by Peter Tonkin
Instinctively, not a little awed by her, they spoke in whispers—they would have taken care in any case after Richard’s first, surprised exclamation, for they did not want English accents to carry across the still water.
“Well, there she is, just where Admiral Stark said she would be,” said Richard, first to gather his thoughts.
“No sign of life aboard,” observed Salah.
“And she wasn’t showing lights last night or we’d have seen her,” added Robin, her voice heavy with disapproval.
“That’s dangerous,” said Angus, angrily.
“Bloody lethal. Lucky we weren’t a mile farther that way last night or we’d have sailed straight into her. Stupid sods.” Robin was not at her best in the morning. After having delivered herself of this opinion, she vanished toward the low sterncastle.
“But what to do next,” mused Richard. “What to do.”
“You’re the boss,” said Angus. “We do what you say.”
“That’s fine with me,” said Salah. “But I know what I’d do. I’d try to get aboard.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “That’s obviously our next objective now we’re here. But how to start…”
“What would we do if we were just a bunch of fishermen out from Bushehr?” asked Angus.
“Sail right up and say hi?” ventured Salah, voice wavering between doubt and excitement.
“Damned if I wouldn’t!” said Richard decisively.
“You mean just sail right up to them and see what happens?” Angus seemed less pleased with the simple plan.
“At least it has the merit of the direct approach,” observed Richard. “And it’ll save a lot of time.”
“We’re here to save lives, not time,” countered Angus. “Starting with our own lives.”
“True. So, we’ll have to think this through carefully, step by step. Now, could we actually have come from Bushehr?”
“In a smallish launch?” Angus said. “No reason why not. It’s why we settled on this type of craft after all.”
“But not,” struck in Salah suddenly, “in a launch with a French name. Not from Bushehr. The Iranians aren’t calling boats by any names the mullahs mightn’t like at the moment. And they aren’t writing them in that sort of lettering.”
Out of nowhere at that moment, the name of the burning ship on that lost radio message sprang into Richard’s memory. It was amorphous, slightly out of focus, a serpentine puzzle of lines. But he thought he might be able to put it on paper fairly accurately. Salah might know what it meant. But he thrust the thought away as soon as it occurred to him. They had more important matters at hand. “Right,” he said. “So we’re not from Bushehr, or anywhere else in Iran. Where are we from?”
“Not too close by,” decided Salah. “We didn’t see them last night, but they might have seen us. We were carrying lights, remember.”
“Okay,” agreed Angus. “Then where’s closest on the far side of the Gulf? Somewhere in Kuwait, I guess.”
“Mina al Ahmadi and Al Mish’ad are both a hundred and fifty miles away,” said Richard, his eyes closed, consulting the chart in his head. “Nothing closer of any size.”
“Well, I can speak with a Kuwaiti accent,” said Angus more happily. “That’s no problem. But what are we doing here?”
Robin came rushing back at that moment, her vivid eyes alight with pleasure. “Have you seen them?” she asked at once. “Aren’t they lovely?” The others had no idea what she was talking about, so she took them back to see.
The head was at the stern, sticking out over the back, a simple wooden seat with a hole in it secured in a secluded spot. Depending on the disposition of its occupant, it could command quite a view. The view from the stern rail above it was breathtaking this morning. Some time just after dawn, a fishing fleet had arrived. Between Alouette and the distant shipping lanes, some twenty dhows had gathered, all of them busily trawling with lines or nets.
“Perfect!” Richard’s fist thumped onto the rail. “Now we just need to check where they’re from.”
“Radio?” inquired Angus.
“No need,” Salah flung over his retreating shoulders. “Glasses should be enough.” He was back in a moment with two pairs. He gave one pair to Richard and pressed the other to his own eyes.
