by Peter Tonkin
As they passed beneath the accommodation ladder, he hit the button on its electric motor and, silently on desert-booted feet, he ran for the shadows of the black-windowed bridge.
The accommodation ladder clanged down to its fullest extent and stopped. They sat and looked at it in an awed, superstitious silence. Then Ben stood up in the first boat’s bow. “Someone alive up there after all,” he called cheerily. “Hope it’s the chief. Still feel bad that we didn’t manage to find him.” Then he sprang nimbly out and up. John automatically took his place, leaning out and holding the boat still, looking up after the first officer with the ghost of a frown.
Ben vanished up onto the deck, hallooing cheerfully, but there was no reply, and after a moment, his tousled head was shoved out over the side. “Nobody here. No hide nor hair. Damnedest thing.”
Richard sat for a moment longer, face like a mask, mind racing. More mystery. He, too, hoped it was the chief, but this behavior was too eccentric for the American—unless Martyr was motivated by something as yet unknown to him. But there was certainly someone left alive on board. He would find out soon enough who it was. In the meantime it was nearly full night and he had to get the wounded aboard. He rose stiffly, raising a hand to Robin to warn her that he wanted her to stay where she was for a moment; then he stepped carefully down the boat past John and climbed swiftly up the ladder.
Stinking, strange-atmosphered, inhabited by mysteries or not, it seemed to him as he came onto the deck that Prometheus was glad to see him. But that was perhaps mainly because he was so pleased to be back.
Ben was busily examining the top of the ladder. “Might have tripped as we passed under it…”
They both listened in the silence above the muttering from the boats below. The ladder was powered by electricity. That meant the generators had to be on, but it was hard to tell down here. And the bridge was in darkness. They looked at each other, already almost lost in the gloom.
Then, unexpectedly, with a sort of silent explosion, all the navigating lights and most of the forward deck lights came on.
“It has to be Martyr,” said Richard decisively. “You oversee the unloading of the boat. I’m going up to the bridge at once.”
Ben hesitated. “He’s acting pretty strangely, Dick. Maybe I’d better come up with you.”
“No. I’d say he tripped the ladder then ran back to get the lights on before it got absolutely dark. Nothing strange in that.”
“If you say so. You’re the boss. All the same, I’ll get a couple of Malik’s heftiest up here first in case anyone needs restraining.”
Richard walked briskly down the deck, his mind switching from speculation to planning; his eyes wringing the last drop of information out of the gathering shadows as the deck lighting, also smashed by the explosion, sought to hide the wounded deck and bridge-house in darkness. But a simple sense of equilibrium told him of some of the damage, for the deck canted up increasingly steeply on his right, as he came past the last of the three tank caps nearest the bridge. Unable to resist, he walked to the edge of the gaping pit where the Pump Room hatch had once been and looked down into the black void. There was nothing to see. The stench was overpowering. He did not tarry long.
The lights in the A deck corridor were on and the brightness nearly dazzled him. There was no doubt here: he could hear the generators clearly and even feel the hum of them through his feet. Even so, he did not trust the lift, preferring to pound up the stairs two at a time.
The instrument panels, most of them miraculously still working, lit the bridge with an eerie green glow, in which he could just make out the figure of Martyr sitting in the captain’s chair. At once he thought about Ben’s concern. What if he had cracked during the last three days? But his voice sounded calm enough. “Hello, Captain. Welcome back aboard.”
“Evening, Chief. You the only one here?”
“Only one alive.” Martyr turned and Richard gasped. The chief’s face was a total wreck. Brows thrust out above swollen eyes. The nose was out of line. The lips, simian in their thickness, were split in several places. The high forehead was welted and raised in mountainous lumps. There was dried blood at the corners of nostrils and eyes, and in the ears.
Without thinking, Richard was in action. As first officer, he had acted as medic on enough ships to know the basics. His hands gently took the ruined face and probed with infinite care, checking for telltale tenderness that would tell of fractures. There seemed to be none. Martyr’s bright eyes watched him quizzically. “Teeth?” Richard asked.
“Still in place,” answered Martyr. “You should have asked about my heart. The shock I got when I first looked in a mirror damn near killed me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nobody except the sedated got much sleep that night. Martyr’s job of cleaning had been rudimentary. There was still much that needed immediate attention even before the bridge could be properly manned or the great engine restarted.
Of course, Richard’s dream of bringing the great ship to port in better condition than when she sailed had necessarily gone by the board, but there was some tidying and painting that had to be done. All the windows needed boarding or replacing. Electrical light was needed at any price, and it returned to the bridge-house little by little. Only the places that needed to be used regularly were illuminated, as and when necessary, for light bulbs were now few, because, as Martyr had observed, all those in the blast area had been broken. The radio shack was sealed and left in darkness, finally, because there was no way of fixing the ruin in there.
