Crude Carrier (13 page)

“Julie,” he urged her in a quiet voice, “don't push things too hard, okay? We don't want to make it—ah—imperative for somebody to get rid of your father. And remember: He's a big lad. He can take care of himself.”

“I hope so.”

XVI

No one knew where the story began or how it passed from ear to ear, but within twenty-four hours the whole crew had heard of the fight between Raiford and the first mate. Pressler did not appear on the bridge for two days, the captain took over the mate's twelve-to-four watch in tight-lipped silence, and all orders from the first mate were issued by messenger. The other officers' attitudes toward Raiford shifted to cool distance. As near as he could figure, it wasn't because they were sensitive to Pressler's feelings; rather, it seemed a more general embarrassment at Raiford's doing what simply was not done. Even Li, who had been the friendliest, was guarded. Any chore that required Raiford to communicate with the first mate was relayed through Shockley. Otherwise, he was shunned at meals, in the wardroom, and at the evening cinema.

The crew, too, said nothing about it. In the presence of the other officers, the Chinese stewards and sailors even avoided looking at Raiford. Sam, who had not been seen for a couple of days after the fight, was reassigned to chip paint. Raiford glimpsed him occasionally, far down the green deck or on a platform slung over the ship's rail to dangle just above the heaving foam of the ocean.

His new assistant was Alfred, whose last name was not Wang, and he did not come from the same village where Sam and many of the crew had been recruited. In fact, Alfred's height and bulk—taller and heavier than the Taiwanese—marked him as coming from northern China. Unsmiling, he kept himself apart from the rest of the crew. Though the man understood enough English to hand him the right tools, Raiford couldn't guess how much more he spoke because he seldom said anything.

The entire ship's complement—officers and men—apparently believed Raiford had earned some kind of punishment. Pressler may have deserved what he got, but Raiford had assaulted the rigid chain of command that supported the authority of every officer and petty officer, and which ran from captain to cabin boy. It meant, ironically, that in his remaining few days aboard, he would be even less effective in finding out what happened to Rossi. He'd allowed his temper to play into the hands of those who would keep information from him, and he had only himself to blame. But he would not stand by and watch Pressler kick a helpless man. And he knew that if Pressler tried to stomp another sailor into pulp, he and the mate were going to repeat that first discussion. Raiford hoped Pressler knew it too.

The sullen ship, logging about two hundred and eighty nautical miles every twenty-four hours, steamed into the empty reaches of the Indian Ocean. But the ocean's larger waves did not make the ship roll any heavier. Rather, there was a kind of forward lurch far down in the quivering hull as if the shove of the following seas let the laboring engines rhythmically grab a breath before churning the screw once more against the sluggish weight of the cargo. Driven by a following wind, blue crests hissed close to the main deck and spilled swirls and blossoms of foam that shone glaring white against the clear cobalt depths. They raced along the hull from the stern, peaked high when they met the bow wave, broke off the blunt stem in a turbulent trough, and re-formed as a giant swell of dark and wind-chapped sea disappearing toward the wriggling line of the southern horizon.

A few days into the Indian Ocean, Raiford found himself beside Shockley on the main deck of the bridge's open promenade, enjoying the welcome shade and fresh sea wind. For a long time, both men silently watched the waves heave past the wallowing ship.

“This is the northern monsoon I heard about, right? North wind carrying us down to the Cape?”

Shockley grunted affirmative but nothing else.

During lunch, the ship's noon chit had been announced over the intercom—the knots sailed since noon yesterday, assignments to working parties and maintenance details for the afternoon, the name of the night's cinema, any birthdays among the ship's complement, and, for Muslims, the direction of Mecca. It had become the longest communication Raiford heard.

But now Shockley surprised him by clearing his throat. “First Mate wants you to run some programs this afternoon. Cargo projections. Says you're to make damn sure the results are accurate.” The pudgy man no longer used Pressler's name when he passed orders on to Raiford. “Mr. Pressler” had become “First Mate,” as if to emphasize Raiford's purely functional existence. “Here's the figures.” He handed Raiford two slips of Teletype paper.

