‘Yes. You should go out onto your right bridge wing, Richard. The sea presents an interesting sight this afternoon.’
Richard walked across and looked through the clearview. Thick glass still tinged with a fine dusting of sand placed a patina on everything. Yves was right: if he wanted to make out any fine detail he would have to go out onto the bridge wing.
The late afternoon was warm, wide and magnificent. Africa lay just below the eastern horizon beyond the bulk of the iceberg and, from Richard’s point of view, behind the bridgehouse. In a subtle way, however, the great continent still exercised its influence even though the harmattan was long gone, leaving only the sand and the sorrow. That subtle influence was part of the wider picture, subsumed into the size and colour of the sky, into the scents carried almost subliminally with the high-flying gulls on the soft easterly breeze. And, perhaps most of all, in the waters through which they were sailing. Ahead and all around lay a wonderland of water. Richard was used to wide, unvarying waters which remained the same day after day; here there was a kaleidoscope of textures and hues, their vivid contrast breathtaking. It was slightly disorientating, as though he was driving across the rolling patchwork fields of the downland around Ashenden, his home.
But it was not the unusual beauty of the scene or the poignancy of the thought that made him slap the metal safety rail in front of him. For even with its colours, the sea spoke to him. He narrowed his eyes against the late afternoon glare and looked again. Then his walkie-talkie was at his lips.
‘You’re right, Yves. I’m going up to take a closer look. Want a ride?’
‘D’accord! I’m on my way.’
Richard strode back onto the bridge and called across to Sally Bell, ‘Call the pilot. Tell him I want to go up asap, please.’
‘Yes sir.’ She crossed to the phone and punched in the pilot’s number while Richard ran down the stairs.
With his return of memory had come all his old self-confidence and drive. The weather and the sailing conditions simply added to his new access of energy. He felt on top of the situation, in charge, and certain of success. He was well aware that this was a combination of chemical secretions in his recovering body — and probably some psychological reaction as well. Whatever it was, he was using it to his best advantage. He had been on the phone during the last few days, to Robin at length, soothing her and re-igniting her normal sunny cheeriness of nature; to Charles Lee in Heritage Mariner’s executive boardroom in London; to the Mau Club in New York, to whose number had now been added Sir William Heritage, his father-in-law, friend and mentor.
He knew that his children were well and missing him almost as much as his wife, and that the autumn was glorious at Ashenden. He knew that the payments due were being met in full and on demand so that Heritage Mariner was standing tall in the City. The impact of their sterling work was the talk of the business world and Charles was currently being forced to turn down lucrative business deals, knowing that there were bigger ones in the offing — especially if Manhattan reached Mawanga safe and sound. Richard knew that waiting for him in Mawanga city itself was a team of UN experts, diplomats, and workers, all geared up to welcoming his massive cargo and putting it immediately to the best possible use, though the rest of that troubled state, especially upcountry, simmered on the edge of civil war still. He knew that in New York his reputation, and that of his company, stood even higher than it did in London. Even in troubled Moscow, Heritage Mariner’s standing was such that the whole of the late Russian Empire was considering making the company sole transporter of all nuclear waste due for disposal or reprocessing. To add weight to this, the only hard currency actually coming out of the Soviet Union was all heading his way. And he knew that also heading his way, as quickly as possible, was a Bell helicopter to replace the little reconnaissance craft which he had lost little more than a week ago.
It did not even occur to him to wonder how radically most of these things would be affected if anything went wrong during the next week.
Wally Gough was at the edge of the helipad talking to the French scientist when Richard arrived. ‘What are you up to at the moment?’ asked Richard. The cadet was under Sally Bell’s tutelage and not likely to be hanging around with both hands idle.
‘Just finished clearing this section of the deck, Captain. The last of the sand is gone now, sir, and I’ve dismissed my work team. The first officer is too busy to check my work at present.’ He looked at his watch a little glumly. ‘Navigation class after dinner.’
‘But nothing until then?’
‘No, Captain.’
‘Up you go then. All set, Yves?’
‘Yes.’
The side of the Westland opened wide and the three of them clambered in. The pilot was already in the seat going through his pre-flight checks. Richard swung the sliding door closed as the other two strapped themselves in. He and Yves would share the copilot’s seat when the time came to check the detail of the sea and sky ahead. The Westland was not perfectly designed for this kind of observation, but it was a great deal better than nothing — and worth its weight in gold when it came to performing the functions it had been designed for.
‘Off!’ bellowed the pilot, and the rotors began to turn.
They were airborne a moment or two later, with the two men leaning back lost in their own thoughts while the cadet strained excitedly to see everything there was to see around him, both inside the fuselage and outside.
‘Heading?’ bellowed the pilot.
Richard stirred himself and went up into the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Due south,’ he answered through the intercom, then he set about strapping himself in place.
The big chopper dropped its nose accommodatingly and ran them rapidly down towards the equator. From here they could almost see it, a fine black horizon-line sitting on the curved edge of the earth.
Richard looked around, narrow-eyed against the afternoon glare, even though the silver-coloured pilot’s glasses he wore — a present from his pilot wife — had the darkest of Polaroid lenses. ‘More height, please,’ he ordered.
Upwards they swooped, the nose still staying low, the fuselage still tilted forward to give him a grandstand view of the sea. With the glasses high on the fine beak of his nose, his vision swept from horizon to horizon, from far Atlantic to the first dark bulge of Africa. Then he took the glasses off and, frowning, looked back, his mind busy. Yves had been right to draw his attention to this, for it was striking. Strange.
The water around the berg was blood-red. He had expected that, it was the sand washing off. The red puddle had absolute edges. It did not fade into the green sea around it like wet watercolours running. It had an edge defined almost with a solid line, as though it was contained in some huge submerged glass. Beyond it, level with the ice itself, away to the west, the sea was deep green. From the heart of the Western Ocean it came in a series of majestic waves. And when the water’s motion reached the red outwash from Manhattan, the strangely coloured water took it up, but here the faces of the waves seemed blue, although their foundations were of disturbing ruby. And blue as well were the waters to the south and west. Blue and utterly different in form.
Richard’s hair stirred as he was carried back to the last few moments he had spent in the company of Doug Buchanan in the ill-fated Bell. There, too, the sea had behaved in an unusual way, with a band of different form and colour revealing the existence of a major current. As it did here, too. For the strange water formation in the west was the counter current coming in. Away to the east, under the dark swell of Liberia and the pale watery outwash below it, die long blue ribbon of water surged on, gaining depth, darkness and strength. Surging eastwards, as strong as the Stream along the eastern Maritimes, all the way to Mau.