12
They must be almost there, Antonio Gutierrez thought; he should see the pretty blonde one any minute now. One could see the ship was stopping, just as it had when they had gone back to pick up the big American on his rubber raft. The engine room telegraph meant nothing to him, and he had no way of knowing the Leander had been moving through the water only from her own headway ever since Lind and the others had run from the bridge.
But it was very difficult to see anything in all this rain, and to make it worse nobody even appeared to be watching for her. The officer still lay where he’d left him in the house where the wheel was, and on the decks below everybody was shouting and running around dragging hoses as they shot streams of water into the fire which still roared and threw flames as high as the stack. He himself had started to leave the boat deck once, before they discovered him up here where he had no business, but the men with guns were around the ladder below him, with no way for him to get past them unnoticed, so he had remained. His white jacket and trousers were drowned, and water ran out of his hair and down into his eyes. But since he was the only one watching, he would continue to watch.
He went over to the rail between the starboard lifeboats and looked down. She wasn’t there, but he could see that the ship was barely moving now. He searched the surface as far out as he could see through the blown curtains of rain. Nada. He went over to the portside and peered outward and then down. Truly, they had not yet reached her. He went back to the door of the wheelhouse and looked in. The officer was trying to sit up. He was very weak and holding his head with the dolor, and a little stream of blood ran down across his face.
* * *
It was agonizingly slow and exhausting, trying to make any headway against the wind and the steep-sided chop it was kicking up into their faces, and they’d had to stop several times and rest. Goddard didn’t know how long they’d been struggling after the orange glow in the rain, dragging the life ring. They’d almost lost it at first. It had faded until they could scarcely see it, but the ship had lost way rapidly as she continued to turn and had finally come head up into the wind and sea. She was dead in the water now, directly ahead. The dark shape of the counter materialized below the column of flame. In a few minutes they were under it. They looked up at the railing of the poop far above them, and then at each other in mutual admission of what they’d both known all along. When they did reach her, there was no way to get aboard.
To call out would be to attract the attention of Lind or one of his men. They’d simply be shot in the water, or ignored, to be left there when the ship got under way again. If she did, Goddard thought, looking up at the tower of flame and smoke blown back across the poop by the force of the squall. If they didn’t get the fire under control very soon, the Leander was doomed.
Lind and the bos’n would be back here directing the fight, so their best chance of attracting the attention of someone else would be to go forward. He gestured to Karen, and they began kicking ahead along the black steel cliff of her starboard side. They could hear shouted orders and the roaring of the fire, but no one appeared at the bulwark above them. They passed the well-deck, and were below the midships house.
* * *
Harald Svedberg climbed unsteadily to his feet, assisted by Gutierrez. He was nauseated, his head was splitting, and when he put a hand to his face, it came away with blood on it. The ship was stopped, he noted, they were still enveloped in the opaque fury of the squall, and there was nobody else on the bridge except this waterlogged and obviously insane Filipino messman who appeared to have taken up residence on it. There was a roaring sound in his ears, which he took to be part of the headache until he became aware the messman was speaking English now and was saying something about a fire. He made it to the door of the wheelhouse and looked aft, and the whole picture clarified itself then as he remembered Mayr and that other messman with their guns. Lind had taken over the ship, that man he’d seen back there in the wake had probably been thrown overboard, and now they were all fighting the fire.
Their only hope was that Captain Steen was still alive and that he might have a weapon of some kind. He went in through the office to the captain’s stateroom. The improvised oxygen tent was gone now, but Steen still lay on the bunk in the same position he’d been in last night, and his eyes were closed. Svedberg grabbed a wrist. The flesh was warm, and after several hurried and fumbling attempts he located a pulse. Steen was alive, and still the legal master of the ship, whether drugged or not. It seemed unlikely that a man of his devout religious beliefs would own a gun, but captains quite often did, and a forlorn hope was better than none. He began yanking open drawers under the bunk, and then the desk, conscious of the ominous sound the fire was making and the fact that he had no idea how many of the crew were involved in this with Lind. He moved out into the office and began hurriedly ransacking the desk there. Then the crazy messman, dripping water like a sponge, ran in from the starboard wing of the bridge.
‘We have arrived,’ he said, pointing outward. ‘She is right there.’
Svedberg pulled open another drawer and began scattering its contents, paying no attention.
‘The man we saw too,’ Gutierrez said. ‘It is the big American.’
What in the hell was he talking about, anyway? If the skipper had a gun, it must be in the safe—Svedberg’s head jerked around then. ‘What?’
‘The people who fell into the water.’
