Текст книги "The Wheel of Darkness"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Penner? Damn it,

howlong

?”

“As many years as there are grains of sand on all the beaches in the world,” he murmured, almost choking on the words from the feeling of dread.

63

THE THING WHICH HAD NO NAME MOVED THROUGH SHADOW AND audient void. It lived in a vague metaworld, a world that lay in the grayness between the living world of the Britanniaand the plane of pure thought. The ghost was not alive. It had no senses. It heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing.

It knew one thing only: desire.

It passed through the mazelike passages of the Britanniaslowly, as if by feel. The world of the ship was but a shadow to it, an unreal landscape, a vague fabric of shade and silence, to be traversed only until its need had been fulfilled. From time to time it encountered the dull glow of living entities; their erratic movements were ignored. They were as insubstantial to the thing as the thing was to them.

Vaguely, it sensed it was approaching the prey. It could feel the tug of the living being’s aura, like a magnet. Following this faint lure, it made an irregular progression through the decks of the ship, passing through corridor and steel bulkhead alike, searching, always searching for that which it had been summoned to devour, to annihilate. Its time was not the world’s time; time was but a flexible web, to be stretched, broken, shrugged off, moved into and out of. It had the patience of eternity.

The thing knew nothing of the entity that had summoned it. That entity was no longer important. Not even the summoner could stop it now; its existence was independent. Nor did the thing have any conception of the appearance of the object of its desire. It knew only the pull of longing: to find the thing, to rend the entity’s soul from the fabric of the world and burn it with its desire, to consume it and satiate itself—and then to cast the cinder into the outer darkness.

It glided up through a dim corridor, a gray tunnel of half-light, with the flitting presences of additional living entities; through clouds heavy with fear and horror. The aura of its prey was stronger here: strong indeed. It felt its yearning grow and stretch out, seeking the heat of contact.

The tulpa was close now, very close, of its prey.

64

GAVIN BRUCE AND HIS LITTLE GROUP—NILES WELCH, QUENTIN Sharp, and Emily Dahlberg—followed Liu and Crowley toward a port-side hatchway onto Half Deck 7. It was marked Lifeboats;a similar hatch would be found on the starboard deck. A crowd milled before the hatch and, as soon as they appeared, converged on them.

“There they are!”

“Get us on the lifeboats!”

“Look, two ship’s officers! Trying to save their own asses!”

They were besieged. With a shriek, a heavy woman in a disheveled tracksuit grabbed Liu.

“Is it true?” she shrieked. “That we’re headed toward the rocks?”

The crowd surged forward, sweaty, smelling of panic. “

Is it true

?”

“You’ve got to tell us!”

“No, no, no,” Liu said, holding up his hands, the grimace of a smile on his lips. “That rumor is

absolutely

false. We’re proceeding on course to—”

“They’re lying!” a man cried.

“What are you doing here at the lifeboats, then?”

“And why the hell are we going so fast? The ship’s pounding like crazy!”

Crowley shouted to make himself heard. “

Listen

! The captain is merely bringing us into St. John’s at all possible speed.”

“That’s not what your own crew is saying!” the woman in the tracksuit bellowed, grabbing the lapels of Liu’s uniform and twisting them frantically. “Don’t lie to us!”

The corridor was now packed with excited passengers. Bruce was shocked by how wild and unruly they had become.

“

Please!

” Liu cried, shaking off the woman. “We’ve just come from the bridge. Everything is under control. This is merely a routine check of the lifeboats—”

A younger man pushed forward, his suit coat hanging open, the buttons of his shirt undone. “Don’t lie to us, you son of a bitch!” He made a grab at Liu, who ducked aside; the man took a swing and struck Liu a glancing blow to the side of the head. “ Liar!”

Liu staggered, dropped his shoulders, turned, and, as the man came back at him, slammed his fist into his solar plexus. With a groan, the passenger fell heavily to the floor. An obese man charged forward, his bulk heaving, and took a wild swing at Liu while another grabbed him from behind; Bruce stepped forward, neatly dropping the fat man with a counterpunch while Crowley took on the second passenger.

The crowd, momentarily shocked by the outbreak of violence, fell silent and shuffled back.

“Return to your staterooms!” cried Liu, his chest heaving. Gavin Bruce stepped forward. “You!” He pointed to the woman in front, wearing the tracksuit. “Step aside from that hatch, now!”

His voice, ringing with naval authority, had its effect. The crowd shuffled reluctantly aside, silent, fearful. Liu stepped forward, unlocked the hatch.

