The Iceberg - [Richard Mariner 05]

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Perhaps it will be,’ said Richard quickly. ‘We should get a steady run during the next three days which will give us a chance to shake down the routines we’ll need to have in place when the going does get tougher. Still, that’s a good report. Good news. Thanks, Bob. John. Navigation?’

  John got up and crossed to his chart. ‘We’re here, and doing bloody well, in my submission,’ he said bracingly. ‘Even as we speak, we’re just swinging past twenty degrees west longitude, sliding down off the back of the mid-Atlantic ridge here into the northeast Atlantic Basin at forty-four degrees north latitude. I couldn’t do a noon shot in this murk, so these are the satnav’s best figures, you understand, but it still looks pretty good. We’ve come the better part of two thousand and seventy-five kilometres in the last four and a half days, and to have pulled ourselves south of Bordeaux is particularly good. We’ll be down level with Corunna later tonight. Bang on track.’ He met Richard’s eyes and gave a tight grin.

  Richard returned an infinitesimal nod. How absolutely he could rely on his ‘Little John’. For once, John had given a less than clinical navigation report, pulling in references to locations in France and Spain calculatedly, hoping to lighten the atmosphere by bringing Europe, and the next section of the voyage, closer.

  ‘Yves?’

  The Frenchman availed himself of John’s chart. ‘As you know, I fly ahead in the helicopters and take readings of sea and sky. I also take the inflatables if I need to examine the state of the sea more closely.’ He paused, but not even Tom rose to the challenge. Yves took it as confirmation that the others had forgiven his absence as readily as he had forgiven himself, and he proceeded. ‘My readings show that we are in the following situation, which I must say is extremely fortunate. As we come down off the mid-Atlantic ridge here, so we are crossing a whirl of cold Arctic water. As you may know, as the Gulf Stream ages, so the straight line of the water’s flow breaks off into whirls, like enormous whirlpools. Warm water pools run westwards to the north of the main flow, up here towards Cape Farewell. Cold water pools run eastward and southward, here, towards Biscay. And the current which currently carries us east and south is a large one of these. We came into it, by my calculation, yesterday, and I may say that even as I was diving in the chamber beside Psyche, I registered a sudden drop in water temperature. I mentioned this to Bob who was with me, did I not?’

  Bob nodded. ‘It suddenly went very cold in there,’ he confirmed.

  ‘The mean temperature of the water of the Gulf Stream is twenty-five degrees Celsius,’ continued the professor eagerly. ‘The mean ocean surface temperature for this section of the ocean at this time of the year is sixteen degrees, but the temperature in the pool which we are crossing is three degrees. I believe we can expect that all serious melting below the waterline will now slow, perhaps even stop.’

  ‘For how long?’ asked Richard.

  ‘When the weather clears, I will take the helicopter and fly on ahead. Such features can be many hundreds of metres in diameter. Thousands of metres, even. But there is no way of knowing how large this one is until I look ahead. I cannot be certain, but the way we are riding and the speed at which we are moving leads me to believe that we are going round the outer edge of it, at the south, along the strongest part of the flow. As we proceed, we will have to watch for a northward pressure of the current. But by then it may not be so strong, and the wind and the geostrophic force -the Coriolis force - will still be pushing us south. The wind is also colder than the mean air temperature for this time of year. We should be expecting mean temperatures of ten degrees. If you go outside, you will find that it is four degrees. But tomorrow, this depression will have passed, the sky will have cleared and the air will be warmer. More than this I cannot tell you at the moment.’

  Colin Ross rose without Richard’s bidding. ‘A slowing in melt rate below the waterline fits in with what I have to report,’ he said, his voice a low rumble carrying effortlessly over the raving of the wind outside. ‘Since we turned east at Flemish Cap, the mean melt rate above and below the water has risen from negligible amounts to a much more serious one point five per cent per day. I had expected to warn this meeting that we were faced with a two per cent daily loss, rising further, but, as Professor Maille has observed, things have slowed down again. This is very good, because otherwise our friends aboard Psyche and Kraken would have to keep a very close eye on their lines indeed. The iceberg has lifted by little more than two and a half metres since we came east. When it gets hotter and the melt rate increases, I will be projecting lift rates of anything up to five metres a day, which will mean much careful slackening of lines, much less efficient towing regimes and a much increased danger that the whole thing will roll right over.

  ‘But that is looking well into the future. As I said, the mean melt and lift rates have slowed dramatically over the last twenty-four hours. Which is very good news indeed.’

  ‘Thank you, Colin. Any questions?’

  There were none.

  ‘Right. Let me sum up, then. We are in optimum position, travelling faster than anticipated, but using exactly the predicted amount of fuel. Projections of the continuation of this situation seem excellent and, in the short term at any rate, the situation will only get better.’

  ‘I think that says it all,’ said John. He looked at his watch. ‘Time for Pour Out. Can I buy anyone a drink?’

  ~ * ~

  Richard could not make an opportunity to talk to Peter Walcott over drinks or dinner, so he accompanied the quiet Guyanese back to his command that evening.

