Читать книгу Alistair MacLean Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection: San Andreas, The Golden Rendezvous, Seawitch, Santorini - Alistair MacLean, Alistair MacLean, John Denis - Страница 12

It was snowing heavily and a bitter wind blew from the east as they buried their dead in the near-Stygian darkness of the early afternoon. A form of illumination they did have, for the saboteur, probably more than satisfied with the results of his morning’s activities, was now resting on his laurels and the deck floodlights were working again, but in that swirling blizzard the light given off was weak, fitful and almost ineffectual, serving only to intensify the ghoulish effect of the burial party hastening about their macabre task and the ghostlike appearance of the bare dozen of snow-covered mourners. Flashlight in hand, Chief Engineer Patterson read out the burial service, but he might as well have been quoting the latest prices on the stock exchange for not a word could be heard: one by one the dead, in their weighted canvas shrouds, slipped down the tilted plank, out from under the Union flag and vanished, silently, into the freezing water of the Barents Sea. No bugle calls, no Last Post for the Merchant Navy, not ever: the only requiem was the lost and lonely keening of the wind through the frozen rigging and the jagged gaps that had been torn in the superstructure.

Shivering violently and mottled blue and white with the cold, the burial party and mourners returned to the only reasonably warm congregating space left on the San Andreas – the dining and recreational area in the hospital between the wards and the cabins.

‘We owe you a very great debt, Mr McKinnon,’ Dr Singh said. He had been one of the mourners and his teeth were still chattering. ‘Very swift, very efficient. It must have been a gruesome task.’

‘I had six willing pairs of hands,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘It was worse for them than it was for me.’ The Bo’sun did not have to explain what he meant: everybody knew that anything would always be worse for anybody than for that virtually indestructible Shetlander. He looked at Patterson. ‘I have a suggestion, sir.’

‘A Royal Naval one?’

‘No, sir. Deep-sea fisherman’s. Anyway, it’s close enough, these are the waters of the Arctic trawlers. A toast to the departed.’

‘I endorse that, and not for traditional or sentimental reasons.’ Dr Singh’s teeth still sounded like castanets. ‘Medicinal. I don’t know about the rest of you but my red corpuscles are in need of some assistance.’

The Bo’sun looked at Patterson, who nodded his approval. McKinnon turned and looked at an undersized, freckle-faced youth who was hovering at a respectful distance. ‘Wayland.’

Wayland came hurrying forward. ‘Yes, Mr McKinnon, sir?’

‘Go with Mario to the liquor store. Bring back some refreshments.’

‘Yes, Mr McKinnon, sir. Right away, Mr McKinnon, sir.’ The Bo’sun had long given up trying to get Wayland Day to address him in any other fashion.

Dr Singh said: ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr McKinnon. We have supplies here.’

‘Medicinal, of course?’

‘Of course.’ Dr Singh watched as Wayland went into the galley. ‘How old is that boy?’

‘He claims to be seventeen or eighteen, says he’s not sure which. In either case, he’s fibbing. I don’t believe he’s ever seen a razor.’

‘He’s supposed to be working for you, isn’t he? Pantry boy, I understand. He spends nearly all his day here.’

‘I don’t mind, Doctor, if you don’t.’

‘No, not at all. He’s an eager lad, willing and helpful.’

‘He’s all yours. Besides, we haven’t a pantry left. He’s making eyes at one of the nurses?’

‘You underestimate the boy. Sister Morrison, no less. At a worshipful distance, of course.’

‘Good God!’ the Bo’sun said.

Mario entered, bearing, one-handed and a few inches above his head, a rather splendid silver salver laden with bottles and glasses, which, in the circumstances, was no mean feat, as the San Andreas was rolling quite noticeably. With a deft, twirling movement, Mario had the tray on the table without so much as the clink of glass against glass. Where the salver had come from was unexplained and Mario’s business. As became the popular conception of an Italian, Mario was darkly and magnificently mustachioed, but whether he possessed the traditional flashing eyes was impossible to say as he invariably wore dark glasses. There were those who purported to see in those glasses a connection with the Sicilian Mafia, an assertion that was always good-humouredly made, as he was well-liked. Mario was overweight, of indeterminate age and claimed to have served in the Savoy Grill, which may have been true. What was beyond dispute was that there lay behind Mario, a man whose rightful home Captain Bowen considered to be either a prisoner-of-war or internment camp, a more than usually chequered career.

After no more than two fingers of Scotch, but evidently considering that his red corpuscles were back on the job, Dr Singh said: ‘And now, Mr Patterson?’

‘Lunch, Doctor. A very belated lunch but starving ourselves isn’t going to help anyone. I’m afraid it will have to be cooked in your galley and served here.’

‘Already under way. And then?’

‘And then we get under way.’ He looked at the Bo’sun. ‘We could, temporarily, have the lifeboat’s compass in the engine-room. We already have rudder control there.’

