The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  “It’s beautiful.”

  The colors were as distinct and pure as the light in a crystal prism. The rainbow blinked like a channel marker, appearing, disappearing, reappearing, scattering shafts of yellow, green, and blue that blended and fanned in radiant half circles as the spray rose and fell with the sharp bow.

  “Look!” Ajaratu gasped.

  The rainbow turned red—a color as deep and rich as a cardinal’s cape.

  “It looks like blood.”

  Hardin gazed somberly into the rainbow. It was as if the sea were bleeding when the Swan cut it.

  “Do you have a plan?” she asked.

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t want you to be killed.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I won’t allow it,” she said angrily. “I’ll stop you.”

  “You can’t. I told you they already know about me.”

  “Yes I can.”

  Hardin looked at her. Her mouth set primly and her eyes were deadly serious.

  “How?”

  “I’ll make my father use his influence with the Liberians, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, the Senegalese, and Ghana. They’ll catch you and impound your boat.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” Hardin asked, “that I might wrap a chain around your legs and drop you over the side?”

  “Like a slave? ”

  “Stop being stupid.”

  “I feel a slave to you,” she said softly. “But I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  He looked at her coldly. If she thought that, he couldn’t protect himself. “What do you think, we’re in love because we screwed in the starlight?”

  She hit him with the nearest thing at hand. It was the binoculars, and the right front lens caught him under the eye. He reeled back, clutching his face, too shocked to react. Her lips bared her teeth and she raised the heavy glasses to swing again. Her eyes were wild. Hardin brought up his hands to block the blow. Blood ran down his cheek. When she saw it, she hesitated, her arm in midair, and her lips slid trembling into place.

  “Oh, God, what did I do to you?”

  Hardin automatically put the Swan back on the course she had left when he released the helm. Astonished by her ferocity, he stared at the blood his palm left on the wheel. “Christ.”

  “I hurt you.”

  “I’m okay.”

  She lowered the binoculars. “I’m sorry. I never did a thing like that in my life. I never felt such anger.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Hardin, gingerly touching his cheek. “I’m sorry I said it.”

  She spread his fingers and examined the cut.

  “I want to come with you,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Hardin looked at her. Her rage gone, she seemed very young, very vulnerable, very much the soldier’s daughter raised in the convent. He said, unable to think of anything else, “What?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No way.”

  “I’ll spell you. I’ll keep you strong. Isn’t that why you let me come this far?”

  “Forget it.”

  “You have to take me.”

  “Oh no I don’t.”

  “Yes you do. I know you won’t kill me. But you know I would make my father catch you. So you have to take me.”

  Hardin stared at the water. She went below and returned with the small first-aid kit. When she had cleaned and taped the cut under his eye, he said, “Please, Ajaratu. Leave quietly at Monrovia.”

  “Anything but that.”

  “Go home and start your clinic. Go to school; do what you planned.”

  “I don’t care about those things.”

  “Then find something you do care about.”

  “I have.” She met his eye and Hardin had an awful feeling that she was less confused than he.

  “Don’t you have any doubts?” he asked.

  “None.”

  “Would you really turn me in if I put you off at Monrovia?”

  “I will.”

  Hardin shook his head in dismay. “Jesus Christ—listen, you better think about this. It’s going to be very hard. You’ll hate me in a week and hate yourself in two. And you’ll hate the boat and the water and by then it will be too late to stop. We’ll pass Monrovia tomorrow. You have until then to decide.”

  “I already have decided,” said Ajaratu. “Where are we going?”

  “Winter.”

  14

  LEVIATHAN neared the Canary Islands the fifth morning out of Southampton.

  Captain Ogilvy called his second officer to his office and without comment instructed him to make an unusual alteration in their normally undeviating course.

  The second’s brows rose and he looked at the Admiralty chart on the wall behind the captain’s desk. Ogilvy casually rearranged the framed photographs of his wife, a woman he enjoyed more in her letters than in the flesh, and their daughters, whom he knew mostly from holiday cards, weddings, and announcements of grandchildren.

