The Coffin Ship (24 page)

Salah looked up from where he was standing by the wheel and met their eyes in the glass. Kerem, at Salah’s shoulder, swung round.

Richard paused in the door with Robin at his side. Just for a second they looked around the bridge and in that time their eyes met every other pair of eyes there.

No word was said, no obvious message exchanged. Yet when Richard turned away, they were all, except John, behind him.

Damn! The water was cold. No—beyond cold: it was freezing. He eased himself into it inch by inch, thanking God he had got the full wetsuit, just in case. Also what he should have got, he thought ruefully, was flippers. And some way of carrying the bomb through the water. It had been heavy enough on land, but as soon as he tried to swim with it slung over his shoulder, he became certain it was going to drag him under to his death. Reluctantly, he turned round and regained the shore.

He sat there, breathless, looking across at the great hulk of his ship. In a fit almost of temper, he hooked his left thumb into the big metal ring on the zipper of his wetsuit and jerked it down to his belly. The metal teeth of the zipper parted and he automatically began to scratch his chest as he looked around. There was no lighting on this side of the anchorage, but the security lighting cast enough light across the water for him to see everything around him here. He didn’t have to look for long. Unusually for Holland, but inevitably for any seashore, there was a line of jetsam at the high water mark, and among it was a half-collapsed cardboard box with a picture of a television on the side.

Demetrios felt a sudden flood of energy. He jumped to
his feet and crossed to the box. Two kicks burst it. At either end, originally designed to protect the set in transit, where firm trays of polystyrene. He took them out of the cardboard and carried them speculatively to the water. One on top of the other, they made a raft that was so buoyant it hardly seemed to penetrate the surface. Even with the bomb sitting snugly on top of them, they still had enough flotation to give him a little support. He zipped up, leaned forward, pushed it out to arm’s length, and kicked off like a kid learning to swim.

John remained on the bridge because he was on watch. Literally, because from his elevated position, he could see the outline of the deck quite clearly under the security lighting from the dock. But all the many protuberances on the deck, from manifolds to tank caps, cast weird, sharp-edged shadows that might well conceal a saboteur, so a watch had to be kept below as well. And a search made and remade, from now until the first inspection team arrived. He crossed to the sleeping Quine and took the captain’s R/T from beside the new telephone. He removed the binoculars from their holster on the side of the chair and returned to his position by the wheel.

A moment or two later, he was joined by two of Salah Malik’s best men, each armed with a walkie-talkie and a pair of night glasses. They nodded to him as they passed and each went out onto one of the bridge wings. Just the way they moved seemed to knot up his belly. He had never experienced anything like this before. Most of his endeavors had been lonely ones. He lived alone and raced his yacht for the most part alone. He had never before been a part of such a team. And to think, only a scant matter of weeks ago he had secretly wondered if
Richard were finished. But not now. He would never doubt the man again. It was like a miracle.

He had been there when the four of them, with Khalil’s help, had been pulled back over the brink of their ship. That brush with death, that exploration they had made into another kingdom, seemed to have added the final touch to their extraordinary relationship. The last doubts and suspicions had been destroyed by the destruction of the bow. To see Richard then with Robin or with Martyr was a revelation. If blood was thicker than water, it was as though they had discovered something thicker than either.

Effectively leaving him and Rice to run the ship, with young McTavish filling in where necessary and Sir William fitting in where he could, the three of them had gone off into some sort of secret conclave. Robin had turned up first, coming onto the bridge to give John some relief while Martyr, his head bandaged, and Richard went down below and examined every inch of the hull from the Engine Room forward—as far forward as they could get.

Richard had been back on the bridge, of course, when John and Salah’s best team had been down at the terrifying new bow taking the Dutch lines aboard. Things could hardly have reached that stage without the full involvement of the captain, who was the owner’s representative, the one person aboard empowered to agree to Lloyd’s Open Form for the salvage.

But once they were safely under way, Richard had vanished again, first with Martyr, to clarify the last of his suspicions; and then with Robin to write his reports.

