Firespill (5 page)

The agent was not amused. He opened several bottles, sniffing with the intensity of a bloodhound.

“Would you like a belt?” offered Harry.

“No thanks,” answered the other sternly, adding, “We really should have a diver check the bottom.”

“What for?” asked Harry. “Wrong time of year for oysters.”

“There’s no season on mines,” replied the agent tartly. “What’s underneath that bench?” He pointed to a long, coffinlike white box.

“That’s where all my girl friends sleep,” Harry answered mischievously, adding, “Matter of fact, might be one in there now.” He knelt down, lifted the lid, and shouted into the box, “Are you there, Sheila?”

The agent swung round, his forehead furrowed with disapproval. He was about to say something, then checked himself and dutifully bent over, quickly glancing into the box.

Harry chuckled to himself. The chief, red-faced, had had enough. He turned on the old man angrily. “Listen, Mr. Reindorp, I’m not trying to invade your privacy, but I’ve a job to do. I know the Vice-President is only here to visit for a few minutes, but some of those nuts’ll try anything, believe me. Poison in the drinks, bombs under chairs, in the toilet, anything—you name it.”

Harry patted the younger man on the shoulder. “ ’S all right, son. Just kidding. I care about her as much as you do.” The agent walked off, tight-lipped, and gave Miller the all clear.

Elaine Horton moved towards the boat. Miller followed and she turned back to face him. “James, it’s already been checked out. I’d just like to indulge in a few childhood memories with Harry. All right?”

Miller didn’t like it, but he nodded understandingly. “Sure. I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

Harry took her hand as she came aboard. She gave him a wink and he smiled back. He showed her proudly around the old boat, pointing, out some of the new additions. Meanwhile the six agents and Miller ranged themselves along the jetty, looking strangely wooden and conspicuous in their dark suits, silhouetted against the hazy blue of the Pacific, which stretched far beyond.

Suddenly the boat’s engine burst into full power. Harry pulled the lanyards on the quick-release lines and
Happy Girl
roared away from the dock. Beneath him, all Miller saw was a wake of white, foaming water as the old engine’s screw churned full ahead. “Jesus Christ!” he bellowed. “Jesus Christ—do something!” he yelled at the Secret Servicemen, who ran towards the edge of the jetty only to stand there looking and feeling utterly helpless as they watched the fishing boat growing smaller and smaller and the Vice-President throwing them a cheeky kiss from the stem. Miller turned savagely to curse the chief agent, but he was nowhere to be seen. Having instinctively stepped forward to stop
Harry Girl
from drawing away, he had suddenly disappeared from view. It was against his principles to swear; instead, he was making strange muttering sounds and beating the side of a pylon with his fist, his sleek gray suit clinging to him like black sandwich wrap.

When two of the agents, gasping for breath, finally reached the clubhouse to commandeer a pursuit boat, they found it locked. By then,
Happy Girl
was almost out of sight.

Back in the limousine, the chauffeur passed Miller an envelope addressed to him. “The Vice-President asked me to give you this after she visited the boat.”

Miller tore open the note. It read simply, “No Coast Guard, Richard. I need a day alone. Tell the news people whatever you like if they catch up—but keep them away. I’ll take the heat for you, if there is any, when I return. I’ve gone fishing. My eternal gratitude, Elaine.” There followed, in what was obviously Harry Reindorp’s handwriting, detailed instructions on how Miller could reach
Happy Girl
in an emergency. Elaine Horton prayed there would be none. So did Miller.

Elaine lay back in the stem, gazed up at the clear blue sky, and began soaking up the sun, the cool sea breeze streaming over her, bringing with it the purifying smell of salt air and seaweed. The wind reminded her of the childish pleasure she used to take in swinging her hair about in front of Walter whenever they had been alone. She tried to put him out of her mind, but their affair kept returning like a happy dream, breaking down the guilty barriers created by the “homespun” virtues for which she had become respected in the official world of Washington.

Think what she might, she could not shut out the memory of his distinguished graying hair, his firm walk, and the quick, winning smile in the evenly tanned face. Above all, she could not forget the tenderness he had shown whenever they had been alone, before their rise in the political world had ended the relative privacy of their congressional life.

