Richard leaned forward, elbows on the desk, steepling his forearms up to interlaced fingers. “I propose to spend the next few hours interviewing everyone aboard to try to reconstruct what happened that night for the Accident Report Book,” he said. “But that presents me with something of a problem because two crimes — at the least — happened. There was an attempt to sabotage my command and there was an attempt to murder you. I think the same person is involved in both of these crimes.”
“A Crewfinders man,” repeated the chief.
“Not a seaman or a steward?”
“Stewards are all too small. Could have been a seaman — but I’d say only Malik and Khalil are big enough.”
Richard nodded. “But both of them were with teams of men right throughout the night. They couldn’t have slipped away. So it has to be one of my men.”
Martyr shrugged.
Richard continued, “I need to know how you fit into this, Chief, if I’m going to make sense of it, make sure that justice gets done.”
And Martyr leaned forward and told him. “I’m a long-service man. Twenty years in the American merchant marine. Good years. Happy. Had a wife. A daughter — Christine. Beautiful girl. The apple of my eye. But then it all went sour. Sailor’s nightmare. While I was away at sea, my wife found someone new. We divorced. She got custody of my girl. I got visiting rights whenever I had shore leave. I came home one time and Christine was gone. Just plain gone. Vanished. My wife and her new husband put up a reward but they heard nothing. I jumped ship — a chief engineer jumping ship like a cadet — and I went to look. I found her in New York. On drugs. Working as a prostitute. Making videos — like that one Tsirtos put on — to support her habit. I took her back. The little pusher who was pimping for her tried to stop me. I killed him.
“She’s in detox now. Getting better. But it costs. You know, Mariner, it costs! Every cent I earn goes to help my girl. But I don’t earn that much now, on the beach with a federal warrant out on me. Or I didn’t till I met Demetrios…”
He paused. Richard watched him silently.
“All I had to do was get the ship around the Cape. Nurse that clapped-out old motor along then look the other way while they scuttled her. There’s a circuit — I’ll show you — opens all the sea-cocks at once. One flick of the switch and she’s gone.”
“You willing to say all this at a court of inquiry?”
“No way. No way at all. I’ll help you get home, but that is all I’ll do. I’ve got scores to settle and I’ll do that my own way. But I won’t stand up in court: if I go to jail, who’ll watch over my Christine?”
After Martyr had gone, Mariner lapsed into a brown study. What was due to happen to Prometheus’s hull was only part of the problem: what was due to happen to her cargo was important too. And the extension of that problem led to very murky waters indeed.
If the oil had been taken off at Durban without his knowledge then Bill Heritage might be in the clear. But if the oil was still aboard, still part of the fraud, then it looked as if the owner of the oil had to be a party to the fraud as well. If only he felt able to run the risk of looking in the tanks. The loading programs on the computers probably held a clue, but they were unavailable until the computers themselves were fixed — if they ever could be. And even the most cursory examination had already revealed that all the tank tops down as far as the Sampson posts were damaged by the blast. Should he get a team of seamen and a huge dipstick and run the risk of opening the forward tank to see what it contained? It was tempting. But in the end he decided to wait because to do so, to run the very great risk of opening the tank at sea on a damaged ship whose safety systems seemed to be working but were — to put it mildly — unreliable, would solve little and might force him to take action he would rather avoid.
For that oil was owned by a desperate, bitter old man. And by his daughter, who had arrived so conveniently, remained so insistently, fallen in love so precipitately and so convincingly, and who perhaps — just perhaps — had deceived them all so completely.
Until now.
It was not until that evening, partway through John’s second watch, that the fifth ship they had passed during the last twelve hours made the cheerful, unexpected reply:
HELLO PROMETHEUS STOP SOMEONE OVER THERE PRACTICING FOR THEIR ELEMENTARY SEAMANSHI EXAM QUERY
“Cocky bugger’s missed his P off,” growled John.
Richard chuckled, still half winded by his dash to get up here. “Make: RADIO OUT STOP SOME CREW WOUNDED IN ONBOARD EXPLOSION STOP…What else?”
They were outside on the port bridge wing. John was using the lamp himself, and Robin was taking down the messages as the second officer growled them out.
“Contact my father,” she said without thinking, and then stopped, confused. For the first time in a long time, she had spoken as Robin Heritage: a different person from the lean, hard Third Officer, Prometheus, she had become. The difference between what she had been and what she was now came as a shock. So little time had passed: so much had happened.
The other two continued speaking without pause. If they had noticed her momentary confusion, they gave no sign.
“Better Heritage than Demetrios at this stage, surely,” agreed John. Robin’s confusion lasted long enough to miss the linking of the two names. And the cold glance that passed between the two men: so John was thinking along those lines too, thought Richard.
“Yes…” Richard temporized. No matter who they contacted, Demetrios would know soon enough. But what would the wily owner do next? He couldn’t relay orders to his henchman — or men — aboard until they got a radio in, and even then it would be dangerous; perhaps impossible.
But, from Demetrios’s point of view, Prometheus still had to sink. His man — or woman — aboard knew that. Their only real hope was that he — or she — would find it harder now.
If only he could trust Martyr…
“Richard!” John jerked him out of his reverie. “They’re signaling again: PROMETHEUS STOP RELIEVED TO SEE YOU STOP INFORM YOU YOU ARE OFFICIALLY LOST WITH ALL HANDS STOP LUTINE BELL RUNG FOR YOU AT LLOYDS TODAY STOP”
The three of them looked at each other. A chill seemed to settle on them all at once. Robin actually shivered. They had just read their own obituary.
“Well, sod him,” swore Richard, suddenly enraged. “He’s just a little too sure of himself. Let’s spoil the bastard’s day. Make: PLEASE INFORM OWNER STOP KOSTAS DEMETRIOS STOP NEW YORK STOP AND HERITAGE SHIPPING STOP LONDON STOP PROMETHEUS COMING HOME STOP ALSO PLEASE INFORM SIR WILLIAM HERITAGE STOP HERITAGE SHIPPING STOP ROBIN ALIVE AND WELL STOP CAPTAIN STOP PROMETHEUS STOP MESSAGE ENDS.”
Back on the bridge, Robin asked, frowning, “Are you sure we should be warning Demetrios?”
“He’ll get to know soon enough in any case. At least this way he might be fooled into supposing we don’t suspect him yet.”
“What good will that do?”
“I don’t know. But every little bit might help.” He was going to say more, but John came in from the bridge wing and interrupted him.
“They’ll inform everyone. I gave them an ETA for the Channel Approaches. There’ll be some Coastguards waiting, I expect.”
“At the very least.”
“But what exactly do you propose to do?” asked Robin. It was a subject they had skirted but never really discussed. The Manxman looked speculatively at him, but he probably knew the answer as well as did the anxious woman.
“I’m going to park her in Lyme Bay and invite a full inquiry,” he said. “Like it says in the Bible, ‘All hearts will be open and all secrets known.’”