by Peter Tonkin
‘It’ll mean he stays aboard for the duration,’ said Kate uneasily.
‘The doc’s staying. He’ll look after him.’
‘That’s a bit eccentric, even for the doc, isn’t it? To send all the patients away and yet to stay aboard himself?’
‘He’s sending away the current patients,’ said Robin, ‘and saving himself for the next batch.’
The wind thumped against the side of Erebus like a Roman quinquereme at ramming speed.
‘He’s probably wise,’ said Kate, watching distantly as Killigan and Washington carried the sinister shape of the coffin through the ward towards the cold-storage facility.
*
When the holds had been emptied of useful items now no longer bound for Faraday, Ernie Marshall had agreed to help prepare the wounded for transfer. Time would be short in all probability, but the nursing staff on Erebus felt that each patient transferred would be happier, and therefore more disposed to recover well, if they had a package of personal possessions with them. This was supported by the doc, and so while Robin and Kate were finding weatherproof supplies for the transfer, Ernie and the others found a kitbag for each patient and inquired what they would most like to see packed within it. Fagan, oddly, wanted shaving equipment and some old National Geographics. Mendel was still comatose. Billy Hoyle packed his own kitbag, in negotiation with Ernie, fizzingly full of excitement at the prospect of the new market Kalinin’s passengers promised to supply, independent of her entertainment staff, stewards and crew. While Billy plotted and Ernie planned, the other, more serious, patients and nurses worked. Killigan and Washington, having brought the coffin to the cold store, lifted the major gently into it. They put the lid on the box but did not secure it; Jolene was due to come below later and check on it.
‘She’s going to take the major in that box,’ Billy Hoyle said to Ernie, quietly.
‘I’m not too much surprised, mate. She’s a persistent little tart.’
‘I don’t know. This isn’t working as we planned it.’
‘As you planned it, Billy. I bet she wet herself, though.’
‘You’d better hope so, my man. They’ve got Baines. Is he going to stand firm?’
‘Good point, mate. I’ll check when I get the chance.’
Ernie Marshall wished to the bottom of his heart that he could bring himself to trust Billy Hoyle. He knew pretty well how little merchandise the Yank would be taking aboard Kalinin, and while he had no doubt of Billy’s ability to parlay it into a sweet profit, the potential was nothing compared with what might have been possible with his own stash to boot. But Ernie simply could not bring himself to yield up his hard-won investments to his new friend in the dimly distant hope of a return sometime, somewhere.
These thoughts carried Ernie down to the locked door of Baines’s cabin. Under normal circumstances, given the heinous insanity of Baines’s crime, there would have been a guard on the door. Now there was not.
‘Baines,’ whispered Ernie. ‘It’s me.’
‘Piss off, Marshall.’
‘Is that any way to talk to a shipmate as made your dreams come true?’
‘Up yours, Marshall. If you think I’m going down for this on me tod, you’d better think again. If it gets me one second less in the brig then you’re coming with me.’
‘You sorry little shit, Baines. You knew the score. No names, no pack drill.’
‘Well, you’d better pack your pack, Marshall you bastard. ’Cause you’ll have hard drill every watch for the rest of your service, mate.’
While Ernie was having this conversation with Baines, and Robin and Kate had turned their attention to the twins and their own dunnage, and Jolene had gone to prepare her own possessions and the precious disks for safe, dry transfer, Billy Hoyle thought about what he had said to Ernie earlier: ‘She’s going to take the major in that box.’ He decided to go back down below again.
He wasn’t the only one.
Later, when Jolene went down to check on her charge, the coffin lid was screwed down tight and there was no time to loosen it — nor, apparently, any reason to do so.
