Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9)

by Tonkin, Peter

  But the early start, although unwelcome after only four hours’ sleep, had at least allowed Richard to finalise their plans for the day. And it was a day which needed planning in the finest detail, for it was his father-in-law’s wedding day and for all that someone else was best man, it was Richard who had assumed the best man’s duties. And not just those onerous tasks either, for the bride and groom had requested that the reception be held on one of Richard’s new super-cats, part of a small fleet preparing to enter the cross-Channel arena but not quite in commission yet.

  So, apart from running a sizeable independent shipping company, and smoothing the way for the new cross-Channel venture, and arranging that the wedding be successfully mounted in the exclusive environs of St Clement’s, Knightsbridge, that all the bridal party and the assorted international register of guests should arrive, be housed, be supported and guided thither at the required time, Richard was also in charge of getting them down to Dover and onto the super-cat. From Dover, at the better part of 80 knots — nearly 100 mph — they would cross to Calais, a matter of half an hour or so, depending on weather and shipping. Then they would, at an equivalent speed in kph, come back after a small ceremony ashore arranged, again by Richard, for the bride — for his prospective stepmother-in-law was French.

  The happy couple, Madame Helen Dufour, Chief Executive of Heritage Mariner, and Sir William Heritage, Chairman of the Board, were, respectively, at the company flat above her office in the Heritage Mariner building on Leadenhall Street and at his usual suite at the Savoy. Sir William was sharing the suite with his oldest friend and best man Sir Justin Bulwer-Lytton, whither they had repaired after an exclusive dinner at the Savoy Grill which had been held instead of a stag night the previous evening. In younger days Bill and Bull would have been game for any sort of high jinks, but both were in their eighties now and much more aware of fleshly weakness than of spiritual strength.

  Having overseen the return of several other guests to various suites and hotel rooms all over the West End, Richard had boarded his new Land Rover Freelander and driven home to Ashenden, the big old house overlooking the Channel partway between Beachy and Seaford Heads. He had not driven down alone, for one of the other guests at that exclusive little gathering was bunking down with him. This was Bob Stark, senior captain of the Heritage Mariner Shipping Company, lifelong friend to Richard and Robin and godfather to the twins.

  One might have thought that two old friends would have whiled away the drive with commentary on Richard’s new top-of-the-range off-roader or with memories. No so these two. They spent the unexpected quiet time in discussion of the future. Richard had sold a small shipping company centred in Hong Kong at a considerable profit less than a year ago and had added to the profit of the deal more than a million pounds sterling of treasure trove. This small fortune had financed the new super-cat venture. Heritage Mariner were all set to take the Channel by storm, and the super-cats were destined to sweep into the American market as well. Richard had asked Bob to put aside his tanker work for a while and train to command the fastest of the ships. But there was more to it than this, and here lay the nub of their discussion.

  Richard had also put some of his company’s new-found wealth into a new super-freighter, a jet-ship. The new craft, a 10,000- ton freighter called New England, was powered by the same propulsion units as the super-cats and so designed that it could rival their speed. As soon as he had finished his course on commanding the super-cats, Bob had started training to command the jet-ship, a course he had completed only days before flying east to attend his old friend and sometime boss’ wedding.

  Bob, resplendent in dress whites, was between William and Mary in the back of the Freelander as Richard piloted her northward again on the morning of the wedding day. The American, son of the recently retired senior senator for New England, scion of a family whose only rivals in Newport were the Kennedys, found the intensity of the puppy love he inspired in Mary almost as unnerving as William’s unashamed hero-worship. With his cow’s lick of blond hair forever falling into his dazzling eyes, his lean, straight nose and wide, generous mouth, Bob was so much the filmstar matinee idol that the children melted to supine adoration in the sunlight of his presence. The pair of them were too over-awed even to play I Spy.

  An hour later, at ten thirty on the dot, they were pulling into the car park of the King’s Head, across the road from the church, and the designated meeting place for the wedding guests.

  “Right,” said Richard as they disembarked, taking charge with that calm decisiveness which was his trademark. “Bob, you and Robin can sort things here. Got the money, darling? Guest list, Bob? Good. I’ll just pop across and check that everything is in place in the church. Five minutes, no more.”

  Within four minutes, he was back in the lounge bar of the pub, his bright eyes sweeping over the guests as though over stormy waters threatening his command. He glanced down at his trusty old steel Rolex.

  Kick-off in half an hour.

  He glanced up and his eyes met Robin’s. They exchanged one of those achingly intimate, almost invisible smiles. God, she looked beautiful. Had he told her?

  The phone in his pocket throbbed and he pulled it out, his face folding into an automatic frown. But it was only his father-

  in-law checking in. “Be there in ten minutes, the driver says. All present and correct?”

  “All AOK this end, Bill,” said Richard. “Haven’t heard from Helen yet. I’ll give her a call now.”

  “OK.”

  Helen answered on the second ring. “We’re on the way,” she said, her husky voice made more mysterious by the little handset.

  “Right, ladies and gentlemen,” began Richard but his voice came out as his famous quarterdeck bellow, loud enough to rattle the windows. He cleared his throat and tried again, more quietly.

