‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was five months ago.’
Why? he wondered. Was it the imminence of death, or
some latent tendency to spill himself he’d never
suspected before, just waiting for a captive audience
with no bra to get in the way? Since he’d walked away
from the hospital that afternoon in his private and
invisible bubble he’d never said anything to anybody
except to call Suzanne and tell her that Gerry was
dead, he would be home in three hours, and not to be
there.
People had asked occasionally, and he’d said he had
no children. Once or twice during that marathon drunk
some more convivial and inquisitive type had forgotten
and asked the question twice, to receive a brief smile
that left him with an impression his martini was
freezing to a lump of solid ice in his hand. Well, yes, I
did have a daughter, but her stepmother and I killed
her. How about a refill?
Her arms looked very soft and round on the rim of the
life ring. Somehow he wanted to touch them. Water
coursed down her face.
‘Did you have any?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Then, without knowing why, she added, 'I had
abortions instead. Two of them.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘They were induced. My husband didn’t want
children.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 154
‘I’m not a professional Angeleno,’ Goddard said, ‘but
don’t they have the pill in San Francisco?’
‘They were still experimental then.’ She said nothing
else. Well, it was an unlikely place to hold a seminar on
planned parenthood. But at least neither of them had
anybody else to worry about, and if they didn’t start
slopping over about each other— So why had he come
back here? He didn’t know.
‘I’m sorry I said that,’ he apologized. ‘It must have
been left over from some cocktail party. And God damn
your husband.’
She gave him a strange look, but said nothing. That
was understandable, however; he wasn’t making sense
even to himself. If he wanted to stamp his foot and stick
out his tongue at somebody, why not Lind, instead of
some anonymous dead man?
'I mean, it’s degrading,’ he said, still floundering. ‘For
Christ’s sake. I don’t know what I mean.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said gently. 'I don’t even know why
I said it.’
We gotta do something with this scene, fellas; it’s
fuzzy as hell and the dialogue stinks. Maybe what the
script meant was our boy Shrdlu—we got to find a
better name for him, let’s make a note of that—Shrdlu
is about to buy the John Donne bit, only he’s still all
futzed up with his old behavior patterns. This babe is
now the whole human race—I buy that—she’s
Everybabe, mother, sex object, sufferings, boobs, and
all, and he feels the old tidal pull. He wants to tell her
he’s sorry, or buy her a chocolate Easter egg, but the
best he can do is get mad because she was married to
some guy thinks a pregnancy is a clogged drain, you
send for a plumber.
There was a simultaneous flash of lightning and a
crackling explosion of thunder. Water beat at his face.
And after the squall would come the agony of the sun.
I’m not so sure, Mannie; this is just off the top of my
head, but I think what it is with Shrdlu is he’s scared
spitless.
* * *
And The Deep Blue Sea — 155
Gerry hadn’t entirely given up on the over-twenty-five
generation; there was still hope even if a good many of
them did seem to have the moral outlook of howler
monkeys. The Haight-Ashbury routine wasn’t for her,
with its promiscuity and pot; she was at UCLA,
fulminating against Rusk and the CIA and Dow
Chemical recruiters, even if it was her opinion that
blaming the latter for napalm was about as logical as
crusading against fever because it sometimes killed
people with malaria. You were still only treating the
symptoms.
He didn’t know what she’d come home for that
afternoon. He’d come back from the studio for some
notes he’d forgotten that morning in regard to the third
cut they were taking at The Salty Six in a last desperate
attempt to save what everybody was already calling ‘a
real nice picture, Harry.’
The studio had served notice they were going to drop
his option, but that wasn’t what was riding him; he was
pretty well fixed financially. It was simply the failure.
The picture was a bomb, and it was his baby from
beginning to end; he’d written the script and produced
it. On the surface it would seem to be a good comedy
situation, the misadventures of a sailing yacht in midocean
with a male captain and a five-girl crew, but
when it was in the can there wasn’t a belly laugh in it.
He should have known to begin with that there weren’t
five good comediennes in the industry, that if there
were they wouldn’t work together, and that, finally,
with all five of them in full cry after the one male within
two thousand miles and he the Godhead, Authority, the
Captain, nothing in Christ’s world, script, director, or
threat of death, was going to make them be funny; they
were going to be sexy. He had a headache, which he’d
had almost a month ago, and no amount of Miltown
could any longer retract and sheathe his nerve-ends.
