Hari hadn’t been hanging around either. Unlike the commander, who had charted a course that had taken the Sandpiper more or less straight up through the centre of the Yellow Sea, since Hari had made his last refuelling stop at Qingdao on the Chinese mainland he’d been hugging the coast, sounding increasingly irritable on each occasion Coburn had been in touch with him, until their conversation of this afternoon when he’d announced that he was standing by to collect Coburn as soon as the Sandpiper was close enough for the transfer to take place.
According to co-ordinates Hari had provided, the Selina was currently riding at anchor in the company of several Korean fishing boats four miles off the coast of a small island, and almost exactly sixty miles south of the Demarkation Line.
How accurate the co-ordinates were, Coburn wasn’t certain, although when this evening’s arrangements amounted to little more than him exchanging a bunk on the Sandpiper for a bunk on the Selina, his concerns were best reserved for tomorrow, he decided. It was then that Hari’s real skills would be put to the test in readiness for the crunch on the following night.
By now, although the last rays of sunlight had gone, he was reluctant to go below, trying not to wonder what Heather was doing in order to avoid cluttering up his mind with half-formed notions of the future and not wanting to think ahead too far.
He was still on deck when O’Halloran appeared. From the beginning of their trip from Chinhae, the American had been at pains to insulate Ritchie and himself from any direct involvement with either Hari or the Selina, spending more time with the commander than he had with Coburn, but since they’d received Hari’s last communication he seemed to be less on edge.
‘Skipper wants us on the bridge,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘He’s got what he thinks is the echo of a Korean patrol boat on his radar. It could be Yegorov making sure he’s picking up his target early. Come on.’
Of the forty-six members of the Sandpiper’s crew Coburn had met, he was able to remember the faces of the officers and some of the ratings, but this evening, so many people were coming and going that, apart from one of the young women from Baltimore who was leaving the bridge as they arrived, he didn’t know who he recognized and who he didn’t.
Ritchie was waiting for them, standing by the larger of two radar screens. ‘Got him,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ Coburn studied the screen, uncertain of what he was looking at.
‘See there?’ Ritchie pointed to a number of glowing green dots. ‘Those are the fishing boats where your friend’s anchored. Now take a look at this one.’ Sliding his finger diagonally down the screen he let it come to rest beneath another dot. ‘For the last three-quarters of an hour, each time we’ve changed course, within a few minutes whoever it is has changed theirs. We’re being shadowed.’
‘Where did the boat come from?’
‘Probably out from one of these islands.’ Ritchie pushed a button to superimpose the outline of the coast. ‘Tokchok’s the biggest of them, but there are plenty of others where you could park up a patrol boat for a couple of days. An Osa only takes around nine feet of water, so you wouldn’t need much of an inlet to hide one in. Do you want me to order another course change so you can watch?’
Coburn shook his head. ‘If it’s Yegorov and you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, he’ll start wondering why the Sandpiper’s working in the dark.’
‘OK.’ Ritchie smiled. ‘How about this instead, then? First thing tomorrow I’ll head off north using the kind of search pattern he’ll be expecting us to use if we were hunting for mines. If the bastard stays with us all day, we’ll know he’s who we think he is.’ Ritchie spread out a chart. ‘See where I’ve marked that cross? As long as we’ve got a positive identification by evening, that’s where I’ll drop anchor for the night, so guess where he’ll be anchoring.’
‘Somewhere to the south of you,’ Coburn said.
‘Exactly, which means that if you and your friends are there waiting to do whatever it is I don’t need to know about, I can deliver him pretty much right to you.’
Which was going to significantly reduce the risk to Hari’s men, Coburn thought. Instead of them having to embark on what could have been a lengthy and dangerous trip from the Selina to the patrol boat and back again, at one stroke the problem had been largely overcome.
‘OK.’ Ritchie rolled up the chart and gave it to Coburn. ‘That’s settled then. Now all you and I have to do is finalize things for the 9th.’
‘Not that much left for you to do,’ Coburn said. ‘We know Yegorov will be banking on you being within a couple of miles of the Demarkation Line at some point, so he won’t be letting you get too far ahead of him. If we believe Shriver’s draft press statement, nothing’s going to happen until it’s dark, but it’ll be best if we keep a radio channel open all the time.’
O’Halloran wasn’t happy with the idea. ‘Forget the radio,’ he said. ‘If Yegorov’s been smart enough to overpower the crew of a Korean Osa, what makes you think he’s not smart enough to be monitoring every marine frequency he can find? It’ll be safer if you carry on communicating by satellite phone.’
Coburn looked at Ritchie. ‘What do you think?’
‘Sure. That makes sense. If you want to grab one of our phones now, you can tell your friend he can come and collect you in fifteen minutes. We’ll be at the rendezvous by then. In case someone’s looking, say we’ll be putting our hull between him and the patrol boat, and slinging a ladder over the starboard quarter for you near the stern.’ The commander stuck out his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure. I hope this works out.’
Coburn hoped so too, keeping the doubt out of his voice and, after making his call to Hari, for the next quarter of an hour managed to avoid mentioning his misgivings to O’Halloran who had accompanied him from the bridge and was waiting with him on the afterdeck.
The sea was still as flat as it had been earlier, and because the Sandpiper had already started losing speed, the breeze generated by its forward motion was barely noticeable.
‘I’ve got to tell you this,’ O’Halloran said. ‘I can’t see Ritchie relying on you — not now he knows he’s being followed for sure. If you were in his shoes, you wouldn’t rely on anybody else either.’
‘Do you reckon he’ll open fire the minute he hears from Yegorov?’ Coburn had considered the possibility.
‘He’d have to be brave not to, don’t you think?’
‘Depends how far away from the Sandpiper Yegorov’s going to be. Styx missiles have twenty times the range of Ritchie’s guns. Either way, your job’s to make sure I get that two-second window.’
O’Halloran forced a smile. ‘Because if I don’t, this could be the last time I get to enjoy a nice starry night.’
‘Let Ritchie look after the Sandpiper,’ Coburn said. ‘It’s you I’ll be wanting to hear from on the phone.’
‘Count on it.’ O’Halloran peered out to sea. ‘Sounds like your ride’s coming.’
Just audible above the noise of the Sandpiper’s idling diesels, Coburn could hear the buzz of an outboard motor. A moment later the shape of an inflatable swam out of the darkness.
It was travelling fast, one of the three village Zodiacs Hari occasionally used for raids on shallow-draught freighters that ventured too close to the coast.
The man at the helm was blacker than O’Halloran and equally difficult to see. But Coburn recognized him. It was Hari’s friend, the skinny Somalian, cutting back his speed now he’d caught sight of the ladder and beginning to ease the Zodiac alongside.