Feeling a little like the Phantom of the Opera, she used the steel tunnels below the decks, showing herself only at the hatch covers she had left unlatched for this purpose. Only that one closest to the accommodation ladder itself was near enough to the action to be of any use and, having tried another farther away without success, she returned to this one, hoping to hear something of the terrorists’ immediate intentions. She approached it with a great deal of care. On the deck above her she could hear a confused rumble of footsteps and, when she eased the hatch up an inch, she was confronted with a forest of booted legs. It was instantly clear what was happening: the captive crew were being taken off Prometheus.
Hope swelled. Perhaps a ransom had been paid: perhaps they were going home.
Reality intruded: perhaps not.
“That’s the last of them,” a man’s voice called, in Arabic.
“Wait a moment,” answered the Englishman’s voice in the same language. “I want a last look around.”
“What about the two that are missing?”
“Forget them. Get ready to cast off.”
“Very well.”
Asha closed the cover silently and went back down the steps. Good. It seemed that her fears were unfounded. If he was content to have a last check around and then to leave, then she would be free to tend John. When he was comfortable, she would see about contacting the outside world. Her mind busy with plans, she crawled out onto the deck and ran for the bridgehouse. With hardly a second thought she sprinted down the corridor and in through the surgery door, straight into the arms of the terrorist waiting there.
Asha stood, paralyzed with shock, utterly incapable of movement. All for nothing, she thought. It was all lost now. She would have to take them to John or he would bleed to death. A sense of frustration swept over her. It was so acute it felt like fury.
“He knew you would come here!” snapped the terrorist. “You fool, Asha, how could you think he would not know?”
Asha stood, unable to breathe as the familiar voice went on.
“You hang around here risking your freedom to release your captain. Then you all but throw your life away to rescue him when he is wounded. Of course you will come back here the moment you think it is safe, to get what you need to tend him!”
“Fatima. It is you! Your voice, I…”
“Get down! Down on the floor.”
“Fatima. Darling…”
“Now!” The barrel of the rifle in her twin sister’s hand drove into Asha Quartermaine’s stomach and she dropped to the floor at once, winded. Then sturdy legs rolled her over and over as though she were a big beach ball and she was under the examining table, concealed by the cotton sheet upon it.
“Has she come yet?” enquired the harsh voice of the Englishman suddenly, from the doorway.
“No,” lied Fatima at once. “I told you she was too clever to fall into such a simple trap.”
“Well, never mind. We still have enough hostages to ensure no action will be taken against us until it is too late. Come on, then. It is time to go.”
Chapter Nineteen
“That was last night,” Asha said. “Just before dawn. I did some work on him then and let him sleep. When he was well enough to move, I brought him up here. Then you arrived and I thought they had come back. I made him move too quickly and we opened up his wound again.”
John sat, pale but wide awake, on the examination table in Prometheus’s surgery, listening to the last of the story. Richard, Robin, and the others clustered, spellbound, around them. While she talked, Asha continued to work. The wound in John’s back had been stitched, the track of the bullet disinfected and cauterized. Now the ragged pit of the exit wound at the front was being dealt with.
Richard hardly knew where to start. The fact that Sinbad’s story had been so close to the truth disturbed him most, pulling him away from a clear view of the problems that now confronted him and the further action needed to overcome them.
It was a damn nuisance that, apart from John and Asha, the rest of Prometheus’s crew had slipped through their fingers, spirited away to some other location as the second part of the terrorists’ plan began. But if Asha’s account of the conversation between her sister and the Englishman was correct, then things were not going right for the terrorists either. They had held their hostages here unwillingly, for so long, because they had been awaiting the signal to begin part two. But that had never come. So they had gone ahead without it. Of all the welter of detail their story had revealed, this fact seemed the most important. But where had they gone? And with what purpose?
“First things first,” he said. “Let’s radio in. We’ve a fair number of people to inform about this…”
“I tried that,” said Asha quickly. “The radio doesn’t work.”
“I’ll go and take a look at it,” said Martyr at once.
“If you can’t fix it, we’ll call in from Katapult when we get back aboard,” called Richard after him. The central system for the handheld radios and the big transceiver Admiral Stark had donated to the cause of greater safety in the Gulf were still aboard Katapult, the heart of their simple communications system: perhaps it would be as well to move it all up here, thought Richard. And that, by association, took his mind to the multihull. “Better get Katapult shipshape,” he suggested to Weary.
“Too right, Captain. Don’t like having my spinnaker draped over your forecastle head, for a start,” said the Australian. He and Chris left together, almost like twins themselves.
An instant after they departed, Salah was gone, to prowl about the ship, looking for clues.
“Anything we can do for you?” Robin asked Asha, too well aware that Richard, lost in thought, would be like an automaton until he had sorted out whatever was on his mind. Where his men were and what to do next, she guessed.
Oh God, if only Daddy were here, she thought. The poignancy of his absence brought tears to her eyes. “I beg your pardon?” Poor Asha had been talking to her in response to her question, and she hadn’t heard a word.
“When I’m finished here, there are some things I want to bring up from that hole I’ve been hiding in for the last few days.”
“Of course. I’ll give you a hand.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t have to stay here, do I?” asked John.
“No. If you’re careful, you can move around.”
“Good,” said John. Asha had filled him full of painkillers, so that he felt quite well and was itching to get up onto the bridge. The fact that Weary had assumed Richard was the captain of Prometheus galled him. He, John Higgins, was the captain. And his place was on the bridge. So, as soon as the last layer of bandage was firmly round his chest, he went. After an instant, Richard followed him. The two women exchanged glances and went out onto the deck.
“It’s just impossible even to guess where the murderous bastards are,” said John, easing his stiff frame into the captain’s chair on the port side of the bridge. Richard stood restlessly by the tiny helm, looking down toward the accommodation ladder, then out beyond it into the afternoon haze of the Gulf. Robin suddenly appeared, popping up out of the tiny hatch halfway down the deck, her golden curls glinting like guineas as the south wind tossed them in the sunshine.
“No clues at all?”