“Okay. But I want more speed as soon as possible.”
It was the earliest part of John’s watch, and he stood by Salah Malik’s left shoulder while Ben stood at his right, both peering through the fogged glass. Robin was guarding the Collision Alarm Radar, which, though set at its lowest calibration, was mercifully quiet. The first big seas thundered into her, beam-on, black and hard as coal. She lurched a little, not liking this at all. Richard remembered the last time he had put her through anything like this, sitting confidently in his captain’s chair. Before bombs; before anyone had mentioned anything about sister ships breaking their backs on the long seas of the Roaring Forties.
Another big sea hit her. She moved only infinitesimally, but Richard knew all her ways now, and that one felt as though it had come more from head-on than beam-on. Richard went forward and pressed himself close to the glass, wishing he had a clearview in front of him. He could hardly see the deck. He couldn’t see the sea at all.
“Quine?”
“Yes, sir?”
“It’s getting increasingly important…”
Just as Richard spoke, Quine at last got something on the portable radio he had brought aboard. The World Service News.
“…And the hurricane-force winds which have devastated Southern France today turned north, against all predictions, and are currently blowing over the Channel. Coastguards fear considerable danger to shipping. And now, sport…”
Richard exploded. “Hurricane force! That’s no bloody use at all, Mr. Quine! I need facts, not journalistic horror stories. I want reports from weather ships and coastal stations. I want accurate wind velocities. I want exact atmospheric pressure readings. I want state of sea and sky, and I do not need the blasted news and sport.”
“N…No, sir!” stuttered Quine, unnerved by the injustice of the attack. But Richard had slammed out onto the port bridge wing where he could vent his frustration on the elements, and not on innocent bystanders.
The wind out here was thunderous, breathtaking. It buffeted him with a cold fury, numbing him almost at once. He strode forward and gripped the handrail. Only that unrelenting grasp kept him upright as the wind tore at him, pushing icy fingers through the apparently impenetrable cold-weather gear he was now wearing. This was the last thing on earth he wanted to be putting Prometheus through, but he had no choice. The storm, approaching from this direction, simply turned Lyme Bay into a lee shore and threatened to blow him aground off Exmouth. He had to run for the shelter of the Seine Bay, off the north coast of France opposite.
It was a matter of mere miles — little more than a hundred — before the Cherbourg Peninsula would start giving a mea sure of protection. In these conditions, perhaps ten hours’ sailing time. So little and so short a time after their voyage so far. But there was something that made him more than a little uneasy; and it was not just the thought of the use Demetrios’s man might put this weather to. Perhaps he thought the old girl had had enough. Perhaps he felt that this was one test too many.
Certainly, it was the one final test he now most dreaded facing with her. Even as he stood there, lost in thought, the first great column of lightning striking the wavetops far ahead showed him the worst.
As it sometimes does, the Channel, under the storm conditions, had pulled in the great Atlantic rollers from the Western Approaches; it had steepened their sides and lengthened the distance between their crests. It had swung them round and was hurling them head-on at Prometheus: a perfect facsimile of the seas of the Roaring Forties. It didn’t happen often but it had happened now. To get to the safety of northern France, Prometheus must sail through a flawless replica of the seas off Valparaiso. The seas that had broken her sister’s back. On a clear day. In a calm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Richard remained outside on the bridge wing for fifteen minutes, expecting to be summoned momentarily as Quine managed to contact the Coastguards. When no such thing happened, his patience ran out quickly. The occasionally glimpsed seas looked too dangerous for him to allow the boy much indulgence.
After the icy rigor of the storm, the bridge was almost suffocating. He paused for an instant to reorient himself, streaming water. Nothing much had changed. Quine was palely wrestling to extract sense from his radio. Without success. Richard bit back further recrimination and turned to Robin.
“Number Three. Go down and ask your father if you can bring his radio up here. It may be open to less atmospheric interference than Mr. Quine’s.”
“Aye, sir,” snapped Robin and exited at once.
Robin was quite pleased at being asked to go to her father. Her bladder was about to burst, courtesy of that unwise whisky at midnight, and the mission at least saved her from having to ask to leave the bridge. Really she should have gone straight to the owner’s cabin, but her need was too acute. She ran down to her own cabin first and let herself in with a sigh of relief. It was pitch dark in the little vestibule, for the only light bulb in her quarters lit her cabin, perpetually dark now that the windows had been boarded up.
She knew, as soon as she stepped in, that she was not alone, and she swung the door behind her wide again, to let in light from the corridor.
The layout of the cabin was similar to Richard’s except that there was no dayroom or office on her left. Only the curtain before her into the shower and toilet, and the door on her right led out of the little cubicle where she now stood, not even breathing, trying to make her ears overcome the bluster of the wind, the rattling of the window-ply. What was it that had warned her? Some fragrance on the unquiet air? Some sound half hidden in the wind? Some more subtle sense?
It was probably only one of the stewards after all. “Who’s there?” she called, as though she hadn’t hesitated, being careful to open the door to her sleeping quarters before the door behind her closed.
The cabin was empty. There was no one visible and nowhere to hide: even the doors to her wardrobe had gone to fix the windows. She gave an angry sigh, irritated with herself for acting like a ner vous child, frightened of her own shadow.
She went back out to the toilet, vexed.
Sitting in the dark, with the shower curtain eerily caressing her as it moved in the draft, her room suddenly became very clear before some inner eye, and she realized just how many things were not quite in the places she had left them.
Her room had been very thoroughly searched.
And the unease that this shock realization brought started another train of thought. Why had Ben looked so shaken when he had answered his door? She let her mind go back and looked at his face in her clear memory. Something was wrong there. She checked her luminous watch. She might just take a further moment to find out what was going on before she fetched her father.
As soon as Heritage was in her quarters, the door opposite across the corridor opened and C. J. Martyr crept out on silent feet. That English policeman hadn’t fooled him with his slow speech and hesitant manner. Heads were going to roll over this, and Martyr’s was closest to the block.
Bodmin had brought this home with a vengeance. Martyr had been so wrapped up in what he was doing, and why, it simply hadn’t occurred to him how it would look from the outside. But now he saw all too clearly. He was the only survivor of the original crew — which had joined willingly in the fraud. He was a party to a huge insurance swindle, sanction-breaking, something damn near piracy, and murder. Again. They were going to lock him up and throw away the key. The only hope he could see to try to prove his innocence was to try to find Demetrios’s man. That at the very least might make them reduce his sentence.