The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  Asha gathered her light cardigan about her shoulders and John slid his arm across them too, for they were on the shadowed side of the ship. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  They went down the companionways with John taking the lead on the steps but waiting to embrace her at the foot of each flight, gently solicitous, and guide her to the next with his arm warm and tight round her shoulders.

  As they moved, they talked quietly. ‘What did Richard say last night?’ She had made a habit of trying to be with him when he contacted Richard, but last night she had been involved in the far more important task of trying to get to know their new passenger.

  ‘Same as before. If we want to go home, he’ll have us ‘coptered off at the drop of a hat. I think he’d actually come out and take over himself if we asked.’

  ‘But I couldn’t leave Fatima.’

  The two sisters, twins born only minutes apart, had received an unusual upbringing. Daughters of a minor playboy Arab prince, they had been given a liberal education in England during the late seventies and early eighties until their father had discovered the True Faith and had called them home to Dhahran to take up their place in Muslim society. They had refused and so he had resorted to trickery and managed to kidnap Fatima, with disastrous results. As a result of this the two of them, always close, had become closer still, and it was only Fatima’s terrorist involvement that now kept them apart. Asha would never abandon Fatima, even if Richard Mariner promised to take over Napoli himself.

  ‘I know you couldn’t leave her. I’d never ask you to,’ he said. ‘And in any case, it’s not so bad. This sort of thing is what I did before I settled down into the Heritage Mariner fleet anyway. I think Richard is only so worried because he thinks we should be on honeymoon somewhere.’

  She said nothing, for she felt as Richard did on that point. If only they had been able to drop Salah and Fatima off safely in Tunis!

  ‘Still, mustn’t grumble,’ he said after a moment. ‘We’re certainly on our way home now. And Richard hopes to have some plan dreamed up of helping Salah and Fatima at Liverpool. As for honeymoons, well, after we get free of this lot, the rest of our life will probably feel like a honeymoon.’

  They were on the main deck and he led her slowly sternwards. She had never been behind the bridgehouse and was surprised how secluded it was. The great gallows stood above them, black against the thrilling sky. It had two great steel legs standing nearly forty feet high, seated on massive rollers fitted in turn on to rails in the deck. The tops of these legs were joined by a huge gantry reaching right across the ship. The whole structure gave an impression of forbidding strength and its shadow lay heavily upon her as she hurried past.

  Beyond it, the deck was flat and largely uncluttered. Winches and cleats stood to port and starboard. The rails to guide the gallows lay along the steel, but there beyond, beneath the little flagpole with its drooping CZP house flag, bound in by the afterdeck rails, was a little area where the green metal and modern machinery gave way to something very different. The green deck ended a yard beyond the gallows rails. And set square against it, reaching out to the rounded stern, was an added section of dark teak boards. To walk on them was a different sensation to walking on metal. For a dizzy moment she felt as though she had stepped off concrete on to turf. Her feet tingled. Absurdly, she wanted to dance. She turned towards him, thinking this was what he had wanted to show her. But his eyes were narrowed against the sunset and looking away behind her to the north. She turned and he guided her the last few steps to the little pulpit of the after rail.

  Sardinia crouched below the horizon then reached up high above it. Asha found herself looking into the bay of Cagliari from the south-west, looking past Capo Spartivento across to Capo Carbonara. The impression was of great wooded shoulders of land, clad in forests of beech trees, but turreted and fortified at their crests. One stood close on her left and the other further away behind her. Between them, the land swooped down into a great placid bay, still and mirror-calm, as though it was filled not with water but with mercury.

  Nothing moved. No boat disturbed its perfect reflection. No car wound along those pale, reflecting ribbon roads. No dark land-bird rose flapping from its nest among those black-green forests, and no white gull swooped calling to break the spell. Nothing in the town which climbed up the hillsides and down to its image inverted in the bay stirred or sounded in that perfect moment. Until, over the mountain, came the evening breeze. It seemed to make the air dance at the distant, knife-edge crest. It brought a sea swell to the forest branches. It set the washing in the town to flapping and doors and shutters to slamming, and when it drew its fingers across the water of the bay it seemed to set the whole evening a-ripple. The flags on the distant turrets waved and Napoli’s flag waved in return.