People? It was one man, and he would be miles astern by now. But wait a minute! At the same time he’d noticed the engine room telegraph was on STOP, he’d automatically checked the rudder indicator. It was hard over! He sprang to his feet and ran out onto the wing of the bridge where Gutierrez was pointing. He looked down and saw Goddard and Karen Brooke clinging to the life ring right below them.
‘Come on!’ he ordered. Followed by Gutierrez, he ran back through the wheelhouse to the chartroom, and down the inside companionway.
In the confusion on the after end of the crew’s deck, two fire hoses with a pair of sailors on each nozzle were throwing hard jets of water into the inferno of number three hold. The bos’n and Otto, armed with the Luger and the .45, were directing them and holding back excited crew members jammed into the entrance of the passageway and clustered in gesticulating groups forward of them. Lind and Mayr were standing at the starboard corner of the deck house. Lind was now carrying an automatic rifle, and they were speaking rapidly in German, with Mayr doing most of the talking, apparently giving orders. Lind nodded. He gestured to the bos’n, and to a member of the black gang, the twelve-to-four oiler, a thin, hard-faced man named Spivak. They came over. Lind spoke to them, still in German. Spivak nodded. The bos’n handed Spivak the Luger, and received the automatic rifle Lind had been carrying. Lind ran up the ladder to the boat deck.
In the wheelhouse, he lifted the phone off its hook, and rang the wireless room. ‘Come up to the chartroom, Sparks,’ he ordered. He reset the selector switch, and called the engine room.
‘The fire’s out of control,’ he said. ‘Secure the pump. Kill the fires under the boilers, and bring your men out. We’re going to abandon ship. Yes. Right now.’
He replaced the phone, strode into the chartroom and began to work up their position by dead reckoning since the star sights he’d got at dawn. Sparks came in. Lind wrote out the latitude and longitude, and gave it to him.
‘Here’s where we are right now,’ he said. ‘Give it to the Phoenix, and tell them to keep coming at full speed.’ Then, on a second sheet of paper, he wrote out another position, and slashed a large X across it. ‘So you won’t get ‘em mixed up,’ he said. ‘This is a fake, two hundred miles to the east of us. After you sign off with the Phoenix, get on the distress frequency, send an SOS, and say we’re afire and it’s out of control. As soon as you’re sure somebody’s got it, shut down, and smash the transmitter, just in case there may be another radioman aboard.’
Sparks looked at him, and then away. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said.
Lind’s eyes were dangerous. ‘You don’t what?’
‘It’s thirty men. This is not what I agreed to do.’
Lind caught the front of his shirt and pulled him close. ‘When the Phoenix picks us up,’ he said, ‘if they didn’t get this message and hear the SOS, I’ll disembowel you alive, on deck in front of everybody. You ever see it done to a shark?’
* * *
Goddard and Karen Brooke held onto the life ring in the rain and blown spindrift and continued to stare anxiously up at the wing of the bridge. It had been two or three minutes since they’d seen Antonio Gutierrez, and then the third mate, look down at them and disappear. They expected any moment to see Lind or one of his men. Then Goddard sighed softly. Svedberg had appeared at the bulwark in the forward well-deck just at the break of the midships house. He dropped over a roll of line which uncoiled as it fell. They swam over to it. Goddard threw a bowline in the end of it.
‘When I get up,’ he told Karen, ‘put your legs through here and sit in it. We’ll haul you up.’
She nodded. He caught the line, planted his feet against the steel plates, and began to walk up the side, hauling himself hand over hand. He grabbed the bulwark, got a knee on it, and dropped down on deck. No one was in sight except Svedberg and Gutierrez, but they had to hurry. Somebody could spot them any minute. Just beyond them, the steel door into the enclosed shelter deck was open.
‘Take off your jacket,’ he said to Gutierrez. The other looked at him blankly. ‘She’s got no clothes on,’ he explained. He leaned over the bulwark with Svedberg, and they began to hand her up. They lifted her over the rail, nude except for the nylon pants. He grabbed the jacket from the messman and passed it back to her as they slipped along the bulkhead toward the open door. There were no shouts of discovery. They were inside then, and she had the jacket on and was buttoning it. It covered her mid-thigh. Svedberg pulled the steel door shut and dogged it. They were safe for the moment, here below the crew’s deck where there were only storerooms and lockers and the cubicle where they’d sewn Mayr into the burial sack, but the air was thick with smoke and the odor of blistering paint, and the deck was hot to their bare feet. They were all dripping water, and Goddard was conscious then that he had on nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.
Karen finished buttoning the jacket and smiled at Gutierrez. ‘Thank you, Antonio.’ The youth nodded and blushed, and looked away from her, self-conscious about her legs.
