The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  “I don’t know what happened, Bill. Our radar reflector was up.”

  “What did they say?” Kline persisted.

  Hardin said, “It didn’t work that way, Bill. They didn’t stop. I was in the water for four days.”

  “What? They just ran right over you and kept going?”

  “Right. Now listen, I want you to bring charges against them.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I want to get whoever’s responsible. Can you be here tomorrow? ”

  “I can’t, Pete. I got a client subpoenaed to Washington. I gotta go with her. Besides, you need a local guy. I’ll line up my corresponding English solicitor. Top guy. Where are you?”

  Hardin told him.

  “Hospital? You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “And it happened in British waters?”

  “No,” said Hardin. “High seas.”

  “Oh . . . Well. My guy’ll be there tomorrow for sure. I’ll contact State, and I’ll have American Express transfer funds. You need anything else?”

  “Clothes.”

  “Sure. I’ll go over to your place right now.” At the mention of their apartment, Hardin thought of Carolyn’s clothes and how her closets held her fragrance. Kline’s voice broke. “Is there any chance?”

  “I’m still hoping,” said Hardin. “But . . .”

  After a while, Kline said, “I’ll take care of things here.”

  Hardin hung up, sick with grief. He had made her death real by telling Kline. Now the lawyer would carry the news to her family. As he lay back with his hand on the telephone, a frightening wave of nausea swept through him. He waited for the violent vomiting that would indicate he had sustained damage to the medulla oblongata, the brain stem. Instead, he slept.

  The next day Columbia Presbyterian, Carolyn’s hospital, called for confirmation. She had taken a leave from her staff position, and their Atlantic crossing had been the start of what was supposed to be a long, lazy four months before she reported back to work.

  Then a young woman from the American Embassy arrived on the London train with a temporary passport, a British visa, and official solicitude. She seemed awed by him, as if she were meeting a character in a television drama, until he said that he wanted embassy help in pressing charges against the owners of LEVIATHAN. She patted the blanket and said, ritualistically, “First you have to get better.”

  She was followed by a couple of London reporters who telephoned repeatedly after failing to insist their way past Dr. Akanke in person. Hardin was tiring and, thinking the press might help, mentioned a few details before Dr. Akanke interrupted him with the news that Carolyn’s father had come.

  Ira Jacobs was a trim, short man in his sixties, expensively dressed, but ill at ease with his Protestant son-in-law who seemed to achieve so much with baffling ease. Carolyn had inherited his dark eyes and small hands, and seeing him amplified Hardin’s pain.

  Jacobs looked on the edge of collapse. Grief had deepened his jowl lines, blackened the pockets under his eyes. Carolyn’s mother, he reported, was under sedation and couldn’t travel. He stood stiffly by the bed, refusing a chair, and said he wanted to know what had happened.

  Hardin described their last moments together.

  Jacobs sobbed. Tears dripped from his cheeks. He raised his eyes accusingly. “Why didn’t you watch out?”

  “We were watching. It came out of a cloud bank.”

  “Why did you sail in clouds?”

  “We didn’t choose to.”

  “It was stupid. You took my daughter.”

  “Ira,” Hardin pleaded.

  “What a crazy thing, sailing the ocean. She was a brilliant physician. She was so beautiful. She had everything to live for. You didn’t even leave me her body.”

  Hardin forced himself to meet her father’s anguished gaze. He reached for his hand. Jacobs jerked it back. “Why did you drag her along?”

  “We loved each other, Ira. We sailed together. It was part of our lives. Our marriage.”

  Jacobs wrung his hands. “She didn’t even leave children.”

  “That was the choice we made. We were happy.”

  “All you did was play. She was a serious person before you got her.” He started out the door, then whirled back, his face contorted. “I always hoped that marriage wouldn’t last. God, I was right! She would still be alive if it hadn’t.”

  The black wall came for him that night, oozing like tar, and he knew if it caught him it would smother him, fill his nose and throat and trickle down his windpipe into his lungs. He knew he was dreaming. But when Dr. Akanke shook him awake, he clung to her, shaking with terror.