“They’re going to the lifeboats!” a man cried. “Take me! Oh God, don’t leave me!”

The crowd woke up again, pressing forward, the air filling with cries and pleadings.

Bruce decked a man half his age who tried to rush the door and won enough time for his group to pile through. Within moments they had pressed the hatch shut behind them, shutting out the crowd of panicked passengers, who began pounding and shouting.

Bruce turned. Cold spray swept across the deck, which was open to the sea along the port side. The boom and rumble of the waves was much louder here, and the wind hummed and moaned through the struts.

“Jesus,” muttered Liu. “Those people have gone frigging crazy.”

“Where is security?” Emily Dahlberg asked. “Why aren’t they controlling that crowd?”

“Security?” said Liu. “We’ve got two dozen security officers for more than four thousand passengers and crew. It’s anarchy out there.”

Bruce shook his head and turned his attention to the long row of lifeboats. He was immediately taken aback. He had never seen anything like them in his navy days: a line of giant, fully enclosed torpedo-shaped vessels, painted bright orange, with rows of portholes along their sides. They looked more like spaceships than boats. What was more, instead of being hung from davits, each was mounted on inclined rails that pointed down and away from the ship.

“How do these work?” he asked, turning to Liu.

“Freefall lifeboats,” Liu said. “They’ve been deployed on oil platforms and cargo ships for years, but the

Britannia

is the first passenger vessel to use them.”

“Freefall lifeboats? You can’t be serious. It’s sixty feet to the water!”

“The passengers are buckled into seats designed to cushion the g-forces of impact. The boats hit the water nose-down, hydrodynamically, then rise to the surface. By the time they surface they’re already three hundred feet from the ship and moving away.”

“What kind of engines you got on these?”

“Each has a thirty-five diesel, capable of eight knots, and they’re all supplied with food, water, heat, and even a ten-minute air supply in case there’s fuel burning on the water.”

Bruce stared at Liu. “Good God, man, this is perfect! I thought we were going to have to launch old-fashioned boats on davits, which would be impossible in these seas. We could launch these right now!”

“I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple,” Liu said.

“Why the hell not?”

“The problem is our forward motion. Thirty knots. That’s almost thirty-five miles an hour—”

“I know what a knot is, damn it!”

“It’s just that there’s no way to know how our forward speed might affect the boats. The rules are very emphatic that the boats have to be launched from a stationary ship.”

“So we launch a test boat, empty.”

“That wouldn’t tell us how passengers might be affected by the lateral g-forces.”

Gavin Bruce frowned. “I get it. So we need a guinea pig. No problem. Give me a portable VHF and put me in there. Launch the boat. I’ll tell you how hard it hits.”

Crowley shook his head. “You might be injured.”

“What choice do we have?”

“We couldn’t let a passenger do that,” Liu replied. “I’ll do it.”

Bruce stared at him. “No way. You’re the bosun. Your expertise is needed up here.”

Liu’s eyes darted toward Crowley, darted back. “It might be a rough landing. Like being in a car, hit broadside by another moving at thirty-five miles an hour.”

“This is water we’re talking about. Not steel-on-steel. Look, somebody’sgot to be the guinea pig. I’ve taken worse risks than this. If I get hurt, at least I’ll be off the ship. As I see it, I’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s not waste time.”

Liu hesitated. “I should go.”

Bruce frowned with exasperation. “Mr. Liu, how old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“And you, Mr. Crowley?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Children?”

Both nodded.

“I’m sixty-eight. I’m a better test case because my age and condition are more in line with the other passengers. You’re needed on the ship. And,” he added, “your kids still need you.” Now Emily Dahlberg spoke up. “One occupant isn’t a sufficient test for the launch. We’ll need at least two.”

“You’re right,” Bruce said. He glanced toward Niles Welch. “What about it, Niles?”

“I’m your man,” Welch replied immediately.

“Wait a minute,” Dahlberg protested. “That’s not what I—”

“I know what you meant,” Bruce replied. “And I’m deeply appreciative, Emily. But what would Aberdeen Bank and Trust say if I endangered one of its most important clients?” And with that, he took the VHF from Liu’s unprotesting hand, moved to the stern hatch of the nearest orange spaceship, and turned the handle. It opened on pneumatic hinges with a soft hiss. He stepped into the dark interior, nodding for Welch to follow. After a moment, he poked his head out again.

“This thing is fitted out better than a luxury yacht. What channel?”

“Use 72. There’s also a fixed VHF and SSB radios on board the lifeboat, along with radar, chartplotter, depth finder, loran—the works.”