But it had been inevitable that the pair of them should prowl back, their almost silent footsteps cloaked by the haunting wail of Nihil’s distant flute. He had
known the moment Martyr appeared on the bridge that the others would not be far behind. And it was as obvious to the Manxman as to any of the others why all this was going on.

The R/T hissed into life: “Any sign, John?” “Nothing.” He answered automatically, never for an instant wondering that Richard should have known he would be standing there, watching, with the set by his side.

“Okay,” said Richard quietly. “We’re going out onto the deck.”

Demetrios paused under the shadow of the blunt bow, tempted almost beyond enduring simply to put his bomb against the relatively thin metal of the tank wall and get the hell away. But such an action would not be guaranteed to bring success. Success was all that could save him now. On this one last throw of the dice rested more millions than he could readily calculate, or absolute destruction. He was not the sort of a man who would go almost all the way and then back off, saying he had done his best really; knowing he had not. He went all the way under normal circumstances, no matter what the risk or cost. He was not about to shortchange himself now. The bomb was going into one of the tanks and
Prometheus
was going to the bottom. In as many million little pieces as he had dollars coming.

Thirty yards in front of the ship, a set of steps led down from the quay to the water level. Even in docks made for these oceangoing giants, some provision had to be made for smaller vessels. Demetrios swam across to these and pulled himself out of the water. Then he scampered silently up them and paused. With the bomb by his side, he crouched in the shadows, trying to catch
his breath, waiting for some vigor to return to his chilled and weary body. Willing his dull brain to plan ahead.

The quayside was deserted. It gleamed in the security lighting as though it had just been varnished. It was far too bright for his taste. But at least there was nobody obviously watching out for him. Silently on his numb bare feet, he ran for the next shadow.

The deepest pool of darkness lay beneath a squat crane opposite the blunt end of
Prometheus.
He made it safely, and paused there, narrow-eyed, looking at his ship. A set of steps reached up from the quay to the deck just in front of the bridge house, but almost exactly opposite where he was standing, the automatic accommodation ladder also led down to his level, more because the mechanism was broken than because it had been set, by the look of things. That seemed his best bet. He took it without further hesitation.

As soon as he reached the deck, he ran for the nearest shadow again. This one was at the foot of the Sampson post that had once marked the halfway point of the deck, starboard side. Now it marked the end of the ship. He flattened himself against the white-painted steel upright and looked around. The deck seemed deserted. He could see a figure in the distant bridge windows, and he suspected there would be others invisible in the shadows on the bridge wings; but the deck at least was his alone.

He sucked in a great ecstatic breath. He had overestimated his enemies. He stood an excellent chance of pulling this off.

But then, in the distance, the A deck doors opened and in the brightness he saw them all coming out, the beams of their torches like golden swords cutting the darkness before them.

* * *

Richard led the starboard team, with Kerem, Robin, and a gang of seamen to back him up. Martyr led the port team, with McTavish, Salah Malik, and more seamen. Behind these two teams, in another thin line stretching from port, overlooking the water, to starboard, overlooking the dock, came Ho and the stewards.

They moved forward slowly, inch by inch, disturbing anything that might conceivably hide a man, their eyes busy at their feet. They remained quietly in contact with each other and with the men on the bridge, using the R/Ts that at least two of each team carried. The teams searched the most likely places methodically and thoroughly. The stewards behind them searched everywhere else. It was a system that should have been absolutely foolproof.

And there is no doubt that if Demetrios had stayed on the deck, they would have caught him with that first sweep. But he did not. Desperately, lent a touch of genius by the pressure, he ran forward from shadow to shadow, toward the line. He was lucky. Their eyes were on their feet and they did not see the pale oval of his face or the flash of movement made by his black wet-suit. The watch on the bridge wing missed it, too, and so did John, because the wily owner chose that moment to move when one of Martyr’s men called out and all eyes were on the port side for an instant.