  The solicitor’s name was Geoffrey Norton. He was younger than Hardin, pleasantly dressed in a sport jacket, blue shirt, and bright tie, and he said he would do everything he could to serve him. He asked Hardin, apologetically, to tell him exactly what had happened to him, and listened intently.

  When he had finished, Hardin said, “It was damn close to murder, pure and simple. I want the captain and crew of that ship brought to justice.”

  “Why?” asked Norton. He made it sound like a point of information, not a challenge.

  In waking moments, Hardin had thought of that. He said, “I want to put other captains and crews on notice that they’ve got to do whatever’s necessary to look out for small boats. This isn’t the first rundown of a private boat, but this time they hit the wrong man.”

  A smile wandered across Norton’s mouth. “That simplifies matters, doesn’t it?”

  “If that doesn’t work for you,” Hardin said briskly, “I’ll get another lawyer.”

  “I have no difficulty with your motive,” said Norton. “The law is largely an orderly process of redress.”

  “All right, what do we do now?”

  “I’ve already discussed this with an Admiralty solicitor—a specialist in maritime law. He explained the procedures one would follow, and he helped me isolate LEVIATHAN’s owners.”

  “What do you mean isolate?”

  “When you collided, LEVIATHAN was under short-term charter to CPF–French Petroleum. The ship is registered in Liberia, owned by a Luxembourg consortium consisting of British, American, Arab, and Swiss investors, and managed by a Liberian shipping company called ULCC Ltd. Ultra Large Crude Carriers Limited. They are a fairly new company, pioneering in bigger and better ships. They have an office in London.”

  “I don’t care who owns it.”

  “We will state our claim to ULCC Ltd.,” Norton replied.

  “Why don’t we go right to court? Press charges?”

  “It’s not done that way. LEVIATHAN’s management company will check our claim against the log and any report by the ship’s master.”

  “The captain isn’t going to report it if he didn’t stop.”

  “Probably not,” Norton agreed. “But according to my sources, the company will conduct a scrupulous investigation.”

  “Fine. What if no one saw it happen?”

  “Could another boat or ship have witnessed the collision?”

  “We were alone.”

  “I’m in touch with the RAF unit that searched for your wife after you were found. Thus far, we’ve no reports of wreckage.”

  “It’s been six days,” said Hardin. “Besides, Siren was fiberglass. She would have sunk like a stone.”

  “Yes, of course. If ULCC Ltd. denies liability, we will have to refer the matter to the Admiralty solicitors. They would inform LEVIATHAN’s company of our intention to pursue the matter. They in turn would refer it to their legal department and notify Lloyd’s, their insurer. We would attempt to negotiate a settlement. If that failed, we could petition to sue in the Admiralty. As you can imagine, it would begin to become expensive.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Hardin. “I don’t want to sue. I want the captain punished.”

  Norton laid his note pad on the table beside Hardin’s bed. He crossed his legs and folded his hands. “Unfortunat
ely, as the incident occurred in international waters, the government has no authority to prosecute.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “You can sue the ship’s owners.”

  “They weren’t running the ship.”

  “You’ll never bring the captain to an English court.”

  “I want those who were directly responsible for my wife’s death.”

  Norton looked out the window. Hardin watched his blue eyes flick from side to side as if he were reading old briefs imprinted on his brain. He turned back to him with a smile.

  “We could sue the ship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Proceed in rem. Arrest it.”

  “What do you mean, arrest it?”

  “It’s an old custom. But quite valid. An Admiralty marshal would nail a writ to her mast, arresting her to be held for trial.”

  “Stop the ship?”

  “Actually, he’d use cellotape. It’s difficult getting a nail through a metal mast.”

  “Stop the ship?” Hardin repeated, intrigued by the idea of such direct and physical action.

  “Until the owners posted bail. Then, of course—”

  “Oh.” He was disappointed. “They’d put up money and go.”

