Dead Sea (11 page)

The first call came through a little after four a.m. London time. It came through on Richard's bedside phone and he sat up at the first ring, his heart racing, wrenched out of a nightmare involving Robin, sharks and, of all things, a giant octopus. He grabbed the handset and slammed it to his ear, fearing the worst. ‘Yes?' he grated, his throat dry and rusty.

‘It's Audrey at the Crewfinders twenty-four-hour desk, Captain Mariner . . .'

‘Yes?' he repeated. Audrey was only about thirty metres away from him in the Crewfinders office which, with the company flat, occupied the top floor of Heritage House. Crewfinders was always on the alert. Its famous promise was to replace any crew member on any vessel, anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours. There was a team in that office waiting to send sailors from one place to another twenty-four seven. High days and holidays as well. Particularly then, for it was at the traditional celebration times that people got tipsy or careless – or both – and accidents started to happen. Therefore all the Heritage Mariner news came to the twenty-four-hour desk first.

‘I'm sorry to disturb you so late, Captain,' Audrey apologized gently.
Not bad news then
, thought Richard. No emergency. Something routine.

‘Yes?' he repeated, his voice still rough.

‘
Katapult
has just put in a routine status report on the ship-to-shore radio. It went to the coastguards at Falmouth but we're monitoring the wavelength. It goes into a little more detail than is usual in such contacts so I thought it might be of interest. Shall I play it for you?'

‘Please . . .'

There was a click, a brief burst of static, and then Robin's voice, a scratchy, distant whisper. ‘I say again
Katapult
 . . . It is sixteen hundred hours precisely, local time. Our current time is Tuvalu Standard minus one hour. All is well. We are making good progress now. Everyone aboard fit and healthy. We crossed the equator four hours ago and are currently at: nought point four eight degrees north and one seven six point three eight degrees west. Howland Island is immediately to our starboard and we are proceeding at thirty knots along a heading of nought point five nought degrees magnetic. We have come over one thousand miles since departing Tuvalu and expect to reach Johnston Atoll at one six point seven degrees north, one six nine point nought five degrees west in a little over thirty-six hours if the wind persists. We will have to vary our headings depending on precisely where the locator beacon shows the bottle actually to be four days or so from now. And, come to that, what state we find the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to be in when we get to the edge of it – let alone to the middle.' Robin's voice came and went during the next few minutes as she reported wind and weather, then formally confirmed their position, course and heading once again. Then it whispered away into crackling silence.

‘That's all we have, Captain,' announced Audrey, her voice in contrast to Robin's loud enough to make Richard jump.

‘That's fine, thanks, Audrey. It's enough to put my mind at rest, at any rate.' Even as he spoke the polite lie he wondered why he still felt so tense. He was still in the grip of whatever chemicals the nightmare had released into his system, of course – but it was more than that. It was something to do with the fact that Robin was out there adventuring and he was stuck here as little more than her audience. He longed to be doing something. Anything.

‘I'm pleased to hear that, Captain,' said Audrey, over the top of these thoughts. ‘I'll alert you if anything else comes in from them. Goodnight.'

Richard settled down, closed his eyes and called to mind a chart of the Pacific, mentally tracing
Katapult
's course from Tuvalu past Howland Island a thousand miles to the north-east, then on to the Johnston Atoll, one of the remotest places on earth, twelve hundred miles north-east again, a thousand miles west of Hawaii. Then on once again into the massive, empty vastness between Hawaii and Midway, a channel nearly fifteen hundred miles wide which only really ended with the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Strait and the south coast of Alaska. With no islands or atolls anywhere in between at all, except French Frigate Shoals, the last of the way-stations they had planned along the way.