  The smell of the land, of the forests and the city settled on them; the odours of beech nuts and olive oil, of rich earth and hot stoves, of salt drying and dinners cooking.

  The breeze took her hair and spread it out so that the sunset picked up its auburn highlights. The glory of the sight still lingered in her eyes as she turned back to him, the wizard who had made this magic happen. A quiet, modest, almost self-effacing man, he had no idea at all of the effect he could have on women. And was having on her, at this moment. She threw her arms round him and crushed him to her in an excess of emotion which went far beyond any thought or words. And he, who had brought her to this romantic place just in the hope of pleasing her a little, was overwhelmed by the reaction and surrendered to the emotion as swiftly as she did. His final rational thought moments later in their cabin was that they would be late for dinner.

  *

  The contentment of the captain and his wife went a certain way towards lightening the atmosphere aboard. And that atmosphere did need lightening. At Sorrento, Verdi and Nero had left a stunned crew to oil their ship and bring aboard their supplies like sleepwalkers, deep in shock. They had carried up the bodies of the three dead men like zombies and put them aboard the lighter with Gina Fittipaldi and her kit. They had brought Ann Cable’s luggage aboard and put it straight into the guest cabin, effectively swapping one woman passenger for another. But so deep was their shock and disbelief at Italy’s rejection of them that they did not even try to size up their new sex object. Even Bernadotte failed to assess the cubic capacity of her bust and the lissomness of her waist. His eyes passed blindly over the length of her thighs and the breadth of her hips. There were no quiet whistles at the way in which her jeans clung to her buttocks. Niccolo watched, amazed. Not one salacious comment or hopeful leer. Generations of sexist breeding seemed to have been wiped out at a stroke. It came as little surprise, therefore, when they went about their work uncomplainingly and even seemed to be doing their duty and their best. He and Cesar put their heads together at once and drew up a list of things they needed to get done and put the men to work on them before the stunned mood changed.

  The work was important. The two senior officers were grimly amused but by no means laughing. When the effect of Verdi’s words wore off there would be a backlash. It would manifest itself in slow and sloppy work, refusal to do dirty, difficult or dangerous jobs. And if the mood changed when they were in the Bay of Biscay, there could be real problems. They looked at the long-range weather forecast with narrow eyes and grim lips. Still, it was early days to worry yet.

  In the meantime, while the crew seemed to have left her out of their daily intercourse, Niccolo and Cesar entered into a rivalry to engage Ann Cable’s attention. Niccolo had spent some time in distant homage to the captain’s daughter Gina Fittipaldi, but she left the ship with no word to him and he knew in his bones that she had no real regard for him at all. Perhaps he was on the rebound. He didn’t really think about it; he was acutely aware, however, of the woman from Greenpeace.

  She made no demands; seemed content to get to know the ship in her own time. Obviously she was here to monitor the cargo, but she had a couple of weeks
to do that. During those first two days, therefore, she simply wandered around with a notepad, a camera and a small personal tape recorder. She talked to the scientists and went down the deck with them to look at the containers. But she did not get into a white suit. She did not go into the hold. Niccolo and Cesar both watched her and watched each other watching her.

  Niccolo thought he would have the edge over the second mate, not through any misplaced over-confidence, but because he spoke better English and because he had been in charge of the disposition of the load which was of such interest to her. But, then again, the obvious time for social chat was at the dinner table. And dinner was served at seven, during the last hour of Niccolo’s watch. This he found very frustrating. And his confidence was further damaged by Cesar’s quiet revelation that his limping English had proved no handicap after all; the American woman spoke perfect Italian.