‘He saved you,’ Svedberg said. He told them quickly what had happened on the bridge. There was still a little blood mixed with the water running out of his hair. ‘After they slugged me, he put the wheel hard over himself, and watched for you.’
Goddard grinned as he caught the messman by the shoulder and shook it. ‘What some people will do to collect for a haircut. Thanks, Antonio.’
‘They threw you over?’ Svedberg asked.
‘Yes,’ Goddard said. He told them briefly about Madeleine Lennox and Rafferty and the fight on the promenade deck.
‘Do you know how many there are besides Lind?’ Svedberg asked.
‘No,’ Goddard said. ‘The bos’n, Otto, Karl—the dining room steward—and one of the black gang. But there might be more. And they’ll all have guns.’
‘And there’s not another one on the ship as far as I know,’ Svedberg said. He told them about searching the captain’s quarters, and that Steen was still alive. ‘I don’t know what they’re going to do about the ship and the rest of the crew, but if any of them see you, you’ll just go right over the side again. You’ll have to stay out of sight until I can find out what’s happening.’
‘Have you got a radio license?’ Goddard asked.
‘No. Hardly any mates do any more, but I’ll ask the second. And see if any of the engineers might have a gun. You won’t be able to take this smoke very long, so I’ll try to get you out of here. I’ll come back or send word.’
Svedberg and Gutierrez hurried down the passageway toward the ladder to the crew’s deck at the after end of it, almost invisible in the smoke by the time they reached it. Goddard shifted uncomfortably, and saw Karen do the same. The deck was burning their feet.
‘How is the smoke getting in here?’ Karen asked. At the far end, the door to the after well-deck was closed.
‘Most of it’s coming from here,’ Goddard said. ‘It’s the paint scorching on the deck and bulkheads back there. The tween-decks of number three probably runs in under the after end of this deck.’ And when the paint got hot enough, he thought, it would burst into flame. Then the fire would be loose in the whole midships house above.
The smoke was stinging their throats and making breathing difficult. Their eyes were watering. And they had to find something to stand on before their feet were blistered. He looked around. On their left, the engine room casing ran all the way down the passageway to the thwartships passage at the after end. Barset’s big refrigerator and chill room were on their right, but they were both locked, as were the next two doors that he could see. But the one beyond that was open. He caught Karen’s arm and they ran toward it, the deck growing hotter with every step they went aft. If they didn’t find anything, they’d have to come back.
It was the small storeroom, he thought, where they’d stitched Mayr into the burial sack, and he remembered the wooden door on the two horses where the ‘body’ had lain. That would be perfect. He didn’t remember Krasicki until they’d shot inside the doorway and there on the same platform was the canvas mummy in its familiar, grisly shape. He saw Karen shudder, and they were turning to run back out when he caught sight of the bolt of canvas on the deck. They leaped over, and stood on it, conscious only of the relief of getting off the burning steel.
There was the sound of a shot somewhere above them. They exchanged an uneasy glance, but said nothing. Then just above their heads there were footsteps, a great many of them. Goddard oriented himself with relation to the rest of the midships structure. The men would be going forward along the port side of the crew’s deck. They were still passing. Were they fleeing the fire? The smoke was growing worse. His throat and nostrils burned with it, and he was seized with a fit of coughing. The temperature must be more than a hundred and twenty degrees. Sweat ran into his eyes. The footsteps ceased, and there was silence except for the rushing sound of the fire.
‘They were going forward,’ Karen said. ‘Do you suppose it has started to spread?’
'I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But let’s get out of this trap while we can make it to the ladder. If we can.’
He motioned for her to wait while he leaped to the door and hopped from one foot to another as he looked down the passageway to his right. The ladder was half obscured by smoke now, and for half the distance this way the paint on the steel deck plates was bubbling. It would stick to their feet and take the skin off. He turned back to Karen.
‘Let me have the canvas,’ he said. ‘Sit there for a minute.’ He gestured to the door supporting Krasicki’s body in its burial sack. She perched on the edge of it and lifted her feet. He grabbed up the bolt of cloth and leaped back into the passageway. Holding one end, he threw it toward the ladder. It unrolled to within a few feet of it.
He ran down the strip and kicked the remainder of the bolt. He could feel his feet blistering as he bounded the remaining distance and leaped to the ladder treads. He could see no one above him. ‘All right,’ he called softly. Karen emerged and ran toward the ladder. He watched to see she made it all right, and went on up.
There was no one in the passageway, and no sound except that of the rain and the roaring and crackling noises of the fire. That was odd. She came up behind him. They looked at each other, puzzled. They could duck into the hospital, which was just forward of them, but the silence worried him. The doorway opening onto the after end of the deck was less than six feet from them, but nobody had passed it, and there were no footsteps or voices from the men fighting the fire. He gestured for her to stay where she was, tiptoed over to it, and peered out. There was nobody fighting the fire. There was nobody in sight at all.