  “However,” said Norton, “this is all rather speculative at present. We would have to persuade the Admiralty court of the merits of our case.” He went on uneasily. “The burden of proof will be on you.”

  “My wife is dead,” said Hardin. “My boat sunk. They found me on the beach.”

  “That is not proof.”

  “Are you saying that I don’t have a case unless LEVIATHAN’s crew admits they ran me down?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  After Norton left, Hardin realized what had happened. The lawyer had come as a favor to Bill Kline even though he knew that he couldn’t help him, and had courteously walked him through the facts until he saw the truth.

  When the black came again, it was too real to be a dream. He escaped, thankful for whatever instinct it was that enabled him to differentiate between nightmare and reality.

  A police patrol found him limping barefoot on a dark road and returned him to the hospital.

  “Good morning,” said Dr. Akanke.

  She shone a light in his eyes and took his pulse.

  “You’re looking much improved.”

  Hardin nodded. His body felt like one he remembered.

  “Do you know you’ve slept twice around the clock?”

  Hardin shrugged.

  “We were beginning to consider taxidermy.”

  Hardin looked from the window to her face. She had not cracked a smile. Even her brown eyes were fathomless. She inserted an electronic thermometer between his lips. It looked like an ordinary glass-and-mercury thermometer, but it was made of aluminum, and instead of calibrations on the side, it had a tiny LED readout the size of a thumbnail.

  Hardin turned his head so she couldn’t see him click his teeth on the metal probe.

  Her eyes widened when she removed it from his mouth. “What’s the matter?” Hardin asked.

  “You have a temperature of one hundred and eight degrees.”

  “I feel kind of warm.”

  She pressed her hand to his forehead and her shoulders drooped with relief. “You’re all right. It must be broken.”

  “Try it again,” said Hardin.

  She reset the probe and put it in his mouth. Hardin handed it back in a moment.

  “Ninety-nine. Much better. There’s still a little fever.” She regarded the thermometer dubiously. “Odd. It’s never broken before.”

  Hardin took it back, placed it in his mouth, and clicked his teeth.

  “Now it says a hundred and seven.” She laughed, tentatively. “You made it do that.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I designed it.”

  “You did? They’re very dear. You must be frightfully rich.”

  “This is an early model; pediatricians complained about bad readings. I found out it was susceptible to chewing. Some of them had a soldering defect. The new ones will give you point-oh-one accuracy on a hungry tiger.”

  “Interesting,” said Dr. Akanke. “I suspected you had jaw injuries.”

  “Jaw? My jaw’s fine.”

  “Apparently so. You just smiled.”

  Hardin looked away.

  “It’s not wrong to forget your grief, Dr. Hardin.”

  “Thank you,” he said, dismissing her.

  She replied, firmly, “I want you to get up today.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I want you up and I want you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “My rounds.”

  “I don’t practice anymore; I make instruments.”

  “I’m recently graduated, Dr. Hardin. I’d like some advice. There’s a woman in the village.”

  “I don’t know if I feel up to it.”

  “Sit in the garden this morning. We’ll see how you feel in the afternoon.”

  Hardin stayed two days in the garden, ignoring the magnificent view of the Cornish coast, gazing vacantly at the sea beyond. The hospital was atop a hill that overlooked the Fowey harbor, a slender deep-water anchorage, well protected because its mouth, a slash in the high coast cliffs, offered a meager entrance for the Channel’s wind and waves.

  The town of Fowey, a mix of white and pastel houses, clung to the steep shore on the west side of the harbor. A quarter mile across the water on the east slope was the tiny village of Polruan. Behind the hospital, farms spread north from the sea, draping the land in green and plowed-brown checks.

  Gradually, prodded by Dr. Akanke, Hardin lowered his bleak gaze from the sea and focused on the life around him. He noticed a small ferry crisscrossed the harbor every five minutes between Fowey and Polruan. It was little more than a motorized rowboat. People boarded from sloping stone quays.

