‘Watch him,’ said Tozier to Hellier, and went off fast. When he returned he found the skipper bellowing into the loudhailer under the supervision of Hellier and already the crew was assembled. As he had thought, there were few of them; the ship was undermanned.
‘I’d give a lot to know if that’s all,’ he said, looking down at them.
Warren came forward with Parker at his side. ‘This is Dan Parker; he might be able to tell us.’
Tozier smiled. ‘Glad to know you.’
‘I’m even gladder to know you,’ said Parker. He looked over the deck. ‘That’s all—but I don’t see the engine-room staff. If they stop the engines we’re dead mutton.’
‘They couldn’t have heard the shot,’ said Tozier. ‘But we can soon find out.’ He rang for full speed on the telegraph and it clanged obediently. ‘No one has told them yet.’
‘If we get them out of there I can handle the engines,’ said Parker. He looked around. ‘Where’s Mike?’
‘I haven’t seen him,’ said Warren. ‘Where was he?’
‘In his cabin, I think.’
‘We’ll find him later,’ said Tozier impatiently. ‘What can we do with the crew? We have to secure the ship before anything else.’
‘There’s an empty hold,’ said Parker. ‘They’ll be safe enough in there.’
‘Nick, you and Hellier go along with Parker and see to it—and take this lot with you.’ Tozier indicated the ship’s officers. ‘They won’t give you any trouble; they look a pretty poor lot to me.’ He pulled at his lower lip. ‘I hope Tom is doing all right, though.’
Warren helped secure the crew and herded them into the hold, and then the three of them took over the engineroom. He left Parker and Hellier down there, put the three engineers with the rest of the crew, and then looked up to the bridge. Tozier leaned over the rail. ‘We’ve got a problem—come up here.’
‘What about this lot?’
‘I’ll send Abbot down—we found him. Leave him your gun.’
Abbot came down and gave Warren a cheery grin. ‘A nice bit of fun and games,’ he said. ‘I was very glad to see the gang.’
Warren gave him the gun. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘That’s a beauty—I’ll leave your pals up there to tell you.’
Warren went up to the bridge and found Follet on the wheel with Tozier close by. Tozier said quickly, ‘We have Eastman bottled up, but it’s a stand-off. Tom is keeping the cork in the bottle down there, but it leaves us with a problem. He’s down where the torpedoes are, so we can’t get rid of the heroin until we winkle him out.’
‘He went to protect the loot,’ said Follet, ‘It’s my guess he’s expecting to be rescued. The crew can’t do it, but Delorme has Fuad’s yacht and she might chase us.’
Warren dismissed that eventuality. ‘What arrangements have been made for firing the torpedoes?’
Tozier pointed. ‘Those two buttons near the helm. Press those and you fire two torpedoes.’
Warren nodded. We can get rid of half the heroin.’ He took a step forward.
Tozier grabbed him. ‘Steady on. Your man, Parker, has been working too hard. All the torpedoes are live. He found some explosives—each warhead is carrying a hundred and eighty pounds of TNT.’
‘Short of a hydrogen bomb it’ll be the most expensive bang in history,’ said Follet.
Warren was perplexed. ‘But what’s the problem?’
Tozier stared at him. ‘Christ, man; you can’t shoot live torpedoes indiscriminately in the Mediterranean—especially these. They have an eighteen-mile range, so Abbot says.’ He pointed towards the horizon. ‘How the hell do we know what’s over there? We can’t see eighteen miles.’
Follet laughed humorously. ‘Last I heard the US Sixth Fleet was in these parts. If we knock off one of Uncle Sam’s aircraft carriers that’s as good a way of starting World War Three as I know.’
Warren thought about it. ‘Are there any uninhabited islands around here? Or rocks or shoals? Anything we can shoot at without killing anything else except fish?’
‘A nice way to cause an international ruction,’ said Tozier. ‘You fire torpedoes at any rocks in the Arab world and the Israelis are going to be on the short end of the stick. Things are touchy enough now and a few bangs around here could really start something.’
‘And we’d still have half the stuff left on our hands,’ said Follet. ‘Maybe all of it. If Eastman is smart enough he’ll have ripped out the firing connections.’
‘So we have to get him out of there,’ said Warren. ‘I think we’d better have Parker in on this—he knows the ship.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Follet. ‘I’m still hanging on to this goddam steering-wheel, so would someone mind telling me where we’re going?’
‘Does it matter?’ said Tozier impatiently.
