by Peter Tonkin
‘Yes, the printer might be noisy, which could be dangerous. Better not, then.’
They began to search the room, hampered by the fact that they did not know whether the tiny disks they were searching for had been hidden, dropped, scattered or removed. ‘What I don’t quite understand, though,’ she said as they searched, ‘is why put the disks back? I mean, why were the disks in the file at all, let alone in the wrong order? If the first officer was the last one to use them he would probably have taken them out one by one and put them back in the correct place.’
‘So, it wasn’t the first officer.’
‘Right, but if not him then who? Who would need to look at them, be careful and tidy enough to want to put them away again, but not know where they should go?’
Her question was enough to reduce them both to thoughtful silence as they worked. The feeling that the ship was moving with a purpose now made them want to work faster themselves. The container terminal was no great distance away and they had no real knowledge of the speed of which the ship was capable. The great RB211 engines in the Heritage Mariner nuclear waste transporter Atropos, for instance, could bring her up to speed with smarter acceleration than many a speedboat. Now that they were moving, their time might be limited indeed.
‘Someone looking at them in the dark?’ suggested Twelvetoes after a few minutes. ‘That would explain it.’
‘Power on but lights out? So they couldn’t see where the disks belonged? It’s possible, I suppose, and I sure as hell can’t think of a better explanation.’
She was still working through the desk as she said these thoughtless words. Her concentration was on the piles of papers and the bundles of files. Her heart had gone out to the beleaguered first officer when she found his desk reminded her of Richard’s, and the more she explored it, the more she felt an ache of sympathy with the dead man. The only items on the desk which seemed out of place were the personal things, the photographs of the woman and children — his young wife and daughters, she guessed. There were photographs aplenty on the bookcase beside the desk, but it was as though he was not happy unless he had some one of them in view at all times and so they overflowed onto the desk. The wife looked to be in her mid-twenties and the two little fair-haired girls about six and four. They would never, she guessed morbidly, look as happy again as they did in the photograph on this desk. Betrayed alike by her femininity, her motherhood, her loneliness and her sympathy, she picked up the family portrait from the desk and the disk labelled ACCIDENTS fell out of the back where it had been carefully hidden.
And just as this happened, Twelvetoes gave a grunt. ‘Here.’ He handed her a beautifully-wrapped little parcel slightly larger than a paperback book, covered in Mickey Mouse designs. Her fingers recognised it at once as a video cassette. She flipped over the gift tag, Mickey in a striped blazer and a straw boater. It said in square, boyish writing on the back: ‘To: Fiona From: Daddy. Happy 6th Birthday, Darling. June 1st, 1997.’
Frowning, with her heart twisting fit to break, she looked up at Twelvetoes and he pointed to the side, where the paper overlapped. The overlap had been Sellotaped closed but there was space to slide something below the tape, beneath the paper. Something flat and square, the size of a computer disk. Feeling as though she was desecrating something almost holy, Robin prepared to rip the paper wide. But she found she simply could not do it. It would have been too much to destroy the poor child’s last-ever present from her father. Instead, she angled the package, patiently and painstakingly widening the seam of the overlap by peeling the Sellotape off Mickey Mouse little by little until at last the disk slid out to land on the table, label side up. NWK BOOT said the label.
Slowly, deliberately, almost as pleased to have preserved the one as to have found the other, Robin put the present down and picked up the disk. Without further thought, she removed the SUPERNUMERARIES & PASSENGERS disk from port B and slipped in the NWK BOOT disk in its place. Nothing happened.
‘Oh …’ she said, with quiet desperation.
She punched the button and pulled the disk out. She checked it but could see nothing wrong with it. She looked up at Twelvetoes but he was continuing to search through the books on the wall. ‘Oh well,’ she said to herself and put the disk back in. This time in port A.
The screen lit up like a firework display.
‘Got it!’ she exulted.
Welcome to Sulu Queen’s Network, it said. Your Network Manager is the First Officer. If you have any trouble, please see him. PRESS ENTER TO PROCEED.