Each had been torn from a longer message. The figures were for two programs, one off-loading, the other on-loading. Among the first set of figures, Raiford recognized some by-now familiar data: the mathematical description of the
Aurora Victorious
's tank capacities and its current load of Halul and Saudi crudes. The second set he did not recognize. “Planning to take a little oil out of our tanks?”

“Don't know. First Mate wants both programs tested by eight bells.” Shockley disappeared into the bridge.

“Sure,” said Raiford to the closing weather door. “Happy to.”

The tests involved running the figures through the Lodicator, which was programmed with the
Aurora
's capacities, then feeding the result to the Sweding machine. Its results would project the proper trim for the ship, based on a particular unloading pattern. That output would be compared to that of the ISIS 300 on the bridge. The ISIS 300 would give the navigation bridge a monitoring plan for the unloading, and Raiford's tests would indicate the range of limitations to be programmed into the ISIS alert system. The figures, complicated by dealing with two different weights of oil in adjoining holds, had been telexed from shore. Raiford guessed that someone in the home office, worried about the possibility of bad weather on either side of the Cape at this time of year, wanted to be certain the
Aurora
would unload the least amount of valuable cargo.

The home office had done the basic mathematics, and now it was up to the electronics officer to feed the new program accurately into the ship's computers and to verify the outcome before actual off-loading. In this program, the amount to jettison came to little more than three percent of the total cargo, enough to raise the ship to its winter load line. The dollar cost of dumping that much crude wasn't in the numbers Raiford had been given, but at, say seven to nine barrels a ton, and figuring for ease of arithmetic a value of, say, $100 to the barrel, the range was between $500,500 and $656,560. Compared to the value of the entire multimillion-dollar cargo, that didn't sound like much. But it did add up to a couple days' pay for a private eye, and the idea of just pumping that many dollars overboard made you swallow a time or two.

The second set of figures was for an entirely different cargo space. A penciled note in the paper's margin said “SP.2,” which looked like a file's call letters. Raiford settled in front of the loading control room's terminal and tapped into the memory of the ship's computer. Scanning down the alphabetized files, he found SP.2 and tried to open it. But access was coded and the only information he could find was the time of the file's last use: May 13, 10:22
A.M.
That would have been during the
Aurora
's previous voyage, when Rossi was still aboard. And the programmer would have been the man he was replacing, Pierce.

A glance through the loading plan told him it was for a smaller tanker: the number of stress points to be monitored was almost two-thirds less than the
Aurora
's. However, the cargo specifics matched the specific gravity of the Halul and Saudi oil now carried by the
Aurora
. Which, since Raiford was paid to think nasty thoughts, gave him an idea. But the idea that the
Aurora
would dump its excess into the smaller vessel was short-lived for a couple of reasons. While half a million dollars might be a lot of pocket change for Raiford, it would barely cover expenses for even a small tanker to cruise this far into the Indian Ocean in order to take on that oil. Second, according to the figures he had been given for loading the smaller vessel, the quantity of oil to be loaded was over three times the amount scheduled to be dumped—adding up to at least a million and a half dollars and a little change. There was no way the
Aurora Victorious
could become that light on tonnage without some very embarrassing questions from the oil company at the final delivery point. They would measure what was delivered against what the port inspector said was originally loaded. … Unless, of course, that inspector was part of whatever was going on. …

Those were some of the objections to the suspicions that had entered his mind, and they were good ones. Nonetheless, they didn't answer why the
Aurora
's computer had in its memory a loading plan for a smaller vessel. Or why that plan had to be updated to match the type of oil in the
Aurora
's tanks.

Raiford spent the afternoon chatting with the Lodicator as he recalculated both plans. He put in the new data, answered questions the program raised when he tinkered with its basic figures, asked the program questions when the results needed more computation. Finally, he adjusted the binomial sequences of operating commands to stay within the parameters of the new loading plans. And—as Shockley had demanded—checked and double-checked the figures for accuracy before feeding the information to the Sweding machine for its projections. Shockley, who periodically hung over Raiford's shoulder in silence, took a deep breath when the machine at last chattered its conclusions.

He studied the rows of data on the paper curling out of the printer. “Is this accurate?”

