by Peter Tonkin
But the moment he stepped past the Sampson posts halfway down the deck, all thought of Ben and even Robin was driven from his mind.
Like everyone else who had crossed this line tonight, he did so in the heart of a vicious squall; blind, deaf, dumb: distanced by a quirk of the storm from what was happening on the deck. Yet he knew at once. Even through the thicksoled yellow wellingtons, lashed securely to his strong calves, the soles of his feet felt it instantly. The vibration of the deck was different. Up to the Sampson posts, the green steel throbbed to the rhythm of the mighty engine. Here it did not. Scant feet back, the deck was alive. Here it was dead.
Ice-cold inside as well as out, he whirled, falling to his knees. Salah came up beside him, reaching down to help, thinking only that the wind had toppled him. But Richard shrugged off the helping hand. He was peering at the green, fat-welded seam which stretched across the deck here. And as he looked, its thin lips ground together.
Was the movement in his imagination? It had been slight enough! He tore off his heavy gloves, pushing his fingers into the glassy streams of water, feeling for the truth before his hands went numb. Salah crashed to the deck beside him - and his hands were also there, long, dark-skinned fingers lost under the mill-race of the water on the deck.
Then, proof positive! Simple and undeniable. The deck opened just wide enough to take the tip of the surprised Palestinians's left ring-finger and then closed to nip it off.
Salah lifted his hand, unbelieving. The finger was simply gone from the top knuckle, severed with surgical neatness. It wasn't even bleeding. It simply wasn't there. The two men looked at it, thunderstruck.
Then Richard's R/T exploded into life. All along the line, from port to starboard, the horrified seamen had seen the deck open and close at their feet.
Richard sprang upright, overcoming the force of the storm by sheer will. He stood astride the breaking seam, facing out to port. There was no denying it: his left leg felt the engine's throb. His right leg did not. Then, in a motion which translated itself almost into seasickness in his taut belly, he felt the bow on his right ride down the back of a great wave while the stern on his left was still riding up it. This time they all heard the clang as the two halves closed together again.
There was no training for this situation. He kept up, like any competent professional, with the literature of his profession, but nowhere had he ever seen the article he needed now: 'Correct Procedures to be Followed During the Break-Up of Supertankers in Heavy Seas'. If he survived, perhaps he should write it.
But it was laughable even to be thinking like this. What they needed now was seamanship and leadership. Or nobody would be going home.
Was there time to secure the two halves of the ship together in some way? Out of the question. Dismissed at once.
Was there time to bring her head round so the seas hit beam-on and stopped working the weak joint? The instant the thought occurred he was on the R/T. 'John! John, this is Richard. Bring her head round.'
'Aye. What bearing?'
'Fifty-five.' But would the torque of the turn widen the crack? Cause it to split apart altogether? God knew. What next? He raised his R/T and opened the general band. 'Attention all. Attention all. This is the Captain speaking. Anyone forward of the Sampson posts, return to the bridge at once. Report in, fo'c'sle head watch.'
'Crackle ...hiss ...Khalil here, Captain. Returning to bridge as ordered ...'
Richard stepped back a few feet on to the living half of the deck. He turned and looked down towards the bow, his mind already lost in the innumerable practicalities of the situation. Better get Quine to send a general distress signal. Have some Vessel Not Under Command warning lights ready in case the bow stayed afloat. Better get those down there quickly. Two red lights in a vertical line, not less than six feet apart, visible for at least two miles.
Visible for about two hundred yards in this lot ...
Suddenly, a prolonged, mournful howl burst out of the throat of the storm. Richard jumped, looking wildly around, before he realised it was the cry of his own ship. John had managed to get the fire-damaged foghorn working. It would sound a prolonged blast every two minutes now until visibility cleared.
The eerie howl of the horn seemed to echo behind him. He turned and looked back, towards the bow. The wind rammed him again, sending him staggering back into Salah who had put his glove back on as though his hand were still complete. It would be useless to order him to the sickbay until Kerem came safely back from the fo'c'sle head.