‘It wouldn’t work, sir. There’s so much metal in your engine-room that any magnetic compass would have fits.’ He pushed back his chair and rose. ‘I think I’ll pass up lunch. I think you will agree, Mr Patterson, that a telephone line from the bridge to the engine-room and electric power on the bridge – so that we can see what we are doing – are the two first priorities.’

Jamieson said: ‘That’s already being attended to, Bo’sun.’

‘Thank you, sir. But the lunch can still wait.’ He was speaking now to Patterson. ‘Board up the bridge and let some light in. After that, sir, we might try to clear up some of the cabins in the superstructure, find out which of them is habitable and try to get power and heating back on. A little heating on the bridge wouldn’t come amiss, either.’

‘Leave all that other stuff to the engine-room staff – after we’ve had a bite, that is. You’ll be requiring some assistance?’

‘Ferguson and Curran will be enough.’

‘Well, that leaves only one thing.’ Patterson regarded the deckhead. ‘The plate glass for your bridge windows.’

‘Indeed, sir. I thought you –’

‘A trifle.’ Patterson waved a hand to indicate how much of a trifle it was. ‘You have only to ask, Bo’sun.’

‘But I thought you – perhaps I was mistaken.’

‘We have a problem?’ Dr Singh said.

‘I wanted some plate glass from the trolleys or trays in the wards. Perhaps, Dr Singh, you would care –’

‘Oh no.’ Dr Singh’s reply was as quick as it was decisive. ‘Dr Sinclair and I run the operating theatre and look after our surgical patients, but the running of the wards has nothing to do with us. Isn’t that so, Doctor?’

‘Indeed it is, sir.’ Dr Sinclair also knew how to sound decisive.

The Bo’sun surveyed the two doctors and Patterson with an impassive face that was much more expressive than any expression could have been and passed through the doorway into Ward B. There were ten patients in this ward and two nurses, one very much a brunette, the other very much a blonde. The brunette, Nurse Irene, was barely in her twenties, hailed from Northern Ireland, was pretty, dark-eyed and of such a warm and happy disposition that no one would have dreamed of calling her by her surname, which no one seemed to know anyway. She looked up as the Bo’sun entered and for the first time since she’d joined she failed to give him a welcoming smile. He patted her shoulder gently and walked to the other end of the ward where Nurse Magnusson was rebandaging a seaman’s arm.

Janet Magnusson was a few years older than Irene and taller, but not much. She had a more than faintly windswept, Viking look about her and was unquestionably good-looking: she shared the Bo’sun’s flaxen hair and blue-grey eyes but not, fortunately, his burnt-brick complexion. Like the younger nurse, she was much given to smiling: like her, the smile was in temporary abeyance. She straightened as the Bo’sun approached, reached out and touched his arm.

‘It was terrible, wasn’t it, Archie?’

‘Not a thing I would care to do again. I’m glad you weren’t there, Janet.’

‘I didn’t mean that – the burial, I mean. It was you who sewed up the worst of them – they say that the Radio Officer was, well, all bits and pieces.’

‘An exaggeration. Who told you that?’

‘Johnny Holbrook. You know, the young orderly. The one that’s scared of you.’

‘There’s nobody scared of me,’ the Bo’sun said absently. He looked around the ward. ‘Been quite some changes here.’

‘We had to turf some of the so-called recuperating patients out. You’d have thought they were being sent to their deaths. Siberia, at least. Nothing the matter with them. Not malingerers, really, they just liked soft beds and being spoiled.’

‘And who was spoiling them, if not you and Irene? They just couldn’t bear to be parted from you. Where’s the lioness?’

Janet gave him a disapproving look. ‘Are you referring to Sister Morrison?’

‘That’s the lioness I mean. I have to beard her in her den.’

‘You don’t know her, Archie. She’s very nice really. Maggie’s my friend. Truly.’

‘Maggie?’

‘When we’re off duty, always. She’s in the next ward.’

‘Maggie! Good lord! I thought she disapproved of you because she disapproves of me because she disapproves of me talking to you.’

‘Fiddlesticks. And Archie?’

‘Yes?’

‘A lioness doesn’t have a beard.’

The Bo’sun didn’t deign to answer. He moved into the adjacent ward. Sister Morrison wasn’t there. Of the eight patients, only two, McGuigan and Jones, were visibly conscious. The Bo’sun approached their adjacent beds and said: ‘How’s it going, boys?’

‘Ach, we’re fine, Bo’sun,’ McGuigan said. ‘We shouldn’t be here at all.’

‘You’ll stay here until you’re told to leave.’ Eighteen years old. He was wondering how long it would take them to recover from the sight of the almost decapitated Rawlings lying by the wheel when Sister Morrison entered by the far door.

‘Good afternoon, Sister Morrison.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr McKinnon. Making your medical rounds, I see.’

