by Peter Tonkin
‘Yes, missy,’ said Sam Yung and thundered off to carry out her orders.
Alone on the bridge, Robin first glanced up at the ship’s chronometer above the vacant helm. It was well after twenty-two hundred hours now, less than two hours before she was due to take over the middle watch. How on earth was she going to arrange a decent search for Fat Chow now? Idly, she crossed over to check the log. Feeling slightly out of place because she was really only minding the store and was not really on watch or in charge, she fiddled with bits and pieces of the equipment, checking the probable distance to Kwai Chung, getting an update on the weather, looking morosely in at the useless radio. While she did this, it occurred to her that she had better sort out one of the lifeboat radios. They would need a radio in the morning in order to call up the Hong Kong port authorities, if nothing else.
It was strange, Robin mused, how they had managed to settle nothing in the last twenty-four hours — get nothing fixed, explained or sorted out. It was almost as though they were being manipulated, somehow, for some sinister purpose. With a shiver, she wondered whether Richard had felt like this eighteen hours out of Hong Kong, just before everything had blown up in his face. Even now, in spite of all that had happened, she still could not bring herself to believe that everything was just about to blow up in her own face. The thought of Richard’s dilemma took her across to the collision alarm radar. Unusually, it was switched off, and the round bowl was absolutely dark. In the dim light of the bridge, she felt for the little switch which activated the machine and depressed it. At once, the bowl glowed green. The bull’s-eye circles reached out, and the straight lines of the directional grid sprang to life. And there, in the south-eastern quadrant, shockingly close behind them, was a pattern of tiny bright green dots. The collision alarm made one urgent, strangled chirrup and the whole machine died. Robin jumped back as though she had been stung. She looked around the bridge as though disorientated and wondering where she was. ‘This is simply not happening,’ she said aloud, then she crossed to the internal phone. After an instant’s hesitation, she punched in the captain’s number.
‘Wai?’
‘First officer here, Captain. I’m on the bridge. The collision alarm radar …’
‘Why you not conducting second search for Fat Chow? Why you disobey my order?’
‘I’m not disobeying you, Captain. I’ll be conducting the second search in a few moments. I’m on the bridge keeping watch while the third officer arranges a nursing watch on the patients in the sickbay for me. In the meantime, I called to warn you that the collision alarm radar has just gone down.’
‘Why you tell me? You tell Sparks. He fix same as usual. Is pile of junk anyway. He fix radio yet?’
‘No, Captain.’
‘Is other pile of junk. You get him up and out. He fix radio and fix radar, pretty damn quick. I not going into Hong Kong deaf, dumb and blind, missy!’
Robin found herself nodding — her own thoughts of a moment before. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, I can sort out a shortwave two-way from one of the lifeboats for you, Captain. It would have more than enough power. But in the meantime, just before the radar went down, I was certain I saw some signals on it. Vessels, quite close behind us. It could have been a fishing fleet, but I’d like your permission to post lookouts all around the ship. After Sulu Queen, we don’t want to be taking any chances at all.’
‘You find Fat Chow then you post lookouts, missy! I want lookouts on forecastle if the radar’s down in any case and you had better cut speed. Go to Slow Ahead.’
‘Slow ahead, aye, Captain.’
‘But you remember, missy, no lookouts and no nurses until you complete one more good search. But you get Sparks up first, and that lazy Chief Chen Hang to look after motor while we go on low revolutions. You tell Sparks to fix all that lousy junk equipment up there pretty damn quick! I not taking my ship into Hong Kong Vessel Traffic Management System using only lifeboat radio! I should bloody think!’
‘Aye aye, Captain!’
She punched the chief engineer’s number. ‘Chief, the radar has just gone down and the captain wants the revolutions cut to Slow Ahead. He wants you on watch until we can go up to our usual speed.’
There was a reply, but she pretended not to hear it.
She punched in the radio officer’s number. ‘Wai?’
‘Sorry, Yuk Tso; the captain wants you up and out. He wants you to take another look at the radio, and the collision alarm radar’s just gone down too.’