There was a figure now, stumbling out of the screaming murk. Running oddly, but that was surely the effect of the storm ... Howling like the foghorn; but that must be a trick of the wind ...
And, behind, two more figures ...
Richard stepped forward on to the dead section of the deck. Immediately it seemed to jump down a couple of feet, throwing him flat, as though his extra weight were too much to bear.
He picked himself up. The howling man saw him and froze. Then he turned and was gone sideways into the shadows.
Richard staggered forward again, only to be driven down by another lurch as the whole bow fought to tear itself free. The other two figures struggled to pick themselves up as he did, running in towards him. He recognised them at once - Robin and Martyr; there could not be two others like them aboard. And the howling man ... Ben!
What in hell's name was going on here?
Yet another figure appeared, this one much closer. Kerem. He ran unsteadily up to Richard, gesturing over his Captain's shoulder away towards the bridge, his normally imperturbable countenance twisted with concern. Richard turned again. The dead deck beneath his feet had fooled him, giving no warning. Behind him, what had once been a plain was now an escarpment. The stern was riding three, perhaps four, feet higher than the bow. The edge of the decking gleamed dull silver, sharp as though machinetooled.
He looked back. Martyr and Robin had vanished again. He swore and turned away, running back towards the bridge, aware that in all probability only the horizontal pipes running along the centre of the deck towards the forward tanks were keeping the ship together. As he reached the edge, the gap yawned again and he saw, incredibly, sixty feet below, clear water boiling through the heart of his ship.
He hurled himself forward wildly into the waiting arms of Salah Malik. 'Get me rope!' he yelled.
'On its way,' yelled Salah in reply. 'I counted three still on the other side.'
'That's right. We'll set up near the walkway. Those pipes are all that're holding her.' They stumbled across the deck, reeling like landsmen as the stern section began to ride the waves with the beginnings of freedom, like a normal ship.
The rope arrived at the same time they did, carried by Bill Heritage himself. Pausing only to clap the grand old man on a yellow-coated shoulder, Richard led them up one of the midship companionways to the walkway amid the flexing hawser of pipes. It was like some terrifying fairground ride, half remembered from his youth: as he and Salah stood side by side while Bill and Kerem secured the ropes around their waists then belayed safely behind them, they watched the narrow path they were to walk twisting and writhing like a live thing. Steel was flexing with more and more freedom; beginning to steam in places where the cold rain hit. Wood bent like a bow, sparking and splintering. The halves of the ship ground together like toothless jaws, moving with wilder and wilder motion.
She had never had a real keel like a lesser vessel, so you could hardly say her back was broken. She had been constructed simply of great U-shaped sections - six in all - welded together. The bow and stern sections had been added later. Within these sections, the tanks had been placed, discrete and solid with huge double walls at their ends. And the join between the third and fourth U-shaped sections, currently breaking open, mercifully coincided with the double wall between two tanks. Both bow and stern remained, for the meantime, watertight; and there was little or no leakage of oil.
Or of South African water, thought Richard grimly. Even now, dyi
ng like this, Prometheus was keeping her secrets safe. Like a battered child protecting its parents with silence.
A blow on his shoulder broke the train of thought. The rope round his waist was secure. He shambled forwards onto the snaking, rollercoaster walkway.
At once he was glad of his heavy gloves. He had to keep tight hold of the railings, and the mahogany - not the most flexible of woods - was quilled with splinters already. He was glad, too, of his thick-soled boots, for the metal beneath them was hot - and getting hotter - as he moved through the steam over the yawning, snapping chasm in his ship.
Wildly in the blinding bluster he searched below for the bright wet-weather gear of the officers on the dead deck. At first he could see nothing, but then the storm relented and he began to see glimpses of furtive movement.
