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Storm from the South
By
Peter G Bailey.
Smashwords Edition
Published By
Peter G Bailey at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 by Peter G Bailey ©
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The moral right of Peter G Bailey has been asserted
First published in Great Britain by PG Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9569572-0-7
First published electronically in Great Britain by Amazon in 2011.
All characters in this book are fictitious and bear no relationship, or resemble any person known to the author, alive or dead.
A catalogue record for all published eBooks is held in the British Library.
Dedication to Joy:- To inspirational Joy who gave me time and space to complete this work.
With the world virtually destroyed by ‘The Whisperer’ asteroid, US Captain Marcus Kelloway steers his giant aircraft and battle fleet into clear air to be found in the Antarctic and only returns to Norfolk, Virginia after four years to find the US President, having survived the asteroid in underground shelters is keen to take advantage of the World situation and introduce a new World order. Sent to China to replenish his sister battlefleet Kelloway finds himself fighting Chinese survivors and in an IBM exchange the rest of the world, including the two American super fleets, is obliterated leaving just a few pockets civilisation. Two thousand years later the world still has not recovered and is populated by using flint using beings.
Storm from the South
An international terrorist suspense thriller.
One line synopsis:- Private morality triumphs over international inertia and bigotry.
One-paragraph synopsis:-Two journalists and an errant scientist collide with international religious terrorism that no government will admit exists.
Dust Cover Endorsement:-
Shipping correspondent Stuart Darnley is recalled to London from an assignment in New York and sent with cub-reporter Lesley Wainwright to Tokyo to discover what he can of a new propulsion unit fitted to a closely guarded merchant ship.
The assignment seems straightforward until his company’s Japanese representative is murdered in the dockyard and Darnley finds himself drugged and imprisoned on the ship he is sent to investigate.
Taken to Antarctica with Lesley, they meet the brilliant, if reclusive Professor Maynard Robinson, a man wanted by the American CIA for absconding with nuclear engine plans, data and hardware belonging to the Livermore Laboratories. The US President wants the professor returned to continue his work for the benefit of America and himself.
Darnley discovers that Professor Robinson has formed a vigilante group dedicated to the total destruction of the world’s nuclear and mass destruction weapons. The price Darnley is asked to pay for the release of him and Lesley is to cover and report a vigilante raid to destroy a road convoy of illegally acquired intercontinental missiles making its way from Russia to Afghanistan. A fanatical religious fundamentalist group threatens to use them against the West. The Americans know nothing of this plan until told by Lesley, a secret CIA sleeper activated to find Professor Robinson. Darnley reluctantly accepts the offer.
Forced to fly to Afghanistan with armed vigilantes the group locates the sixty-one-vehicle convoy and decides to attack it.
The first ambush fails and the second attempt is only partially successful with the vigilantes suffering many casualties in an unexpected landslide.
With the vigilante leader and many of his men dead, a bigoted Australian pilot takes matters into his own hands.
Belatedly warned of the danger by Lesley, America launches missiles at the convoy. A nuclear explosion destroys the convoy, but with Russia also desperate to stop the convoy no country is willing to accept responsibility. Was the explosion caused by the Americans, the Russians, a rogue convoy missile, or by the attackers own nuclear engines going critical?
Contents:-
Chapter One - The Mission.
Chapter Two - Yokosuka.
Chapter Three - The Lateral Thinkers.
Chapter Four - Puffin Two.
Chapter Five - Antarctic Base Station.
Chapter Six - The Conversation Stopper.
Chapter Seven - The Flight.
Chapter Eight - Afghanistan.
Chapter Nine - The Washington Gavotte.
Chapter Ten - The Storm.
Storm from the South
Chapter One
The Mission
Leaving the arrival’s gate at Heathrow Airport after an all-night trans-Atlantic flight from New York, Stuart Darnley could hardly conceal his surprise to see his name written in thick black ink on a piece of white cardboard held aloft at the crowd control barrier by his company’s chief executive’s personal chauffeur.
‘Don’t tell me P cubed has resigned in my favour, Tom,’ he grunted cynically as he presented himself before the tall immaculately uniformed driver of the company Rolls Royce, an aloof respectful figure often seen in the remote distance but never waiting at airports for lesser company personnel like himself.
The luxury of a waiting chauffeur driven car caused Darnley to blink several times fearing the one-man welcoming committee might be a mirage sent to taunt him at the end of a long journey. Going back over the many years he had been with the company he could not remember a single reporter ever being allowed within stroking distance of the quality car let alone being offered a ride in it. The portents for such a concession being granted to him on this occasion were not good.
‘Don’t know anything about that side of things, sir,’ Martin responded guardedly as the two men moved out the crowded concourse and into an area of the airport that normally guaranteed instant removal and compounding for less well-bred vehicles. As he spoke Martin tossed the now redundant name card into a waste bin, its function fulfilled. Such mundane tasks were clearly below his high calling and professional expectations. Unencumbered by the notice he still did not offer to carry Darnley’s two cases. The indignity of having to meet a mere marine correspondent was clearly more than enough humiliation for one day.
‘As far as I’m aware Mr Peters is still in charge,’ he continued loftily. ‘I was asked to meet you at the airport. I believe he wants to see you as soon as you reach HQ, though.’ His employer’s outlandish requests were not for him to question, especially as Darnley’s wry humour went over his head.
‘We haven’t been taken over while I’ve been in America, then,’ Darnley persisted. ‘Rupert Murdock hasn’t made a bid for my MFI flatpack desk for instance?’
Nothing about the urgent request to return to London made him suppose there was anything other than a more pressing job to be undertaken. Such mid-stream changes in assignments occurred often enough for him not to be surprised by their conflicting contrariness, but the variations never included a ride in the executive transport.
