“Eighteen hundred tomorrow,” said Weary without even glancing up from the chart table where he was plotting their course with practiced ease.
“…eighteen hundred hours tomorrow. Are there any special warnings or standing orders in force, over?” Hood drew an ebony hand down over his smooth, perspiring face. His short, black curls were jeweled with moisture.
“Good afternoon, Katapult, this is Rass al Kaimah,” said the radio clearly. “We have you at fifty-six degrees and fifteen minutes east, twenty-six degrees and twenty minutes north on an inbound heading due west for Manama harbor, Bahrain Island, with an ETA at eighteen hundred hours local time tomorrow. There are no special warnings in force at this time. We expect the weather to remain as it is, though the wind may strengthen from the south during the day due to the unusually low pressure over the center of Iran. There may be light northerly winds during the hours of darkness. On your heading, you will pass south of Fate but north of Jesirat bu Musa. Beware of oncoming tanker traffic beyond Fate. You will enter the Iranian advisory zone at Jesirat bu Musa. I assume you have already contacted Bandar Abbas, over?”
“Katapult, affirmative, over.”
“Good. Then you should proceed, Katapult. Oh, and post a lookout. There may be mines in the waters south of Fate.”
“Say again, Rass al Kaimah?”
“Mines in the waters south of Fate.”
“Robin,” said Weary over the top of the radio message. “You’re on watch. Up and out.”
“I read you, Rass al Kaimah. Watches have been posted. Will advise you of any change. Katapult over and out.”
Hood flipped the radio to general receive and turned it down to a background babble. “Mines,” he said, his voice disgusted. “Jesus! Is there anything in these waters that doesn’t burn or blow up?”
Keeping watch was not Robin’s idea of good fun. Kneeling on the foredeck gingerly, careful not to burn herself, she tried to get comfortable without obscuring Richard’s view. His face was behind the small windscreen at her left hip. Once in place, she tried to concentrate on scanning the sea all around the multihull. But it was hard, because of the heat. The Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman had been nothing compared to this. The brisk south wind brought no relief from the power of the sun. It was not moving as English breezes seemed to do, with a cool will of its own, but because it was being sucked sullenly from one hot place to another. And it was so humid that the sails dripped with moisture. Robin’s hair, already perspiration-soaked, curled wildly, and her heavy clothing stuck to her. It was, literally, like a sauna — and in the overpowering heat of it, she was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved pullover, a scarf, and a hat. The fact was that any flesh left bare to the sun would blister in seconds and burn in minutes. Sunstroke was a very real danger. They had started taking salt-tablets at dawn — which had caused her morning sickness to extend itself until midday.
In the agonizingly clear distance, sharpened to uncommon focus by the activity of the south wind, a tanker loomed, superreal. Robin could see every detail of it, every line and plane and surface.
She shifted position slightly, trying to get some shade from the sail, while resisting the temptation to start thinking about cold drinks. It was less than half an hour since she had had one and she was parched already. Instead, she thought back, past that horrific hour over the explosives dumping zone to that one word she had said when they were discussing what they most needed in order to take back Prometheus and get word of her father:
“Help!”
It had not been a cry in the wilderness, of course. It had been the beginning of a series of practical maneuvers. For they could summon help if they needed it. Help was as close as a call to Angus El Kebir. Robin allowed herself a brief indulgence. Of all Richard’s friends, Angus was her favorite — apart from C. J. Martyr and Salah Malik, both of whom shared the unassailable distinction in her eyes of having saved Richard’s life. In her mind, she called Angus “The Red Beard,” for all the world as though he were a heroic figure from a novel by P. C. Wren or an operetta by Sigmund Romberg.
As though it were yesterday, she remembered their first meeting nearly ten years ago when she had gone to his Dubai office trying to get aboard Richard’s ship, the first Prometheus. How well she remembered the steely glare of his pale, Scottish eyes, the twining of his fingers in his red Rob Roy beard. And the cold disdain with which he raised that eagle beak of a nose and thinned those perfectly sculpted desert prince’s lips. On first meeting they had fought like cat and dog. They had been the best of friends ever since.
Angus’s mother had been a Scottish nanny flown out to Dubai to tend the royal offspring, but one of the Sheikh’s cousins had married her instead. It had been a strange match but a successful one. Angus had attended Fettes College in Edinburgh and there he had first met Richard and there the two had started their own friendship. Now Angus kept offices in Dubai, on Za’abil Street, near Sheikh Ahmad’s palace overlooking the Creek; and in Manama City, Bahrain, on Old Palace Road near the Soukh. He had set them up first as an agent for Crewfinders, the first company Richard had ever founded, but now he maintained them as Heritage Mariner’s agent as well.
Just as Angus had been the first to contact them with the news, so he was the first they had contacted when starting to form their plan.
“Richard! At last! Yes, I hear you five by five. I was growing concerned, old friend. I thought you had been taken, too. Only your radio! Well that is good news at least.” How well Robin remembered that first transmission as they neared the Gulf at last.
“No, there is no more news from here. I have messages for you from all over the world, but no real news at all. Helen Dufour and Sir Justin Bulwer-Lyons have raised nothing other than sympathy from the Foreign Office in London. Eric Ellen’s people at the International Maritime Bureau may have more, I expect to be hearing from them again soon. Chris and C. J. Martyr in New York pass on messages from Bob Stark’s father: nothing doing in Washington either. They’re all too nervous of the situation in Iran. Apparently, the Navy and the Air Force are at each other’s throats there. It’s a powder keg.”
“All right, Angus,” Richard’s clipped tones echoed in Robin’s memory, bringing an unconscious stirring of lust to her heavily-wrapped body, which was beginning to behave a little oddly now, gripped by the hormones of early pregnancy. Nine weeks down, thirty-three to full term. “Here’s what I want you to do. First, I want you up in Bahrain — we’ll coordinate from there. It’s nearer Prometheus and more open. It has the international airport at Muharraq.
“Then get Martyr. He can leave Chris to run the New York office and…”
“Martyr’s already moving, Richard.” Angus’s calm pronouncement still made the short hairs on Robin’s neck stir. Ten years before, the events on the first Prometheus had made a friendship between these people more like that of a combat unit than of business associates. They still held a reunion dinner every year. They called it “Separation Day” to commemorate the night their ship had broken in two. Richard, Robin, Sir William, C. J. Martyr, John Higgins, Twelve Toes Ho, Kerem Khalil; all who had been aboard that night and lived to tell the tale. At first, also, Salah Malik, the great silent Palestinian ex-PLO man who had been chief petty officer on that fateful night had attended, mysteriously appearing and disappearing. But of later years, Salah had effectively vanished, returning to the continuing tragedy of his beloved Beirut, impossible to contact any longer.