Yuk Tso made a hawking sound and muttered something about Japanese junk. ‘I come on up right now, missy,’ he promised.
Sam Yung returned, closely followed by the radio officer. ‘Just before the radar went down,’ Robin said, as she and Yuk Tso looked down into the dead black glass bowl and Sam Yung wrote up a new section of the log, ‘I thought I saw some signals quite close behind us. Could that have been a ghost of some kind? Part of the fault which closed it down?’
Yuk Tso looked at her as though she was insane. ‘What you think, missy?’ he said derisively. ‘If the radar shows you contacts, then is because there are boats out there.’
With the disturbing vision of that ant colony of green dots clustering close behind the ship on her mind, she arranged for the more detailed second search for Fat Chow. But she was her own woman with her own agenda. She led the search but dictated the areas she herself examined. Firstly, she had the lifeboats winched down and checked in them. The radios were not kept in the boats themselves, but in secure storage in the bridgehouse, ready to be brought aboard as part of any emergency procedure. There were emergency beacons in the boats, however, which would broadcast a broad band, high-frequency distress call incorporating the ship’s call sign. The beacons were just about the most up-to-date things on the ship. She slipped one into her pocket.
Fat Chow was not in any of the lifeboats. There was nothing untoward in any of the lifeboats, in fact. Except that in the one which hung nearest the A-deck door out onto the main weather deck, there was a white suit, such as they were all wearing. It had been bundled up and stuffed out of sight, only to fall free when the boat was moved. Robin looked at it with hardly a second thought. Seamen could be a sloppy lot, she thought; someone simply too lazy to take it to the laundry. She folded it automatically, as though it was a piece of Richard’s clothing, or William’s or Mary’s, ready for washing. And that was how she noticed that on one sleeve, just where the crook of the elbow might have been, there was a bright trace of fresh blood. But, preoccupied with the bright dots on the dead radar and the need to post watches in spite of her orders, she sent it down to the laundry without another thought.
Next, she led her longsuffering little team onto the poop deck. There were two high piles of containers here, with a walkway round to the after rails and the little flagpole there. Although it was soon obvious that Fat Chow was nowhere back here either, Robin lingered, looking into the absolute darkness behind them. She strained her eyes, and ears but there was nothing to be seen and, apart from the rumble of the motors, the grumbling thrust of the big single screw and the hissing tumble of the wake, nothing to be heard. ‘You two,’ she said decisively, pointing to a pair of pale figures visible largely because of their white boiler suits, ‘I want you to keep watch here. I’ll have you sent something to eat and drink, and a couple of walkie-talkies as well. You’ll be relieved in an hour or so.’
The two men shrugged accommodatingly and went to stand where she directed.
Back in the bridgehouse with her depleted little team — which would have been nonexistent had it not contained the two men Sam had detailed for the nursing watch in the sickbay — Robin organised the last quick search while she pounded up to the bridge and asked the tired and increasingly grumpy Yuk Tso to send walkie-talkies down to her watchkeepers on the poop. He would do so, he said, just as soon as he was finished here — or, more to the point, as soon as he gave up here. ‘This stuff couldn’t be more dead,’ he said bitterly, ‘if some b
astard had killed it on purpose!’
It was coming up to midnight, so Robin popped down to the meeting place she had arranged with her exhausted team and dismissed all but two of them. These last two she took to the officers’ galley where she found some food and filled a thermos with hot chocolate for the men on the poop. She checked briefly on the patients and pounded back up to the navigation bridge. Before she dismissed Sam Yung, she gave him strict orders to rearrange a watch on the sick men and a relief for the watch on the poop before he turned in.
By twelve thirty she had dismissed Yuk Tso with orders that he supply her poop-deck watch with walkie-talkies as promised, and was all alone on the navigating bridge, drifting exhaustedly in the wash of all the activity which had so suddenly come to a dead halt. Of all the things she had planned to do this evening, she had omitted to get a lifeboat radio up here to replace the main set tomorrow if push came to shove. Well, she had better just bustle about early and get it sorted out before breakfast. John Shaw would have alerted the authorities and warned Kwai Chung, but the Hong Kong authorities would still demand a detailed report — name, flag, tonnage, draught, call sign, length, contents and state — a good many hours before they were due to dock.
