The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘I hold the papers,’ said Richard. ‘I’ll take the watch if I may. Salah, will you stand it with me? You’ve been bosun on enough ships of mine. I know I can trust you with the helm. Fatima, could you keep an eye on the radar, perhaps? I think the three of us have something to discuss in any case.’

  And so it was done. The outsiders stayed on the bridge, giving the crew a chance to stand together. After all that had happened, all the tensions and suspicions that had been grown up, it was a necessary move. Richard felt it with a sensitivity almost as strong as John’s knowledge.

  The crew’s dining salon was split as it had been for that earlier speech of John’s—could it be only three weeks ago?—along lines of language understood rather than responsibilities undertaken. As on that other occasion, the crew stood and faced speaker and translators with a sullen resentfulness. They expected trouble because that was all they ever got; that was the kind of seamen they were or they would not have been in Piraeus, willing to sign CZP’s shady contracts. The deck officers and the engineering officers looked guarded. They were no prize crewmen either. Only the scientists looked unconcerned: they were company men. They expected company protection. The company men were also the only ones in the room not to register the increasing revolutions of the engines and the slow swing to port, the only ones who did not check round furtively to look for El Jefe, who was missing.

  Verdi spoke. ‘Well, gentlemen, and…ah, ladies, I am sure you have some idea of our current situation. The Napoli and you who crew her, having been leased to Disposoco, are still legally under their control until such time as we have delivered their cargo. That is in the contract we hold with them, and in the contract we hold with you. No matter where that cargo is delivered, or when.’

  The silence was glacial. He licked his lips and looked around. ‘As you know,’ he continued, raising his voice over the running translations, ‘we have aboard a cargo of industrial waste taken from the desert in Lebanon and intended for delivery in Naples. The situation in Italy made it necessary for us to send it, and you, to England. But the English have gone on strike rather than handle it.’ The expression on his face showed clearly what he personally thought of the English. A hiss of shock went round the room.

  ‘Yes. It is true. The English will not touch it. Only one company will touch it. They will meet the Napoli, they will unload her, they will oversee the transport of the waste to the disposal site and they will guarantee its safe disposal. Needless to say, Disposoco are well aware that this situation must be reflected in a new contract with CZP and in turn in an enhanced rate of pay for yourselves. I have personally made it my business to ensure a considerable rise in your pay for—’

  ‘Dove?’ It was Bernadotte. Of course it was, thought John wryly. Bernadotte seeing through the bullshit at once. Not ‘How much?’ but ‘Where?’

  ‘Under the circumstances,’ persisted Verdi angrily, ‘I have arranged a considerable rise…’

  But Bernadotte was not alone in smelling a rat. The cry of ‘Dove?’ was taken up by the rest of the crew until it drowned Verdi’s voice. He looked to John for help, but John was far too astute a boardroom politician to offer any now. He did not want his crew to become confused as to whose side he was on.

  So Verdi was forced to turn back and bellow for silence. Eventually, he got it.

  ‘As I was just about to tell you, had I not been interrupted in this manner, the company that has agreed to take the cargo work out of Sept Isles. They wish the cargo to be delivered to them there as soon as possible and Signor Nero has therefore arranged for you to be refuelled at Cork in Southern Ireland.’

  A whisper ran round the room like the first rumour of a plague. Those who had not yet been at sea long enough to learn where the minor seaports were soon found themselves enlightened by the old hands. The whisper went round the room and died. The stillness became absolute. John expected Bernadotte to speak next, but he was wrong. It was Marco Farnese. The third officer, childlike in his geographical knowledge as in most things, was riven by the news. ‘Canada!’ he yelled. He spoke in Italian, but even John had no trouble following his general gist. And, in any case, Asha leaned close enough to whisper a translation in his ear. ‘You seriously expect us to take this old tub all the way to Canada. You must be mad!’

  ‘We at CZP place our absolute trust in Captain Higgins, in the Napoli and in—’

  ‘But not enough to come along yourself!’

  Verdi began to bluster.

