The Pirate Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  The smallest of the team stood up; scarcely more than a teenager by the look of her and certainly nowhere old enough to be holding a gun that size. As far as Richard could tell, it was the identical gun to his own massive Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. ‘Right,’ he breathed. Then he pulled out the empty clip and replaced it. The sound this made was the loudest sound that had occurred in the corridor since the shooting had stopped. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Suzy,’ he whispered, ‘you go low and I’ll go high. And I’ll go first.’

  High and low they went, round the next corner and up the stairs, and round the next corner. Were it not for the fact that they were being extremely careful, they would have died then, for that last corner brought them round into the well of the last set of stairs up to the navigation bridge. At the top of this stairwell was the barricade Robin had caused to be erected a little less than fifteen hours earlier and behind it was a bunch of extremely nervous pirates whose fear had been wound to fever pitch by the sounds of shooting they had just heard from immediately below their feet. At the first intimation of movement, the pirates let loose a volley of shots and Richard spun backwards, knocking Su-zi out of the line of fire as he went. He fell clumsily and rolled down the stairs to land on his hands and knees in Wally’s blood. Su-zi landed like a ballerina beside him and looked down expressionlessly as he began to pull himself up. ‘OK,’ he said, just audibly, ‘point taken. I’m sorry.’

  The rest of Su-zi’s wu had gone, and so had poor Wally. The dead pirates were still piled against the bullet-pocked door, however. ‘This way, I think,’ said Richard, gesturing with his chin. Su-zi gave a minuscule nod and they were off, out onto the external companionways.

  *

  The two fusillades of shots gave Robin some hope. If whoever was coming her way through the bridgehouse was fighting the pirates then they might well be willing to help her. What was the old saying? ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ But if they were coming up through the bridge-house deck by deck, as they seemed to be doing, then they would in all probability drive the pirates up here first. So she was likely to have at least one more hard fight before she met her enemy’s enemy. Still, she had nine shots left, her back was not quite against the wall yet.

  But no sooner had this bracing thought entered her head than pandemonium broke out on the deck below. Up one side of the deck came half a dozen white uniformed Chinese coastguards and up the other came a similar number of pirates. Whether the tension of their situation was simply too much for them, and panic took over from reasoned thought, Robin did not know, but as soon as they saw each other, both groups opened fire. At once, Robin’s confidence that the platform she was sitting on might prove bullet-proof was also challenged as bullets came singing up past her in screaming ricochets. The two groups seemed to be past any kind of human reasoning. Instead of finding cover and sniping at each other from relative safety, both groups, like pointlessly suicidal Kamikazes, ran towards each other, screaming wordlessly and firing with all their might. Almost inevitably, the two waves of men met halfway across the deck, exactly at the foot of her radio mast. Down there, immediately below her, a wild and terrible shoot-out took place, for none of these men in their hand-to-hand lighting was using knives or even pangas, they were simply standing almost breast to breast emptying bullets from handguns into each other at point-blank range.

  They could not keep it up and none of them could survive such an onslaught. At last there was only a jumble of twitching bodies lying at the foot of the ladder below her. And, on the top, one man still alive, facing upwards. Robin knew he was still alive because of the electric jolt which slammed through her system when their eyes met. He lay on his back, on the top of this pile of bodies with his white uniform shirt torn and stained with what looked like blackcurrant jam. And he looked up into her wide eyes and he smiled. His body began to twitch and writhe, and Robin thought perhaps he was trying to get up, but then, suddenly, incredibly, she saw that he was pulling his pistol up and taking aim at her. Frozen with the inconceivable insanity of his action, she sat and watched him pull a huge, old-fashioned revolver up and, with his face locked in an agony of concentration, push it up towards her into the firing position. It was only the sharp click as he pulled the hammer back which galvanised her. ‘No!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs and she pushed her own gun down towards him. The dot flared brightly on his breast and she squeezed the trigger with all her might. The gun exploded and his body slammed back into the soft pile beneath him as though the dead men had been mere cushions. She raised the gun until it was pointing at the sky. Then she realised she was still screaming down at him, and she choked herself into silence.

