The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  “What if none of them were true?”

  “Oh they were true, all right. He was too comfortable with himself—and with me—to be a man who had to make up a life. . . . I just wish I had seen him in the midst of triumph. He’d already won. I wasn’t born in time to see him swagger down a gangway with a new promotion, or step out of a storm in streaming oilskins. I think I’m getting a little drunk and romantic.”

  “I saw mine step in dripping blood. Before the civil war. A mob attacked my mother because she was Ibo. He killed two men with a ceremonial sword, but now he sits at a big desk like any other busy executive.” She bit a knuckle. “Strange, I never told anyone about that. My mother and I left Nigeria soon after.”

  “Will you marry when you get home?” Hardin asked.

  Her eyes flashed and her English grew imperiously precise. “I’m not all that sure I’ll be married at all.”

  “The Lovely Lagos Spinster? I don’t believe it.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps I’ll knot my hair in a bun and devote my life to lepers in the jungle.”

  “Where will you practice?”

  She made a face. “My father has arranged a position in a clinic. I told him I wanted to work with the poor, but if I know him, there’ll be a policeman outside my office screening my patients. It wouldn’t do to have his daughter mingle with the wrong types.” She drained her glass and laughed.

  Hardin signaled the waiter for refills. He said, “Rich people get sick, too.”

  Ajaratu leaned forward, her face suddenly intense. “I want to do something I can hold in my life.”

  “What?”

  Her hair, drawn back and skewered by an elaborate ivory pin, reflected the glow of some nearby candles.

  “Something special. Something important I can look back on. I don’t know. I’ll probably wind up going back to university. I’d like to study—you’ll laugh—I think I want to study psychiatry.”

  Hardin laughed. “No kidding. I knew I was a guinea pig.”

  The waiter brought the brandy.

  “Would you take a degree at Ibadan?”

  She looked surprised. “Now how would you know about Ibadan?”

  “It’s the top research hospital in Africa. I wondered why you didn’t study there instead of London.”

  “The civil war. My father sent us to England as soon as the fighting began. I was in my teens then, and by the time it was over I was already in university.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She died. The climate here. I was raised by a retired British colonel who had been my father’s CO before independence. He had sons and no daughter. They sent me to a convent school.”

  “No wonder you’re confused about going back to Nigeria.”

  “I’ve been back since for vacations.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “A frontier. Just like your wild west was once. Very optimistic. People are busy making money and building, and they are full of enthusiasm. I’m really excited about going home.”

  “No longer confused,” said Hardin. “I’m glad we settled that.”

  “Did we?”

  “Something the matter?”

  She shook her head. “Tell me about your sail. Where are you going?”

  “Monrovia first. Near you. A thousand miles or so.”

  “Then?”

  “Brazil.” The lie came easily. He’d used it often this week.

  “You are testing a radar, Mr. Culling said.”

  “Right. Kind of business and pleasure together.”

  “But hasn’t radar been invented already? I don’t understand what you intend to do.”

  “I’m working on a simple warning device which will sit on top of the mast out of the way of the jib and main and give more than the twenty- or thirty-mile range of ordinary small-boat radar.”

  “The jib is the forward sail?”

  “Yes. If I can make it work, I’ll try to rig it so it can be stowed below and run up the mast with a halyard—excuse me.” He produced a pen and sketched a design on a paper napkin. He’d become so involved with the lie that he had just come up with a nice idea for rigging the thing. Pocketing the napkin, he returned to the conversation with another apology.

  “When do you leave?” Ajaratu asked.

  “As soon as I can. I don’t want to get caught in the hurricane season.”

  “How long will it take to sail to Monrovia?”

  “Three weeks or so. She’s a very fast boat.”

  “Alone.”

  “I’m alone.” The pain was always close. He felt it disturb the pleasure of the brandy like ripples in wind-riled water. What, he asked himself again, could he have done better?

  “Does it get boring?”

  “No.”

  “What happens when you sleep?”

