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13.

UP ON THE BRIDGE of the MS Windsor Castle, the power surged and died, and then the emergency batteries came on line.

A second later, a red light began flashing, and a horn started sounding.

Fire in the engine room.

The staff captain wasn’t unduly disturbed – on a vessel of this sophistication, it was far more likely that this was a false alarm, linked to whatever had caused the engines to shut down, than that there was an actual fire.

But still.

He knew that the ship’s duty fire control party would have received the alarm on their personal radios, but he called the head of the party anyway and made sure he was en route.

He had a quick look at the fire suppression system – it was showing deployed, which meant a fine drizzle was already descending in the compartment; if it was not cancelled it would be followed shortly by a mixture of argon, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.

Still not overly troubled – this was an automatic response to an alarm, false or otherwise – he keyed in the command to close the fire doors in that zone of the ship, before glancing up at the overhead CCTV panel.

It was divided up into many dozens of small images; he called up a new screen showing the six views of the engine room.

All were blank.

He grunted in surprise.

Okay, now that was concerning.

He immediately put an intercom call out to the men down there.

No reply.

Tried first engineer Phil Clarke on his personal radio, with the same result.

Well, Houston, he thought to himself, perhaps we do have a problem.

He checked the ambient temperature sensors – they were elevated.

He clicked his own radio again.

‘Captain to the bridge, please,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’

Then he called the second deck officer, whom he knew was in his cabin not far from the engines.

The man picked up quickly.

‘Jerry, it’s Nils,’ said the staff captain. ‘Can you do me a favour? The engines have gone offline, there’s a fire alarm down there, and I can’t raise Phil Clarke or anyone else. Fire control are on their way, but would you mind just going along and telling me what’s going on?’

‘Sure,’ said Jerry.

The staff captain ran through some checks on his bridge systems, and then made another attempt to contact the engine room on the comms.

Same result.

His radio crackled.

It was Jerry.

‘Nils,’ he said, ‘it’s me. It’s… it’s a bit weird down here. I can definitely smell burning, but the door’s locked somehow. And one of the junior engineers reckons he heard a loud bang from inside about a minute ago.’

‘Shit. Are fire control there?’

‘Yes, we’re forcing it. We’ll be inside in thirty seconds.’

‘Okay,’ said Nils. ‘Keep me in the loop. I’ll need to know whether it’s a general evacuation situation in…’ He looked at his watch. ‘In one minute. If I don’t hear from you, I’m calling it.’

‘Roger that. We’re nearly through.’