  *

  Richard slammed back against the wall outside the C-deck door, his eyes raking the deck beyond the companionway and then flicking out over the sea. In an instant of vision he noted that the cutters, Chinese and Crown Colony, were very nearly hull down now, and that the police launch was very very close indeed. He wondered for a split second why Commander Lee had commanded his men to bring him back — probably so that he could put any surviving pirates under arrest. But then Richard’s thoughts were wiped away by a screaming, thundering fusillade of shots which seemed to come from immediately above his head. Such was the overwhelming noise of the battle, he and Su-zi had no need to worry about moving quietly and so they pounded up, past the closed doors protecting the passage ends behind the fortified bridge and onto the topmost section of the deck. Here, piled round the foot of the radio mast, was the result of all that shooting. And even as Richard’s great body froze, with Su-zi by his side, taking stock of the carnage, so the topmost body on the pile thrust his arms upwards, taking aim, and a voice screamed ‘No!’, only to be drowned out by the explosion of a gun. The body on top of the pile jumped as a bullet hit it, and the cry went on and on.

  And Richard recognised the voice. The sound of that cry echoed within him as though it would cause him to explode. He tensed himself to run forward but Su-zi’s hand fastened on his arm, restraining him.

  ‘It’s my wife,’ he said, still talking in the near-whisper of combat. ‘It’s Robin.’

  ‘She safe,’ breathed the wise warrior. ‘We take care.’

  ‘I’ve got to go to her!’

  ‘One step at a time. You no good to her shot in the back.’

  She was right. Silently, but as swiftly as they possibly could, the pair of them began to pick their way across the deck, checking that all the silent, bleeding men were actually dead. It was the action of perhaps ten minutes before they were absolutely sure that it would be safe to approach that central pile. ‘I go in first,’ said Richard. ‘You cover me.’ With his heart in his mouth, he walked forward across the deck, his eyes fixed on the square trap in the steel floor of the little platform high on the radio mast. He walked slowly, knowing that she would be able to see him long before he could see her, but by no means certain that she would be able to make out exactly who he was and wondering whether he should call out to her. His head was whirling with such a wild range of speculation that he wondered whether or not Tom had been right and he was just going to bum out before he could let her see that he was free, that she had pulled it all off and rescued him.

  Richard stopped at the outside edge of the pile of bodies, peering up, still not able to see anything beyond the square edge of the trap. ‘Robin?’ he called, but he couldn’t get his voice to work and no sound came out. He tried to clear his throat. ‘Robin?’ he said again.

  But the sound of Richard’s word was lost in the sound of a single gun shot. Richard whirled, raising his own gun. ‘Too late, Captain Mariner,’ called a mocking, familiar voice. There, with his arm round Su-zi’s throat and his service revolver moving back to cover her head, stood Commander Victor Lee of the Royal Hong Kong Police. He was little more than seven metres distant, and for a wild moment Richard thought about risking a snap shot — but the girl’s body was held too close and covered too much of Lee’s to give him any realistic
chance.

  ‘Too late for what, Commander?’ called Richard, his voice betraying his amazement that the man was here, and behaving like this.

  ‘Too late for you, too late for your friend Twelvetoes Ho, too late for his daughter Su-zi here. You did not know? I see you did not. But there is so much you did not know, Captain. It is too late for the good Captain Huuk who, I fear, will never catch his Chinese smugglers now. Perhaps even too late for the People’s Republic of China who think they will come and take away my country and my home and all my life’s work. I have started another Opium War, Captain Mariner, and I have done it in spite of everything you have tried to do to stop me. Now, put your weapon down, please, and be quick. There is little time.’

