He leaned across and swung the door shut. ‘What are we talking about here, Charles? The United Nations aren’t our enemies. They’re just trying to get a job of work done. We’re trying to help because it makes good sense in a bad market. I thought we had all this agreed.’
‘We do, Richard. I apologise if I led you to think anything different. I am not saying I am disinclined to send Hero and Dido. I am just saying it will be impossible in the time. Physically impossible. Hero is due to dock in Nagasaki in three days’ time. It will take her at least another day to turn around even if she can discharge at once. Dido is in the Malacca Strait, also bound for Japan. Even at optimum speed, she will take more than a week to get there, say ten days including discharge and turnaround. And even then, they are on the wrong side of the world. If we started them from Nagasaki now they would still have to cross the Pacific and come through the Panama Canal and that has to take anywhere between three weeks and a month, depending on weather. It puts them outside the time frame altogether. I’m sorry, but you must see that.’
Richard pursed his lips and sighed. ‘Yes, you’re right, Charles. I’m sorry. I do see that all too clearly. So. All we can offer of the current fleet are Titan, Niobe which is discharging at Mobile tomorrow, Achilles which is currently in Georgetown, Guyana …’
‘But which will be turned around tonight.’
‘Right, good. And Ajax at Stavanger.’
‘That’s correct.’ Charles Lee’s voice picked up a little more warmth. Richard had no doubt that the Hong Kong Chinese businessman basically disapproved of all this gallivanting around the world, and Richard was bitterly inclined to agree with him. Because he had not been in the office since the executive board meeting more than a week ago, he had effectively lost track of his ships and so had promised two hulls which he simply could not deliver. It was galling to say the least. But the fact that he had such a firm grasp of the disposition of the rest of the Heritage Mariner tanker fleet had obviously gone some way towards mollifying Charles, hence the thaw in his chilly tone.
Hence, in fact, rather more than that. ‘Richard, are you still there?’ came the distant voice.
‘Yes. I was thinking.’
‘Of course. But Helen, Sir William and I have had more time to think than you have and we may have come up with something.’
‘Yes?’
‘We think we can get you Kraken and Psyche.’
‘What? But they’re in mothballs off Piraeus. Have been for five years and more.’
‘Quite so. But the situation is this. We understand from the Lloyds agent there that the hulls are still sound. It would take less than a week, we believe, to test and certify the engines if the last report on them is accurate. If it is not or if there is a major breakdown then that will be a different matter of course but in the meantime it seems possible to proceed. And there are several advantages to this course of action.’
Richard could see them all too clearly and his heart raced as Charles went carefully through what he and Helen had discussed.
The two ships had been purchased by Heritage Mariner in the balmy days of the early eighties when their business had been booming. They had got them at a knock-down price and when the oil shipping market had collapsed, they had mothballed them. It would have been uneconomic to sell them, incurring a massive loss, and moored off Piraeus as they were, they remained at least tax deductible. A paper loss. Heritage Mariner would probably never bring them back into commission. It would cost them too much to update their certificates of seaworthiness, to bring their engines up to scratch and to get them certified. The independent shipping company would find it crippling even to insure them, let alone crew them. But none of these would be particular obstacles to the United Nations. In fact they were insisting on doing the latter in any case. The contract stated that the UN had to supply three crews and all of the insurance cover.
And, of course, much of Charles’s disquiet with the original contract rested upon the fact that Heritage Mariner would be required to commit such a high percentage of its fleet, which effectively represented the total collateral of the company. So this would satisfy everyone, if it could be pulled off in time.
‘What time scale are we actually talking about here, Charles?’ Richard asked, when his colleague’s measured tones fell into echoing silence and only the airways whispered between them.
‘Helen and I estimate that, all things being equal, we can bring the ships into commission within the week. Neither we nor Sir William can see any reason why the United Nations could not assemble a standard crew for each within that time. Crewfinders alone could probably find two crews within that time, I suspect. And then, according to Sir William, it would be quite possible to sail the ships from Piraeus to the Davis Strait within ten days or so. So, effectively, we feel if we receive an immediate go-ahead, we can get these two ships to you before the end of the month.’
‘That’s wonderful, Charles, if you can pull it off. Proceed at once, if you please, and I’ll check with the Mau Club at the UN as soon as the secretariat opens this morning. Now, I’ve been thinking about our crews. It seems to me that no matter what other experts I need, I shall have to have an engineer of real genius to keep our propulsion units up to scratch and a world-class navigator to tell us which way to go.’
‘You seem to be a little modest, Richard. You are the most experienced captain we currently employ. Your knowledge of navigation, certainly, is unparalleled…’
‘Thank you, Charles, but no. I know my own limitations. I’m an all-rounder and we need specialists here. Bob Stark is the best engineer we’ve got. He knows all about every propulsion system we are likely to be using from the big diesel four-strokes we’ll have to deal with if we do get Kraken and Psyche to the RB211 turbines we have on the more modern ships. We really will need him if we’re going to stand a realistic chance of putting six different propulsion systems into one effective unit. And, of course, he’s currently master of Achilles so he’ll be coming up from Georgetown in any case.’
‘Yes, I see. I had considered none of this …’
‘That’s only to be expected, Charles. It’s not your field.’
‘Nor is navigation, you are just about to say.’
‘Yup. Look. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I will need to talk it through with several people yet, but it seems to me that the berg, Manhattan, is so big that it will effectively always be drifting in the grip of the major ocean currents. Even six supertankers would have a job to come up with enough power to move it against one of the major currents so I reckon what we’re looking at is guiding it across the currents, shifting it from one current to another where they meet, and trying to hurry it up a bit while it’s in the grip of the current. Do you see?’
‘Dimly. It is not my area …’
‘Quite. But if I’m right, the consequences are enormous. We’ll have to pull the thing south for a little, then east, then south-west, then south again before going hard east. But within that broad course, I’m going to need a navigator who can read the sky and sea like the back of his hand; who can place us on the surface of the earth more accurately than the satnav system, who can feel the optimum for us, night and day, for a month and more. I need John Higgins.’