He took it out, switched it on and started praying.
THIRTY
‘Hello, Maxima? This is Sulu Queen. You are very faint. No, I am very sorry. Captain Mariner is not aboard. I repeat, not aboard this afternoon. He has visited Captain Sin in hospital and should currently be at the port authority office with Major Guerrero and Mr Prudhomme. They are due back at the beginning of the first dog watch. May I take a message? Please speak slowly and clearly. I am afraid we have a very weak signal here and you keep breaking up. Hello?… Hello, Maxima? Are you there, Maxima? Sulu Queen calling Maxima. Hello, Maxima, can you hear me?’
Sulu Queen’s radio officer turned to face First Officer Cheng, who was in command of the bridge. ‘It was a very weak signal,’ he said. ‘I have recorded it, of course. I will play it back to the captain as soon as he returns at sixteen hundred hours. It is mostly static and the message seems very garbled to me. But he may be able to make out more than I could. And he may recognize the voice of the woman. Do you want me to try again?’
‘Yes,’ said Cheng. ‘The captain’s wife is aboard Maxima. It must have been her. The vessel is en route to Puerto Banderas on the Pacific coast of Mexico and may well be in the path of the ARkStorm that the USGS and NOAA have been warning California about ever since we berthed here — the storm which is apparently heading south at speed. There have been reports of a storm surge and rapidly worsening conditions all along the coast of Baja California Norte, beyond even the report that Captain Mariner brought back himself after the helicopter flight. Did you get the impression that this was a courtesy call, a domestic matter, or something more serious? The weather down there is likely to be deteriorating quite rapidly according to the weather predictors. There are danger signals out all the way down the coast as far as Acapulco.’
‘I have no idea,’ answered the radio operator. ‘But it seems to me that matters may be getting serious. There was something in the background — someone she may have been talking to. I could make no sense of it. Also something in her tone before we lost contact, especially as she was coming and going. It is worrying. From what I understand of Maxima, everything aboard is state of the art. Mrs Mariner should be able to communicate with Shanghai or Beijing, yet she cannot get a signal across a thousand miles of empty ocean.’
‘If the weather is bad, could that interfere with the signal?’ asked Cheng. ‘The captain reported that his helicopter flight up was a very rough one.’
‘Unlikely. I know we have been dealing with peculiarly powerful electrics in this storm, but even so …’
‘Then it is probable that the equipment on Maxima is malfunctioning,’ concluded Cheng. ‘Did your contact give any hint of damage or danger?’
The radio operator shrugged. ‘Who can tell?’
‘Captain Mariner will want to know as soon as he returns, which, with luck will be at any minute now at change of watch. Try and contact Maxima again.’
Cheng was waiting at the top of the companionway ten minutes later at four p.m. when Richard, punctual to a fault, led Guerrero and Antoine back aboard. The solicitous first officer had brought an umbrella as well as hard hats and hi-viz jackets, but the rain had eased about five minutes before their taxi drew up and the four of them were able to walk the length of the deck in the dry. ‘I have some news which might concern you, Captain,’ said Cheng as he almost jogged to keep up with his Richard’s long strides.
‘Yes? What is that?’
‘A radio message from Maxima, sir. It was incomplete and garbled. The contact was very bad and comprised mostly of static. But it was almost certainly from Captain Mrs Mariner. The radio operator and I are concerned that the vessel may be in some kind of trouble, sir. We have recorded the contact of course. You may want to listen to it as a matter of some urgency.’
‘I do indeed, Mr Cheng. You and the radio operator have done well.’ Richard stepped through the bulkhead door into the A-deck corridor, shrugging off his vest and hanging it with his hard hat on the wall hook labelled ‘Captain’ without a second thought, already very much in charge.
Ten minutes later, Richard was seated in the radio officer’s chair with a pair of headphones clapped to his ears. His eyes were closed as he concentrated absolutely on the recording the usual occupant of the chair had made. Richard was not only listening to the words; he was listening for the tone. He was trying to make out from the background noise what was static and what was actual sound broadcast from Maxima herself as Robin vainly attempted to make contact with him. His normally open, cheerful face was closed and grim. His lips, which normally turned up at their ends, were turned down. The knuckles of the hands that controlled volume, pitch and tone were white.
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima,’ the recording began. ‘Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’ There was a hissing whisper in reply. Richard strove to hear what was going on in the background. Was there wind? There was nothing that sounded like the torrential downpour she had reported on their last contact. But the timbre was strange. Flat, lacking in echo. And there was that whisper of wind or waves. Was she outside? What on earth was she doing radioing from outside on the deck?
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima,’ she repeated. ‘Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’ Richard skipped through the radio officer’s recording of his own lengthy reply and focused once again on the incoming signal, such as it was. And his frown deepened at once. The downturned lips thinned. The nostrils on that aquiline nose flared. The blue eyes flashed open for a moment then closed again as Richard leaned forward, his concentration redoubled. For everything had changed abruptly. Robin had stopped talking to Sulu Queen, but she had not stopped talking. ‘Manuel!’ she shouted. He could tell she was shouting from the tenor of the voice but not the volume — her words were scarcely more than a scratchy whisper. ‘Get down here now!’ The voice suddenly became even more distant. A hissing roar filled the airwaves. No wonder the radio officer had given up on it, he thought. Nothing he did with the sound controls shifted it. Was it static or was it real? he wondered. The agitated voice continued distantly, only just audible above the mounting noise. ‘Captain Toro! There’s a series of large waves approaching. The biggest rogue waves I’ve ever seen. You’d better tell your men to brace. And pray. There’s nothing else to do.’ The roaring gathered. Then there was a sudden silence, broken only by a gentler, less natural, hiss. That would be the static, he thought grimly. And if that was static, then the other sound was real. And it did, in truth, sound like a huge sea approaching with a pretty stiff wind behind it. Suddenly her voice was back; the clear, crisp and decisive tone she reserved exclusively for the most dire of emergencies reduced to a whisper that echoed as though she was speaking from the bottom of a well somewhere on Mars. ‘Get down,’ Robin advised whoever she had been talking to. Captain Toro, perhaps, or this chap Manuel — whoever he was. ‘Get down and lie flat. This is going to be a rollercoaster ride.’ And after that, there was only the gathering roar which Sulu Queen’s radio officer had mistaken for static, the terminal click that broke the contact — and silence.