  *

  At the sound of the shot, Robin jumped awake. It was as though she had been in a trance since she shot the man at the foot of the ladder. She had noticed nothing of the new arrivals on the deck and it came as a stunning shock to her when she heard Richard’s voice. Fighting back an impulse to stand up and call to him, Robin instead peered carefully out of her little eyrie. She could not see Richard at all, but she could see the fat policeman holding a frail girl round the throat.

  But then she heard Richard’s voice again, speaking slowly, addressing the words to Lee but actually speaking to her. ‘Little time for what, Commander? What have you got planned this time?’

  ‘You’ll never find out, Mariner. I’ll keep you alive as insurance until my men have cleared things up below and then this time you’re going to meet an unfortunate end.’

  ‘Your men? Is that the pirates or the Chinese coastguards?’

  ‘What do you care? Coastguards, pirates, policemen. They all work for me. All they need now is some organisation to stop them slaughtering each other like those imbeciles you were looking at. Then we’ll see what next week will really bring to Hong Kong!’

  Down below, a fierce fusillade of shots broke out, but unlike the others, this was not a short burst. This was a pitched battle.

  ‘Right!’ screamed the Commander. ‘You lose! I win!’ He pushed the gun into Su-zi’s ear and for a moment Richard really believed he could see the red light of insanity in the man’s eye. Then half of Lee’s head flew apart and he whirled backwards, throwing Su-zi and the gun both wildly away. Richard ran forward, crouching, to snatch his own gun off the deck but by the time he had straightened, the fat policeman was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Richard?’ called a wavering voice from the platform halfway up the radio mast. ‘Richard, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, darling,’ he called back. ‘Yes, I’m all right now.’ And as he spoke, the northern horizon lit up in a huge fireball. The lower sky seemed to catch fire and waves of force came flashing out towards them. And, following the first blinding wall of light, before even the thunderous rumble of sound, there came a lone aeroplane, silver, sleek, deadly, bearing the markings of the Chinese People’s Air Force. And as it passed at zero feet over their heads, it slowly waggled its wings and the sun caught the empty clips which had held its air-to-surface missiles. Dazed, the three of them waved up at it — Ho Su-zi from her knees on the deck, Richard, standing, shaking in the blast, and Robin, wedged up in her safe haven high up on the radio mast. They waved, and they began to cheer as the fighter circled the ship.

  Commander Lee’s Opium War was over before it even began.

  Epilogue

  Charles Lee folded the South China Morning Post and put it reverently away in the drawer of his big business desk. Then his eyes lost their focus as he looked out of his office window and across the teeming waterway towards Kowloon. That same edition, some months old now, had detailed the historic passing of Hong Kong from British jurisdiction to Chinese; the heroic destruction by the People’s Air Force working in co-operation with officers from HMS Tamar, of the White Powder Triad’s load of crack cocaine; and the facts in the death of his unfortunate elder brother.

  How much his world had changed in the last three months, Charles mused, moved to philosophy. It was as though his long stay in Beijing and Guangzhou had opened in his mind doors which his education in England and America had only served to close in spite of his revered father’s good intentions. And what would that wise, essentially gentle old patriarch have thought of the naked hatred with which he had infected his eldest son and the tragic lengths to which that hatred had been stretched? The new more philosophical and gentler Charles Lee could scarcely imagine.

  Well, Charles would certainly still be here on the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts next year, and he would bring all kinds of food and sacrifices to put his brother’s troubled spirit to rest. There would be time and there would be sacrifice; there would be atonement and, eventually there would be peace.

  Charles felt most poignantly the need to make peace with his brother’s hungry ghost, for in a strange way which could only make sense here, in the People’s Republic, the sins of the elder brother had atoned for the sins of the younger. When Xiang Lo-wu had understood at last that it was Victor Lee’s dark plans which were funnelling contraband in through the Tiger Gate — in the all too familiar methods of the younger Charles — he had at once released the Heritage Mariner executive, sending him downriver and across the border into Hong Kong for the last days of Crown rule. And here Charles had been able to meet up with Richard, Robin, Andrew Balfour, Maggie DaSilva and the rest and to enjoy the non-stop party through the last week in June and the first week in July. Though he, like all of them, had found the festivities tinged with his own personal sadness.