The Bo’sun felt the stirrings of anger but contented himself with looking thoughtful: he was probably unaware that his thoughtful expression, in certain circumstances, could have a disquieting effect on people.

‘I just came to have a word with you, Sister.’ He looked around the ward. ‘Not a very lively bunch, are they?’

‘I hardly think this is the time or place for levity, Mr McKinnon.’ The lips were not as compressed as they might have been but there was an appreciable lack of warmth behind the steel-rimmed spectacles.

The Bo’sun looked at her for long seconds, during which time she began to show distinct signs of uneasiness. Like most people – with the exception of the timorous Johnny Holbrook – she regarded the Bo’sun as being cheerful and easy-going, with the rider, in her case, that he was probably a bit simple: it required only one glance at that cold, hard, bleak face to realize how totally wrong she had been. It was an unsettling experience.

The Bo’sun spoke in a slow voice. ‘I am not in the mood for levity, Sister. I’ve just buried fifteen men. Before I buried them I had to sew them up in their sheets of canvas. Before I did that I had to gather up their bits and pieces and stick their guts back inside. Then I sewed them up. Then I buried them. I didn’t see you among the mourners, Sister.’

The Bo’sun was more than aware that he shouldn’t have spoken to her like that and he was also aware that what he had gone through had affected him more than he had thought. Under normal circumstances it was impossible that he should have been so easily provoked: but the circumstances were abnormal and the provocation too great.

‘I’ve come for some plate glass, such as you have on the tops of your trolleys and trays. I need them urgently and I don’t need them for any light-hearted purposes. Or do you require an explanation?’

She didn’t say whether she required an explanation or not. She didn’t do anything dramatic like sinking into a chair, reaching out for the nearest support or even putting a hand to her mouth. Only her colour changed. Sister Morrison had the kind of complexion that, like her eyes and lips, was in marked contrast to her habitually severe expression and steel-rimmed glasses, the kind of complexion that would have had the cosmetic tycoons sending their scientists back to the bench: at that moment, however, the peaches had faded from the traditional if rarely seen peaches and cream of the traditional if equally rarely seen English rose.

The Bo’sun removed the glass top from a table by Jones’s bedside, looked around for trays, saw none, nodded to Sister Morrison and went back to Ward B. Janet Magnusson looked at him in surprise.

‘Is that what you went for?’ The Bo’sun nodded. ‘Maggie – Sister Morrison – had no objection?’

‘Nary an objection. Have you any glass-topped trays?’

Chief Patterson and the others had already begun lunch when the Bo’sun returned, five sheets of plate glass under his arm. Patterson looked faintly surprised.

‘No trouble then, Bo’sun?’

‘One only has to ask. I’ll need some tools for the bridge.’

‘Fixed,’ Jamieson said. ‘I’ve just been to the engine-room. There’s a box gone up to the bridge – all the tools you’ll require, nuts, bolts, screws, insulating tape, a power drill and a power saw.’

‘Ah. Thank you. But I’ll need power.’

‘Power you have. Only a temporary cable, mind you, but the power is there. And lights, of course. The phone will take some time.’

‘That’s fine. Thank you, Mr Jamieson.’ He looked at Patterson. ‘One other thing, sir. We have a fair number of nationalities in our crew. The captain of the Greek tanker – Andropolous, isn’t it? – might have a mixed crew too. I should think there’s a fair chance, sir, that one of our men and one of the Greek crew might have a common language. Perhaps you could make enquiries, sir.’

‘And how would that help, Bo’sun?’

‘Captain Andropolous can navigate.’

‘Of course, of course. Always the navigation, isn’t it, Bo’sun?’

‘There’s nothing without it, sir. Do you think you could get hold of Naseby and Trent – they’re the two men who were with me here when we were attacked? Weather’s worsening, sir, and we have ice forming on the deck. Would you have them rig up lifelines between here and the superstructure?’

‘Worsening?’ Dr Singh said. ‘How much worse, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Quite a bit, I’m afraid. Bridge barometer is smashed but I think the one in the Captain’s cabin is intact. I’ll check.’ He brought out the hand compass which he’d removed from the lifeboat. ‘This thing’s virtually useless but at least it does show changes in direction. We’re wallowing in the troughs port side to, so that means the wind and the sea are coming at us on the port beam. Wind direction is changing rapidly, we’ve backed at least five degrees since we came down here. Wind’s roughly north-east. If experience is any guide that means heavy snow, heavy seas and a steadily dropping temperature.’

‘No slightest light in the gloom, is that it, Mr McKinnon?’ Dr Singh said. ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile. Except this is the other way round.’

‘A tiny speck of light, Doctor. If the temperature keeps falling like this, the cold room is going to stay cold and the frozen meat and fish should stay that way. And we do have a vile man – or men – aboard or we shouldn’t be in the state we are. You’re worried about your patients, aren’t you, Doctor – especially the ones in Ward A?’