At the car Darnley placed his luggage in the carpeted boot with exaggerated care while Martin stood with one hand on the lid watching apprehensively: he did not want any marks left on his gleaming coachwork. Job completed Darnley allowed his tired mind to wander over the possible reasons for being dragged from his half-completed assignment in New York, tumbled on to the nearest aircraft and flown back to the UK in a first class seat to be met in this grand and ostentatious manner. Something out of the ordinary obviously, but despite his earlier wry comment he doubted that he had made it to the position of chairman of the board in his absence. He was too much of a mongrel for that honour: that sort of thing did not happen, even in fairy tales.
Maybe the company wanted to make him redundant, surplus to requirements, he mused worriedly, but even that did not add up. If he had been declared superfluous in his absence the Rolls Royce reception would have been uncompromisingly replaced by a black plastic sack containing his desk contents and personal belongings with the whole lot being thrown at his feet from the back of one of the battered company delivery vans as he stepped off the aircraft. His employers were none too subtle on such occasions. No, something more ominous was afoot.
His unproductive reverie was broken by Martin belatedly squashing the take-over suggestion.
‘I don’t think anyone’s made an offer for the company, but anything can happen these days.’ He spoke with studied neutrality as he moved to his driving position leaving Darnley to climb into the rear unassisted and to close his own door. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’ He grinned condescendingly at Darnley’s reflection in the rear view mirror as he eased himself behind the polished rosewood wheel. ‘Anyway, aren’t you guys supposed to know about these things before anyone else gets a whiff. You’re the ones with your noses in the armpit of anything underhand. You should be telling me what’s going on.’
Darnley grunted derisively. ‘I’m a shipping correspondent not a shovel-nosed news sleuth looking for trouble. I can tell you what’s going down in the shipping world, not literally of course, but if you have any money in a certain bulk carrier line I could advise you to get it out quick. Their ships have been going down rather too fast and too often for their insurer’s peace of mind.’
Martin allowed the set of his face to widen into a lopsided grin of derision.
‘Money in shipping? You got to be joking!’ he laughed. ‘The closest my cash gets to the sea is when I invest it in a portion of cod and chips while waiting for his sir-ship to come out of a late night meeting.’ He pulled into the road traffic with the help of an armed, flak jacketed policemen who might have supposed the important personage inside the posh car needed to go about his business without the usual indignity of waiting for a gap to appear in the traffic congested highway.
‘What’s the problem with this shipping line, then?’ he went on when they joined the flow and adjusted their graceful progress to the modest stream speed of the other vehicles. ‘Just so I can warn me mates like. Some of them might have a bit tucked away and if I can offer them some horse’s mouth info they might do the same for me when we meet at Ascot, or the Wembley dogs, as we do quite often.’
Darnley chuckled at the transition from the prim starchiness of his lofty occupation to the informal language of his driver’s south London origins.
‘One of the flag of convenience companies is about to have their insurance comfort blanket pulled after losing one too many of their bulk carriers at sea in rather dubious circumstances,’ he explained. ‘You’re talking about a few million nicker each time one of those disappears into a bottomless part of the ocean, and that’s the only place they seem to vanish. Nothing as convenient as sinking in the shallow water at the mouth of a river where they can be salvaged and the problem sorted out.’
‘Bit like a rigged household insurance claim then?’ Martin threw over his shoulder.
Darnley wondered if Martin was as talkative as this with his usual passenger. If he was, he might be able to tell him a bit about his chief exec, a man he had never met, but whose unbending personality was stamped on everything that moved or breathed in his tightly controlled printing empire.
‘Something like that,’ he agreed. ‘But with a few more noughts on the end.’
They chatted jovially until Martin pulled up outside the modern Canary wharf office of the Fortune William’s Publishing Company, a twenty storey glass and concrete structure that replaced the old dingy warehouses and poor narrow streets and dark terraced housing of London’s old dockland’s area. The car stopped, not at the main entrance where Darnley expected to be dropped, but at the director’s exclusive entrance, an area strictly out of bounds to those who had stubby ink stained working class fingers. This was the chosen area of the Gods; the movers and shakers of the world; the men with power and instant career death in their voices if they were offended; or they smoothes the highways to better things if pleased.
Darnley, out of touch with the current mood of the Gods, suspected he would be updated sooner than he wanted.
Martin, fearing uncultured hands would touch his sparkling paintwork, opened the boot and helped Darnley deposit his baggage on to a narrow pavement more of a cosmetic function than a utilitarian use because nobody used it. Before closing the boot Martin carefully brushed the nap of the compressed carpet back into a uniform pattern. It would never do for shades of light and dark to appear in the carpeting of a boot that could provide comfortable lodging for an unemployed shipping correspondent if the God’s were indeed angry and spoke in harsh voices.
‘I suppose I have to walk round to the front of the building now,’ he complained looking around uncertainly. It was not far, but Martin could easily have stopped there to save his expensive Madison Avenue footwear from contacting rude dockland pavements. Such refined footwear was not designed for rough usage being intended for the class of transport just climbed out of.
Apart from concern for the unreasonable abuse of his shoes had he been deposited at the front entrance some of his compatriots might have seen him alight from the master’s Rolls Royce and been impressed by the sight: the greenness of their complexions, and their exaggerated double takes would have more than compensated for the acute mental anxiety suffered in conjecturing the reason for the star transport treatment.
He frowned ruefully as no one rushed from the building bowing and fawning to greet his august arrival: so the top job was out.
Martin grinned at his passenger’s apparent confusion.
‘I was told to drop you here. One of the girls will take you up to the exec suite. I think Mr Peters wants to speak to you personally.’ The posh modulation had returned.
Darnley tried to appear unimpressed by the honour as he looked around. Everything was of the highest quality and neatness around that part of the tall building; even the late autumn flowerbeds were laid out in military precision already planted up for the next growing season. Ruefully, he wondered if he would be around to admire the display.
‘Is there a decontamination tray to walk through in case I bring my working class attitudes into the land of milk, honey and private education?’ he asked caustically.
