Arctic Enemy Part 2

Katie was touchingly young, glowing with the same idealism that illuminated the pleasant features of her husband. Emily possessed a natural wisdom and endearing warmth. Together, the women provided a circle of cheer and kindness that was relished in an otherwise hard and demanding man's world. Somehow, thought Sarah, she must find a way of weaving their feminine strand into the fabric of her story.

Just as the dinner chimes were trilling, the men appeared, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with high spirits. Captain Price himself extended his arm to Sarah and escorted her into the dining room.

'I've been hearing nothing but praise for you today, Captain,' she said.

'A loyal crew,' he quipped. 'I've trained them well!'

'You're too modest,' she teased. 'I didn't detect a hint of coercion. They seemed to speak from their hearts.'

The Master pulled back a chair for her. 'The hearts I leave entirely to my wife, Miss Grey,' he said, and Emily beamed shyly at him.

He took his place at the head of a long table set with a damask cloth and fine china. Tony sat at the foot with Katie and Sarah at either side. Shop talk was goodnaturedly banned, but the conversation returned to the voyage time and time again anyway. Toasts were raised repeatedly to its success.

Katie had joked to Sarah that Tony terrified her at their first meeting, with his urbane, almost haughty manners. But now, as he turned his considerable charm on to the women, and Katie's tinkling laughter rose above the hum of conversation, it was evident that she was captivated by him.

Sarah felt the spell, too. It was difficult not to believe they were caught up in a fairy-tale world. Even the food, from the fine consomme and grilled sole to the rich pastries for dessert, contributed to the feeling of privilege and fantasy.

Coffee was being poured and a silver platter of cheese and fruit pa.s.sed when a cadet appeared and apologetically approached the Master.

'A radio communication from London, sir,' he said, standing stiffly at his side. 'It's from head office, for your attention only.'

Tony elevated a dark brow and shot a quizzical glance the length of the table. Conversation was politely muted as Captain Price accepted the sheet of paper, read, and nodded his dismissal of the messenger. His face was expressionless, betraying no hint of what he was thinking.

'Patrick,' he said, 'perhaps you would be good enough to read this aloud for the benefit of the officers... and Mr Freeland, of course. It will affect all of us in the days to come.'

Patrick took the paper, cleared his throat selfconsciously, and read. 'To the Master, Arctic Enterprise. Prepare to accept the arrival by company helicopter, out of Southampton Harbour, of Captain Guy Court, for the purpose of carrying out safety inspection procedures. Please radio harbour authorities when you are pa.s.sing within range. Signed, Julian Freeland.'

Patrick pursed his lips as if to let out a long, silent whistle, then laid the paper neatly before him and looked quickly left and right. After a stunned silence, a reaction grew and rippled around the table. The men shook their heads and exchanged quiet, alarmed comments. Only the Master seemed unruffled and calmly sliced a wedge of cheese for his biscuit.

Tony's response, however, was immediate and a good deal less restrained. Crumpling his napkin roughly and sc.r.a.ping his chair back, he was visibly disbelieving and angry.

'This is d.a.m.n poor judgement on someone's part, Captain!' he snapped, pulling the gold lighter out of his breast pocket with an irritable gesture. 'You and the men don't need any more problems right now-were you aware that this kind of nonsense was going to happen?'

'I was not, Mr Freeland,' the Master replied easily, sipping his coffee. 'It's as much a surprise to me as it is, I take it, to you.'

'My uncle said nothing to me,' Tony retorted, his lips thin with anger. 'Perhaps he himself didn't know until now. This sort of shabby tactics is more Guy's style than his.'

'You may have something there, although I don't think I would have characterised it in quite those terms.'

'Whatever,' said Tony dismissively. 'But since I estimate we must be just about below Southampton now, may I suggest that you do something quickly to put a stop to this?'

The Captain folded his hands before him and looked steadily at Tony. 'I'm sure I don't need to point out to you, Mr Freeland, that your uncle himself established the office of Safety Master as an independent authority within the company. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't prevent Captain Court's arrival.'

