‘Rad Block is just potassium iodide. It’s been around since the meltdown at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. But I couldn’t find any in Bangladesh. AED is different. It’s a brand new adrenal gland hormone called 5-androstenediol that stimulates marrow-cell growth. It’s supposed to work really well.’ She paused. ‘Not that it would’ve helped as things turned out. The last crewmember of the Rybinsk died in Chittagong hospital two days ago. He was the cook.’
‘How many have died altogether?’
‘All of them — six Malaysians. Ships that come here to be broken up only have tiny delivery crews.’ She went to stand at the open doors. ‘Now we’ve got this too — dead soldiers, people with bullet wounds and all those poor boys.’
‘Do you think there’s a connection?’ Coburn had already decided there had to be one.
‘I suppose it depends whether you believe certain ships are unlucky.’ She turned round. ‘If you talk to seamen, that’s what they think. Perhaps the Rybinsk is one of those.’
‘It might just be unlucky because of the port it sailed from. Do you know where that was?’
‘Vladivostok on the Russian coast. It was at sea for about three weeks. That’s not long, but it was long enough for whatever’s on board to irradiate the crew.’
‘Nuclear power plant,’ Coburn said. ‘If it’s an old Soviet-era ship, maybe that’s the problem.’
‘That’s what I thought too. But the Rybinsk isn’t nuclear powered.’
‘How do you know it isn’t?’
The question had annoyed her. ‘Because I asked the captain, and because I went to see. And if you think I misdiagnosed the crew’s symptoms, I didn’t — nausea, vomiting, bloody diarrhoea, fever, internal haemorrhages, anaemia and emaciation. How does that sound?’
‘Did you do a white blood-cell count?’
‘Have a look around.’ She kept her voice level. ‘Does this look like a testing lab to you? Why do you think I had to get the men transferred to hospital? The last I heard their white cell count was around two hundred and dropping. Is that low enough for you?’
‘It’s what you’d expect in someone who’s been exposed to a good three week dose of something like six or seven hundred Rem.’
‘So you believe me?’
‘I never said I didn’t.’ He was thinking, wondering how best to locate the source in a quarter of a mile-long steel-hulled vessel that was in the process of being cut up into pieces. ‘I’ll go and have a look,’ he said.
‘You won’t know where to begin. If you haven’t been on board a supertanker before, you’ll either end up being gassed to death at the bottom of an empty tank, or you’ll spend days and days finding your way around.’
Coburn thought she was probably right, but after all the time it had taken him to get here, another day or so wasn’t going to make much difference. ‘Have any of the Bangladeshis got sick yet?’ he asked. ‘I mean the ones working on the ship.’
She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t necessarily have heard if they have. I’m not running an emergency clinic. I’m just doing what I can for the children. I only got involved with the crew of the Rybinsk because the captain came begging me for medicine. Why do you want to know?’
‘Well, if the shipyard workers aren’t showing symptoms, it’s probably because none of them have been close to the source of the radiation for long enough.’
‘But the crew were?’
He nodded. ‘Maybe for the whole time they were at sea they were sitting right on top of it.’
‘Living quarters,’ she said. ‘Or somewhere near the cabins.’
‘Good place to start looking, don’t you think?’
‘There’s nothing to see. I’ve been inside the deckhouse — when I went to visit men who were too ill to leave their cabins.’
‘You don’t see radiation,’ Coburn said, ‘you hunt it down with a Geiger counter.’
‘Did you bring one?’
‘It’s in my car. If you can put me in touch with someone who can get me on board, I’ll go and have a poke around with it.’
She leaned back against the door. ‘I’ll take you.’
‘How are you going to do that when you can’t walk properly?’
‘You fetch your Geiger counter and let me worry about my leg. I’m good at metal splinters. I’ll have it out by the time you get back.’
Doubting that she would, and in two minds about having her accompany him anywhere, Coburn put his shoes back on and went to see if the imaginatively named Peace, Happiness and Prosperity Company had requisitioned his car for scrap.
They hadn’t. It was still parked where he’d left it, and the Geiger counter he’d bought in Singapore was still in its box inside the boot.
Along this section of the beach, although a few people were standing around watching the last of the ambulances depart, work was being carried on much as it had been before, uninterrupted by an incident that had taken place two shipyards away and therefore of little consequence.
To find out if the same was true elsewhere, on his way back, Coburn made a detour that took him nearer to the Rybinsk.
Except for the electrical cable lying on the mud where the boys had dropped it, there was no obvious evidence left of the events he’d witnessed.
A tracked vehicle was recovering the remains of the burned-out Landcruiser, but otherwise it was hard to believe that anything of significance had happened here at all — proof if he needed it of how cheap life was at Fauzdarhat beach, Coburn thought, and why, no matter how hard people like Heather Cameron tried to change things, they were never going to make a difference.
He’d expected her to be waiting for him at the door. But she wasn’t. She was in the other room lying face down on the bed. Beside her was a saucer on which she’d placed a scalpel and a pair of tweezers.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve only just met me, but there’s not anyone else I can ask. I can’t twist myself round far enough, so you’re going to have to do it for me. I’ve got something to bite on, so you can be as rough as you want.’
‘Forget it.’ He didn’t bother to re-inspect the wound. ‘You’re not that brave. Whatever you got hit with is in too deep. You need a local anaesthetic and a doctor who knows what he’s doing. I’ll drive you to Chittagong.’
‘If I don’t take you out to the ship first you’ll have to wait until tomorrow because of the tide.’ She rolled over on to her back and stood up. ‘My leg’s not that bad, and it’s not going to get any worse in the time we’ll have before the water’s too deep for us to get back.’
It was hardly a persuasive argument, but in the absence of anyone else he could ask, he was half inclined to accept her offer. She was anxious to prove she was right about the radioactivity, he decided, and if, like him, she believed the mayhem on the beach had something to do with the Rybinsk, she’d be equally anxious to find a reason for that too.
‘Well?’ She was waiting for him to agree.
‘OK. Can you find a plaster to stick on your leg?’
‘I thought I’d just let the cut get filled with muck so my leg will turn gangrenous and I’ll have to have it amputated. You’re not very impressed with me, are you?’ She spent a minute or two wrapping a waterproof bandage around her thigh, then reached under the pillow and took out a large flashlight. ‘If we’re going inside the hull we’ll need this and we’ll need some hard hats. I’ve got one for myself, but we’ll have to borrow one for you.’
‘Wait until we get there,’ Coburn said. ‘If the living quarters are in the deckhouse, we might not have to go anywhere that’s dangerous.’
For the first time since he’d met her she managed a faint smile. ‘The whole beach is dangerous. Fauzdarhat averages a fatality a week. Come on, I’ll show you why.’