There was a bizarre game of hide-and-seek going on down there. What in blazes was happening? Didn't they realise the danger they were in? He could have screamed with frustration. And, at the very thought, one wild figure hurled up a companionway immediately in front of him, screaming like a banshee.
'Ben!' he bellowed.
Ben whirled to confront him and Richard staggered back. The expression on his godson's face was beyond belief. Their eyes locked. Ben stopped yelling and suddenly pulled something from his pocket. It was a gun. 'You!' snarled the godson. 'I've something to settle with you!'
Then Martyr and Robin came up as well, one from either side, erupting out of the shadows to hurl themselves at him. But he was too quick for them, dancing nimbly back towards the bow, still holding up the gun.
Richard was jolted out of his instant's inactivity as Salah hurled bodily past him and tackled Martyr round the waist, lifting him clear of the catwalk to drag him back. Instantly, he dived forward himself, lying along the wooden handrail, belly down, to grab Robin. The rope jerked him back on to his feet and his shoulders popped, crushing her to his chest. Staggering backwards on the wild, hot steel, he lost his footing and sat. She sat in his lap.
The wind stopped.
There was an instant of calm. Just long enough for Ben to dance forward again, to tower over them, the gun held firmly familiarly, in both hands. He froze, his face a mask of confusion, the gun wavering between them.
Ben's mind was a whirl of murder lust, but he had a bewildering choice of targets. Martyr had to die; he had heard too much - and anyway, Demetrios had paid to have it done. Uncle Dick had to die because he had killed Ben's father. And the girl had to die. Of course the girl had to die - her death was a simple extension of the way he enjoyed seeing women treated. He had paid a lot to see the things he had seen, but he had never actually seen one die. Until now. God! was this some adventure!
He pointed it at Robin first, therefore, smiled and said, 'Goodbye.'
The instant Ben called 'Goodbye' and pressed the trigger, the greatest of the storm's rogue waves hit Prometheus's bow exactly from the side.
The concussion, like a right hook to a boxer's jaw, threw the whole bow section to starboard, against the steady pressure of the ship's turn to port, and it sheared the pipes already weakened by the movements of the two sections.
Prometheus broke in two.
Ben suddenly found himself flat on his back, completely ignorant of whether he had killed Robin or not. He felt as though he was attached to the wooden walkway; riveted to it: an invisible force was pressing him down so hard that he couldn't make the slightest movement. Couldn't even breathe. The breath was crushed out of him in a long, wheezing scream. He realised the whole earth-like solidity beneath him was spinning, wheeling. That was why he couldn't move - he was pressed into place by the unimaginable forces hurling the forward half of Prometheus to destruction.
He had time to think, Nooooooooooo ...
Richard and Salah, each clasping their human bundle, were thrown up and back as the companionway fell beneath them like an elevator going down. Richard's consciousness snapped shut on the overpowering need to crush Robin to him, the need to wrap his legs as well as his arms around her, as they tumbled vertiginously. Then the rope snapped taut, winding him, while the pull of her falling body came perilously close to breaking his grip. Something slick but solid, whirling madly, crashed into him: Salah, still holding Martyr - just.
Enormous power, mostly liquid, surged over him, bringing his broken attempts at catching his breath dangerously close to drowning. Robin wriggled against him, vivid as an eel, then her arms closed around his neck and her face was close to his, filthy, icy, running. And she was kissing him, fiercely alive. They clung to each other, held to the great stem section by the terrifyingly thin ropes, tiny bundles of life dangling against that sheer steel wall like mountaineers, helpless, trapped high on a storm-lashed precipice.
The force of the storm wave tore the forward section clear, opening it on the broken hinge of the starboard safety rail. It tore loose in an instant, already sinking, and the great column of spray born of the massive wave joined the first arterial gush from the severed pipes in a filthy, icy, Niagara down the naked steel wall which now served the aft section as a blunt bow.
Salah Malik's team, steadied by the massive calm of Kerem Khalil and Bill Heritage, did not flinch. Even in this most terrifying of nightmares, they hung for dear life on to the bucking, straining ropes.
