hear his story.
His quick move across to my desk had something of a South American jaguar in it – lithe, muscular, sinister. I could almost imagine muscles rippling under his tight black polo-necked sweater. The collar did not reach high enough to mask the bruise and swelling on his jawbone where I had hit him.
'You're going ahead with this crazy business?' he blurted before I had time to speak.
'Listen,' I snapped. 'I don't consider I owe you any more explanations. As for an answer, take a look at Jetwind's course.' 'You are still in Malvinas' territorial waters.'
'I don't know what Malvinas means,' I retorted sarcastically. 'If you mean, I'm in Falklands' territorial waters, you've under-estimated the distance Jetwind has travelled. We're nearly a hundred and twenty miles east- northeast of Port Stanley at this moment. That's well outside anyone's territorial waters.'
'Malvinas' territorial waters have been proclaimed as two hundred nautical miles. The same applies to all Argentinian waters.'
'Listen, Grohman,' I said. 'The sooner you forget all this crap about your country's rights, the better for your seagoing career. It's already cost you your job as first officer of Jetwind. You're as full of hang-ups about it as a forty-year-old virgin is about sex.'
His eyes blazed. I was reminded again of a predator. He didn't seem to take in what I was saying about his shipboard position. 'You… you… have insulted my country's Navy. You have damaged one of our best ships. In Argentinian waters! You have broken international law. You have offended against my country's honour, most of all…'
'Cut it out!' I broke in. 'You talk like a character in a bloody Spanish soap opera. I'm on my way. Nothing you or your tin-pot Navy can do about it will stop me.'
'No?' He thrust his face at me. 'And who is the great Captain Rainier? My Navy will come after you…'
I gestured deckwards. 'In this weather? No destroyer could make even twelve knots the way the sea's running without breaking herself in two. You're still sailor enough to realize that. Moreover, your precious Almirante Storni is a dockyard job for months to come.' 'Long-range search aircraft will find you…'
'Nonsense, and you know it. There isn't an Orion closer than the nearest American base and that's the only plane capable of flying the distance Jetwind will be before anything can be done. Not even an Orion could fly safely through this weather – or what's building up.'
Mercurially, the anger seemed to drain completely out of him. What remained was more sinister than his melodramatics.
'You will pay for this, Captain Rainier,' he said quietly. 'You will pay for this.'
'I have suspended you, as from last night, on grounds of endangering the ship and the lives of those aboard,' I said. ' Shall I add insubordination?' He shrugged.
'What the hell did you do it for?' I demanded. 'If you'd blasted away Jetwind's top-gallant masts there in The Narrows, we'd have been into the rocks at Engineer Point before I could have done a thing.' His silence said everything.
I went on. 'You're confined to your quarters, as of now. If you set foot outside your cabin, I'll have you locked up.s
'You, not Tideman, should have been in the Royal Navy.'
Which reminded me that Tideman had been on the bridge all night. Like myself, the feel of the great ship under our feet had banished all need for sleep and had thrown up those inner resources which only a Cape Horner can draw upon. 'That's the way it is, Grohman.' I dismissed him.
At that moment Arno, the radio operator, entered with a signal. His enthusiasm caused him to give only the most perfunctory of knocks. I still wonder how the course of events; might have been otherwise precipitated had he paused long enough for me to have got rid of Grohman. Arno, of course, could not guess that Grohman had been fired.
Arno was beaming with excitement. 'Weather Routing report, as you ordered, sir. Portishead radio. They've been pretty smart about opening up their service to Jetwind again.'