*
Kalinin came nosing brightly out of the sleety, freezing murk halfway through the second dogwatch, dead on time. She did not come unannounced. In fact she had been checking in half-hourly through the first three hours and latterly every fifteen minutes. Everything and everyone was ready for her. And that was as well, for the wind was continuing to gather and it was bringing with it rather too much ice for comfort. Hardly a pitching heave passed by Erebus without the ringing impact of ice on metal. All the forced cheeriness and Dunkirk spirit was used up now. Those waiting to go and those doomed to stay alike sat silent and exhausted. Apart from the engineers, they had all completed their duties and reached the end of their tether. At the change of the dogwatch at pour-out, which never came, the chief switched on the lights. Those with new bulbs blazed for three minutes then died. The chief contacted the bridge. Estimated completion time was now the end of the first night watch. Immediately afterwards, Palmer came on. The bay was blocked; the way in and out was closed. Each transmission received from Kalinin, however, spread a little brightness through the gloom. The earlier ones did, at any rate. The later ones, falling on fatigued ears, only served to drive home the twin facts that those leaving were going out into a fair amount of danger and discomfort on the way, and those who were staying, were staying.
Richard and Colin privately agreed between themselves that they would do as much deck work as they possibly could themselves and keep the number of Erebus’s men required outside to a minimum. They, at least, had heat, brightness and dry clothes to look forward to. The men remaining aboard had none of these things. Moved by exactly the same impulse, Robin and Kate planned to oversee the movement of each patient personally across the deck and onto the rescue ship before they themselves went aboard. Jolene agreed that she would be first over, to check the incoming casualties and assure their disposition. Even on a pitching deck, stormbound on the rim of the Antarctic Circle, this was little more complicated than simple secretarial work and easily within her ability, though having never been in anything fiercer than a ten-minute squall on the way out from Rockport to Matagorda Island, she was glad to have discovered she was not prone to seasickness.
For reasons best known to himself, Ernie Marshall went all the way up from the sickbay to the command bridge to assure himself — on the doc’s behalf, he said — of the exact arrival time of Kalinin. On being brusquely informed that she was at this moment closing to come alongside — something he could have seen clearly for himself had he looked through the portholes on the starboard side — he turned to run back below. He had reached the top of the final companionway when the two hulls crashed together. The impact sent him crashing into the side of the corridor opening at the stairhead. He spun as though shot in the shoulder and pitched headlong down the stairs. Robin had finished preparing the twins down in the sickbay and was about to go on deck with Kate when she saw the tumbling body pitch out of the well at the far end of the corridor. Bouncing off the walls as the hulls ground together again, she ran to him, crouched down and carefully turned him over. A quick examination showed that he was battered but not too badly broken. Kate arrived. ‘Add him to the sick list,’ gasped Robin. ‘Bundle him up and bring him along with the children and all the rest.’
*
As that first bellowing impact went shuddering through Erebus’s hull, Richard ran out of the A-deck door, clipping his safety onto the lines as the great icy hand of the wind tried to slap him into the sea. The converted icebreaker’s hull stood a good two metres taller than Erebus’s. The effect was claustrophobic, as though a tall white wall was trying to close over on him and crush him. The first team on the forecastle head had caught the foreline and were securing it to the winch there. At the stern, in the relative shelter beneath the reach of the helideck, the second team would be doing the same. Each team leader was wearing a hands-free radio tuned to a wa
veband agreed between Andrew and Irene Ogre.
No sooner had Richard arrived midships with Colin solidly beside him than the black avalanche of the scaling net crashed down at his feet. Old-fashioned, unhandy and downright dangerous as it might be, the net was still the easiest and quickest way to transfer walking wounded, Karrimats and stretchers, not to mention kids and corpses in coffins. Richard’s huge hands closed on the black strands of the net and pulled it back to the nearest securing points. Half a dozen safety lines whipped down and he clipped these in place too so that anyone slipping off the net would be held safely, hopefully well clear of the grinding jaws of the ships’ sides. When the safety lines were rigged, Richard yelled into his battery-powered radio, ‘Ready! Warn the sickbay.’
Another bundle of cordage slammed down onto the deck and he looked up to see a solid davit reaching out over Kalinin’s side like a small white crane. ‘For the coffin, Karrimats and dunnage,’ he cried to Colin. ‘Catch hold of it, would you?’ As the massive Scot hurried off to do his bidding, his radio buzzed.
‘On their way up from the sickbay,’ came Andrew’s faint voice. ‘And they’ve got one customer more than planned.’