Richard inspected the busy fleet brought closer by the magnification. The boats varied from twenty to forty feet. None had their sails up—all were using their diesels. Hardly surprising—there was no real wind to speak of. On their open decks, figures toiled industriously but he only glanced at them, searching instead for the names of their vessels. He found several very quickly, but they were all in Arabic and defeated him every time. He spoke a fair smattering of Arab dialects, but—much to his chagrin now—had never learned to read it.
So it was Salah who after a moment said, “Jackpot, I think. They all seem to be from Mina Al Ahmadi. There’s even another one with a foreign name. Seagull. You see it there? The bright red one? It’s written in English.”
But Richard was no longer looking. That feeling was creeping over him that this was a good day. A lucky day. They had wanted to find Prometheus and here she had come with the dawn like a gift. They had needed an excuse to hail her and here was that excuse. They wanted cover and here it was. Today they could do nothing wrong.
“Salah, you steer and stay on the bridge. You’re the only one not dressed correctly.” Salah wore olive camouflage battle fatigues.
“Robin, you’re the cabinboy or whatever. I’m a general dogs-body. Angus, you’re the fleet coordinator. You’re an important man in Kuwait. You’ve decided to hail this tanker in the middle of your fishing grounds to find out just what the hell it’s doing here. Okay?”
“Fine. On the radio?”
“No. Your radio doesn’t work too well.” Richard gave a lean smile, apparent to the others only in the narrowing of his eyes; his mouth hidden behind the folds of the kaffiyah. “You’ll have to sail right up and talk to them.”
“Right,” said Robin, catching Richard’s growing excitement. “Let’s get the hook up.”
The pair of them oversaw the winching up of the anchor, as befitted their lowly position. Salah and Angus went onto the bridge. Once the hook was up, Richard and Robin went below to oversee the starting of the diesel, and Salah swung Alouette’s head slowly to starboard until she was pointed straight at the silent, sinister tanker.
“Wouldn’t we be fishing?” Robin asked Richard tensely as they began to draw closer to her. They were at the very prow, with only the ornamental bowsprit between them.
“No. We’re too important. It’s our job to find the fish and direct the rest.”
They fell silent then as Prometheus’s overhanging stern rolled toward them like a thundercloud. Her after-rail and bridge-wings remained empty.
“Would we be using binoculars?” The tension was beginning to tell in Robin’s voice.
“I think we might risk them.” He did so and within moments added, “You know, I’m damned if I can see anyone at all.”
Abruptly Angus joined them. “Richard, she looks empty to me. Deserted.”
“I’d have thought there would be watches on the bridge-wings,” said Robin.
Richard heard her only distantly, his mind back at the discussion they had had in Katapult’s cabin the night before last. They had reckoned on intelligent terrorists. But what if they were stupid?
Or brilliantly cunning?
He wiped his mouth through the kaffiyah with the back of his hand. Angus took the glasses and he relinquished them thoughtlessly, mind trying to weigh up the odds. But what were the odds in a situation so completely unknown? It was all guesswork. Blind guesswork, at that. All at once, he did not feel so confident about the luck of the day.
And then they came into the tanker’s shadow.
Salah took them up Prometheus’s starboard side. At once the massive length of her became apparent. Fifty Alouettes, nose to tail, might just have been as long as she was.
What numbers of that sturdy little thirty-footer piled atop each other might have reached her bridge-house, God alone knew. But what struck Richard immediately was not her scale, but her silence. Nothing stirred aboard her. Were they close enough to hear the grumble of her generators? He strained his ears with no success. Not a footstep. Not a voice.
Beneath the bridge-wing they lost way as Angus cut the diesel. They drifted out in silence. More of the bridge came into view—empty.
“Ahoy, the tanker,” bellowed Angus, the Kuwaiti accent thick. First in Arabic and then in broken English—the Arabic easier to understand. Richard was surprised by the power of his friend’s bellow. But then an errant memory jerked him back to the Hay Market ice rink in Edinburgh and the climax of the Scottish Country Life curling competition with himself brushing feverishly in front of the stone while Angus yelled a mixture of direction and encouragement across the ice as they guided Fettes to victory.
