by Paul Gallico
Women’s tears. Rogo had seen them before. No one had cried more than the seventeen-year-old girl who had strangled her mother with the belt off her coat, and then gone out and bought a new belt. He had seen innocent, beautiful faces before too. One of them had been on a photographic model who had left an ax in her boyfriend’s head. Rogo was unimpressed by tears and beauty and innocence. He pressed his questions.
“Tell it again, lady, and a little more detail this time, please.”
He felt Martin’s furious look. “Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair, Mr. Rogo?” The question was as close to a challenge as Martin cared to go.
“Yes.” This time it was Manny Rosen. His voice sounded censorious too. “Give the young lady a chance to recover first, then I’m sure she’ll explain everything.” He appealed to the whole group. “Anyway, we haven’t time to go into all this now. Don’t forget, we’re sinking.”
Sympathetic bystanders. Rogo knew all about them too. He also knew how to handle them. “Thanks a lot for your tips, fellas, now how would it be if you just let me hear the lady talk?” He leaned forward to watch her face when she spoke. He was usually right about faces. “Let’s have it again from the top. And slowly.”
The girl closed her eyes and gasped. Manny and Martin exchanged looks. They had said all they dare.
She opened her eyes again. Rogo’s questioning, remorseless gaze was still there. The lanterns yellowed the waiting faces. The red fires roared spasmodically. The slow dripping, like Rogo’s questions, went on relentlessly. It was Jason’s voice that cut in.
“Leave her, Rogo.”
The cop did not move. “Shut up, cowboy,” he replied. “I’ll handle this.”
“I told you, Rogo, she’s had enough. Give her a break.”
“And I told you, keep out of it.” Rogo had turned now. He was rising, and the terrible struggle between the two men was being reborn. “Keep out of it, d’you hear?” He was almost shouting again.
This was it. The battle for supremacy, interrupted by Hely’s arrival, established more fiercely than ever. It had to be settled. Jason had stopped lounging and teasing. He had moved away from the girder with his feet apart, and Rogo held the gun firmly on him. He was only a few feet away from Jason and he talked as he edged nearer.
“I’ve had enough, mister. I had enough of you the second I saw you. And if you don’t like cops that’s just too bad because . . .”
The girl’s scream tore open the darkness of the vault. Rogo spun awkwardly, one foot raised on a chunk of metal, the other braced behind him. He had a quick flash of the girl in the wet suit with her mouth open. Then Jason hit him. Off balance, he crashed to the floor, twisting as he fell. Even as he landed he felt the gun torn from his hand and Jason’s knee on his throat. “You goddamn sonofabitch!” The words came in a croak.
Manny started to tremble. Martin began to say, “I don’t honestly think you’re going to solve anything . . .” No one was listening. Martin finished the sentence weakly, for his own benefit, “by falling out like this.”
Jason rose in one movement and backed three paces away. He kept the gun aimed at Rogo’s stomach. He spoke evenly, without any hint of anger or excitement.
“You’ve got it all screwed up, Rogo. Maybe you’ve been on this boat too long. Maybe you shouldn’t have come back. You’re too jumpy. You’re trying to hammer everyone into the ground. Forget what you think about me, and the girl too for that matter. We don’t count. Think about your job. Remember, that’s why you’re here.” Rogo’s eyes flickered towards the hold. Uncertainty replaced the anger on his face. Jason was still talking. “This isn’t a contest for who’s the toughest kid on the block. There’s half a billion dollars’ worth of gold bars in there and you’re supposed to be sitting on them for Uncle Sam. Remember! Old Glory, apple pie, all that crap you guys believe in. Well, believe in them. Do it! Do your job! You’re a cop, Rogo. Act like a good one.”
Coming slowly to his feet, Rogo wiped his hands on his thighs. “Okay, okay,” he murmured. Louder, he said, “A guy asks a coupla questions and you go out of your tree.”
It was over.