Bruce nodded. “Good. Now quit standing around like a bunch of sheep. Once we give you the signal, say a Hail Mary and pull the bloody lever!”

And he closed and secured the hatch without another word.

65

CONSTANCE GREENE OPENED AN ANCIENT SANDALWOOD BOX AND took out a bizarre, fantastically complex knot tied from gray silken cord. Superficially, it resembled an obscure European knot known as a Mors du Cheval, only it was far more complex. In Tibetan it was called dgongs, the “unraveling.”

The knot had been given to her by Tsering on her departure from the Gsalrig Chongg monastery. It had been tied in the eighteenth century by a revered lama, to be used in a particular kind of meditative exercise to expunge attachment, to rid oneself of evil thoughts or influences, or to aid in the joining of two minds. In Constance’s case, the knot was to be used for cleansing herself of the stain of murder; now, she hoped it would expunge the stain of the Agozyen from Pendergast. The knot was never to be untied in the real world: to do so would be to release its power and transform it back into a mere silken cord. It was an exercise of mind and spirit only.

The stateroom was dark, the curtains drawn tightly closed over the balcony windows. Marya—who had been unable to find a doctor—stood by the salon door, anxiety and uncertainty flickering in her eyes.

Constance turned to her. “Marya, please stand guard outside. Don’t let anyone interrupt us.”

The woman nodded, then turned and quickly left the salon.

When she heard the door close, Constance placed the knot on a small silken pillow that lay on the floor, illuminated within a circle of candles. Then she glanced over at Pendergast. With a dry smile, the agent took his place on one side of the knot, while she sat down on the other. The knot lay between them, one loose end pointing at her, the other at Pendergast. It was a symbol, both spiritual and physical, of the interconnectedness of all life and—in particular—of the two entities that sat on either side of the knot.

Constance arranged herself in a modified lotus position, as did Pendergast. She sat for a moment, doing nothing, letting her limbs relax. Then, keeping her eyes open and contemplating the knot, she slowed her breathing and decelerated her heartbeat, as she had been taught by the monks. She allowed her mind to settle into the moment, the now, discarding past and future and closing down the endless flow of thoughts that normally afflict the human mind. Liberated from the mental chatter, her senses became acutely aware of her surroundings: the boom and shudder of the waves on the hull, the splatter of rain on the glass of the balcony door, the new-room smell, the faint scent of wax from the candles and sandalwood from the knot. She became acutely aware of the presence opposite her, a dark shape at the periphery of her vision.

Her eyes remained on the knot.

Slowly, she released each external sensation, one after the other. The trappings of the outside world vanished into darkness, like the closing of shutters in a dark house. First the room around her; then the great ship, and then the vast ocean on which they crawled. Gone were the sounds of the room, its scents, the slow roll of the ship, her own corporeal awareness. The earth itself vanished, the sun, the stars, the universe . . . gone, all gone, falling away into nonexistence. Only she remained, and the knot, and the being on the far side of the knot.

Time ceased to exist. She had reached the state of

th’an shin gha

, the Doorstep to Perfect Emptiness.

In a strange meditative state of utter awareness and yet complete absence of effort or desire, she focused on the knot. For a moment, it remained unchanged. Then—slowly, evenly, like a snake uncoiling—the knot began untying itself. The fantastically complex loops and curves, the plunging bends and rising swerves of cord, began to loosen; the bitter ends of the rope withdrew into the knot, tracing in reverse the original convoluted tying, three centuries earlier. It was a process of immense mathematical complexity, symbolizing the unraveling of the ego that must take place before a being can reach stong pa nyid—the State of Pure Emptiness—and merge with the universal mind.

She was there; Pendergast was there; and in the middle, the knot, in the act of untying itself. That was all.

After an indefinite period—it could have been a second, it could have been a thousand years—the gray silken cord lay in a smooth heap, untied and loosely coiled. In its center a small, crumpled piece of silk was revealed, on which had been written the secret prayer the ancient monk had bound up in it.

She read it over carefully. Then slowly, chantlike, she began to recite the prayer, over and over again . . .

As she chanted, she extended her consciousness toward the loose end of the rope closest to her. At the same time, she was aware of the glow of the being opposite her, extending itself in the same manner toward the untied cord.

She chanted, the low, soothing tones unraveling her ego, gently parting all ties to the physical world. She felt the current as her mind touched the cord and moved along it, drawn toward the entity on the other side as he was drawn toward her. She moved along the convoluted strands, barely breathing, her heart beating with funereal slowness, coming closer, ever closer . . . Then her thought met and merged with the glow of the other, and the final stage was reached.

