Murray glanced out towards the kitchen where his wife Anthea was preparing dinner. Anthea rolled her eyes and raised her eyebrows, as if to say ‘Daddy’s girl has you wrapped around her little finger. How are you going to get out of this one?’
‘ Please, Daddy, please, pleeeeease?’
‘Okay. If that’s where you want to go, little one, that’s where we’ll go. Mummy can bring you and the boys in on the train in the morning and I’ll meet you there after I finish my shift,’ Murray said, giving his daughter a kiss and again looking across to Anthea.
She shook her head and smiled warmly.
Murray pulled up behind a semi-trailer in the waiting bay in the middle of Hickson Road, the traffic sloshing past intermittently on either side. It had been over thirty years since he’d been to the fun park in the shadows of the northern pylons of the bridge. It was a toss-up as to who was more excited – Louise or the six-year-old twins, Jonathon and Matthew – and although Anthea wasn’t letting on, Murray knew that she was pleased too. It was about creating family memories. As they’d made love together that night, Anthea had whispered, ‘We’re so lucky, Murray. I love you.’
‘I love you, too,’ he’d replied.
CHAPTER 65
A s the dawn broke over the Pacific Ocean, Captain Arne Svenson, the Swedish captain of the Ocean Venturer, stepped quietly onto the bridge of the massive tanker. Svenson was a tough professional who had dedicated his life to the sea; no matter what time of the day or night he was always on the bridge hours before any ship under his command entered a port. He glanced in the direction of the helmsman and was mildly irritated to find that Mussaid ibn Khashoggi was on duty. Not that the swarthy Saudi Arabian wasn’t competent, quite the reverse. He was arguably one of the most professional and reliable men in the tanker’s entire crew, but Arne had been around seamen and the sea for nearly forty years and there was something about Khashoggi that made him uncomfortable. The Saudi never relaxed and Captain Svenson was convinced he had some sort of chip on his shoulder, but his early attempts to find out what that might be had been met with surly denial.
Acknowledging the greeting of his first officer, the Captain checked the tanker’s position on the GPS and then checked the chart. They were abeam of Point Perpendicular, less than 100 nautical miles from Port Jackson and the entrance to one of Captain Svenson’s favourite harbours. More importantly, the tanker’s arrival in the port would coincide with the high tide. The Ocean Venturer had a draft of 14.2 metres and the UKC, the under keel clearance, was critical. He knew that Port Jackson’s next high tide was 1.7 metres and that it would occur at 10.05 a.m. He also knew that the Western Channel of the harbour was dredged to a minimum of 13.7 metres at mean low tide. The critical points were the tops of the two tunnels the authorities had built on the harbour floor; even at high tide the massive tanker would clear them by barely a metre.
Captain Svenson thanked the duty steward for the mug of hot coffee and sank into the big leather chair that he’d worked a lifetime to win. Driving rain was lashing the reinforced glass on the bridge that towered over the Ocean Venturer’s wide deck, with its jigsaw puzzle of interconnecting pipes and winches. A great mass of foaming water exploded over the tanker’s huge bow but the Ocean Venturer barely registered the vibration. Svenson had a deep respect for the awesome power of the sea but the waves would not trouble him or his ship today. As if to underline his judgement the Ocean Venturer smashed through another wave, causing dark, foaming water to cascade over the decks only to disappear into the scuppers, spent and defeated. He glanced at the radar screen. There was a small blip on the screen, about 10 nautical miles further inshore.
‘She’s a bit bloody close in this weather,’ Svenson observed.
The First Mate nodded. ‘Small cargo vessel. The Jerusalem Bay. She’s due to dock just after us. My guess is that she’s making heavier going than we are and probably doesn’t want to be out in this weather longer than necessary. I’ve been keeping an eye on her.’
Svenson grinned. A 3-metre swell could make life very uncomfortable aboard a small container vessel. He glanced at the radar again. Well to the north, off the tanker’s starboard quarter, one and occasionally two fainter blips were showing on the screen.
‘And those?’ the Captain asked.
‘A couple of ocean-going tugs, the Montgomery and the Wavell, also due in Sydney at the same time as us.’
‘Who’d be a tug driver,’ Svenson observed sympathetically. He’d started out in tugs and he knew the sheer hell of a watch spent strapped in and hanging on through a long night, the deck pitching and rolling relentlessly beneath you.
‘A warship, the HMAS Melbourne, is due out of the harbour this morning as well and she’ll be followed by a car ship, the Shanghai, but otherwise, there’s nothing else to bother us,’ the First Mate said.
CHAPTER 66
T he semi passed through security and Murray Black inched forward in the rain. The hydraulically controlled posts in front of the gate disappeared into the road, the light turned green and Murray drove off Hickson Road and pulled up at the guardhouse.
‘Morning, Frank.’ Murray flashed his Sydney Ports Authority identification card and gave the security guard a smile. Frank waved and a second set of security posts disappeared, opening the entrance to the vast concrete dock. Murray drove onto the secure area of the docks and turned right towards the Sydney Ports Authority Control Tower at the far northern end. Slowly, he swung his car into the small parking compound at the base of the control tower.
‘Bugger!’ he muttered as the wind blew his umbrella inside out. The Best and Less $2 special was no match for the westerly that was driving rain across the open docks. Murray bolted up the narrow staircase on the outside of the tower, unlocked the door, wiped his face and stood dripping rainwater onto the carpet in the lift well. The tower might be an engineering marvel but it had one of the slowest lifts in the world, he thought, as he waited for the tiny capsule to come down from the operations centre, 76 metres above him. After what seemed an eternity, Murray stepped into the lift and pressed the button for it to return to the top. He could feel the lift rocking as it ground its way up the middle of the concrete tower. He stepped out and made his way up a few stairs into the operations centre – a large round capsule on top of the tower that provided 360 degree vision around the city and the harbour. The tower had been deliberately sited above the most dangerous part of the harbour where ships were blind to each other’s movements around Miller’s Point.
‘Morning, Bob.’
Bob Muscat, the duty operations officer, waved a greeting from his desk. He was leaning into one of several microphones arrayed in front of him, talking to the Captain of a Royal Australian Navy guided missile destroyer that was just rounding the sea buoy at the Heads.
‘Harbour Control, HMAS Melbourne is rounding junction buoy, over.’
‘Romeo, Melbourne, this is Sydney Harbour Control, report departing Line Zulu and have a safe voyage.’
‘A pleasant overnight leave?’ Bob asked, leaning back from the microphone. The two had served together in the 5/7th Battalion, a mechanised cavalry regiment and there was an easy camaraderie between Murray and the short, dark-haired ex-Major.
‘Late-night shopping,’ Murray said, rolling his eyes. ‘Why is it that most women at shopping centres are fourteen pick handles across the arse?’
‘With husbands and barge-arsed kids to match,’ Bob replied. ‘You can’t have your ice-cream until you finish your bloody hamburger!’ he said with a grin.