But even the ones he could call to mind were islands and atolls in name, but nothing more than specks of coral in fact. The only fact he could remember about Howland Island was that it had been the destination the intrepid aerial explorer Amelia Earhart never reached on her solo round-the-world flight when she vanished into that vastness in the nineteen thirties. Johnston Atoll was utterly deserted. Hardly surprisingly: it had been a nuclear test ground in the fifties and sixties before it became a dumping ground for all the chemical weapons that the US refused to admit they ever possessed. It was where the Americans had disposed of their Agent Orange poison after the Vietnam War. The girls would need to be desperate indeed to go ashore there. If they ever got that far. Beyond that, the Shoals named for the French Frigates that had only survived their encounter with the deadly coral heads by an amazing stroke of luck. And, after French Frigate Shoal, there was nothing except empty ocean and the accumulating mass of floating rubbish that lay trapped at the heart of it.

He dosed off into another haunted slumber in which he was face-to-face with the octopus again – but this time it had a vaguely familiar human face. With a hooked nose. Long, dark eyes. Something strangely wrong with its ears. And it was holding Robin in one of its massive tentacles. It was a relief when her choking screams became a familiar ringtone and he woke to find that his cell phone was sounding.

This time it was a courtesy call from the Falmouth Coastguard bringing him up to date with Robin's latest report. At least their reception was clearer than Audrey's had been. But the information was, of course, just the same. After he broke contact, he heaved himself out of bed and went to make a coffee. His Rolex informed him that it was coming up to six in any case and his day tended to start at six when he was ashore – just halfway through the morning watch.

He switched on his radio and as he stood in the shower, the
Today Programme
on BBC Radio 4 informed him that Liberty Greenbaum had reported in as well. The news report was briefer, but it gave him everything he really wanted to know.
Flint
was over a thousand miles out of Vancouver heading along her planned south-westerly course now. There were no islands and precious few vessels anywhere near her. But all aboard were fit and well. Progress was precisely as planned and they too hoped to reach the rendezvous point north of Hawaii at the same time as
Katapult
and Professor Tanaka's Cheerio bottle.

The familiar voice of the regular anchorman added a further tag to the story, ‘
And, according to this morning's
Times
, there is still no sign of the lucky winner of the Japanese Lottery. One-hundred-and-ten-million United States dollars – or their equivalent in Yen – are waiting to be claimed, apparently, but no one knows who holds the winning ticket
 . . .'

His interest piqued, Richard wrapped a bath towel round his waist and padded through to the sitting room, towelling his short black hair dry with a hand towel as he went. He flipped up his laptop and clicked through to the live broadcast from
Japan Today.
The lunchtime news was just finishing as two p.m. Tokyo time clicked up. The newscaster was reporting a story in such a flood of enthusiasm that Richard stood no chance at all of following what she was saying. But the English subtitles explained that she, like BBC Radio 4, was speculating about the identity of the mysterious lottery winner. ‘The winning ticket was purchased from an outlet in the Bunkyo District,' she was saying. ‘And this has led some people to guess that the winner may be a student at the university. However, Bunkyo is one of the most heavily populated areas of the city with more than two-hundred-thousand people registered as residing in the ward, let alone the great number of people who come into the area on a regular basis to visit attractions such as the Tokyo Dome, the cathedral and the gardens . . .'

Frowning, Richard pulled up a chair and sat, leaning forward a little to read the rapidly changing script. As he did so, however, he noticed that the Skype logo was flashing and he clicked on it without thinking.

The screen cleared at once to a picture of a hazy blue horizon at whose shadowy centre lay a long golden heave of land, just tall enough to rise above a wall-to-wall vista of ocean and catch some brightness from a westering sun. Lazy waves gathered themselves from the bottom of the screen and rolled gently away until they smashed into white surf on the pale flank of beach. The whole picture heaved dizzyingly and the familiar lines of
Katapult
's cockpit and after-rail came and went at weird angles. Then, disorientatingly, almost shockingly, a pair of breasts in a skimpy bikini top were all but pressed against the screen. He half expected a giant green tentacle to appear from the restless water and wrap itself around the golden body at the far end of the Skype contact. Then, at last, Robin's sunburned face appeared amid a wild riot of wind-blown hair. There were freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were wide and grey. And her glowing face split into the most enormous grin.