Martyr and his team, shaken to a man by the sight of his face, but warily silent and apparently incurious, had the engine started before first light next day, so the new dawn found Prometheus under her own power, sailing determinedly north, back onto her old course.
All the navigating equipment had survived except the suspect Sat Nav, so John brought up his beloved sextant to replace it, and, because the chronometers also seemed undamaged, this was quite good enough.
Richard sprang awake and automatically looked at his watch. 07.30. Last half hour of John’s watch. Half an hour until Robin took over. He looked down at the golden crown of her sleeping head lying lightly on his chest. The emotion that swept over him as he looked at her was so poignant it made him feel like a boy again, stunned by the beauty of a world that could contain so much happiness; so much excitement. For the last few days he had lived on a plateau of contentment above any he had ever known, knowing that she shared it with him.
They lay, fully clothed, on the bunk they had collapsed on the night before. Her arms and legs wound round him, clutching him to her. He smiled and returned her gentle embrace for a few moments, luxuriating in the feel of her, then he softly disentangled himself and rose. As he put his feet on the floor, something chimed quietly: a tray with cups and saucers, sugar and reconstituted milk. And a thermos of teak-dark tea. Richard smiled. Ho’s one concession to the emergency was the thermos—he would not wake his captain at 06.30 anymore; nor would he let his captain’s tea go cold while he slept. He opened it and poured himself a cup, then left it uncorked by the head of the bunk, knowing the warm fragrance of the hot tea would waken Robin more effectively than anything except the emergency siren.
With his cup in his hand, he crossed to the vacant windowframe to look down across the scarred deck, through the balmy morning toward his distant goal. If they had maintained course and speed through the night—and if they had not, he would have been informed—they should be north of Cancer by now. The Canaries and the Azores beckoned temptingly: they still had not sighted another ship. They were still in enforced radio silence. There was, creeping over the men, a sort of fantastic suspicion that something unimaginable had happened to the rest of humanity, some unannounced holocaust that had left them alone in all the world. Like the Flying Dutchman, whose waters they had so recently crossed. But Richard was not going to stop at any of the islands unless he absolutely had to. He was going to take her home. If they limped into s
ome safe harbor on the way, they would simply be taken off and flown home, leaving the massive, impersonal machinery of the investigation to work itself out distantly from them while they were occupied with other things. Like getting on with the rest of their lives. There was a temptation, but Richard could not entertain it. He could not allow the resolution of all this to come about through the workings of others: men and women who had not earned the right, as his crew had, to lay bare the whole truth of the matter.
No. The only thing that could have made him turn aside now was if their rudimentary medical facilities began to fail, putting the lives of the wounded at risk. But, as he had observed in the lifeboat more than three days ago, the men were either dead or only lightly wounded. There was no one who needed hospitalization. The worst hurt was Nihil, among Ho’s men, who had lost part of a finger. And that only served to make his endless playing of that strange flute even more weird and haunting. The others only needed burial, and they would wait.
He frowned, still gazing out into the still, clear morning, his thoughts taking a darker turn.
“Penny for them…” she whispered at his shoulder, so close she made him jump. She took another silent step forward and wrapped her arms around his waist, crushing herself to him.
“You’re due on watch in fifteen minutes, Number Three,” he said.
She screwed up her nose. “Just time for a shower, then.”
They showered together, not having time to turn it into a game; Richard, in any case, too preoccupied to answer her playful advances. They came out together also and quickly changed into clean, white uniforms. Twelve Toes and his team had performed little short of miracles getting the ship’s laundry back in service. And, since Durban, there had always been a complete change of clothes for each of them left, apparently by accident, in the other’s quarters. The bomb and the abandonment had not changed that.
There had been enough glass in the ship’s stores to replace the bridge windows. Everyone else had to put up with ply or board unless, like Richard, they were willing to risk inclement weather and leave their windows uncovered for the moment. So, with windows in and blast-damage covered if not corrected, the bridge seemed normal as they stepped into it side by side ten minutes later, as though the explosion had never happened. Until, that is, they walked forward far enough to see the crater on the deck.
John Higgins was sitting, worn out, in the captain’s chair. His pipe had fallen into his lap. When the rest of them had collapsed, exhausted, at four this morning, it had only been time for him to take over his watch. He was certainly due for some sleep now, and, emergencies aside, he would sleep until Pour Out.
Richard had reinstated the ship’s routine at once, as though nothing untoward was going on. He would make his noon report as usual later, having calculated their position himself with John’s sextant, and without the international news that Tsirtos used to supply, but still religiously including the bearing of Mecca for the Moslems. They might be working all the hours that God—or Allah—might send, trying to repair the damage caused by their strange, invisible enemy, but the daily routines punctuated their efforts with the calm accuracy of a Swiss watch. The facade of normality was enormously important. It gave them an added strength. So the watches changed like clockwork, with Martyr replacing Napier below, and all the meals were served as normal. They were only an hour behind GMT now, and would not come back onto it until they were entering the Channel Approaches in a little less than five days’ time. With luck, they would sight the Lizard at dawn on September 9.
