The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘God, Richard, she’s done for us too,’ he whispered.

  And the whisper carried, because all the other noise had stopped. An absolute silence seemed to claim them. Even the water coming out of the stairwell behind them was welling up silently.

  John looked at Fatima and she looked enough like his beloved Asha almost to break his heart. ‘We’re dead,’ he whispered. ‘There’s no way out. No way.’

  The engine exploded then. It had built to such a pitch of heat spinning the broken shaft with no resistance whatsoever, that the cold water of the ocean depths simply made it shatter like glass. Glass which had contained many thousands of pounds of pressure. Richard’s assessment of what this inevitable moment would bring proved, for once, inaccurate. The force released by the explosion did not just go upwards, towards the surface. It went out in a sphere of destruction as well, tearing the whole keel off the ship from the coffer dam behind the last hold to the hole where the propeller had been. It bent out the sides of the ship even against the gathering forces of ocean pressure. And because its joints had been weakened by the mountain of water last night and were now under added strain because of the air trapped within it, it blew the bridge house off.

  For the three on the bridge itself, the sensation was what dice must experience during an energetic game. When the wild movement stopped, John found himself flattened against the glass of the forward corridor wall, looking dazedly down. The deck was falling away from him and he simply could not credit what was happening. The water was so clear. The colours were so beautiful. With his face pressed against the glass while the shallowest skim of water flowed across it, he watched the main deck of his lost command fall slowly downwards. It wasn’t really green any more, he noticed its colour redefined by the thickening water. The twisted cranes down the middle of it waved at him. Behind them opened a gape in the deck, a crater as though there had been a tooth there, recently drawn. And behind that horrendous hole, he saw the gantry of the after gallows and the poop where Asha and he had loved to stand.

  Then so near as to make him shout aloud, Napoli’s great funnel fell past and tumbled after the rest of the ship with a kind of balletic grace.

  His ears popped.

  With his shout, the magic of the moment broke. The three of them were no longer in the grip of that timeless time which had held them, like flies in amber, eternal. Dead. Instead they returned to the panicked, untidy, agonising, desperate scramble for life. The water continued to thunder into the bridgehouse as the air billowed out. But the physics which had begun with the explosion of the engine still held them relentlessly in their grip. The air could not escape fast enough to stop the wreck of the bridgehouse from following its new course. The air that had been trapped in the rooms and passageways, pressurised by the force of the deep water seemed extra-buoyant. The outside walls of the square construct were of metal, but most of the internal ones were of wood. Quite apart from the three people trapped within it, there was much in the bridgehouse that wanted to float. And float it did, for a while at least. As the hull of Napoli slid down into the dark, her entire deckhouse leaped back up towards the light.

  The three on the bridge held onto each other like children fighting a nightmare. They screamed as their eardrums flexed in the explosive lessening of the pressure.

  The screaming allowed the high-pressure air to escape from their lungs. The water tried to overcome them but the friendly air remained. The coldness of the ocean tried to take them but their vital warmth survived. Moment after moment after moment it went on, until with a great, overpowering roar, as though of joy and understandable pride, the bridgehouse burst out of the water altogether and seemed to leap up into the air halfway between the lifeboat and Rainbow Warrior’s helicopter.

  If you enjoyed The Leper Ship you might be interested in The Coffin Ship by Peter Tonkin, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Coffin Ship by Peter Tonkin

  Prologue

  By a coincidence neither man would ever be aware of, they were both in the same place, doing the same thing at exactly the same time a week before it all really started, as though they were bound by something more elegant than the rough chains of circumstance already tightening around them.

  The tall Englishman sat in the window corner of the first class compartment watching the familiar countryside blur by with tired, almost dead, eyes. On his lap lay a paperback novel, open but unread. Opposite sat four Japanese, dividing their intelligent, excited scrutiny between England's southern scenery and this huge native; far more awed by the man than the moorlands.

  Three of the Japanese - two men and a woman - were tourists from a remote province and were more used to Westerners on television than in the flesh. The fourth, a second woman in her early twenties, was a student at London University supplementing her grant by acting as a guide. They spoke animatedly in Japanese, just loud enough to be audible above the rhythmic clatter of the train.

  'Are all Englishmen so tall?'

  'No. This one is taller than most.'

  'And his bones stretch his skin - one can almost see the skull beneath his face ...'

  'It may be that he is tired. He is certainly thin for his age and height. He seems tired ...'

  'But look at his eyes! Like a summer sky. Do all barbarians have such ...'

  'Many have pale eyes but few have eyes of such a colour. I believe, however, it would be incorrect to call this man a barbarian. Observe. He is reading a work by one of the masters of Japanese literature. In translation to be sure. However ...'

  'Oh! A Japanese novel! Pray, you who can read English so well, tell us which novel it is?'

  'It is the work by Yukio Mishima. It is called The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea ... Oh!'

  The Englishman did not hear the conversation or the horrified exclamation. Utterly unaware of the shocked faces opposite, he was ripping the book to pieces, from top to bottom along the spine. Then he stood, his actions ugly, abrupt, violent. He opened the carriage window and hurled the fluttering pages away.

