A Ravel of Waters

Chapter 16

'Suspended First Officer Anton Grohman on grounds of…'

I stopped writing and stared at the ship's formal log. On grounds of… what? I looked round my cabin where the previous night we had held our council of war before Jetwind's break-out. It seemed light years away instead of a mere twelve hours. The illusion of night was still present, however, because of the storm — it was dark enough to need electric light. '… grounds of… dereliction of duty?'

Would any official inquiry consider that Grohman had failed in his duty by trying to stop his captain carrying out a crazy, outrageous action against a warship of a friendly power?

I scrapped the phrase and lit another cigarette. I wanted to get shot of the Grohman problem and return to Jetwind's bridge. In the insulated confines of the cabin I could not share in the splendid exhilaration of feeling the ship tear along at eighteen knots or hear the mad music of the mounting gale. Even the motion of the ship was damped, it seemed. Even I was surprised at how steady a platform the deck presented. Her mighty sail plan — I was carrying everything to royals — was holding the ship against the bursting wave crests just as spoilers and aerofoils hold down a Grand Prix racer against a track.

We were clear of the land mass of the Falklands now. With the forty-knot gale holding abaft her starboard beam — her best point of sailing — Jetwind seemed determined to show exactly what she was capable of. Blast Grohman!

I sat down and wrote quickly without pausing to weigh the words too judicially:

‘… on grounds of endangering the safety of the ship and the lives of the crew.'

Which, I thought ironically, had been exactly what Pd done. There was a peremptory knock at the cabin door. 'Come in!'

It was Grohman. I snapped the log book shut. I had already passed judgement on him. I scarcely wanted to 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 the automatic pilot it will make the first six alterations for a Great Circle course — all that will have to be changed, in the light of this.'

Whatever Trolltunga meant to Brockton, the news caught him off-balance. Like Tideman, his cover-up made him over-articulate.

'Trolltunga, eh? That's the biggest ice baby ever to come out of Antarctica! We located her first in the Weddell Sea from one of the old ESS A satellites way back in 1967, I guess it was. She was born big — a hundred and three kilometres by sixty. That's almost the size of the state of Delaware. And even after all these years of drifting about the Southern Ocean she's still the biggest — fifty-six by twenty-three kilometres, I think it was, the last time we measured her…'

I stared at him. I'd had my showdown with Grohman. He was bad news. These two were good news; on my side. However, I had finally to penetrate their cover. They had a lot of explaining to do. Ordinary yachting journalists cannot usually handle highly sophisticated electronics and discuss the dimensions and origin of the world's largest iceberg at the drop of a signal, so to speak. Nor do they ordinarily lapse into Navy jargon when their guard is down. And what was Trolltunga to Tideman? Like icebergs, five-sixths of the truth about them was concealed.

I went on matter of factly, 'Jetwind will follow the same route as Albatros. Briefly, I'm taking her eastnortheast until I cross the fifty-degree south line a little short of forty west. From there on there's a one-knot current in our favour -1 discovered it in Albatros — and we can count on a westerly or southwesterly gale almost continuously. We'll intersect the Trolltunga ice danger zone about six hundred miles southwest of Gough. After Gough it will be a straight run to the finishing tape at the Cape.'

It was as if what I had just said had erased the strain of his long stint of duty from Tideman's face. He made a great effort to be non-committal. 'How many days have we scheduled to make Gough?' 'About six and a half — as of now.' 'Good,’ he said, half to himself. 'That's very good, Peter.'

Brockton said obliquely, using a similar satisfied tone as Tideman, 'By the time you got to the Trolltunga area in Albatros you must have been pretty short on sleep, Peter.' I wondered what he was driving at. 'I was.'

He laughed, a kind of tell-me-all-pal laugh. 'Just the sort of time-lapse when lone sailors get tired enough to hallucinate and see their mother-in-law climbing up the mast, or even spot an imaginary aircraft flying overhead?' He had given me the opening I was looking for.

'Sit down,' I said, 'Both of you have a lot of explaining to do.'

I picked on Brockton first.

'Paul’1 said. 'I'm ready to tell you about my hallucinations. In return, you tell me who you really are.' 'What do you mean?'

'You know perfectly well what I mean. First, however, I want you both to know that I realize you're on my side. You're no yachting magazine writer, Paul. No journalist could possibly have handled all that sophisticated equipment the way you did.' 'The America Cup trials…' he started.

'Cut it out,' I replied impatiently. 'I don't believe it. You don't act like a reporter and you don't talk like a reporter. You haven't written or filed a single story since you boarded Albatros. Even in Knysna you were much more interested in my so-called hallucinations than in reportage. Now you've given yourself away again. You discuss Trolltunga like an expert. Not many have ever heard of Trolltunga except a few scientists or weather-men. But you're able to give chapter and verse about the world's biggest iceberg. Your detailed knowledge of the Southern Ocean is, to say the least, phenomenal.' ‘A journalist has to know his beat.'

'Rubbish, Paul! Journalists usually have no more than a working knowledge of their subjects. As a group they lack in-depth knowledge. Not you, though.' 'So what?'