Tony shook his head vehemently. 'But it's insanity on a maiden voyage of this complexity!'

'Perhaps,' said Captain Price, shrugging, 'this is the very time when we should be welcoming Captain Court.'

Their Master's comments seemed to inspire debate among the officers, and whispered arguments broke out around the table.

Captain Price's tone became more conciliatory. 'I'll grant you,' he said, raising his hand for silence, 'that I hadn't been expecting Guy to appear until our second trip. But perhaps there's some method in his madness.'

He smiled, but it was not returned. The atmosphere in the room had altered irretrievably. The men sat silent and ill at ease. Emily tactfully busied herself with refilling coffee cups from the silver service in front of her. Katie was wide-eyed.

Sarah was fascinated by the dramatic change that had been wrought by one brief radio message. She stared at her companions with undisguised curiosity. Who was it who could so easily snarl the smoothly purring operation of the Enterprise and provoke such intense disagreement among its previously harmonious crew? The others obviously shared Tony's shock and disapproval.

She took a deep breath and plunged bravely into the awkward silence around her. 'Would I be out of line,' she began, 'if I asked just who this person is who's coming aboard?'

It was Patrick who found his tongue first. 'Guy Court,' he explained, 'is Freeland's Executive Director for Marine Safety. He visits all our ships, from time to time, to run drills, give seminars on the latest developments. Other companies use him as well as a consultant and trouble-shooter. He's a naval architect and engineer by training-in fact, he designed the Enterprise. He usually schedules his inspections in advance, but he also... drops in, as I guess you've gathered.'

'But I still don't understand,' Sarah persisted. 'If his presence will be so disruptive, why doesn't someone from Freeland's management forbid it just this one time?'

'Captain Court has complete freedom of movement on all our ships-he doesn't really report to anyone. It was felt that in this way he could maintain complete objectivity and the highest standards. And anyway, Captain Court is...' He looked up, distressed, and his voice petered out.

'What Mr McQuade is trying so tactfully to say,' cut in Tony, 'is that Guy is Freeland management, although his name is different from mine. He's my cousin. His mother, Diana, is Uncle Julian's youngest sister. Aunt Diana never took an active role in the company, the way Julian and Charles, my late father, did. Guy a.s.sumed her position, just as I did my father's.'

'Oh,' said Sarah quietly, 'I see... I see.'

Darkness had blanketed the sea. Only the running lights, twinkling in the distance, indicated the point where the bow sliced steadily through the water. The bridge was lit by the pale red of the night lights. Sarah leaned back against the chart table and watched as the navigation officer studied the quivering blips that moved ceaselessly across the radar screen.

Suddenly he turned to the Master. 'Radar shows aircraft approaching from the north, sir,' he said.

'Very well. Dead slow, helmsman,' Captain Price ordered. And to the duty officer: 'Floodlights on the landing pad, please, and prepare to a.s.sist the pilot.'

Sarah straightened and walked to the windows. In the distance, a pinpoint of green light blinked. If she hurried, she could make it to the deck that hung over the circular pad. Pulling her raincoat about her, she slipped out on to the open bridge and quickly scampered down the steps.

On the lower deck, she stopped and went to the rail. In the intense white glare of the lights the helicopter grew large, its lights flashing and jet engines screaming. For a brief moment it hovered above the giant bulls-eye, then dropped with amazing gentleness and precision to the deck.

Sarah clung to the rail as a blast of air from the throbbing rotors pushed her back, whipping her hair wildly about her face. With the jets still whining, the side door slid open. A figure jumped out and, bent low to avoid the slicing of the blades, ran quickly off the pad. He clutched a briefcase under one arm and was followed by a scurrying crewman carrying a suitcase and duffle bag.

As soon as the two were safely clear, the motors rose again to a deafening wail. The helicopter climbed steeply, swung sharply away from the Enterprise, and was rapidly swallowed by the night.