‘Telepathy, Mr McKinnon. If conditions deteriorate much more they’re going to start falling out of their beds – and the last thing I want to do is to start strapping wounded men to their beds.’

‘And the last thing I want is for the superstructure to topple over the side.’

Jamieson had pushed back his chair and was on his feet. ‘I have my priorities right, no, Bo’sun?’

‘Indeed, Mr Jamieson. Thank you very much.’

Dr Singh half-smiled. ‘Not more telepathy?’

The Bo’sun smiled back. Dr Singh appeared to be very much the right man in the right place. ‘I think he’s gone to have a word with the men rigging up the telephone line from the bridge to the engine-room.’

‘And then I press the button,’ Patterson said.

‘Yes, sir. And then south-west. I don’t have to tell you why.’

‘You might tell a landlubber why,’ Dr Singh said.

‘Of course. Two things. Heading south-west will mean that the wind and the seas from the northeast are dead astern. That should eliminate all rolling so that you don’t have to put your patients in straitjackets or whatever. There’ll be some pitching, of course, but not much and even then Mr Patterson can smooth that out by adjusting the ship’s speed to the wave speed. The other big advantage is that by heading south-west there’s no land we can bump into for hundreds of miles to come. If you will excuse me, gentlemen.’ The Bo’sun left, together with his sheets of plate glass and hand compass.

‘Doesn’t miss much, does he?’ Dr Singh said. ‘Competent, you would say, Mr Patterson?’

‘Competent? He’s more than that. Certainly the best bo’sun I’ve ever sailed with – and I’ve never known a bad bo’sun yet. If we ever get to Aberdeen – and with McKinnon around I rate our chances better than even – I won’t be the man you’ll have to thank.’

The Bo’sun arrived on the bridge, a bridge now over-illuminated with two garish arc lamps, to find Ferguson and Curran already there, with enough plywood of various shapes and sizes to build a modest hut. Neither of the two men could be said to be able to walk, not in the proper sense of the term. Muffled to the ears and with balaclavas and hoods pulled low over their foreheads, they were so swaddled in layers of jerseys, trousers and coats that they were barely able to waddle: given a couple of white fur coats they would have resembled nothing so much as a pair of polar bears that had given up on their diet years ago. As it was, they were practically white already: the snow, driving almost horizontally, swept, without let or hindrance, through the yawning gaps where the port for’ard screens and the upper wing door screen had once been. Conditions weren’t improved by the fact that, at a height of some forty feet above the hospital, the effects of the rolling were markedly worse than they had been down below, so bad, in fact, that it was very difficult to keep one’s footing, and that only by hanging on to something. The Bo’sun carefully laid the plate glass in a corner and wedged it so that it wouldn’t slide all over the deck. The rolling didn’t bother him, but the creaking and groaning of the superstructure supports and the occasional juddering vibration that shook the bridge bothered him a very great deal.

‘Curran! Quickly! Chief Engineer Patterson. You’ll find him in the hospital. Tell him to start up and turn the ship either into the wind or away from the wind. Away is better – that means hard a-starboard. Tell him the superstructure is going to fall over the side any minute.’

For a man usually slow to obey any order and handicapped though he was by his constricted lower limbs, Curran made off with remarkable alacrity. It could have been that he was a good man in an emergency, but more likely he didn’t fancy being on the bridge when it vanished into the Barents Sea.

Ferguson eased two layers of scarf from his mouth. ‘Difficult working conditions, Bo’sun. Impossible, a man might say. And have you seen the temperature?’

The Bo’sun glanced at the bulkhead thermometer which was about the only thing still working on the bridge. ‘Two above,’ he said.

‘Ah! Two above. But two above what? Fahrenheit, that’s what it’s above. That means thirty degrees of frost.’ He looked at the Bo’sun in what he probably regarded as a meaningful fashion. ‘Have you ever heard of the chill factor, eh?’

The Bo’sun spoke with commendable restraint. ‘Yes, Ferguson, I have heard of the chill factor.’

‘For every knot of wind the temperature, as far as the skin is concerned, falls by one degree.’ Ferguson had something on his mind and as far as he was concerned the Bo’sun had never heard of the chill factor. ‘Wind’s at least thirty knots. That means it’s sixty below on this bridge. Sixty!’ At that moment, at the end of an especially alarming roll, the superstructure gave a very loud creak indeed, more of a screech than a creak, and it didn’t require any kind of imagination to visualize metal tearing under lateral stress.

‘If you want to leave the bridge,’ the Bo’sun said, ‘I’m not ordering you to stay.’

‘Trying to shame me into staying, eh? Trying to appeal to my better nature? Well, I got news for you. I ain’t got no better feelings, mate.’

The Bo’sun said, mildly: ‘Nobody aboard this ship calls me “mate”.’