“According to the numbers you gave me. Why are we figuring the load for another ship?”

“Who says we are?”

“The program.” Raiford pointed at the printout. “Those numbers aren't for the
Aurora
. They're for a smaller ship.”

Shockley's ears turned dark under their suntan and he blinked rapidly as he looked hard at the paper. Finally he said, “I don't know. It was a request from shore. Probably one of the company's ships that doesn't have its own computers. A smaller ship, you say? That's it, then—a lot of smaller tankers don't have a computer of their own, so we do it for them.” He hurried out of the loading room, the printouts clutched tightly in his fist.

XVII

Julie once again tried the radiophone. She suspected that whoever had isolated her father would expect her to try. So she did, with the same empty result. The captain, should he bother to answer, could tell Julie that Raiford had left the ship, that he never arrived, that he fell down a ladder, and there was no way she could challenge the man's statement. It was the same dead end Rossi's parents had hit months ago. Julie, deeply worried despite Mack's reassuring words, understood more sharply the frustration and anger that had finally driven the Rossis to hire someone to shake some kind of response out of the bland silence.

But she did know that something was going on beneath that silence, something important enough to cost the lives of four people, including a child, to protect it. And she knew that her father was targeted—unless she could stir up enough dust to draw their attention from him. And since a moving target would best attract that attention, she'd better get moving.

The after-work crowd filled Russell Square Station, queuing up at the turnstiles, squeezing onto the escalators, jamming the platforms to press toward the hissing doors of the incoming trains. Julie looked for anyone following her, but the hundreds of faces made that difficult. King's Cross Station, where she wound through tunnels and up and down stairs to the Northern line, was even more congested. The jostling throngs were not helped by buskers who clogged the passageways and whose various instruments or straining voices echoed down the tiled walls to mingle in a constant noise. The packed car surged forward, pushing her against fellow passengers who clung to the chrome rails and dangling hand-bulbs and swayed with the racketing lurch of the train. She suffered the close rub of a man whose breath heated the side of her neck and who kept trying to catch her eye as he let the crowd press his body hotly against her curves. Then, with relief, she squeezed through the doors at the Hampstead stop. Following the tide of legs and scuffling shoes up the stairs, she exited into an early evening light that nonetheless made her blink like a mole.

The taxi dropped her at the corner of Carlingsford and Worseley. As she strolled up the quiet street, she was able to keep a cautious eye behind. But no one seemed to follow. At the top of a small hill, she turned right toward Captain Boggs's address. The homes, some brick, some half timber, many stucco, were three and four stories tall, the gardens walled with brick or fieldstone. Large enclosed verandahs were popular, as were expensive cars: Bentley, Mercedes, Jaguar, and the occasional Land Rover. Even the small convenience shops tucked away on street corners, picturesque in design and cozily understated in advertising, had the aroma of money.

Boggs Manor, a square brick building painted white and touched with Georgian motifs, rose three stories above a ground-level service floor. Each had a full-width glassed-in porch. Through the gathering twilight, the first-floor porch showed large green plants and comfortably placed wicker furniture. A carriage drive ran between the house and a high brick wall, also painted white, to the closed green doors of a two-story detached garage. The ceramic nameplate in the white brick gatepost said
WILLOW HOUSE.
Pale roses blown large and losing their petals to the coming winter bordered a manicured plot of grass. In the center of the garden, a large willow tree draped its soft branches in yellowing glory to justify the home's name. Julie was reminded of some of the old-money neighborhoods in American cities of the eastern seaboard—Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston. Homes, safely anchored in neighborhoods whose wealth had defended them against decline or even change, homes that had been expensive when built and were even more expensive now. In fact, when a home like that came up for sale, it was rarely placed on the open market.

Yet Boggs had bought one of these very impressive homes. After working for Hercules Maritime for just half a dozen years, he put down a lot of money and was now keeping up with a mortgage that almost matched his pay.

Julie's shoes shuffled in the autumn leaves littering the sidewalk. Downhill and around a slight bend, a pub's genteel sign glowed warmly: the
CROWN AND FEATHER
. A hand-lettered notice beside the entry stated the pub hours—traditional ones, here, of course—and the mahogany and brass interior had the slow feel of just having reopened for the evening trade.

