Trident Force (6 page)

“Oh my gosh, I'm so terribly sorry!”

Covington looked down and saw a little girl of about eight. Katie something or other, he thought. He'd noticed her name because she was the youngest person aboard the ship. “Are you all right?”

“Oh yes,” said the girl-dervish. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” continued Katie. “Somebody told me that if I ran up these stairs I could get a better look at . . .” As she paused, a look of horror crossed her face. “You're not the captain, are you?”

Covington couldn't help but burst into laughter. “Yes, Katie, I'm the captain.”

“Ohhhhhh!”

“And you're Katie Sanders. I'm very glad to meet you and I'm also very glad you could come along on this trip.”

“Thank you. They—Mom and Dad—told me we're going to see hundreds and hundreds of penguins. I love penguins.”

“I will show you hundreds of penguins but you have to do me a favor . . .”

“Yes?”

“Please don't run around without looking where you are going. It's all too easy to fall over the side of a ship and very, very hard to pick you up again if you do.” As he spoke, Covington's eyes scanned the rails to ensure that the netting had been installed along them precisely to prevent people like Katie Sanders from rocketing over the side.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Good. Now, part of my job,” continued Covington as he pulled himself up, “is to go around and meet as many of those people as want to meet me. If you will excuse me, I'm sure we will get a chance to talk more later.”

“Will you come meet my mom and dad? I know they want to meet you.”

“Sounds to me like the very best place to start. You lead the way.”

As the tall officer in white followed the little girl in shorts and a T-shirt, he noticed a hint of perfume mixed with the strong smells of food that surrounded him. The band then finished its break and broke into a mellow version of a popular rock tune. Covington found himself smiling again, not at the band but at the thought that one of the video cameras had caught his collision with Katie. What, he wondered, would the home office make of it?

“Captain,” said Katie, “this is my dad, Tim, and my mom, Dana. Mom and Dad, this is the captain of the ship.”

“Arthur Covington,” said the captain quickly, offering his hand first to Dana.

Katie's parents, who had been startled to see Katie leading what was obviously the captain toward them, struggled to recover their composure as they shook Covington's hand.

“I congratulate you,” continued Covington, thinking as he did that Tim and Dana both looked so young they could have been Katie's older siblings. “I wish more people had the wisdom and confidence to bring kids with them on these expeditions of ours.”

“We were a little worried about the rides ashore in the rubber boats,” said Dana. “They say the water's bitterly cold and sometimes rough. But we decided this was probably the opportunity of a lifetime for all of us. Katie
will
be able to go ashore, won't she?”

“Absolutely. I know for a fact that Katie's as nimble as she is tough. If I were to worry about anybody, it would be some of our older passengers.” As he spoke, Covington watched out the corner of his eye as Katie ambled over to a table of hors d'oeuvres and scooped up a cracker with caviar. After touching it carefully with the tip of her tongue, the girl made a face and, believing nobody was watching, threw it over the rail.

The band finished the tune, and after a pause, the band-leader asked for silence. “Welcome to
Aurora Australis
,” she intoned over the microphone. “We're so glad you could join us. Although I'm sure you will all agree that the expedition itself is a grand treat, I'm thrilled to announce that we have another one for you. Among our many illustrious expedition members, one is named Chrissie Clark. Yes,
the
Chrissie Clark! Our own Chrissie Clark. And as her special contribution to ending global warming and saving the environment, Chrissie has volunteered to sing for us from time to time. Starting right now!”

As the crowd burst into shrieks of delight, Covington studied the singer a moment. She was a nice-looking girl. Not just because she was slender, well built and had an open, friendly face, but because she seemed to radiate a natural warmth. It's something that all entertainers try to do, he thought, but only the most successful really manage to pull off. He turned back to the Sanders. “I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed meeting you three. And,” he added quietly, “I want you to bring Katie up to the bridge sometime.”

“Is that permitted?”

“It is if the captain says it is.”