Abruptly, she found herself in a place both strange and familiar. She stood on a cobbled street between elegant gas lamps, staring up at a dark and shuttered mansion. It was a construct of extraordinary concentration, of pure thought alone, more real and solid than any dream she had ever experienced. She could feel the cool clamminess of the night mist on her skin; hear the creaking and rustling of insects; smell coal smoke and soot. She gazed up at the mansion through the wrought-iron fence, her eye traveling over its mansard roof, oriel windows, and widow’s walk.

After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped through the gate into a dark, humid garden, heavy with dead flowers and the smell of loam. She continued on up the walk, onto the portico. Beyond, the double doors were ajar, and she stepped through the entryway, passing into a grand foyer. A crystal chandelier hung overhead, dark and threatening, tinkling faintly as if disturbed by wind despite the dead air of the house. One massive doorway led into a tall library, its wing chairs and couches empty, its fireplace dark and cold. Another passage led toward a kind of refectory or perhaps exhibition hall, silent, watchful.

She crossed the foyer, her heels clicking on the marble floor, and climbed the wide stairs to the second-floor hallway. Tapestries and indistinct oil paintings lined the walls, stretching back into the dark heart of the house, interrupted by oaken doors darkened by time.

She glanced along the left wall as she moved forward. Ahead, not quite halfway down the long hall, one door was open—battered open, the doorframe smashed, splinters of wood and twisted pieces of lead scattered about the floor. The yawning black opening exhaled a cold, cellar-like stench of mold and dead, greasy centipedes.

She quickly passed by with a shudder. The door beyond drew her toward it. She was almost there.

She placed her hand on the knob, turned it. With a low creaking sound, the door swung inward and a welcome warmth flowed out around her, enveloping her with the pleasant sensation of stepping into a cozy dwelling in wintertime.

Aloysius Pendergast stood before her, dressed in black as usual, his hands clasped in front of him, smiling.

“Welcome,” he said.

The room was large and beautiful, with paneled wainscoting. A fire burned in a marble fireplace, and an old clock on the mantel chimed the hours, beside an antique gasogene and several cut-glass tumblers. A stag’s head mounted on the wall looked out with glassy eyes across a desk piled with leather-bound books and papers. The oak floor was covered with rich, dense carpeting, over which expensive Persian carpets had been laid in turn. Several comfortable wing chairs were scattered about, some with open books lying on their seats. It was an extremely comfortable, well-used, luxurious space.

“Come and warm yourself by the fire,” he said, motioning her forward.

She moved closer to the fire, keeping her eyes on Pendergast. There was something different about him. Something strange. Despite the utter reality of this room and this house, the edges of his form were indistinct, blurry, slightly transparent, as if he wasn’t quite there.

The door shut behind her with a dull thud.

He held out his hand for hers, and she gave it to him. He grasped it, suddenly very hard, and she tried to withdraw, but he pulled her toward him. His head seemed to waver, to bulge and dissolve; the skin cracked, and a glow emerged from within; and then his face peeled away and fluttered down in burning threads, revealing a visage that Constance recognized. It was the indescribable face of the Kalazyga demon.

She stared at it, strangely unafraid, feeling its warmth, drawn to it with a mixture of fear and attraction. It seemed to fill her with fire: the ineffable, all-consuming, triumphant fire she had felt in her mad pursuit of Diogenes Pendergast. There was a purity to it that awed her.

“

I am will

,” it said, with a voice that was not sound, but thought. “

I am pure thought burned clean of any vestige of human sentiment. I am freedom. Join with me

.”

Fascinated, repelled, she again tried to withdraw her hand, but it held fast. The face, terrible and beautiful, drew closer to her. It wasn’t real, she told herself, it was only a product of her mind, the image of one of the thangkas she had contemplated for hours on end, now recreated by this intense meditation.

The Kalazyga demon drew her toward the fire. “

Come. Into the fire. Burn off the dead husk of moral restraint. You will emerge like the butterfly from its chrysalis, free and beautiful.

”

She took a step toward the fire, hesitated, then took another, almost floating over the carpeting toward the warmth.

“Yes,” said another voice. Pendergast’s voice. “This is good. This is right. Go to the fire.”