‘Bo’sun.’ Ferguson made no move to carry out his implied threat and he wasn’t even showing any signs of irresolution. ‘Do I get danger money for this? Overtime, perhaps?’

‘A couple of tots of Captain Bowen’s special malt Scotch. Let’s spend our last moments usefully, Ferguson. We’ll start with some measuring.’

‘Already done.’ Ferguson showed the spring-loaded steel measuring tape in his hand and tried hard not to smile in smug self-satisfaction. ‘Me and Curran have already measured the front and side screens. Written down on that bit of plywood there.’

‘Fine, fine.’ The Bo’sun tested both the electric drill and electric saw. Both worked. ‘No problem. We’ll cut the plywood three inches wider and higher than your measurements to get the overlap we need. Then we’ll drill holes top, bottom and sides, three-quarters of an inch in, face the plywood up to the screen bearers, mark the metal and drill the holes through the steel.’

‘That steel is three-eighths of an inch. Take to next week to drill all those holes.’

The Bo’sun looked through the tool box and came up with three packets of drills. The first he discarded. The drills in the second, all with blue tips, he showed to Ferguson.

‘Tungsten. Goes through steel like butter. Mr Jamieson doesn’t miss much.’ He paused and cocked his head as if listening, though it was a purely automatic reaction, any sound from the after end of the ship was carried away by the wind: but there was no mistaking the throbbing that pulsed through the superstructure. He looked at Ferguson, whose face cracked into what might almost have been a smile.

The Bo’sun moved to the starboard wing door – the sheltered side of the ship – and peered through the gap where the screen had been in the upper half of the door. The snow was so heavy that the seas moving away from the San Andreas were as much imagined as seen. The ship was still rolling in the troughs. A vessel of any size that has been lying dead in the water can take an unconscionable time – depending, of course, on the circumstances – to gather enough momentum to have steerage way on, but after about another minute the Bo’sun became aware that the ship was sluggishly answering to the helm. He couldn’t see this but he could feel it: a definite quartering motion had entered into the rolling to which they had been accustomed for some hours.

McKinnon moved away from the wing door. ‘We’re turning to starboard. Mr Patterson has decided to go with the wind. We’ll soon have both sea and snow behind us. Fine, fine.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Ferguson said. This was about twenty seconds later and the tone of his voice indicated that everything was all but fine. He was, indeed, acutely uneasy and with reason. The San Andreas was heading almost due south, the heavy seas bearing down on her port quarter were making her corkscrew violently and the markedly increased creaking and groaning of the superstructure was doing little enough for his morale. ‘God’s sake, why couldn’t we have stayed where we were?’

‘A minute’s time and you’ll see why.’ And in a minute’s time he did see why. The corkscrewing and rolling gradually eased and ceased altogether, so did the creaking in the superstructure and the San Andreas, on an approximately south-west course, was almost rock-steady in the water. There was a slight pitching, but, compared to what they had just experienced, it was so negligible as not to be worth the mentioning. Ferguson, with a stable deck beneath his feet, the fear of imminent drowning removed and the snowstorm so squarely behind them that not a flake reached the bridge, had about him an air of profound relief.

Shortly after the Bo’sun and Ferguson had started sawing out the rectangles of plywood, four men arrived on the bridge – Jamieson, Curran, McCrimmon and another stoker called Stephen. Stephen was a Pole and was called always by his first name: nobody had ever been heard to attempt the surname of Przynyszewski. Jamieson carried a telephone, Curran two black heaters, McCrimmon two radiant heaters and Stephen two spools of rubber-insulated cable, one thick, one thin, both of which he unreeled as he went.

‘Well, this is more like it, Bo’sun,’ Jamieson said. ‘A millpond, one might almost call it. Done a power of good for the morale down below. Some people have even rediscovered their appetites. Speaking of appetites, how’s yours? You must be the only person aboard who hasn’t had lunch today.’

‘It’ll keep.’ The Bo’sun looked to where McCrimmon and Stephen were already attaching wires from the heaters to the heavy cable. ‘Thanks for those. They’ll come in handy in an hour or two when we’ve managed to keep all this fresh air out.’

‘More than handy, I should have thought.’ Jamieson shivered. ‘My word, it is fresh up here. What’s the temperature?’

The Bo’sun looked at the thermometer. ‘Zero. That’s two degrees it’s dropped in a few minutes. I’m afraid, Mr Jamieson, that we’re going to be very cold tonight.’

‘Not in the engine-room,’ Jamieson said. He unscrewed the back of the telephone and started connecting it to the slender cable. ‘Mr Patterson thinks this is an unnecessary luxury and that you just want it so that you can talk to someone when you feel lonely. Says that keeping the stern on to wind and seas is child’s play and that he could do it for hours without deviating more than two or three degrees off course.’