“Yes, miss?” A smiling, heavy-faced man wiped his hands on a bar cloth as he popped through swinging doors that led to the kitchen. “What's your pleasure?”

Julie ordered a shandygaff, watching the publican pull two or three times on the pump handle and drain off a half mug of foam before filling it with ginger beer. Five-pounds fifty, a price tailored to the local incomes as well as eliciting the fifty-p tip that would not be reported for tax purposes. “This is a very attractive area—very nice homes along here,” she said.

“Thank you, miss—quite lovely, everyone says, and I won't argue with them. Canadian, are you?”

“American. And looking for a house to buy or rent.”

“Ah, well, couldn't do better than Hampstead. Especially if you intend to work in London. Mind you, there are other nice areas. But I'm partial to this one. A very settled feel to it, miss. Comfortable, like, and quite safe for young ladies living alone.”

Julie nodded. “I suppose the homes don't often go on the market?”

“Ah, as to that I couldn't say. But any estate agent could assist you. In fact, one usually stops by of an evening. Retired now, I believe, but he still knows all there is about the area. If you'd like, I can point him out when he comes in.”

“That would be lovely! Please do.”

“My pleasure. I have seen notices posted toward West Hampstead. Not quite up to this area, of course, but still very comfortable. Have you looked there?”

“Well, I do like being near the heath. The husband of an acquaintance bought a home just up the street a couple of years ago. She has nothing but high praise for the neighborhood.”

“Well, there you are: they do come up for sale now and then.”

“I suspect they were very fortunate. His name is Boggs—a sea captain. Lives at Willow House. This must be the pub they've spoken of. His wife said they've spent some very pleasant evenings here.”

“Ah, thank you, miss. That's lovely to hear. Boggs … Boggs … Willow House … sea captain …” Julie guessed that the man's off-season trade was primarily neighborhood residents and his success depended on his ability to recall their names. “Yes—tall chap, I believe. Rather thin. Thought there was something of the military about him. Each December, for a week or two, he and his missus dine here a number of times. Then they're off to their finca in Spain. Sea captain, eh? That tells me why we don't see him the rest of the year, don't it?”

“Captain of an oil tanker. He's done quite well. Must, to afford Willow House.”

“Indeed. Lovely home, that.”

“And another house in Spain? A finca, you say?”

“Near Alicante, it is. My wife and I make our pilgrimage to Majorca every January, and I remember talking with the Boggses about Alicante. Very nice home, from what his missus mentioned. Overlooking the sea. Private bit of beach. Away from the usual tourist haunts.”

The early trade began to drift in. The publican excused himself to greet and serve. The barstools and small booths began to hold a smattering of men in their fifties and older. Wearing casual but expensive tweed, they spoke quietly together or exchanged a friendly word with the publican and then drank alone. Their eyes occasionally drifted toward Julie in cautious assessment. None of them, Julie supposed, had exchanged names with anyone else when they first started coming here twenty or thirty years ago, and they still weren't about to invade one another's privacy without a proper introduction. Like cats, they seemed at home in their favorite corner, and their animal comfort lent contentment to the room. Near the fireplace with its flickering gas log was the dining area. Another sign in hand-lettered script indicated a family room and patio in the rear—where children would be welcome. Beside the fireplace, a chalkboard listed the day's menu. A portly woman in her forties—probably the bartender's wife—took dinner orders and gave directions to two young, overworked girls who hurried to do the serving and bussing.

Julie sipped a second glass—a detective's lot didn't always have to be an unhappy one, even at five pounds per drink—and was finally introduced by the publican to an elderly, tweed-coated gentleman who said his name was Andrew and that he would be delighted to talk about local estate properties, or, really, anything else she wished to discuss. A wrinkled hand lifted its glass of whiskey in a chivalric toast to Julie, and Andrew settled onto the booth's other bench.

