The Iceberg - [Richard Mariner 05]

by Peter Tonkin

  And, of course, much of Charles’s disquiet with the original contract rested upon the fact that Heritage Mariner would be required to commit such a high percentage of its fleet, which effectively represented the total collateral of the company. So this would satisfy everyone, if it could be pulled off in time.

  ‘What time scale are we actually talking about here, Charles?’ Richard asked, when his colleague’s measured tones fell into echoing silence and only the airways whispered between them.

  ‘Helen and I estimate that, all things being equal, we can bring the ships into commission within the week. Neither we nor Sir William can see any reason why the United Nations could not assemble a standard crew for each within that time. Crewfinders alone could probably find two crews within that time, I suspect. And then, according to Sir William, it would be quite possible to sail the ships from Piraeus to the Davis Strait within ten days or so. So, effectively, we feel if we receive an immediate go-ahead, we can get these two ships to you before the end of the month.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Charles, if you can pull it off. Proceed at once, if you please, and I’ll check with the Mau Club at the UN as soon as the secretariat opens this morning. Now, I’ve been thinking about our crews. It seems to me that no matter what other experts I need, I shall have to have an engineer of real genius to keep our propulsion units up to scratch and a world-class navigator to tell us which way to go.’

  ‘You seem to be a little modest, Richard. You are the most experienced captain we currently employ. Your knowledge of navigation, certainly, is unparalleled ...’

  ‘Thank you, Charles, but no. I know my own limitations. I’m an all-rounder and we need specialists here. Bob Stark is the best engineer we’ve got. He knows all about every propulsion system we are likely to be using from the big diesel four-strokes we’ll have to deal with if we do get Kraken and Psyche to the RB211 turbines we have on the more modern ships. We really will need him if we’re going to stand a realistic chance of putting six different propulsion systems into one effective unit. And, of course, he’s currently master of Achilles so he’ll be coming up from Georgetown in any case.’

  ‘Yes, I see. I had considered none of this . . .’

  ‘That’s only to be expected, Charles. It’s not your field.’

  ‘Nor is navigation, you are just about to say.’

  ‘Yup. Look. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I will need to talk it through with several people yet, but it seems to me that the berg, Manhattan, is so big that it will effectively always be drifting in the grip of the major ocean currents. Even six supertankers would have a job to come up with enough power to move it against one of the major currents so I reckon what we’re looking at is guiding it across the currents, shifting it from one current to another where they meet, and trying to hurry it up a bit while it’s in the grip of the current. Do you see?’

  ‘Dimly. It is not my area . . .’

  ‘Quite. But if I’m right, the consequences are enormous. We’ll have to pull the thing south for a little, then east, then south-west, then south again before going hard east. But within that broad course, I’m going to need a navigator who can read the sky and sea like the back of his hand; who can place us on the surface of the earth more accurately than the satnav system, who can feel the optimum for us, night and day, for a month and more. I need John Higgins.’

  ‘He’s on Prometheus.’

  ‘I know. But we have other captains who can take even Prometheus between Kharg and Europoort with no trouble at all. He’s the best qualified captain for the job I have in mind. And there’s a bonus. Our medic Paul Chan is in hospital with a shattered thigh. If John comes then so will Asha his wife and she’s the best doctor in the Heritage Mariner fleet.’

  ‘Very well. Then it looks as though I shall be replacing Captain Higgins with Captain Welland from Ajax. I hope Captain Welland will not mind exchanging the icy weather in the north for the opposite extremes on die Gulf run.’

  ‘You know he’ll jump at it!’

  ‘I do. He will. And that means that your friends - your Club do you call them? - just have to get their third captain and crew out to Stavanger. I think we can give Ajax’s complement a choice of alternative berths or paid leave until this contract expires. And that will be everything tied up tight from this end.’

  ‘Charles, I never thought I’d hear you say that!’

  ‘Well, Richard, I must admit to being quite surprised myself.’

  ~ * ~

  After his talk with Charles Lee, Richard found that he was too wound up to sit still. He left the radio shack and crossed the bridge, then he was out through the bridge-wing door and thundering down the external companionway. His energy felt boundless and his confidence infinite. The morning spread out around him, bright and beautiful; he could hardly contain himself. He had spent so much of the summer locked in deep despair that he had forgotten it was possible to feel like this. Every cloud which had darkened his horizon in May, June and July was gone. Heritage Mariner was back on track; Bill, Robin and he were out of the woods in all sorts of ways. He was engaged on a project where he carried the power of responsibility but little of its weight. A project which allowed him to surround himself with many of the men and women he most admired among his wide circle of friends and colleagues. A project of great benefit to the world in general and to a country for which he felt a particular affection. A project which required him to try and complete work begun by a man who had been a hero of his youth, and in doing so would benefit his own company. A project which would require every ounce of seamanship and leadership within him, but which at the same time filled him with joyful anticipation and simple excitement. This is what it must be like, he supposed, to be in an Olympic final. To captain the England cricket team for the Ashes series.