  John judged this to be the moment to intervene. He stood up and started speaking. ‘This is more than an old tub, Mr Farnese. It is a first-rate ship. It has to be. We have to make it so. We must get our cargo safely to Sept Isles to be disposed of properly. There must be no more mutant children like the ones in Lebanon my sister-in-law has described to me. No more ruined farms. No more damage to the environment. Both Disposoco and CZP are keen to ensure that. They trust us to make it absolutely certain. That is all. Dismiss the men to their watches and duties please, Mr Niccolo.’

  He turned and exited, followed by Asha and Ann Cable. He had taken only one step when his wife threw her arms about him and hugged him. And Ann was there too, shaking his hand. ‘That was quite a speech.’ She was smiling, but her eyes were guarded. She might have said more, but the reason for her expression came puffing self-importantly out of the crowd of silent crewmen.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Signorina,’ he said ingratiatingly. ‘If you will pack your bags now I have made arrangements for you to come with me back to Italy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Verdi,’ she answered carefully, ‘but if the others are staying aboard, I guess I am too.’

  ‘No, no. That is not what we agreed. And Signor Nero is most specific also. To Liverpool only.’

  ‘Same as you said to the crew? Specifically? To Naples only. To Liverpool only. To Sept Isles only.’

  ‘It is not the same! You are here as a guest of CZP and Disposoco and—’

  ‘And of the officers and crew of the Napoli,’ John interjected. ‘If Ms Cable wishes to remain aboard, we’ll be only too pleased to have her.’

  Verdi eyed John wrathfully. His moustache actually seemed to bristle with irritation. But he was caught in a cleft stick: he could not threaten the Crewfinders captain and he could hardly manhandle the woman off the ship.

  Eduardo suddenly appeared. ‘Signor Verdi’s helicopter will be ready to lift him off in five minutes, Captain.’

  The deck was blustery and wet, and the overcast low and drizzling. Even so, two helicopters kept station with Napoli, a couple of hundred feet off, dull light catching on the lenses of video cameras.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wave, Mr Verdi?’ asked Ann quietly. ‘You’ll be on the news at home tonight.’

  ‘Very well, you can stay. But only as far as Ireland. When they refuel…’ But then he paused, realising that getting her off in the Irish Republic was even less of a possibility than getting her off here.

  ‘Mr Mariner,’ he said suddenly, as though he had just made an important discovery.

  ‘What about him?’ John asked.

  ‘He is still aboard. Miss Cable can get off when Mr Mariner gets off.’

  ‘Ah, but he isn’t getting off.’

  ‘Che?’

  ‘No, indeed Mr Verdi, I thought you realised. Captain Mariner is coming with us too.’

  19

  As they came back down St George’s Channel between Wales and the east coast of Ireland, the wind behind them began to moderate, so that when they turned south-west off Carnsore Point at midnight it was into quiet water. Atlantic swells, born a thousand miles further still south-west, came in regular series under her bow but the seesaw motion of her pitching was gentle enough. The coast of Ireland swept past, visible only as occasional points of light at first, but then emerging with the dawn, so green after the long rains that it seemed to glow even in the overcast. The Saltee Islands. Hook Head, guarding Waterford harbour. Cork.

  ‘The harbour there used to
be called Queenstown, but they changed it,’ said John to Richard as they watched from the starboard bridge wing. They had not gone into the harbour itself, but were waiting off Crosshaven for the oiling lighter to come out to them as arranged. The Swansea ferry came out first, all white upper works and passengers waving, in holiday mood, even on a dull December morning. The oiler was just behind it and it was soon snugged up beside them as they filled their bunkers for the long journey to Sept Isles, the better part of two and a half thousand miles distant.

  The bustle of the brief contact was enough to bring everyone topsides as the oiling team got to work under Cesar’s watchful eye. Niccolo remained in the watchkeeper’s chair, leg raised. Marco had just relieved him, agonisingly aware that there were now two captains aboard and both of them were just outside the bridge wing door. Right now they were keeping an eye on the crew lining the foredeck rails around the pipe which was pumping the oil aboard beneath the crane swinging up the supplies. Salah joined his old friends on the bridge wing and Fatima soon followed him. Asha and Ann were not long in coming up either and so the end rail got quite crowded.