  “The boat sails. A steering gear, directed by the wind, controls the rudder. It’ll hold an approximate course.”

  “But what if you’re near land or in shipping lanes?”

  Hardin’s eyes narrowed fractionally. He said, “Then you don’t sleep. In fact, as far as sleep is concerned, you could do me a favor. I need some stay-awake drugs and some antibiotics. I can’t prescribe in England. Could you . . .”

  “Certainly. Though you still ought to be careful with drugs until you’ve fully recovered from your concussion.”

  “I’m fine.” He sipped the brandy. “See, I can even drink again.”

  “I’ve never sailed on a yacht,” said Ajaratu.

  “I’ll be shaking her down with the radar antenna day after tomorrow,” said Hardin. “Come with me.”

  “Wouldn’t I be in the way?”

  “You’d be a help if you let me put you to work.” He smiled. “Come along.”

  Donner found it almost by accident in the London Times. He checked the dates in other newspapers. The Mirror had blown a short interview up to a shrill half page. He telephoned Grandig in Germany from a pay phone. Grandig called him back in fifteen minutes from another pay phone.

  “I’ve been thinking about the Dragon,” said Donner.

  “Nothing new has occurred,” said Grandig. His English had none of the charm of his Hebrew.

  “I have a suggestion,” said Donner. “Check all the local hotels and restaurants and car rental agencies for a man with a lot of money.”

  “Thank you,” said Grandig, “but we’re doing that already.”

  “I have a name.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t share it with your friends.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might be for us.”

  Donner went home and typed a triple-spaced report to a man named Zwi Weintraub who was getting old and had trouble reading. When he had read history at Cambridge, Donner had been fascinated by General George Washington, who had had a fine sense of the relationship between power and information.

  A superb horseman, young Washington had used his skill and extraordinary stamina to ride regularly between the frontier and Williamsburg to report to a few powerful men on the state of the war with the French. The fresh information had furthered their positions in the Virginia House of Burgesses and had put them in Washington’s debt. Years later he had had their support for his own ambitions.

  Washington’s habit had served Miles Donner well in his own career. Since Partition he had always apprised Weintraub of his plans, often consulting him before he spoke with his direct superiors. Weintraub had risen in the ranks of government and gave Donner greater access to power and information than would ordinarily fall to a Mossad agent.

  He drove to Heathrow Airport, where he handed the sealed report to an El Al copilot who would deliver it personally.

  The sun had settled behind the hills when the Swan nosed to its mooring off Culling’s yard in Fowey harbor. Ajaratu caught the pickup buoy and hauled the dripping pendant onto the bow deck. She ran the thick line through the chock Hardin indicated, and forced the eye over the foredeck mooring cleat. Then she t
urned to Hardin for approval, but he was already lowering the jib, so she helped him stuff the sail into its bag.

  Her face burned from the sun. Her hair was caked with salt. Her hands were raw and every muscle ached from handling the lines and cranking winches. Loath to let the day go, she said, “I had a wonderful time. Could I take you to dinner as a thank-you?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Hardin. “I’m too tired and I’ve got to get up early.”

  “Next time . . .” Her voice trailed off. His radar had worked perfectly. He was ready to leave. She made herself smile. “I guess there won’t be a next time.”

  He tossed the jib down the fore hatch. Then he stood up straight and met her eye. Her heart leaped. His face was so full of pain, yet it still held a memory of laughter. But even though he never laughed, and rarely smiled, she knew he had enjoyed her being with him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath. She had planned to ask at dinner or in the morning, but now, on the boat, with an evening sea breeze cooling her face and the first stars lighting the black east, she knew was the time.

  “May I come with you?”

  It was wrong. The moment she said it she knew it was wrong. He didn’t understand.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “To Monrovia. I’d fly home from there. I could help you. I’ll pay for my food and I’ll stand watches and help get ready and I’ll stay out of your way and only talk when you want to talk. I could sleep in the back cabin. And I’d cook.” Her voice trailed off. How could she have been so foolish to fall in love with a white American from New York just when she was going home to Nigeria? And was she falling in love?—that was the most disconcerting question.

