One look was enough. He hit the emergency button.
Then, thankfully, Richard was there by his shoulder. John had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. “You all right?” asked the captain. John could only nod.
“Pray the PA is still working,” said Richard, coolly in control even under these unimaginable circumstances. “You’d better get below, John. Find Robin. I left her in the Officers’ Galley.” Then he spoke crisply into the microphone. “Attention. Your attention, please. This is the captain speaking. There is a fire in the Pump Room and we are in danger of exploding. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.”
In the confusion after Richard gave the order to abandon, the man who had poisoned the soup had no real difficulty in sneaking away alone. The tanker might explode; it might not: there was still work to be done.
The saboteur’s course was fraught with danger. The possibility of an imminent explosion he took for granted, quelling his fear with thoughts of the immensity of his reward if this continued according to plan.
Where in hell’s name had that bomb come from? Acutely, for he was a greedy man, not a stupid one, he suspected that the bomb had been part of the original plan, the one that had died with the bulk of Levkas’s crew. What incredible luck that it should have gone off just at the right moment. Ah, but was it good luck or bad? Only time would tell. In the meantime, there was no use crying over spilled milk. It had certainly panned out suspiciously well for the owner. No one was likely to question the loss of a ship that blew up and sank with most of the crew still aboard.
These dark musings served to take him down to deck level where he almost met some of the crew. A line of wounded men — he could not see how badly they were hurt from the shadows where he hid himself — being led to safety by Kerem Khalil. He avoided them with ease and, pausing only to check in the burned-out wreck of the Radio Shack, he headed for his first destination.
The Cargo Control Room was a mess too. He should have foreseen that, but it came as a surprise to him. One glance through the splintered door was enough to tell him it would be useless to enter. All the machines were dead. The shattered windows were so full of searing flames from the Pump Room that he turned away at once, drenched in sweat. So plan number one — insurance number one — was ruined. All that time setting it up in Durban had gone to waste after all. Now he had to go on down below. It was the heat, he told himself, not fear, that made him sweat. And, indeed, the heat was building fiercely as he went down. As though he were nearing the center of the earth, he told himself. Or hell. Yes, all in all hell was much more likely. But down he plunged regardless, into the bowels of the ship.
The noise increased disproportionately as soon as he got beneath deck level. It became a deafening roar, echoing through the corridors as though the ship were bellowing like a beast in agony. He was used to the incessant grumble of engine or generators, which caused a perpetual trembling in everything aboard, but this was infinitely louder and dangerously overpowering. A deafening, disorienting din that made the floor vibrate so hard the soles of his feet itched unbearably and his teeth chattered painfully. Were the walls shaking, or was it just that his eyeballs were trembling in their sockets? Tears sprang onto his cheeks, born of the acrid smoke and the juddering of his eyes. He leaned against a rail to catch his breath, but the vibration only shot up his arm and caused his very heart to palpitate. He thought only of the half a million pounds he had been promised; it bolstered up his courage. And after a moment more he went on with his secret mission to ensure the death of the ship. Unable now to log in his secret program on the cargo control computers to move the cargo and break her in two, he was going to open the seacocks and let the Atlantic into her. Even ablaze as she was, he could not rely on her cargo blowing up. And her destruction had to be ensured.
The Engine Control Room was empty. He glanced around it quickly and did not linger. His mission must take him farther down still.
His procedure for opening the sea-cocks and flooding the ship was designed to be relatively simple. Down here, out of the way, in a place where it would not be too hard for the engineers to overlook it, was a switch. As soon as it was turned, the sea-cocks would begin to open. Not too complicated, even under these circumstances, which were so much worse than anything ever envisioned. And so discreet! And it was very nearly foolproof, granted only two things: granted that he could get to the switch, and granted that the generators maintained enough electrical flow to make the system work. But if the ship’s power died, the switch would be useless. And in the final analysis, after all he had been through, after all his bravery, all his intrepid greed, it was the generators that let him down. He was deep in the ship, in the same place — though on the opposite side — as the one in which Hajji had died, with his fingers actually fastened on the switch itself, illumined by the beam of his torch, when the distant lights went out and that all-important element of the background noise fell silent. He flicked the switch up and down, thwarted at last: absolutely nothing happened.
The saboteur was overcome at once by dread. At first he imagined that the Engine Room must have flooded and he waited for several dreadful seconds anticipating that first cold lick against his legs that would tell him he was dead. It did not come. Thankfully, he began to move — the switch now useless and his presence here pointless. He turned and began to pick his way back along the path that had brought him here. His first priority now was to obey his captain’s last order and abandon.
But his steps, which had been quick enough in bringing him here through the fully illuminated ship, were slower now. The dark was an oppressive force. It had weight. It wrapped itself around him like a blanket. The sensation became so vivid that he found it hard to breathe. He pulled a shaking hand down over his running face, gathering enough cold sweat to flick an enormous shower of it away into the massive darkness.
In the Engine Control Room there was a glimmer of light. It did not come from any of the consoles — they were all dark. As were all the hi-tech aids on the bridge now: Prometheus without her generators was blind, deaf, dumb: dead. The light came, a reflection of a reflection, glancing off bright surfaces, round corners, up and down, from the sun-bright furnace of the Pump Room.
And still there had been no further explosion.
But that was nearly a miracle now. Even knowing what he knew of that, he could no longer subdue the fear under promises of massive wealth. He had to escape. Now.
He swung the broad, bright beam of his torch over to the door and lit up the startled face of the chief engineer.
“What…” said Martyr, blinded.
The saboteur hurled himself forward, silently offering a prayer of thanks that the brightness of the beam masked him, but at the same time cursing the chief for being here now. Why was he here? Had he come to try to fix the generators so that the others could abandon in greater safety? Or was it he who had switched them off, trying even now to save the ship? The terrible suspicion flashed into the saboteur’s mind just as their bodies met.
They met with a shock of force, two big men charging for each other full-tilt. The torch spun out of the saboteur’s hand and rolled away across the floor. Then, but for that vague light from the furnace at the ship’s heart, they fought in darkness. And, but for their guttural grunts of effort or pain, in silence.