  His desk faced the door. Beside the chart was a big window that offered a clear view of the vast green deck and the sparkling sea ahead of the bows. The office was furnished in the modern style of corporate grandeur, expensive leather chairs, deep blue carpeting, paneled walls and gold draperies. Had it not been for the ceaseless vibration that caused the captain’s gold pen to walk across the polished desk top, it would have seemed that the white-haired executive and the youthful assistant standing before him were conducting business in an office tower high above a busy city.

  The second officer looked again from the written course to the chart. His broad, open face was clouded with puzzlement. Ogilvy seemed oblivious that his number two was juggling conflicts.

  Navigation was the responsibility of the second officer. Taking account of sea conditions and weather reports, he had to plot the most economical route for LEVIATHAN to sail. With transportation costs of well over a million pounds for a round trip between Europe and Arabia, every mile and hour saved represented enormous gains. Conversely, every mile and hour wasted brought harsh inquiries from the Company and a reminder that the expense of a hundred miles squandered might equal a second officer’s yearly salary.

  Should he question the captain’s orders or bear the responsibility later for not raising the obvious objection of expense? You just didn’t know with Captain Ogilvy. Sometimes when he was getting bored on a long run, the Old Man deliberately set you up for ridicule.

  Ogilvy prodded him, his voice tinged with irritation. “Is there something on your mind, Number Two?”

  “It will cost about seven hundred miles, sir.”

  “Twenty thousand pounds,” Ogilvy agreed.

  The second nodded doubtfully, screwed up his courage, and ventured, “It may run more like thirty thousand, sir.”

  “Thank you, Number Two,” said Ogilvy, dismissing him.

  The second officer’s tensed shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly. He had pulled it off, aired his objection, and not suffered retaliation. But as he backed out of the door, Ogilvy called after him, “Perhaps you’ll find a way to minimize the expense.”

  Bloody hell! He hurried up the single deck to the chart room behind the bridgehouse. The Old Man had trapped him after all. He had probably already worked out the new course and knew to the penny that it would cost. If he didn’t duplicate the captain’s calculations, Ogilvy would ride him for a week. He dreaded going to dinner without a solution.

  He worked until noon, when his watch began, pausing just before for a quick plate of curry brought to his chart table by a Pakistani steward. Then he took the bridge from the third officer, shot LEVIATHAN’s midday position with the sextant, confirming the cool, silent lights of the satellite navigator, and spent the rest of his four-hour watch devising ways to cut the cost of skirting the leeward edge of the Cape Verde Islands.

  He fed several schemes into the ship’s computer, which had access to LEVIATHAN’s bunkerage, ballast, and engine performance, as well as weat
her, current, wind, and wave-height reports on the millions of square miles of ocean that would affect conditions on their route. The weather maps coiling out of the facsimile machines showed a deep depression forming in the Drake passage—the raging storm-spawning waters between Antarctica and South America’s Cape Horn. They’d be hearing from that one on their new course if the South Atlantic high didn’t stall it.

  By the end of his watch, he had settled upon a plan he could bring to dinner. He took a swim in the ship’s pool, then had a nap to set him up for his night watch.

  Whenever LEVIATHAN was steaming routinely on the open sea, there were two seatings in the officers’ mess. The younger men— engineering and electrical juniors, thirds, and seconds, the radio officers, and the deck third, whose watch began at eight—dined at seven o’clock, while their seniors—the captain, the chief engineer, and chief electrical officer, and the deck second—gathered in Ogilvy’s office for cocktails.

  They dressed for dinner because Ogilvy was still at heart P and O and foremost among the old British line’s traditions was Red Sea rig, officers’ dress for tropical climates. They wore open shortsleeved white shirts—despite the frigid air conditioning—with gold-braided shoulder insignias, black cummerbunds, and dress slacks. Ceremony, Ogilvy had once explained to the second officer, was a shipboard necessity. Without it, isolation from the strictures of the land might breed disorder among the kind of men who had chosen the illusory freedom of the sea.