‘OK. Kalinin, you hear that?’
‘We hear,’ came Vasily Varnek’s voice in his ear. ‘We will prepare.’
Jolene arrived, wrapped up like a kid in her parent’s parka. ‘Bernie’s coming next,’ she yelled. Richard nodded to show he understood and took her across to the net, clipping her harness from one safety line to the next and checking it carefully for her. Gamely, she waved, turned and scrambled up the heaving, streaming web of the net.
‘Hope none of those guys up there work for the KGB or whatever they call it these days,’ growled Colin, his voice carrying even against the brute bellow of the wind.
‘I think she’s more worried about her own side,’ said Richard without thinking. ‘Industry. That’s where the money is. International inter-corporate stuff. Political espionage is dead and buried.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Colin.
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Andrew distantly. Richard swore silently. He had forgotten his radio was still on.
Bernie Schwartz arrived in his coffin carried by two of Richard’s team, Killigan and Washington. Richard sprang into action, helping to run the coffin across to where Colin stood. While the crewmen secured it to the pulley rope, Killigan and Washington staggered across to the netting and secured themselves to the safety lines. Then, as two of the less badly hurt, they waited to help the others up.
Jolene’s head and shoulders flashed into view with Varnek just behind her. And, behind them, another figure, framed against Kalinin’s lights. There was something unutterably sinister in the scene for an instant.
‘Bring him up,’ screamed Jolene, her voice only audible via Varnek’s VHF.
The coffin began to stir, swinging upwards as though part of some magic trick. Then the first of the walking wounded stumbled out of the A-deck door, preceded by the twins. Richard and Colin both ran back to take the children in hand, and as they did so, the wind took the coffin, making it spin and swing, out of control.
Unaware of this, for it was going on behind his back, Richard made sure the twins were well secured to the safety lines. Then he held them back, looking around for Robin and Kate to accompany them to the net. Robin left the wounded and ran over to him. When the little group reached the foot of the net, Richard clipped the children to their lines and clipped Robin securely between them. Only then did he return to his team.
They really had their work cut out as the stretcher cases came. Colin and Richard had to rush back from the net and prepare to carry the Karrimats over to the foot of the winch. Only when the first lay safely there did Richard turn, just in time to see disaster strike.
The twins were halfway up the net. Robin was between them, with Kate and some of the wounded just behind. Providentially, Killigan and Washington were there too, having followed the women, children and wounded upwards, so that when the two ships suddenly wrenched apart, slamming the net into terrible tautness and throwing everyone upon it up into the air, there were strong hands ready to help.
Richard always felt he loved Mary more than her twin. She was quiet, academic, affectionate. She gave as good as she got but never gave it first. William, on the other hand, was moody, self-absorbed and capable of a spiteful meanness when one of his dark moods was on him. But when his son cartwheeled off the taut net and flew towards the gaping, foaming gulf below, Richard received a salutary re-education. He could not have felt more terrified agony if all three had fallen. Robin instinctively clutched at the flying Mary. Killigan and Washington threw themselves sideways, Washington reaching out to catch William’s safety line and pull him feverishly upwards. As he did so, the hulls, having jerked apart, swung down towards each other again, making the net sag dangerously between two closing walls of steel. And the coffin swung over into the narrowing gap as though Major Schwartz hoped he could hold the hulls apart. Instead, the foot of the coffin slammed into the two soldiers, smashing them backwards into the slack netting. Washington, who took the first impact, let go of William’s line.
Richard was off. Leant wings by sheer terror, he raced to the net. He did not pause to clip himself on but threw himself over the rail, onto the swinging netting. Up he swarmed, over streaming, ice-slippery strands, over the bodies hanging grimly onto them. Up past Robin he went, past the inverted, bleeding bulk of Killigan. Even Washington was trodden underfoot as Richard caught at William’s safety line and heaved with a power that tore his back and shoulder blades. As he strained to pull his son upwards, he looked up, perhaps even heavenwards. And there, heading straight for him like a medieval siege engine, came the major’s coffin. In the moment he saw it and realised that it was going to smash him down like Killigan before he could pull William up, he saw something else. A figure leaped easily outward off Kalinin’s deck, caught the line like Tarzan himself, and came sliding down the whipping rope to slam onto the coffin with an impact like a bomb. The coffin’s movement moderated under the sudden added weight of the man and instead of battering Richard, it swung harmlessly to one side of him as his hands closed around William’s vital little body.