  Early in the third afternoon out of Sorrento, however, it seemed that the tables would be turned. Cesar had taken over the watch at midday and was prowling the bridge restlessly, his eyes everywhere, as the automatic helm guided them along the pre-programmed course across the western Mediterranean towards the first narrowing of the sea lanes south of the Balearic Islands. They were about 350 miles south of Marseilles and 50 miles north of Cap Carbon, though neither could be seen. Niccolo was on the deck with a day-work gang chipping rust away from the safety rails and strengthening them where necessary so that they would be reliable across Biscay. The first he knew of her presence was a kind of stirring among his men and a whisper or two, the least offensive of which was ‘Che bella regazza!’ What a stunner!

  ‘She speaks Italian, pene. Watch your mouth,’ he spat in a rapid Calabrian undertone. Then he was on his feet, wiping his hands.

  She was almost as tall as he was, and her blue eyes looked quizzically directly into his own. It was not their size or their colour which engaged him at once: it was their cool intelligence. The whole of her delicately chiselled face, from the slight raising of one finely curved, dark brown eyebrow to the merest upward curve of her lip, bespoke powerful intelligence. He met her gaze, all too aware of the untidy picture he must present with his hair plastered low across his perspiring forehead and his hands and overalls—his face, too, likely as not—liberally sprinkled with flakes of rust and paint.

  ‘Signora?’ He gave her the title out of respect. He had looked at her hand and seen no wedding ring.

  ‘It’s time I had a closer look at your handiwork, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble, Mr Niccolo.’ Her voice in its own way matched her eyes. It was cool, reserved. The sort of voice he could more easily imagine delivering a dissertation than swearing undying love. She was speaking English and he answered in English.

  ‘Of course, Ms Cable.’ He paused. He had never actually said ‘Ms’ before. But the title suited her. ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as would be convenient.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Right.’ He looked around for Eduardo automatically, but he was helping Marco on the far side of the deck. ‘Bernadotte, you’re in charge,’ he said at last. ‘Carry on with that chipping and for heaven’s sake, check any weaknesses carefully. We don’t want that lot giving way if we hit bad weather in Biscay.’

  He turned away at once, confident the big seaman would see the importance of what they were doing and make the others take care. The fact was that Bernadotte was twice the seaman of any of them; only his truly foul temper and utterly unacceptable attitude to authority kept him off first-class ships.

  ‘Don’t you want to borrow one of the scientists’ protective suits?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t seen the need for one.’

  ‘What exactly do you want to see first?’

  ‘It’s a tough decision. Most of the people I’ve spoken to since I came aboard seem more scared of what’s in the barrels than what’s in the hold.’

  He gave a bark of mirthless laughter. ‘So?’

  ‘So, how easy is it to get into the containers?’

  ‘The only one worth opening is the top one nearest the fo’c’sle head.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I packed the others full of sand round the barrels. I had time to do them all properly except for that last one. Except for sand, there’s nothing to see in any of the others.’

  ‘That was very sensible.’ She sounded impressed. He liked that.

  ‘It was the obvious thing to do. I had to pack them in with something. We dug them out of a desert and brought them to a beach: there was a lot of sand available.’

  They came down to the last set of containers before the fo’c’sle. Ann paused here, looking up, and Niccolo went on down to the foot of the forward cargo-handling crane. He collected a ladder and a box of tools, then he returned to her side.

  The containers were secured one on top of the other. They were each ten feet square at the end and twenty feet long. ‘We’ll go right up on top and open up from there,’ said Niccolo and put the ladder in place. ‘You first.’

  Without a further word, she climbed upwards. He caught up the box of tools and followed her. The top of the container was more than twenty feet above the deck and it did not feel like two hundred square feet of moulded and riveted metal affording sure and solid footing. Even though Napoli was riding smoothly and surely, the height above the deck and even greater height above the water was disconcerting. Niccolo found Ann sitting down to wait for him, even though he was only a second or two behind her. It seemed absolutely natural for him to sit beside her for a moment.