‘Not this trip, sunshine,’ Martin retorted cynically. ‘But try not to let your chin drop too far. Drooling marks the carpet and the cleaners don’t like that.’
‘Thanks,’ Darnley muttered. ‘I’ll keep my eyes lowered and only speak when spoken to while tugging my forelock.’
He picked up his cases and moved off.
Inside the glass revolving doors silence descended like an ominous blanket. It was quieter, more subdued and less competitive than in the frenetic working section where he normally functioned. There, brash down-to-earth application with unbreakable deadlines and little time to waste on polite conversation and verbal pleasantries ruled. Darnley was in rich coffee and crossword country where refined decisions were made about horsy entertainment for the coming weekend. Nothing as vulgar as work went on here.
He looked appreciatively around the cathedral peacefulness of the annex. A man could think here, create things and put substance to earth-shattering dreams. A man could mould elaborate plans inside his head until they developed into silky maturity. The only handicap to fulfilling such grand schemes would be the cruel task of concentrating on dreams while trying to ignore the superabundance of very bedworthy young women moving around the premises on silk clad slender legs and superbly articulated hips. All were decorative, svelte, well groomed and possessed the bright-eyed attentiveness of expensively educated quality.
He exhaled in deep approval of all he could see. So this was what executive power was all about? This was their exclusive habitat. The old dockworkers would spin in their graves to think that so much opulence had replaced their dark dingy streets and closely packed terrace houses. To them the display of such undistributed wealth would be offensively obscene.
‘Are you Stuart Darnley?’ One such divinely moulded creature enquired in a delightfully soft voice that drew the owner of the name abruptly from his awed speculation as he wondered if all this refinement and gloss was really part of the organisation he worked for and had done for a number of years. The two seemed so far apart, silk and hessian, marble and concrete, oil and the malodorous contents of a hospital slop bucket. There was no similarity anywhere. Wracking his brains, he could remember nothing corresponding to it when the company operated from their old ‘street of shame’ offices in another part of the city; but he had never been invited into the executive section of that place either so who was he to comment?
‘Can I answer that over breakfast?’ he enquired hopefully. His attention suddenly riveted on the dewy speaker, a young blonde in a shapely, smartly cut Helen Grace grey suit and a smile that would draw angels from the clouds to applaud the perfection that could only be improved by the sparkle of cut diamonds. Cornflower blue eyes under sweeping natural lashes looked at him enquiringly, if a little chillingly, in their corporate mode. Base humour was for other parts of the organisation: it was not understood here.
‘Yes, you’re right, that’s me,’ he agreed quickly. ‘Can I call you ‘beautiful’?’
‘Mr Peters will see you now,’ the angelic face and perfect body informed him archly. She seemed mildly pleased by the crude compliment but ignored the social potential in the interests of immediate business. ‘If you’ll follow me.’ She moved towards a nearby rank of lifts. ‘Did you have a good flight from America?’
Caught by surprise, Darnley looked down at his cases wondering if he should leave them in the annex and collect them later, or take them with him. He doubted that his august employer would be pleased to see him struggle into the plush executive office bearing fourteen daysworth of unappealing grubby laundry. He looked after the departing hips and decided that the most expensive item in his cases was not worth a whiff of the expensive perfume wafting through the annex after her. Pushing the cases against a convenient wall with his foot, he followed. He could collect them later if a worried police and army bomb squad had not blown them apart.
At the lift his guide pressed a summons button and turned to face him as he joined her.
‘Well, did you?’ Not having heard the question Darnley looked stupidly blank. ‘The flight,’ she prompted patiently. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Oh that! Not really.’ Darnley usually quick-witted found his equilibrium disturbed, probably jet-lagged and definitely overwhelmed. ‘The best bits were between the airport building and the end of the runway and then the other way around. You can have the stretch in between; total boredom.’
They entered a smallish green carpeted lift, one intended for splendid exclusivity, not for the massed ranks of the sweaty hoi polloi. She pressed a button. This was not her first venture into the land of the press giants and reporter-eating ogres. She knew which switches and buttons to press and looked good doing it.
‘I wanted to be an air hostess once,’ she confided without apparent regret for the missed opportunity. ‘But I wasn’t tall enough.’
‘I bet you had all the other requirements,’ he looked her over and grinned salaciously. ‘You know. Good health, smart appearance, elegance, grace and a foreign language.’
‘Sure! All of those things. The airlines expect more than long legs to see over the backs of the seats.’ Her tone was tart enough to warn him that she carried a fair quantity of gender equality baggage behind the smiles and graceful carriage.
Unperturbed he pressed on: ‘Any chance of taking you out to dinner tonight. Miss?’
‘Lesley, Lesley Wainwright.’ The lift doors opened with a hushed swish at their destination floor level. ‘I should wait to see what Mr Peters wants before making long term entertainment plans.’
‘Dinner tonight is a long term commitment?’ he enquired, aghast at the thought. ‘P cubed can’t be about to.’ He paused in mock consternation. ‘No! It can’t be the push. Dogsbreath would have done that dirty deed.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Heah! Do you know what this is all about?’
‘What! Little old me, who sits at the end of an intercom and jumps whenever a Pavlovian light flashes?’ Lesley smiled enigmatically, leaving the clear impression that she knew more than she was letting on but was not about to reveal an executive secret. She walked away motioning him to follow.
Outside a vast deeply French polished double door marked uncompromisingly in gold leaf: ‘Chief Executive Director’ they stopped by an occupied reception desk. Plainly no one could barge into the inner-sanctum without the approval of the desk occupant, a maturer version of Lesley Wainwright and just as lovely. Glossy Hollywood good looks and endless smiling charm were obviously the prime prerequisites for employment in those gilded halls.