  ‘It’s your last chance too,’ said John to Ann. ‘As Verdi said, you were supposed to get off at Liverpool. Haven’t you got a life to get back to?’

  Ann gave a negative flick of her head in reply. ‘I’m supposed to keep an eye on that stuff down there.’ She gestured down the length of the ship. ‘If you’d unloaded at Liverpool, I’d have written a report. Now it’ll be a fully-fledged article; maybe more. I’ll see what I can scare up on the far side of the pond. We need a combination of accurate fact and wide publicity on this one. It’s the sort of thing that happens too often and it shouldn’t be happening at all.’ She looked at them all and smiled wryly. ‘And of course I’m really here to make sure you don’t just dump it over the side one dark night, or scuttle her altogether.’

  Richard laughed humourlessly. ‘I know it’s been done,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And all too often,’ said John. ‘Mind you, if we are going to pull the plug on her, we’d better do it soon or we’ll have a bloody long swim home.’

  ‘Hello, Napoli!’ came a call from below. The lighter had finished her business and her captain let her drift back a little until his bridge was just below the freighter’s. ‘That’s you filled and vittled.’ The soft brogue made almost no distinction between the ‘f’ and the ‘v’, poignantly reminding John of his childhood holidays. ‘Where are you bound?’

  ‘Sept Isles, Quebec,’ called back John.

  ‘And aren’t you the brave boys to be running that a’way.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Sure and isn’t there a terrible storm coming down out of Hudson’s Bay.’

  ‘That’ll either pass far north of us or blow itself out long before we get anywhere near it,’ countered John.

  ‘Indeed it will, indeed it will. But they say there’s another one behind it that makes it look like a dead calm.’

  The lighter captain seemed content to leave the conversation there but John was not. He looked across at Salah and Fatima standing beside Richard. The western clothes he had brought aboard for them yesterday made them look different. For once Salah was wearing a sports jacket and slacks, though he would be changing back into his bosun’s overall soon. Fatima also was wearing slacks—it would be a while before she wore a skirt again, he reckoned. Even so, the clothes emphasised the new start they were trying to make. It was hard to believe that less than two days ago, less than a hundred miles from here, the three of them had nearly been blown to kingdom come. And no one had said a thing about it. Oh, they had talked to Richard and he had discussed it with Asha, but there had been no news reports on the radio or the television; nothing in the papers. Nobody beyond Napoli seemed to know or care. ‘I hear there was a big fire up in Wexford a couple of nights ago,’ he called down to the Irish captain.

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘Up beyond Enniscorthy. Near the coast. A bomb, I think. In an old house.’

  ‘Ah. Blackwater Hall. No, that was no bomb. Sure, who’d want to blow up an old place the likes of that? T’was just the gas, they say, and t’was a fox or something set it off.’

  *

  By the end of lunchtime the Old Head of Kinsale was visible from the bridge. John and Richard were back up there again. It was a strange, do-nothing time; they had made another departure and yet had not quite started on the last leg of their voyage.

  John and Richard had worked together on and off for years, but had shared the bridge only once with John as captain and Richard as senior captain. On Napoli, Richard deferred to John. He was not in command here and was anxious not to interfere with the way John wanted to run his ship. Richard’s reasons for coming were complex, but nowhere among them was there any distrust of his most experienced captain and friend. He had always believed in leading from the front and if any man or woman from Crewfinders found themselves in trouble, then they knew they would find Richard there beside them. Had he been available when Salah’s original cry for help arrived, instead of indulging Robin in the bridal suite of that Windsor hotel, then he would probably have come himself in any case.

