“Well, I can speak with a Kuwaiti accent,” said Angus more happily. “That’s no problem. But what are we doing here?”
Robin came rushing back at that moment, her vivid eyes alight with pleasure. “Have you seen them?” she asked at once. “Aren’t they lovely?” The others had no idea what she was talking about, so she took them back to see.
The head was at the stern, sticking out over the back, a simple wooden seat with a hole in it secured in a secluded spot. Depending on the disposition of its occupant, it could command quite a view. The view from the stern rail above it was breathtaking this morning. Some time just after dawn, a fishing fleet had arrived. Between Alouette and the distant shipping lanes, some twenty dhows had gathered, all of them busily trawling with lines or nets.
“Perfect!” Richard’s fist thumped onto the rail. “Now we just need to check where they’re from.”
“Radio?” inquired Angus.
“No need,” Salah flung over his retreating shoulders. “Glasses should be enough.” He was back in a moment with two pairs. He gave one pair to Richard and pressed the other to his own eyes.
Richard inspected the busy fleet brought closer by the magnification. The boats varied from twenty to forty feet. None had their sails up — all were using their diesels. Hardly surprising — there was no real wind to speak of. On their open decks, figures toiled industriously but he only glanced at them, searching instead for the names of their vessels. He found several very quickly, but they were all in Arabic and defeated him every time. He spoke a fair smattering of Arab dialects, but — much to his chagrin now — had never learned to read it.
So it was Salah who after a moment said, “Jackpot, I think. They all seem to be from Mina Al Ahmadi. There’s even another one with a foreign name. Seagull. You see it there? The bright red one? It’s written in English.”
But Richard was no longer looking. That feeling was creeping over him that this was a good day. A lucky day. They had wanted to find Prometheus and here she had come with the dawn like a gift. They had needed an excuse to hail her and here was that excuse. They wanted cover and here it was. Today they could do nothing wrong.
“Salah, you steer and stay on the bridge. You’re the only one not dressed correctly.” Salah wore olive camouflage battle fatigues.
“Robin, you’re the cabinboy or whatever. I’m a general dogs-body. Angus, you’re the fleet coordinator. You’re an important man in Kuwait. You’ve decided to hail this tanker in the middle of your fishing grounds to find out just what the hell it’s doing here. Okay?”
“Fine. On the radio?”
“No. Your radio doesn’t work too well.” Richard gave a lean smile, apparent to the others only in the narrowing of his eyes; his mouth hidden behind the folds of the kaffiyah. “You’ll have to sail right up and talk to them.”
“Right,” said Robin, catching Richard’s growing excitement. “Let’s get the hook up.”
The pair of them oversaw the winching up of the anchor, as befitted their lowly position. Salah and Angus went onto the bridge. Once the hook was up, Richard and Robin went below to oversee the starting of the diesel, and Salah swung Alouette’s head slowly to starboard until she was pointed straight at the silent, sinister tanker.
“Wouldn’t we be fishing?” Robin asked Richard tensely as they began to draw closer to her. They were at the very prow, with only the ornamental bowsprit between them.
“No. We’re too important. It’s our job to find the fish and direct the rest.”
They fell silent then as Prometheus’s overhanging stern rolled toward them like a thundercloud. Her after-rail and bridge-wings remained empty.
“Would we be using binoculars?” The tension was beginning to tell in Robin’s voice.
“I think we might risk them.” He did so and within moments added, “You know, I’m damned if I can see anyone at all.”
Abruptly Angus joined them. “Richard, she looks empty to me. Deserted.”
“I’d have thought there would be watches on the bridge-wings,” said Robin.
Richard heard her only distantly, his mind back at the discussion they had had in Katapult’s cabin the night before last. They had reckoned on intelligent terrorists. But what if they were stupid?
Or brilliantly cunning?
He wiped his mouth through the kaffiyah with the back of his hand. Angus took the glasses and he relinquished them thoughtlessly, mind trying to weigh up the odds. But what were the odds in a situation so completely unknown? It was all guesswork. Blind guesswork, at that. All at once, he did not feel so confident about the luck of the day.
And then they came into the tanker’s shadow.
Salah took them up Prometheus’s starboard side. At once the massive length of her became apparent. Fifty Alouettes, nose to tail, might just have been as long as she was. What numbers of that sturdy little thirty-footer piled atop each other might have reached her bridge-house, God alone knew. But what struck Richard immediately was not her scale, but her silence. Nothing stirred aboard her. Were they close enough to hear the grumble of her generators? He strained his ears with no success. Not a footstep. Not a voice.
Beneath the bridge-wing they lost way as Angus cut the diesel. They drifted out in silence. More of the bridge came into view — empty.
“Ahoy, the tanker,” bellowed Angus, the Kuwaiti accent thick. First in Arabic and then in broken English — the Arabic easier to understand. Richard was surprised by the power of his friend’s bellow. But then an errant memory jerked him back to the Hay Market ice rink in Edinburgh and the climax of the Scottish Country Life curling competition with himself brushing feverishly in front of the stone while Angus yelled a mixture of direction and encouragement across the ice as they guided Fettes to victory.
“Ahoy, the tanker! Is there anyone aboard?” Again that stentorian voice in Arabic, then English.
Not a whisper of an answer.
“Let’s go on down,” said Richard quietly to Angus. “There might be a forecastle head watch.”
Angus gestured to Salah and they rumbled forward again. Halfway down, they all looked up wistfully, at the accommodation ladder snugly tucked away some thirty feet above them. There was no way they could get aboard here. Getting aboard at all might prove difficult, even were she completely deserted. The least they would have to climb to gain the deck would be thirty feet, with no hand- or foothold. Nowhere even to secure a thrown rope. Well, thought Richard grimly, they could cross that bridge when they came to it. If they came to it: there had to be a watch on the forecastle head.
Nothing but the cry of a startled gull answered Angus, and in that instant the whole situation changed. Salah kicked in the idling motor and guided Alouette around the huge torpedo-head protrusion at the base of the bow. Above them at her head, where the figurehead should have been, was the Heritage Mariner logo, H and M overlapping as the iris of an eye painted there. So Prometheus watched them motor round her head to her port side where her anchor plunged down to the shallow sea bed.
The links of the enormous anchor chain fell almost vertically, pulled forward a little and curved slightly by such poor forces as dared disturb her massive inertia. Each link, an oval five feet from top to bottom, was divided in the middle by a solid crosspiece. The links were still slippery with dew because the morning’s heat had yet to reach them. The moisture made the weed with which they were coated slick and dangerous. The chain would be difficult to climb, but by no means impossible. As Alouette’s head snugged into the angle between the chain and the water, Salah cut the engine and left the bridge. Still looking speculatively upward, Richard reached for the nearest link. He had to slip his arm through it to hold Alouette still; Salah had judged the approach so perfectly that there was no way left on the little launch and he had no trouble holding her head where it was while Robin secured a line to Prometheus’s anchor chain. There was no time for a council of war. If they were going up, they would have to move fast. “I’ll go first,” said Richard and began to climb at once. There was enough tension to keep the chain firm even under his added weight, and so he swarmed up it without too much difficulty, even in his long, unwieldy robe.