'You maintain the act fairly well normally but when the pressure mounts you give yourself away. If you want to know, you've something to do with the US Navy.'

He stood up and held out his hand. 'You win, fellah. I am a Navy man. Commander Paul Brockton. Glad to meet you, Peter.' 'That makes two naval men, Paul,' said Tideman.

'Thanks for coming clean, Paul,' I added. 'And now may I ask what is your function in these waters?'

'What I'm going to tell you is so classified that it could cost a man his life, if he talked.' 'You have my word.' Tideman nodded his agreement. 'Ever heard of Lajes?' he asked.

The name had a familiar ring. Before I could crystallize my thoughts, however, Tideman said, 'The American Atlantic base, on the island of Teceira in the Azores.' 'Correct.'

'Where does Lajes connect wtih Jetwind and the Southern Ocean? The Azores are thousands of miles away.'

'I'll come to that,' answered Brockton. 'Near the main base at Lajes is a village named Agualva. It's so small that 1 guess the hundred men of my command doubled its population overnight. Back at Atlantic Fleet Command HQ in Norfolk, Virginia, my men are rated officially as Naval Securities Group Activities.' 'Go on.'

'We operate what is called a high frequency direction finding facility. In plain language, we monitor the movements of Soviet vessels in the Atlantic, subs in particular. We fly regular missions using Orion T-3S way out across the Central Atlantic Ridge and drop sonar buoys. These relay the sound of ships' engines to listeners at the Agualva tracking station. We also use other methods which the Reds would give their eye-teeth to know.' 'In short, you spy on the Soviet Fleet,' I said.

He nodded, but Tideman interrupted. 'You're not telling us much that's new, Paul. All this is pretty well known. It's also known that Lajes provides staging and logistic support for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Lajes was very much in the headlines a while back when a lease agreement with Portugal regarding the base was renewed.'

Brockton went on, 'It was also in the headlines when the Russians claimed to have discovered the site of the legendary Atlantis not so far from Lajes. You may have seen a guy called Dr Andrei Aksenov on TV announcing the news to the world. We on Lajes itself knew different. The Reds are so determined to find out about our methods that they hatched up the Atlantis story as a cover to spy on Lajes.'

'Paul — all I can say is that you are a helluva long way from base aboard Jetwind. That's what I am primarily interested in.'

He dropped his voice, as if fearful he might be overheard. 'Recently, I and about twenty guys from Naval Securities Group Activities set up a secret listening base on Tristan da Cunha.' 'Now we're getting closer!' I exclaimed.

'Yeah,' he replied. 'Tristan is only two hundred and thirty nautical miles from Gough Island — and Jetwind is on her way to Gough.'

'We'll be there in less than a week if we keep our present speed,' added Tideman. 'What made your group move to Tristan?' I asked.

'There was an impressive build-up of Red signals emanating from this area,' replied Brockton thoughtfully. 'We haven't yet been able to pinpoint the source.'

'You can't fly those big Orions from Tristan,' I said. 'No airfield can take a plane like that anywhere between the Cape and South America.'

'There is one, but it's a powerful long way away, answered Brockton. 'On Ascension Island. There's a big airfield there which was built during the war.'

'I'd say Tristan itself is a flight of close on two thousand miles from Ascension,' remarked Tideman. 'This build-up of signals…' Brockton resumed. 'Naval signals?' I interrupted.

'Aye,' he said, grimly. 'Naval signals. NAVWAG has 'em all on tape…' 'What's NAVWAG?' I queried.

'Navy Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory. To try and track the origin of the signals, the Navy fitted an Orion with special electronic gear — everything the latest, the most top secret. We filled her up with gas until it ran out of her wing tips. Every man aboard was a specialist — twelve of them. It constituted a top secret maximum range search, acoustic intelligence. And when I say maximum range, I mean maximum range. The Orion could stay airborne for eighteen hours, maybe even a little more. I myself spoke to the pilot. Captain Bill Werner, as the plane passed over Tristan. He gave me the okay — no problems. The Orion kept going. It entered the Southern Ocean Air-Launched Acoustical Reconnaissance Zone SSI…' 'What in hell's that?' I demanded.

Brockton was speaking fast and became agitated. 'That's the secret zone where we suspected a Red concentration. Werner ran into bad weather but he wasn't worried. An Orion is built to stand up to that sort of thing.'

As if to emphasize what he was saying, Jetwind gave a sudden pitch. I heard the crash of tons of water sluice along her deck. 'Then?'

'The plane's last position was about six hundred nautical miles southsouthwest of Gough, about eight hundred and fifty from Tristan.'

Brockton paused. The only sound was Jetwind shrugging off the waves. I knew what was coming. "The Orion vanished.' ' Just like that?' Tideman asked. Brockton held my eyes. 'No, it wasn't just like that. We happen to have a taped in-flight recording of the Orion's last moments.' 'Was there a Mayday signal?' 'No Mayday. No time for it. I guess a missile got her.' There was a long silence. Brockton leaned towards me. It was an accusing pose. 'Missile?' I repeated. 'I'm asking you, Peter.' 'How should I know?'

He replied, choosing his words carefully, 'It's almost a month ago — doesn't that mean anything to you, Peter?'