  But, alongside the sadness there had been happiness too — happiness and stunning surprise, for on the last day of June, he, Charles Lee, had received an invitation to attend the ceremony in which the new People’s Governor of Hong Kong would assume power on behalf of the People’s Republic. All unaware, he had turned up on that bright auspicious morning, with Richard and Robin who had also been invited. Side by side the three of them had walked into the main reception room of the Governor’s Palace and taken their allotted places. Amid all the pageantry they had seen a range of familiar faces. The last Governor of the Crown Colony; the Prince of Wales; the Foreign Secretary; StJohn Syme. Daniel Huuk was there in full dress uniform, as part of the last-ever honour guard. And a slight figure almost invisible amid all the pomp and circumstance, Charles’s friend Xiang Lo-wu.

  Charles had actually been looking around the dazzling room, wondering where the People’s Governor was and why he was so late to this incredibly important ceremony when he realised that the People’s Governor was there and had been there all along. And no one applauded more loudly than Charles as Xiang Lo-wu accepted his duties and responsibilities as the first People’s Governor.

  *

  As Charles was folding his South China Morning Post and placing it reverently in his desk drawer down in the new Heritage Mariner office on the sixteenth floor of the old Jardine Matheson building, Richard Mariner was standing a couple of hundred metres behind him and eight storeys higher.

  The Mariners were fortunate that the suite on the corner of the twenty-fourth floor of the People’s Mandarin Hotel was available and they moved in with the twins. They had no intention of staying long on this occasion, but it was difficult to be sure about the future. It seemed most likely that Charles Lee would be the executive to settle here longterm. He was the man with the background, after all. And he was the man with the contacts — and the good sense never to take them for granted.

  There had never been any question of giving Heritage Mariner an unfair advantage, in spite of everything, but there was no doubt that they had their foot in the door now. Here and now. Richard felt himself filling with all the old excitement which he thought had long since gone. There was so much to play for and the rewards of success would be simply breathtaking. He was put in mind all too vividly of the feelings he had experienced on assuming his first command. He had gone from being the busiest man aboard to the most powerful. It had seemed, then, that even life and death had Ia
in within his hands. And he had the same feeling now. They were stepping up from senior office to command. They were joining the front rank. Becoming world-class.

  Robin came through into the sitting room from the main bedroom where the twins were bouncing on the great teak bed. She found Richard out on the balcony beyond the French windows, leaning pensively over the railing and looking across the near gridlock of Connaught Road, past Jardine House and away towards Kowloon. The waterway was abustle with shipping of all sizes, through which the Star ferries were weaving their busy way. Robin, with the association still so vivid in her mind wondered about Twelvetoes, for she had seen nothing of him since he had dropped them all back at the Prince of Wales’ steps after the problems with the pirates on Seram Queen had all been tidied up. Remembering the gentle smile on his wise old face, she could not bring herself to think that anything bad had happened to him — or would happen to him under the new system here. He had been the man who dealt in the cleanest of the contraband, and while there was a market for St Laurent shirts and Reebok shoes and Rolex watches and Walt Disney videos which were not quite what they purported to be, then Twelvetoes would continue to make a living. And so would all his daughters — and his sons, if he had any.

  Robin stepped silently up onto the balcony and wrapped her arms round Richard’s slim waist. ‘Penny for them,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking,’ he said gently.

  She folded herself over him so that her chest was flat against his back and her chin rested on his right shoul-derblade. In this position, it seemed to her, she could follow his gaze out across the busy waterway. A big ship was pulling out past the Ocean terminal just at that moment and she supposed it must have taken his eye. ‘You promised, darling,’ she chided gently. ‘No more vanishing down to the seas again. No more commands.’