“Ahoy, the tanker! Is there anyone aboard?” Again that stentorian voice in Arabic, then English.
Not a whisper of an answer.
“Let’s go on down,” said Richard quietly to Angus. “There might be a forecastle head watch.”
Angus gestured to Salah and they rumbled forward again. Halfway down, they all looked up wistfully, at the accommodation ladder snugly tucked away some thirty feet above them. There was no way they could get aboard here. Getting aboard at all might prove difficult, even were she completely deserted. The least they would have to climb to gain the deck would be thirty feet, with no hand- or foothold. Nowhere even to secure a thrown rope. Well, thought Richard grimly, they could cross that bridge when they came to it. If they came to it: there had to be a watch on the forecastle head.
Nothing but the cry of a startled gull answered Angus, and in that instant the whole situation changed. Salah kicked in the idling motor and guided Alouette around the huge torpedo-head protrusion at the base of the bow. Above them at her head, where the figurehead should have been, was the Heritage Mariner logo, H and M overlapping as the iris of an eye painted there. So Prometheus watched them motor round her head to her port side where her anchor plunged down to the shallow sea bed.
The links of the enormous anchor chain fell almost vertically, pulled forward a little and curved slightly by such poor forces as dared disturb her massive inertia. Each link, an oval five feet from top to bottom, was divided in the middle by a solid crosspiece. The links were still slippery with dew because the morning’s heat had yet to reach them. The moisture made the weed with which they were coated slick and dangerous. The chain would be difficult to climb, but by no means impossible. As Alouette’s head snugged into the angle between the chain and the water, Salah cut the engine and left the bridge. Still looking speculatively upward, Richard reached for the nearest link. He had to slip his arm through it to hold Alouette still; Salah had judged the approach so perfectly that there was no way left on the little launch and he had no trouble holding her head where it was while Robin secured a line to Prometheus’s anchor chain. There was no time for a council of war. If they were going up, they would have to move fast. “I’ll go first,” said Richard and began to climb at once. There was enough tension to keep the chain firm even under his added weight, and so he swarmed up it without too much difficulty, even in his long, unwieldy robe.
At the top of the chain he paused, peering warily in through the hawse hole onto the forecastle head. The sun was shining strongly onto the green deck plates now, so that the air was full of the smell of hot iron and the glare hurt his eyes. Wherever the terrorists were hiding, there were none on the forecastle head. Hanging precariously, Richard gestured to Salah, then he turned back and dived through the oval opening onto the deck of his ship.
Like a parachutist making a textbook landing, he rolled for the nearest cover, hoping that the flash of his white robe would not be visible from the bridge.
He was still certain that someone—someone prepared to answer a hail or not—had to be on bridge watch. But it was early. It was bright. Any lookout would have to look straight into the low sun to see him. He reckoned he stood a good chance of remaining undetected.
A low whistle made him turn and his heart almost stopped. There was a terrorist crouching behind him. Only at the last instant before he launched himself into the attack did he realize that it was Salah. He had been concentrating so hard he hadn’t even heard the Palestinian come aboard. His shock put things in perspective for him, however, and suggested the next step. Salah was wearing the international terrorist’s uniform. With luck he could creep down the deck and see what was happening. As long as he was careful, it was quite feasible that he could get an accurate idea of everyone’s whereabouts without arousing suspicion. Information that would be invaluable on Sunday when they came back with the Kalashnikhovs and the thunderflash grenades.
Rapidly, whispering despite the fact that they were a quarter of a mile from the bridge, Richard checked that Salah was happy to risk a quick exploration. He was. Then, with a slap on the shoulder he was off, vanishing from Richard’s sight among the forest of pipes running the length of Prometheus’s deck.
