by Peter Tonkin
Chapter Nineteen
“That was last night,” Asha said. “Just before dawn. I did some work on him then and let him sleep. When he was well enough to move, I brought him up here. Then you arrived and I thought they had come back. I made him move too quickly and we opened up his wound again.”
John sat, pale but wide awake, on the examination table in Prometheus’s surgery, listening to the last of the story. Richard, Robin, and the others clustered, spellbound, around them. While she talked, Asha continued to work. The wound in John’s back had been stitched, the track of the bullet disinfected and cauterized. Now the ragged pit of the exit wound at the front was being dealt with.
Richard hardly knew where to start. The fact that Sinbad’s story had been so close to the truth disturbed him most, pulling him away from a clear view of the problems that now confronted him and the further action needed to overcome them.
It was a damn nuisance that, apart from John and Asha, the rest of Prometheus’s crew had slipped through their fingers, spirited away to some other location as the second part of the terrorists’ plan began. But if Asha’s account of the conversation between her sister and the Englishman was correct, then things were not going right for the terrorists either. They had held their hostages here unwillingly, for so long, because they had been awaiting the signal to begin part two. But that had never come. So they had gone ahead without it. Of all the welter of detail their story had revealed, this fact seemed the most important. But where had they gone? And with what purpose?
“First things first,” he said. “Let’s radio in. We’ve a fair number of people to inform about this…”
“I tried that,” said Asha quickly. “The radio doesn’t work.”
“I’ll go and take a look at it,” said Martyr at once.
“If you can’t fix it, we’ll call in from Katapult when we get back aboard,” called Richard after him. The central system for the handheld radios and the big transceiver Admiral Stark had donated to the cause of greater safety in the Gulf were still aboard Katapult, the heart of their simple communications system: perhaps it would be as well to move it all up here, thought Richard. And that, by association, took his mind to the multihull. “Better get Katapult shipshape,” he suggested to Weary.
“Too right, Captain. Don’t like having my spinnaker draped over your forecastle head, for a start,” said the Australian. He and Chris left together, almost like twins themselves.
An instant after they departed, Salah was gone, to prowl about the ship, looking for clues.
“Anything we can do for you?” Robin asked Asha, too well aware that Richard, lost in thought, would be like an automaton until he had sorted out whatever was on his mind. Where his men were and what to do next, she guessed.
Oh God, if only Daddy were here, she thought. The poignancy of his absence brought tears to her eyes. “I beg your pardon?” Poor Asha had been talking to her in response to her question, and she hadn’t heard a word.
“When I’m finished here, there are some things I want to bring up from that hole I’ve been hiding in for the last few days.”
“Of course. I’ll give you a hand.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t have to stay here, do I?” asked John.
“No. If you’re careful, you can move around.”
“Good,” said John. Asha had filled him full of painkillers, so that he felt quite well and was itching to get up onto the bridge. The fact that Weary had assumed Richard was the captain of Prometheus galled him. He, John Higgins, was the captain. And his place was on the bridge. So, as soon as the last layer of bandage was firmly round his chest, he went. After an instant, Richard followed him. The two women exchanged glances and went out onto the deck.
“It’s just impossible even to guess where the murderous bastards are,” said John, easing his stiff frame into the captain’s chair on the port side of the bridge. Richard stood restlessly by the tiny helm, looking down toward the accommodation ladder, then out beyond it into the afternoon haze of the Gulf. Robin suddenly appeared, popping up out of the tiny hatch halfway down the deck, her golden curls glinting like guineas as the south wind tossed them in the sunshine.
“No clues at all?”
“Nothing. We can go through the story again later in case we’ve missed anything important, but it all happened like we told you in the surgery just now, and I don’t think they gave anything away. Whoever this Englishman is, he’s damned clever. This thing has been carefully planned to make sure that nothing they’ve said or done has given anything away at all.”
“They’ve taken Bill Heritage too, you know.”
“No!”
“Yes. They’re holding him somewhere. Near here, I’d guess. Wherever Bob, Kerem, Twelve Toes, and the rest are bound for, probably. Poor old Bill will have been sitting there for a week now, waiting for them. But not knowing, I suppose. Kept as much in the dark as you all were.”
“Bastards! It fair makes your blood boil, doesn’t it?” John absently fumbled on the shelves by his chair and pulled out a briar pipe. Without thinking, he slipped the stem into his mouth and started chewing on it morosely.
In the distance, two tiny figures were sorting out the spinnaker on the forecastle head. Abruptly Katapult’s ruined masthead became visible. Richard watched the activity absently, his mind going over the cold ground of the events so far like a bloodhound searching for a scent.
“So, what do you want to do first?” asked John.
“The obvious thing is to get Prometheus out of here. Up anchor and move into safer waters. We’re too close to Iran here.”
“Anchor off the Saudi coast. Bring a new crew out. Get her back into business?”
“She’ll have to go back into business in the end. Though the thought of replacing her crew while they’re still…” Richard all but choked with frustrated rage.
“Perhaps, now that stage two of their plan has started, someone will actually hear from them.”