  He looked at his watch: just coming up for nine. Would breakfast be cleared away yet? he wondered.

  ~ * ~

  An hour later, he was back in the radio shack, full of bacon and eggs and a little calmer. This time Emily Karanga was with him. He was talking to the Mau Club - or, at least, to Indira Dyal. She had informed him that the first official contacts with the Maui government had been made and a team of as yet unnamed Maui government representatives and experts would be on its way soon. That was the news which Emily particularly wanted to hear and Indira agreed to give her more details the moment they came to hand. And of course Emily would also be informed of the names of the other members of the UN team going with her to Mau as soon as they had been finalised.

  Indira provisionally approved the recommissioning of Kraken and Psyche and noted that the third crew would be going aboard Ajax at Stavanger. She listened with patient lack of understanding to Richard’s theories about using the ocean currents. At last she broke in, ‘Captain Mariner, I must admit to being left breathless by the speed at which you have caused things to happen. I have never seen a project shape up so quickly or so promisingly. But I have a meeting in five minutes. Is there anything at all that we in the Mau Club can do at this stage? Any little problems you cannot see a way round yourself?’

  And, almost without realising it had ever been on his mind, he answered, ‘Rope.’

  ‘Rope?’

  ‘Yes. It’s been niggling away in the back of my mind. I know that whatever we use, the pressure of the actual tow will cause the ice to melt at the anchorage points. I suppose we’ll just have to work something out to overcome that when we see what we are actually dealing with, but what I can’t quite see is what kind of rope, cable or line is actually going to be strong enough to tow something weighing a billion and a half tons.’

  ‘I’ll hand you over to General Cord, I think. I know that rope isn’t a strategic consideration, but he’s die man most likely to be able to help, I think.’

  Emily had gone by the time General Cord came through. There was nothing much for her to do until they began drawing detailed plans for their arrival in Mawanga, though the plans would have to be drawn
as early as possible because they would have to be negotiated with the Maui government and might well need time-consuming preparations on the ground. She would be here to draw up the preliminaries with Richard for the run up the coast. She had been educated and trained as a civil engineer and she was the person most perfectly placed to go through the detailed structural plans of Mawanga harbour as soon as they arrived via the UN and the fax. She was the person selected by the Mau team as being the one best qualified to check the irrigation system, too; it had been with this sort of task in mind that her father had overseen her education in the first place. So, as soon as the drawings came, the plans would be laid then she would be off via New York to Mawanga and to the irrigation ditches in the veldt - if they were still there as Robert Gardiner had reported forty-eight hours ago.

  ‘NASA,’ echoed Richard, the tone of his voice betraying his astonishment.

  ‘Sure,’ said General Cord, surprised that Richard was surprised. ‘They’ve done a lot of work in that field. It was NASA who first put out the contract for this unbreakable rope, as far as I know, and I guess they’ll still be die best place to start. I don’t know whether they’ve gone much beyond the parallel molecule carbon mono-fibre they’ve been using for their suits, but if they have, then I’ll find out. But it seems to me that if you get large bundles of carbon monofibre and then wind them round each other, you should end up with the kind of rope you’re looking for. Maximum strength, minimum weight, minimum stretch. I mean, your standard braided nylon probably won’t be long enough and will stretch to hell and gone if you’re going to use any sort of length of the stuff. . .’

  ‘Yes. That seems likely to me too. It’s been a bit of a worry. Of course we won’t be trying to pull over a billion tons dead weight. It’ll be moving under its own power anyway, influenced by the currents, the winds, the spin of the earth, but we’ll have to overcome some almost incalculable inertias, especially if we want to turn it.’

  ‘Kinda like a fisherman trying to land a ten-pound steelhead on a line with five-pound breaking strain.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m afraid we’ll go well beyond the capacity of normal ships’ ropes, so I really do want the strongest available.’

  ‘OK. I’ll see what I can do. On the other hand, though, having a known breaking strain might be all to the good. This pulling business can go both ways remember. You don’t ever want to find that that thing is pulling you and there ain’t no way to break free ...’

  ~ * ~

  ‘Manhattan is drifting down the Labrador Current at the moment. Making about four knots in a straight line roughly south.’ Richard was on the phone in die radio shack. It was mid-afternoon now and Sally Bell was holding her own watch as Titan pounded through the dark brown outwash of the still swollen Mississippi River. Even out here it was hard to hold course because of the power of the river’s current. The big tanker kept drifting away to starboard, behaving in exactly the way Richard hoped the iceberg would. ‘My ships will try to get that speed up to ten knots by the time we hit the Gulf Stream, then we’ll swing east with the Stream - and with the westerly winds behind us - and run it as fast as we can southwards across the main flow until we can pick up the Canaries current on the western edge of Biscay. The Canaries current will take us down to the Canary Islands themselves. It’ll be a long haul but at least the water will be relatively cold.’