Richard walked forward and put his hand on John’s shoulder. The second officer jumped into full wakefulness and looked up. “We’ve got her now, John. Robin’s watch. You get to bed.”
“I think we came pretty close to another vessel last night. Strong echo on the radar. Couldn’t raise her with the signal lamp, though I thought I could see her lights. Watch must have been asleep.”
Richard looked down at the tired man with infinite respect. In spite of everything, the watch on Prometheus had been anything but sleepy. He glanced at Robin. She was just signing onto the log. “Logged at 04.45,” she confirmed. “Echo’s course due south. Closest three miles. Should have seen a signal lamp: conditions clear enough.”
Richard nodded. They might find it difficult to raise a passing ship with the lamp. So many ships relied solely on their radios now. But then, Prometheus would strike passersby as unusually silent; worthy of closer attention. It should be possible to attract someone’s attention to that flashing point of light. And most ships’ officers still understood Morse code.
Richard called them into his dayroom and they stood like guilty schoolboys at the headmaster’s desk: “Twelve Toes” Ho, Salah Malik, C. J. Martyr. It was the middle of Robin’s watch, the first opportunity Richard had had since returning aboard to reconstruct the sabotage and voice his opinions.
The other three knew why they were here. They were wary but, surprisingly, thought Richard, there was no real hostility in the air. And this fact seemed significant to him.
“The bomb wasn’t part of the original plan, was it?” he said. “Or if it was, then none of you knew about it.”
They watched him in guarded silence. He went on, calmly. “That’s the only way I can see to make sense of this. You all agreed, with the others, to abandon and scuttle Prometheus off the coast of Senegal so that Demetrios could put in a huge insurance claim. It was supposed to be easy and safe: nobody hurt. But Demetrios decided to do things his way and he put a bomb on board.”
“He’s put more aboard than that,” grated Martyr, his voice slurred by his swollen lips. “There’s someone else aboard, a Crewfinders man, whose job is to do what the bomb failed to do.” He gestured at his face. “No matter who gets in the way.”
Richard nodded silently. Then his ice-cold gaze switched to Salah and Ho. “You both agreed to abandon, like the original officers. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and suppose you both must have reckoned you would get all your men off safely. But Demetrios and his sidekick have taken this simple fraud and made it murder.”
Salah’s square shoulders slumped. “It is as you say, Captain. It is as you said in the lifeboat. We were going to abandon. Levkas or one of his officers was going to scuttle her and lead us in the lifeboats to Dakar. It was all agreed. But these men have changed all that. We must find them now and kill them for what they have done!”
“Twelve Toes” made a sound deep in his throat to signify agreement.
Richard’s hand slammed down onto his desktop. “Not on my ship, you don’t! You tell your men I want watches kept in case the owner’s friend tries anything more, but that is all. I want no searching, no detecting, no revenge. I want to take this ship and her crew back home exactly as they are. Is that clear?”
All three men nodded.
“Right. Malik. Ho. Back to your duties.” The two of them left. “Mr. Martyr,” Richard continued, “sit down please.”
Martyr sat.
Richard leaned forward, elbows on the desk, steepling his forearms up to interlaced fingers. “I propose to spend the next few hours interviewing everyone aboard to try to reconstruct what happened that night for the Accident Report Book,” he said. “But that presents me with something of a problem because two crimes—at the least—happened. There was an attempt to sabotage my command and there was an attempt to murder you. I think the same person is involved in both of these crimes.”
“A Crewfinders man,” repeated the chief.
“Not a seaman or a steward?”
“Stewards are all too small. Could have been a seaman—but I’d say only Malik and Khalil are big enough.”
Richard nodded. “But both of them were with teams of men right throughout the night. They couldn’t have slipped away. So it has to be one of my men.”
Martyr shrugged.
Richard continued, “I need to know how you fit into this, Chief, if I’m going to make sense of it, make sure that justice gets done.”<
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And Martyr leaned forward and told him. “I’m a long-service man. Twenty years in the American merchant marine. Good years. Happy. Had a wife. A daughter—Christine. Beautiful girl. The apple of my eye. But then it all went sour. Sailor’s nightmare. While I was away at sea, my wife found someone new. We divorced. She got custody of my girl. I got visiting rights whenever I had shore leave. I came home one time and Christine was gone. Just plain gone. Vanished. My wife and her new husband put up a reward but they heard nothing. I jumped ship—a chief engineer jumping ship like a cadet—and I went to look. I found her in New York. On drugs. Working as a prostitute. Making videos—like that one Tsirtos put on—to support her habit. I took her back. The little pusher who was pimping for her tried to stop me. I killed him.
“She’s in detox now. Getting better. But it costs. You know, Mariner, it costs! Every cent I earn goes to help my girl. But I don’t earn that much now, on the beach with a federal warrant out on me. Or I didn’t till I met Demetrios…”