“I expect someone will. I just wish to God there was some way we could make sure they heard from us first. I’d give a lot to know where they’ve gone. If only Asha’s sister…”
“That’s so strange,” mused John, sidetracked. “Such a strange situation.”
“All too common these days.”
“Asha’s quite a woman though, coming out after her sister like that.”
“She is.”
Martyr appeared. “No chance of fixing the radio I’m afraid.”
“We’ll bring the big set from Katapult aboard,” said Richard. “Any chance of starting the engine?”
“I’ll go look,” said the American amiably.
Richard looked back out into the afternoon glare. Robin and Asha were carrying bits and pieces from Asha’s hideout back along the deck. Two tiny figures, deep in conversation, all but lost on the immensity of the deck. That was what they all were, thought Richard bitterly: pygmies at the mercy of giant forces. Powerless. Helpless. And it simply was not good enough.
Salah prowled in, his long, dark eyes everywhere. “There’s nothing,” he reported quietly. “Not a hint. Not a clue. It’s as though they were never here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I have, thought Richard.
“They were a strange lot anyway,” mused John. “I mean, who’s ever heard of a terrorist cell being led by a woman and an Englishman?”
We have, thought Richard. He and Salah exchanged lean smiles.
Just at that moment, Robin arrived. “Here we are,” she said. “We’ve moved most of Asha’s stuff back to her quarters. But we thought we’d better bring this back up here.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the chart she stole. You know she was going to jump ship and go across the Gulf in an inflatable. At night. Alone. Daft.”
“Here…” began John, leaping to Asha’s defense, for all that he agreed with Robin.
“Asha said they were upset about losing that,” said Richard. “Let’s have
a look at it.”
Within seconds, the big British Admiralty chart 2858 was spread out in front of them and five pairs of eyes were scrutinizing it carefully.
“What’s that?” asked Robin at once. There was a design in flowing script written in the margin.
“It’s Arabic,” answered Salah. “It means Dawn of Freedom.” He looked across at Richard. “So Sinbad got that right as well.”
But Richard wasn’t listening. He was staring at the chart, thunderstruck. The Arabic script was written beside their present position. Then a long line charted a course away down the whole length of the Gulf. But the same script was written at the far side of the paper, right by the purple writing that said, “Adjoining Chart 707.” And this time a course was charted back across the Gulf of Oman then in through Hormuz.
To a rendezvous, where the two courses met.
“My God!” he breathed.
He blinked. Frowned. Concentrated. He had to be certain about this.
But he was certain. There could be no other explanation. It all made too much sense. It all made too much terrifying sense.
He knew where the terrorists were heading. And he knew what they had been waiting for. And he knew why they had waited in vain.
With shaking hands, he took his wallet from his pocket and opened it. The paper was there among a wad of old photographs, cards, receipts. He emptied them all out on the chart and spread them out until he found what he was looking for. A simple piece of white notepaper onto which he had painstakingly traced what he could remember of the pattern written on that flimsy he had taken from the dead radio officer a week ago. Taken and then lost in the waterspout. The writing that had been the name of the burning ship. He slid it across the chart until it was beside the writing that meant Dawn of Freedom. It was identical.
“Where did you get that?” asked Salah, awed.
Richard told him.
So the terrorists had been awaiting an arms shipment. One that would never come. And rather than wait here any longer for news, they had gone early to their rendezvous. That point on the chart where the two lines crossed.
Fate.
But even as Richard’s mind switched into lightning calculations of the impact of this information, his thoughts were interrupted by a gasp of shock from Asha. Suddenly she was sorting through his personal belongings spread out across the chart beside his empty wallet.
“It’s him,” she said, lifting a photograph of a smiling, open-faced young man. “It is him!”
They all turned toward her, Richard last. She was holding a photograph of a man who had been dead for years. Lost in the breakup of the first Prometheus. A photograph of his godson, Ben Strong. Over the top of it she looked at Richard with horror on her face. “What are you doing with a picture of the terrorist leader?” she demanded.
Chapter Twenty
Fate.
As soon as he was certain that the distant voices were not just another trick of his imagination, Bill Heritage started beating on his door and yelling at the top of his lungs. During the time he had been in this dark, silent room, he had come to know it so intimately that he could see it in his mind’s eye almost as clearly as if the light were on. He moved about it unerringly now, for learning it had been what had kept him sane so far. Or nearly sane. So far.
When he awoke each morning—he called it morning when he woke up, though he had no idea what time it really was—he stripped altogether and did a long, complicated series of exercises. By the time he had completed these, he was always running with sweat, so, cosseting himself exactly as he would any of his thoroughbred racehorses, he walked gently round the room until he was dry. Only then did he dress. It was important to his self-esteem that he keep his clothes as clean and odorless as possible. Dressed in his shirt and trousers, he would then go for a tour of his room. He would explore it thoroughly, every bit as minutely as he had on the day of his arrival. He would test his memory by predicting what lay within a hand’s breadth of his fin- gers. He would take risks, gamble with himself, by walking rapidly in any direction then stopping, to find himself within an inch of the slop bucket, the bed, a wall. Every irregularity on these walls he knew by touch, but especially well he knew the doorway that never let in light or coolness or draft of fresh air. Whose round metal handle turned easily enough, but uselessly. To no avail.
