Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ Seen from the sixty-foot high island bridge at her stern, this huge vessel was all deck, a vast platform of steel extending seven hundred and forty-three feet from stem to stern with a breadth of over one hundred feet. From the island bridge, five decks high, her endless main deck below was a maze of piping and valves with a breakwater in front of the main distribution area close to the base of the bridge – the area where pipes would be attached to suck out her desperately-needed cargo of oil when she reached the terminal near San Francisco.

^ A raised catwalk ran down the centre of her main deck to the distant forepeak, a catwalk men could move along when the main deck was submerged under heavy seas, a not infrequent hazard at this time of the year. Two large loading derricks reared up to port and starboard on either side of the catwalk near the bridge; five hundred feet beyond them the foremast loomed up with its crow's nest circular platform close to its summit. And these three vertical structures were the only mast-forms raised above the main deck beyond the bridge.

^ The ^ Challenger, ^ like so many other ships of her kind, was designed as a floating storage tank of oil, a tank divided into eighteen smaller tanks – one row of centre tanks and two more rows of wing tanks to port and starboard. This sub-division of the cargo-carrying space was vital because it provided stability and safety in turbulent seas: carried in one single, vast compartment fifty thousand tons of oil could endanger the life of the ship had it been able to sway and slosh about as one huge liquid unit. The weight alone would have become an unmanageable menace. On the morning of Friday January 17 the meteorological report forecast a quiet and uneventful voyage for the ^ Challenger.

^ Betty Cordell stirred in her bunk, switched on the light and saw that it was almost six in the morning. She hadn't been able to sleep for the past hour. First night on board, she assumed. Sitting up in her bunk, she yawned and stretched and then got up sleepily. It might be interesting to see what the ship was like at this hour. Might even make an interesting story angle: ^ While The Ship Slept.

^ Twenty-seven years old, slim and fair-haired, her hair cut short and close to the neck, there was a severity and detachment about her expression as she gazed critically at the reflection in the mirror over the basin. She knew people found her disconcerting when they first met her, that they described her as attractive but cold, and the description pleased her: it made people less inclined to draw her into a crowd. Like Winter, like Sullivan, even like LeCat, Betty Cordell was a lone wolf who preferred to go her own way.

^ She dressed quickly and without fuss: slacks, sweater and fur-lined parka. As an afterthought she decided to clean her teeth, then she collected her camera and opened the cabin door quietly. The ship creaked, rolled a little, tilting the deserted alleyway. She closed the door and went silently along the alleyway.

^ There was a light under the door marked 'Radio Cabin', which struck her as odd at this early hour. She paused, listening to the irregular tapping of a Morse key beyond the closed door, a familiar sound when her father had been a ham radio operator at their home in the Californian desert. She walked on, past the next cabin door, which also had a light underneath it, climbing a com-panionway, holding on to the rail. Bennett met her at the top.

^ 'Betty, please…' She liked Bennett: he had a quiet sureness of manner she found appealing. 'I thought it might be interesting to get the atmosphere of the ship when everyone was asleep,' she explained. 'This series of magazine articles I'm doing on the energy crisis – I want to get an unusual angle on it.' She smiled. 'In any case, I'm not the only one up – the radio operator is working.'

^ 'I'm not!' Her natural combativeness surfaced. 'There's a light under his door.'

^ Bennett was frowning again, as though he couldn't understand why she was going on about it. 'Are you on your way up to the bridge?'

^ 'It's all right – tell them I said you could come up. I'll be there myself in a few minutes. You'll find Walsh up there – he has this watch.'

^ 'Couldn't sleep.' He grinned, then went quietly down the companionway and along the alleyway. And she was right, he thought. There was a light not only under Kinnaird's cabin door but also under the radio cabin door. He stopped at the second door, listening, hearing nothing but the creak of the woodwork and the faint hum of the engines. He opened the door.

^ The lean-faced wireless operator jumped, swivelled round in his chair and stared blankly at the first officer. An open handbook lay in front of the transmitter, a notepad with a pencil by its side. 'You should be catching up on sleep, Kinnaird,' Bennett said.

^ 'I didn't know it was your watch,' the wireless operator observed.

^ 'You're an old friend of Swan's?' Bennett leaned against the bulkhead, watching the new man. He offered him a cigarette, but Kinnaird shook his head and said he didn't smoke. He waited while the wireless operator yawned before replying.

^ 'I've known him for years. I hope the flu gets better soon. It can lead to complications…'

^ Bennett shot the question quickly and unexpectedly, following his previous domestic enquiry, and he studied the reaction closely. Kinnaird looked bewildered. 'I haven't sent any message…'

^ 'She must have heard this.' Kinnaird picked up the pencil and beat an irregular tattoo on the table. 'I do it when I'm concentrating. Some people have music on -I tap a pencil.'

^ 'How would she know the difference?' Kinnaird shut the handbook. 'I think I will go back to bed. The met. report looks good.'

^ Because Victoria, Canada, is two hours ahead of Anchorage time, it was eight in the morning when Andre Dupont came on to the bridge of the ^ Pecheur ^ with a piece of paper in his hand. The first position signal has just come through from ^ Challenger,' ^ he told the French captain of the trawler.

^ The captain marked the position and the time carefully on the chart he had already. From now on they would receive a flow of signals as the ^ Challenger ^ moved hourly closer to an approximate position two hundred miles off the coast of British Columbia. By the time she reached that position the ^ Pecheur ^ would also be there. This would be the interception point.

^ The North West Airlines flight carrying Winter and LeCat to Seattle landed at that American city close to the Canadian border at 4.25am, local time. Both men were tired now – they had missed a night's sleep – so they took a cab to the Greyhound bus terminal in Seattle. Waiting fifteen minutes inside the bus station – they had now effectively broken any link between themselves and their airport arrival – they took another cab to the most expensive hotel in Seattle, the Washington Plaza.

^ Booking their rooms independently, as though they didn't know each other, they slept through most of the day. After a quick meal in an outside coffee shop, they took a cab back to the bus station, waited there another fifteen minutes, then travelled in a different cab to the railroad station. Boarding the 5.20pm train to Canada, they arrived at Vancouver at ten o'clock at night. Dupont was waiting for them with a powerboat to take them to Victoria.

^ By the time they boarded the ^ Pecheur, ^ Winter was in a hurry. It was close to midnight; soon it would be Saturday January 18 and zero hour was Sunday morning. 'I want this ship at sea by midnight,' he told LeCat. 'Tell your French crew to get off their backsides…'

^ LeCat returned to Winter's tiny cabin after carrying the Englishman's order to the bridge. 'The captain says he may manage it -for you,' he added sourly. 'He has informed the port authority…'