  He eyed her calculatingly.

  She was strong and athletic and she had picked up the mechanics of the boat more quickly than most. Taking her with him could be an opportunity to arrive at his destination in better shape than if he sailed there alone. The single-handed trip to Rotterdam had been exhausting. Sharing watches meant better sleep, greater efficiency handling the sails, and therefore more speed, as well as a safer passage through the shipping lanes.

  On the other hand, he’d lose several days dropping her at Monrovia. But if time was a problem, he could take her to Dakar, seven hundred miles closer, and at either port he could replenish food and water—and fuel, if he’d had to use it, something he might not be able to do later on.

  What if she found out?

  But she wouldn’t. Because the next leg of his plan was nothing more than a cruise to West Africa, just as he told all who asked. Could he teach her enough so he could sleep while she was at the helm? It boiled down to that. He would take her if she could serve him. And he would find that out very soon.

  He said, “There are five thousand moving parts in your car, and less than fifty on this sailboat. The difference is you don’t have to be on intimate terms with each of its parts to drive a car.”

  Donner flew to Amsterdam; Grandig came by train. They met at Pechcadou, a quiet restaurant at the foot of the Brouwers Kanaal. The menu was French. The decor was thirties Art Deco, and the view from the tall dining-room windows was a long perspective up the floodlit eighteenth-century canal.

  Between the black and mirrored bar and the dining room were glass tanks where the patrons were invited to choose their fish. Donner and Grandig sat first at the small private bar. Trading greetings, they looked like a pair of European diamond merchants or art dealers celebrating a lucrative agreement with an expensive evening out in a foreign city.

  “Why Amsterdam?” asked Grandig.

  “Private.”

  “From whom?”

  “Everyone but you and me,” said Donner. “Did you keep it quiet?” Next to Weintraub, he trusted no one more than Grandig.

  “So far,” said Grandig. “Hardin stayed two nights at the Schlosshotel in Kronberg. It’s near enough Aschaffenburg, where the weapon was stolen. He drove a car he had rented in Wesel. How he got to Wesel is a mystery, thus far. We’ve found no record of his entering the country, unless it was a long time ago.”

  “A boat,” said Donner. “He probably went up the Rhine.”

  “Of course. Easily done. . . . Who is he?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s between me and Weintraub.”

  “Unofficial?”

  “Yes.”

  Grandig spun the remains of his drink around the bottom of his glass. “It is not good for us to have too many wheels spinning inside of wheels.”

  Donner smiled. “Consider it initiative.”

  “Do you know that they’re investigating you?”

  Donner concealed the shock with a smile. The jolt set his heart pounding. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I trust you,” said Grandig.

  “Why are they investigating me?”

  “You’ve been accused of not staying under discipline and of independence in the extreme. I don’t know the issue, but I’m sure you can recall something.”

  Donner nodded.

  Grandig said, “Probably something similar to this Hardin incident.”

  “I’ve been playing this game for thirty years, Grandig. I’m better at it than most of the new ones.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll like you for it.”

  Grandig picked up a menu and read for several minutes. Then he asked, “What do I do about the Dragon investigation?”

  “I’d like you to do nothing, if you can without endangering yourself. We know that Hardin doesn’t pose a threat to our interests. Let the Germans run in circles. They’ll get bored.”

  “They might not.”

  “Why?”

  “The American MP is recovering.”

  “Does he know the name?”

  “He doesn’t even know his own at the moment.”

  “Can you do anything to keep matters that way?”

  “It’s a little late for that,” said Grandig. “Now that he’s conscious, it wouldn’t look natural.”

  They ordered dinner at the bar. Then the waiter led them toward the dining room, stopping at the fish tanks to let Donner choose his trout. Donner inspected the dozen fish swimming in the clear water.