Gerry was living on campus, when she wasn’t
working in Watts or picketing an induction center
somewhere, so she didn’t know yet how near he and
Suzanne were to calling it quits. Not, he thought, that
he’d known it had gone that sour, until he got to the
house. There was a strange car in the driveway, but he
And The Deep Blue Sea — 156
didn’t pay any attention to it; it was just one of
Suzanne’s friends. He went in through the front and
back to the den, but he couldn’t find the notes. Maybe
she’d know where they were; she was probably out by
the pool. He went out through the sliding glass door of
the living room, apparently just ahead of Gerry. He
hadn’t heard the Porsche pull into the driveway, so it
must have been while he was in the den.
He didn’t see Suzanne, but the shallow end of the
pool was around the corner of the master bedroom. He
stepped around it and almost onto two nude bodies on
the poolside mattress with the wet trunks and swimsuit
discarded beside it, Suzanne in an equestrienne
attitude with her eyes closed and beyond hearing
anything less than an amphibious assault, the
recumbent one a posturing and epicene writer named
Ransome he’d always assumed was a fag. Ransome’s
eyes were open, looking up at him; they kept growing
wider in horror as he made a strangled sound and
fought to escape, both of which could have been
interpreted as ardor until at last his voice returned and
he wailed, ‘Oh, good heavens!’ Suzanne’s eyes opened
and she looked around at him with the blank stare of
someone in a trance. It hadn’t been more than two
seconds.
In spite of the roaring in his head, his voice seemed
to be perfectly matter of fact. 'I don’t care if you lay this
double-gaited son of a bitch,’ he said, ‘but could you do
it somewhere else? I’d like to think the pool’s exclusive,
anyway.’
There was a gasp behind them then. He whirled, and
Gerry was staring at all three of them, her eyes sick
with loathing. She turned and ran. There was a snarl
from the Porsche out in the driveway, a scream of
rubber, and she was gone.
There was no use trying to catch her; he’d just have
to keep calling her at the dormitory tonight until he
could get her to come to the phone. Maybe he could
make her understand he’d been operating in shock
himself. He went back to the studio, and was in one of
the projection rooms two hours later when the call
And The Deep Blue Sea — 157
came from the California highway patrol. She’d spun
out through a guardrail on the San Diego Freeway.
Afterwards, when he walked away from the hospital
isolated from everything in his private world of silence,
all he had to hang onto was the knowledge she hadn’t
done it deliberately; she was too healthy-minded and
vital for that. She was just burning out her anger and
disgust by driving too fast, a kid hitting back blindly at
the only things available at the moment, the throttle of
an overpowered car and the speed laws promulgated by
the same can of worms.
* * *
It was a lovely face, he thought, with magnificent bone
structure, and he was conscious of a desire to tell her
this, but she was probably already convinced he was
some kind of nut. He was appraising the exquisite
effect of that slight tilt to the eyes when a little black
streak trickled briefly down her cheek like running
mascara and then disappeared under the pelting of the
rain. Now another oozed from the blond hair plastered
to her head. He was wondering at this when she said,
‘There’s soot or something in the rain. It’s on your
face.’
The ship, of course! It was the fallout from the fire.
He swung his head, searching the limits of the rainswept
void around them, but could see nothing except
the short and choppy sea fading away into the murk. In
the squall it could be blown for miles. But there was
more of it now. Sooty splotches were dotting her arms.
It had to be nearby. He turned, eyes slitted against the
spindrift and rain, and stared directly to windward.
Then he saw it—not the ship itself, but a faint and
shapeless wash of orange glowing through the gray. He
spun Karen around and pointed.
There was no way to tell how far away she was or in
what direction she was going. It was simply a color
without form or dimension, and they had no framework
or orientation except the wind, which could be veering
all around the compass. But it was growing brighter, he
thought, conscious of the pounding of his heart.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 158
Then they could see the flames and the dark clouds of
smoke, and the side of the ship began to materialize in
the mists at the limit of visibility. It was in profile, going
past them very slowly with scarcely any disturbance to
the swell or the confused and choppy sea set up by the
squall.