As she drew closer to the flames, the heavy guilt and mortification of murder that had lain on her shoulders melted away, replaced by a sense of exhilaration, the intense exhilaration and dark joy she felt when she saw Pendergast’s brother tumble off the edge of La Sciarainto the red-hot depths below. That momentary ecstasy was being offered to her now, forever.

All she had to do was step into the flames.

One more step. The fire radiated its warmth, licking up into her very limbs. She remembered him at the very edge, the two of them locked together in a macabre caricature of sexual union, struggling at the roaring edge of La Sciara; her unexpected feint; the expression on his face when he realized they were both going over. The expression on his face:it was the most horrifying, most pitiful, and yet most satisfying thing she had ever seen—to revel in the face of a person who realizes, without the shadow of a doubt, that he is going to die. That all hope is gone. And this bitter joy could now be hers forever; she could be free to experience it again and again, at will. And she would not even need overweening vengeance as an excuse: she could simply murder, whoever and wherever, and again and again revel in the hot blood-fury, the ecstatic, orgiastic triumph . . .

All hope is gone . . .

With a scream, she writhed in the grip of the demon, and with a sudden, immense force of will she managed to break free. She threw herself back from the fire, turned and ran through the door, and suddenly she was falling, falling through the house, through the basements, the sub-cellars, falling . . .

66

THE STORM RAGED BEYOND THE OPEN RAILS OF HALF DECK 7, SPRAY sweeping across the deck despite their being sixty feet above the waterline. Liu could hardly think over the boom of the sea and the bellow of the wind.

Crowley came up, as soaked as he was. “Are we really going to try this, sir?”

“You got a better idea?” Liu replied irritably. “Give me your radio.”

Crowley handed it over.

Liu tuned it to channel 72 and pressed the transmit button. “Liu here, calling Bruce, over.”

“This is Bruce.”

“How do you read me?”

“Five by five.”

“Good. Buckle yourself into the coxswain’s station at the helm. Welch should take the seat across the aisle.”

“Already done.”

“Need any instructions?”

“They seem to be all right here.”

“The lifeboat’s almost completely automatic,” Liu went on. “The engine starts automatically on impact. It’ll drive the lifeboat away from the ship in a straight line. You should throttle down to steerageway speed only—they’ll find you quicker that way. The master panel should be pretty self-explanatory to a nautical man.”

“Right. Got an EPIRB on this crazy boat?”

“Two, and they’re actually the latest GPIRBs, which transmit your GPS coordinates. On impact, the GPIRB automatically activates at 406 and 121.5 megahertz—no action required on your part. Keep the lifeboat’s VHF tuned to emergency channel 16. Communicate with me through channel 72 on your handheld. You’re going to be on your own until you’re picked up—the Britanniaisn’t stopping. Both of you stay strapped in at all times—you’re going to take a few barrel rolls in these seas, at the least.”

“Understood.”

“Questions?”

“No.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.” Bruce’s voice crackled over the handheld.

“Okay. There’s a fifteen-second automatic countdown. Lock down the transmit button so we can hear what happens. Talk to me as soon as possible after you hit.”

“Understood. Fire away.”

Liu turned to the freefall launch control panel. There were thirty-six lifeboats, eighteen on the port side and eighteen on starboard, each with a capacity of up to 150 people. Even launching one boat virtually empty like this, they still had plenty of capacity to spare. He glanced at his watch. If it worked, they’d have fifty minutes to evacuate the ship. A very doable proposition.

He murmured a short prayer.

As he initiated the launch sequence, Liu began to breathe a little easier. It

was

going to work. These damn boats were overengineered, built to withstand a sixty-foot free fall. They could take the extra strain.

Green across the board. He unlocked the switch that would began the countdown on lifeboat number one, opened the cover. Inside, the little red breaker-lever glowed with fresh paint. This was a hell of a lot simpler than in the old days, when a lifeboat had to be lowered on davits, swinging crazily in the wind and roll of the ship. Now all you had to do was press a lever; the boat was released from its arrestors, slid down the rails, and fell sixty feet to land, nose first, in the sea. A few moments later it bobbed to the surface and continued on, driving away from the ship. They’d been through the drill many times: drop to recovery took all of six seconds.

“You read, Bruce?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Hang on. I’m releasing the switch.”

He pulled the red lever.

A woman’s voice sounded from a speaker mounted overhead. “Lifeboat number one launching in fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Nine, eight . . .”

The voice echoed in the metal-walled half deck. The countdown ran out; there was a loud clunkas the steel arrestors disengaged. The boat slid forward on the greased rails, nosed off the end into open space, and Liu leaned over the side to watch it fall, as gracefully as a diver, toward the churning sea.

