North Star (35 page)

I didn’t even feel the shock wave as they cut No. 3 cable. Sprawled in the bottom of the boat, my fingers gripping the slats of the floorboards and my head lifted to peer over the side, I saw the
Mary Jane
steaming across the line of the buoys, and twisting round I could see the rig growing in size, the gas jet high in the sky, the oil flare licking the night. Soon I could hear the roar of that flame, the sound of the power plant, the whole factory blaze of the giant structure going on about its
business, apparently oblivious that only one of the windward anchors remained. And the wind and the sea sweeping me towards it, to pass I thought just seaward of that blinding, searing tongue of flame now looking like a beautiful frilled monster with the spray-jets gleaming red, a glorious coloured ruff, a mouth wide open, pouring out fire.

Already I was only catching glimpses of the
Mary Jane
, and then, when she, too, was on the top of a wave, I thought she had turned and was heading north, and at the same moment a klaxon blared on the rig. I could hear it even above the wind, the platform so close above me now. The gas flare at the derrick top was snuffed out, the tongue of flame at the end of its boom flickered, withdrawing itself into the darkening circle of spray. Suddenly it was gone, the sea all black, and only the lights of the rig to show the white of the waves rolling under me.

I was almost abreast of the rig then, drifting fast downwind to pass a cable, perhaps a cable and a half, to the north. Then for a while the rig seemed stationary again. Spotlights picked out the underside of the platform, the round fat columns with the waves breaking against them and the big tubular bracings smothered in foam. I could see the guidewires leading down to the seabed and the casing of the marine riser, and guidewires and riser were no longer vertical. They were slanting away from the wind, the angle increasing. And I was moving down past the rig again, the whole huge structure held anchored by a 20 inch casing reaching down almost 600 feet to the BOP stack on the seabed.

And then it snapped and the rig was moving with me, the guidewires trailing, men crawling like monkeys high in the night, releasing scrambling nets, checking the winch drums at each of the four corners of the platform. The rig stayed with me for perhaps ten minutes, the time it took to drift over her downwind anchors, to drag the cables, and then she held and I was being swept past it again.

Lying there, clinging on to the slats, my head twisted sideways watching the rig, I was too scared of what might happen
to think of myself. At any moment I had expected the whole structure to be engulfed by flames. But something had given them the few moments they’d needed to choke the oil flow. Maybe Dillon had been so tense, so disturbed by the loss of the Swede overboard, that he had mistaken No. 1 buoy for No. 2. That would explain the quick turn and the northward run. Whatever it was, the rig was safe – for the moment. No drill hole run amok and blazing oil, nobody roasted alive in a holocaust of fire.

It was only then that I remembered the torch, my urgent reason for grabbing it, and I shone it up at the small figures loosening the nets high above me. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. I kept flicking it on and off until my thumb ached with the pressure and I was losing sight of the rig in the troughs. It was when I stopped sending that hopeless SOS that I realized I was shaking with cold, the water I was lying in warmer than the wind blowing through my sodden clothing.

I never saw her come up on me out of the night. She was just suddenly there, a trawler with her fishing lights on, her spotlight swinging back and forth across the waves. I began using the torch again and for long minutes I thought she’d never see me. Then very slowly she began to turn, her bows swinging till they pointed straight at me and she was growing larger.

She lay-to a short distance to windward, rolling her side decks under and drifting down on me, smoothing the seas out and blocking the wind. A heaving line came rushing through the glare of her lights, missed me by a few feet. Another whistled straight across me and I grabbed it, wrapping it round my body as the rusty steel plates of her side rolled down on top of me. Then the line tightened round my chest, dragging me into the sea and yanking me up to swing in a blinding crash against the ship’s side. I remember nothing after that until I found myself sprawled on the deck and Johan’s bearded face hovering over me.

I remember putting my hand up to my head, blood on my fingers, and Johan saying, ‘It is Gertrude you must thank.’ And the next thing I knew I was on a bunk with the light in my eyes and they were pulling off my clothes. I felt dazed and I wanted to be sick. A voice, a long way away, said, ‘He’s coming round.’ It was Gertrude’s voice and I tried to raise myself, wanting to ask about the fishing boat, but I couldn’t form the words. Instead I was sick, leaning over the edge of the bunk and retching up seawater.