She signed in on the log, and began to pace restlessly, feeling disturbingly alone at the heart of the vast night. She was struck, not for the first time in her twenty-odd years at sea but more poignantly than ever before, by how big and how empty the accommodation and navigating areas could become late at night. Once Yuk Tso had given the walkie-talkies to her watch men and turned in, she would effectively be all alone up here. The bridge was five decks high. Each deck contained more than ten rooms — galleys, saloons, offices, cargo-handling rooms, sickrooms, day rooms, rest rooms, bars, library, video room, recreation room, cabins, chart rooms, radio rooms, the navigation bridge itself. Immediately abaft the bridge was more accommodation — storage rooms, cold rooms, all the rest. Aft of these were the upper engineering areas around the thrust of the funnel itself. These areas all interconnected in one way or another. All available to a man who wished to hide, or who was lost or hurt, and all of them except the cabins empty now.
The crew were packed two or sometimes four to a berth on A deck, four huge decks down from the navigation bridge. Then, on the next deck up, B deck, were the junior officers, navigating and engineering. On the third deck, C deck, were the cabins and day rooms of the senior officers, including her own cabin, although her office was down beside the cargo handling room at main-deck level. On D deck, immediately below the navigating bridge, were the cabins and day rooms set aside for the captain and the chief engineer, the owner and one important guest. Two of these spacious suites were empty too. There were forty people — thirty-nine men and herself — in a block of flats which on land would easily accommodate one hundred and fifty. Never had the bridgehouse seemed so huge, so lonely.
When the walkie-talkie in its pouch beside the watch-keeper’s chair squawked, she jumped. ‘You’re getting far too nervy, my dear,’ she told herself out loud as she crossed to it.
‘Bridge,’ she snapped. ‘First officer here.’
‘Radio officer here. Where did you say you had placed your watch?’
‘On the poop. By the stem rail.’
‘They gone, missy. Nobody here.’
‘What —’ The bridge phone rang. ‘Wait.’ With the walkie-talkie still to her ear, she crossed to the shrilling instrument. ‘Wait a minute, Sparks.’ She lifted the handset of the internal phone. ‘Bridge.’
‘They’ve gone, missy!’
‘What? Who is this?’
‘Third Officer in the sickbay. The Vietnamese men have gone.’
She closed her eyes then. Her mind should have been racing but it was not. The truth of their situation was absolute and obvious. So obvious, it was as though she had always known it. She saw dead women drained of blood so that they would not attract shark or barracuda to the five men on the sampan. She saw two men miraculously alive in spite of impossible odds, able to signal to the approaching ship. Two men who had not been properly watched except by Fat Chow who had vanished. Who showed signs of moving and slipping the needles out of their arms in spite of their near catatonia. She saw a crook of ivory-skinned elbow with a pool of blood in it. She saw an ill-concealed, all too anonymous boiler suit with a trace of blood on its crisp white sleeve. She saw a pattern of green dots on a radar bowl which was broken, which stood beside a radio which had been sabotaged. And she remembered how devastatingly effective the Wooden Horse of Troy had been, also the brainchild of a cunning sailorman.
‘Get up here, Sam. Drop everything and get up here right now.’ She put the phone down and pressed SEND on the walkie-talkie. ‘Sparks. Get up here. Now.’