They saw the air convulse with the concussion of the impact. They saw the whole vista of the deck before them twist and tilt. They saw four figures thrown back. They saw one thrown forward towards the doomed bow, to lie there, splayed like an insect pinned under glass. They saw the column of water rise like the hugest of breakers against the fo'c'sle, boiling up, fanning up, exploding up over the side as the forces twisting the very air around them tossed them about in an awesome silence, like toys.
When at last their vision cleared, all there was to see was the torn pipe-ends cascading sludgy filth, the wildly twisting lines plummeting sheer from the splintered end of the catwalk, and wall after wall of black, foam-webbed water charging in towards them, breaking over something which looked for a moment like a slick black reef before it rolled over and under as they watched.
Then, for the first time in her history, slowly to begin with, like a child learning, what was left of Prometheus began to pitch, riding over the great storm seas like ships have done over all seas, down from the dawn of time.
SAFEHAVEN
Chapter Twenty Six
They towed her into Europoort after sunset three days later, on 13th September. There was a fine drizzle and a high overcast which threatened to bring the night in early, but still, it seemed, half of Rotterdam, Vlaardingen and Schiedam were there to see her in.
She had ridden out the tail end of the storm, miraculously refusing to sink, sheltered in the Seine Bay; then the rescue services had come for her, come awe-struck to bring her to the end of her voyage - to the port she had set out for so long ago - the safe haven of Europoort near Rotterdam in Holland.
First came the three tugs out of the massive shadows of the gathering dark; the great hawsers, familiar from countless TV and newspaper pictures, stretched up to the crippled giant which even the smallest television screen had somehow been unable to dwarf. Then, like a bulk of blackness itself, storm-choppy seas thundering against the flat ram of the bow as though against a cliff, she slid into the outwash of the harbour lights. Even cut in half as she was, she seemed almost unimaginably big; even broken, she looked so solid. And there was about her still such horrendous potential for disaster.
But verdammt! said the onlookers one to another, what a crew must there be aboard to bring her safe to port! And as she detached herself from the rain-misted gloom, and, above the sheer wall of her broken bow the scarred wreck of her upperworks appeared, first one or two and then all of them began to cheer and cheer.
Cameras clicked as photographs were taken, but a tourist foolish enough to use a flash was rapidly warned off by all those around - the air in Europoort is too rich in oil fumes to allow even this tiny risk of a spark. The tour
ist, an American, judging from his accent, apologised profusely; then, like everyone else, lengthened his exposure time and hoped for the best.
As the evening wore on, and the lengthy business of positioning Prometheus safely in an anchorage as far from the rest of the shipping as possible stretched out, so the crowds began to drift away. Only one or two diehards remained, and they were cleared out of the dock complex itself by the courteous but insistent security guards, and had to content themselves with crossing to the headland opposite and watching from the hillside there. The American went with them, cheerful in spite of the weight of his camera equipment. At least up here he was able to use his flash again: but of course he was now too far away for it to be effective.
By midnight, when Prometheus was at last in place and the tugs had cast off and sailed away, the rain had cleared and a thin mist was beginning to shroud the anchorage. Even the most intrepid of the boatwatchers called it a day once the clammy tendrils beg to infest the air; so at last, with his digital watch reading 00.20 local time, Kostas Demetrios found himself alone.
All he had to do now was to prime the bomb in his camera carry-all and get it aboard the ship.
The nightmare had really begun for Demetrios ten days earlier, within hours of the Lutine Bell being rung for Prometheus at Lloyd's, the age-old ceremony declaring her officially lost at sea.
That had been the high point - when his chief underwriter phoned through, shocked and depressed, to the office in New York. The transatlantic call had come through just before lunch, and for once he had taken the afternoon off and motored home early. It had been his modest way of celebrating, to be there with Maria when she picked up the eldest girl from school.