‘Go right in,’ an expensively cultivated voice invited them after the merest passage of a fleeting moment, every second counted in the executive world. They were expected the expensive voice assured them.
Nodding to her culture clone Lesley opened one of the polished doors and walked into the office followed by Darnley, now severely aware of his well-travelled appearance and the stale aromatic smell of two days without a bath. Deodorants were good, but hid nothing.
Darnley found himself in an office occupying half the floor plan of the building cross section. It was huge, although in its defence, it did double as a boardroom for a hundred or more company directors when they were required to meet and air their expense accounted views.
On this occasion the vast room was empty expect for one man seated behind a desk of truly gigantic proportions at the far end. Two first division football teams could have played happily side-by-side on the desk surface without either interfering with the other’s game.
As they approached Darnley fully expected the occupant to appear from behind the desk wearing hiking boots and carrying a map and compass to guide him to the front. Surely one man did not need all that space, he muttered in awed disbelief; not when his own untidy desk was crammed on the fifth floor along with another twenty noisy, aggressively bad-tempered, egotistically driven reporters all trying to get their output into the next print run. All could have squeezed into one corner of the desk with plenty of room left for the office coffee vending machine.
‘Stuart Darnley, sir,’ Lesley called as they approached over a deep two-tone gold coloured carpet to within hailing distance of the occupant who looked up expectantly as the door opened. She moved to one side to allow Darnley to take the lead.
He knew the man. Darnley had seen his leader many times in the far distance and had lived in fear and awe of his name and reputation since the moment of his own conception; or it seemed that long.
Rising from his well padded high backed swivel chair, Patrick Paul Peters came briskly to the front of the desk with extended hand and a questioning half-smile. It was almost as if he was going through the motions of greeting an unexpected foreign dignitary without actually knowing why the man was being presented to him. Darnley was taken aback by the courtesy; it was not a greeting expected by staff reporters. They were used to kicks, cuffs and verbal abuse as a form of friendly salutation. This gesture was unprecedented.
As the two men shook hands Darnley wondered if Peters realised that he was shaking the hand of a mere employee and one not worthy of the expansive cordiality. Doubtless Peters would scrub and sanitise his hands with appropriate oaths of horror in the executive washroom when the meeting ended and the ghastly truth was revealed.
Peters, impressive: tall, remarkably broad shouldered and narrow waisted had the physique of an extravagantly padded sportsman ready for a game of American football; except that his muscular bulk was for real, at least from the front. Approaching, he gave the appearance of a moving mountain, yet in profile he was a beanpole. From the side he looked as though he had been flattened by a wayward comic strip cartoon steamroller to a degree that seemed to leave little room for any internal organs to function. On top of the wide shoulders sat a large head thickly covered with long unruly grey hair that flopped over his forehead and eyes whenever he bent forward. Irritating it might be to some but he seemed to bear the necessity of wiping his forehead clear of obscuring flopping hair follicles with the same solemn fortitude a Dulux sheepdog might display if it had hands and really wanted to see what was going on in the decorating world.
Despite his impressive full frontal physique it was his eyes that attracted attention. They were the features most people remembered about him long after they forgot all else. They were grey and speculative with the ability to change expression through a colour spectrum ranging from an almost fishlike opaqueness when deep in thought, to a penetrating magnetism when concentrating on complicated details or when weighing difficult propositions.
He had the latter glint in his eyes, as he looked Darnley over as if trying to place where he had seen him last, and why he was greeting him at all. His facial expression evinced neither friendliness nor hostility, just business blandness.
‘Fetch the Antarctic ‘A’ file, Miss Wainwright, will you? And set up the two Pacific Basin surveillance videos with them.’ His orders were directed at Lesley without taking his eyes off Darnley who came to rest by the front of the desk. ‘Did you get very far with your Mayor Kinchoch interview?’ Peters asked to demonstrate his mastery of the work schedule allocated to the man standing in font of him; photographic memory retention was a faculty Peters was universally famed for. Before Darnley could reply, he went on: ‘Has he stopped dumping New York’s communal refuse in the sea off Cape Hatteras? It’ll lose him a pile of votes if he doesn’t.’ The idle throwaway question showed he was up with the latest news and with the issues concerning ordinary people even in far away lands.
‘Ed was about as evasive as you’d expect a politician to be in the run up to the presidential elections,’ Darnley grinned guardedly. ‘Politics was all he wanted to talk about, not refuse disposal. I suspect he thought the interview was on that subject and he wanted to score some points. Got some good stuff though.’
‘Give it to the American desk then, will you? I’m sure they could use some up-to-the-minute material,’ Peters ordered.
‘I faxed it to them before I left Kennedy,’ Darnley responded quickly. He scowled internally, as if he was going to hand over his hard won material to a colleague, some chance of that happening!
Peters nodded to indicate approval of quick thinking staff who did the job despite obstacles placed in their path.
‘What do you know of UniFreight?’ Peters asked returning to his side of the desk to open a drawer and extract some papers.
‘UniFreight?’ Darnley repeated with a slight frown of worried concentration. The question almost threw him. ‘Not much,’ he admitted after finding little worth mentioning hidden in the dark recesses of his clogged mental grey cells. He remembered writing nothing recently about that particular company that could rebound on his head during a caustic interview with his aggrieved employer waving a libel writ in his face. ‘After they brought the Sun Shipping Line and changed their name and port registration they’ve kept a very low profile. In fact, I don’t think they appear on the Shipping Register any more, unless they’re in the small activities section. I haven’t seen any of their trading accounts lately, although the Sun’s made pretty dismal reading I remember.’
Some vague snippets of stored information swirled to the forefront of his fatigued mind: things he had read, or heard, and then recorded for future use, or to be assigned to the dustbin of items never seen or heard of again. He looked across the desk at Peters, a frown of curiosity on his face as he wondered why such a small and insignificant third world shipping company should interest a man sat on the seventeenth floor of an office block at Canary Wharf in London.