Sarah stood on tiptoe on the first rung of the railing and strained to catch a glimpse of the newcomer who stood directly beneath her, shaking hands with Patrick. Their words did not rise to her, but in the floodlights, the man was clearly visible. This member of the Freeland clan, unlike Tony, was in uniform-the full dress blues with cap and gold trim that identified him as a senior officer.

Sarah frowned as she studied his features, deeply shadowed in the harsh overhead beams. Part of his face was obscured by the peak of his cap, but the strongly defined nose and jaw were striking. A slight brutalness in the features seemed at odds with the refinement of the uniform. This contradiction between face and clothes was vaguely familiar to her. Hadn't she seen that stern profile somewhere else?

Of course! she thought, with a gratifying flash of recognition. In the Herald's file room... the picture of the Freeland executives at the contract signing. He had been the scowler in the back row. Then, too, the ruggedness of the face had seemed at war with the expensively tailored business suit. Sarah extended her lower lip in a thoughtful pout as she studied him. Evidently venomous looks were a permanent characteristic of the man.

Sarah's impractical dinner shoes skidded on the mist-slicked rail. Struggling to keep her balance, she jammed her foot against the bar, and the delicate spike heel snapped, falling to the deck below and clattering to a stop in front of Guy Court.

'd.a.m.n!' she said into the startled silence. She held her breath as he stared down at the ridiculous little thing at his feet. Wordlessly, he bent, picked it up, and turned it over in his large hand. Slowly he tilted his head back and saw her. His eyes held hers in a cold and strangely knowing gaze.

Sarah felt her heart thud.

He slipped the heel into his pocket and was gone.

CHAPTER THREE.

If Sarah had hoped to find an angle for her story by cornering Guy Court for a quick interview, she was disappointed. The second day out, he did not even present himself in the wardroom for meals. She caught only brief glimpses of his back as he strode down corridors, or a shock of dark hair as he vanished down stairwells.

The rest of the Enterprise's crew were frustratingly inaccessible as well. And you didn't have to be a reporter to figure out that the reasons for their sudden withdrawal and the tension that seemed to grip all of them was Captain Court. Sarah found this intensely irritating. When Tony, the man in charge of the project, was so generous and helpful, how dared this interloper descend on them with his disturbing influence!

Sarah set aside her notebook on the chartroom table. She was impatient with herself for what she had to concede was an over-reaction to a man she had yet to meet. There had been only that one unfortunate look exchanged the day before. That, of course, had chilled her. But it was hardly a sufficient basis on which to form an opinion of the man. Had he a.s.sumed she was one of the officers' wives? If that were the case, he had been particularly rude.

She walked across the bridge room to the broad, slanting windows. They had left the main shipping lanes far behind and were running up the west coast of Greenland, in the safest, ice-free route. The sea ahead of them was deserted, sunlit, and intensely blue. The purity of the light was glorious. Sarah stared dreamily out the window and did not hear them until they were directly behind her.

'Sarah-I've been hoping we'd run into you!'

She turned, and was face to face with the two of them. For cousins, they could not have been much more dissimilar. Both were tall, it was true. And they were close in age, although Guy, she judged, was the younger. But while Tony was all polish, refinement, and dark good looks, Guy was a man of barely restrained power and hard, almost brutal lines.

The old saw was quite true, she thought, astonished at the jolt of her own response: a uniform did amazing things for the male body. There was something unsettling about the breadth of navy shoulder, the snow white shirt, the precision and gleam of gold embellishment.

But despite the impeccable grooming, the strongly muscled frame still looked about to burst out of its starched and well-cut confines. He was without cap, and a shock of thick dark hair slipped rebelliously down one side of the broad forehead. The strong nose and broad, high cheekbones bore the permanently ruddy colour of a face more accustomed to the deck than the boardroom. The green-flecked eyes threw a look at Sarah that was shockingly cold.

