He went out and paused again. Should he close up the wound in his head?
No. Like the storm, it covered up so much. If he alone survived, it would look so impressive at the court of inquiry. And, after all that had happened, he would need to look impressive there.
Or, if any of the others survived as well, then the wound, deep enough to bring mild concussion, would explain why he wasn’t on the bridge — why he was doing the apparently irrational things he needed to do if he were going to survive.
The first of which was to get to the forecastle head, where his own personal life raft was hidden beneath the spare anchor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The door to Ben’s office slammed wide and Martyr was standing there. Robin looked at him narrowly. She was not really surprised. “Is this it?” she asked quietly. “Is this what you have been searching for?” She held up the empty picture frame and he understood its meaning as readily as she had done: wherever he was now, what ever he was up to, Ben had no intention of ever coming back here.
“Strong…” he whispered. “Where is he?”
“On the bridge five minutes ago. But it looks as though he’s not going to stay there.”
“Right.” He swung round, heading for the door. Then he stopped. “No. Wait.” He turned back. “He’s got to make sure we sink. He can’t leave it to chance. He’s got to be sure, but how?”
“Tell you what I’d do,” said Robin thoughtfully, “I’d move the cargo so that she breaks up. Easy enough to do. Hell, we need all those machines and years of training to stop it happening in the first place.”
“That’s it!” he agreed. “It has to be!”
“Right. Tell you what: I’ve got to get the radio from my father. It’s what I came down for. You take this to the captain. I’ll get the radio and come to the bridge with it. And I’ll get my father to check the Cargo Control Room.”
She caught Martyr’s questioning look. “Computers,” she snapped. “He loves them. They’re like toys to him. If anyone can find…”
The American nodded.
She was away at once.
Robin made no hesitation outside Richard’s cabin this time, but crossed to her father’s quarters at a flat run. She thundered on the door until light washed over her feet, then burst impulsively in. Sir William was standing, clear-eyed but tousle-haired at the side of his bunk. He had been sleeping in his shirtsleeves and as his daughter entered he turned, running his thumbs up under his braces. “Well?” he snapped, none too pleased with being woken.
Once she might have hesitated, cowed by his obvious displeasure. No longer. “Quine’s radio doesn’t work properly,” she responded coolly. “The captain wants to borrow yours.”
“Of course. But I turned it off hours ago because of atmospheric interference.”
She crossed to it as he was saying this. She nodded once, tight-mouthed, picked it up, and turned back.
Then she did pause, for the first time, suddenly struck by the thought that she might well be sending him into unacceptable danger. He was shoeless, and something about his bright Argyll socks made her feel poignantly protective toward him. But she had a responsibility to all the rest of them as well. And he would do a better job than anybody else aboard. So: “Look…” she began. As quickly and accurately as she could — given that some of it at least was guesswork — she explained what she and Martyr had learned. And what she wanted him to do.
Within moments of her first word he was seated on his bunk, reaching for his shoes. By the time she was finished he was laced up and ready to go.
They parted at the lift. He stepped in, to sink two decks. She ran on to the stairs and bounded up them. Running onto the bridge, she had handed Sir William’s little radio to Quine before she noticed something was wrong. John was there alone. There were no other officers in sight.
No sign of Richard or Martyr. Or of Ben.
She went cold.
John was at the helmsman’s left shoulder. She strode quickly across to him. “John!” She had to yell to make herself heard. “Where are the others?”
“Captain’s on the starboard bridge wing.”
“But Martyr? Ben Strong?”
“Martyr’s in the engine room if I know him. Ben bashed his head open and went below, what? ten minutes ago?”
“Oh God.”
“Robin? Robin, where are you…Number Three! Christ!”
But she was gone.
Sir William pushed the door of the Cargo Control Room open and very nearly panicked. He found himself confronted with a solid wall of smoke. He unconsciously echoed John Higgins three decks above. “Christ!” he muttered, hit the lights, and plunged in.
There was no sound of flames, merely a telltale hissing. Nor was there any real sensation of heat; just the smoke: McTavish’s wires were shorting out again, though William Heritage did not know this.
Sir William paused in the center of the room. His eyes were watering and, for all that he was holding his breath, the acrid smoke caught at his throat. Forcing himself not to cough, he looked around, all too aware that his time was severely limited. But at the center of the room, the smoke seemed thinner and the light as it flickered on revealed the seat of the fire — a thinning column of smoke oozing oilily from behind a blistered, twisted tin panel. Sir William kicked it twice, ruining some of Lobb and Company’s finest work, and it fell back to reveal a black mare’s nest of burned wires.
McTavish had left a red can of electrical-safe fire-fighting foam on the nearest work surface and Bill used this to kill the last pungent clouds.
His breath ran out then but instead of going out toward the open door, he crossed to the rattling sheet of board that was trying to wrench itself out of the blast-twisted windowframe. It came away surprisingly easily and the storm wind burst in, blasting the smoke away.
And bringing William Heritage almost face to face with a tall, yellow-clad figure who turned away before the old man could be certain who it was, to vanish down the deck.
The storm hit Ben with full force the moment he stepped out of the A deck door. The solid ram of the wind blasted him back against the ravaged iron of the upper works. A sheet of water, solid as ice, slid along the deck beneath his feet, almost sweeping them away. He turned and was suddenly blinded by a bright light. He turned again, his back to the brightness, and staggered away from the bridge house, feeling acutely the loss of his chance to summon up some reserves of energy and fortitude. But he had to pause almost at once, fortuitously, in the first shadow; then, leaning forward into the brunt of the wind, placing his feet carefully as though planting them and willing them to grow safe roots into the throbbing deck, he began to walk down the length of the ship.
It never occurred to him that the brightness meant that he had been spotted. It seemed unlikely that anyone from the bridge would see him, though he was dressed in the bright wet-weather gear they had broken out before turning to run for France. The bridge windows, plain glass without the benefit of clearview, would hide most of the deck under a vertical sheet of water. He had no intention, however, of using the raised catwalk above the pipes running down the center of the deck. No. He would sneak down among the shadows of the manifolds and tank caps here at deck level, and hope the hell he wasn’t washed overboard. Danger of one sort saving him from the far greater danger of exposure.
That was the one thing he really dreaded. He was one of nature’s natural spies. Under the bland surface he presented to the world he could hide anything. Even this. But the surface was important to him. He enjoyed the respect of his peers. He needed to have standing in his community. He lived in an expensive little Surrey village where rich ex-Londoners played at being countryfolk. He kept his accounts at local stores. He was a church warden and attended services every Sunday when at home; following prayer with a drink or two at the local pub and an occasional slog with a bat on the village green for the village cricket team. Soon there would be a quiet, patient, biddable, preferably rich wife. A captaincy. Children. He had it all mapped out. But it all required money. And that had been too slow in coming. Until he met Kostas Demetrios in a casino one night.