  Ceremony also divided the tedious days aboard the automated ship into bearable blocks of time, each with specific expectations, functions, and conclusions. The second had awakened from his nap at six-fifteen, showered and shaved and dressed leisurely, timing his preparations so he would have to hurry the last few minutes not to be late to Ogilvy’s cabin.

  The sixty minutes allotted to cocktails was time enough to receive a cocktail from the steward, sip a third of it while inspecting the captain’s prints and antique charts, chat up an officer he hadn’t already talked to that day, settle down in an armchair for a natter with a couple of others, then rise for a second drink, which he finished just as the dinner chimes rang.

  The officers made their way slowly down a broad stairway two decks to the dining salon, talking in twos, following the captain. At ten past eight they sat to soup and sherry. Immediately, the meal was interrupted by the late arrival of the chief officer, who had just been relieved at the bridge. The stewards scurried about him, bringing hot soup, filling his sherry glass, and the dinner began in earnest.

  Ogilvy—his white hair gleaming, his shoulders heaped with braid—presided over the second seating like the lord of a great country house. He dominated conversation with stories of his gunboat days in the Persian Gulf and convoy duty on the North Atlantic, peppering his remarks with acerbic comments on men he had served with during his long career. As the meal progressed, he shifted to the various versions of current events which he received on his radio as LEVIATHAN steamed down the North African coast.

  Egypt was asking for a new conference; the Israelis had better be careful, said Ogilvy. The Arab’s word was not the honest bargain of the Europeans. The black African states were accusing South Africa of maintaining concentration camps. They have to protect themselves, said Ogilvy. He offered a solution. The white government should put it squarely to the blacks. If they don’t like the system they can return to their homelands. But if they stay, they have to take it as it is. North Sea oil production was still increasing. It perplexed Ogilvy. On one hand, it was a relief to see the trade balance back in proper order. On the other, with all that easy oil money propping up the economy, what was to convince the British workingman that he still had to improve his output, which had fallen to disgraceful levels.

  His officers regularly nodded assent, but rarely replied except when he asked a direct question. The stewards, their jackets as white as the spotless table linen, unobtrusively shuffled china that bore the seal of LEVIATHAN—a charging black whale, its head raising a gold wake, its flukes pointing the sky. Only the absence of women and the low, modern tile ceiling belied the fact that the senior officers were not in the first-class dining room of a passenger liner.

  The second officer tried to eat sparingly of the lavish meal, conscious of a fold of flesh which was developing beneath his chin like a pink beard. He drank a little of the white wine with the fish course, and only pretended to sip the red with the meat. Ogilvy would ask about the new route over coffee and he wanted a clear head. He avoided the potatoes and the second helping of meat which the steward tried to press on him, but he succumbed to his appehension and nervously buttered a large roll. He was rehearsing his report in his mind and reaching for a second roll when Ogilvy suddenly addressed him.

  “What did you come up with, Number Two?”

  The stewards were already clearing Ogilvy’s place and the officers had been eyeing the captain expectantly, waiting to be led to the wardroom. Since dinner talk was usually of inconsequentials and rarely touched upon ship’s business, they exchanged curious glances and sat back to hear the second’s reply. He wiped his mouth, took a sip from his crystal water goblet, and detailed LEVIATHAN’s new route.

  The officers looked surprised.

  “Well done,” Ogilvy said heartily. “It sounds quite ingenious.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The captain suggested a slight alteration on the third day, but the second knew that the Old Man was pleased. He found himself looking forward to coffee and a good, stiff brandy in the wardroom.

  “A dogleg?” asked the chief electrical officer. He was new this voyage, a replacement standing in for the regular chief.