  Half an hour later, Bill and Bull were safely ensconced in the front pew with Robin, Bob and the twins immediately behind. Relatives filled in on Bill’s side and friends in lieu of family on Helen’s. For all it was a quiet affair — the formal union of a widower and a maiden lady who had been lovers for more than a decade — the little church was full enough, and the super-cat Hero would get a stylish christening. Richard checked the ushers one last time, had a word with the canon and made sure the photographer was on the ball. Then he called Dover and updated the captain, the purser and the chief steward on Hero.

  “Here she comes,” whispered John Higgins the chief usher urgently, but Asha his wife hissed a negative just in time to stop Richard giving the signal. Late and more than a little flustered, Ann Cable the journalist, another old friend, rushed in and sat at the back. Richard crossed to her and leaned down.

  “It wasn’t the flight in from New York,” she said, her voice low, “it was the traffic in from Heathrow.”

  “Still, you’re here now,” he soothed. “Deep breath and — ”

  “Here she comes!” announced John. And this time there was no retraction as Richard straightened, caught the organist’s eye and walked swiftly to his place as the Wedding March from Lohengrin boomed out.

  *

  If Sir Justin Bulwer-Lytton was a trifle unsteady on his feet three hours later, thought Richard, it was nothing to do with his advancing years or with the progress of the super-cat across the millpond Channel, for all she was just coming to full speed and moving forward at velocities undreamed of even five short years ago. The elderly best man could have told stories and to spare of wild days of war service in battleships long broken up, of Bill’s early post-war days setting up a shipping line, of his own more secret days in intelligence and counter-terrorism. He could have told how their two worlds, never far apart, had overlapped more than once. But he chose not to. Instead, on the bright, shining, spanking new vessel, with the newly married couple at his side, Bull was looking to the future and keeping his observations short, for Calais was swiftly approaching.

  Richard was beginning to relax at last. Captain Andrew Fawley wa
s in charge of seeing them into Calais and handing them over to the specially prepared reception committee there. The French civil ceremony would take an hour at most — the hour they were enjoying now, in fact, given the time difference — then they would be off back to Dover. Home by teatime. It would take them longer to return to London than it would take them to get to Calais and back.

  Really, this was a most extraordinary vessel, decided Richard. The big passenger area they were in at the moment was the central elevation between two lower areas that looked for all the world like the cabins of a couple of aeroplanes complete with high-backed, state of the art airline seats. He had seen all over her at every stage of her construction from the agreement to purchase over a year ago; had seen her being built, launched and tested. He knew her propulsion system almost as well as her engineers did, knew every inch of her sleek hull, knew every instrument on her flight deck of a navigation bridge. He had been on one of the courses with Bob Stark — as had Robin. Either one of them could have taken command had Captain Fawley been struck down.

  “Excuse me, Captain Mariner,” said a young steward, leaning solicitously in over his shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “Captain Fawley would like to see you, at once, please, sir. And Captain Stark…”

  Richard and Bob walked onto the super-cat’s bridge side by side. Captain Fawley was standing just behind the radio telephone, his square body outlined by the bright wide-screen curve of the windows, while the first officer sat at the helm. On either side the sea was speeding past in a breathtaking blur, like a speeded-up film. Calais was rushing at them as though this was the cockpit of a fighter coming in at sea level. The captain was deep in conversation but the instant they entered he completed what he was saying and turned.

  “It never rains but it pours,” he observed obscurely, as though talking to himself as he strode across the bridge towards Richard and Bob. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am in receipt of two urgent radio signals. Both have come through by word of mouth and fax.”

  “Trouble?” asked Bob sympathetically.

  “Perhaps you can tell me — about one of them at least. You are requested to return to Boston at once. Captain Stevenson, it appears, is dead. So is Cohen. And they can’t find Newbold.”

  “Jesus…” Bob swung round to look at Richard. He knew some of these people too. Jet-Ship Inc. was such a small company at the moment — one hull and one small family with many friends who shared their hopes and dreams — it was almost like Heritage Shipping had been in the early days.

  Richard was frowning, his face set like granite. “The other message hardly makes any more sense,” Captain Fawley said. “It’s for Sir Justin. They’ve found two floaters in Lough Foyle. Man and a woman. No hands or feet. Shot with more than one gun, apparently. They want his thoughts so could he pop across to Lisburn ASAP.”

  “Lisburn?” said Richard, the frown deepening.

  “That’s what they said.”

  Richard tried to fathom who would send this much information to a senior if semi-retired intelligence officer with such detail, in clear language. They must want him very badly indeed, he thought. Unless they were playing dangerous games with the IRA.

  Only such chilling speculation could have pulled his mind away from the horrific news from Boston.

  “Bob, it sounds as though you’d better be ready to go straight out. I’ll get the girls at Crewfinders to put you on the first flight west. I’ll see if I can free enough time to come with you myself. Sounds bad.”

  “Stevenson and Cohen dead…”

  “And Newbold missing.”