Robin pressed ENTER.
The following files are available for general access, it told her. Please use your F keys to select then press ENTER to proceed.
She scanned the list. It was low-grade stuff: crew names; crew responsibilities; duty roster; dates of current voyage; useful addresses in the next port of call. Against F10, however, it said Enter company code to proceed. She tapped F10.
The screen went blue. A line of dots appeared across the middle. Above it were the words ENTER COMPANY CODE TO PROCEED. The red square of the cursor flashed insistently on the first dot.
‘Now,’ said Robin, quietly. ‘Let’s hope the Conrad codes are in place or I’m sunk.’
The lowest current company codeword was JIM. Like all the others it was derived from the title of a book, but not obviously so. The idea was that although there was an obvious pattern for senior executives who knew the central code, the associations between the lower codes remained obscure enough to foil all but an impossibly psychic hacker. The central code was CONRAD — all the codes derived from his books. Next time it might be DICKENS or DOSTOEVSKY — or MELVILLE for that matter, they tried never to be consistent or predictable. She typed in JIM.
The list of F prompts came up again. But this time the files offered were not for general access. Names and addresses of company agents; lists of cargo of particular worth or needing particularly careful handling … and again at the bottom F10 Enter company code to proceed.
‘We haven’t much time, I’m afraid,’ prompted Twelvetoes.
She tapped in F10, waited and typed in GUARD, the next code up. Then, hardly bothering to scan the screen, she tapped F10 again, waited and typed in LOCK.
‘One more to go,’ she said, ‘then we’re in to the most secret files.’
‘What sort of information will there be?’
‘Could be anything. Anything from all the previous levels of file that is too personal or important to be left open. It could be stuff not recorded anywhere else.’ She glanced across at her old friend. ‘One of our captains uses the MOST SECRET for the recipes he collects all over the world then takes home for his wife. Sounds stupid, but you should go to their place for dinner!’
She hit the last F10 and when the blue screen came up she typed in CONRAD and sat back, waiting.
The whole screen went red. MOST SECRET, it said, NO ACCESS. The letters were large and black.
‘What is this?’ gasped Robin, all her confidence slipping rapidly away. ‘This should not be happening. My God!’
The screen went plain red for a second then the letters changed. EYES ONLY MRS ROBIN MARINER, HERITAGE MARINER LONDON.
‘I don’t understand! I simply don’t understand!’
The screen went plain red again.
‘What is going on?’
PLEASE SAVE THIS FILE AND SEND IT DIRECTLY TO MRS MARINER.
‘God … Oh God …’
Robin pressed ESCAPE S.
The screen went blank. Black. Then, in red letters: ERROR — FILE NOT SAVED.
‘Not on the network disk,’ she yelled to herself. ‘Put another disk in, you silly woman!’
Twelvetoes whirled away up the little room to stand behind the door, listening. ‘Too much noise!’ he hissed in warning.
She caught up the nearest disk, the one labelled ACCIDENTS and swapped it for the disk in drive A. She hit ESC S again and the screen went blank. The machine hummed and clicked. The screen switched back to blue.
>
Welcome to Sulu Queen’s Network, it said in white lettering across the middle. Your Network Manager is the First Officer.
‘I think I’ve got it!’ exulted Robin breathlessly. ‘I don’t know what the secret file is, but I think I’ve got it.’
‘Sssssshh!’ hissed Twelvetoes. ‘Someone coming!’ As he spoke, he reached into the fold of his jacket and pulled something out. Robin hardly paid any attention to him. She was too busy pulling the ACCIDENT disk out of the computer and looking feverishly around for somewhere to hide it.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, coming closer. Lent a touch of genius by the pressure, she slid the disk back into the parcel where the NWK BOOT disk had been and popped the brightly wrapped little present back where Twelvetoes had discovered it. Then, with the room exactly as they had found it except for the BOOT disk lying on the desk beside drive A, she walked towards the door. It was only as she did so that she registered that Twelvetoes, standing immediately behind it, was holding a very large and dangerous-looking Gurkha’s panga.