‘That’s what I thought until I read that they’ve moved into the cruise market and have a number of ships trading in that sector,’ Peters informed him.
Darnley raised his shoulders in a shrugged gesture of defeat. ‘You’re one up on me there, boss,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t know that, but I don’t think anyone else is interested enough to ferret around in those particular waters; unless you know of a reason why they should,’ he added hastily. There was no point kicking his leader’s hobbyhorse into the long grass until he knew what was being ridden, and why. Plainly this had something to do with reason he was dragged back from New York. Making himself look self-important by knowing more about a particular subject than his underlings was not one of Peters’ recognised personality traits.
‘I don’t need to remind you that news sometimes comes from unexpected sources,’ Peters grunted reprovingly, ‘but I’m not getting at you for not knowing too much about this particular set up. After all, you spend most of your time fishing in bigger European, American and Asian pools, and rightly so; that’s why I pay you. If you spent your time ignoring them I’d boot you through the door faster than you came in.’ He smiled when Darnley winced theatrically at such uncompromising language: you don’t argue with your chief executive on a delicate subject like that. ‘This particular company seems to operate mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, at least the freight side does. I’m not too sure about the cruise side yet; they seem to turn up just about anywhere there’s water to float on.’
‘I didn’t even know that,’ Darnley admitted with a self-effacing grimace. ‘You know something we don’t?’ he repeated.
Peters nodded as Lesley placed a thick manila file in front of him before turning to a video screen by the side of the desk. She slipped a cassette into the machine and stood waiting patiently for further instructions. Ignoring her, Peters open the file.
‘As you say UniFreight is the new name for the old Sun Shipping Line,’ he agreed reading from one of the papers. ‘For your information though; the company is now registered in Liberia and has fourteen ships, mostly bulk carriers and general freighters; all yawningly boring commercial stuff until we spotted this.’ He looked at Lesley and nodded.
Darnley moved to the side of the desk so that he could see the video screen better as flashes of light settled into what appeared to be an unidentifiable section of the world viewed from outer space.
‘What we’re looking at,’ Peters went on to explain when he identified what he was looking at, ‘...is a part of the world’s surface about eighteen to twenty degrees East of the Greenwich Longitude and thirty degrees south of the equator all the way to the Antarctic coastline. We’re in a geo-synchronous orbit at about twenty-two thousand miles above the earth’s surface.’ He paused to let that unlikely gem of information sink into Darnley’s earthbound jet lagged mind. ‘If we increase magnification I’ll show you what I mean.’ He picked up the video control pad and brought the picture to a size that made visual sense to the watchers. ‘I particularly want you to look at this vessel here.’ He touched the screen at a spot showing the white plume of a ship’s wake with the darker outline of the vessel at its head. It was no more than a streak on the screen and could have been anything, a tadpole even.
Looking closely Darnley identified several ships scattered over an area off the South African coast where the congested sea-lanes of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean intersected. He watched in silence for several minutes wondering what conclusions he was supposed to be drawing, or if Peters was about to tell him what he was looking at. As he watched, he suddenly started and moved closer to the screen, rigid with attention.
‘Bloody hell!’ he breathed in wonder. ‘What speed did you say that ship was travelling at?’
‘I didn’t,’ Peters said with a dry chuckle as if pleased that his confidence in his shipping correspondent had been confirmed. ‘But it’s travelling a good deal faster than anything around it and from rough projections the ship’s size is about the same as some of the slower vessels, but we’re not just looking at a high powered ship.’ He glanced at Darnley to see if he made the same important distinction. ‘Running the tape on twenty-four hours, we find the same ship has moved over four times the distance we might have expected.’ He paused reflectively. ‘What’s the maximum speed a modestly loaded freighter can achieve?’
‘Depending on age, power, cargo and position; about fifteen to eighteen knots,’ Darnley suggested thoughtfully. ‘It doesn’t pay to go much faster or the fuel cost penalty becomes disproportionate; except for a few specialised trans-Atlantic passenger liners.’ He gave a low impressed whistle. ‘That babe must be creaming along at the better end of eighty knots.’
‘That’s not the only shot we have,’ Peters went on. ‘One shot might be anomalous so we panned around over the next few weeks and came up with a number of fast-moving ships, including two discovered in Japanese waters, but they did not return there. It’s almost as if they’d been built in that country, sailed away and as far as we know never returned.’ He regarded Darnley closely. ‘They could have returned at a slower speed and escaped our attention, of course. Unfortunately, we can’t get any better satellite shots than these and the picture becomes very grainy if blown up any more than you see now. The satellites were never intended for close surveillance work and the American launched Landsats, which are, are rarely in position when the boats are speeding.’
‘Is that bad luck, or their good fortune?’ Darnley asked peering at the screen hoping to pick up something missed previously.
‘I image some opportunism was involved,’ Peters agreed. ‘Unless the ships are shy about advertising their superior speed.’
‘Well, it’s been a damn closely guarded secret up till now,’ Darnley agreed ruefully. He was impressed by what he could see. ‘I don’t know anything that’ll go that fast and is not military. Flat out a nuclear sub is fast and goes at speed for quite a long time.’ He paused. ‘A secret like that won’t remain one long, that’s for sure.’
‘Quite,’ Peters agreed with calm satisfaction. ‘But remember the southern seas are less populated than elsewhere on the globe and that sort of performance would remain hidden a lot longer there, wouldn’t it?’
‘Am I to infer that UniFreight are the owners of these speed boats?’ Darnley interposed doubtfully. It was the only conclusion he could draw from the presented evidence. He looked at Lesley and then at Peters, wondering who would answer.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Peters agreed. ‘It took an age but eventually I had a man in the right place to confirm that a ship we’d been tracking for a long while appeared in exactly the spot we calculated and there were no other contenders to confuse matters. The ship had to be one of the UniFreighter vessels; moreover, it had speed streaks all over the hull and superstructure; although, the crew hosed those off as the ship pulled into Cape Town.’
