‘What about the suit room?’ said Ford, leaning over and putting a sticky finger on the blueprint.
‘There’s a lot of gear in there,’ said Gallen. ‘What’s in this compartment next door?’
‘That’s the boilers, is my guess,’ said the Aussie.
‘Boilers?’ said Tucker. ‘You mean for hot water? We’re not taking that many showers are we?’
Ford laughed. ‘In the Arctic, they pump boiling water into the gap between internal and external dive suits. We look like sea lions, but it beats having to piss in your wettie.’
‘What’s this one?’ said Tucker, pointing at another compartment.
‘That’s an emergency diving lock and dock. If the main one ever gets damaged and you need to take people off, bring supplies on, you can switch to this one. They’re usually off-limits. The skipper has the only key.’
‘Okay,’ said Gallen. ‘That’s our brig.’
CHAPTER 57
The massive red-hulled vessels loomed out of the fog patches as the pale sun peeked over the horizon. The Sikorsky banked around the Oasis drilling ship — the Conquistador—and aimed for the helipad on the front of the Fanny Blankes-Koen, a twin-hull Dutch service vessel that had carried the Ariadne from the workshops in Rotterdam to its sea trials in Norway, and now to its operational resting place on the sea bed of the Beaufort Sea, in the area between Canada and the North Pole.
Gallen followed the others across the helipad and into the warmth of the guest state rooms. Unpacking in the shared security quarters, he assigned the men different parts of the ship to recce before he joined the executives in Florita’s state room.
As he entered the large suite, Gallen saw a group of men in blue woollen naval sweaters.
‘Gerry,’ said Aaron, jumping up and doing the introductions. ‘Meet Captain Wil Armens — captain of the Fanny Blankes-Koen.’
Gallen shook a big dry hand.
‘Bjorn Hansen, commander of the ship-side operation of the Ariadne,’ continued Aaron, ‘the Ariadne’s seabed commander, Captain Sam Menzies, his chief engineer, John Negroponte, and his XO, Ben Letour.’
Gallen shook and smiled, getting a closer look at Negroponte.
‘Black gang, right?’ said Gallen, referring to the nautical slang for the people who worked in the engine room of ships. He thought it was witty, the way it worked in with Negroponte’s name.
Negroponte looked surprised; before he could say anything Gallen felt himself being directed towards the board table where Aaron had charts spread out. The operational aspect of dropping the Ariadne to the ocean floor had obviously been canvassed, judging by the checklists and other documents that sat among the schematics.
‘Ben,’ said Aaron, ‘Gerry is probably most concerned with who is on the Ariadne, and getting our CEO off her in a timely and safe fashion.’
‘Sure, Aaron,’ said Letour, who Gallen judged to be a French Canadian in his mid-forties, probably ex-Navy by the way he kept himself in shape. ‘We thought we’d use a service submersible.’
‘Which is a sub, right?’ said Gallen.
‘Yes, a mini submarine,’ said Letour. ‘It will eventually live on the ocean floor with the Ariadne, but we can wait for the media to put their cameras away and use it to take Madame Mendes from the dive.’
‘So, she doesn’t even get wet?’ said Gallen, warming to the plan. ‘I mean, we can do this without her having to get into a dry suit, swim to the surface?’
Sam Menzies, a younger American, laughed. ‘That’s what you were worried about? Well, don’t.’
The wind gathered strength from the west as Gallen sucked on his cigarette and turned so the icy breeze hit the back of his red arctic suit and his raised hood. Tucker put his hand out for a smoke and Gallen handed the packet and lighter rather than messing around trying to light up for the former Marine.
‘That’s one hell of a tin can,’ said Tucker, getting his smoke lit and nodding.
Above them loomed the bulk of the Ariadne, its pale blue paint looking deathly cold in the sunlight. Men crawled over it in their insulated coveralls, checking the massive hoses that were connected to the top and working over every join, bolt and rivet on the huge structure that was going to support a small town on the sea bed for months at a time. Stevedores scale-lifted bagged cargo and pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes into the main lock, which was an open steel hole with a door swung back on its hinges, like a nose door on a cargo plane.
From the main hatch on the top of the vessel, men took readings with black boxes the size of field radios and scribbled on their clipboards. Other men yelled into radios, while high above them the main crane of the Fanny Blankes-Koen, which was going to lift the Ariadne into the sea and lower it down, was being prepared to swing the dome-like steel door onto the open hole.
The divers would come and go via a pressurised air lock on the underside of the Ariadne. This lock entered into the suit room and was large enough to dock two of the service submersibles that would be used on the sea floor.
Gallen had spent the last ninety minutes walking every deck, passageway and companionway on the Fanny Blankes-Koen, looking for the source of his discomfort. There was something not right about Negroponte and Gallen had worked himself up about it. What was that look from the chief engineer when Gallen had said ‘black gang’? Was it surprise, confusion? Was he hesitating as he worked out the reference to his name? Or didn’t he know what a black gang was? It couldn’t be that, thought Gallen. Every maritime engineer knew what it was; even long after the steam era, the engine room sailors and officers still referred to their work as if it involved a lot of coal dust and shovels.
Letour walked out of the vessel, giving the go-ahead wave to the crane operators. Beckoning for Gallen and Tucker, Letour ducked back into the vessel as the crane revved up and slowly swung the massive steel bell into place on its hinges.
The inside of the Ariadne was warm and Gallen pushed back his hood and unzipped the arctic suit. The tour was fast: Letour’s main task was looming in just under an hour, when he took the world’s media through the vessel, and Gallen noted that the Canadian XO had shaved and splashed himself with Old Spice.
Standing back, Gallen let Letour brief Tucker, whose concentration and attention to detail made Gallen relax slightly. The back-up air lock was a large internal steel hatchway bolted into the hatch like a bank vault door.
‘Shit,’ said Tucker, thumping on it. ‘No one’s getting through that once they’re locked up.’
Letour smiled. ‘It’s designed to stop the ocean entering at three thousand pounds per square inch. It should stop an angry drunk.’
Letour handed Tucker a red plastic swipe card. ‘That’s yours, but don’t lose it. It’s the only one.’
Swiping it, Tucker waited for the red light to flash green and then turned the hatch wheel three hundred and sixty degrees. Pushing it open, they looked in at a plain steel chamber with another watertight hatch at the other end and an array of diving equipment, air bottles and suits along the wall.
‘Emergency lock,’ said Letour, anticipating Gallen’s question. ‘If the main one is damaged, this is how we hook up with our submersibles.’
Pulling back, Gallen noticed another door in the passageway was opening. As they walked alongside it, the hatchway pulled back and the chief engineer, Negroponte, stepped out, his face flushed. Gallen noticed the hand checking and rechecking the hatchway even as the engineer faced Letour.