“Quite an item!” spat Martyr, his voice heavy with disgust.
“Nothing compared to what it would be if they knew what Heritage Mariner’s reaction actually is,” observed Robin dryly.
“And now the rest of the world news. Remaining in the Middle East, it is now reported from the city of Ubaylah in Saudi Arabia…”
“Well, so far so good,” said Richard, much relieved. “Nobody seems to have noticed that we’ve gone. Still nine hours to go, though. And we’re likely to stir up a hornets’ nest when we report in…”
“But we haven’t been challenged by any of the coastal stations yet,” said Robin matter-of-factly. “After all, what are we to them? One more blip on their radar going the same way as all the other blips, like one more freight car on an infinite train. What do they care?”
“They’d care quickly enough if they realized.”
“But they haven’t. And they won’t unless they get in contact directly. They wouldn’t even expect to hear from us until we get close enough to Hormuz to start asking for a pilot. And anyway, if anyone does contact us, why tell them the truth? Unless they come out here and look us over, how are they going to know? I’ve got all the Heritage Mariner sailing schedules in my head. So have you, Richard. Neptune should be in the Gulf now. We’ll just say we’re Neptune if anyone asks us. At the very least it’ll confuse the hell out of them for a while. Christ! We only need nine hours.”
In the silence, the bulletin continued, “…scientists have recently discovered they do not fly directly downwind. The configuration of their wings is such that they actually fly across the wind at an angle dictated by the sun. The southerly winds presently dominating the region during the day, therefore, mean that a northeasterly course is more likely. The citizens of Dubai…”
“Well, let’s not worry about it until it happens,” decided Richard.
“As the actress said to the bishop,” quoted Martyr.
“Can I smell coffee?” asked Robin.
“…as far as Bandar Abbas and Zahedan in Iran.”
Salah came in through the door with four steaming mugs. Robin’s nose wrinkled. One of the side effects of her present condition was super sensitivity to smells which, on the one hand meant that she could smell the coffee coming long before the others, but on the other hand meant that she couldn’t actually face it when it came. And she thought she had been getting over morning sickness. What she really fancied, actually, was a morsel of cheese…
And so the day proceeded. Richard had the con. Robin kept watch on the collision alarm radar and slipped out onto the bridge-wings with binoculars whenever she got the chance; checked their position on the satellite navigation system against the notes on the course in Ben’s neat handwriting; ran down to the cargo control room during the quieter moments to check that the tanks were filling all right, and every time she did so, she popped into the galley for just one more sliver of cheddar cheese.
The others had a rest, or pretended to, each lying alone and tense in his or her cabin. Only Christine and Doc shared each other’s company, he sleeping like a baby while she kept watch beside him, watchful for when he awoke. And when he did spring awake, at a quarter to four, she was still there, still watching, wideeyed. But he knew who he was and remembered what was going on.
By four they were all on the bridge, waiting for Richard’s final briefing. For the last two hours, Richard had been cutting speed and pulling north so that now they were dawdling along the very top edge of the one-way, east-bound channel just southwest of the island of Tanb e Borzog. Now he swung north again and cut power altogether. Prometheus continued to coast forward, dominated by the massive momentum of her fully laden tanks, out of the shipping lanes altogether until she came to rest, still facing east, safely behind the shallows stretching down from Tanb.
While the way was slowly coming off her, Richard took them over the plans for one last time, and the moment she was dead in the water they all hurried away to start assigned tasks. By five to five only Richard and John were left on the bridge. Richard stood by the helm, staring morosely down the deck. John sat in the right-hand chair — not the captain’s chair — by the radio, with one of the walkie-talkies by his side. During the next five minutes it squawked almost continuously.
“Asha here, John. Ready.”
“Martyr here, Captain. Ready. Over.”
“Robin here. Ready but out of cheese.”
“Weary here. Ready when you are. We’ll hold as planned for as long as possible.”
Seventeen hundred hours local time clicked up.
“They’re all ready, Richard.”
“World Service News, please, John. One last time.”
“And here is the news at two o’clock…”
“Fingers crossed, eh, Richard?”
“Fingers crossed, John.”
“It has just been reported from the Arabian Gulf that the Heritage Mariner supertanker Prometheus has vanished…”
“Hell’s teeth!”
“The tanker, taken over by terrorists recently, has been anchored for over a week off the Iranian coast at Bushehr…”
“Martyr. Martyr, can you hear me? Engine room. Come in!”
“…but unconfirmed reports started arriving this morning that the ship had been moved during the night…”
“Engine room here, Richard…”
“The story’s broken on the world news, Chief. They’re broadcasting it now…”
“…Iranian authorities have just confirmed that Prometheus is no longer at Bushehr, although news from that troubled state…”
“Chief, I want full speed ahead, as fast as you can give it to me.” Richard’s hand moved on the engineroom telegraph, confirming his words even as he spoke: FULL AHEAD. Immediately he felt the whole ship begin to shudder as the twin screws thrashed the seas behind her. He felt life come into the tiny helm beneath his sweating palms as she began to gather way. The low gold shoulder of the island began to move across his vision and he swung Prometheus onto her new heading southeast, choosing the shortest route between themselves and their target little more than fifteen miles away across the quiet, unsuspecting Gulf.
Aiming to hurl her like a great javelin across the slow-moving, humdrum eastbound sea lanes, to hurl his command at Fate, at flank speed, no matter what the risks or consequences.
Chapter Twenty-two
“An urgent search is currently being carried out all through the Arabian Gulf to try to discover what has become of her…”
“Ben! Ben, can you hear me?” Fatima spoke feverishly into the walkie-talkie, praying that Ben was listening in somewhere close at hand. Not for the first time, she cursed the old platform for being so big. It was a long way from their center of operations to this lookout post down here.
“Fatima? What is it?”
“It’s gone, Ben. Prometheus has disappeared. It’s on the news.”
“They’ve moved it. Someone’s gone aboard and moved it. It must be Mariner. I’m on my way down. Don’t tell the others yet. I’ll have to think this through.”
Fatima sat back, breathing deeply, trying to calculate what this might mean. The words of the rest of the bulletin whispered meaninglessly in the background.
“…over Dubai. Observers say it is among the largest ever seen and reports speak of the sun being obscured…”
She could not sit still. She left the radio on but she could not bear to stay beside it. Long before the bulletin was finished or Ben arrived, she had begun her restless prowling. She was in the rig foreman’s office, the equivalent of a ship’s bridge. It was a long, spacious room, chosen to be their forward observation post because it gave such excellent views north across the shipping lanes to the Iranian island of Queshm twenty miles away. But the shipping lanes were nowhere near that wide, for there were seven miles of shoals and shallows: the Flat, they were called, and the Mariner shoal…