There was no scupper at the edge of the deck. The flat green decking curved down to become the side without any runnel or channel to collect and guide the water. Welded to this rounded edge, just inboard of the line where horizontal green became vertical black, were the uprights supporting the deck rail. At the foot of one of these lay a small pile of rope, perhaps thirty feet in
all, neatly coiled. It was obviously far too small to hide anything, and its neat, flat, circular shape made it obvious that there was nothing under it. But its edge was exactly at the foot of the upright. Demetrios saw all this and formed his plan, such as it was, in an instant. Then he had slid silently over the side, and was dangling there invisibly, a black shape against the black side, with his pale hands hidden beneath the rough coil of rope.

A slow count of ten brought the footsteps close. Unashamedly, he squeezed his eyes tight and ground his forehead against the icy side. If they found him like this, he was lost. Watching them come nearer would only make the tension unbearable. Then their voices came. Not the captain’s, thank God; but the girl talking to one of the Palestinians. “What’s that?”

“Where?”

“There! By the deck rail.”

“Rope.”

“Right.”

“Check it out?”

A pause. Demetrios could feel the sweat streaming down between his tanker and his cheek. The tip of his nose itched unbearably.

“No. Leave it. We’re falling behind anyway.”

Their footsteps moved away. Demetrios took a great shuddering heave of breath…

…and nearly lost it at once in a scream of fright as the rope moved. It was a Chinese steward. Demetrios had heard nothing. The man had approached on silent feet and conscientiously looked under the rope.

But he had looked under the inboard half only. Demetrios’s hands stayed safely hidden by the outboard coils as they lay piled against the white upright.

The movement of the rope stopped. This time he heard a sibilant shuffle of footsteps, like the slither of a snake over tiles, as the steward moved away.

At once, near the end of his strength in any case, he began to pull himself up. He paused with his eyes at deck level and glanced around. Fortunately there was no one nearby so he did not have to wait—he could not have done so in any case, for his muscles were jumping with fatigue. He hurled himself forward under the bottom rail. Luckily the bomb case landed on the rope with the dullest of thuds. The stewards, ten feet away, heard nothing. Sensed nothing. He was in a squat in an instant, bowed like a sprinter on the blocks. Then he was off into the shadow of the central walkway, under the fat, safe pipes.

“Richard!” John’s voice hissed over the captain’s R/T. Demetrios could just hear it. He froze and listened, running with sweat again. How could someone as cold as he was perspire this much? He slid the heavy metal ring of his wetsuit’s zipper down to the middle of his chest absently, listening with all his might.

“Yes?” The captain’s crisp reply.

“I thought I…”

“What?”

“No…It’s…Starboard bridge wing: did you see it?”

“Starboard bridge watch here: Did I see what?”

“…Nothing. It must have been nothing, then.”

“Captain here. Okay, John. Keep looking. We’ll do another close sweep on the way back. Did you get that, everybody?”

“Robin: affirmative.”

“Martyr: affirmative.”

All the rest of them.

Demetrios slithered into the shadow of the tank cap. The cap itself stood three feet high, and it was circular with a radius of three feet. It was designed to take the great pipe that would rapidly suck the tank dry. The cap itself was almost like the top on a massive bottle, except that it was held down by a series of clamps, like a hatch cover. In the security lighting from the dock, it cast a hard shadow like the center of a sundial. On a clockface with 12 at the bridge, the shadow would be pointing at five.

As quickly as he could, constrained only by the need for silence, he undid all the clamps concealed by the shadow, then he slowly began moving into the light, crawling to his left, toward the starboard side, fighting to keep the hatch itself between himself and the keen-eyed man on the bridge.

Things were becoming increasingly dangerous, second by second. When he reached the point of realizing he was unlikely to walk away from this, he never knew; but the realization that he would be lucky to survive did not slow him down.

Abruptly, the hatch moved.

His heart lurched within him with enough force to wind him, like a punch in the belly. The rest of the clamps, the ones closest to the volcano-sided hole in the deck, must all have been broken by the explosion in the Pump Room.