She put the walkie-talkie down on the equipment shelf beside the automatic steering equipment. She took a deep breath, then she hit the Emergency siren. As the first piercing notes blasted out, she hit the tannoy button. ‘This is the first officer speaking. All officers and crewmen report to the navigating bridge at once. I say again, all officers and crewmen report to the navigating bridge at once. This is not a drill. The ship is under attack.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
The final day of Richard Mariner’s trial, Saturday, 21 June 1997, began as early for the prosecution as previous days had begun for the defence. And it began badly. Po Sun Kam, unmarried if highly eligible, lived with his mother and had promised, perhaps unwisely, to escort her to the People’s Celebratory Party on Shek O today. Although the old lady was fiercely ambitious for her son, the disappointment resulting from Judge Fang’s decision to continue the trial on a Saturday had upset her considerably and amends had been time-consuming and expensive. Only the fact that Po had beggared himself to get a pair of tickets to next weekend’s even greater party on the Peak itself had mollified her and allowed him to get back to his work.
As Po pored glumly over today’s trial papers, such as they were, he kept one eye on the clock, all too aware that Mr Justice Fang had ruled the proceedings would open at nine thirty, probably because the judge himself wanted to get to Shek O for the party too.
By nine fifteen, the prosecutor was in the robing room of the Supreme Court getting ready. When he got out into court he knew he would find there a range of officials, including Captain Huuk and Commander Lee to whom he would have to express his regretful opinion that their case would not stand up for very much longer. He had tried to get them both on the telephone before he left his office, but neither was immediately available. He hoped that he would get a chance to talk to one or both of them before things got properly under way. Magnanimous withdrawal would save a lot more face than ignominious defeat.
But when he went through into the court, neither man was there and he felt unsupported and alone, especially when the defence team swept in like a small army. He felt every eye in the packed public galleries boring into his back like so many daggers, and every hissed comment and stifled whisper seemed aimed at him.
The conversation intensified as the prisoner was led to his place. Po could not remember ever having seen him look so alert, so intensely alive. From the prosecutor’s point of view, it was all intensely depressing.
The clerk of the court arrived. ‘All rise,’ he demanded, and Po, an aficionado of Western culture, glanced across to his stunning opposite number, and thought to himself, it’s showtime, folks!
Mr Justice Fang took his position, bowed, sat The court officials bowed and sat in their turn. Just as they did so, Commander Lee bustled in and took his place. ‘Sorry to be late,’ the stolid policeman imparted, sotto voce, ‘but just as we were leaving, Huuk got another of his funny phone calls. It’s Seram Queen this time.’
Po’s mind reeled. This seemed like the final nail in the coffin of the Crown’s case. They had proceeded on the assumption that the accused, Captain Mariner, was solely responsible; that he had undertaken a range of killing, beginning with two deaths in Singapore, in order to secure a f
ortune for himself or for his company; that the whole thing had been a desperate half-sane one-off. And now, just as the two original victims had come all too conveniently back to life, the same thing was happening all over again to the sister ship.
But the Commander had not finished speaking. ‘It’s probably a hoax,’ he opined. ‘I’m getting Huuk to check it out thoroughly before we even dream of taking it seriously.’ Then he sat back as Maggie rose for the final time.
‘I would like to call Miss Anna Leung, company secretary to the China Queens Company,’ she said.
Anna Leung looked exhausted and nervous as she came to the witness stand. She was all too well aware of Commander Lee’s cold gaze. She would be lucky not to be standing in the dock next time she came here.
‘You are Anna Leung, of the China Queens Company, Singapore?’
‘I am known as Anna Leung, yes.’
‘That is not your real name?’
‘It is an alias I adopted at the behest of the Royal Hong Kong Police’s Criminal Intelligence Division.’
‘So you are, in fact, a police officer?’
‘I was, but I have resigned my commission. I am a private citizen now.’
‘Very well. Now, if we can turn to the matter in hand. For what purpose did you assume the alias of Anna Leung?’
‘So that I could investigate smuggling as it was carried on through the port of Singapore. More specifically through the Tanjong Pagar computerised container terminal. It was understood by my superiors that the China Queens Company was involved in such smuggling. When the operation in which I was involved began, the China Queens was owned by a front company ultimately run, we believed, by the White Powder Triad. Although they used it for their own business occasionally, they also had a lucrative sideline in hiring out the container space to other concerns who wished to transport merchandise invisibly and without the inconvenience of Customs inspections.’