North Star

'A professional, like myself. But the right age. And the right time, too — democracy finished, all the countries of the West, even America, degenerate and vulnerable.'

We were headed north again, the speed picking up and the beat of the engine increasing. 'Where's he come from?' I asked. 'What nationality?'

'Scots-Irish. Started in the Midlothian coalfields. Moved to Liverpool docks. He's politically astute and quite ruthless. Remember that and do what he says.'

I thought I detected a note of respect, of envy even, as though in the pecking order of that shadowy world to which they both belonged my father knew his place.

The wake was straightening out now and I kept my eyes on the pale taut line to the submerged torpedo. Somebody joined us from the wheelhouse, but I didn't shift my gaze. If the marine electronics gear was some sort of an impulse transmitter, then I knew what to expect and I wanted to see it. The light was fading, the clouds very louring, and suddenly our wake erupted in a jet of spray, the sea heaving beneath it. Then the shock wave of the seabed explosion hit the soles of my feet as it had done that night in the Duchess out by No. 2 buoy.

I turned my head. It was Dillon standing beside me, a quiet look of satisfaction on his face. Our eyes met and he nodded. 'North Star,' he said, and there was tension in his voice. 'The charges are already laid.' And he added sharply. 'A job you could have done.'

'The anchor cables again?' I was thinking of the rig adrift in a big sea and the driller working in a frenzy to disconnect the marine riser. 'There are safety devices,' I said.

'Pipe rams, blind shears, the whole emergency disconnect drill.' He nodded. 'I haven't wasted my time in Aberdeen. I guess I know almost as much as a driller about how the blow-out preventer works. But it takes time, and there's always the human factor.'

'So you're going for pollution. You're going to try and flood the whole sea with oil.'

He looked at me, that thin-lipped smile, and a sardonic note in his voice as he said, 'Still worrying about moral principles?' He clapped me on the back, the only time I had seen him in high good humour. 'With luck we'll set that rig adrift at the critical moment when they're testing for pressure, and you can watch it.' The smile vanished, tension in his voice again. 'But don't try to interfere. And stay out of the wheelhouse.'

Darkness was falling as we turned west under Muckle Flugga. We were very crowded with only two on watch and the tiered bunks all occupied. I couldn't sleep for thinking how utterly defenceless that rig was, a sitting duck to the heterogeneous group we had on board. The forecast had not been very good, a cold front passing through and a deepening depression moving in from the Atlantic. About 02.00 I went up on deck. The wind was nor'nor'-westerly Force 4, a beam sea and the old girl rolling like a cow.

I found the man with the dark Indian face clinging to the rail capping of the bulwark and shivering uncontrollably. He was moaning, and when I asked him if he was all right, he only groaned and retched with a rasping empty sound into the back of a breaking wave as it rolled under us.

'What's your name?' I asked him.

'Paulo,' he gasped.

'Where's your home?'

'Mexico.' He pronounced the 'x' as an 'h' so that I didn't get it at first. And when I asked him what he was doing over here, he looked up at me, his face green in the starboard navigation light, his teeth showing in the flash of an exhausted smile. 'You are not a freedom % fighter or you know. We are international, like a — a club, eh?' The boat swooped sickeningly on the long Atlantic swell, twisting and rolling as her bows ploughed into the sea, white water creaming past. Stars showed through ragged gaps in the clouds and it was cold.

I got him into the wheelhouse and he leaned shivering against the side of it. Paddy was at the wheel, nobody else there. 'This your first trip?' I asked him.

He shook his head, speechless.

'You're the electronics expert, are you?'

He stared at me uncomprehendingly. The bows slammed down, spray slashing at the windows, and above the roar of the water I heard Paddy's voice — 'You're not supposed to be here.'

I looked at him, at the tough, low-browed, unimaginative features. 'He might have gone overboard.'

'Sure and he never has. He's always sick the first few hours.'

'He's done this trip before, has he?'

There was no answer and I turned to the Mexican. 'How many times?'

He was still shivering, his brown features a sick grey. 'Two times,' he murmured.

'Why? What do you do?' He frowned in concentration. 'You're an expert — at what?'

'Ah, si.' The teeth flashed. 'Explosives. I am trained in explosives.'

I glanced at the impulse transmitter at the back of,the wheelhouse and the vessel yawed as Paddy left the wheel. 'You better get out now.'

We stared at each other, but he was a compact, powerfully-built man. 'Watch your helm,' I said as the bows fell away in the trough, the top of a swell breaking against our starboard side, solid water crashing against the wheelhouse.

'Okay. You steer then.'

I took the wheel and he lit a cigarette, standing right behind me.

'You've been a trawlerman, have you?' I asked.

'Coasters.' But he wouldn't say what run or where he came from, and after a while I handed the wheel back to him and went below to my bunk. That short spell at the helm, the feel of the boat under my hands, had relaxed me and I slept.

I woke to a change in the motion. It was just after 06.30 and we were hove-to. The light was on and I heard somebody moving in the bunk below me. I stayed there, wrapped in the cocoon of my blankets, my eyes closed and unwilling to stir. Twelve hours. Just about the time we should reach North Star. But there was no movement on deck and when I did open my eyes all the bunks were occupied, only my father getting into his clothes. 'Are we there?' I asked him.

'Not yet. We wait here till nightfall.'

'And then?'

'We relieve Island Girl.'

So I still had a whole day. I closed my eyes again, sleepless now and wondering what the hell I was going to do. What could I do? And cutting the rig adrift wouldn't necessarily result in massive pollution. I didn't know much about drilling operations, but I had seen the blowout preventer panel in the toolpusher's office. I had seen how quickly they had been able to operate the pipe rams to hold the drill string suspended in the hole that night the windward anchor cables had been cut. There had been a strong wind then. Now there was very little. I knew that by the feel of the boat. She was rolling to the swell, but that was all. I turned over, away from the light, and dozed for a while.

It was eight-thirty when I finally got up, only two of the bunks occupied now and the ship still hove-to with the engine running slow. There was coffee on the galley stove, eggs and bacon beside the pan. I was just sitting down to my breakfast when Paulo came down.

'Feeling better?' I asked him.

He nodded. 'Okay now.'

'What's happening on deck?'

'Nothing. They wait to make a radio telephone to the other sheep.'

'What time?'

'Nine-thirty.' He went past me, through the door we had cut in the bulkhead to the hold. He had a torch and a plastic case that looked as though it contained tools. I finished my breakfast, then went through into the hold to see what he was up to. He was crouched over a butane gas cylinder, screwing a plug into the head of it where the control valve is normally sited. Just behind him was another cylinder with two wires trailing from it. 'What is it — a depth charge?' It had to be something like that.

He looked up at me, puzzled. 'Detonator,' he said, pointing to the head of the cylinder he was working on.

'An underwater bomb?'