“Willow House?” Andrew's frayed white mustache stretched in a wide smile. “Yes, of course! Belonged to the Brierlies for a number of years. Always liked that: Brierlies and Willows. Two different species of plant, eh? Strikes one as droll, eh? Smythe-Rogers before that—no pun there at all. Oakley. Now that would be a good one: Oakley and Willow, eh? What's that? Price? Price and Willow … ? Don't really see … Oh, you mean price of the house! It would be up there. All the homes around here cost a pretty penny and go up in value every year. Damned labor government. Haven't met your Captain Boggs. Boggs and Willow—Willow Boggs! Might make something of that, eh? But Brierlie wasn't one to sell a cow for a calf—knew the value of his property, he did. If your Captain Boggs paid his price, he paid a-plenty. Wouldn't do otherwise, would it? Values go down, blacks move in, neighborhood goes to ruin. Can't have things end up like East London, eh? No doubt your Captain Boggs could sell it tomorrow for more than he paid, but he'd have the devil's own time buying another. Unless he had the cash, of course, and didn't mind parting with it. Always someone's got the eye out for a good profit—discreet inquiries only, you understand. No one wants it known that they must sell. Don't know of one right off, though. Might ask Mellers—he was the estate agent transacted the Brierlie sale, I believe. Yes. Mellers. Offices in Hampstead—should be in the directory, eh? It's the man's job to be located, eh? Mellers—sellers, a bit droll, eh?”

When Julie finally left the pub, the chill night air cleared her smoke-stung eyes and made her wish for one of the heavy knit sweaters that a number of the pub's customers wore. The lights of the large homes were hidden behind shrubbery and walls, and scattered streetlamps only intensified the darkness. London's high latitude—level with the southern tip of Hudson's Bay—meant that autumn nights came early and, despite the Gulf Stream that blessed the land, cold. In a sky clear of the day's haze, the northern constellations looked hard and bright and close. The giant W of Cassiopeia's Chair and the tiny North Star it circled were almost overhead. Julie took a moment from her brisk stride and her thoughts about Boggs to admire the icy glitter of the sharply etched stars.

And that was when she was hit.

A squeaking whisper of rubber soles warned her an instant before the black shape exploded at the side of her vision. Reflexively, she pulled back, feeling more than seeing the blur of a dark arm whip toward her face. A tug at the sleeve of her light jacket, a burning sting along her forearm. The dim gray of pavement showed the shadow of legs and Julie dropped to her unwounded arm to scissor her feet hard and catch a knee between her swinging heel and toe.

A grunt as the vague shape fell awkwardly and Julie rolled away, her momentum carrying her over her own shoulder and up to her feet to face what she now saw was a scrambling figure dressed in black with a black cloth covering its face. In front of that cloth, the hard glitter of a stiletto wove back and forth like a snake's head. She aimed a hard kick at his groin but he was expecting that and hopped back.

Her eye on the steely gleam, Julie moved sideways from the knife, forcing the man to attack across his body. The arm struck out and Julie grabbed behind the blade, her fingernails digging into a wrist as she thudded the heel of her other hand savagely against the back of an elbow.

“Gawd—!”

The hairy wrist twisted from Julie's grasp. The blade whistled sharply past her ear in a vicious swipe at her throat.

Desperately, Julie kicked out. The side of her shoe caught something solid that sent the shape stumbling back into the street. Julie, arm now burning deeply, gasped for breath and moved in again, searching the blackness for the flicker of the knife.

A flash of automobile lights swung uphill behind her. Their glare showed the black gloves covering his hands, the black balaclava over his face, and his eyes momentarily blinking against the headlights. Julie lunged, one hand ready to deflect the knife, the other aiming at the glint of eyes. But the man turned and ran into the dark past the rapidly approaching car. Julie staggered back onto the sidewalk as the vehicle swerved to miss her. The dim glimmer of a face, smudges of wide eyes, a gaping mouth turned toward her. Then the car accelerated in fright up the hill. In the silence, Julie crouched and listened and searched the dark. The only sounds were her own heavy breath and, somewhere toward the lightless expanse of the heath, the distant rustle of busy vehicle traffic. On her forearm, she felt the spreading fire of cold air on gaping flesh, as well as the tickle of blood. It seemed as if Julie's ploy of distracting attention from her father was working—better and more quickly than she had planned.