  “That one.”

  The waiter dipped his net. The fish scattered to the corners of the tank, but he had already trapped the fat trout Donner had chosen.

  “Well done.”

  The young man lifted the net from the water. The trout struggled frantically, slapping the water with its tail, standing almost perpendicular in the clinging mesh.

  “Hold him,” chuckled Grandig.

  With powerful thrusts of its glistening body, the fish thrashed out of the net and fell back into the water. The waiter scooped after it instantly.

  “No,” said Grandig. “Let him go. Take another. He deserves his life a little longer.”

  “Which, sir?” asked the young man, withdrawing his net.

  “He’s mine,” said Donner with a gentle smile.

  “The same fish, sir?”

  Donner watched the trout circle the tank with agitated flicks of its tail. “The same,” he answered. “Get him.”

  Culling’s relief on hearing that Hardin was taking the African doctor was short-lived. He had sent many yachts to sea, and as they loaded the Swan he saw that Hardin was still provisioning for a long voyage rather than a cruise along the northwest coast of Africa. The three cabins were filled to capacity.

  The fore cabin held the sails, sixteen hundred feet of nylon and Dacron line in half-inch to inch thicknesses, and two spare forty-pound high-tensile plow anchors. The anchors were stowed at the aft ends of the sail bins, one on each side to distribute their weight evenly. A third anchor, a 22 S Danforth “lunch hook,” occupied a cockpit-seat locker beside the storm jib and sheets.

  The head, and the hanging lockers that separated the fore and main cabins, were crammed with clothing, foul-weather gear, blankets, linens, towels, saltwater soaps, and medical supplies. Clearly, Hardi
n was a man who planned for comfort aboard, which was all right with Culling. He had noticed that the casual ones often took ill or just wore down until they couldn’t cope.

  The main cabin had a drop-leaf table and berths above and outboard of the settees on either side. Hardin’s sleeping bag occupied one of those berths, neatly rolled and ready to be used on whichever was the leeward side. The storage spaces were filled with cans, bottles, and glasses, but the cabin itself was not cluttered—another aspect that Culling admired. You had to be comfortable in such a small, confined space. He wondered where Hardin had cached the contents of the fiberglass nacelle he’d removed from the hull.

  Tonging a third fifty-pound ice block out of the cockpit, the old man struggled down the companionway into the after portion of the main cabin, which was separated from the forward portion by cutaway partial bulkheads. The galley was starboard of the companionway, the nav station to the port side of the steps. Whether Hardin was navigating or cooking, he would have quick access to the cockpit.

  Culling put the ice in the cooler. The glassy blocks would charge it for three days on the relatively cool mid-June Atlantic. There was fresh food for the first week out—eggs, milk, cheese, bread in plastic, vegetables, cooked meat, oranges, lemons, apples, and juices—and dry and canned provisions for the time to follow— brown rice, dried potatoes, pasta, cereal, soups, canned meats and vegetables, condensed milk, jams, honey, raw sugar, peanut butter, cocoa, coffee, and tea.

  Culling snooped through the lockers and drawers, hunting empty spaces. One drawer was almost entirely filled with brown bottles of vitamins. He slipped in a stone crock of Stilton cheese and shut it before anyone noticed. Then he buried a bottle of Cock-burn’s in the rice sack. By the time they turned to rice, they’d be glad of a good port.

  Culling stepped around the companionway and had a final look through the nav station. A powerful shortwave radio, a local-channel VHP radio-telephone, and a loran navigator—the new longer-range C type—occupied the bulkhead above the chart table. In the drawers and slots beneath the table were charts and the supplementary Africa Pilots and Defense Mapping Agency’s Sailing Directions, a sextant, a chronometer, and the Nautical Almanac. A spare sextant, a second chronometer, binoculars, flare guns, signal lights, and flags were stowed in a locker aft of the nav station. Spread on the teak chart table were the English Channel charts Hardin would use tonight.