‘Cape Town?’ Darnley repeated. ‘What trade does South Africa do with Antarctica, if that’s where the ship came from?’
‘I can only imagine its dumping something. It sails to the Antarctic and disappears into the ice floes, usually at dusk and reappears some days later, usually well out to sea.’
‘Always in the same place? I mean, it’s not supplying a research station?’ Darnley asked. He wasn’t certain what research activity was taking place at the other end of the earth although he knew a number of countries maintained a presence there if only to establish a territorial claim should the area ever be carved up. Those places would want their bases supplied on a regular basis.
‘It’s difficult to say,’ Peters mused. ‘They don’t always go to a South African port. Some go to Australia, Perth or Melbourne and some to New Zealand. They seem delightfully catholic in their choice of destination, although they avoided the United States. We’ve yet to see one near there.’ Peters sat down at his desk without inviting his guest to do the same, even if there been any chairs to offer him. The nearest were three days march by the picture windows overlooking the river Thames and districts of south London. Lesley and he remained standing. ‘Put on the Upper Pacific video,’ he ordered as if justifying his lack of courtesy.
After Lesley changed the films, a new lower altitude and clearer picture appeared on the screen and from the magnified version it was possible to home almost to deck level and recognise individual items of equipment on the decks and superstructure. Disappointingly, all the ships were tracking along at normal acceptable speeds indicating that the exposures had been taken while the subjects were in high density shipping lanes and were taken from an aircraft, probably a helicopter.
While trying to identify some of the ship’s names Darnley asked for some shots of the sterns to be rewound and frozen so that he could inspect each one frame by frame.
‘Those last two ships, what were they called? ‘ he asked.
‘The Skua and the Storm Petrel,’ Lesley offered helpfully reading the plainly painted names on the sterns.
‘Yes, that’s right, so they are,’ Darnley agreed. He was not interested in the names but in something else. He turned to the watching Peters. ‘In my humble opinion, neither ship is driven by propeller propulsion,’ he declared firmly. ‘Judging by the flat, almost non-aerated wake, I’d say they were driven by water jet propulsion. Look, the wake is almost the same colour as the surrounding sea. There’s little air mixed into the turbulence to give it the white plume usually associated with thrashing propeller blades. Water jet propulsion is a fairly common method of propulsion for small boats in shallow water, but I’ve never seen it used in such a large vessel. Also, I suspect both are nuclear powered. See! There’s virtually no exhaust haze escaping from that single cosmetic funnel.’
Peters rose to his feet and looked closely at the evidence again as if the information was new to him. ‘You could be right,’ he agreed. ‘And that might confirm what our man in Yokosuka noticed.’
‘Would that be Takeda Nobunaga?’ Darnley asked curiously.
‘Oh, yes! You two know each other, don’t you?’ Peters nodded sagely before opening a file on his desk to read some notes written earlier. ‘Nobunaga reports that a ship, just finishing fitting out in Yokosuka has a curious drive configuration, but; although, the ship’s in dry dock he’s not been able to get a look at the middle section of the keel, nor at the driving end. He thinks the ship is fitted with a propeller design the company wants to keep a commercial secret until evaluated in extensive sea trials. Needless to say, waving a flag like that in front of any self-respecting journalist is asking him to poke around surreptitiously, especially when his requests for information and a professional look-see around the ship have all been firmly rejected. The owners obviously don’t want strangers prying under her skirts so to speak. What’s more, the dry dock and its approaches have been guarded night and day since the builders handed the hull over to the fitters.’
Peters looked up from reading his notes and fixed his grey eyes on Darnley as if challenging him to refuse an order he was about to give.
‘He suggests we send someone to look around and report what they find. He’s too well known locally and his curiosity has been legendary. He suggests that you join him. He reasons that while the guards watch him you could get a photograph, or with your greater professional erudition you might draw technical conclusions from what little can be seen.’
Peters shuffled a few more pages on to the desk and peered at them thoughtfully.
‘He also says the docks will be flooded in a few day’s time and that might end our chances of a scoop. No one else seems to have latched on to whatever’s going on there.’ He sat down and nodded to Lesley to indicate that he had finished with the video show. ‘I want you to take Miss Wainwright here, to Japan and contact Nobunaga. She researched this particular project and knows most of the important details and background. That’ll save you research time; she’s already done most of it.’ He grinned tightly at some personal joke between them. ‘It’ll also get her off my back for a few days. I want you to take the evening flight from Heathrow to Tokyo, travel to Yokosuka and find out what you can about the ship and about UniFreight. I think there’s a story there and if you can find out what they’re shuttling around in the southern seas, you know, chat up a few sailors that would also help to sell a few more copies.’ He turned to Lesley with a slight grin. ‘You might like that chore Miss. Meanwhile, I’ll chase up some company reports. They might tell us something, at least they might show the company’s core business and indicate if it’s profitable.’
Darnley puffed his cheeks and scowled in mild exasperation. ‘I’ve just flown across the Atlantic boss,’ he protested. ‘I have a stack of grotty laundry and no clean shirts. I need a few days at home to get sorted.’ He stopped speaking as he saw Peters’ grey eyes darken ominously. ‘But, I’ll get on it right away.’ he added weakly. ‘Just as well I’m not married, or I’d have a divorce on my hands and gross overwork addiction would be cited as the cause.’
‘I have the airline reservations and Takeda has fixed us up with accommodation at the other end,’ Lesley informed him brightly when Peters pointedly ignored the over stressed plea. She, at least, was delighted to be going on a field trip and especially to such an exotic destination as the Far East. She could not understand her new travelling companion’s apparent reluctance; although she knew travelling around the world was no new experience for him. In his pursuit of marine news he circumnavigated the globe many times a year chasing interesting and uninteresting commercial stories.