  Every once in a while Richard Mariner would come south to Rowena's grave, his actions dictated by something deeper than time. It would never be when it was convenient, or on the anniversary of their meeting, of their marriage, or of her death. He would suddenly find himself prey to nightmares. In his dreams, great ships would blow apart. Then sleep itself would become a dream. He would become moody and violent. Unable to concentrate. Unable to work. Surrounded by ghosts wherever he was. Until at last he would find himself travelling south. South and west from London. Down to the graveyard at Land's End.

  If he had suspected half the trouble it was going to cause him, he would have shoved her box into the ground very much nearer to London, no matter what the caprices of her morbid childish dreams. It had been empty - the casket - so what did it matter where it lay? Except that a sense of the fitness of things had dictated that the coffin should lie here, no matter where the body was.

  Not, in fact, that the body was anywhere. Atoms, molecules, shreds and splinters spread over half the Channel. Mixed in with forty others and his last command, in pieces too small to see. So only an empty coffin lay here under her headstone lovingly - lyingly - inscribed in the tiny graveyard overlooking the Western Approaches on the cliff top at Land's End where England, indeed, ended, far out in the Atlantic.

  Richard Mariner stood at the foot of his wife's empty grave, therefore, two hours after he had destroyed the book with that morbidly accurate title, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. It was six o'clock, British Summer Time, on the evening of 8th July and he was thinking of all that he had lost.

  No! he thought to himself. Not lost! All that you took from me, Rowena Heritage. From me and from all the rest of us. All that I'm going to get back. When I can and how I can. Whatever the cost.

  His ice-blue eyes looked away over the green water. West towards the horizon.

  The big black Cadillac turned off the blacktop on to a sandy Cape
Cod lane. The driver knew where he was going. In the back, neither the Italian nor the Greek said anything. It had been a long trip. A business trip, the Italian had said, and the first hour or two had passed in heated discussion, then in acrimony and finally almost in threats. There had been a stormy silence since then.

  At last the Cadillac turned off the lane into a small parking lot and stopped. The Italian got out, knowing where they were and why they were here. The Greek followed silently, watchfully. The lot backed on to a low stone wall. Beyond that, a squat church and beyond that, a graveyard. Then the sea.

  An early afternoon calm held the place silent, deserted even by the sea wind. The Italian looked overdressed in his black overcoat. The Greek took off his jacket and laid it on the dry-stone wall as he followed the other through the broken gate and into the graveyard itself.

  'All this way to visit a graveyard?' The Greek's body was square and hard under the white cotton shirt. His arms stuck out of the short sleeves, corded with muscle. 'What is this, Mr Diavo?'

  The Italian turned and smiled. 'I wished to make a point.

  That is all. To give you a gift. To cement our partnership.' It had been about the 'partnership' that they had quarrelled. The idea had been the Greek's. The inspiration, the research, the selection, the recruitment: the creation of the plan.

  But the investment, it now transpired, had been the Italian's. The money the Greek had borrowed to supplement his own - the friends with which he had shared his vision, a little, secret, part for each one of them in return for a little price - everything had led back to Mr Diavo. The Greek was like a businessman thinking he had many small investors; finding they had all been bought out by one corporate raider. And so now, instead of many partners each ignorant of the whole plan, he now had one powerful partner who knew it all. Instead of twenty modest financiers each on a fixed - minuscule - return, he now found himself funded by one Company - who wished to dictate terms.

  'I paid for the tanker myself,' blustered the Greek. 'Apart from the loan we expedited for the actual running costs,' observed Diavo icily. 'Supertankers may no longer be so expensive, especially when they have been rusting at anchor for years, but running them will never be cheap. And who sent this tanker to Lisbon for refitting? Who got her registered a hundred per cent at A1 Lloyd's of London? Insured for ten times her actual worth? Who completed your negotiations for the cargo of Iranian oil she will load at Kharg Island next week? Who finalised the legal cover, the contract with the Abu Oil Company to transport it from the Gulf to the refineries at Europoort in Rotterdam?'

  'I did most of that ...'

  'Started most of that! Who has made the way so smooth? Every inch of the way as far as it goes? Who finished it all so swiftly and efficiently and who has shaken hands on it all already?'

  'You ...' This was going too fast for the Greek ship owner. Diavo had such a grasp of the plan, of the whole thing. It was awesome. He had been expecting to fix up the rest of it himself. So they had contacts even there ...

  'We!' Diavo put the word in the silence like a foot in a door. 'All the way down the line!' His voice lost some of its ice. 'Your plan is so simple. The profits are so vast. There is room for all of us. The tanker is yours: you take the hull. The oil is ours: we take that ...'

  'No!'

  '...and pay you a finder's fee. Five per cent. It diminishes your risks. And you can still make millions. Millions!' The final word was hissed out.

  Then silence.

  It seemed there was no more to be said. The Greek bunched his right fist and drove it into his left palm. It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse even now. It had cost too much in money, time and lives - yes, lives - to get this far!