Before success had thrown them permanently into the public spotlight, they had had a chance now and then to disappear together. In the fall it had been Vermont, in the spring Virginia, and once, as part of a congressional fact-finding mission on the feasibility of dumping nuclear waste two hundred miles off Hawaii, they had managed to spend a magical three days on the islands. The books had all been left behind in Washington, and she had concentrated instead on packing the most tasteful yet alluring outfits she could find. Since then she had often been troubled by how easy it had been to ignore the fact that he was married. She tried not to think of the President’s wife. Clara Sutherland was a remarkable woman, and the thought of hurting her was one of the main reasons Elaine had agreed to try to end the relationship.

Happy Girl
’s aging motor, tired by the sudden takeoff, coughed several times. Now that they had passed the headland and were out of sight of the agents, Harry throttled back.

Elaine began thinking about her return to Washington. She wondered just how strong her will would be. From here, three thousand miles away, her decision of some months before to stop seeing Walter in other than public matters seemed firm; but what would happen when she saw him, when he first spoke to her, when he smiled?

It was 7:32 A.M.

Four

By 7:44 A.M. the fog was thick about the MV
Kodiak
, and Salish had become aware of another ship’s presence in the area. Normally this would not have worried him, but the anticollision radar was acting up again, spewing out reams of unintelligible printout. As a result, for the past thirty minutes or so Salish had been trying to pinpoint the other ship’s position using only the relative radar, which was close to impossible.

Then suddenly the anticollision screen had gone completely blank. The junior officer, who preferred not to think about the increasing unpredictability of both the weather and the computer until he had to, had retreated to the galley to make himself a sandwich. Radar always reminded him of outboard motors; they always seemed perversely human in the way they would pack up just when you needed them most. Like now, with the fog bank rolling in relentlessly as a cold Arctic air mass came into contact with the land-warmed air of the Alaskan Panhandle.

What was worrying Salish was all this reliance on machines. Not only did it make men lazier in their surveillance duties and blunt their general alertness, but whenever one thing went wrong in the myriad electronic systems that guided the ship, it made him wonder what else was wrong below decks, deep in the “mine shafts,” as the men called the labyrinth of tanks, pipes, and tunnels. Were the explosimeters or gas registers registering, or were there invisible and highly flammable pockets of vapor building up—pockets which only needed one spark to blow out the Butterworth tank covers like rockets and rip open the sides of the supraship as easily as one might explode a balloon? One spark. And the tanker wasn’t afloat that didn’t leak gas somewhere, somehow.

Salish had nightmares about leading inspection crews down into the tunnels to check the empty tanks after they had been automatically cleaned. The continual fear of such descents was encountering an unseen layer of highly concentrated gas lying quietly in one of the many bays that made up each tank, waiting to envelop a man the instant the movement of his body punctured the gas bubble. When that happened you blacked out in less than ten seconds. Five minutes more with the hydrocarbons rushing into your brain and you were a vegetable for life. Another minute and you were dead. And even in the emergency drills, it had taken twelve minutes to rush the Drager breathing pack gear down into the bowels of the tank from the nearest “pithead.” On top of that Salish hated having to wear the big antistatic overalls and spark-free slippers which were mandatory. Not only did they make for awkward movement inside the tanks, but they were unbelievably hot. He didn’t mind the inspection tours quite so much on a bright day, when at least reassuring pencil beams of light could be seen penetrating the somber tanks; but when it was overcast, there was no natural light. Even the soft shuffle of the slippers echoed in the vast zeppelin-sized interiors; the leaden tangle of pipes, ladders, and tanks within tanks seemed like cold, damp caverns in which primeval beasts dwelt and died, imprisoned in a world of unending darkness.

On the MV
Sakhalin
, a tanker of the same tonnage as the
Kodiak
, the helmsman was humming because he was bored. As they headed south off the Alexander Archipelago, the sea was calm, and Bykov had discovered that he could maintain the ship’s course with fingertip control. Now and then long wisps of fog raced past like fleeing ghosts. Everything else around the Russian vessel was stone gray.

Third Officer Yashin turned away from the radar again to prowl nervously about the bridge. “Bykov, stop making that noise.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“See anything?”

“No, sir.”