‘Hello, sailor,' she said. ‘You're a sight for sore eyes. Lucky it's me and not one of the other girls getting an eyeful!'

And he remembered with a start how little he was wearing.

‘Shall I get dressed?' he asked.

‘Don't you dare!' she chuckled. ‘I want to remember you just the way you are. It'll give me something to liven up my dreams.'

‘OK,' he answered easily. ‘I'm never one to disappoint a lady.' He draped his hand towel round his shoulders and leaned back. ‘If that's still Howland Island behind you then you've done better than Amelia Earhart.'

‘Ah. Someone forwarded my report to the coastguards . . .' The smile deepened. She was having a whale of a time, he realized with a pang of jealousy.

‘A couple of people,' he nodded. ‘It sounds as though you have the bit between your teeth now . . .'

‘And then some. We've been going like the clappers. There's a perfect wind behind us and
Katapult
is really in her element. The only down side has been the fact that we've found it all but impossible to get a decent signal in or out.'

‘Looks like you're all right now.
Flint
's OK as well, by all accounts.'

‘I know. We've been in contact with her. And we've uploaded some good footage that we took during the run up here. Some excellent close-ups of a waterspout, for instance. And a storm front like you wouldn't believe. We should be all over the TV news by teatime. Teatime
your time
. It's teatime
our time
already . . . Now, quickly, while whatever satellite up there continues to smile upon us, how are the kids?'

Richard was still bringing Robin up to speed with family and business news when the connection faltered then failed. He sat looking at the screen thoughtfully for a moment or two, wondering what on earth Robin had been doing to get close-up pictures of a waterspout. Then, still deep in thought he rose, turned and walked back through to his dressing room. He had no memory of hitting the back button on his laptop, but he must have done, because, as he opened his underwear drawer, he was suddenly treated to another diatribe of excited Japanese.

He gave a dry chuckle and dropped the towel round his waist. He stepped into his underwear then hopped from foot to foot pulling on his socks. He chose a white cotton shirt and a mid-grey suit. He had tightened the belt and was standing in front of the mirror perfecting his half-Windsor knot in a gold-patterned silk tie when one of the words in the Japanese broadcast caused him to stop.

‘. . . Tanaka . . .' it said, quite clearly.

Frowning, Richard walked back through into the sitting room.

The same excitable news anchor from
Japan Today
had her head and shoulders framed on the screen. Behind her there was a picture of Professor Reona Tanaka, full face in close-up. No sooner were the familiar features there than they were gone. And the photograph of a young woman replaced them.

Also missing is his colleague, Dr Aika Rei
, said the translation across the bottom of the screen.
Neither she nor Professor Tanaka have been seen for several days and the Tokyo Police have begun a manhunt.

Richard was walking towards the laptop, shaking his head in simple surprise, when his cell phone started to ring again. He glanced at its screen as he picked it up. Nic Greenbaum's picture looked back at him.

‘Mariner,' he said, putting it to his ear. ‘You're up late, Nic. Is it about Tanaka?'

‘Yeah,' came Nic's familiar voice, his usual laid-back California drawl absent. ‘But it's not as late as you think. I'm at a meeting in Las Vegas just in from the glad-handing and the floor show. Only eight hours behind you, Buddy. Still, Tanaka's chosen one hell of a time to go awol.'

‘You think something's up?' demanded Richard at once. ‘Something beyond some kind of a runaway romance?'

‘I don't know, Richard. I mean, the guy seemed pretty level-headed to me.'

‘And to me,' agreed Richard thoughtfully. ‘Far too sensible to walk out on a lifelong career at the pinnacle of his ambition, only ten days away from becoming the pin-up boy of the environmental lobby, if this Cheerio thing goes right.'

‘On the other hand . . .' temporized Nic.

‘Yeah. He probably didn't get out much. This woman could have turned his head, I suppose. God knows it's happened before.'

‘No way of knowing. But the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is . . .'

‘Where does his disappearance leave us?' Richard completed Nic's thought. ‘And
Katapult
and
Flint
, come to that?'