  ‘An important consideration, I should think.’

  ‘Yes. Now, at the Canaries we’ll have to move under our own steam for a bit, but if we’re lucky we can pull Manhattan south fairly quickly - I’m hoping for an average of about eight to ten knots - and hitch our final ride on the Guinea current which will deliver us to the very doorstep. What do you think, John?’

  John Higgins’ voice was very distant indeed - it was being relayed via Heritage House from the bridge of Prometheus off Kharg Island in the Gulf. ‘You’ll have to give me some time to think about it, Richard. It sounds feasible, though. My God! Does it ever! Look. I’ve got to go now. I’ll be seeing you as soon as possible. I’m getting Niobe, I understand.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I hope it doesn’t end in tears . . .’

  Richard hung up with a wry smile. It was an old joke. A reference to the ship’s name and a line from Hamlet. Richard pulled himself to his feet, muttering it to himself in his very best Laurence Olivier, lines which, all things considered, were surprisingly apt for the matter in hand:

  A little month; or ere the shoes were old

  With which she followed my poor father’s body

  Like Niobe, all tears . . .

  He had no real idea that he was saying Hamlet’s bitter words aloud, for he was too caught up in the coincidence that, if the plan went ahead, then a little month was just about all they would have before the iceberg reduced itself to tears and ran away.

  Sally Bell watched him go. She could hardly believe her ears. His half of the conversation with Captain Higgins had shown an impressive enough knowledge of the oceans, especially as she knew he was looking only at the chart of the Atlantic Ocean’s major currents which he carried in his memory, but that he should come out spouting Hamlet was simply too much! It was no wonder he was a legend, she thought; all this and Shakespeare too.

  ~ * ~

  Sally - and, indeed, everyone aboard - was a good deal less in charity with Richard when he sat down to complete his final outgoing phone call of the first day. His own mood had darkened with the gathering of exhaustion once again. Even his massive energy could not really be renewed by six hours’ sleep after four days without even seeing a bed. He was soaking wet, as were they all, for the weather had worsened again during the afternoon and the rain had been sheeting down by teatime. Which had not prevented him from calling a lifeboat drill at seven o’clock, just as everyone was sitting down to dinner.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said, the deep gravelly sound of his voice betraying his exhaustion. ‘Sorry to be getting through so late. Twins off to bed all right?’

  And Robin Mariner, who had been waiting for this call, relaxed into the big sofa and rested her golden head on the soft cushions behind. She was concentrating on the distant rumble of his words so hard that even the organ-pure tones of Lucia Popp singing the Queen of the Night’s aria from The Magic Flute faded into nothingness, and the still grey eyes went out of focus as her mind represented in vivid detail what he was doing as he spoke to her. The French windows, open to the veranda for the last time this year, the gentle slope of the lawn down to the wall at the end of the garden, and the breathtaking view across the Channel from this, the next high shoulder of South Down to the west of Beachy Head, were all as nothing to her. She would have traded it all at once, traded even the great house Ashenden itself, to be there, in that tiny, cramped radio room, hungry and wet, exhausted and unpopular; and with him, with him, with him.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Eleven

  Richard stood on the sternmost section of Titan with the binoculars clamped under his frowning brows. The lower cliffs of Manhattan’s rough-hewn bow glimmered dully in the late afternoon overcast, which was a mercy. In the time he had been away, the iceberg melt rate had grown slightly and the skim of water even over the tall vertical surfaces added to the intensity with which they caught and reflected every candlepower of light. Colin and he had talked at length already about the advisability of spraying those parts with the fastest melt rate with some kind of protective coating, but they couldn’t come up with a coating which was easy to apply, strong enough to do the job, and simple to get rid of at the far end. Even the expanded polystyrene that disposable cups were made of would be impossible to get rid of if they used it, and might leave an environmental legacy of the worst sort - a plastic cup fifty kilometres long which was non biodegradable. But there was time enough to worry about that later.

  He was jerked out of his thoughts by a sudden ripple of brightness along a line exactly level with his gaze. Brightness which came from deep within
the ice. The strange light was lost immediately in a blinding mixture of ice dust and spray which billowed out into the stillness of the calm afternoon. A series of flat, dull reports reached Richard’s ears as the clouds began to thin and settle. The cliff face immediately above the line of the explosion began to move. With the slow majesty of an avalanche, it lost definition as the cliff face shattered into boulders, then settled down into the sea.

  ‘Looks good,’ said Richard to the man standing beside him.