Tom Cain - The accident man

Now Carver was in the lee of the Adventurer, which put a block of steel as high as a church steeple and as long as a suburban street between the wind and his yacht. It was like sailing into the eye of a hurricane. The air stilled. His sails flapped emptily. He was completely helpless once again, bobbing on the water like a rubber duck in a bathtub. To his left, the huge hull of the container ship went by for ten, twenty, thirty seconds, as if it filled the entire ocean, one vast ship that never seemed to end.

Suddenly the current of the bow wave took hold once again, swinging back toward the ship's hull and taking the Tamarisk with it. Now the yacht was propelled directly toward the flank of the ship, which came closer and closer, looming higher and higher until Carver could almost stretch out his left arm and touch the cold, wet steel.

Then the current swung again, flinging the yacht back out to sea. The container vessel was passing by, fifty meters away, and Carver could see the giant capital letters that spelled out its name emblazoned on its stern like a giant farewell as it powered into the distance. The words grew smaller and less distinct until the ship was swallowed up by the darkness and the rain.

There was no sign of the flare now, no indication of where Trench's body was floating.

Carver briefly considered looking for it, but the wind, waves, and current would already have washed the charred corpse away from its original position. He had no searchlights to sweep across the surface of the water, no engine to carry the Tamarisk back and forth. He could waste hours without finding anything. When morning came, the body would be spotted and hauled aboard whatever ship had discovered it. The coastguard would be called, an investigation begun. That would inevitably lead to the Tamarisk and Bobby Faulkner.

So now another clock was ticking. All Carver could do was press on. His back and legs were aching. The sweat was chilling against his skin. Fatigue washed over him like the waves that surrounded the boat.

He was still slumped over the tiller, two hours later, when he heard a coughing sound over the howl of the wind and the beating of the rain. He looked up and saw Bobby Faulkner's head and shoulders emerge through the hatch.

He looked around, sleepily. "Where's Quentin? What's the daft old bugger got up to now?" He paused, and gave Carver a ragged, doped-up smile. "Have I missed all the fun?"

It took Bobby Faulkner a couple of minutes to get his drugged head around the fact that Quentin Trench was dead. Then he spent another couple shouting at Carver, his voice slurred, his thoughts disordered, blaming him for what had happened, calling him a murderer. He said his wife had been right. He said he should have stayed at home and gone to work. "Brother-officer my bloody arse!" he ranted. "You're nothing but bloody trouble. Should've left you in France. Let you sort your own sodding problems out, none of my business. Now Quentin's dead, best commander a man ever had. And it's all your bloody fault."

Carver let Faulkner say his piece. He considered his options as the other man ranted. He could either suck it up and say nothing. Or he could rip right back at him.

He thought about going for the strong, silent option. It would probably be the more mature response. But he couldn't be sure Faulkner wouldn't try something stupid as long as he saw Carver as a murderer and Trench as the innocent victim. Plus, he was tired and hacked off and he'd taken about as much as he could stand tonight-and the night before, and the ones before that. So he grabbed Faulkner by the neck, hauled him close till his face was just a few inches away. Carver stared into eyes still bleary with chemicals.

"Listen," he said. "Listen very hard, because I'm only going to say this once. Quentin Trench was a lying, treacherous bastard who tried to kill me and would have killed you next. He stuck something in that hot bloody toddy you guys made, knocked you out. For God's sake, you're a big boy, you must know you've been drugged. And it couldn't have been me, could it? I was up on deck, on watch."

Faulkner shrugged noncommittally, unable to argue but unwilling to agree.

"He shot at me," Carver continued, "but he missed. Look." He pointed to the frame of the hatch. "There are the bloody holes. And none of this would have happened if you hadn't got him on this boat in the first place."

Carver let Faulkner go and moved across to the tiller, steering the boat north, waiting for the first faint glimmer of dawn.

"Why would Quentin want to kill you?" Faulkner asked. "He loved you like a son. Told me so himself."

"He sent me on a mission I wasn't supposed to survive. And when I did, he wanted me dead. Look, I've spent the past five years working off-the-books, black ops, jobs that never happened. I never knew who gave me the work. I didn't think they knew who I was, either. Better that way, for both our sakes. Turns out I was wrong. One of my bosses knew exactly who I was, because he was Quentin. I've been working for him all along, I just didn't know it."

Faulkner frowned. "Hang on. It was you that called me first about Quentin. That's why I thought of him when you called again about the boat."

"That's right. I thought he could help me. Pretty stupid, right?"

"So how did you find out he was out to get you?"

"Because he made some stupid crack about Alix, the girl I told you about, being a Russian mail-order bride. How did he know she was Russian? I didn't tell you or him that. He had to be on the inside. All I needed to know then was whether you were in on it too. And I knew you were in the clear once I saw you lying there unconscious."

Faulkner was trying to work it all out, struggling against the numbed synapses in his brain.

"How do I know you're telling the truth, Pablo? How do I know you're not going to kill me too?"

"Because I would have done it already. You've been unconscious or incapable for hours. I could have tipped you over the side anytime. Anyway, you know the truth yourself. What was the last thing you remember before you went out?"

Carver watched Faulkner squint up his eyes, trying to create a picture in his head. He took a couple of deep breaths, expelling the air through his nose. He muttered to himself. Then his eyes opened and he shook his head sorrowfully. "You're right. It must have been him. We were down there. I was sitting down, thinking about getting some rest. He came over. There was a mug of something in his hand… I don't remember anything after that."

"He knocked you out. Then he came after me. But he forgot how good I am at my job. So he died."

Faulkner leaned forward. "What, precisely, is your job, Pablo?"

Carver said nothing.

"Come on," Faulkner insisted. "You turned my boat into a battlefield. I've got a right to know."

"I told you already," said Carver. "Black ops, accidents. Like, say, a veteran marine officer with years of experience at sea who runs into a storm on a night crossing of the Channel and gets fatally wounded by a distress flare. It goes off too early while he's trying to warn an oncoming container ship of his presence and blows him overboard. That kind of thing."

"So what was this job Trench sent you on, the one where you met this girl? The one you weren't meant to survive?"

"Don't ask," replied Carver. "We'll both be happier if we drop the subject right now. So, take the tiller for a while. I'm going down to the cabin to check a couple of things out. Do you want a cup of coffee to help you wake up?"

He went below. The ship's radio was mounted on the wall of the cabin by the chart table a couple of steps away. Carver ripped the radio from its mounting and smashed it against the side of the table.

"What's going on down there?" Faulkner called down from the cockpit.