  ‘As soon as we get within anything like helicopter range of England, I’ll have them off.’ Richard looked up at the captain’s anxious face, and for the first time saw how worried he really was. ‘That will be in two days,’ he promised. ‘Three at the most.’

  Peter Walcott nodded, but he didn’t look much happier. ‘I’m worried she’s getting a reputation,’ he said. ‘I’ve been worrying since I first came aboard. There’s little things, you know? I’m not a superstitious man, but she’s not a happy ship. Did you ever sail her when she worked for Heritage Mariner?’

  ‘No. But I’m sure she never had a reputation then.’

  ‘Well, I guess you’d be the man to know. But she’s working hard at getting one now. Perhaps she didn’t like being mothballed. Went sour off Piraeus.’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t superstitious, Peter.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe I’m just tired, is all.’

  ‘Well, is there anything else you think I can do for you? To ease the situation?’

  Peter leant back against the outer wall of his day room. Behind his left shoulder, his window glimmered spectrally as the ice visible through it took and multiplied what little light there was. Wind thundered over the bridgehouse, its bluster hardly dimmed by the thick metal walls and heavy glass that cocooned them. A respectful tapping came at the door and a steward entered to close the curtains.

  ‘I’m going to do my final round,’ said Psyche’s captain without answering Richard’s question.

  ‘I’ll come with you, if I may,’ said Richard. ‘I’d like a look over her again.’

  ‘I thought you’d never sailed her.’

  ‘I haven’t. John Higgins has. I’ve visited him aboard.’

  ‘You two go back a long way, hunh?’

  The two men crossed to the door and exited side by side. Richard chatted as they crossed to the lift and waited for the car.

  ‘Yes. I first met him more than fifteen years ago on a ship called Prometheus. I was running a firm called Crewfinders at the time. We were employed to replace a crew decimated by an industrial accident. John was on my firm’s books as a second mate. I hadn’t met him but his references were good so I sent him out then I went out myself as master. We had an eventful voyage during which I met my wife Robin, quite apart from anything else. We stayed friends.’

  The lift came. They got in.

  ‘And he joined you when you took over t
he Heritage Mariner fleet?’

  ‘That’s right. I’d known Bill Heritage, my father-in-law, for many years. When I transferred into the Heritage organisation, John came with me. Now that it’s Heritage Mariner, he’s our senior captain. He’s sailed everything from supertankers to tramp steamers. He met Asha when she nursed him after he’d been wounded by terrorists in the Gulf. They honeymooned on a cargo vessel refused permission to dock anywhere because the atomic waste aboard was so dangerous.’

  ‘The leper ship Napoli. Yes, I read Ann Cable’s account of that. You were on board too, I understand.’

  ‘Briefly.’

  The lift doors hissed open and the two of them stepped out onto the bridge. From here it was possible to see just how snugly berthed against Manhattan Psyche really was. Although there was no moisture in the wind at all, it blew a steady stream of runoff across the clearview and down the shadowed deck. It was almost as though the great supertanker was moored beneath a waterfall. The noise was intrusive, if not overpowering. ‘It’s been improving all day,’ said Peter, gesturing at the falling water. ‘But I don’t think it’ll ever stop. At least it’s fresh.’

  He introduced Richard to his third officer, who was holding the watch, and checked the instruments, the charts and the logs. Then the two captains went out onto the starboard bridge wing where it was blustery and cold, but dry. ‘I’ve started to do a full inspection at weather deck level,’ confided Peter. ‘Bridge and line watches before I retire. It seems to be the most sensible way of going about things.’

  ‘It’s what I do,’ Richard told him. ‘But I don’t have to go all the way up to the forecastle head.’

  ‘The forecastle head watch changes every hour at night. We found on the first night that it was a bit too much for the men out there during a full four-hour watch, and things have got worse since then, of course.’

  ‘Do you go there first, or do you go to the poop-deck line watch first?’

  ‘Capstans first, then windlass. I find I have to build up to the forecastle head, somehow.’

  ‘Right then.’ Richard gathered his cold-weather gear more snugly about his massive frame. ‘After you.’

  They went down die external companionways sternwards to the first deck which stood at the base of the great funnel, side by side across it, deep in conversation, then down and aft again, five decks in all, finally coming down a central stair onto the poop behind the massive bridgehouse. All through their shadowy journey, they had seen no one; all the curtains were drawn except on the bridge, and they did not even see a light. But it was not dark. The clear skies promised by Yves had arrived, though the wind showed little sign of abating. The stars were out and the moon was glimmering promisingly on the distant, southern horizon.