The door handle turned and the tall Oriental tensed. ‘It’s all right,’ called Robin, a little shrilly. ‘You’ve caught me.’
The door swung wide until brought to a halt by Twelvetoes’ foot. Immediately inside it stood Robin and she found herself looking out into the cool, calculating eyes of Captain Daniel Huuk. Into his cool eyes and into the cavernous barrel of the black gun he was carrying. Its skeletal butt pressed hard against the shoulder of his bulky bulletproof jacket. His finger on the trigger was pale, almost white, and trembling slightly.
‘It was the computer, wasn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘The network gave me away.’
‘What are you doing aboard?’
‘Looking for clues. It didn’t occur to me until after I put the disk in that all the computer terminals would probably light up at the same time.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘And it was a bit of a give-away. “The Network Manager is the First Officer.”’
‘Are you alone?’
‘A bit like saying “Here I am, come and get me”. What took you so long?’
He looked at her for a moment longer, then lowered the gun fractionally. He took a deep breath, breathing in and out through his nose making the sort of sound an angry parent makes before forgiving a wayward child. He reached up and pulled a walkie-talkie off its Velcro shoulder attachment. He thumbed SEND. ‘Captain?’
‘Yes?’ answered the walkie-talkie.
‘All clear down here. It was just a computer glitch.’
‘I might have known,’ said the walkie-talkie. ‘Bloody machines. Carry on, Huuk.’
Huuk put the walkie-talkie back on his shoulder and gestured her out of the room. She came out obediently and closed the door gently behind her like a good girl.
‘We’ll be docking in Kwai Chung in a few minutes,’ he said. ‘I’m going to put you in the officers’ lounge until then. There is only one other officer aboard, the captain, and it’s off limits to everyone else, then I’m going back to check through the first officer’s quarters and secure them. I’m working on the assumption that you have brought nothing out of there with you. Am I right?’ As soon as he started speaking he was in motion herding her down towards the proposed destination as he talked. She walked just in front of him, picking her way carefully, very aware of the manner in which the brutal-looking gun extended his arm.
When he asked her the question, she paused, looked back and met his gaze. ‘I’ve brought nothing out,’ she said earnestly. ‘I swear.’
He nodded, then continued to talk quietly as they proceeded. ‘You will be safe in the officers’ lounge. No one will disturb you and if you are quiet no one else will ever know you came aboard. How did you manage that, by the way?’
‘I have friends in low places.’
He grunted, not much amused. They arrived and she opened the door. He let her walk in and loitered for a moment longer in the doorway. ‘If you try to hide or escape I will find you and arrest you and take you directly to prison, where you will be held until Commander Lee decides whether to charge you sometime tomorrow. Then you really will make some friends in low places. Be warned. If you stay here I will arrange to let you go. When we have docked I will be the last off except for the skeleton crew, and I will take you with me. We will be in Lai King by twelve thirty and I will put you on the MTR to Central. You should be back well before the system closes at one.’
‘The MTR? Will that be safe at that time of night?’
‘You choose a strange time to worry about safety, Mrs Mariner. But you will be quite safe, I assure you. The MTR is not the London Underground.’
*
Robin could hardly contain herself during the next three-quarters of an hour as she felt the ship pull into dock and tie up, heard the engines slow and stop; heard the main crew come grumbling down the corridor and get off; listened as Huuk gave his orders to the skeleton harbour watch immediately outside the lounge door; then sat watching the slow crawl of her watch’s minute hand until he came to get her. With every occasional scurry of footsteps or measured pace of boots outside the door she expected Twelvetoes to appear. Equally nerve-racking was the constant expectation of gunshots. But neither thing happened, and when the door handle turned, she knew in her heart that it was Huuk come to get her as he had promised. And so it was.
