he managed to save the situation within forty-eight hours finally added to his overall sense of achievement. He had been lucky, he knew; lucky to have one strong - very Strong - contact in Crewfinders. Lucky that Martyr had saved his Captain. But the speed with which he had acted, with his back to the wall, simply added, in the end, to the sense of elation he felt on that afternoon, after the Lutine Bell was rung, in that brief time of contentment before it all blew up in his face.

  They phoned him at midnight - it must have been the early hours in London - to tell him the good news: Prometheus was coming home after all. They also dropped the bombshell in his lap about the explosion in the Pump Room. It shocked him, somehow, that so many more should have died in such a fashion as his plan was working itself out. Demetrios himself knew nothing of Gallaher's bomb at that time. He had arranged that the sea-cocks would open so that all except one could be saved. That seemed good enough to him. It never occurred to him that his shadowy partners would have wished to make assurance double sure.

  At once the pressure began again. Sleep was impossible. He sat up all the rest of the night working out how to pull the rest of his chestnuts out of the fire, hardly thinking of Americorp at all.

  Within the day, Mr Diavo was on the phone. They had a problem. Demetrios had been preoccupied. Short with the man. He had hung up on him, and enjoyed doing so. If there was a problem then they had brought it on themselves by their own greed; if they had been willing to pay the extra five per cent, he had said, then he might have been more willing. But no. He had done his part, he answered. That was that.

  Perhaps he should have thought more clearly, but he was tired, under pressure, trying to arrange passage to London; calling in favours from here to Hong Kong. Even with Strong still aboard they were in serious trouble once Prometheus entered the Channel. Too many people were now watching her too closely. The plan was coming apart. He was half asleep next morning, with Maria for once fussing over him instead of watching the kids, when Melina, the youngest, little more than a toddler, had come running up to him calling out 'Bang!' at the top of her voice. She was just learning to read, and had run up to her father, capriciously demanding his help. The words she was struggling with were written on a piece of ribbon.

  'Where did you get this, angel?' he had asked.

  She toddled off and returned with the tatters of a little parcel. It had contained a small doll. Around the doll had been tied the ribbon. On the ribbon had been written BANG YOU'RE DEAD. He hadn't even realised that the post
had come.

  This time when the phone rang he was more inclined to listen, beginning - with a growing sickness deep in his belly - to associate the threat to his family with the bomb in the Pump Room; to realise that gravestones and bits of ribbon were only the beginning - that there would be no more warnings. The payment Americorp had received for the oil from the South Africans was nowhere near enough for them. Unless he could guarantee their insurance payment too, he and his family would die.

  Now here he was in Rotterdam himself, out of alternatives. Simply blowing a hole in Prometheus wasn't going to be any good now anyway. He had to blow her to hell and gone. He had to manufacture such a holocaust that no one would think to ask what had been in her cargo tanks.

  He was more scared now than he had ever been. But every time he closed his eyes he could see little Melina standing there, wide-eyed and excited, holding the bright ribbon which now lay folded by his heart to give him strength, and reading from it the one word she understood: 'BANG!'

  Salah Malik stood by the wheel as the tugs brought them into Europoort. His arms were so stiff and his bandaged finger so sore that a lengthy turn at the wheel was almost too much to ask. But his usual replacement, Kerem Khalil, was in scarcely better shape. A series of lesser seamen had stood by the rally-sized helm throughout the last forty-eight hours, after John Higgins had overseen the bringing aboard of the lines from the Dutch tugs sent out when it became obvious that what was left of the ship was not going to sink. But Salah and Kerem had been there to bring her into port.

  Martyr had been in a pretty bad way when they brought him up. Salah's shoulders had almost been dislocated by the weight of the big American under the waterfall which had descended on them as they dangled at the end of the rope immediately after Prometheus broke in two. After the first full weight of it, Salah's grip had begun to slip, his whole hand suddenly on fire. Some vagary of the massive physical laws which held them upended them and twisted them around. Martyr's head had smashed into the unforgiving metal wall behind them with the full weight of two bodies, knocking him out at once.

  The dead weight, especially under these circumstances, would have been too much for most men. Indeed, had he been holding any other man, even Salah's strength might have faltered. Above the sickening, choking sensation as he all but drowned in the oily deluge, he could feel the muscles of his arms and torso tearing apart. He held the clumsy, slippery bundle of Martyr's inert body grimly, each second making him more certain that it was all a waste of time, effort and agony. A few more moments and the Chief would slip out of his crippled arms. His right hand gripped his left wrist with bruising force, but the joints in this steely circle at elbow and shoulder were slowly being pulled apart. Salah shook his head to clear his eyes and spat to clear his mouth. Then he ground his teeth together. The wings of his shoulder blades seemed to be tearing away from the muscles of his back. The whole of his torso was burning now, as though he had been severely scalded from neck to waist.

  For the last time he kicked away from the black steel wall which swung towards him like an avalanche time and again. The strange laws which had been tossing the two of them around like a feather relaxed for an instant. Salah swung upright. A pause in the torrent allowed him respite to glance upwards and what he saw there gave him the one more ounce of strength he needed.

  Kerem Khalil, tied into a makeshift rope sling, was abseiling down the iron precipice towards them.

  Kostas Demetrios sat beneath the gentle dew-fall, watching the quiet ship and wondering how best to go about destroying her.

  Prometheus had to be totally destroyed - no matter what the risks to her crew, the anchorage, himself. Only an explosion followed by a massive fire would solve his problems. But he was no suicide. Nor any kind of a fool. He had no intention of being caught in the explosion if he could help it. But the simple fact was that he was willing to die if by doing so he could save Maria and the girls. And he was much more willing to kill than to die.