“She'll love it,” said Tim.

“And so will Tim,” remarked Dana dryly.

“Good. Send word to me when you're ready. Now, I'm paid to circulate, so I must do so. Again, welcome aboard.”

While Chrissie Clark belted out several of her latest hits, and the under-forty set swayed and bumped to her words and tunes, Covington worked his way more or less at random through the crowd, greeting and chatting as he went.

Despite his current social duties, Arthur Covington could never forget he was
Aurora
's master. By law he was almost totally responsible for the ship and all those aboard, and no matter what limits the law might put on his liability, what wiggle room it might allow him in the case of error, he held himself to be absolutely and totally responsible. Even while chatting with several highly influential businessmen, he couldn't prevent his eyes from wandering almost continuously around his ship, checking that all was in order. He glanced up and forward and was most gratified to notice one of the enginemen standing beside the winch of the aft-most lifeboat on the port side. The man was, at the moment, staring aft at the party, but Covington was certain he was there checking the winch and performing preventive maintenance. He held his chief engineer in high regard and was pleased to have his confidence reaffirmed. Within less than a heartbeat, however, his sense of well-being blew away with the warm breeze when he caught sight of Congressman Peter Evans, his second most important politician-passenger, and realized the man was staring almost angrily at him.

Evans had a reputation for being intensely ambitious, not to mention proud, and would expect Covington to approach him rather than the other way around. Pasting his smile back on, the captain turned and headed toward the congressman, who, he noted, had his wife, Penny, at his side. Penny, he understood, was from old money, and most seemed to feel that much of her husband's success had grown out of that very same weedy old green.

“Congressman Evans,” said Covington as he wormed his way through the small crowd surrounding Evans and offered his hand. “Welcome aboard
Aurora.
”

“Thank you, Captain,” replied Evans, now beaming. Unlike Chrissie Clark's, however, Peter Evans's good cheer was totally forced. He simply did not seem comfortable, which seemed strange since most politicians are addicted to crowds. It was only then that Covington realized Evans had arranged for a news crew to be on hand to tape the great moment. Cameraman, soundgirl and reporter—all undoubtedly primed by Evans to ask just the right questions.

A media show, thought the captain. A scripted media show. That was what the whole expedition was supposed to be.

 

Marcello Cagayan paused in his labors—he was lubricating the winch on one of the lifeboat davits—and looked aft at the party as he unthinkingly wiped the bluish grease off his hands with a rag. His most basic, and dominant, impulses were hatred and contempt, although a very slight twinge of jealousy was also present. He hated all those people milling around on the deck beneath him. For their smugness; their greed; their stupidity. He hated them because up until now they had not only believed they were powerful, but were, in fact, powerful. He hated them because whenever they noticed him—assuming they ever did—they would see nothing more than a powerless little brown monkey. Unworthy of comment.

But the world was changing fast. The world had already changed. Omar was right. They thought they had the power. They thought they were in control. But they weren't. On this ship, Marcello Cagayan, the puny little brown monkey, had the power. He was the one who would control who would live and when all would die.

“Hey, man.” Marcello turned. It was Vido, one of the Ecuadorian deckhands. “Looks like a damn good party.”

“Yeah,” stuttered Cagayan as Vido passed by, carrying a large roll of white nylon line. Vido was okay, thought Cagayan. He never called him a
mono
, never treated him like a fool. If anybody survived, Cagayan hoped it might be Vido, although he certainly wouldn't change anything to guarantee it.

Marcello had been born into parasite-ridden poverty on one of the southern islands in the Philippines. His father, a subsistence farmer, had died when he was young. Killed by government troops who claimed that he was a rebel. Even though they knew better. His mother had died when he was even younger. Of poverty.

Marcello could well remember the day his father died. He'd stood there with the rest of the village in terrified silence when the officer told his father to kneel before him and beg. He saw the expression on the officer's face when he pulled the trigger and blew a big hole in his father's head.