  He hated to be away from Robin, especially at the moment, and he didn’t like being away from his desk at Heritage Mariner, but following Napoli’s course from disaster to disaster during the weeks of her voyage so far, he had felt a nagging worry, not least about how to get Salah and Fatima safely off the ship. Now returning them to the Middle East seemed impossible. If they were going to be handed to any authorities, then the Canadian or American would be the best. Neither of them had been directly implicated in any act of murder or sabotage, as far as he knew, and there were no warrants outstanding against them which would cause automatic extradition. America might be a good place for them. And he had lawyers in New York who would make cases which would last for years if necessary. He had well over a week to try and think of anything else that might be done. In the meantime, Salah and Fatima were trapped aboard. And while her sister was there, Asha would not leave. And while Asha was there, John would stay, at the mercy of CZP and Disposoco.

  Richard trusted neither organisation. Of CZP he knew little, and his myriad contacts in shipping had been unable to enlighten him. They seemed to be a faceless company quietly building a fleet of old, self-reliant freighters. Go anywhere, do anything ships. He found the way they recruited, contracted and looked after their men particularly disturbing. They obviously started out with the assumption that everything would go wrong and they made sure they had a shady edge over everyone involved. Working for them must be like working for the Mafia, he supposed. And if CZP were bad, Disposoco were worse. Here was a company that secretly purchased great tracts of desert land specifically so that they could bury waste products no one else would handle. It was ‘out of sight and out of mind’ as far as they were concerned. And, when babies began to be born deformed, it still needed the direct intervention of the PLO to make them take any responsibility or action. And that action had not been impressive either.

  As for the ship’s company, Niccolo and Cesar both appeared to be good officers, but he knew nothing of their qualities as men. He was not overly impressed with El Jefe in the engine room, and by and large the rest of the crew left a lot to be desired. He had no knowledge of the late Captain Fittipaldi, but he suspected that if his command had run the same course as John’s had, Napoli would never have got out of the Mediterranean. Or, if she had, she would have been en route for Nigeria, as John had cynically suggested, simply to dump the waste on a beach somewhere and slip away into the night. Richard also wondered about the bona fides of the nameless company in Sept Isles and he hoped John had thought to put the explosives Faure and his scientists had brought aboard safely under lock and key.

  *

  As the dull afternoon began to darken towards evening, they seesawed on over the groundswell past the increasingly craggy coast familiar to John from his forays in the Fastnet, that
great yacht race which is the climax of Cowes Week. Beyond the great thrust of the Old Head came Courtmacsherry Bay and, beyond that, Galley Head. Cliff followed cliff as the rugged jaw of Ireland squared itself against the great Atlantic blows. The Stags, Toe Head, Kedge Island. Dark mountains gathering themselves grimly into the overcast behind Skibbereen, and Baltimore. Then the view deepened, stretching away behind Clear Island to the first lights of Schull on the thrust of Mizen Head to the north and, almost indistinguishable, the Caha Mountains beyond, reaching out towards Dursey Head. Then the black shoulder of Cape Clear cut it all off and the darkness came with it as they made for the hopeful gleam of the Fastnet Light.

  John and Richard were on the bridge again as they butted past Fastnet and carried on away, out to sea. John felt a brief sense of worry, as though he were doing something badly wrong by failing to order the helm hard over. Just for a moment, he felt a shiver of unease as they went on out into the gathering darkness instead of safely back to the Isle of Wight. He walked forward to check the course from Fastnet to their destination. They would be following the logical, usual route of any ship going so far across the open ocean: Great Circle to the Corner at 42N;47W, then choosing their best course in past Cape Race, between Cape Ray on Newfoundland and Cape North on Nova Scotia.

  He was, perhaps, a little psychic tonight—fey, his mother would have called it—for there was something about their new course that he found disturbing as well.

  Richard noticed the tiny shudder he gave. ‘What is it, John?’

  ‘I haven’t done this often, but once in a while when I lay in the Great Circle from Fastnet to the Corner, I can’t help thinking of poor old Captain E. J. Smith doing the same.’

  Richard was miles away—he only half heard: ‘Captain Smith? Don’t think I’ve met him.’