‘The engine’s stopped!’ Goddard said. ‘And she’s lost
most of her headway.’
Karen slipped out of the life ring. They each hooked
an arm through it and began to kick in the direction of
the ship. She was fading from view into the curtain
again, off to their right, but the glow was still visible
and he knew she was slowing all the time.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 159
12
They must be almost there, Antonio Gutierrez thought;
he should see the pretty blonde one any minute now.
One could see the ship was stopping, just as it had
when they had gone back to pick up the big American
on his rubber raft. The engine room telegraph meant
nothing to him, and he had no way of knowing the
Leander had been moving through the water only from
her own headway ever since Lind and the others had
run from the bridge.
But it was very difficult to see anything in all this
rain, and to make it worse nobody even appeared to be
watching for her. The officer still lay where he’d left
him in the house where the wheel was, and on the
decks below everybody was shouting and running
around dragging hoses as they shot streams of water
into the fire which still roared and threw flames as high
as the stack. He himself had started to leave the boat
deck once, before they discovered him up here where
he had no business, but the men with guns were around
the ladder below him, with no way for him to get past
them unnoticed, so he had remained. His white jacket
and trousers were drowned, and water ran out of his
hair and down into his eyes. But since he was the only
one watching, he would continue to watch.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 160
He went over to the rail between the starboard
lifeboats and looked down. She wasn’t there, but he
could see that the ship was barely moving now. He
searched the surface as far out as he could see through
the blown curtains of rain. Nada. He went over to the
portside and peered outward and then down. Truly,
they had not yet reached her. He went back to the door
of the wheelhouse and looked in. The officer was trying
to sit up. He was very weak and holding his head with
the dolor, and a little stream of blood ran down across
his face.
* * *
It was agonizingly slow and exhausting, trying to make
any headway against the wind and the steep-sided chop
it was kicking up into their faces, and they’d had to
stop several times and rest. Goddard didn’t know how
long they’d been struggling after the orange glow in
the rain, dragging the life ring. They’d almost lost it at
first. It had faded until they could scarcely see it, but
the ship had lost way rapidly as she continued to turn
and had finally come head up into the wind and sea.
She was dead in the water now, directly ahead. The
dark shape of the counter materialized below the
column of flame. In a few minutes they were under it.
They looked up at the railing of the poop far above
them, and then at each other in mutual admission of
what they’d both known all along. When they did reach
her, there was no way to get aboard.
To call out would be to attract the attention of Lind or
one of his men. They’d simply be shot in the water, or
ignored, to be left there when the ship got under way
again. If she did, Goddard thought, looking up at the
tower of flame and smoke blown back across the poop
by the force of the squall. If they didn’t get the fire
under control very soon, the Leander was doomed.
Lind and the bos’n would be back here directing the
fight, so their best chance of attracting the attention of
someone else would be to go forward. He gestured to
Karen, and they began kicking ahead along the black
steel cliff of her starboard side. They could hear
shouted orders and the roaring of the fire, but no one
And The Deep Blue Sea — 161
appeared at the bulwark above them. They passed the
well-deck, and were below the midships house.
* * *
Harald Svedberg climbed unsteadily to his feet,
assisted by Gutierrez. He was nauseated, his head was
splitting, and when he put a hand to his face, it came
away with blood on it. The ship was stopped, he noted,
they were still enveloped in the opaque fury of the
squall, and there was nobody else on the bridge except
this waterlogged and obviously insane Filipino
messman who appeared to have taken up residence on
it. There was a roaring sound in his ears, which he took
to be part of the headache until he became aware the
messman was speaking English now and was saying
something about a fire. He made it to the door of the
wheelhouse and looked aft, and the whole picture
clarified itself then as he remembered Mayr and that
other messman with their guns. Lind had taken over
the ship, that man he’d seen back there in the wake
had probably been thrown overboard, and now they
were all fighting the fire.
Their only hope was that Captain Steen was still alive
and that he might have a weapon of some kind. He
went in through the office to the captain’s stateroom.