He beckoned, and she slipped up beside him in the doorway. The fire roared on unchecked from number three hatch, flames and boiling black smoke blowing off to starboard now in the wind, and they could feel the searing waves of heat on their faces. The steel hatch coaming glowed a dull red, and the deck all around gave off waves of steam as the rain lashed across it and vaporized on contact. At each corner of the deck up here, next to the ladders, was an abandoned fire hose, no water at all coming from the nozzles.
‘If they’d abandoned ship,’ Karen said, ‘they’d have gone up. They were going forward.’
They wheeled and ran along the deserted passageway. The rooms and fo’c’s’les were all empty. At the forward end, beyond the thwartships passage, were two messrooms. They were empty too, but there were portholes along the forward bulkhead. They hurried into the second one and around the long single table. Slipping up to separate portholes, they peered out cautiously, and saw at once why nobody was fighting the fire.
The forward well-deck below them was full of men standing in the blown curtains of rain. They were staring aft in the attitudes of animals at bay, some up at the bridge and others apparently at someone or something on this deck and just off to the right of where they were. It was the whole crew, Goddard thought. At a rapid glance he picked out Barset, Mr. Pargoras, Svedberg, the second mate, Gutierrez, two of the engineers, several of the sailors he knew by sight, and even two of the black gang who must be on watch now, wearing singlets and sweat rags.
Karen had moved around with the left side of her face against the bulkhead, peering out as far to the right as she could. She stepped back, looked at Goddard, and stabbed a finger in that direction. He looked. Otto was standing just beyond them where he could cover both ladders, an automatic rifle propped on the rail in front of him.
He beckoned to Karen, and they slipped back out into the passage. Just as they emerged they heard a noise somewhere on the starboard side as though somebody had dropped a pail. There was an instant of silence, and then a groan Goddard slipped on to the corner, and peered down the starboard passageway. Ahead of him was an open cleaning-gear locker. Sprawled on his side in front of it was a man clad only in dungarees and slides, near his head the empty pail he had apparently dislodged from a shelf while trying to pull himself erect. Goddard beckoned to Karen and ran back to him. He knelt and turned him on his back.
It was Koenig, the AB who’d given him the sport shin. He had apparently been shot through the chest. Blood was all over his rib cage and abdomen, and on the deck, and more bubbled from his nostrils and trickled from the corner of his mouth. Karen winced and closed her eyes for an instant, but she picked up his legs while Goddard caught him by the shoulders and they got him into a lower bunk in the fo’c’s’le next door. Goddard turned his head and propped it on a pillow so he wouldn’t strangle, cursing silently because there was nothing else he could do. Even a surgical team couldn’t save him without several liters of blood. He’d lost too much, and was slipping into shock.
Goddard knelt beside him. ‘Who did it?’ he asked.
‘The bos’n.’ Koenig started to choke. Goddard turned him back on his side and snatched at part of the blue bedspread to wipe the blood from his mouth. He took a gasping breath. 'I tried to hide—in the locker. To get behind him—get the gun. I knew what they were going to do.’
‘What?’ Goddard asked.
Koenig gave no indication he had heard. His eyes closed, but he went on with his halting speech. He’d overheard Mayr and Lind speaking in German while the others were fighting the fire.
'I am German,’ he said, with another fight for breath. ‘Mayr was telling Lind what to do. Stop the fire pump—let her burn. Get a cutting torch from the engine room—wreck all the lifeboats except one. Send an SOS—with a phony position. Spivak—oiler—’ Koenig’s voice stopped.
‘What about Spivak?’ Goddard asked.
“In the engine room—opening the sea intakes.’
Goddard looked up at Karen. ‘Thirty men,’ she whispered. ‘Who could do it?’
‘Koenig.’ Goddard leaned close to him. ‘Koenig, can you hear me? You say Mayr was giving the orders. Was it military? You know—as if he were Lind’s superior officer?’
‘No.’ Koenig’s voice was barely audible. ‘It was worse. He is Lind’s father.’
That answered a lot of things, Goddard thought, including Karen’s question: Who could do it? Blood would tell. And it didn’t matter in the slightest how much, or whose.
Koenig’s eyes opened wide for an instant as though he were watching something terrible he was powerless to escape. Did you see it coming for you in those last few minutes, Goddard wondered, even when you were in shock? He was trying to speak again, but his voice was only a whisper, and Goddard had to lean down almost to his lips to hear. ‘Oh, God. Another one.’