Still taking care to remain concealed from any prying eyes on the bridge, Richard wormed forward from shadow to shadow until he had a clear view of the deck. Between himself and the bridge there lay an expanse of green-painted metal twice the size of a football field. The deck itself was simply green metal stretching from deck rail to deck rail where it folded down to become the tanker’s massive sides. Partway in from the rails was a series of tank tops standing five feet high, carefully clamped closed. There were small lateral pipes running from side to side between these, but by far the largest feature on the deck was that central sheaf of pipes stretching lengthways from just in front of him right down to the bridge itself. Five pipes each side measured six feet in diameter. Eight more beside them measured from two feet to four. The whole complex of thirty-six pipes was topped by a walkway running the length of the deck. Immediately beneath this, along the narrow tunnel between the pipes themselves, safe from all eyes, Salah was running silently. It seemed so quiet, so safe, that Richard was tempted to follow—but prudence dictated that he remain where he was.
As the minutes ticked by, however, the wait became well-nigh unbearable. He knew better than to look at his watch—that would only make things seem worse—but he counted his steady breathing unconsciously, as though he were diving. So he knew well enough that nearly ten minutes had elapsed before a tiny flash of movement warned him that Salah had entered the bridge-house.
During the next few minutes, while nothing further happened, he almost convinced himself that the two of them were in fact completely alone aboard.
But then his hopes were dashed and his darkest fears revived as the first flat rattle of automatic gunfire rang out.
Chapter Eleven
The run back down to Fujayrah was a disaster almost from the outset. Katapult got under way as soon as Hood returned with the Martyrs and Richard’s orders, pausing only at an all-night fuel-supply dock to load diesel for the engine. Weary, still unhappy to be continuing with the top of the mast damaged and so many of his instruments out of commission, nevertheless acquiesced to the plans and took the con while Sam went down to get some rest. Martyr, still full of vigor, still half a day behind them in the need for sleep, kept that first watch with him and they struck up a working relationship—if not a friendship—during the long night watch.
Christine went below with Hood and took her dunnage pointedly through to the small, forward cabin Richard and Robin had hardly bothered to use. Hood’s dark eyes followed her, clouded with confusion, and, as though aware of them, she first closed the door, and then she locked it.
So the first eight hours passed until the sun rose next morning. Martyr was near exhaustion now, and Doc, too, needed some rest. They simply changed watches: Hood took the con and Christine came up into the cockpit with him while the other two turned in.
The day was incre
dibly hot and, for all that, Katapult was skating across the wind on a strong port tack, seemingly airless. Christine was a sailor—and her father’s daughter to the last inch. After her release from the detox clinic, they had rebuilt their battered relationship during long summer days aboard his sloop Chrissie off Martha’s Vineyard. She was at her ease here on Katapult, therefore, almost at home. “You don’t need me for this,” she observed to Hood, quite correctly. He would not require any help until they reached the end of this tack up near Queshm, where they would have to come about and head down past the Quoins out of the Gulf.
Because she was so much at her ease, so far from home, and so far from her memories, she did something she hadn’t done in years. She simply slipped off her dress and lay back on the lazarette in the shadow of the sail, rubbing Ámbre Solaire onto her long, golden body. Her high-fashion bikini was a statement of new life for her: not since her father had brought her home had she dared wear anything like this. Heavy jeans and baggy shirts had been her fashion since—anything that would cover up her body and protect it from the eyes of men.
Even when she had come to work in the Heritage Mariner offices, she had followed a subtle variation of the same stratagem. Her hairdresser, enormously expensive but willing to follow orders, cut her hair carefully but unflatteringly so that it seemed as sexless as the clothes she wore, as the front she presented to the world.
Until now. In fact, she was an amazingly strong person. She had been through experiences that should have destroyed her but she had not allowed them to do so. Little by little, inch by inch, with her father’s help but mostly through her own inherent strength, she had adjusted. Recovered. To such an extent that she could now, more than ten years later, dare to wear a bikini.