The improvised oxygen tent was gone now, but Steen
still lay on the bunk in the same position he’d been in
last night, and his eyes were closed. Svedberg grabbed
a wrist. The flesh was warm, and after several hurried
and fumbling attempts he located a pulse. Steen was
alive, and still the legal master of the ship, whether
drugged or not. It seemed unlikely that a man of his
devout religious beliefs would own a gun, but captains
quite often did, and a forlorn hope was better than
none. He began yanking open drawers under the bunk,
and then the desk, conscious of the ominous sound the
fire was making and the fact that he had no idea how
many of the crew were involved in this with Lind. He
moved out into the office and began hurriedly
ransacking the desk there. Then the crazy messman,
dripping water like a sponge, ran in from the starboard
wing of the bridge.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 162
‘We have arrived,’ he said, pointing outward. ‘She is
right there.’
Svedberg pulled open another drawer and began
scattering its contents, paying no attention.
‘The man we saw too,’ Gutierrez said. ‘It is the big
American.’
What in the hell was he talking about, anyway? If the
skipper had a gun, it must be in the safe—Svedberg’s
head jerked around then. ‘What?’
‘The people who fell into the water.’
People? It was one man, and he would be miles astern
by now. But wait a minute! At the same time he’d
noticed the engine room telegraph was on STOP, he’d
automatically checked the rudder indicator. It was hard
over! He sprang to his feet and ran out onto the wing of
the bridge where Gutierrez was pointing. He looked
down and saw Goddard and Karen Brooke clinging to
the life ring right below them.
‘Come on!’ he ordered. Followed by Gutierrez, he ran
back through the wheelhouse to the chartroom, and
down the inside companionway.
In the confusion on the after end of the crew’s deck,
two fire hoses with a pair of sailors on each nozzle were
throwing hard jets of water into the inferno of number
three hold. The bos’n and Otto, armed with the Luger
and the .45, were directing them and holding back
excited crew members jammed into the entrance of the
passageway and clustered in gesticulating groups
forward of them. Lind and Mayr were standing at the
starboard corner of the deck house. Lind was now
carrying an automatic rifle, and they were speaking
rapidly in German, with Mayr doing most of the talking,
apparently giving orders. Lind nodded. He gestured to
the bos’n, and to a member of the black gang, the
twelve-to-four oiler, a thin, hard-faced man named
Spivak. They came over. Lind spoke to them, still in
German. Spivak nodded. The bos’n handed Spivak the
Luger, and received the automatic rifle Lind had been
carrying. Lind ran up the ladder to the boat deck.
In the wheelhouse, he lifted the phone off its hook,
and rang the wireless room. ‘Come up to the
And The Deep Blue Sea — 163
chartroom, Sparks,’ he ordered. He reset the selector
switch, and called the engine room.
‘The fire’s out of control,’ he said. ‘Secure the pump.
Kill the fires under the boilers, and bring your men out.
We’re going to abandon ship. Yes. Right now.’
He replaced the phone, strode into the chartroom and
began to work up their position by dead reckoning
since the star sights he’d got at dawn. Sparks came in.
Lind wrote out the latitude and longitude, and gave it to
him.
‘Here’s where we are right now,’ he said. ‘Give it to
the Phoenix, and tell them to keep coming at full
speed.’ Then, on a second sheet of paper, he wrote out
another position, and slashed a large X across it. ‘So
you won’t get ‘em mixed up,’ he said. ‘This is a fake,
two hundred miles to the east of us. After you sign off
with the Phoenix, get on the distress frequency, send
an SOS, and say we’re afire and it’s out of control. As
soon as you’re sure somebody’s got it, shut down, and
smash the transmitter, just in case there may be
another radioman aboard.’
Sparks looked at him, and then away. ‘I don’t like
this,’ he said.
Lind’s eyes were dangerous. ‘You don’t what?’
‘It’s thirty men. This is not what I agreed to do.’
Lind caught the front of his shirt and pulled him
close. ‘When the Phoenix picks us up,’ he said, ‘if they
didn’t get this message and hear the SOS, I’ll
disembowel you alive, on deck in front of everybody.
You ever see it done to a shark?’