  They had put her in the outermost of the docks, with only the headland Demetrios was on separating her from the restless sea. If he followed the headland back the way he had come all those hours earlier with the Dutch sightseers, he would return to the high dock gates. Security was too tight for him there. Only by revealing himself as the Owner would he get through, and even then they would probably search him - especially at this time of night. Even if they did not discover the bomb, they would certainly escort him onto the ship and then he would fall into the same trap he had almost fallen into earlier, on the dock. The slightest gesture on his part would have got him aboard. But that would have landed him with the massive salvage bill. And put him straight into the hands of the crew.

  He had seen them only distantly, but he had known at once. Even when posing as a journalist, preoccupied with his attempt to smuggle Diavo's second bomb to Ben Strong in Lyme Bay, it was an impression which burned into his mind. He had seen it again tonight. A team of them, moving about the deck, hadn't even needed to speak to each other. He had seen units like that - platoon reunions of men recently back from Vietnam. A closed unit, almost telepathic, welded together by experiences he could hardly imagine. He had almost seen the lines of force between them, those faceless crewmen, and it had made his hackles rise. Rung warning bells deep within him, bells he had forgotten were there.

  His first instinct had been to get out, and he had followed it - and the Hollanders - this far. But the simple fact was that he had to go back. There was no alternative. First thing in the morning, the investigators would go aboard. Investigators from Rotterdam, Lloyd's, Scotland Yard, the FBI and God knew where else. The first thing they would do would be to check in the tanks. The next thing they would do would be to come looking for him.

  But of course there wouldn't be all that much of him left to find. Nor of Maria and the girls.

  The only way he could make good use of the incendiary was to get the damn thing aboard again. His only real hope was to get it somehow into the ullage where the scum from the unwashed tanks would have oozed enough lethally explosive gas to blow what was left of Prometheus apart, if his incendiary could set it alight.

  He had known in his bones for an hour and more that there was only one way to get across to her. And he had come prepared even for that eventuality: the pictures on the television over the last few days, the learned commentary that went with them, had left little room for doubt. No matter where she ended up, if he was going to board in secret, he was going to have to swim. He pulled out the wet suit from under the bomb and started to put it on.

  Richard sat in his dayroom, staring at the blank ply over his window, with Robin curled at his feet. Her shoulder rested on the right leg of the chair and her golden head rested on his thigh. She was exhausted, sound asleep. As was her father, grey with fatigue, in the Owner's suite. He was on his last legs himself, staring mindlessly at the wood with its swirls of grain like sea-ribs on pale sand. He should be writing up the log. The Accident Reports. This was the first chance to do any paperwork since Bill Heritage had pulled the pair of them back aboard nearly forty-eight hours ago with Robin's kisses still burning on his lips. That was the moment he was trying to record in the log. The power of the emotion that memory brought was all that was keeping him awake.

  No. Not all that was keeping him awake. There was something else. A formless sense of something. Too imprecise even to be called a feeling. Danger. Much less powerful than the sensation that had travelled magically up through the soles of his feet as his command had begun to come apart. It was nothing he could feel, even subconsciously. It was perhaps only the impression that it was all but over and they were safe, that impression twisted into a worry by all that had gone before. A thought. A fear. An unprovable certainty.

  They were not safe yet. They ought to be but they were not. Not here. Not anywhere above the waves. Not like this. Not as they were, in one piece. Not now. Not until it was too late to stop the inspection. The report. It was almost too much to ask. After
what they had been through already, it might well be too much. But he had to ask it. He had to go round and wake them all up. That was why they were still here, after all.

  He had insisted on remaining aboard, on keeping his own watch instead of letting the Dutch harbour watch take over. The port authorities had allowed it, understandingly; and doubled the security on the dock. It was the dock nearest the sea, furthest from the other ships and the refineries. The closest Europoort had to an isolation dock. If they could not have put them, effectively, in quarantine, the careful Dutch would never have allowed them in here.

  But were they well enough quarantined? Not from Demetrios. Never from the Owner, until his fraud had been exposed.

  Facing this, at the end of his long, weary, meandering train of thought, forced him into action. He slammed the log loud enough to disturb Robin, though this was not his object. She sat up sleepily and he rose stiffly, feeling ancient and arthritic, and stooped to help her to her feet. He was about to lift her into his arms and carry her through into his cabin and his bunk, but once she was on her feet she stopped him. 'What is it with you?' she asked. 'It's like being in love with a guard dog.’

  He smiled wearily at her. 'I know.' His voice was rusty with fatigue. 'I'm a natural-born worrier.'

  'OK,' she acquiesced. 'So let's go guard something.'

  He nodded. 'Not something. Everything.'

  She sobered down. 'You think he's coming?'

  'Maybe not him.’

  'But someone?'

  'Sure as death.'

  'Tonight?'

  'Tonight is all they've got.'

  'Then let's go.'

  They went out together, side by side, as though going on patrol in the jungle.

  Rice was keeping an eye on the generators. McTavish was with Martyr on the bridge, waiting for them. Quine dozed in the Captain's chair, beside the quiet radio. 'Twelve-toes' Ho and his men formed a phalanx outside the bridge door, also waiting. They had run a land-line from the shore and a telephone lay in a cradle beside it. John went over towards the sleepy Radio Officer as soon as he saw Richard, but the Captain smiled and shook his head: let the boy sleep. The youngest and the oldest aboard could sleep undisturbed. For the time being. If all went well.