‘Keep in touch using the code words Miss Wainwright knows. We don’t want to alert the world until we give it a front page spread. Good luck.’
Peters stood up to shake Darnley’s hand again as though sending him on a mission into darkest Africa or across the withering machinegun fire in no-man’s land to gather information on the enemy’s strength, both missions having the unstated capacity to become one-way tickets. Peters had half turned back to his desk before the perfunctory handshake was completed, his mind all ready on other publication problems. It was noticeable that he did not extend the same valedictory consideration to his young research PA, nor did she expect it.
Perhaps the need for a little distance between them was more profound than it appeared on the surface Darnley mused cynically.
The brief handshake left Darnley not knowing whether to feel proud that his technical opinions were worth sending him to the other side of the world for, or whether he had been given a task that an office junior could have accomplished with bored ease. He suspected the latter, although if the paper’s Japanese correspondent felt the need for professional support perhaps there was more in the assignment than appeared obvious from the bare facts presented so far.
Outside in the annex Darnley looked at his watch. If he had to catch an evening flight out of Heathrow there was no time to go home and collect fresh clothes, even if he had any available. That was a definite benefit of marriage, he thought wryly; a wife would not want him to go out into the wide world without clean underwear and some nicely starched shirts. She would want to feel proud of his surgically clean underwear as they laid him out on a stretcher should he have an accident. With no wife he would have to ditch the soiled clothing in his suitcases and buy a fresh ensemble. He could do with some new shirts especially as they could be accounted as a legitimate business expense. This assignment was not of his making and he needed to appear clean and impeccably dressed to go about company business. He squared his shoulders resolutely as though relishing the verbal punch-up he knew such a claim would engender when it hit the accounts’ department. He shrewdly guessed the claim would go on the company ‘laugh a minute’ board as the most humorous try-on since expense accounts were invented, but he was damned if he was going to trail his suitcases full of dirty washing back through customs. Coming from a long trip abroad, he could smile weakly as the custom’s official rummaged disdainfully around in his dungy underwear; going out with the same malodorous contents would be unthinkable. What apology could he offer? He liked wearing soiled underwear, perhaps.
‘I guess we’ll be taking breakfast together after all,’ he chuckled as Lesley Wainwright joined him. ‘You knew that though, didn’t you?’ He looked up at a ceiling lighting fixture in a fit of mock exasperation. ‘God Almighty! Another twenty-four hours entombed in an aluminium sardine can and more shouting at bloody foreigners to make them understand English.’
‘You’ll have me to keep you company,’ Lesley assured him sweetly as if that compensation was enough for the imposition on his valuable time. ‘You’ll be pleased to know we fly over the pole, it’s quicker. We’ll be in Yokosuka for breakfast the day after tomorrow.’
‘And feeling like the inside of well used Wellington boot, I don’t doubt,’ Darnley grunted cynically.
‘Oh! Don’t be so grumpy Stuart. It’s all right for you seasoned travellers to be blasé about airliners and flying to distant parts of the globe, but think of us lesser mortals. All I ever see of the world is the same dreary stretch of road from Coulsden and back. After two years of that, looking at the inside of a Wellington boot would be a welcome relief.’
‘Not if it’s been worn by an Irish navvy who’s been using it as a toilet,’ Darnley retorted darkly still unconvinced why he should not hate the prospect of another day’s total high altitude tedium. He looked at her speculatively. He had travelled abroad with women reporters before; some were accommodating and good fun, others less so. He wondered which category Lesley Wainwright would fit into. She looked a bit young and green to be left in the hands of someone like him, but she seemed capable enough not to need too much wet nursing. ‘As you’ll be masquerading as a cub reporter, I suppose I’ll have to teach you the tricks of the trade and get you registered as a bone fide journalist,’ he sighed wearily.
Lesley nodded her vigorous agreement, eyes shining with evident delight and relief. She expected the usual violent male objections to sharing a prospective scoop with anyone, especially a young pup who was not even a qualified reporter. The Father of his Chapter would go ballistic if he guessed what was going on. The rabidly red union man would insist on a fully qualified journalist if support were thought essential in the first place. Darnley grinned to himself, a fully qualified reporter joining him might make the union happy, but he knew none as easy to look at as Miss Wainwright, nor as bedworthy if things became boring and they had to wait around a long time for something to happen. She would do him for this trip.
‘The first thing we have to do, Miss,’ he informed her seriously, ‘Is to trade the business class air tickets they’ve no doubt given us, into first class magic carpets. I’ve long since given up the dubious pleasure of travelling in close proximity to the common herd, although I can’t get my editor to agree that I’m special enough to deserve VIP treatment at his expense; the tight bastard,’ he grunted disgustedly. He was pleased to see she did not flinch at his use of immoderate language. She would have been a real pain if he had to bite his tongue each time he opened his mouth to express his feelings with a little more emphasis than might be appropriate for the occasion. ‘We also need to draw some expenses and for that, we need the financial department and that’s in the working part of the organisation. You ever been there?’ he demanded mockingly.
He wasn’t sure how she would perform in a truly working environment, nor if he should be revealing trade secrets to someone who worked so close to the very top management and who would be likely to treat the matter of inventive expense accounting with less discretion than it deserved.
‘To be taken into the loyal brotherhood of journalist we need to exchange blood and swear an oath never to reveal what you’re about to learn,’ he told her darkly.
‘How exciting,’ she laughed cynically. ‘Do we slash our wrists with a broken beer bottle and mingle our blood on the way to intensive care?’
‘Don’t mock female or the brotherhood’ll ban you to areas north of the Watford Gap,’ he grunted. ‘Come on! Let’s be gone to the Anglo-Saxon expletive factory and start your real life education.’
Instead of using the private lift they arrived in Lesley led him to a different section of lifts that took them to the more functional side of the organisation, a short enough journey if the right buttons were pressed. On the third floor, Darnley, with more assurance, for this was his territory, led her unerringly to the travel and financial section.