‘I’ve no doubt he could. That way we’ll never see Aberdeen. You can tell Mr Patterson that the wind is backing and that if it backs far enough and he still keeps stern on to the wind and sea we’ll end up by making a small hole in the north of Norway and a large hole in ourselves.’

Jamieson smiled. ‘I’ll explain that to the Chief. I don’t think the possibility has occurred to him – it certainly didn’t to me.’

‘And when you go below, sir, would you send up Naseby? He’s an experienced helmsman.’

‘I’ll do that. Need any more help up here?’

‘No, sir. The three of us are enough.’

‘As you say.’ Jamieson screwed the back of the telephone in place, pressed the call-up button, spoke briefly and hung up. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed. Are you through, McCrimmon? Stephen?’ Both men nodded, and Jamieson called the engine-room again, asked for power to be switched on and told McCrimmon and Stephen to switch on one heater apiece, one black, one radiant. ‘Still require McCrimmon as a runner, Bo’sun?’

The Bo’sun nodded towards the telephone. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve got my runner.’

One of McCrimmon’s radiant heaters had started to glow a dim red. Stephen removed a hand from the black heater and nodded.

‘Fine. Switch off. It would seem, Bo’sun, that Flannelfoot has knocked off for the day. We’ll go below now, see what cabins we can make habitable. I’m afraid there won’t be many. The only way we can make a cabin habitable – the clearing up won’t take long, I’ve already got a couple of our boys working on that – is to replace defective heating systems. That’s all that matters. Unfortunately, most of the doors have been blasted off their hinges or cut away by the oxyacetylene torches and there’s no point in replacing heating if we can’t replace the doors. We’ll do what we can.’ He spun the useless wheel. ‘When we’ve finished below and you’ve finished here – and when the temperature is appropriate for myself and other hothouse plants from the engine-room – we’ll come and have a go at this steering.’

‘Big job, sir?’

‘Depends upon what damage in the decks, below. Don’t hold me to it, Bo’sun, but there’s a fair chance that we’ll have it operational, in what you’ll no doubt regard as our customary crude fashion, some time this evening. To give me some leeway, I won’t specify what time.’

The temperature on the bridge continued to drop steadily and because numbing cold slows up a man both physically and mentally it took McKinnon and his two men well over two hours to complete their task: had the temperature been anything like normal they could probably have done it in less than half the time. About three-quarters of the way through the repairs they had switched on all four heaters and the temperature had begun to rise, albeit very slowly.

McKinnon was well enough satisfied with their end product. Five sheets of hardboard had been bolted into position, each panel fitted with an inlet oblong of plate glass, one large, the other four, identical in shape, about half the size. The large one was fitted in the centre, directly ahead of where the helmsman normally stood: two of the others were fitted on either side of this and the remaining two on the upper sections of the wing doors. The inevitable gaps between the glass and the plywood and between the plywood and the metal to which they had been bonded had been sealed off with Hartley’s compound, a yellow plastic material normally used for waterproofing external electrical fittings. The bridge was as draughtproof as it was possible to make it.

Ferguson put away the last of the tools and coughed. ‘There was some mention of a couple of tots of Captain Bowen’s special malt.’

McKinnon looked at him and at Curran. Their faces were mottled blue and white with cold and both men were shivering violently: chronic complainers, neither had complained once.

‘You’ve earned it.’ He turned to Naseby. ‘How’s she bearing?’

Naseby looked at his hand-held compass in distaste. ‘If you can trust this thing, two-twenty. Give or take. So the wind’s backed five degrees in the past couple of hours. We don’t bother the engine-room for five degrees?’

George Naseby, a solid, taciturn, dark-haired and swarthy Yorkshireman – he hailed from Whitby, Captain Cook’s home town – was McKinnon’s alter ego and closest friend. A bo’sun himself on his two previous ships, he had elected to sail on the San Andreas simply because of the mutual regard that he and McKinnon shared. Although he held no official ranking, he was regarded by everyone, from the Captain down, as the number two on the deckside.

‘We don’t bother them. Another five, perhaps, ten degrees off, then we bother them. Let’s go below – ship can look after itself for a few minutes. Then I’ll have Trent relieve you.’

The level of Scotch in the Captain’s bottle of malt had fallen quite rapidly – Ferguson and Curran had their own ideas as to what constituted a reasonably sized tot. McKinnon, in between rather more frugal sips, examined the Captain’s sextant, thermometer and barometer. The sextant, as far as the Bo’sun could tell, was undamaged – the felt lining of its wooden box would have cushioned it from the effects of the blast. The thermometer, too, appeared to be working: the mercury registered I7°F., which was about what McKinnon reckoned the cabin temperature to be. The Captain’s cabin was one of the few with its door still intact and Jamieson had already had a black heater installed.

He gave the thermometer to Naseby, asking that it be placed on one of the bridge wings, then turned his attention to the barometer. This was functioning normally, for when he tapped the glass the black needle fell sharply to the left.

