His right cheek hits a sharp piece of metal, his right shoulder takes a blow, pain flares up in his breastbone and there is a low hiss as his left hand closes round the boiling-hot searchlight on the front edge of the roof.
Jónas cries out and writhes in pain and fear, but his cries drown in the wind and the railing saves him from a lethal fall off the roof.
‘Good God!’ he cries, holding tight to the railing. He doesn’t dare let go and needs a few minutes to build up the courage to stand up and carry on. The night is again dark as a coalmine, no gleam of light in the sky.
Step by step Jónas edges over to the satellite receiver on the port side. At times the wheelhouse tilts back, and he hangs from the wet railing and gazes, terrified, up into emptiness, and sometimes it tilts forward so the metal digs right into his bones and he stares with horror all the way down to the weather deck, which looks like farmland seen from an aeroplane coming in to land. But every once in a while the wheelhouse seems to be pretty horizontal, and then Jónas grabs his chance and dashes across the roof.
Once he has locked his left arm around the pole holding the satellite receiver, he gets the wire-cutters out of his right-hand pocket, then locks the cutters around the thick wire that sways out from under the dome before it disappears into the white-painted metal pipe surrounding the base. He squeezes the handles with all his might, using both hands.
Jónas’s knuckles go white, the blades of the cutter sink slowly into the insulated wire, Jónas grimaces and whimpers with effort, the ship falls forward and the bow kisses the heavy wave.
Boom, boom, boom…
The wire snaps and Jónas loses his hold on the cutters, which slip from his stiff hands, bounce once on the roof and then disappear over the edge on the port side.
‘Shit! ’ says Jónas and listens intently. But he doesn’t hear the cutters land on anything – no blow, no clatter, nothing. They probably fell straight into the sea, which is the best place for them.
Jónas grabs the railing with both hands and catches his breath. He smiles crookedly and snuffles rainwater up his nose with a quiet laugh.
He did it!
The ship is free from the burden and fuss of telecommunication. No-one can contact the ship and the ship can contact no-one. It is out of reach. It sails away in peace and quiet, as ships are meant to do.
Now Jónas is sailing undisturbed to his rendezvous with God and uncertainty, free from worry about official interference and the attention of the media, confused relatives and mourning loved ones.
Actually, from the psychological point of view, it’s not so good to have lost both the radar and the GPS, but it doesn’t really make any difference. They still take their course from the magnetic compass and in good weather they can work out their position with a sextant, night or day. If people could do it in olden times, they can do it today. The radar keeps track of nearby shipping, but since other ships will still see this ship in their radar, there’s almost no danger of a collision, especially not in daylight.
Jónas goes backwards down the stairs that lead to the platform behind the wheelhouse, then he grips the handrail, hurries to the door and grabs the doorknob.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaims as the wind hits the door and blows it open, yanking him like a ragdoll over the high threshold. He loses his balance but doesn’t let go of the door. He manages to resist the wind and push against the door with all his weight, so he closes out the whining wind and pounding rain.
Silence. The freezing rain is running down his neck onto his back and chest, his hands are trembling and his teeth chatter.
Jónas unzips his parka and pulls his soaking hood off before opening the door into the bridge. He closes the door, stops to catch his breath by the map room, sneezes like a dog and then snorts out a blend of snot and ice-cold rainwater.
Has the underworld guy fallen asleep?
‘Who’s there?’ somebody asks frostily and takes two steps forward in the gloom. Jónas sees a murderous glint in staring eyes that he knows he should recognise.
‘Eh? What?’ asks Jónas, then stiffens as he realises that it’s the captain himself who’s receiving him in the unattended bridge.
‘Where’s the… seaman?’ says Jónas, just to say something, but of course Jón Karl’s absence astonishes and angers him, while the captain’s presence scares him to death.
‘It’s not up to me to answer that!’ says Guðmundur, who is so angry he can hardly speak clearly. ‘You are the officer on watch.’
‘He said he was just going to the toilet,’ says Jónas, trying to think of some plausible story.
‘The radar is out,’ says Guðmundur, tying his bathrobe more tightly. ‘And the GPS went out just now.’
‘Huh? Yes, I was going to check that out, see. But it’s madness to try to get up there now. The weather’s insane and—’
‘Did you abandon the bridge?’ growls Guðmundur, taking a deep breath and blowing it out through flaring nostrils.
‘Yes, the radar went out and—’
‘You said the seaman had gone to the toilet!’ says Guðmundur, throwing up his hands. ‘And then you go exploring without letting anyone know. In this weather.’
‘Well, I, look—’
‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ Guðmundur barks, spraying a blend of coffee and saliva over the soaking-wet second mate.
‘Yes – no – look…’ mutters Jónas, scratching his wet head, but he has no idea what he should say, or what he shouldn’t say.
‘Jónas?’ Guðmundur walks right up to the officer, who is about to collapse from exhaustion, sleeplessness and general distress. ‘Is there something you…’
Guðmundur stops in the middle of his question when somebody opens the door and enters the bridge.
‘Evening,’ says Jón Karl, slamming the door behind him. ‘What’s going on here?’
Jónas says nothing but Guðmundur looks searchingly at the deckhand, who is both red and wet in the face, as if he has just come in from the storm.
XVII
04:22
Jón Karl leaves the bridge and knocks on the door of the G-deck toilet, where he assumes Jónas is sitting on the throne.
‘I’m going down below for a moment!’
Then he saunters down to F-deck, then E-deck, on down to D, then C and all the way down to the kitchen on B-deck. The stairs are steep and the treads are hard. Jón Karl is breathless and the pains in his stiff body come to life and send their silent distress signals to his head.
In the kitchen a light is shining under a shelf and below that shelf is a plate of sandwiches that Ási has covered with plastic wrap. Jón Karl strips the wrap off the plate and eats three slices of brown bread with meat paste, washing them down with cold milk which he drinks straight from the carton. Then he returns the empty carton to the fridge and locks the fridge door. At sea all cupboards are locked to ensure they don’t open in high seas.
‘Hello there,’ says Jón Karl when he sees Skuggi’s black head peering from the officers’ mess. The look each other in the eye for a moment, then the dog turns and disappears into the darkened mess.
In the corridor between the kitchen and the seamen’s mess is the ship’s medicine cabinet and beyond it a room with a hospital bed and a closed air-conditioning system in case someone needs to be quarantined. Jón Karl walks into the medicine cupboard, turns on the light and closes the door behind him. He finds some strong painkillers and swallows a fair number, then his attention is drawn to a special locker where they keep ampoules of morphine, syringes and needles. Jón Karl takes one ampoule, a syringe and a few needles, wraps them together in a bandage and closes up the whole thing with adhesive tape. Then he fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his right trouser pocket and dumps the four cigarettes left in the pack into a steel tray, sticks the taped parcel into the empty pack and shoves it back in his pocket.