* * *
Goddard and Karen Brooke held onto the life ring in the
rain and blown spindrift and continued to stare
anxiously up at the wing of the bridge. It had been two
or three minutes since they’d seen Antonio Gutierrez,
and then the third mate, look down at them and
disappear. They expected any moment to see Lind or
one of his men. Then Goddard sighed softly. Svedberg
had appeared at the bulwark in the forward well-deck
And The Deep Blue Sea — 164
just at the break of the midships house. He dropped
over a roll of line which uncoiled as it fell. They swam
over to it. Goddard threw a bowline in the end of it.
‘When I get up,’ he told Karen, ‘put your legs through
here and sit in it. We’ll haul you up.’
She nodded. He caught the line, planted his feet
against the steel plates, and began to walk up the side,
hauling himself hand over hand. He grabbed the
bulwark, got a knee on it, and dropped down on deck.
No one was in sight except Svedberg and Gutierrez, but
they had to hurry. Somebody could spot them any
minute. Just beyond them, the steel door into the
enclosed shelter deck was open.
‘Take off your jacket,’ he said to Gutierrez. The other
looked at him blankly. ‘She’s got no clothes on,’ he
explained. He leaned over the bulwark with Svedberg,
and they began to hand her up. They lifted her over the
rail, nude except for the nylon pants. He grabbed the
jacket from the messman and passed it back to her as
they slipped along the bulkhead toward the open door.
There were no shouts of discovery. They were inside
then, and she had the jacket on and was buttoning it. It
covered her mid-thigh. Svedberg pulled the steel door
shut and dogged it. They were safe for the moment,
here below the crew’s deck where there were only
storerooms and lockers and the cubicle where they’d
sewn Mayr into the burial sack, but the air was thick
with smoke and the odor of blistering paint, and the
deck was hot to their bare feet. They were all dripping
water, and Goddard was conscious then that he had on
nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.
Karen finished buttoning the jacket and smiled at
Gutierrez. ‘Thank you, Antonio.’ The youth nodded and
blushed, and looked away from her, self-conscious
about her legs.
‘He saved you,’ Svedberg said. He told them quickly
what had happened on the bridge. There was still a
little blood mixed with the water running out of his
hair. ‘After they slugged me, he put the wheel hard
over himself, and watched for you.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 165
Goddard grinned as he caught the messman by the
shoulder and shook it. ‘What some people will do to
collect for a haircut. Thanks, Antonio.’
‘They threw you over?’ Svedberg asked.
‘Yes,’ Goddard said. He told them briefly about
Madeleine Lennox and Rafferty and the fight on the
promenade deck.
‘Do you know how many there are besides Lind?’
Svedberg asked.
‘No,’ Goddard said. ‘The bos’n, Otto, Karl—the dining
room steward—and one of the black gang. But there
might be more. And they’ll all have guns.’
‘And there’s not another one on the ship as far as I
know,’ Svedberg said. He told them about searching
the captain’s quarters, and that Steen was still alive. ‘I
don’t know what they’re going to do about the ship and
the rest of the crew, but if any of them see you, you’ll
just go right over the side again. You’ll have to stay out
of sight until I can find out what’s happening.’
‘Have you got a radio license?’ Goddard asked.
‘No. Hardly any mates do any more, but I’ll ask the
second. And see if any of the engineers might have a
gun. You won’t be able to take this smoke very long, so
I’ll try to get you out of here. I’ll come back or send
word.’
Svedberg and Gutierrez hurried down the
passageway toward the ladder to the crew’s deck at the
after end of it, almost invisible in the smoke by the time
they reached it. Goddard shifted uncomfortably, and
saw Karen do the same. The deck was burning their
feet.
‘How is the smoke getting in here?’ Karen asked. At
the far end, the door to the after well-deck was closed.
‘Most of it’s coming from here,’ Goddard said. ‘It’s
the paint scorching on the deck and bulkheads back
there. The tween-decks of number three probably runs
in under the after end of this deck.’ And when the paint
got hot enough, he thought, it would burst into flame.