“And another thing,” Jason said, but now he was grinning and the gun was swinging by his side. “This damned peashooter of yours. It’s been soaked. Bet you a bar of gold you can’t get a shot out of it.” He pointed it into the black distance towards the propellers and squeezed the trigger steadily. It clicked harmlessly. “Bet you’re glad you’re not after Jesse James with that, Batman.” He threw it across to Rogo, who caught it, looked at it, and sent it clattering among the wreckage by the small pool. It was only a lousy lady’s gun anyway.
He said, “Yeah, well it don’t really make so much difference. These days you gotta have an affidavit signed by Jesus Christ before you can pull the trigger. So what the hell! Come on then, cowboy, you’re the one talking duty. Help me get that hold door open.”
Side by side, the two men set off scrambling over the rubble.
“Whew, that sure was a relief.” Hely hardly heard Martin’s words. She had sat up to see the confrontation. Her own anxiety to shake off the pestering questions of the cop had gone. Her scream, she knew, had given the man in the old jeans the chance to move. But what a man. She had never seen anyone like him before. She had known strong men and tough fighting men, but this was different. He had talked the cop down. He had won the battle, and then calmly handed the gun back to the vanquished. Again the pink-faced man beside her was squeaking away, “Because if two guys don’t hit it off together in this sort of situation . . .” Hely was not listening. She was thinking. That was the man. She must have that man. He was the one. She had seen what she wanted just as certainly and coldly as she had seen the rings on the fingers of the dead. She scrambled to her feet, holding down the excitement inside her.
“You seem to have recovered now.” The young girl’s comment was laced with disbelief. Hely was slightly amused. She was perfectly accustomed to women who did not like her. Presumably this little girl had her eyes on the American too. Hely delivered her most seraphic smile.
“How sweet of you to worry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have made such a fuss. I mean, it must be so much more frightening for a small girl like you.” Shopgirls. They were all shopgirls to Hely. With their calf-eyed crushes and their mindless swooning and the bodies they hardly understood themselves. If the only competition around came from a schoolgirl in her first trainer bra, Hely could afford to be amused.
“Hey.” Rogo’s bellow came from the shadows. “How about bringing those lamps over here? I don’t want this bum strangling me with his beads.”
He’s smart, thought Rogo, as they climbed towards the hold. He’s smart and he’s tough, and he’s straight, I think, but I still got to watch him. Rogo hoped he would be on the level. If he wasn’t, he could sure as hell cause a lot of trouble. He could hear the others coming up behind. At least Jason wasn’t a cripple, that was something. Martin was explaining to that half-stripped blond all about Anaheim and the problems of the haberdashery trade. Rogo sighed, and promised himself he would volunteer for permanent traffic duty when he got back.
“C’mon there, snap it up,” he called.
COMPANY
6
News of the Poseidon’s disaster commandeered the front pages of the world’s newspapers, and thousands of politicians and film stars cursed to find their carefully scheduled publicity stunts driven out of the papers. A New York newspaper carried a photograph of Mike Rogo in which, as his friends remarked, he looked a good deal more criminal than anyone he had ever arrested. A young reporter from the Anaheim Dealer tried to get background information on Mr. James Martin, their newly minted local hero, only to discover that no one could remember what he looked like. A retired naval officer who had not seen water since 1945 found himself whipped from his rose garden in Kent to the London television studios as an instant expert on sea disasters. There was a great deal of wild, fruitless speculation about what had ca
used a New York cop to pull a gun on the rescue helicopter’s crew and insist on returning.
Television crews came up with dramatic footage of the scene, and studio-bound reporters reconstructed the events as they appeared on film. It was evident, they all agreed, that the yacht Naiad, the Magt, and the Komarevo were launching a salvage operation. The retired naval officer pointed out the features on a swiftly prepared mock-up of the cross section of a cruise liner and explained how the Poseidon could stay afloat. “It’s rather like a giant sponge,” he said, amazed at his own knowledge. “Some of the cells are full of water and are dragging it down, some remain full of air and hold it up. The water must be advancing, and as soon as the balance tilts, the ship will go down.” Exhausted, he retired to the hospitality room for a pink gin.
