‘Come on,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing for you here. Let’s get to Ocean Falls and see if Brian can help.’ And I turned, half running across the quay, not waiting for him, but sensing that he was following. The beat of the engines was loud as I tossed my bags onto the deck and hauled myself aboard. Tom was close behind me, the bow warp already gone, the props beating the water to a froth as a gap began to open up between the hull and the quay. The stern warp went slack, the bows swinging out and the stern in, and the man on the quay slipped the rope off its bollard and leapt aboard with it. The bows were steadying then, the vessel digging its stern deeper into the water as she picked up speed.
We parked our bags in the mess room aft, which was below deck and empty except for the steward clearing away the last remains of the evening meal. ‘You like some coffee, help yourself.’ He nodded to the hotplate. ‘Coffee’s available any time and if you’re real thirsty there’s the fridge — milk, orange juice, cans of tomato juice. Biscuits in the rack above the table there. Okay?’
I nodded and turned to Tom. ‘I’m going up to the wheel-house,’ I said. ‘See what the Captain can tell me.’
Tom didn’t seem to hear. He was helping himself to coffee, his hair standing up like a brush and his brow creased in a horizontal line. The cup rattled in its saucer, his hand shaking, his mind shut away with its own thoughts and fears. I went up through the hatch and out onto the sidedeck where the wind of our passage thrust at my clothes and I had to clutch my cap. We must have been doing the better part of 2.0 knots, black water streaming past and the roar of the engines from the open hatch, where one of the oilers sat reading a magazine, almost deafening. A short iron ladder led up the side of the bridge-housing to the half-shut door of the wheelhouse. I slid it back and went in, a voice on the radio saying, ‘I can’t see nuttin’. No lights, no stars, not a fuckin’ thing. Where are you, Naughty Gosling? This fishing boat Chick Chick. Can’t see nuttin’. I’m in a fog right up to my eyeballs, boy, an’ ah reck’n ah’m lost.’
The Captain reached up and switched stations. ‘Poor bloody Indian got himself lost. Next thing is he’ll call RCC — that’s the Rescue Coordination Centre at Esquimault, Victoria. If he does he’ll be out of luck.’ And he added, ‘Forecast is for fog and that bugger’s in it already. Trouble is we don’t know where he is. Seaward probably.’
‘Thickening up already, Doug.’ The Mate was standing by the radar, peering into the night ahead. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Shit! Why do we have to get ourselves dealt a bank of fog just when we’d like clear visibility?’
‘Good practice, Curly.’ The Captain’s voice sounded sour and they grinned at each other. ‘Be a long night, I reck’n.’ The Mate was short and fat with black curly hair and a voice that was hoarse as though he had a perpetual need to clear his throat and couldn’t be bothered.
‘Not going to be easy to locate that tug, is it?’ I asked.
The Mate gave me a startled look as though he hadn’t expected the stranger to voice an opinion, and certainly not on the bridge. It was the Captain who answered. ‘Soon as we’re through the Lama Passage and into the Fisher Channel we should pick up the tow on our radar.’ He glanced at my battered sea cap. ‘You understand charts?’ I nodded and he turned to the chart table that stretched along most of the rear wall of the wheelhouse below all the radios, the Decca navigation and search and rescue equipment. ‘She’s out of the Fisher now and into Fitz Hugh Sound and there’s a ship the Defence Forces base at Esquimault has been tracking by satellite sitting waiting down there by the North Passage.’ He pointed a thick hairy ringer at the open sea area to the west of Calvert Island. ‘Don’t ask me how, but somebody’s bugged her so that they’ve been able to track her all the way from somewhere south of the Californian coast. It’s a big motor yacht, I’m told.’
‘And what’s your role?’ I asked him as he stopped abruptly, leaving me in the air as to what his instructions were.
He hesitated, then said, ‘Well, I’ve let you on board, and since you’ll see what happens, no point in your not knowing the role we’re supposed to play.’ His finger tapped the open water area. ‘My instructions are to wait until I’ve got both yacht and tug on my radar scan and can report they’re closing. A chopper is standing by. The expectation is that this is the rendezvous position, that they’ll close to let the yacht lie alongside and pass her cargo over. I haven’t been told what that cargo is, but as I gather both you and Jim here have already leapt to the conclusion that it’s drugs, I can say that that’s my conclusion, too. The helicopter will be carrying a rummage party. We stand by in case there’s trouble.’
We were in the Lama Passage then, the waterway narrowing to the width of a quite ordinary-sized river, forests of trees green on either side, a pale tide-band of exposed rock close above the surface of the water and our wake arrowing out behind us to surge against it. It would have been too dark to see it if we hadn’t had the spotlight trained on it, and as we entered the narrows, our speed unreduced and wisps of fog, Doug Cornish switched on the powerful beam of the ‘nightsun’ searchlight that seemed to pierce even the fog.
Our speed at that time was just over 18 knots, rocks and lit beacons ahead; I watched Cornish’s face for some sign of nervousness, a flicker of hesitation. There was neither.
‘Starb’d helm.’
‘The wheel spun under the helmsman’s hand and he repeated, ‘Starb’d helm.’
‘Helm amidships and steer one-six-o.’ And a moment later, the helmsman reported, ‘Steering one-six-o.’
After that we just stood there, watching the Fisher Channel shoreline, which on the port side was barely visible, and waiting. The watch changed, the helmsman handing over and collecting the coffee mugs scattered about the wheelhouse.
‘Everybody coffee? Milk and sugar?’ he asked me. ‘No sugar,’ I said, and Jim asked for two lumps. The engine beat and the swish of the bow wave, the slop of the water against the starb’d side of the channel, all these were constant sounds. Only the sound from the radio and occasional verbal exchanges between skipper and mate interrupted the monotonous, almost sleep-inducing background noises of a vessel under way.
The Captain was bent over the radar, his eyes glued to the scanner, talking quietly to the Mate, and Jim had pushed open the door and was searching the Channel through a pair of ship’s binoculars. I turned to the white expanse of Chart 1933 spread out on the chart table. There was a pair of dividers in the rack and I measured off the distance from where we had turned out of the Lama Passage to Cape Calvert and the open water of North Passage, then checked it off against the minutes of latitude shown vertically on the edge of the chart. A minute is the equivalent of a nautical mile and die dividers indicated just on forty.
‘You a sailor?’ It was the Captain’s voice.
I nodded.
‘The tide’s with us so we’re probably doing twenty over the ground. We’ll be up with them in two hours. Sailing boat?’ he asked.
He lived at Fulford in the Gulf Islands and kept a small cruiser in the harbour there. ‘I named her Salish after one of the Indian tribes from the south — like Bella Bella is named for one of the northern tribes; the Haidas and the Bella Bellas were very fierce at one time.’ Mugs of coffee appeared on a tray and we talked about boats for a time, then his eyes began to watch the clock. At twenty-three minutes past the hour he switched on the HF single sideband radio and two minutes later he was talking to RCC at the southern end of Vancouver Island. He gave his ETA at the target as approximately 22.55 and it was arranged that unless contrary advice was received from him the helicopter would lift off from Port Hardy at 22.10 hours to be on call within range of the target as the Kelsey closed with the tug and ordered it to heave-to. ‘Good luck and let’s hope this isn’t another FBI rabbit that isn’t going to come out of the hat.’ The radio went silent and he switched it off.