Then the fire would be loose in the whole midships
house above.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 166
The smoke was stinging their throats and making
breathing difficult. Their eyes were watering. And they
had to find something to stand on before their feet were
blistered. He looked around. On their left, the engine
room casing ran all the way down the passageway to
the thwartships passage at the after end. Barset’s big
refrigerator and chill room were on their right, but they
were both locked, as were the next two doors that he
could see. But the one beyond that was open. He
caught Karen’s arm and they ran toward it, the deck
growing hotter with every step they went aft. If they
didn’t find anything, they’d have to come back.
It was the small storeroom, he thought, where they’d
stitched Mayr into the burial sack, and he remembered
the wooden door on the two horses where the ‘body’
had lain. That would be perfect. He didn’t remember
Krasicki until they’d shot inside the doorway and there
on the same platform was the canvas mummy in its
familiar, grisly shape. He saw Karen shudder, and they
were turning to run back out when he caught sight of
the bolt of canvas on the deck. They leaped over, and
stood on it, conscious only of the relief of getting off the
burning steel.
There was the sound of a shot somewhere above
them. They exchanged an uneasy glance, but said
nothing. Then just above their heads there were
footsteps, a great many of them. Goddard oriented
himself with relation to the rest of the midships
structure. The men would be going forward along the
port side of the crew’s deck. They were still passing.
Were they fleeing the fire? The smoke was growing
worse. His throat and nostrils burned with it, and he
was seized with a fit of coughing. The temperature
must be more than a hundred and twenty degrees.
Sweat ran into his eyes. The footsteps ceased, and
there was silence except for the rushing sound of the
fire.
‘They were going forward,’ Karen said. ‘Do you
suppose it has started to spread?’
'I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But let’s get out of this
trap while we can make it to the ladder. If we can.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 167
He motioned for her to wait while he leaped to the
door and hopped from one foot to another as he looked
down the passageway to his right. The ladder was half
obscured by smoke now, and for half the distance this
way the paint on the steel deck plates was bubbling. It
would stick to their feet and take the skin off. He
turned back to Karen.
‘Let me have the canvas,’ he said. ‘Sit there for a
minute.’ He gestured to the door supporting Krasicki’s
body in its burial sack. She perched on the edge of it
and lifted her feet. He grabbed up the bolt of cloth and
leaped back into the passageway. Holding one end, he
threw it toward the ladder. It unrolled to within a few
feet of it.
He ran down the strip and kicked the remainder of
the bolt. He could feel his feet blistering as he bounded
the remaining distance and leaped to the ladder treads.
He could see no one above him. ‘All right,’ he called
softly. Karen emerged and ran toward the ladder. He
watched to see she made it all right, and went on up.
There was no one in the passageway, and no sound
except that of the rain and the roaring and crackling
noises of the fire. That was odd. She came up behind
him. They looked at each other, puzzled. They could
duck into the hospital, which was just forward of them,
but the silence worried him. The doorway opening onto
the after end of the deck was less than six feet from
them, but nobody had passed it, and there were no
footsteps or voices from the men fighting the fire. He
gestured for her to stay where she was, tiptoed over to
it, and peered out. There was nobody fighting the fire.
There was nobody in sight at all.
He beckoned, and she slipped up beside him in the
doorway. The fire roared on unchecked from number
three hatch, flames and boiling black smoke blowing off
to starboard now in the wind, and they could feel the
searing waves of heat on their faces. The steel hatch
coaming glowed a dull red, and the deck all around
gave off waves of steam as the rain lashed across it and
vaporized on contact. At each corner of the deck up
here, next to the ladders, was an abandoned fire hose,
no water at all coming from the nozzles.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 168
‘If they’d abandoned ship,’ Karen said, ‘they’d have
gone up. They were going forward.’
They wheeled and ran along the deserted
passageway. The rooms and fo’c’s’les were all empty.
At the forward end, beyond the thwartships passage,
were two messrooms. They were empty too, but there
were portholes along the forward bulkhead. They
hurried into the second one and around the long single
table. Slipping up to separate portholes, they peered
out cautiously, and saw at once why nobody was
fighting the fire.
The forward well-deck below them was full of men
standing in the blown curtains of rain. They were
staring aft in the attitudes of animals at bay, some up at
the bridge and others apparently at someone or
something on this deck and just off to the right of
where they were. It was the whole crew, Goddard
thought. At a rapid glance he picked out Barset, Mr.