‘Twenty-nine point five,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘Nine nine nine millibars – and falling.’

‘Not good, eh?’ Ferguson said.

‘No. Not that we need a barometer to tell us that.’

McKinnon left and went down from deck to the officers’ quarters. He found Jamieson at the end of the passageway.

‘How’s it coming, sir?’

‘We’re about through. Should be five cabins fit for human habitation – depending, of course, upon what your definition of human is.’

The Bo’sun tapped the bulkhead beside him. ‘How stable do you reckon this structure is, sir?’

‘Highly unstable. Safe enough in those conditions, but I gather you think those conditions are about to change.’

‘If the wind keeps backing and we keep holding to this course then we’re going to have the seas on the starboard quarter and a lot of nasty corkscrewing. I was thinking perhaps –’

‘I know what you were thinking. I’m a ship’s engineer, Bo’sun, not a constructive engineer. I’ll have a look. Maybe we can bolt or weld a few strengthening steel plates at the weakest points. I don’t know. There’s no guarantee. First of all, we’ll go have a look at the steering on the bridge. How are things up top?’

‘Draught-free. Four heaters. Ideal working conditions.’

‘Temperature?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Above freezing, or below?’

‘Below.’

‘Ideal. Thank you very much.’

McKinnon found four people in the staff dining area – Chief Engineer Patterson, Dr Singh, and Nurses Janet Magnusson and Irene. The nurses were off-duty – the San Andreas, as did all hospital ships, carried an alternate nursing staff. The Bo’sun went to the galley, asked for coffee and sandwiches, sat at the table and made his report to the Chief Engineer. When he was finished he said: ‘And how did you get on, sir? Finding a translator, I mean?’

Patterson scowled. ‘With our luck?’

‘Well, I didn’t really have any hope, sir. Not, as you say, with our luck.’ He looked at Janet Magnusson. ‘Where’s Sister Morrison?’

‘In the lounge.’ Neither her voice nor her eyes held much in the way of warmth. ‘She’s upset. You upset her.’

‘She upset me.’ He made an impatient, dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘Tantrums. This is neither the time nor the place. If ever there is a time and a place.’

‘Oh, come now.’ Dr Singh was smiling. ‘I don’t think either of you is being quite fair. Sister Morrison is not, as you suggest, Mr McKinnon, sulking in her tent and, Nurse, if she’s feeling rather unhappy, it’s not primarily the Bo’sun’s fault. She and Mr Ulbricht are not quite seeing eye to eye.’

‘Ulbricht?’ the Bo’sun said.

‘Flight-Lieutenant Karl Ulbricht, I understand. The captain of the Condor.’

‘He’s conscious?’

‘Very much so. Not only conscious but wanting out of bed. Quite remarkable powers of recuperation. Three bullet wounds, all flesh, all superficial. Bled a great deal, mind you, but he’s had a transfusion: one hopes that the best British blood goes well with his own native Aryan stock. Anyway, Sister Morrison was with me when he came to. She called him a filthy Nazi murderer. Hardly makes for the ideal nurse-patient relationship.’

‘Not very tactful, I agree,’ Patterson said. ‘A wounded man recovering consciousness might expect to be entitled to a little more sympathy. How did he react?’

‘Very calmly. Mild, you might say. Said he wasn’t a Nazi and had never murdered anyone in his life. She just stood and glared at him – if you can imagine Sister Morrison glaring at anybody – and –’

‘I can imagine it very easily,’ the Bo’sun said with some feeling. ‘She glares at me. Frequently.’

‘Perhaps,’ Nurse Magnusson said, ‘you and Lieutenant Ulbricht have a lot in common.’

‘Please.’ Dr Singh held up a hand. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht expressed deep regrets, said something about the fortunes of war, but didn’t exactly call for sackcloth and ashes. I stopped it there – it didn’t look like being a very profitable discussion. Don’t be too hard on the Sister, Bo’sun. She’s no battleaxe, far less a termagant. She feels deeply and has her own way of expressing her feelings.’

McKinnon made to reply, caught Janet’s still far from friendly eye and changed his mind. ‘How are your other patients, Doctor?’

‘The other aircrew member – a gunner, it seems, by the name of Helmut Winterman – is okay, just a scared kid who expects to be shot at dawn. Commander Warrington, as you guessed, Mr McKinnon, is badly hurt. How badly, I don’t know. His occiput is fractured but only surgery can tell us how serious it is. I’m a surgeon but not a brain surgeon. We’ll have to wait until we get to a mainland hospital to ease the pressure on the sight centre and find out when, if ever, he’ll see again.’

‘The Andover’s navigator?’

‘Lieutenant Cunningham?’ Dr Singh shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – in more ways than one, I’m afraid this may be your last hope gone – that the young man won’t be doing any more navigating for some time to come. He’s in a coma. X-ray shows a fracture of the skull and not a hairline fracture either. Pulse, respiration, temperature show no sign of organic damage. He’ll live.’

