‘We know that, Ms—’
‘I know you know it, Dr Dyal, which is why it’s so frustrating that we’re still talking about it instead of doing something about it!’
‘But we are doing something about it. As of now. That’s why I have brought Captain Mariner to speak to us today.’
Richard’s dazed condition was threatening to return, but this time it was nothing to do with jet lag or airsickness. The passionate words of the tall, willowy, mahogany-skinned woman had opened his eyes to the dazzling prospect of what the United Nations was actually proposing to do. The irrigation system that Julius Karanga had planned to fill from the Karanga Dam was still in place. He was to try and get the iceberg into the harbour at Mawanga and then get enough of that one point five billion tons of water up the Mau River to fill the irrigation ditches.
He found himself on his feet, leaning forward across the table with his face surprisingly close to that of the vividly impatient girl who had just finished speaking. Her eyes were long and sloping — cat’s eyes as bright as copper. Her nose was long and spread generously at its end. Her lips were full and wide and sculpted like a model’s. He was so close to her he could smell her perfume, something light and exotic that he did not recognise. They were so close that he could smell the musk of her body beneath the perfume and the faintest scent of cloves upon her breath.
‘Emily,’ Dr Dyal was saying, distantly. ‘Emily—’
‘Sit down, please, Miss Karanga,’ Aziz cut in more forcefully, ‘and let the captain explain how he proposes to finish your father’s final project.’
Chapter Ten
Two days later, just as it was coming up to midnight local time, Richard, red-eyed, stood in the tiny cabin of the pilot’s launch as she pounded out of Galveston Bay into the Roadsteads where Titan had just finished discharging. He was swaying with exhaustion but his individual movements were lost in the general motion as the tiny craft jumped and butted through the waves. There was a southerly gale blowing and the hurricane warnings were out already further to the south. Though the weather was by no means as bad as it had been in New York, it was still a foul night.
The tiny cabin was hot and claustrophobic, crowded as it was with crew, pilot and two passengers, each of whom had brought two big suitcases along, and all the doors, windows and portholes closed against the wind, rain and spray. At the back of the cabin was a shelf with a hotplate which ran off the launch’s battery; it had just enough power to keep a pot of thick black coffee on the simmer and its bitter odour filled the air, adding to the uncomfortable atmosphere.
Dead ahead, the supertanker sat moored to an SMB, all lit up like a palace in expectation of their arrival. Her lights seemed to dance wildly up and down as the little vessel pitched and tossed until she came into the wind shadow of the great superstructure, extended to a considerable distance because she was riding so high.
As soon as she did so, the launch’s motion moderated. The thunder of wind and spray fell back sufficiently for conversation to be possible. ‘She’s a hell of a ship,’ shouted the pilot. Richard was too exhausted to reply.
‘He’s glad you like it,’ called back Emily Karanga drily. ‘He owns it.’
With no further ado, the pilot launch raced up to the towering side of the vessel and tied up at the foot of the accommodation ladder. The two men and the woman leaped over the restless little gap more or less nimbly. Their cases were swung across behind them. Richard picked up his and the pilot mutely offered to carry Emily Karanga’s. She mutely declined and hefted them up herself and began to climb aboard, so the pilot followed her up the steps covertly appreciating, every step of the way, the shape of her bottom and the manner in which it filled the seat of her black leather trousers.
At the top of the ladder they stepped up onto the deck and back into the power of the wind. An officer was waiting to meet them there with three general purpose seamen ready to take the bags. This time independence would have been sheer bravado so Emily relinquished her bags at the same time as Richard did and the little group ran up across the rainswept deck towards the high white brightness of the bridgehouse.
Emily had never been aboard a supertanker before and right from the moment that the big metal door was slammed behind her to shut out the stormy wind, she was struck by the quiet — the near silence, in fact, emphasised by die distant throbbing grumble she would come to recognise as the generators. She looked around as they waited for the lift to arrive, very much struck by the clean, functional lines of everything. And the size. In the pilot’s cutter she had been awed by die sheer size of the hull. At the top of the companionway she had been struck by the length and breadth of the deck she was stepping onto and by the scale of the pipes, conduits and deck equipment she could see. The bridgehouse looked to be about the same size as her apartment block from the outside and now that she was inside, it seemed like a huge plush hotel. Except that there was no luxury apparent, there was only linoleum on the floor and the walls were covered in cold white paint instead of wallpaper. So, not a hotel then; more like a hospital. She shivered. The lift came. Richard, the pilot and she got in. The officer and the seamen waited for the next car.