Pargoras, Svedberg, the second mate, Gutierrez, two of
the engineers, several of the sailors he knew by sight,
and even two of the black gang who must be on watch
now, wearing singlets and sweat rags.
Karen had moved around with the left side of her face
against the bulkhead, peering out as far to the right as
she could. She stepped back, looked at Goddard, and
stabbed a finger in that direction. He looked. Otto was
standing just beyond them where he could cover both
ladders, an automatic rifle propped on the rail in front
of him.
He beckoned to Karen, and they slipped back out into
the passage. Just as they emerged they heard a noise
somewhere on the starboard side as though somebody
had dropped a pail. There was an instant of silence, and
then a groan Goddard slipped on to the corner, and
peered down the starboard passageway. Ahead of him
was an open cleaning-gear locker. Sprawled on his side
in front of it was a man clad only in dungarees and
slides, near his head the empty pail he had apparently
dislodged from a shelf while trying to pull himself erect.
Goddard beckoned to Karen and ran back to him. He
knelt and turned him on his back.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 169
It was Koenig, the AB who’d given him the sport shin.
He had apparently been shot through the chest. Blood
was all over his rib cage and abdomen, and on the
deck, and more bubbled from his nostrils and trickled
from the corner of his mouth. Karen winced and closed
her eyes for an instant, but she picked up his legs while
Goddard caught him by the shoulders and they got him
into a lower bunk in the fo’c’s’le next door. Goddard
turned his head and propped it on a pillow so he
wouldn’t strangle, cursing silently because there was
nothing else he could do. Even a surgical team couldn’t
save him without several liters of blood. He’d lost too
much, and was slipping into shock.
Goddard knelt beside him. ‘Who did it?’ he asked.
‘The bos’n.’ Koenig started to choke. Goddard turned
him back on his side and snatched at part of the blue
bedspread to wipe the blood from his mouth. He took a
gasping breath. 'I tried to hide—in the locker. To get
behind him—get the gun. I knew what they were going
to do.’
‘What?’ Goddard asked.
Koenig gave no indication he had heard. His eyes
closed, but he went on with his halting speech. He’d
overheard Mayr and Lind speaking in German while the
others were fighting the fire.
'I am German,’ he said, with another fight for breath.
‘Mayr was telling Lind what to do. Stop the fire pump—
let her burn. Get a cutting torch from the engine room
—wreck all the lifeboats except one. Send an SOS—
with a phony position. Spivak—oiler—’ Koenig’s voice
stopped.
‘What about Spivak?’ Goddard asked.
“In the engine room—opening the sea intakes.’
Goddard looked up at Karen. ‘Thirty men,’ she
whispered. ‘Who could do it?’
‘Koenig.’ Goddard leaned close to him. ‘Koenig, can
you hear me? You say Mayr was giving the orders. Was
it military? You know—as if he were Lind’s superior
officer?’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 170
‘No.’ Koenig’s voice was barely audible. ‘It was
worse. He is Lind’s father.’
That answered a lot of things, Goddard thought,
including Karen’s question: Who could do it? Blood
would tell. And it didn’t matter in the slightest how
much, or whose.
Koenig’s eyes opened wide for an instant as though
he were watching something terrible he was powerless
to escape. Did you see it coming for you in those last
few minutes, Goddard wondered, even when you were
in shock? He was trying to speak again, but his voice
was only a whisper, and Goddard had to lean down
almost to his lips to hear. ‘Oh, God. Another one.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 171
13
The only thing they had going for them, Goddard
thought, was that Lind didn’t know they were aboard.
That wasn’t much, considering the time margin they
were operating with. In a half hour, or perhaps less, the
fire was going to spread into the shelter deck and come
roaring up through the whole midships house. The
engine room was being flooded, and while he didn’t
know how fast it came in, you would reach a point of no
return as soon as you could no longer get at the valves
to stop it, and the pumps and the boiler fireboxes were
flooded.
Koenig was still fighting for life, his breathing a
series of rattling gasps it was awful to hear and which
couldn’t go on for more than a few minutes longer.
They didn’t want to leave him, but he was already
unconscious, and time was flying past them. Goddard
nodded to Karen, and they went out and hurried aft
along the passageway.