It struck with a tremendous eruption of spray, much larger than anything Liu had seen during the drills: a geyser that rose forty, fifty feet, swept backward in ragged petals by the tearing wind. The VHF channel let loose a squeal of static.

But instead of plunging straight into the water and disappearing, the lifeboat’s forward motion, combined with the added speed of the ship, pitchpoled it sideways, like a rock skipping over the surface of a pond, and it struck the ocean a second time full force along its length, with another eruption of spray that buried the orange boat in boiling water. And then it began to resurface, sluggishly, the Day-Glo hull brightening as it shed green water. The static on the VHF abruptly died into silence.

The woman—Emily Dahlberg—caught her breath, averted her eyes.

Liu stared at the lifeboat, which was already rapidly falling astern. He seemed to be seeing the boat from a strange angle. But no, that wasn’t it: the lifeboat’s profile had changed—the hull was misshapen. Orange and white flecks were detaching themselves from the hull, and a rush of air along a seam blew a line of spray toward the sky.

With a sick feeling Liu realized the hull had been breached, split lengthwise like a rotten melon, and was now spilling its guts.

“Jesus . . .” he heard Crowley murmur next to him. “Oh, Jesus . . .”

He stared in horror at the stoved-in lifeboat. It wasn’t righting itself; it was wallowing sideways, subsiding back in the water, the engine screw uselessly churning the surface, leaving a trail of oil and debris as it fell astern and began to fade away in the gray, storm-tossed seas.

Liu grabbed the VHF and pressed the transmit button. “Bruce! Welch! This is Liu! Respond!

Bruce!”

But there was no answer—as Liu knew there wouldn’t be.

67

ON THE AUXILIARY BRIDGE, LESEUR WAS FACING A TORRENT OF questions.

“The lifeboats!” an officer cried over the others. “What’s happening with the lifeboats?”

LeSeur shook his head. “No word yet. I’m still waiting to hear from Liu and Crowley.”

The chief radio officer spoke up. “I’ve got the

Grenfell

on channel 69.”

LeSeur looked at him. “Fax him on the SSB fax to switch to channel . . . 79.” Maybe choosing an obscure VHF channel to communicate with the Grenfell—channel 79, normally reserved for exchanges between pleasure boats on the Great Lakes—would keep their conversations secret from Mason. He hoped to God she wouldn’t be scanning the VHF channels as a matter of course. She’d already seen, of course, the radar profile of the Grenfellas the ship approached and heard all the chatter on emergency channel 16.

“What’s the rendezvous estimate?” he asked the radio officer.

“Nine minutes.” He paused. “I’ve got the captain of the

Grenfell

on 79, sir.”

LeSeur walked up to the VHF console, slipped on a pair of headphones. He spoke in a low voice. “

Grenfell

, this is First Officer LeSeur, acting commander of the

Britannia

. Do you have a plan?”

“This is a tough one,

Britannia,

but we’ve got a couple of ideas.”

“We’ve got one chance to do this. We’re faster than you by at least ten knots, and once we’re past, that’s it.”

“Understood. We’ve got on board a BO-105 utility chopper, which we could use to bring you some shaped explosives we normally use for hull-breaching—”

“At our speed, in this sea and gale conditions, you’ll never land it.”

A silence. “We’re hoping for a window.”

“Unlikely, but have the bird stand by just in case. Next idea?”

“We were thinking that, on our pass, we could hook the

Britannia

with our towing winch and try to pull her off course.”

“What kind of winch?”

“A seventy-ton electrohydraulic towing winch with a 40mm wire rope—”

“That would snap like a string.”

“It probably would. Another option would be to drop a buoy and tow the wire across your course, hoping to foul your propellers.”

“There’s no way a 40mm wire rope could stop four 21.5-megawatt screws. Don’t you carry fast rescue craft?”

“Unfortunately, there’s no way we can launch our two fast rescue craft in these seas. And in any case there’s no way we can come alongside to board or evacuate, because we can’t keep up with you.”

“Any other ideas?”

A pause. “That’s all we’ve been able to come up with.”

“Then we’ll have to go with my plan,” LeSeur said.

“Shoot.”

“You’re an icebreaker, am I right?” “Well, the Grenfell’s an ice-strengthened ship, but she’s not a true icebreaker. We sometimes do icebreaking duties such as harbor breakouts.”

“Good enough.

Grenfell

, I want you to chart a course that will take you across our bow—in such a way as to shear it off.”

A silence, and then the reply came. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I read you,