  It was suddenly as though the two radio messages, having arrived together, should have something to do with each other. That the bodies found floating in the cold dark waters off Ulster should have something important to do with death and disappearance in New England.

  “I’d better get Bull sorted as well,” said Richard, reaching for his phone.

  “And what in the name of God,” asked Captain Fawley, scrutinising the scrawl at the bottom of the fax, “is a Black Talon?”

  CHAPTER III

  At about the same time as Richard, Sir William and the rest were settling down to their stag night dinner at the Savoy Grill, Harry Newbold was bringing the jet-ship New England into port in Boston Harbour. Harry was not actually in command of the bridge — Captain Stevenson was out there and the harbour pilot was at his side — but the young computer officer’s machines and programmes were in such complete control of every aspect of New England’s disposition and progress that there was no doubt in Harry’s mind who was really in charge.

  Harry’s domain extended the old-fashioned chart area at the rear of the bridge into what in traditional ship’s architecture would have been the captain’s day room. Effectively, this mirrored the radio room on the starboard side of the wide, airy command bridge. In fact, the computer area did more than mirror the radio room. With its fax and modem facilities, E-mail capabilities, satellite connections and Worldwide Website, it usurped the old-fashioned radio equipment altogether. Which was one reason why Sparks hated Harry Newbold.

  Radio Officer O’Reilley (Harry, calculatedly, pronounced it “Oh Really”) was not alone in his hatred of the computer officer. Chief Bligh and his engineers also found their expertise challenged by the apparently modest young officer’s computers, which they did not trust or fully understand but which they felt they should control. But Harry had the power. Every aspect of the massive water jet and standard jet engines which thrust New England forward at such amazing speed was at least monitored by the equipment here, though each of the sixteen engines which made up the propulsion unit had its own computer control system which was under the engineers’ purview.

  The deck officers, led by First Officer Larry Cohen rather than the scholarly, hesitant, ineffective Captain Herbert Stevenson, also had Harry on the top of their shit list and again it was largely because of the computers. The tall, slim, forthright young officer would have been a natural butt of their jokes and jibes anyway, but it was the computers that drove them to excess. And Harry could see why. Every observation and measurement, every decision or order that any of them made could be double-checked or double-guessed by this equipment. No matter what any of them was up to at any time, the computers were there, doing it better and quicker. It was as though there was a permanent time and motion man behind each one of them, and that man was Harry Newbold.

  Even now, as Captain Stevenson and the Boston Harbour pilot guided New England into the North Channel past the Graves, cutting speed as they proceeded, a series of graphics on the screens in front of Harry monitored every aspect of what was going on. A three-dimensional schematic of New England’s hull showed all the power sources and stress points. Readings demonstrated that the captain’s demand for slow ahead was being fulfilled by the closure of all the standard aero jets and all but two of the eight port and starboard water jets; 10 per cent power on these two water jets brought New England’s speed right down to that of a conventional freighter and made it possible for her to proceed safely through the busy harbour. Red lights on the bow and side sections showed the thrusters powering up, ready for the docking manoeuvre.

  Beside this central screen, a schematic of the harbour itself, at water level and below, warned of all currents and potential hazards along their proposed route through the North Channel into the Main Channel and thence through the traffic to their designated berth on the Mystic River. The harbour screen was glowing in a range of colours denoting New England’s position and progress and the movement of all other traffic nearby. Above this, in white on an old-fashioned black screen, the current notices and directions from the Port Authority were displayed, so current that not even the Massachusetts Port Authority pilot, who had come aboard at the B Lightbuoy a few minutes earlier, was as perfectly up-to-date.

  By dusk, New England was tied up at one of the empty petroleum berths on the north bank of the Mystic. She had turned quite a few heads
on her way here through the harbour.

  Tomorrow she was destined to move out of her obscure berth and welcome aboard a delegation of local businessmen, a party to be hosted nominally by the captain but actually by that indefatigable representative of the owners, New England’s creator, Professor Alan Miles. The professor was due to fly in tomorrow morning from New York. New England would take the party for a trip round Massachusetts Bay and drop them back here in twenty-four hours’ time.

  This was supposed to be the last of the “glad hand” cruises. After it was finished, New England was due to return to Fall River where she had been built for a few final checks, then she would go back to Philadelphia, her home port, where facilities to dock and lade her would be completed soon. Here she would take aboard cargo and also the last of the glad hand visitors, an eye-catching array of celebrities geared to attract the maximum publicity for the elegant jet-ship as she sped across the Atlantic for the first time. Sixty hours after leaving Delaware Bay, she was due to pull into Southampton water. And on her return, she would pick up the blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing ever.

  After that, she would settle into her workaday routine, sailing between Philadelphia and Zeebrugge in Belgium, crossing in little more than fifty hours and turning round within the day. It was an enormously expensive undertaking and a very risky show for a company as small as Alan Miles’s Jet-Ship Inc. But the Englishman had networked his way from Heriot Watt University in Scotland to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by way of universities in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. He had made a lot of contacts, and all who could afford it, like Richard Mariner, had pitched in a little, buying a slice of the dream. And now it was all due to come true. In only a few days’ time —