She shuddered once, and drew a hand across her
face. Then she asked, ‘What can we do?’
'I want one of those guns,’ he said. His voice was
calm, but when she looked around at him she saw in his
eyes that same feral yearning they’d had there in
Madeleine Lennox’ cabin before he went for Rafferty.
‘One gun? Against six of them?’ she asked.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 172
They had reached the doorway opening onto the after
deck. Opposite it was one of the steel doors into the
engine room casing. He motioned for silence, stepped
over, and quietly pulled it open a few inches. He peered
in at the catwalks around the great mass of the main
engine and the tracery of steel ladders leading down to
the floor plates thirty feet below. On a grating halfway
down where he could watch all the ladders was a man
with a handgun shoved into the waistband of his
dungarees. That would be Spivak, standing guard over
the opened sea intakes. There was no way to reach him
except down the ladders right in front of him. Scratch
that one.
He looked down again. With the Leander’s slow roll, a
wave of water several inches deep was sweeping across
the floor plates. It was already out of the bilges. He
softly closed the door, and as he turned he saw the
smoke swirling up around the ladder from the shelter
deck where he and Karen had emerged a few minutes
ago. It was coming at them from both directions.
He was thinking swiftly. The others? Lind, Mayr, the
bos’n, and Karl would be on the boat deck, all armed,
and only two of them, at most, busy cutting the bottoms
out of the other three boats with the torch. Simple
suicide. Lind alone, unarmed, could probably kill him
with his bare hands. Otto? With a steel bulkhead behind
him and fifty feet of open deck on each side, he was
impregnable. And unless he was removed, they were all
finished.
‘What could you do with a gun?’ she asked again.
‘Against all six of them?’
‘Kill Otto,’ he said.
She understood what he meant. They had to get the
crew back here. Even if he could get into the engine
room, he didn’t have the faintest idea how to shut off
the sea intakes or start the fire pump, to say nothing of
the fact he wouldn’t recognize either of them if he fell
over them.
‘But as soon as they realize what Lind’s doing,’ she
protested. ‘Otto won’t be able to keep them there.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 173
He could until it was too late, Goddard thought, but
there wasn’t time to explain. They knew already. Of the
thirty, Otto could stop only the first six or eight, but
who was going to be in the first six or eight? Until he
emptied his clip, nobody would get to the top of either
of those ladders. That also meant the second wave had
to climb over a ladder full of wounded men, with Lind
and Mayr shooting straight down on top of them from
the bridge.
Sparks! He was the only one who’d be alone and
where there was a chance to reach him. He grabbed
Karen by the arm and ran her down the passage to the
door of the hospital. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘Bolt the door,
and don’t open it until you know it’s me.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘The radio shack. I’ll only be a few minutes.’
He went up the inside companionway on the run,
trying to visualize where the wireless room would be.
The cage for the antenna lead-in was on the starboard
side of the boat deck near the bridge, so it should be
forward in the starboard passageway. He emerged into
the thwartships passage of the officers’ deck and
turned right, going softly now, and listening. As he
turned the corner, he heard a noise ahead of him, but it
wasn’t a radio receiver or the staccato chirping of
continental morse; it sounded like a wrecking crew at
work, metallic crashings and a splintering of glass.
It was coming from the second door in front of him.
He eased up to it and peered in. The radio console with
its main, emergency, and high-frequency transmitters,
its receivers, and its desk and typewriter stand, was in
the middle of the room, facing the door. Sparks had all
three transmitters tilted out in the servicing position
with their circuits and components exposed, and was
standing with his back to the door, using a fire ax to
reduce them to electronic hash.
Lind never missed a bet, Goddard thought. He should
have realized a mind like that would never overlook
even the possibility there might be another qualified
operator aboard. He sighed, stepped softly up behind
the Latin on bare feet, and slugged him over a kidney.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 174
Sparks slumped in agony, and dropped the ax. Goddard
twisted an arm behind his back and ran him across the
room into the steel bulkhead. His knees buckled.
Goddard flipped him over onto his back even as he was
collapsing, and he lay looking up, dazed but still
conscious, the dark eyes eloquent with hatred. Kneeling
beside him, Goddard patted his pockets. They were
empty.
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