“Right, Chief! Now I’m here. And I give you fair warning, you and anyone else who thinks what ever Levkas and his men were up to might still be going on…” Richard paused for breath, and let his voice sink a decibel or two. “No matter what was going on then, what’s going on now is that I’m bringing Prometheus to Europoort, and nothing — and nobody — will stop me.”
By 17.35, Richard was back in the Radio Room, leaning against the doorjamb, his bright blue eyes wandering vaguely over the clutter of untidy wiring, green metal, plastic fascia, and flashing lights that made up Tsirtos’s den. He had already been to the sick bay, again, and the bridge.
“No word from the owner?”
“No, sir. I’ve checked all the numbers he gave me, but no one can reach him.”
“And the other number? His agent in Dubai?”
“No reply. I think they must have gone home for the day. Shut up shop.”
Richard’s mouth thinned. This was unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. They were an officer short on an almost skeletal crew. It was usual enough for an in de pen dent to sail with only three deck officers for bridge watch, but Richard was used to the Heritage way — four deck officers apart from the captain, plus at least two more partially qualified trainees: Prometheus, though perfectly legal, felt undermanned to him. Both the owner and his nearest recommended agent were unobtainable. He ought to wait until he could contact one or the other. But Demetrios had specifically, if unusually, ordered a fast voyage, and Richard simply wasn’t prepared to go charging round the Cape with only two deck officers.
“Okay,” he said, unconsciously sealing his fate. “Get me Angus El Kebir. Here’s the number of his Dubai office.”
Demetrios’s agents might knock off early. Crewfinders did not.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Angus El Kebir was not used to being intimidated. There flowed in his veins the blood of desert princes and of Highland chieftains. At the court of his father’s third cousin he wore — as was his right — the tartans of his mother’s ancestors.
Offspring of an Arab prince and a Scottish governess, both now deceased, he had been educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh, where he had learned to admire industriousness and look down his long hooked nose at sloth; so, when the time had come for him to fulfill some kind of function in the world, he had scorned the thought of sponging off his princely relatives and hitched instead his rising star to that of Crewfinders, and that of his old school friend, Richard Mariner.
Yet now he found himself sitting, trapped, in his tiny Dubai office, trying his best to hold the cold gray gaze opposite, stroking the fullness of his bright red beard, and thinking like a fox at bay.
“There is the Shamaal,” he temporized at last. “You cannot even reach her in the Shamaal.”
“Oh, come on!” The accent was even more clipped than his own; impatient where his was conciliatory. “You’re stalling. You know I have every right to be aboard. I have come to you simply because I cannot contact the owner or his agent. If you won’t get me out, I’ll charter a helicopter and fly on out myself.”
Could this most unwelcome visitor also fly helicopters? Angus would not be at all surprised. There seemed little the offspring of Sir William Heritage would not do, if driven.
“I did not say ‘Would not,’” he placated. “I said ‘Could not.’ Prometheus will in all probability be through the Strait before the Shamaal clears. To take a helicopter down into the Arabian Sea would be expensive, even for you. Besides, you must know this is none of my business. Richard is there simply as this man Kostas Demetrios’s employee. It has nothing to do with Crewfinders or with me.”
Robin Heritage jumped up out of the chair, too full of frustration to remain seated. A long hand swept a boyish lick of golden hair back out of those cold gray eyes. Angus shifted uncomfortably under the searching stare that seemed to see into his soul like the gaze of a jinni in a fairy tale — that saw how completely he was prevaricating.
It was just this glare, so he had heard, that had made the young Heritage something of a power in the City. The old man, so they said, had yet to recover from the shock of the collision; but this youngster was pulling it all back together for him.
Trained at sea, through the Heritage fleet, with a surprising range of papers to show for it; trained also, if briefly, at the London School of Economics and at the Wharton School, here was a mind of unusual quality. Here was a power in the shipping world not lightly to be crossed.
But Angus could not sacrifice his friend. “Now look…” he began, trying charm as a last, desperate, tactic.
“Don’t bullshit me! I came to you as much out of courtesy as anything else. I can drop onto Prometheus by parachute if I want and Richard Mariner will be hard put to do much about it. Demetrios might own the ship, but by God I own the cargo; all two hundred fifty thousand tons of it. I own it as of 09.00 GMT yesterday morning and I have the right to ride with it if I choose.”
“Hardly marine lore…” He faltered. The icy glance said it alclass="underline" Robin Heritage had forgotten as much marine lore as Angus would ever know. Thank Allah and the Shamaal, he thought. Thank Him also for the fact that Richard had not got in touch.
Angus knew better than most what Richard had suffered during these last few years. He suspected very precisely what it must be costing his old friend to be back at sea again after all this time. He saw all too clearly the resemblance to the dead Rowena in the determined young face opposite. He saw the bitter twist to the lips every time they mentioned Richard’s name.
There was no way Robin Heritage would get onto Prometheus if Angus El Kebir could help it.
Robin saw this clearly enough in Angus’s strange, light eyes and drove a fist down onto his desk in a gesture of frustration.
The impasse was complete.
The telephone rang.
Doctor, nurse, and pilot had been sitting patiently in the little Sikorsky for over half an hour when Heritage showed up.
“You flying out to Prometheus?” The doctor nodded toward the pilot as though he didn’t speak English. The pilot turned and looked back. “If the sand clears,” he said.
“They need a replacement for the man you’re bringing back.”
“You?” The pilot looked at the perfectly pressed whites, innocent of badges of rank or seniority.
“Yup. Me.” The cool, confident voice allowed no room for argument.
“On your own head,” said the pilot equably. “But that’s a bad ship. Unlucky.”
Robin climbed fully aboard. “You have a Florida accent.”
“Fort Lauderdale. Born and bred.”
“Ever fly the Bermuda Triangle?” The question seemed innocently asked, but the point was made. Some people pay more attention to superstition than others.
Robin dumped the bulky suitcase beside the doctor’s medical supplies and came far enough up the Sikorsky’s short body to see that the right-hand seat was empty. “Mind if I sit up front?”
“Can’t say’s I do.”
Something about the way Robin’s capable hands and feet rested on the controls prompted the pilot to ask, “Ever flown one of these?”
“No.”
For some reason, the American felt mildly surprised by the simple negative. But there was more.
“I learned to fly helicopters in En gland. Westlands, mostly. I’ve never flown a Sikorsky, though this looks almost identical to some I have been up in.”