I was shivering then and Gertrude said, ‘You are all right now.’ Blankets were heaped on top of me and I tried to push them away, thinking of the old man and Dillon, the Swede’s hands scrabbling, and the little torpedo, echoes to the seabed, the anchor cables exploding – a kaleidoscope of impressions with the blurred vision of Johan’s bearded face and Gertrude looking down at me with huge eyes full of pity. And at last I found my voice, heard myself say, ‘The radar. Get that boat on the radar.’

‘It’s all right. The rig is all right and no need for you to worry.’

‘It’s not all right.’ A big hand thrusting me back, myself struggling – ‘Stop them – if those bastards blow the last four anchors …’

And Gertrude’s voice: ‘Relax. Nothing you can do.’

But I knew there was. If the rig went adrift … If they succeeded … ‘It’s a lee shore,’ I gasped. I saw it in my mind, the rig stranded and battered on Foula, or on the Mainland shore of Shetland. And the disaster blamed on me. The boat gone, nobody else but me … ‘Get me some clothes.’ I pushed
the blankets back, holding on to my stomach and forcing myself up on my elbow.

‘You can’t, Michael.’

‘Some clothes. Quick, for Christ’s sake.’ I swung my legs off the bunk, forcing myself up stark naked, thinking only of that deadly, dangerous little man and what he had planned. Not the others. The others didn’t matter, not even my father. It was Stevens, Dillon, whatever the cold-hearted bastard liked to call himself. ‘Some clothes, damn you,’ I said, through gritted teeth.

A jersey, trousers, carpet slippers much too large for me; somehow I got into them and dragged myself through the door to the bridge. Lars was at the helm, Henrik at the Decca. Beyond them the rig wavered, a lit tower block canted at an angle and rising and falling in the glass of the windows as the
Duchess
steamed at slow ahead into the waves. The bows fell away and I lurched down to push Henrik away and watch the sweep lighting the screen in its steady radial circling.

‘It is all right,’ Gertrude said again. She was close behind me. ‘It is holding on the other anchors.’

The screen, blurred by the break of the waves, was difficult to read, my head throbbing, my eyes not focusing properly. ‘Where’s that boat now?’ I asked Henrik. ‘Is that it over the bows?’

‘No. Is a buoy, I think. The boat is starb’d bow.’

I waited till the sweep swung round through north-east and there it was, out beyond the pinhead blips of the two buoys, beyond the first distance circle. I reached for the telegraph, rang for full ahead. The bell answered just as a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. It was Ken Stewart calling on us to stay by the rig and patrol the buoys of the four anchors that were still holding. ‘Is Randall able to talk now?’

I reached for the phone. ‘Randall here.’ And I told him briefly what had happened, how his own stand-by boat had cut the four windward cables by trailing a sonic beam transmitter. ‘She’s out by Nos. 5 and 6 buoys, but we’re going after
her now. She won’t cut any more cables, and we’ll keep after her.’

By then we were almost on top of the two buoys and the blip was moving away to the north, fast. He wanted us to stay by the buoys, of course, but I ignored him, blowing into the engine-room voice pipe and calling for maximum revs. I was remembering the Mexican fixing the cylinders in the hold, the powerful engines of that other vessel hammering at the wooden sides of the chain locker, and Gertrude behind me said, ‘No. No, there’s no need for that.’ A hand fell on my shoulder, gripping me tight, and Johan said, ‘You hear what Gertrude said.’ His voice was thick and obstinate, and still gripping me, he reached out for the telegraph and put it back to slow again.

I think I was crying then. Crying with frustration. Certainly there were tears in my eyes as I faced Gertrude, telling her how I had been set adrift, Dillon intending my body to be the only evidence and my father acquiescing. The scene was still so vivid, my anger, my hatred of that man so intense that when I turned on Johan, hitting out at him, there was a wildness running through me. He was a beer-drinker, too fat in the belly, and that is where I hit him. Gertrude screamed at me, but then the voice pipe whistled and I picked it up and heard Duncan asking what the hell was going on. But I couldn’t answer, my legs suddenly weak and buckling under me. I heard Gertrude say something, but her voice was a long way away, and then I was being lifted up and the next thing I knew I was on the bunk again and she was holding a mug of something hot to my lips. ‘Drink it. Then you feel better. You shouldn’t have hit Johan.’ Her tone was reproachful.