'Should it? I was at sea in Albatros. I wasn't in touch with the daily news.'

'This story didn't reach the newspapers,' he said grimly, 'Never will, while Group Securities has any say.' 'Why ask me, then?' 'The time, the place, the distance — they're all right,' 'I don't follow.' But I did.

'Just before Werner went in, he had located a target with his Searchwater radar, Searchwater is newer than tomorrow's dawn. Werner went down to look. Very low, under the cloud. He made a visual sighting. He reported a yacht, moving fast, under full sail.' Tideman was staring at me now.

'So what? Some of the yachts in the Cape-Uruguay race returned from South America via Gough.'

'It wasn't an ordinary yacht, Peter. I've studied Werner's last words until I know 'em by heart. This is what he said: "They're not ordinary sails… they're sails with slits in 'em… looks like a kinda Venetian blind the wrong way up"…' The seas reverberated along Jetwind's hull.

'Well, Peter? There's only one boat afloat that tallies with that description — Albatros.’

There was another long silence. Jetwind's hull was starting to creak. I averted my eyes from Brockton'saccusing stare to the ship's speed repeater. The needle was nudging twenty knots. 'Albatros?’ Brockton prompted.

I didn't reply directly. 'Did the pilot say what conditions were like?'

'Yeah, like I said, I know every word Werner said: "The whole ocean's like a vast Shivering Liz pudding made of icebergs — it's all steaming with mist and fog."' Still I stalled. 'Shivering Liz?'

'It's a Navy phrase,' Brockton explained, still searching my face. 'Sort of gelatine pudding.'

'That's not a bad description,' I conceded. 'That's the way it was, Paul. All Shivering Liz.' 'I didn't ask about weather conditions,' he said.

'I saw the plane go in,' I answered. He gave a satisfied little sigh. 'Yet the weather and sea conditions are important to my story, Paul. It was like a dream, like the sort of hallucination you keep quizzing me about. I thought I was hallucinating. There couldn't be a plane, not there, I told myself at the time. It was thousands of miles from anywhere. There was ice all around. Mist. The sea was steaming. I couldn't distinguish what was ice and what was perhaps dream.'

'Bill Werner's Orion wasn't downed by a dream,' he retorted.

For a moment I relived that morning on the edge of sanity — that morning of the Shivering Liz ocean.

'The Orion was starting to circle — he must have spotted Albatros. Then a vapour trail sprang up out of the sea, from somewhere amongst the bergs. I remember how the missile's vapour trail ducked and weaved and then homed in on the plane. It hit a starboard inboard engine.'

Brockton nodded and repeated from the tape,' "Captain! Captain! There! Starboard! Coming up out of the sea!"' Hammering the point home, he asked, 'And then?' 'There was nothing.' 'Nothing? You must have seen the plane crash.' 'As I said before, I thought I was hallucinating. The plane, the missile — everything — was swallowed up by the mist and the bergs. I saw nothing, heard nothing.'

'You must have heard the noise of the crash or the explosion of the missile.'

'I repeat, there was no sound. The gale must have blown it away.' 'You didn't search for survivors?' 'You don't put a yacht about in that kind of sea to look for a figment of your imagination.' 'Albatros kept going?'

'I was clear of the thick ice by afternoon. At the time I thought it was my mind which had begun to clear. Yes, I kept going — hard.'

Tideman interrupted, with a curious intonation in his question. 'Where did all this take place, Peter?'

'I don't know. I hadn't had a position sight for days because of the storm. Night and day merged. I managed to obtain a radio fix from Gough a couple of days after the incident.'

Brockton persisted. 'Why didn't you report the Orion affair?'

'To whom? How did I know whose plane it was when I didn't even know whether I'd seen one? Imagine if I had radioed a report like that. The isolation has sent him round the bend, they'd have said. Rightly, under the circumstances.'

Brockton jumped up. 'If only you had! We would have picked up the message on Tristan — we were monitoring every wavelength! We could have nailed the bastard who did it! Now it's too late! Where did that missile come from, Peter?’

'Everything was shadowy and insubstantial,' I replied. 'I'm still not sure whether I saw it happen or not.'

'It happened all right,' Brockton retorted. 'That lost Orion and her crew were not a shadow.'

'Why,' I asked, 'if the Orion was in fact shot down by a Red missile, should there be any Russian naval interest in those waters — the area Jetwind is now heading for? It's utterly and totally unfrequented. The last ship recorded before Albatros was a British survey vessel which visited the South Sandwich Islands sixteen years earlier. And the South Sandwich group is a hell of a way south from where the Orion crashed’

Brockton's reaction surprised me. He rounded on Tideman. There was steel in his voice. 'John, you've done a hell of a lot of close listening. You haven't spoken much. I said earlier, a man could die for what he has heard in this cabin today. I don't buy your Royal Navy Adventure School story. The Royal Navy doesn't send its officers and men on pleasure cruises on yachts round the world just for them to catch a suntan. By your own admission, you've been three times round the Horn. You've also got some tough cookies here with you in Jetwind. You're not aboard Jetwind simply in order to sky-shoot your reputation as a sailor. What's the name of your game?'