‘Hi! Sweetheart, we want an advance of expenses,’ he cheerfully informed the white bloused severely efficient Mrs May Drew behind her thief-proof sterile wired reinforced glass barrier.
‘You off again, Mr Darnley? I thought we gave you an advance to go to America a few days ago; we haven’t seen a claim for that yet.’
‘That’s because I haven’t put it in, darling; but I will, you can bet your sweet pearl on that. I can’t afford my style of luxurious living on the pay these Shylocks cross my palm with.’
‘How much do you want this time?’ Mrs Drew sighed indulgently reaching for a black covered folder while shaking her head resignedly as she opened it to that day’s business. They had too much latitude these journalists. She knew they fiddled their expenses outrageously, but could never prove anything.
‘Just three thousand pounds, each,’ Darnley told her blandly.
‘Three thousand pounds?’ Mrs Drew protested, snapping the black ledger shut decisively. ‘You know I can only authorise that amount for trips to the Far East and for special assignments, and that needs clearance.’ She looked defiantly between the two people in front of her wire mesh screen before deciding that she recognised Lesley from the executive side of the organisation. She gave her a warm sisterly smile. ‘Do you have that?’ she asked more contritely.
‘I haven’t, but my cub has. Show her, pup!’
‘Hey! Darnley, if you want a hack in the fork, keep that up,’ Lesley growled warningly. She glared at him balefully while opening the plastic folder she carried in one hand. From it she withdrew a signed a typed authorisation and handed it through an opening in the wired glass.
‘How do you want it?’ Mrs Drew asked after glancing at the paper to confirm its details and authenticity.
‘Three thousand in yen, two thousand in US dollars and the rest in sterling,’ Darnley informed her gravely. Drawing money was a serious business and that was the way Mrs Drew liked it treated. It worried her when recipients drew expenses and then bragged about how they were to be spent even before they had been justified. Some even suggested she helped them dispense it in true Bacchanalian fashion but she always politely refused such offers: although sometimes an attractive the suggestion would terminate her job in a welter of unsavoury favouritism charges. She liked the circumspect way Darnley treated his expenses. He always counted the money she handed over and folded it into a money belt or wallet. He was a nice man, considerate and obliging, a bit cheeky, but then they all were.
‘What do we want US dollars for?’ Lesley demanded in a suppressed stage whisper. ‘We’re going to Japan and why so much anyway? We’ll never spend that amount in the short time we’ll be away.’
While the clerk disappeared to collect the required currency Darnley turned with mock impatience to his doubtful travelling companion.
‘Who do you think is going to pay to upgrade our plane tickets?’ he demanded. ‘And who’s going to replace my wardrobe?’
‘Can you do that?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘It’s cheating, isn’t it, to buy personal things with company expenses, I mean?’
Darnley sighed again.
‘If you read the small print of the journalists’ charter you won’t find the word ‘cheat’ used in relation to the conduct of any of our affairs. The term is only ever applied to the subjects of our investigations. Everyone else cheats, we merely adapt and modify situations to suit our needs. Besides, all we need do is write a few PA articles while we’re away and they’ll pay for our ex’s.’
‘PA articles?’ she repeated, stunned by his blithe disloyalty. ‘We work for the Fortune and William’s publishers not the Press Association.’
Darnley clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Never let such ethical considerations stand in the way of making money, child,’ he chided. ‘In twenty years time, when your writing hand is knotted and crippled with arthritis and your liver looks and behaves like a shrivelled prune, who’s going to pay to keep you on the Algarve in the luxury you might not have been able to afford if you hadn’t done some serious peddling and padding in your youth?’
‘I’ll have a rich husband by then,’ she assured him tartly.
‘Not necessarily so, my child. Not in this liberated age you’ve fought so hard to bring upon yourselves. Anyway, your husband will more than likely be living off your immoral earnings. Trust me! I’ll put you wise to all the tricks of the trade and you won’t see the inside of a felon’s jail. I’ve never had to repay a penny of any advanced ex’s in my life and I always claim more than I’ve needed. There’s no point having a roving job like this if you use your own money to subsidise the way you want to live. Put your wages on the horses, or behind the bar if you think like that, but let the ex’s take the strain for everything else.’
‘Doesn’t the financial director say anything?’
‘When doesn’t he?’ Darnley grunted sourly. ‘It’s all a question of degree. He squeals if you post a private letter through the company mail system and he squeals when you plunder the ex’s, only a bit louder. You ignore both but offer to pay for the stamp.’
‘I see,’ Lesley murmured, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Under that shifty, shameless, dishonest, barratic and totally devious character of yours lies an unprincipled, cheating, unreliable, slippery opportunist just waiting to blossom into a worthless prevaricating, shabby, felonious blackguard.’
‘Heh! Have you been talking to my mother?’ he demanded with a boyish grin. ‘You sound just like the things she puts on my Christmas cards. Anyway, I invoke the fifth...’
His protestations were interrupted by the return of Mrs Drew with the currency. ‘Sign here and I want two legible signatures.’
Darnley signed with his usual assured aplomb while Lesley put her name on the acceptance form with some misgivings. Her usual expense drawings amounted to no more than a hesitant claim for taxicab expenses when sent on company business during the day. Three thousand pounds seemed an inordinate amount of money to draw without for a trip she promised herself she would enjoy. Drawing Company money to pay for her own self-indulgences seemed immoral.
‘Right, gimme the sterling and you keep the rest tucked down your bra. I like it nice and warm when I reach in to get it.’
‘Dammit,’ she protested angrily. ‘I’m going to make a list of all the sexist comments you make and have you strung up by the balls when we get back.’
‘There you are! All ready you have the makings of an expense paying article, ‘sexual harassment of cubs’, and how they like it.’