  The Italian - Diavo was not his real name - saw the ship owner gather himself for refusal and he waited. He had one last card to play and it must be timed to perfection. How much easier it would have been if the Greek had been more tractable. The man's idea was brilliant but too soft. Like the man himself - ruthless but not sufficiently deadly. To have thought of it all but then to have gone to such lengths to ensure ...

  Diavo's lips twisted. He would play the card now and bring this blustering Greek to heel. But it was too early yet to tell him about their fail-safe alternative. And in any case, too many survivors would only look suspicious.

  'And, as a gesture of our own good faith, let me show you what we have bought for you. A gift which you and your family will all appreciate in time!'

  Diavo's sudden bonhomie threw the Greek out of his stride. Greed flashed in his mind like the side of a golden fish in a deep, dark pool. The Italian's arm went round his shoulder propelling him towards the back wall of the graveyard. The Greek's eyes were busy far beyond this. On the sand there was nothing ...On the water! His greedy eyes peered out to sea. The ocean ... Nothing ...

  'Here!' The Italian's soft voice brought the Greek's gaze back from the far horizons. There at his feet lay a hole in the ground. At its far end, a plain marble stone. Beside it, another. Then another. And another.

  On the gravestones were the names of himself, his wife and his daughters.

  He turned away, defeated. All thought of refusal was gone. He stood by the low wall, his mind racing feverishly, working out with all his greedy wit how even now to extract the best deal.

  Behind them, the driver called, 'It's one o' clock, Mr Diavo. You told me to tell you.’

  The Greek glanced down at his watch, then up again and away, mind racing, lips parted, gold tooth gleaming. Hard brown eyes looking away over the gold-green water. East towards the horizon.

  And so it was, though neither of them knew it, that the Owner and the man who would be his Captain each stood in a graveyard at 16.00 hrs Greenwich Mean Time, on 8th July, looking out to sea. Each looking almost directly into the other's eyes, with only the Atlantic between them.

  GULF

  Chapter One

  11 p.m., Gulf local time, 15th July. The VLCC Prometheus lay at anchor off Kharg Island, and nothing at all seemed wrong.

  She lay deep in the black water, fully laden with 250,000 tons of Gulf Light Crude, like a battery waiting to be connected; charged with enough dormant energy to light New York when released. To light New York or destroy Hiroshima. But all that massive energy lay caged in the three cathedral-sized tanks, held still by baffles of steel stretching like unfinished walls from side to side, from top to bottom of the huge chambers. Its volatile elements, capable of exploding at the merest spark, lay smothered by the inert gases pumped into the ullage between the surface of the liquid and the roofs of the tanks.

  She lay dark and quiet, lit only by the lights denoting Ship At Anchor and brightness on the bridge; giving off only the gentle hum of the generators necessary to keep those lights burning. The bulk of her only visible because the absolute blackness of sea and sky were pierced here and there by the silver tracers of stars. A faint breeze set the waves to dancing so that ghostly shafts of the timeless starlight defined occasionally the lines of the peaceful ship.

  Manoj Kanwar, Third Mate, who held the watch, should have been on the bridge, not running through deserted corridors covered with sweat and gasping with fear. If the Captain caught him! His stomach churned. The Captain was a man perpetually enraged. Sober he was terrifying - drunk he was scarcely sane. But Manoj had to get to Nicoli with the news. That was the most important thing. Nicoli would know what to do. If he didn't, they were all as good as dead.

  The thick soles of Kanwar's desert boots screamed quietly on the linoleum decking. The rasping of his breath filled the still air. He reached the First Mate's door and thundered on it with his fist. Then, scared by all the noise he was making, he knocked once more, quietly.

  There was a distant groan as Nicoli came awake. A wash of light over Kanwar's boots from under the door. Unable to wait any longer, the young Indian turned the handle and all but fell in. Nicoli was on the point of opening the door and so they found themselves standing chest-to-chest: a short, wiry, dusky boy and
a tall, bullish Greek with wise blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair.

  'It's Gallaher,' wheezed Kanwar. 'He says there's a bomb on board.'

  Gallaher gazed at the pair of them with his disconcerting eyes. 'Of course there is,' he slurred. 'Now would I be telling lies?'

  He was a small Irishman, red-headed and covered with freckles. His face and arms were terribly marked with scars, overlain with sunburn where he had fallen into a drunken stupor yesterday, sitting on the fo'c'sle head unprotected from the sun. So fair were his brows and lashes that his pale eyes looked naked. His once lean body was running to fat. Only when he was totally drunk did his hands stop shaking and he screamed in his sleep for Maureen who was dead.

  Nicoli knew nothing of Gallaher, ship's electrician, and wanted to know nothing. But he knew the truth when he heard it, and he acutely suspected why the bored, drunken Irishman had told Kanwar his secret - to see the terror in the boy's soft, dark eyes.

  'Where?' he demanded.

  Gallaher leered up at him, fuddled with whisky and sun­ stroke. A shadow moved in the depths of those naked eyes. What was it? Fear. 'They expected me to keep it here,' said the Irishman. 'Sleep with it under me bunk till it was time. Not me! Never again! Not for any amount of money. Been blown up before! Never again! You take it from me, old Nicoli, once is enough ... Under me bunk! I should fuggin' think so!'