  “Exactly,” said Ogilvy with a disdainful smile.

  “Why?” the new officer asked boldly, and the second waited for an explosion. Although the chief electrical officer and the chief engineer held pay and company rank equal to the master, as was typical on modern ships, Ogilvy brooked no challenge to his supremacy at the dinner table.

  The Old Man liked a young staff that would give him old-fashioned respect, and his regular officers, pleased with high rank at a young age, did nothing to annoy him. The second knew he was unusually young to hold his ticket, but Ogilvy had shepherded him through the ranks since he’d discovered him as a cadet at P and O.

  The replacement was a man in his forties, and having suffered years of deck insult before electronics was recognized as an important part of the ship’s equipment, he took great relish in being his own man. His question caused Ogilvy’s smile to turn cool.

  “For the simple reason,” the captain said, “that the man who intends to attack this ship will do so off the bulge of west Africa. Somewhere between the Canaries and the Ivory Coast.”

  The officers nodded carefully. This was the first indication that Captain Ogilvy gave serious weight to the threat, and they had allowed his casual attitude to be their own.

  Ogilvy laughed. “Chap’s in for a bit of a disappointment. What?”

  The second officer laughed with him, and the first smiled thinly, but the new man wouldn’t let it go.

  “How do you know where he intends to attack?”

  Ogilvy frowned. He clearly didn’t like the new man, and the second officer, who feared the captain and tended to seek safety in his prejudices, willingly shared his distaste for the electrical chief’s sloppy appearance and his outspokenness. He was thirty pounds overweight, his hair was shaggy, and his dinner kit was disgraceful, as if the ship’s laundry couldn’t keep a chap’s clothes in tip-top shape. He made no secret of the fact that he had a good job offer from Decca and might leave the sea to work for the electronics firm.

  He said he missed his wife and he admitted to a peculiar affliction. After years as a merchant officer, he had suddenly begun to suffer seasickness. The doctors told him it was psychosomatic, but several days out he had asserted loudly that LEVIATHAN seemed a cure. She sailed steady as a rock. He had said he’d like to sign on permanently if he didn’t join De
cca.

  Ogilvy replied to his question about Hardin with chilly deliberation.

  “Having assessed the sailing characteristics of his boat, the time he left England, the weather, tides, currents, and winds along this coast, and his apparent intention to track LEVIATHAN with radar, I have reached the inescapable conclusion that he could attack only in the sea-lanes off the west African coast.”

  “How is that, Captain?”

  “He hasn’t the speed to chase us,” Ogilvy said with ice in his voice. “Therefore, he must lie in wait. With only a few hours’ warning from his radar, he has to attack where he thinks we will be. In a heavily traveled sea-lane. Also, there is some psychology at work here. Along the bulge, he will be quite close to South America. That seems the logical place he would try to escape to.”

  “I must say I doubt that,” said the electrical chief.

  “Really, Sparks?” asked Ogilvy, reddening. “Perhaps you would offer us your wisdom on the matter.”

  “I don’t know about wisdom,” he replied, his brow knitting briefly at the “Sparks” dig. “But I don’t believe that if the man is a loony he’s worrying about escape.”

  “You are quite right,” said Ogilvy. “You offer little wisdom.” He turned to his other officers. “If this doctor were a simple madman, he would have sailed into Le Havre and fired his rocket while LEVIATHAN was moored to the oil pier like a tethered goat.”

  The second nodded vigorously as the captain’s eyes raked from officer to officer and skewered his.

  Ogilvy repeated his thought. “The fact that he did not attack in a harbor where he had no chance of escape indicates that he is carefully planning his escape.”

  “What if he had another reason not to attack in a harbor?” asked the electrical officer.

  “Such as what?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it didn’t fit his plan.”

  “If you think of it,” said the captain, rising from the table, “do inform us.”

  “But you have to come back this way. For how many voyages will LEVIATHAN avoid this coast?”