At the time he'd felt great sadness and great fear. His father, the central authority of his young life, had been destroyed by an even greater authority. Only later had he come to understand strength and weakness and power. Only later had he understood that the officer's expression was not one of simple pleasure, but the near-divine pleasure of forcing one's will on others. Of exercising power.

After his father's death there was little to keep Marcello in the hot, fever-infested, frequently muddy village of his birth. At the age of eight he wandered off in the general direction of the ocean, a course that was not difficult to determine since he was on an island.

4

Houston

“What do you think of this bottle, Mamoud?” asked Bob Gilchrest, chairman of Oceanic Petrotransporters, LLC, as he partially filled Mamoud al Hussein's glass with red wine. The two men were sitting, with half a dozen others, in one of the private dining rooms in one of Houston's more exclusive clubs. The room was done in a heavy, traditional Spanish style. Dark wood paneling, heavy oak furniture. It was a style that still reflected, especially in some of its details, the tastes of the Arabs who had dominated Spain for so many centuries.

Mamoud tasted it. “Very fine, Bob. Much better than that product you served me earlier . . . Did you say that was from West Texas?”

“And I admit they're better at making oil there than wine,” continued the ship owner in a deep, slow drawl.

“Still, I salute their effort.”

“And I salute your efforts the past six years. You've turned Tecmar into one of the world's cutting-edge yards.”

“Most of the credit goes to Lorenzo and his Brazilians.” As he spoke, Mamoud nodded toward Lorenzo Almeida, the president of Tecmar. “They're the ones who put together the proposal you accepted a few hours ago to overhaul six liquid natural gas carriers and they're the ones who will execute it. All I did was a little cheerleading.”

“You sound as if you're about to retire.”

“No, but I understand His Highness has another project for me.”

“Really! Can you talk about it?”

“I don't see why not. We've been planning to build a new solar panel factory. It's a business His Highness wants to be in, and I have been asked to build it and get it started.”

“Where?”

“North Africa. But please don't worry, Lorenzo and his team are totally capable of handling this project and any others you may ask him to undertake.”

“I know that, Mamoud. We'd have never given you this contract if we weren't confident that Lorenzo could handle it himself, just in case something happened to you.”

Mamoud smiled and looked around the table. He hadn't allowed himself the liberty of relaxing much recently, but tonight a sense of comfortable satisfaction was almost forcing itself on him. He and Lorenzo
had
landed a huge contract and Lorenzo
had
proven to be a very apt pupil. The men at the dinner table with him were all skilled engineers or other technicians, and he always enjoyed the company of such men. But then, as the topic of conversation changed to topics more mundane and, to him, childish, his perpetual unease returned. Their utter conviction that their successes were totally the result of their own personal perfection, their total inability to think of science as merely one portion of something far greater, grated on his nerves and soul. To them, engineering was a means to enhancing one's paycheck rather than a means of approaching and glorifying God. Some of these men, he reflected, might even believe that they were men of faith but he suspected they were just deceiving themselves.

It was through logic of just this sort that Mamoud al Hussein had managed to alienate himself from a major portion of the human race.

“Bob,” Mamoud finally said after looking at his watch about half an hour later, “today has been one of the truly great days of my life, but I must get back to Rio. There are also a number of odds and ends I want to complete so Lorenzo doesn't find himself tripping over them six months from now.”

“I hate to see you go, old friend . . .”

“Any questions or problems, give me a call. Or ask Lorenzo—he'll be in Houston for another week or so.”

After good-byes all around and a quick drive to the airport, Mamoud was airborne in the Tecmar jet an hour and a half later. As the plane had taxied across the apron, the thought of
Aurora Australis
passed briefly through his mind. What he was doing was distasteful, he admitted to himself for the millionth time, but necessary. There was nothing more to think about, since he had done all he could and now the matter would play itself out, one way or another. He closed his eyes and was almost immediately asleep.