‘Metcalfe reckons it matters,’ said Follet. ‘He saw Jeanette Delorme on the quay when we left—and she saw him. She’ll reckon it’s a hi-jacking and Tom says she’ll come after us loaded for bear.’
‘So?’
‘So we can stick to the coast or we can head out to sea. She has the same choice. What do you want to do?’
‘I’d sooner stick to the coast,’ said Tozier. ‘If she caught us at sea where it wouldn’t matter how many guns she popped off I wouldn’t give much for our chances, especially if that yacht is loaded to the gunwales with her cutthroats.’
‘Haven’t you thought that she’ll think that you’ll think that and automatically come along the coast and catch us anyway? I’ll bet she can see us right now.’
‘How the hell do I know what she’ll think?’ burst out Tozier. ‘Or what any other woman will think?’
‘There’s a way around that,’ said Follet. ‘Here, take the wheel.’ He stepped on one side and produced a pen and a notebook. ‘Now, if we go along the coast and she searches out to sea our survival is one hundred per cent—right?’
‘Until she catches on,’ said Warren.
‘We could get clear away,’ argued Follet. ‘And the same applies to the situation vice versa—we go to sea and she goes along the coast. Andy, what chance of survival would you give us if she caught us at sea?’
‘Not much,’ said Tozier. ‘Say, twenty-five per cent.’
Follet noted it down. ‘And if she caught us on the coast?’
‘That’s a bit better—she couldn’t be as noisy. I think we’d have a good chance of coming out—say, seventy-five per cent.’
Follet started to scribble rapidly and Warren, looking over his shoulder saw that he was apparently working out a mathematical formula. Follet finished his calculation, and said, ‘What we do is this. We put four pieces of paper in a hat—one marked. If we pick the marked paper we go to sea; if not, we stick to the coast.’
‘Are you crazy?’ demanded Tozier. ‘Would you leave something like this to chance?’
‘I’m crazy like a fox,’ said Follet. ‘How much have I won from you at the coin-matching game?’
‘Nearly a thousand quid—but what’s that got to do with it?’
Follet pulled a handful of loose change from his pocket and thrust it under Tozier’s nose. ‘This. There are eight coins here—three of them dated 1960. When I matched coins with you I pulled one of these at random from my pocket; if it was dated 1960 I called heads—if not, I called tails. That was enough to give me my percentage—my edge; and there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it.’
He turned to Warren. ‘It’s from game theory—a mathematical way of figuring out the best chances in those tricky situations when it’s a case of if I do that you’ll know I’ll do it but I do the other thing because I know the way you’re thinking and so it goes on chasing its goddam tail. It even gives the overall chances—in this case a little over eighty-one per cent.’
Tozier looked at Warren with a baffled expression. ‘What do you think, Nick?’
‘You
did
lose money consistently,’ said Warren. ‘Maybe Johnny has a point.’
‘You’re goddam right I have.’ Follet stooped and picked up a uniform cap from the deck into which he dropped four coins. ‘Pick one, Nick. If it’s dated 1960 we go to sea—if it’s one of the others we stick to the coast.’
He held the cap out to Warren, who hesitated. ‘Look at it this way,’ said Follet earnestly. ‘Right now, until you pick a coin, we don’t know which way we’re going—and if
we
don’t
know how in hell can Delorme figure it? And the mix of coins in the hat gives us the best chance no matter what she does.’ He paused. ‘There’s just one thing; we do what the coin tells us—no second chances—that’s the way this thing works.’
Warren put out his hand, took a coin, and held it on the palm of his hand, date side up. Tozier inspected it. ‘1960,’ he said with a sigh. ‘It’s out to sea, God help us.’
He spun the wheel and the bows of the
Orestes
swung towards the west.
Tozier left Warren and Follet on the bridge and went down to the engine-room to consult Parker. He found him with an oilcan strolling amid shining and plunging steel piston rods at a seeming risk to life. Hellier was standing by the engineroom telegraph.
He beckoned to Parker, who put down the oilcan and came over to him. ‘Can you leave here for a while?’ he asked.
‘We’re a bit short-handed,’ said Parker. ‘But it wouldn’t do any harm for a short time. What do you want?’
‘Your friend Eastman has barricaded himself in the torpedo compartment in the bows. We’re trying to get him out.’
Parker frowned. ‘That’ll be a bit dicey. I had a watertight bulkhead put in there in case anythin’ went wrong wi’ the tubes. If he’s behind that it’ll be bloody impossible to get him out.’
‘Haven’t you any suggestions? He’s locked himself in and we can’t do a damn’ thing about the heroin.’
‘Let’s go an’ see,’ said Parker briefly.