“I’ve still got a blip on the scanner. Keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, sir.” Bykov wondered what it was he was supposed to see in this pea-souper of a fog bank.

As Yashin sounded the foghorn, Salish started. After fourteen years in the merchant marine, he still wasn’t used to the unnerving sensation the horn blasts gave him. He pulled the cord and answered the other ship, not knowing who she was or where she came from. Then, leaning over the dead anticollision radar screen, he thumped the side of the set with his fist.

“Goddamn it, that’s the second time in the last half hour.” He swung round, walked quickly to the bridge phone, picked up the receiver, and punched a number. He could hear only a long hum. He hung up and pushed the touch key again. After a few seconds a tired voice answered, “Yeah, Pete?”

“Sure hope I’m not disturbing you guys,” Salish growled sarcastically.

“No. Just making a sandwich.”

“Huh. Well, wake Rostow, will you? Tell him the anticollision’s on the blink again.”

“Completely out?”

“Completely. Not a sign of life. Dead. Kaput.”

“Roger, I’ll tell him.”

“Don’t just tell him. I’m running damn near blind on relative radar and there’s another ship in the area. I want his ass up here—now!”

“Will do.”

Salish put down the phone, satisfied that he had acted quickly and properly. He started to fill his pipe, glanced at his watch, and made an entry in the log: “September 22nd, 0749 hours—anticollision radar scanner and computer ceased to function—(third malfunction in 24 hrs.).”

The Russian was sweating. He stared at the blip three minutes longer, then made the decision. He went to the intercom, flicked down the officers’ mess switch, and called the captain, something he had never done before on his watch. To his surprise a voice replied almost immediately. “Yes? What is it, Yashin?”

“Captain, I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but…”

“Yes? Yes, what is it?”

“Sir, there’s a ship chasing us.”

There was a short silence that made Yashin wish he’d never called.

“Chasing? What the hell do you mean, chasing us? We’re not at war, man.”

“But I have him on the scanner, sir, and the horn hasn’t managed to shake him. He seems to be running blind.”

The captain answered irritably, “All right, all right, I’ll be up in a minute.”

Yashin had been on edge ever since the beginning of the watch, when the Old Man had ordered him to flush out the oil-and-water mixture from the bilge tanks off Sitka. They both knew it was contrary to IMCO’s (Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization’s) ban on dumping waste oil and water in coastal waters. But Yashin knew there wasn’t much danger of their being found out, because the Old Man had craftily waited not only for darkness but until they were in what IMCO had designated a registered spill area, or RSA. These were spills caused by leakage of oil either from fissures in the earth’s crust on the ocean bottom or from some tanker that had gone down and was still releasing its cargo as its tanks progressively corroded. The spills ranged in size anywhere from five miles by two miles to ten by one hundred in some cases, as in the Gulf of Alaska. Yashin knew that by flushing bilge oil into an RSA, the Soviet master wouldn’t be caught out, but he didn’t like it. He was looking forward to the day when IMCO would be seeding each tanker’s cargo, fingerprinting it as it were, with identifiable isotopes, so that in the event of any spill, offending parties could be quickly and positively identified.

Yashin was thinking a lot this morning, as the blip on the screen kept edging relentlessly towards him through the fog. That Japanese tanker that had collided with a Liberian freighter in Tokyo Bay in November 1974. She had burned like a torch for seventeen days. If she had not sunk, the experts said she would have burned for six months. Thirty-one tanker explosions at sea every year for the past ten years—that was one statistic which Yashin could remember, and its implications brought beads of sweat out on his forehead as he watched the oncoming blip. All that was needed to ignite a pocket of gas was a single, tiny spark from a man brushing his hair. A single spark, let alone the charges that would be generated in a collision. Yashin walked quickly to the starboard side of the bridge and gave a long blast on the horn.

Peter Salish jumped again. The helmsman smiled. Salish noticed and glared at the back of the man’s head, then stood absolutely still, listening, trying to figure out the heading of the unknown ship. He wondered what kind it was, what his counterpart was like, and above all, how the sound of the horn had come so much closer since the last blast. There had been no reports of any other vessels in the area, and although this wasn’t unusual, he turned to the helmsman. “Keep a sharp lookout, Henry.”