‘Any idea when he might come to, Doctor?’

Dr Singh sighed. ‘If I were a first-year intern, I’d hazard a fairly confident guess. Alas, it’s twenty-five years since I was a first-year intern. Two days, two weeks, two months – I simply don’t know. As for the others, the Captain and Chief Officer are still under sedation and when they wake up I’m going to put them to sleep again. Hudson, the one with the punctured lung, seems to have stabilized – at least, the internal bleeding has stopped. Rafferty’s fractured tibia is no problem. The two injured crewmen from the Argos, one with a broken pelvis, the other with multiple burns, are still in the recovery room, not because they’re in any danger but because Ward A was full and it was the best place to keep them. And I’ve discharged two young seamen, I don’t know their names.’

‘Jones and McGuigan.’

‘That’s the two. Shock, nothing more. I understand they’re lucky to be alive.’

‘We’re all lucky to be alive.’ McKinnon nodded his thanks as Mario put coffee and sandwiches before him, then looked at Patterson. ‘Do you think it might help, sir, if we had a word with Lieutenant Ulbricht?’

‘If you’re halfway right on your way of thinking, Bo’sun, it might be of some help. At least, it can be of no harm.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit,’ Dr Singh said. ‘The Lieutenant was getting a little bit too active – or beginning to feel too active – for his own good. It’ll be an hour, perhaps two. A matter of urgency, Mr McKinnon?’

‘It could be. Or a matter of some importance, at least. He might be able to tell us why we’re all so lucky as to be still alive. And if we knew, then we might have some idea, or a guess at least, as to what lies in store for us.’

‘You think the enemy is not yet finished with us?’

‘I should be surprised if they are, Doctor.’

McKinnon, alone now in the dining area, had just finished his third cup of coffee when Jamieson and three of his men entered, to the accompaniment of much arm-flapping and teeth-chattering. Jamieson went to the galley, ordered coffee for himself and his men and sat beside McKinnon.

‘Ideal working conditions, you said, Bo’sun. Snug as a bug in a rug, one might say. Temperature’s soaring – it’s almost ten degrees up there. Minus.’

‘Sorry about that, sir. How’s the steering?’

‘Fixed. For the moment, at least. Not too big a job. Quite a bit of play on the wheel, but Trent says it’s manageable.’

‘Fine. Thank you. We have bridge control?’

‘Yes. I told the engine-room to cease and desist. Chief Patterson seemed quite disappointed – seems to think that he can do a better job than the bridge. What’s next on the agenda?’

‘Nothing. Not for me, that is.’

‘Ah! I take your point. Our idle hands, is that it? We’ll have a look at the chances of bracing the superstructure in a moment – a moment depending on how long it takes us to get defrosted.’

‘Of course, sir.’ The Bo’sun looked over his shoulder. ‘I have noticed that Dr Singh doesn’t bother to keep the hospital’s private liquor cabinet locked.’

‘Well, now. A little something in our coffee, perhaps?’

‘I would recommend it, sir. Might help to speed up the defrosting process.’

Jamieson gave him an old-fashioned look, rose and crossed towards the cabinet.

Jamieson drained his second cup of reinforced coffee and looked at McKinnon. ‘Something bothering you, Bo’sun?’

‘Yes.’ McKinnon had both hands on the table, as if preparing to rise. ‘Motion’s changed. A few minutes back the ship started quartering a little, not too much, as if Trent was making a slight course adjustment, but now she’s quartering too damn much. It could be that the steering has failed again.’

McKinnon left at speed, Jamieson close behind him. Reaching the now smoothly ice-coated deck, McKinnon grabbed a lifeline and stopped.

‘Corkscrewing,’ he shouted. He had to shout to make himself heard above the near gale-force wind. ‘Twenty degrees off course, maybe thirty. Something far wrong up there.’

And indeed, when they arrived on the bridge, there was something far wrong. Both men paused momentarily, and McKinnon said: ‘My apologies, Mr Jamieson. It wasn’t the steering after all.’

Trent was lying, face up, just behind the wheel, which was mindlessly jerking from side to side in response to the erratic seas striking against the rudder. Trent was breathing, no doubt about that, his chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic fashion. McKinnon bent over to examine his face, looked more closely, sniffed, wrinkled his nose in distaste and straightened.

‘Chloroform.’ He reached out for the wheel and began to bring the San Andreas back on course again.

‘And this.’ Jamieson stooped, picked up the fallen compass and showed it to McKinnon. The glass was smashed, the needle irremediably twisted out of position. ‘Flannelfoot strikes again.’

‘So it would appear, sir.’

‘Ah. You don’t seem particularly surprised, Bo’sun?’

‘I saw it lying there. I didn’t have to look. There are quite a few other helmsmen aboard. That was our only compass.’