Smith waved a hand toward a wooden helm that somehow seemed terribly old-fashioned for a ship built in the sixties. “She’s all yours, Señor Morales. What dock do you want us to moor at?”
“There are no docks available until Thursday. You will have to anchor in the middle of the harbor until then.”
“That’s four days from now. We have a schedule to meet. We can’t sit around for four days waiting to unload our cargo.”
Morales shrugged. “I have no control over the harbormaster. Besides, the docks are full with ships unloading new farm machinery and automobiles, now that the embargo has been lifted. These have priority over your cargo.”
Smith threw up his hands. “All right. I guess it’s not the first time we had to twiddle our thumbs waiting to unload.” He gave a broad, rotten-toothed grin. “I guess me and my crew will just have to come ashore and make friends with your Cuban women.”
The thought made Morales’s skin crawl. Without further conversation, he stepped over to the helm as Smith called the engine room and ordered half speed. The pilot felt the engine’s vibrations through the deck as the tired old ship began to make way again, and he aimed her bow toward the narrow entrance of Santiago Harbor, which was bordered by high bluffs that rose from the sea.
From offshore, the channel that led inside to the bellows-shaped harbor was invisible until a ship was nearly on top of it. Rising two hundred feet atop the cliffs on the right stood the old colonial fortress known as Morro Castle.
Morales noticed that Smith and the members of his mangy crew standing on the bridge seemed interested in the defenses that had been dug into the hillside when Fidel Castro had thought the United States was going to attack Cuba. They studied the gun and missile emplacements through expensive binoculars.
Morales smiled to himself. Let them look all they wanted—most of the defenses were deserted. Only two small fortresses maintained a small company of soldiers to man the missile emplacements in the unlikely event an unwelcome vessel tried to enter the harbor.
Morales threaded his way through the buoys and steered the Oregondeftly around the twists and turns of the channel, which soon opened into the broad, ballshaped harbor surrounded by the city of Santiago. The wheel felt strange to him, though. The odd feeling was barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. Whenever he turned the wheel, there seemed to be a short lag before the rudder responded. He made a quick but very slight turn to starboard before bringing the wheel back to port. It was definitely there, almost like an echo, a two-second delay. He did not sense sluggishness from the steering machinery, but rather a pause. It had to come from another origin. Yet when the response came, it was quick and firm. But why the hesitation?
“Your helm has an off feel to it.”
“Yeah,” Smith grunted. “It’s been that way for a few days. Next port we enter with a shipyard, I’ll have the spindles on the rudder looked at.”
It still made no sense to Morales, but the ship was entering the open part of the bay off the city now, and he pushed the mystery from his mind. He called the harbor officials over the ship’s radio and kept them informed of his progress, and was given orders for the anchorage.
Morales pointed out the buoys to Smith that marked the mooring area and ordered the ship brought to slow speed. He then swung the stern around until the bow was facing the incoming tide before ordering all stop. The Oregonslowed to a halt in an open area between a Canadian container ship and a Libyan oil tanker.
“You may drop your anchor,” he said to Smith, who acknowledged with a nod as he held a loudspeaker in front of his face.
“Let go anchor!” he shouted at his crew. The command was answered a few seconds later by the rattling clatter of the chain links against the hawsehole, followed by a great splash as the anchor plunged into the water. The bow of the ship became hazy from the cloud of dust and rust that burst from the chain locker.
Morales released his grip on the worn spokes of the wheel and turned to Smith. “You will, of course, pay the pilot’s fee when you turn over your documents to the harbor officials.”
“Why wait?” snorted Smith. He reached into a pocket of his coveralls and produced a wad of crinkled American hundred-dollar bills. He counted out fifteen bills, then hesitated, looked into Morales’s shocked expression, and said, “Oh, what the heck, suppose we make it an even two thousand dollars.”
Without the least indecision, Morales took the bills and slipped them into his wallet.
“You are most generous, Captain Smith. I will notify the officials that the pilot’s fee was paid in full.”
Smith signed the required affidavits and logged the mooring. He put a massive arm around the Cuban’s shoulder. “Now about them girls. Where’s a good place in Santiago to meet them?”
“The cabarets on the waterfront are where you’ll find both cheap entertainment and drinks.”
“I’ll tell my crew.”
“Good-bye, Captain.” Morales did not extend his hand. He already felt unclean just by being on board the ship; he could not bring himself to grip the greasy hand of the obnoxious captain. Morales’s easygoing Cuban warmth had been cooled by the surroundings and he didn’t want to waste another second on board the Oregon. Leaving the wheelhouse, he dropped down the ladder to the deck and descended to the waiting pilot boat, still stunned at experiencing the filthiest ship he had ever piloted into the harbor. Which is just what the owners of the Oregonwanted him to think.
If Morales had examined the ship more closely, he might have realized it was all a façade. The Oregonrode low in the water because of specially fitted ballast tanks, which when filled with water lowered the hull to make it look as though it were loaded with cargo. Even the engine tremors were mechanically staged. The ship’s engines were whisper-silent and vibrationless.
And the coating of rust throughout the ship? It was artistically applied paint.
SATISFIED that the pilot and his boat had pulled away from the Oregon, Captain Smith stepped over to a handrail mounted on the deck that did not seem to serve any particular purpose. He gripped it and pressed a button on the underside. The square section of the deck on which Smith was standing suddenly began descending until it stopped in a vast, brightly lit room filled with computers, automated controls and several large consoles containing communications and weapons-firing systems. The deck in the command center was richly carpeted, the walls were paneled in exotic woods and the furniture looked as if it had come straight from a designer’s showroom. This room was the real heart of the Oregon.
The six people—four men and two women—neatly dressed in shorts, flowered shirts and white blouses were busy manning the various systems. One woman was scanning an array of TV monitors that covered every section of Santiago Bay, while a man zoomed a camera on the pilot boat as it turned and headed into the main channel. No one bothered to give the fat captain half a glance. Only a man dressed in khaki shorts and a green golf shirt approached him.
“All go well with the pilot?” asked Max Hanley, the ship’s corporate president, who directed all operational systems, including the ship’s engines.
“The pilot noticed the delay in the helm.”
Hanley grinned. “If only he’d known he was steering a dead wheel. We’ll have to make some adjustments, though. You speak to him in Spanish?”
Smith smiled. “My best Yankee English. Why let him know I speak his language? That way, I could tell if he played any tricks over the radio with the harbor officials as we anchored.” Smith pulled back a sleeve of his grimy coveralls and checked a Timex watch with a badly scratched lens. “Thirty minutes until dark.”
“The equipment in the moon pool is all ready.”