  ‘Some view,’ she said, looking around. It had not occurred to him that this would make such a satisfactory lookout post. It was only half as high as the bridge, but the openness of the place gave a feeling of being able to see much more than the watchkeepers there. Europe and Africa were both invisible. Mallorca and Menorca were below the horizon to the north-west and there wasn’t even any cloud clustered above their mountain tops to betray them. But they were by no means alone on the apparently boundless sea. A tanker was approaching them, obviously inbound from the Strait. It sat low in the water and looked every bit as large as Napoli. Beyond the tanker was an old-fashioned freighter, following roughly the same course. Bound for Italy or Yugoslavia, no doubt, with a cargo of trade goods and a few passengers. Crossing north to south in front of them, but far enough ahead to be clear in plenty of time, was a ferry. Probably the ferry on the regular run from Marseilles to Algiers. Beyond it, to the south of them, heading lazily south-west, was a cruise liner, her upper works a dazzling white, so bright that she was easier to see than the battered old ferry which was so much closer. Closer still, closer than any of the other ships, was a small fleet of fishing boats, all of them chugging purposefully southwards, low in the water, with their nets piled on their long, low sterns like bright orange seaweed. A cloud of seagulls followed them, screaming and swooping. It was an idyllic scene.

  Close to where they were sitting on the container was an inspection hatch a little like a manhole, secured with four clips, one of a number of hatches which enabled the container to be accessed section by section. The hatch was set into a larger hatch which could also be opened with relative ease. And this in turn was part of a yet larger hatch fully half the top of the container. The whole top could be removed in one section as well.

  Niccolo snapped the small hatch open and lifted it back. A wave of hot air, fetid with the stench of rust, filled his nostrils and he turned away. He reached into the tool box for a torch. ‘You want to go first again?’ he asked.

  Ann crossed over to look down the hole. A shaft of brightness revealed a simple stairway of carefully packed drums. ‘Yeah,’ she said, lengthening the word while she continued to move, swinging her leg in and down on to the first step. Carefully, she reversed in as though climbing down a ladder. Niccolo followed her at once.

  At first it was quite easy to climb down the drums for there was plenty of light from the open hatch by which to guide fingers
and feet. But the arrangement of drums was as much like a staircase as a ladder and soon it moved away from the beam of brightness. In the dark, it was less easy to place fingers and feet correctly on the rims of the drums and he heard her slip and swear more than once before they were safely on the floor. Niccolo flashed his torch round the echoing tomb-like place they found themselves in. It was as big as a small room, its ceiling more than four feet above their heads. The drums rose in safe, solid series immediately in front of them, bound firmly in place by strong ropes, just as the container itself was secured in its present position by steel hawsers hooked through the loops on its sides. They were further held in place by battens of wood wedged against their metal sides and stepped against the floor. ‘What’s next?’ he asked, his voice echoing eerily in the steel sarcophagus.

  ‘You were serious about keeping these things still, weren’t you?’

  ‘Have they told you what this stuff can do?’

  ‘The captain’s hands.’

  He nodded, his mouth a thin line. ‘The captain’s hands,’ he said.

  *

  Cesar had no idea that they had gone down into the container because all his attention was on the little fishing fleet. The boats were forty-footers designed in exactly the opposite way to the Napoli for they had tiny fo’c’sles with their bridges immediately behind them. All the rest of their long, low length was open and uncluttered. Only the piles of nets sat on the empty decks. There were no crew visible, but there must have been someone there, for as the Napoli began to close with them, they seemed to speed up, apparently to clear the way. But then the incredible happened. No, not the incredible, the impossible. The last of the boats, all but under Napoli’s bows but chugging purposefully clear, heaved abruptly over a cross wave. The movement threw its carelessly secured nets overboard into its creamy wake. The bright, nearly indestructible web spread out on the back of a wave and slipped swiftly across Napoli’s course. A line of floats bobbed up as the drift net sank like a curtain beneath it. A hundred yards of it unfurled in a moment, spread right across their path.