He was substantially right. The Poseidon was held in its position by dozens of pockets of air, some tiny, some massive, that had been driven by the advancing waters into the stern of the ship. The launderettes, the car elevator, the garage, the indoor swimming pool, and the Turkish baths, all inverted, held the principal bubbles that kept the vessel afloat. Two entire sections of the passenger cabins were free of water. But the weight of the ship, bearing down on the water, created an intolerable pressure that sooner or later would burst the bubbles.
The retired naval officer, emboldened by forty minutes in the hospitality room, told the nation at the next newsbreak that it would happen slowly. One by one the watertight doors and bulkheads would be broached, and the Poseidon would sink gracefully beneath the waves.
He was wrong. The garage and a whole section of cabins went simultaneously, and the water ripped through their silent rooms. This shifted the balance completely. The bow end became heavier and sank further, lifting the stern even higher out of the water.
The retired naval officer, dragged from the bar to consider the newly reported position for an emergency bulletin, took one look and said, “That’s it. The next movement will be the last and the whole thing will go.” This time he was right.
It launched another rash of spontaneous speculation. Would the rescue ships be able to do anything in time? How long could the Poseidon last? Why didn’t the French navy send their helicopter back? The French navy replied courteously but firmly that they had already had one pilot almost shot and did not propose risking another.
A New York cop, over an afterwork beer with a colleague, offered the opinion, “If they think they can kill Rogo that easy they don’t know the guy. You couldn’t kill him with a napalm bomb.” The reporter in Anaheim finally traced Mr. James Martin’s mother, who, sobbing, told him, “All he ever wanted was to find a nice girl and settle down.” He also found a photograph of him at a Christmas raffle; his face was obscured by someone’s shoulder. Desperate relatives telephoned shipping line offices and newspapers. Cranks contacted radio stations with demented suggestions for saving the ship. A Portuguese zoo owner telephoned a newspaper to say he was worried about a Bengal tiger he had on board, on its way to Athens for a mating exercise. The reporter asked him if he realized that hundreds of people had died, and to hell with a goddamn tiger that would be dead anyway. The retired naval officer explained the factors that determined the Battle of Trafalgar; the producer wondered if he would last until the next bulletin. Mike Rogo’s wife was described, charitably, by one newspaper as “an ex-show-biz girl.” Mr. Manny Rosen’s next door neighbor told her sister that Manny must have returned for his wife. “They were never apart, those two old lovebirds,” she said. The New York cop considered his colleague’s statement and replied, “The way that bastard Rogo rides everybody, I hope he’s got lead in his boots.”
The readjustment of the boat’s position came as a heavy, rocking lurch to those inside. The alteration of angle, about three degrees, threw the wreckage of the engine room into a terrifying cacophony, and the two stinking pools, one similarly dark, the other still violently ablaze with hellish fires, drained suddenly. The waters vanished with a hideous gulping sound, and the flames died.
The seven people were flung against the bulkhead. Rogo twisted his arm around a chain across the front of the hold, and locked his other arm around Manny Rosen’s waist. A wrecked catwalk came hurtling out of the darkness and crashed on the floor inches away from Klaas as he and Coby, hanging on to each other, skidded and toppled into a heap of bent handrails. Martin rolled over and over, landing on the Dutchman. Instinctively, Jason seized the girl in the wet suit, flung her against a girder, and locked powerful arms around it as the flying debris crashed and clattered about them.
The last echoes died. Three lanterns, mercifully unbroken, had also been thrown after Martin and the Dutch couple, and all three were illuminated in a crazy tangle, like some extraordinary floor show. Manny Rosen was sobbing. Rogo spoke to him gently as he released him, “It’s okay, Manny. It’s over now.” It was what he called his New Widow’s Voice, the one he used for bad news.
One by one, they disentangled themselves. Coby, surprisingly cool, helped her father to his feet. “You’re very brave,” Martin was saying to her, but she only nodded and saw that Jason and the fair-haired woman were still safe against the girder. The woman was a liar: she wished she could tell Jason.