They found Metcalfe crouched at the end of a narrow steel corridor, at the other end of which was a solid steel door clamped tightly closed. ‘He’s behind that,’ said
Metcalfe. ‘You can open it from this side if you care to try but you’ll get a bullet in you. He can’t miss.’
Tozier looked up the corridor. ‘No, thanks; there’s no cover.’
‘The door’s bullet proof too,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I tried a couple of shots and found it was more dangerous for me than for him the way things ricochet around here.’
‘Have you tried to talk him out?’
Metcalfe nodded. ‘He either can’t hear me or he doesn’t care to answer.’
‘What about it, Parker?’
‘There’s only one way into that compartment,’ said Parker. ‘And it’s through that door.’
‘So it’s a stand-off,’ said Tozier.
Metcalfe gave a wry grimace. ‘It’s more than that. If he can keep us out of there until the ship is retaken then he’s won.’
‘You seem a bit worried about that. Delorme has to find us first and taking us won’t be easy. What have you got on your mind?’
Metcalfe swung round. ‘When I took that stuff to Fahrwaz there were a few things left behind—a couple of heavy machine-guns, for instance.’
That’s bad,’ said Tozier softly.
‘And that’s not the worst of it. She tried to flog four 40-millimetre cannons to Fahrwaz, but he wasn’t having them at any price. They swallowed ammo too quickly for his liking, so she got stuck with them. If she’s had the gumption to stick one of those aboard that yacht, she’d have plenty of time to jack-leg a deck mounting. All she’d need is steel and a welding torch, and mere’s plenty of both back in that shipyard.’
‘You think she might?’
‘That little bitch never misses a trick,’ said Metcalfe violently. ‘You should have let me get her back in Beirut.’
‘And we’d have lost the heroin. We’ve got to get rid of that dope. We can’t let her have it.’
Metcalfe jerked his thumb up the corridor. ‘Be my guest—open that door.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Parker. ‘Maybe we can flush him out.’
‘You mean flood the compartment,’ said Tozier. ‘Can it be done?’
‘Not water,’ said Parker. He raised his head and looked upwards. ‘On the foredeck just above us there’s the anchor winch. It’s run by steam taken from the boiler. I reckon I could take a tapping off the line an’ run it down here.’
‘And what would you do with it?’
‘There’s provision for fumigatin’ the ship—gettin’ rid o’ rats. There’s a gas line goin’ into each compartment an’ I’m pretty sure the one leadin’ into there is open. I find the other end an’ connect my line to it. A bit o’ live steam will bring Jack Eastman out o’ there like a scalded cat.’
‘You’ve got nice ideas,’ said Metcalfe. ‘Humane, too. How long will it take?’
‘Dunno; an hour—maybe two. It depends on what I find topside.’
‘Get cracking,’ said Metcalfe.
Jamil Hassan was a methodical man and it was unfortunate that the bureaucratic organization he worked for was unyielding in its procedures and tended to be compartmentalized. The news did not reach his office at all and it was only because he decided to have a mid-morning cup of coffee that he heard anything about it.
On his way out he passed the duty officer’s desk and automatically asked, ‘Anything happening?’
‘Nothing much, sir; just the usual. There was one odd
thing—a report of a shooting on board a ship leaving Elgamhûrîa Shipyard.’
A young policeman who was writing a report close by pricked up his ears. Hassan said, ‘What was odd about it?’
‘By the time it was reported and we got a man down there the ship was outside territorial waters.’ The duty officer shrugged. ‘There was nothing we could do about it.’
The young policeman sprang to his feet. ‘Sir!’
Hassan eyed him. ‘Yes?’
‘Last night a man called Andre Picot was brought in for questioning—on your instructions, sir.’
‘Well?’
The young man fidgeted a little. ‘It’s…it’s just that I saw Picot leaving El-gamhûrîa Shipyard three days ago. It may not be…’
Hassan waved him quiet, his brain assessing facts like a card-sorter. Heroin—a large quantity of heroin—had left Iran heading westward; Picot, a suspected smuggler, had been questioned—unsuccessfully; Picot had been seen at Elgamhûrîa Shipyard; a shot—or shots—had been fired on a ship in El-gamhûrîa Shipyard; the ship had promptly left Lebanese waters. It was not much, but it was enough.
He picked up the telephone, dialled a number, and said, ‘Bring in André Picot for questioning, and get me a car.’
Thirty minutes later he was standing on the quay in the shipyard interrogating the officer who had made the investigation. ‘And the ship left after the shot was fired?’