Thomsen had laid on for Jetwind the skill of a special weather team at the Bracknell Meteorological Service in Britain. Its purpose was to advise and guide Jetwind according to data gathered from the surface, upper air, and from satellite observations on the best route to steer, wind, sea, and weather-wise. Bracknell's weather routing is the finest in the world; its communications match it. Portishead's signal read: TO RAINIER, JETWIND, JWXS, VIA PORTISHEAD RADIO SEVERE LOW AT 53S 58W EASTMOVING 40 KNOTS. NOW ADVISE TO FOURFOUR SOUTH THREEZERO WEST THENCE GREAT CIRCLE TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE…
I snorted to myself. Bracknell was playing it safe suggesting the old conventional windjammer way to the Cape from the Horn. That wasn't the way to break records. That wasn't the way I had flogged Albatros. And Albatros's route was exactly the one I intended to hell-drive Jetwind -where the great winds and the great storms were. I could do without the fancy weather satellites with their sensors to measure surface temperatures, the state of the wind and the state of the sea from hundreds of kilometres out in space. I was what the weathermen called 'ground truth’ – the guy on the spot, the sailor who knew what was happening in his own surroundings. I read on: SATELLITE PICTURES INDICATE WORLD'S LARGEST ICEBERG TROLLTUNGA EITHER STRANDED OR ADRIFT IN GENERAL AREA APPROX 500 TO 800 MILES SOUTHWEST GOUGH PLUS VARIOUS LARGE ISOLATED DRIFTING BERGS. THESE CONSTITUTE MAJOR HAZARD. STRONGLY ADVISE THEREFORE AGAINST YOUR ORIGINAL PROJECTED ROUTE. METBRACK. 18’09h00.
Trolltunga! Like a film clip, a film clip merged with a dream or a nightmare, I relived what I had seen from Albatros's deck. Ice -I did not know what had been ice or what had been hallucination. Rising clouds of vapour – I did not know whether it had been vapour or the shadows of a lone sailor's disordered mind. And that other thing which I had seen…
I heard Arno's voice as if from a long distance. 'Trolltunga, sir. I queried the word. It's a bit unusual, but the repeat spelling was the same…'
I looked up and saw him on the other side of the desk regarding me with a curious expression.
Grohman was standing beside him. He must have read the signal upside-down. The expression on his face wasn't curiosity. It was naked murder.
'You can't take Jetwind that way,' he said almost pleadingly. 'You must not…'
At first I attributed Grohman's expression and tone of voice to fear. Could it be that he was scared stiff? His face was white; his pallor against the blackness of his hair gave him a mortuary air. Had Grohman, in fact, turned and run after Captain Mortensen's death?
The three of us at my desk might have been a waxworks tableau. For about twenty seconds surprise, fear and contempt seared between us like a laser beam cutting into the dark places of three minds.
Then in the distance, like the end of a boxing round, there came the imperative ring of an electric bell.
'Excuse me, sir,' said Arno. 'That's my alarm. Another signal's coming in.' He dived for the radio office.
Grohman's voice was hoarse and constricted. 'You'd be advised to take the northerly route. Bracknell recommends it. The other way… it's not safe… the signal says so… there's the biggest iceberg in the world…'
I tried to hold his eyes while I picked up the phone but he evaded mine. 'John?' I asked Tideman on the bridge. 'Come down to my cabin right away.'
I stood up and yelled, 'Grohman, pull yourself together! I'm going the way I choose, Trolltunga or no biggest bloody iceberg in the world!'
Whatever admixture of Scottish, Spanish and Indian blood ran in his veins produced a startling result. 'I warn you, do not take the Trolltunga route!' I wasn't sure any longer about my diagnosis that he was frightened.
'Get out!' I snapped. 'Keep to your quarters, if you want to be safe. If I find you on the bridge or in any other of the operational areas, I'll put you in irons!'
He whirled round and almost collided with Tideman coming in with Brockton.
Brockton said after Grohman had brushed past him, 'That guy looks as if he could frag you, Peter.' 'I've just axed him.' 'Make it official, for my part. Put it in the poop sheet.' 'I have already.'
Then I tossed the Metbrack signal across to Tideman. Brockton read it over his shoulder.
The reaction from both men startled me. It was as though a shot of adrenalin had passed through their veins. I could almost feel their vibrations.
'Trolltunga!' Tideman's eyes went very bright. Then, as if seeking to regain control of himself without giving away his feelings, he said casually, 'I had set the computer to our Gough position and Cape destination. Through