Her arms around the American’s waist, Hely felt her earlier excitement rise to a fine, high ecstasy. Her body sang with the frightening sexuality that for some people comes with the nearness of death. Storms of fear and courage and danger and fire engulfed her, and his body seemed to burn her where they touched. She turned her face up and tore a cannibal’s kiss from his mouth. “I want you,” she said, clear enough for the others to hear, and they watched in astonishment. “I want you, and I shall have you.”
Jason leaned back to see her face. “You,” he said, with measured words, “are one hell of a woman.”
“Whaddya think this is, a stinking petting party?” Rogo reintroduced reality. “What in God’s name is this tub doing?”
Klaas was holding his ribs where Martin had landed on him. He winced a little, and picked up his captain’s cap and dusted it on his leg. “You’ll have to be quick now, Mr. Rogo. That must have been the last major pocket of air to go. Next time she will go down.”
In the wet soundless gloom, they all realized the import of his words. It had seemed hard to believe the Poseidon was sinking when it was so firm beneath their feet. Now they sensed the death throes of the old liner, and everyone knew the end could not be far away.
Slumping to the floor, Manny Rosen felt spent. Over where the pool had been, the waters had vanished and revealed the steps of the companionway. They led through into the boiler room and the corridors beyond that they had traversed in their flight for survival. That was where Belle had saved them all with her sacrificial underwater swim. Now Belle’s body had gone. The lurch must have thrown it into the water, and it had been sucked-away. It was as though the Poseidon, in its death throes, had claimed her. He had returned solely to bring Belle back and restore to her in death some of the fine pride she had in life. Now she had gone, swept away into the vast graveyard that lay beyond the engine room. Perhaps, thought Manny, this was how it was meant to be. He felt old and lonely and frightened now that he had lost his reason for being there. The bonds which had bound them together in life were now truly severed, and he was a man alone. He looked at the others and saw the grimness on Rogo’s face. “Mr. Rogo,” he said, in a low, steady voice. “Belle’s gone now.”
It went unheeded. Rogo, his face somber, asked Klaas, “How long? How long’ve we got?”
Klaas held out apologetic palms. “Who can say? Two hours, maybe less. The weight of the ship will pull down, eventually the last bulkheads will burst, and judging by the angle it will sink like a stone. We ought to be going, Mr. Rogo.”
Two hours might be enough. Rogo’s mind now was on his mission. “Okay, you guys, let’s get this goddamn gold outta here and snap it up.” He picked up a bar of shattered steel and began swinging it at the two chains which were padlocked discouragingly
around the front of the hold door. The angry clang of steel on steel crashed around the room. Rogo’s face lit up with furious energy. His eyes bulged and the sweat shone in the pale yellow of the lamps. One chain clattered to the floor. He hammered the second one like a blacksmith, and then, seeing one thick link begin to part, thrust the bar like a lever against the hold door. His shoulders strained. Ugly little grunts burst through his clamped teeth. His eyes rolled white. The chain gave suddenly, and Rogo barked with triumph as he crashed backwards into Klaas. “Right, fellas, let’s get that gold and get the hell outta here!”
Klaas restrained him with one hand. “Not so fast, my friend. I am an old hand at carrying freight of all kinds. This hold could be flooded, or there could be fire in there. There could even be gas. We must proceed with caution. Does anyone know what other cargo was in the hold?”
His eyes were on Jason. He did not reply. Rogo said, “I dunno. I never saw inside. They just showed me where it was and said sit on it.”
Another doubt had occurred to Klaas. “But a fortune like that, and only these?” He kicked the dangling chains. “It hardly seems possible.”
“That was the whole goddamn point.” Rogo was pleased. For once, he was doing the explaining. “The stuff is packed in these Toledo Wire and Bolt cases. See? If they’d put shotgun guards and brand-new locks on it, someone mighta guessed. But no one was going to ask questions with just a coupla lousy chains.”
“That’s right.” Jason was talking now. “I’ve got a . . . parcel in there. Put a nice innocent label on it and who’s going to bother checking. Anyway, only the grease monkeys come down to the engine room.”