‘Abseiling.’ Shouted T-Shirt exultantly from the top of the major’s coffin. ‘Wow, what a rush.’
*
Half an hour later it was all but done. Everyone was safely aboard, though Washington and Killigan were back in the sickbay, both unconscious, and the twins were unusually quiet. Richard and Robin, Colin and Kate stood on Erebus’s foredeck, stiff and sore from reaching and stretching, pushing the dead weight of helpless men on heavy stretchers up a steep pitching hill to a swooping plateau from a heaving, rolling base, all the while being strafed by a barrage of chunks of ice under an unceasing Niagara of rain and spray. At last, Andrew’s voice came faintly over the W/T: ‘That’s the lot, Richard. Over you go. Report in from Kalinin’s deck and we’ll cast off. Farewells from Kalinin’s command bridge. OK?’
Richard and Colin pulled themselves back onto the net after Robin and Kate, hooked themselves on and scrambled up for the last time. As Richard heaved himself over the safety rail onto Kalinin’s main deck, he was for an instant dazzled by the brightness all around him. He turned and looked down to Erebus where his team was already unhitching the scrambling nets. He looked around at the blaze of deck lights, impressed both by the smart lines of the ship and by the smart movement of her deck crew retrieving their nets and safety lines. He clipped himself to Kalinin’s lines, though it hardly seemed necessary to do so, the big ship was so solid and steady it seemed that the very storm itself had moderated, awed by her size, the height of her gleaming bridgehouse, the power of the huge, ice-crusher’s motor throbbing beneath his feet.
‘All aboard, Andrew,’ he called. ‘And safe and sound. At last.’
Andrew’s reply was so faint that the clap of Varnek’s hand on his strained and burning shoulder and the hiss of his gestur
e towards the bridgehouse drowned it out.
Richard strode over to the side and looked down into the dark, departing pit of Erebus’s well. He tore off the radio, gathered its leads and batteries together, heaved it over and down to his team. A glimmer of movement as the falling kit was caught. Distant wave of thanks and farewell. Then Erebus rapidly fell away upwind as Kalinin turned.
Varnek’s hand patted his shoulder again and Richard followed him to the blaze of the bridge. He stepped, dazed and dripping, into warmth and quiet. Halfway between a hospital and a hotel, the bridgehouse closed around him. One of Varnek’s men took his wet gear and Varnek himself led him without delay into the lift and up.
Up and up the smart lift sighed until it hissed to a stop and the doors whispered open. Richard stepped out into the pristine perfection of the prettiest and best-fitted command bridge he had ever seen. It was quite simply palatial, as though the passengers were expected to disport themselves expensively up here as well. Irene Ogre turned, a commander in perfect accord with her command.
‘Welcome, Captain Mariner,’ she said. ‘You wish to report to Captain Pitcairn, I think. Then you will look to the disposition of your people, no? Varnek here will help you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Richard simply. He crossed to the radio room following Varnek’s gesture, and took the handset the radio officer offered him. It was like a walkabout phone. There was no line, just an aerial connecting it to the main radio. ‘Andrew?’ he said, walking automatically to the bridge wing.
‘Hello, Richard. Glad you made it all right. We’re off to Faraday as planned. Should be there in thirty-six hours. I’ll be back in contact the instant we have power. Keep it short in the meantime to preserve the battery. Erebus out.’
‘I hear and obey. Good luck. Mariner out.’ He gave up searching the streaming murk for any sign of her. There was none. It was as though in the moments it had taken to walk to the lift and ride up here, the BAS ship had simply vanished off the face of the earth, sucked to who knew what sub-Antarctic doom. But he knew she was out there, working her way intrepidly up to full power and safe haven.