  The capstan line watch had rigged a shelter, half tent and half hut, open to one side to let the line ride out and up onto the white shoulder of the ice. The shelter was designed to keep the worst of the runoff away, but because the open side was, perforce, nearest to the iceberg, this was only partially successful and the three men of the watch sat huddled in unhappy silence while a fine spray drifted unceasingly in upon them. They said nothing to each other and only answered their captain’s questions in sulky monosyllables when he addressed them directly. Whether they were naturally taciturn or moodily mutinous, Richard had no way of knowing; the duty offered little in the way of opportunities for conversation in any case. The meltwater fell, the ice grumbled distantly; the wind blustered, sometimes with enough force to make the rope hum and the capstan groan; the ship’s massive motor rumbled like the onset of an earthquake, setting the deck to throbbing and the deck furniture to jingling and tinkling; the surf arrived at the reef astern with a piercing sibilance and an arhythmic lack of pattern, and thundered beneath Psyche’s counter like a tidal wave, where the monotonous thudding of the propeller blades battered it to death.

  ‘Where did you get your crew from?’ asked Richard as they began to walk down the length of the weather deck, side by side.

  ‘From Piraeus. But of course they arrived in Greece from all over the world. Most of the stewards are Hong Kong Chinese who are particularly concerned that we are giving ship room to a white-haired ghost. The GP seamen mostly come from Pakistan and they would prefer, I think, that water claim the bodies of the deceased as is common practice in India. But amongst them there is a contingent from Haiti, of all places, so we have some voudon aboard as well. The officers are the usual mixed bunch. I haven’t sailed with any of them before.’

  ‘You must find it a bit lonely.’ The wind battered around them, whirling past the port side of the bridgehouse. In the distance there was a howling sound which wavered and died away.

  ‘Sometimes. A little. I have no family of my own. You haven’t brought your wife along? I hear she’s got her captain’s papers too. Didn’t she fancy a cruise?’ The ice groaned as though weary of life. They glanced up involuntarily, looking across the tall, blind front of die bridgehouse.

  ‘No. She’s at home with the twins. She had enough of this berg when she pulled her ship up on the ice to fix its propeller earlier in the year. Especially as she lost a good few people doing it. At least one of them is still up there somewhere.’

  Peter Walcott glanced up at the sheer cliffs. ‘She must have had powerful winches.’

  Richard gave a bark of laughter. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There was a shallow bay. It came out in a kind of hook. Near perfect dry dock. She did brilliantly to make use of it as she did, though. I don’t think I would have coped half as well. Anyway, we had to blow it all off to make Manhattan ship-shaped. We’d never have been able to control it as it was shaped originally. That was when we knew we were in business, really, when we got it drifting in a straight line.’ The wind thundered up against the ice cliffs and the waterfall was snatched upwards suddenly and hurled like a great handful of stars up into the blue velvet sky.

  ‘Then it was just a case of controlling the course and speed of the drift. I see that, yes.’

  ‘A kind of intellectual game given form and urgency by circumstances. A problem of practical seamanship put into practice because Colin sold it to the United Nations as a viable way of combating a drought and averting a civil war. There was no other way a project like this was ever going to get off the ground really. The cost is so enormous that it could only seem worthwhile to an organisation confronted with the prospect of sorting out another Somalia, another Bosnia, another Congo. The political implications must be enormous even outside Africa, too. Consider the amount of ice-cold water we’re putting into the North Atlantic Drift even now. What effect will that have when it hits the coast of Ireland? Only the UN could have got the Irish government to take the risk of agreeing or we’d have farmers from all over the place suing.’

  ‘Do you think it will have as destructive an effect as all that?’ Peter glanced across at Richard, and found his tall companion’s shape silhouetted against the first white ray of the rising moon.

  ‘Who knows? It’s possible that there could be enough meltwater there to affect conditions briefly, yes. Whether it will do so, heaven alone knows. But, looking at the other side of the coin, only the UN could have got so much positive input from all over the world. Look at the range of nationalities involved already. Even the Russians, and they’ve got troubles enough of their own, God knows.’

  ‘Well,’ Peter said cynically, ‘they’ve got a lot to play for in Moscow, haven’t they? They want the West’s help still, economically and socially, and that means politically. Of course they’re going to be falling over themselves to help with something as high-profile as this. They’ve had their fingers in this particular African pie for a long time and it won’t do them any harm to be seen either by the Americans or the Africans to be helping now. This way they get the kudos of supporting a great humanitarian endeavour without having to pay out too much. And if Mau is pulled out of the mire, you can bet the Russians will be in there bidding for business. Of course, if it isn’t pulled out
of the mire then you just know their armaments men have already been in there bidding for business. Not just in Mau; Angola, Zaire, Congo, Guinea, Congo Libre, all of the local areas. They may not be selling Marxism any more, but they’ve got a lot of military hardware and the expertise to back it up. Hardware they don’t need now, foreign currency they do need. You know that, and even if Moscow wouldn’t sanction it, what about the republics? They say there’s even nuclear stuff up for grabs. A Ukrainian nuclear physicist gets paid about the same as a part-time janitor in the West; a full general earns less than the seamen down the deck, for God’s sake. And they’ve just been hit by capitalism in all its glory. Market forces for all.’ He swung round suddenly to face Richard, his expression creased with concern, his features etched by dead white moonlight reflecting off his glossy black skin. ‘For less than it cost to fit out this ship we could probably have bought a regiment of tanks equipped with battlefield nuclear arms. Or a nuclear power station with all the staff to run it.’