Tony began the introductions, but was cut off sharply. 'Yes,' said Guy, without a hint of cordiality, 'I know who Miss Grey is-the Canadian reporter you've hired.'

'Not hired, no,' Tony corrected immediately. 'Invited, is more like it. Sarah is strictly in the employ of her newspaper.'

'Of course,' amended Guy. 'My mistake.'

But his apology, Sarah sensed, was laced with sarcasm. She felt her body tense instinctively and self-protectively. With an effort, she forced herself to smile evenly and look unblinkingly into the uncomfortably clear green eyes.

'Your arrival has created some excitement on board, Captain Court,' she said with unfelt brightness. 'I know you're busy, but I'm hoping you'll be able to find time to answer a few questions.'

'On or off the record?' he replied, his voice very near a sneer.

'Why... on, of course,' she managed to say, thrown completely off balance by his baffling sarcasm.

Tony was suddenly edgy and his eyes darted from one to the other. 'Guy should have lots of free time very soon,' he said quickly. 'So far he's found everything running beautifully-up to or exceeding Freeland's standards. Isn't that right, Guy?'

'Yes,' he conceded shortly.

Sarah began to feel profoundly irritated by this sour man.

'Guy will be far too modest to tell you himself, Sarah,' Tony continued smoothly, 'so I'm forced to do his bragging for him. As you know, an ice-breaking L.N.G. carrier is a new creature on the seas. The Enterprise was conceived by Guy and built largely from his own original designs.'

'Oh?' said Sarah lightly. 'That is impressive.' Darn, she fumed silently. She was impressed, but part of her didn't want to let Guy Court know. Still, her voice had been much chillier than she had meant it to be. Better sit on those feelings! she told herself sternly. To return to antagonism emanating from him would be cutting off her nose to spite her face.

She felt her admiration for Tony growing steadily. A lesser man might begrudge giving up any of the glory a.s.sociated with the Enterprise. His graciousness was particularly winning since his cousin hadn't even had the courtesy to tell him he was planning to accompany them.

The duty officer popped his head out of the chartroom and beckoned to Tony. Dismayed, Sarah found herself alone with Guy... and an appalling silence. She had to fight back the urge to walk out on him.

What she really needed to do, she thought, was to retrieve her position with him by saying something terribly intelligent and technical, something that would shatter this man's smug sense of superiority. Maddeningly, nothing but inane generalities came to mind. And to make things worse, she felt he was watching her, somehow understanding her dilemma. She could summon nothing but a tiny, twisted smile.

Guy Court lounged lazily against the window, his head c.o.c.ked to one side, a self-satisfied smile turning up one corner of his mouth.

'So,' he drawled, 'Tony's girl reporter is off on an adventure and wants to spin tales of life on the high seas. I'll bet I can guess your lead: the size of this vessel staggers the imagination... stood on end, it would be taller than the Empire State Building... and you'll close with rave reviews of the chef's marvellous menus. Really, Miss Grey-you didn't have to go to these extremes to get your story. t.i.tbits like that are readily available from Freeland's public relations department.'

Sarah winced, having made just such notes in her cabin that morning. It was like a slap in the face, and for a moment she was stunned into silence, the sharp retort she wanted to deliver choked off in her throat. Perhaps it was just as well, she thought grimly. The brisk, efficient bridge was hardly the place for the tirade bubbling impotently inside her.

Recovering, she replied as calmly as her thud-ding heart would allow. 'If details like that help my readers visualise life on the Enterprise, I won't hesitate to use them. But I respect the public's intelligence too much to give them nothing but trivia. I'm a science reporter, not a travel adviser. So I repeat: I would still very much appreciate the chance to interview you on the safety aspects of L.N.G. carriers.'

'Oh, I'm all for that,' he replied sardonically. 'We could begin by advising against the women on board wearing silly spike heels.'