There was no secret scurrying, such as there had been when she came aboard. Instead he just took her firmly by the upper arm and led her straight down the corridor to the A-deck door. He pushed the heavy door open with the ghost of a grunt and supported her over the step out onto the deck as though she were a contessa stepping into a gondola. The deck rail was open immediately outside the door and they walked straight across three metres of deck and stepped up onto the gangplank. At the far end of the plank, parked on gleaming cobbles, was a new Honda Accord. He opened the door for her and she slid into the passenger seat. He climbed into the driving seat and pushed the key into the starter.
‘Nice car,’ she observed.
His long eyes observed her narrowly and she realised that their relationship, such as it was, was one in which everything she said was going to be mistaken, misinterpreted, or misunderstood, almost wilfully. He switched on the engine and hit the lights. The headlights came up and the beams cut across the terminal, revealing great square mountains of containers. He gunned the motor, engaged the gears and they were away.
They paused only briefly at the gate for a word with the security guard who, Robin was sure, did not even realise that she was there. Then it was a little like a replay of last night’s fatigue-blurred memories as Huuk’s Accord drove her across roads which Andrew’s Aston Martin had driven her along, until they reached the MTR station at Lai King. He pulled up on the bright street, busy even at this hour, and ablaze with garish neon signs. ‘The MTR is just down there,’ he said, pointing.
‘I know where it is,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t have ten dollars.’
He gave a bark of laughter. ‘No, of course you don’t,’ he said. ‘Well, never mind. I got you into this, I’ll get you out of it.’
The bitterness with which he said this really made her sit back but when she looked at him she could see nothing but a slightly self-mocking smile.
Her thoughts went far beyond the usual calculating, diplomatic approach to face; she really, genuinely wanted to thank this man. It was an impulse undermined only by the fact of his involvement in the arrest of her husband.
At this point she was not aware of his responsibility for Richard’s current state; at no stage so far had anyone informed her that it was Huuk who had shot her husband.
‘No, Captain,’ she said, her voice ringing with absolute sincerity, ‘I got myself into this situation and I’m very, very grateful to you for getting me out of it.’ She stopped, embarrassed, and then added, ‘What is it Shakespeare says? “I am a spirit of no common note, and I do thank you …”’
‘It is kind o
f you to say this, Captain Mariner, but you do not have to thank me. Here.’ He passed to her a crisp $10 note and she took it thankfully. He held onto the end of the note, however, while he pointed out, ‘Shakespeare in fact allows Titania to say, “I am a spirit of no common rate. The summer still doth tend upon my state, and I do love thee.”’ His deep, smooth voice dropped with just a tinge of extra emphasis on ‘love thee’.
Perhaps it was a corrective against her incorrect quotation; she could not be sure, but she found it unsettling. She pulled the note free. ‘I owe you,’ she said and reached for the door handle.
Even at this time in the morning, the street was filled with the odour of cooking. The smell brought saliva to her mouth for she had eaten nothing since she had picked at the Chiu Chow lunch she had ordered. And the saliva reminded her of other liquids elsewhere within her; but there was nothing she could do about any of it now. She had to catch the last MTR train or she was walking home. There was no eating allowed on the MTR and there were no toilets down there either.
The concourse was quite busy but she had no real trouble in getting to a ticket machine. She fed in her $10 note and pushed the button marked ‘Central’. The ticket came out at once and she took it. The ticket itself was like an extremely thin credit card, complete with black stripe on the back. Even had she never ridden the MTR before, the automatic barriers of the London Underground would have prepared her for the system. She joined the quiet queue for the nearest entrance and shuffled forward with the rest. She fed her ticket into the automatic barrier and walked through when it opened, collecting her ticket as it was spewed out at the other end.
Down on the platform, there was only the briefest of waits before the big silver train pulled in. The doors opened and she climbed in. Luckily there was a space on the long polished steel bench and she got to it first. She half-sat, half-collapsed beside an extremely fat woman — and then all but arrived in her lap as the train pulled away and she found herself sliding helplessly down the seat. She shrugged apologetically and received a long cold stare. Then she settled back and tried to order her thoughts.