‘Tell him I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. I don’t know whether it was exhaustion or the sedative she had mixed with the drink, but I was asleep before I had finished it.

When I woke dawn was just breaking and we were running before a big sea. I knew that by the swooping corkscrew motion, the pitch of the engines, the occasional sound of a wave
breaking aft. It meant that we had left the rig and were headed east for Shetland. I closed my eyes again. Nothing I could do about it now. Nothing I could do about anything, and I was tired. God! I was tired.

I didn’t wake again until Gertrude brought me some food on a tray. It was past nine then and when I asked her where we were she said, ‘Approaching Papa Stour. It is blowing very hard, so we go to Aith. It is nearer and soon we will be under the lee.’

‘What about the rig?’

‘When we leave it is dragging, but not much, and they have sealed off the drill hole. The choke and kill, that is what Ken Stewart call it, and they do that before the marine riser casing broke. So eat your food. There is nothing to worry about.’

It was eggs and bacon and a mug of coffee. Just the smell of it made me hungry. ‘I haven’t thanked you,’ I said. ‘If you hadn’t been standing by
North Star
–’

‘It is not me you have to thank. It is your wife.’

‘Fiona?’ The coffee was thick and sweet in my mouth as I gulped at it. ‘What the hell’s Fiona got to do with it?’ I was staring at her, seeing her large-mouthed competent face, thinking how comfortable and practical she was in comparison with Fiona. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘She did a very wonderful thing – for you.’ She spoke very softly, a note of sadness, almost of pity in her voice. ‘She loves you I think very much.’

‘It’s finished,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk about it, not with her. I began eating, feeling confused and wondering what was coming.

‘For you maybe,’ she said quietly. ‘But not for her.’ There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘She is something to do with those men on the fishing boat I think.’

‘Probably.’ I was remembering how she had followed me to Hull, what she had said the last time I had seen her, in the corridor outside the court. ‘What happened to the boat?’ I asked.

‘You don’t have to worry about the boat. It made off to the north.’

‘You didn’t follow it.’

‘No.’

Would the police accept that? Would they accept that there had been a boat and that it was Dillon, not me, who was responsible for cutting the cables? I was still thinking about that and eating at the same time when she said, ‘You do not want to know what Fiona did?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes, Michael. It does matter.’ And she went on, a note of urgency in her voice, ‘Listen please. We came into The Taing and there was a letter for me, from Aberdeen. She wanted to see me urgently, about you. A matter of life and death, she say, and God help me I think she is just dramatizing. So I don’t do anything until we are fishing off the Hebrides and I get a telegram from her over the R/T. A telegram is something I cannot ignore, so we put into Kinlochbervie and I telephone her. We arrange to meet in Inverness the next day. And it is there she tells me what is going to happen.’

‘About the rig?’

‘Ja.’ And she nodded, her fair hair falling over her face. ‘But it is not only about the rig. She is convinced the man in charge of the operation will make it look so that you are responsible. She is afraid for you. She thinks perhaps it is your dead body –’

‘Did you report this to the police?’

‘No, that was a condition she made. She was concerned for you, not the rig.’

‘Surely you warned Ed Wiseberg?’

‘Yes. As soon as we reached
North Star
I talked with him by loudhailer. I tell him something is planned to happen to the rig. But he thinks the
Duchess
is there to cause trouble – to frighten the men or something. He tell us to Eff Off.’ She smiled. ‘He is very tense, you know, already occupied with his testing. So then I ask the stand-by boat if you are on board or perhaps on the relief boat. But they don’t know anything
about you, so we stay around the rig, watching. And when it is dark and the relief boat arrive, we keep downwind of her with our lights turned off.’

‘She told you I was going to be put in a boat?’

‘No, she don’t say that But Johan and I, we think it is possible. We just don’t know what is going to happen, only that we must stay in the vicinity of
North Star
. Then Ken Stewart say there is a torch blinking an SOS in the water and that’s how we come to pick you up.’ And she added very quietly, ‘So you don’t owe your life to us, but to Fiona.’ She was gazing at me wide-eyed, waiting for some reaction.