Behind me I heard Varsac saying, ‘I don’t think he know anyzing. If he do, why don’t he tell us.’ And Lebois insisting that an officer who had been on board over a week must have learned something. ‘But all he talks about is the Pays de Galles.’
The French, with their customary realism, had already accepted that it was either a scuttling job or a cargo fraud, Varsac insisting that we weren’t loaded with oil at all, but ballasted down with sea water. ‘You check, eh?’ he told Rod. ‘You’re the Mate. You examine the tanks, then we know.’ He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, leaning forward and smiling crookedly. ‘If it is sea water, not oil, then we demand more pay, eh?’
Fraser suddenly erupted into the discussion: ‘Don’t be bloody stupid, man. Yu du that an’ yu’ll find yursel’ left behind to fry on the rocks here.’ He reached for the whisky bottle. ‘Yu seen the guard they got patrolling the deck. Start pokin’ yur nose into those tanks an’ yu’ll get a bullet in yur guts.’ And he added as he refilled his glass, ‘Yu ask me, we’re sitting on a tanker-load of high explosives — bombs, shells, guns.’ He stared at Varsac morosely. ‘There’s enough wars fur God’s sake.’
I left them arguing over the nature of the voyage and went back to my cabin to peer through the tiny chink of clear glass at the deck below. I could see no movement at all, though the stars were brighter than ever and the deck clearly visible with the masts of the dhow like two slender sticks lifted above the port rail. I thought I could make out a figure standing in the shadow of the nearby derrick, but I couldn’t be sure. Then a match flared, the glow of a cigarette, and shortly afterwards two Arabs came over the rail at the point where the dhow was moored alongside. The guard stepped out of the derrick’s shadow, the three of them in a huddle for a moment, and then they were moving down the deck towards the bridge-housing all dressed in white robes and talking together so that I knew the guard was also an Arab.
I watched until they passed out of sight below, then I straightened up, wondering who set the guards, who was really in charge? Not Baldwick, he’d only just arrived. Not Hals either.
But Hals was the most likely source of information and I went along the alleyway to the lift. It wasn’t working and when I tried to reach the exterior bridge ladder I found the door to it locked. It took a little searching to find the interior stairs. They were in a central well entered by a sliding fire door that was almost opposite my cabin.
The upper deck was very quiet. There was nobody about, the alleyway empty, the doors to the offices and day rooms of both captain and chief engineer closed. I tried the lift, but it wasn’t working on this deck either. I don’t think it was out of order. I think the current had been switched off. At any rate, the door leading to the deck and the external ladder was locked, the intention clearly to restrict the movement of officers and crew.
The lift being on the port side it was right next to the radio officer’s quarters. I knocked, but there was no answer and the door was locked. He would be the key man if it were fraud and I wondered who he was. A door opposite opened on to stairs leading up to the navigating bridge. I hesitated, the companionway dark and no sound from the deck above. At the back of the wheelhouse there’d be the chart table, all the pilot books, the log, too, if I could find it. And there was the radio shack. Somewhere amongst the books, papers and charts I should be able to discover the identity of the ship and where she had come from.
I listened for a moment, then started up the stairs, treading cautiously. But nobody challenged me, and when I reached the top, I felt a breath of air on my face. I turned left into the wheelhouse. The sliding door to the port bridge wing was open and the windows were unobscured so that I could see the stars.
There was no other light, the chart table and the control console only dimly visible. But just to be there, in the wheelhouse, the night sky brilliant through the clear windows and the ship stretched out below me in the shadow of the cliffs — I stood there for a moment, feeling a wonderful sense of relief.
It was only then that I realized how tensed up I had become in the last few days. And now I felt suddenly at home, here with the ship’s controls all about me. The two years at Balkaer slipped away. This was where I belonged, on the bridge of a ship, and even though she looked as if she’d been stranded against towering rocks, I was seeing her in my mind as she’d be when we were under way, the wide blunt bows ploughing through the waves, the deck moving underfoot, all the world at my command.
There were no lights here and it took a moment for my eyes to become accustomed to the starlit gloom. The long chart table unit formed the back of the wheel-house, just behind the steering wheel and the gyro compass. There was a chart on it, but even in that dim light I could see that it was the plans of the Persian Gulf, which included large scale details of the Mus-andam Peninsula, and no indication of where the ship had come from. This was the only chart on the table, and the one ready to hand in the top drawer, the big Bay of Bengal chart, was no help either. It was the log book I needed, but when I went to switch on the chart table light to search the shelves, I found the bulb had been removed. I think all the bulbs in the wheelhouse had been removed.
However, the books were the usual collection to be found on the bridge of any ocean-going ship, most of them immediately recognizable by their shape — the Admiralty sailing directions, light lists, tidal and ocean current charts, nautical almanacs, and the lists of radio signals and navigational aid stations and beacons.
I turned my attention to the radio room then. This was on the starboard side, and groping my way to it I stumbled against a large crate. It was one of three, all of them stencil-marked radio equipment. They had been dumped outside the entrance to the radio room which, even in the da’rkness, showed as a ragged gap boarded up with a plywood panel. Jagged strips of metal curling outwards indicated an explosion and the walls and deck were blackened by fire.
The sight of it came as a shock, my mind suddenly racing. Radio shacks didn’t explode of their own accord. Somebody had caused it, somebody who had been determined to stop the ship from communicating with the outside world. The crates were obviously the ones Hals had loaded on to the dhow from the warehouse at Dubai. The larger one would be the single-sideband radio and the other two would contain the other replacements for instruments damaged in the explosion. Was that why I hadn’t seen any sign of a radio officer? Had he been killed in the blast? I was remembering Gault’s warning then, feeling suddenly exposed, the others all in the mess-room drinking, only myself up here on the bridge trying to find out where the ship had come from, what had happened to her.
The need to be out of the wheelhouse and in the open air, away from those grim marks of violence, made me turn away towards the door on the starboard side, sliding it open and stepping out into the night. The starboard bridge wing was so close to the cliffs I could almost touch them with my hand, the air stifling with the day’s heat trapped in the rocks. The masts of the dhow lying just ahead of the port-side gangway were two black sticks against the dull gleam of the khawr, which stretched away, a broad curve like the blade of a khanjar knife in the starlight. Deep down below I could just hear the muffled hum of the generator. It was the only sound in the stillness of that starlit night, the ship like a ghostly sea monster stranded in the shadow of the cliffs, and that atmosphere — so strong now that it almost shrieked aloud to me.