Sarah felt an unwelcome flush spread across her cheeks. 'I'm sorry about that,' she said. 'I'd just come from the Master's first night dinner. As you can see,' she added gamely, looking down at her sensible walking shoes, 'I'm better equipped now.'

His eyes travelled down her slowly, from the trim, beige cashmere turtleneck to the smooth leg of her brown tweed pants. Acutely uncomfortable, Sarah rushed on, 'Do you think we could set up a time now?'

He hesitated, then shrugged carelessly. 'I'm on my way now to meet the senior officers. I don't know how much of it you'll understand and frankly, I don't have the time to explain it to you. But if you'd like to sit in, you may.'

Once again Sarah found herself choking on his condescending manner. She was beginning to loathe the man, but the professional in her rallied. 'Yes,' she said, her eyes meeting the challenge in his and refusing to waver, 'I'd like that very much.'

Guy sat at the head of a long boardroom table, piles of charts and graphs and computer printouts before him. There were no preliminaries. He sliced immediately to the business at hand.

Ruefully, Sarah had to admit that he displayed a stunning depth of knowledge that she, even with her string of degrees, was hard pressed to begin to keep up with. His was such a field of extreme specialisation. There could not be more than a few-perhaps even none-who would be his equal in the world.

'A ship this large,' he was saying, 'with a cargo this dangerous, can't help but be difficult to handle. All the mechanical marvels in the world can't make up for a crew which is not trained or sufficiently caring. If we allow ourselves to relax, to become complacent, it won't be long before we have a real disaster on our hands. It could start with something as simple as a man lighting a cigarette in a restricted area, or as complex as the breakdown of a sophisticated piece of equipment.'

His comment rang a bell in Sarah's head. Startled by her own audacity, she waved her pen and caught his eye. He raised an eyebrow.

'A question, Miss Grey?' he asked with exaggerated politeness.

Sarah inhaled deeply. 'Yes. About all this new equipment. Do you have the capability to repair it on board, or would the breakdown on a critical piece incapacitate the ship?'

'Miss Grey has, immediately sniffed out our Achilles heel, gentlemen. This is indeed one of our worst problems. Very few shipyards are qualified to repair super-tankers. And most of the ones that are would probably refuse us entry if we were crippled and fully loaded with L.N.G.'

Tony, who had remained aloof throughout the meeting, suddenly sat upright and cut in impatiently. 'I think you should make it clear to Sarah, Guy, that our technical crew is superbly trained-largely, by you! And we carry most critical components in duplicate for the rare event of a breakdown.'

'Most,' agreed Guy slowly, 'but not all. As you know, Tony, if I had been consulted, I would have recommended a delay in the Enterprise's departure until we'd finished training that would have made us almost entirely self-sufficient.

'There's that "almost" again! No one knows better than you that a guarantee of total safety is simply not possible. We're not G.o.ds, Guy, only men who try our d.a.m.nedest. What do you want of us?'

Unexpectedly, Guy retreated a little. 'Well, it's done, and we're here. And every minute takes us deeper into the Arctic... and into winter. So, if Miss Grey has no further questions, perhaps we can proceed with an outline of the program I have mapped out for us.'

His catalogue of possible catastrophes was spine-chilling,' exceeding anything Sarah had read. So super-cold was the L.N.G. that even the smallest leak from the cryogenic tanks would crack open the steel decks like an egg. Heavier than air, it would flow rapidly across the ship and out over the water, instantly freezing and killing any life it touched. The surface of the sea would freeze and erupt in a violent mixture of ice crystals and noxious vapour.

If the very worst happened and there was an explosion, it would have the force of an atomic bomb, shredding the ma.s.sive steel hull. Everything for miles would be incinerated in a giant fireball that would create winds of hundreds of miles an hour. Nothing would survive it.

At least, that was one theory. No one knew for sure what would really happen. So far in history, there had never been an explosion of an L.N.G. super-tanker. But the threat was to be a constant companion of everyone on the Enterprise.

'We would be fools,' said Guy, 'to think our luck will last for ever.'