In this way Sir William Heritage lived out some of the strangest days of his long life with nothing to do but to feel his way about the tiny room, await the daily rituals of feeding and slopping out, and rack his brains to think where he might be. It occurred to him he might be in a water tank, or something of the sort underground, for the warm walls felt more like metal than plaster to him, and the stale air smelled of iron. He imagined he might be aboard ship somewhere, moored in Beirut Harbor—but there was no movement of water beneath the keel; no grumble of generators for power.
Never during those long days and nights, in all his reasonings and thoughts and deductions, did he ever dream that he was aboard a disused oil platform at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
“Hey!” He hammered on the door, yelling as loudly as he could. “In here! In here!”
And his cries were answered at once by the sound of the bolts going back. He stood back, eyes narrow, expecting blinding light. But the door opened to reveal a tall figure dimly silhouetted. “Ah, Sir William,” it said, incongruously, in punctilious English. “So there you are! Come along. I think we’ll put you in with the others now.” Something in the man’s tone warned Bill that this was not the SAS, come to set him free.
It must be a ship of some kind, he thought as soon as he walked out into the corridor. The combination of white-painted, rust-streaked metal and bumpy, frayed linoleum had a decidedly maritime feel about it. The impression intensified as they climbed almost naval companionways. And yet the whole structure was rock solid. And he could hear traffic in the distance…
Light dawned, actually as well as metaphorically, when they came to deck level. They rounded a corner, and a window let in a shaft of light so fierce it had discrete edges as though it were a column of golden crystal. And outside, the unmistakable lines of an oil platform with the tanker-filled Gulf, sullen in the heat, equally unmistakable beyond. The rumble of traffic resolved itself into the sound of surf upon hollow iron legs.
“My God!,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. “It’s Fate.”
“Oh, Sir William,” said the tauntingly familiar voice of his guide. “It’s so much more than that!”
But then all conversation between them stopped. The guide opened a door and Sir William found himself on the threshold of a large lecture hall, where, under the guns of a dozen armed terrorists, stood the crew of his tanker Prometheus. At once his eyes were searching for the faces of John Higgins, Asha Quartermaine, Bob Stark. Only Bob was there, pale but defiant, leaning on Kerem Khalil. There was blood on Bob’s leg.
“You will have time to greet our other distinguished guest in a moment,” said the Englishman to them all. “In the meantime, listen to me. You know the rules. Keep to them. The guards may allow you to talk at their own discretion, but this is a privilege easily revoked. You will find life here a little harder than it was on Prometheus. There is no bedding or air-conditioning or videos or books. But I am sure you can adapt. Your discomfort is likely to be temporary. There will soon be enough for all. In the meantime, remember this. The watchword is obedience. Your lives depend upon it.”
“Who is that chap?” was Bill’s first question, a moment later.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Sir William. Mind if I sit down? This leg hurts like a son of a bitch!” Kerem helped Bob down onto the floor. “Only a scratch, and bandaged at that, but just at the stage of stiffening up. You know how gunshot wounds can be.” Tersely, he explained how he had come by it, putting Sir William’s mind at rest about the two missing faces. Then he asked, “How long have you been here?”
“As near as I can estimate, since the day after you were
taken. I’d come to Bahrain to try to get you out. They took me at Manama. Drugged me. Brought me here. I thought I was in Beirut.”
“Thanks for coming to help us. Appreciate that.” The two friends looked at each other long and hard. Then Bob continued, “But if you were out here alone working to free us, that means State doesn’t want to know.”
“That’s the way it was when I came out. Even the President seems hesitant on this one. The Gulf is a powder keg at the moment. They say Iran is near to civil war: navy versus air force.”
“My father must be going mad with worry!”
“That he is. Or was when I flew out.”
A pause.
“Any idea what these people are actually up to, Bob?”
“Not really, Sir William. They were waiting for something, a signal or something, on Prometheus. I don’t think it ever came. Then they brought us down here anyway. Just ran out of patience, I guess.”
“Must be more than a signal, Bob. From the way that chap was talking just now, they’re expecting supplies, not messages. And that means…”
“A ship. God Almighty! Put terrorists together with a ship and what do you have?”
“Arms smuggling.”
“Right! So what we have here is a small group of hardline terrorists on an abandoned platform at the mouth of the Gulf with enough hostages to make sure that no one’s just going to sashay right up and blow them away. We know they don’t need small arms because, as we can see, they are well supplied with those already. So they have to be waiting for something heavier. Rockets, maybe. Wireguided missiles. What does this picture look like to you?”
“My God, Bob, they’re going to blockade the strait. They’re going to sit here threatening to destroy any tanker that tries to get past. And they could do it, too! They’re going to close the Gulf!”
Chapter Twenty-one
They moved the admiral’s big radio up onto Prometheus’s bridge and left the smaller communications center on Katapult. Richard had decided not to contact anyone—not even Angus, yet. But clearly, if they were going to fit into the pattern of Gulf shipping without arousing unwelcome interest until they reached Fate, they would have to be able to talk to other ships and coastal stations at the very least.