  Dozens of sailing hulls rode moorings in the blue water. Ketches, old yawls, and gleaming new sloops shifted like clock hands with the turning tide, pointing north, then south, then north again. Now and then a small freighter entered the harbor and steamed a half mile inland to a gray pier to load, Dr. Akanke explained, clay from Cornish mines for Dutch potters.

  He consented to ride along on her rounds. They drove north down the hills to a car ferry that crossed the River Fowey several miles up from the harbor, then took a narrow hedge-lined road to an isolated farmhouse. Hardin waited in the Rover 2000 with the windows rolled down, breathing the earthy spring odors. They stopped at several more houses, and each time when Hardin declined to go in with her, she did not push it.

  The farmyards were pretty, the houses well kept, but the tall hedgerows lining the narrow roads made him feel claustrophobic. They topped a rise and the sea was suddenly beneath them, glaring in the noon sun like shattered mirrors. She pulled off the road at the edge of the cliffs and got out of the car. Hardin followed and they walked a trodden earth path that meandered toward the rim of the cliff.

  “Sheep?” he asked.

  “Tourists.” She picked up a cigarette wrapper.

  He squinted at the water polishing the black rocks far below and thought of Carolyn in the cold sand at the bottom of the ocean, or drifting in her life jacket, long dead, prey to the birds. He wrenched his mind from that.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dr. Akanke.

  “I was thinking of my wife.”

  “I’m sure she felt nothing. It’s a miracle that you survived.”

  Why me? he wondered. And what had she felt? What pain and fear? They walked silently while he grappled with his imagination.

  Dr. Akanke intervened. “Isn’t this beautiful country?”

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Nigeria.”

  In that single word, her voice wasn’t British. The name rolled like proud music from her tongue.

  “You speak like an Englishwoman.
”

  “I’ve been at school here since I was a teenager.”

  “Do you ever consider going back to Nigeria?”

  “I leave for Lagos within the month.” Shielding her eyes with her dark, graceful hands, she looked out at the sea. “Your wife was a doctor.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Her father told me.”

  Returning from his first long solitary walk, Hardin came in the front door of the hospital. A middle-aged Englishwoman in a plain dress jumped to her feet with an expression of relief. Then her face fell.

  “Yes?” asked Hardin, drawn to her grief-stricken appearance. A wet, gurgling cough sounded behind a closed door.

  She shook her head, biting her lips. “I thought you were my son. He’s coming from Plymouth.” Her voice broke and she sat in the armchair behind her.

  Hardin knelt beside her. “Can I help?”

  The coughing started again. The woman cocked her head and listened intently as the spasm went on and on, rising to a ripping, rasping noise that hurt to hear. When it finally stopped, her tensed body sagged with relief.

  “My husband. Throat cancer. So fast,” she said wonderingly. “He was healthy two days ago and the doctor says he’ll die by night. . . . The boy is coming from Plymouth.”

  Hardin nodded. Dr. Akanke had mentioned the case yesterday.

  “I didn’t want to call at first because he has examinations, but it will be over soon.” She looked exhausted, her round face pasty white. The coughing resumed. “It must hurt him so. I want him to die.”

  “I know,” said Hardin, taking her hand.

  “It’s not wrong.”

  “No.”

  And suddenly he was crying, sobbing his anguish against this stranger’s breast. Her son, a handsome university student, found them there. He thanked Hardin for comforting his mother.

  4

  The balmy May weather Hardin had enjoyed in Cornwall gave way to chilly spring rain in London, and after a day of fruitless shuttling between the British Admiralty and the American Embassy, cold fury blasted the last remnants of depression from his mind.

  Fed up with the runaround, he telephoned Bill Kline in New York. Kline, unable to convince Hardin of the futility of legal recourse, called friends in Washington; and the next day whoever weighed power at the embassy decided that Peter Hardin deserved the personal attention of an assistant chargé d’affaires named John Cave, a bored young man who wore a Links Club necktie and occupied a handsome office with a view of the garden.