They were not safe yet. They ought to be but they were not. Not here. Not anywhere above the waves. Not like this. Not as they were, in one piece. Not now. Not until it was too late to stop the inspection. The report. It was almost too much to ask. After what they had been through already, it might well be too much. But he had to ask it. He had to go round and wake them all up. That was why they were still here, after all.
He had insisted on remaining aboard, on keeping his own watch instead of letting the Dutch harbor watch take over. The port authorities had allowed it, understandingly; and doubled the security on the dock. It was the dock nearest the sea, farthest from the other ships and the refineries. The closest Europoort had to an isolation dock. If they could not have put them, effectively, in quarantine, the careful Dutch would never have allowed them in here.
But were they well enough quarantined? Not from Demetrios. Never from the owner, until his fraud had been exposed.
Facing this, at the end of his long, weary, meandering train of thought, forced him into action. He slammed the log shut loud enough to disturb Robin, though this was not his object. She sat up sleepily and he rose stiffly, feeling ancient and arthritic, and stooped to help her to her feet. He was about to lift her into his arms and carry her through into his cabin and his bunk, but once she was on her feet she stopped him. “What is it with you?” she asked. “It’s like being in love with a guard dog.”
He smiled wearily at her. “I know.” His voice was rusty with fatigue. “I’m a natural-born worrier.”
“Okay,” she acquiesced. “So let’s go guard something.”
He nodded. “Not something. Everything.”
She sobered down. “You think he’s coming?”
“Maybe not him.”
“But someone?”
“Sure as death.”
“Tonight?”
“To night is all they’ve got.”
“Then let’s go.”
They went out together, side by side, as though going on patrol in the jungle.
Rice was keeping an eye on the generators. McTavish was with Martyr on the bridge, waiting for them. Quine dozed in the captain’s chair, beside the quiet radio. They had run a landline from the shore and a telephone lay in a cradle beside it. John went over toward the sleepy radio officer as soon as he saw Richard, but the captain smiled and shook his head: let the boy sleep. The youngest and the oldest aboard could sleep undisturbed. For the time being. If all went well.
Salah looked up from where he was standing by the wheel and met their eyes in the glass. Kerem, at Salah’s shoulder, swung round.
Richard paused in the door with Robin at his side. Just for a second they looked around the bridge and in that time their eyes met every other pair of eyes there.
No word was said, no obvious message exchanged. Yet when Richard turned away, they were all, except John, behind him.
Damn! The water was cold. No — beyond cold: it was freezing. He eased himself into it inch by inch, thanking God he had got the full wetsuit, just in case. Also what he should have got, he thought ruefully, was flippers. And some way of carrying the bomb through the water. It had been heavy enough on land, but as soon as he tried to swim with it slung over his shoulder, he became certain it was going to drag him under to his death. Reluctantly, he turned round and regained the shore.
He sat there, breathless, looking across at the great hulk of his ship. In a fit almost of temper, he hooked his left thumb into the big metal ring on the zipper of his wetsuit and jerked it down to his belly. The metal teeth of the zipper parted and he automatically began to scratch his chest as he looked around. There was no lighting on this side of the anchorage, but the security lighting cast enough light across the water for him to see everything around him here. He didn’t have to look for long. Unusually for Holland, but inevitably for any seashore, there was a line of jetsam at the high water mark, and among it was a half-collapsed cardboard box with a picture of a television on the side.
Demetrios felt a sudden flood of energy. He jumped to his feet and crossed to the box. Two kicks burst it. At either end, originally designed to protect the set in transit, where firm trays of polystyrene. He took them out of the cardboard and carried them speculatively to the water. One on top of the other, they made a raft that was so buoyant it hardly seemed to penetrate the surface. Even with the bomb sitting snugly on top of them, they still had enough flotation to give him a little support. He zipped up, leaned forward, pushed it out to arm’s length, and kicked off like a kid learning to swim.
John remained on the bridge because he was on watch. Literally, because from his elevated position, he could see the outline of the deck quite clearly under the security lighting from the dock. But all the many protuberances on the deck, from manifolds to tank caps, cast weird, sharp-edged shadows that might well conceal a saboteur, so a watch had to be kept below as well. And a search made and remade, from now until the first inspection team arrived. He crossed to the sleeping Quine and took the captain’s R/T from beside the new telephone. He removed the binoculars from their holster on the side of the chair and returned to his position by the wheel.
A moment or two later, he was joined by two of Salah Malik’s best men, each armed with a walkie-talkie and a pair of night glasses. They nodded to him as they passed and each went out onto one of the bridge wings. Just the way they moved seemed to knot up his belly. He had never experienced anything like this before. Most of his endeavors had been lonely ones. He lived alone and raced his yacht for the most part alone. He had never before been a part of such a team. And to think, only a scant matter of weeks ago he had secretly wondered if Richard were finished. But not now. He would never doubt the man again. It was like a miracle.
He had been there when the four of them, with Khalil’s help, had been pulled back over the brink of their ship. That brush with death, that exploration they had made into another kingdom, seemed to have added the final touch to their extraordinary relationship. The last doubts and suspicions had been destroyed by the destruction of the bow. To see Richard then with Robin or with Martyr was a revelation. If blood was thicker than water, it was as though they had discovered something thicker than either.
Effectively leaving him and Rice to run the ship, with young McTavish filling in where necessary and Sir William fitting in where he could, the three of them had gone off into some sort of secret conclave. Robin had turned up first, coming onto the bridge to give John some relief while Martyr, his head bandaged, and Richard went down below and examined every inch of the hull from the Engine Room forward — as far forward as they could get.
Richard had been back on the bridge, of course, when John and Salah’s best team had been down at the terrifying new bow taking the Dutch lines aboard. Things could hardly have reached that stage without the full involvement of the captain, who was the owner’s representative, the one person aboard empowered to agree to Lloyd’s Open Form for the salvage.
But once they were safely under way, Richard had vanished again, first with Martyr, to clarify the last of his suspicions; and then with Robin to write his reports.
But it had been inevitable that the pair of them should prowl back, their almost silent footsteps cloaked by the haunting wail of Nihil’s distant flute. He had known the moment Martyr appeared on the bridge that the others would not be far behind. And it was as obvious to the Manxman as to any of the others why all this was going on.
The R/T hissed into life: “Any sign, John?” “Nothing.” He answered automatically, never for an instant wondering that Richard should have known he would be standing there, watching, with the set by his side.