They stood in companionable silence, then Richard, unable to say how happy he was to be beside his father-in-law again, said instead, solicitously, “Robin said you’d not been well.”
“Told you that, did she?”
“Yup.”
“Ah, well. Happen she thought she had reason.” A hint of displeasure, like distant thunder in his voice.
“But there was no cause for alarm?”
“No!” The northern accent drew the vowel out derisively. As though there could be anything wrong with Bill Heritage! The very idea invited scorn.
Richard was lifted by the negative — and the old, familiar confidence beneath it. This was the man he remembered. Obviously he had found some way to strengthen the weak, broken man Robin had described so long ago…
“How’s the oil market?” Richard asked, as though the suspicions, as though the last five years, had never existed.
“Very buoyant. Rumors of another cut in Middle Eastern production. Prices going through the roof.”
“You were lucky to buy in at the start.”
“I was owed some favors by someone in the Foreign Office.”
“And you sold it on…When?”
“Ten days ago.”
“That fits. Who to?”
“Some outfit I’d never heard of. Good profit.”
“Too good?”
“Good enough to make me feel dirty? That what you mean?”
“No, Bill. We’re over that. Good enough to look suspicious?”
“Not with the market jumping like that…”
Richard nodded. Then something further occurred to him. “Why’d you come out, Bill?” he asked. “It was more than just seeing Robin. She’s been her own woman for years now. You knew she was safe, like the rest of us. You’ve never fussed before.”
“This was different!”
“Right about that!” His tone was mild, robbing the words of offense.
“And anyway…”
“I knew there was more. What?”
“It hardly seems important now. We’re headed for safe anchorage. Only a matter of hours to go.”
“Right. So?”
“I heard yesterday morning, and it frightened the life out of me, I admit.”
“Out with it, Bill. What?”
“Prometheus’s sister. Doesn’t have a name anymore. Last registered as Tethys. Tied up in the next anchorage to Prometheus in Valparaiso all these years…”
“Yes?”
“Broke in half. Sank in minutes. Complete harbor watch gone. Riding in ballast. Clear day. No warning, nothing. They reckoned it was the long seas did it, bending her like a piece of wire, never varying. Bending her like a piece of wire till she snapped.”
Richard felt his body chill.
“No warning at all?”
“One of the watch aboard was talking to his daughter on the ship-to-shore phone line. Cut off in midword. That’s how they found out so quickly. She looked out of the window and it was gone. Bloody great supertanker gone. No ship: no father. Nothing.” He snapped his fingers. “Quick as that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The helicopter was back again in minutes, ferrying in a doctor and a nurse, another Coastguard, a customs officer who looked like the sailor on the front of the old cigarette packet, and the first policeman, a self-effacing detective sergeant from Falmouth.
They might just as well have called in at any of the islands after all, thought Richard grimly. The only difference would have been the nationality of the officialdom that overwhelmed them.
But all these new — and not particularly welcome — faces had the unexpected effect of bringing the crew even more closely together. If they looked upon the first influx as aliens, they looked upon the rest as little short of vermin. On the one hand, Richard found himself rapidly running out of patience as all sorts of bureaucratic pygmies made importunate demands on his time he could not begin to fulfill; on the other, the rest of the crew, from the first lieutenant to the lowliest of Ho’s stewards, flatly refused to do or say a thing without referring either directly or through the chain of command, to their captain. He had, after all, brought them this far against unimaginable odds; he would stand by them now.
And he did. Although he would far rather have been leading a team to check for possible weaknesses in the hull that might trip them, fatally, at the last fence from home.
The awe in which they seemed to hold him, therefore, became a source at once of great strength and of great irritation. And of increasing isolation.
He felt alone, but he was not. They all, to varying degrees, felt isolated too. Robin, even though she was with her father, to whom she had given a lifetime of filial devotion, looked almost with pity on the grand old man because he had not shared what the rest of them had. No matter what he had seen or known, it could be nothing like this. There was a part of her that he would never be able to reach again. Which any other one of the crew, no matter how little known or how faintly remembered, had direct access to. And each of the others, looking at the interlopers, felt the same. Events, and Richard’s titanic abilities as a leader, had welded them together into a combat unit. Had strung between them those bonds almost of blood, which would see the passing of years as nothing compared to the enduring of this experience.
As midday approached, the captain firmly extricated himself from the clutches of the insistent customs man, swept past the policeman, and entered the bridge. His impatience was instantly obvious to his crew. It was pleasant to have the radio aboard, but the current news concerned only pop stars and drugs. They had missed the final test match, of course. There was nothing of real interest. He listened for a few minutes, then swung round.
“Bearing to Mecca?”
Ben was just relieving Robin, and it was she who rattled it off. She hadn’t seen Richard in this mood for many years, but she remembered it vividly and stood in awe of it. When he turned and exited the bridge, the mate and the third lieutenant exchanged a long look.
A moment or two later, the ship’s address system came on. “Attention. Your attention, please. This is the captain speaking…” Absolute silence fell. Even the engine seemed to quiet.
Surprised by this simple demonstration of this captain’s power, Moriarty turned, and his eyes met the awed glance of Quine, the new radio officer. They stood in respectful silence until the bearing of Mecca completed the messages.
Then, “What sort of a man is he, your captain?” Moriarty asked Ben.
“The only man alive who could have brought us through like this.” Ben might have been going to say more, but the subject of their discussion came back onto the bridge just then.
“You can go down to lunch, Number Three. Tell them to send the rest of us up some sandwiches.”
Robin was happy enough to leave, but he stopped her at the door. “Oh. And find that policeman. I don’t want him being sick all over my ship.”
She turned away. Too soon.
“And if you see Sir William, tell him he is welcome either to join us here or to eat with the officers below.”
“Aye, sir.” She hadn’t called him “sir” since Durban, and not very often before Durban, either.
The afternoon passed in that air of dangerous calm. Richard stayed on the bridge, unable to do anything else without tripping over importunate officialdom. Anyone who wanted to see him — fewer and fewer as the day progressed — came and were growled at there. Off their port beam the coast of En gland loomed and receded as they swept past bays and headlands most had never thought to see again. They had passed the Lizard, Black Head, and Manacle Point while Moriarty was getting used to her. They had passed distant Dodman Point and Chapel Point. They had passed the Eddystone Rocks soon after Richard’s curt broadcast; and now, looming large across Bigbury Bay, lay Prawle Point, and beyond it, Lyme Bay.