Diamond Hunters Part 18

"I know nothing about-" Hugo started again.

"You're wasting time." Brusquely Tracey brushed his protests aside. "Take me out to Kingfisher."

"Your brother - where is he? Why didn't he came?" Tracey had antic.i.p.ated the question. "Lance beat him up badly. He's in hospital. He sent me." Suddenly Hugo was convinced.

"Gatt!" he swore. "What are we going to do? This storm I may be able to get you out there, but I won't be able to leave Wild Goose. My crew can't handle her in this sea.

What can you do on your own?" "Get me out there," said Tracey.

"Get me aboard Kingfisher and you can come back. The Italian, Caporetti, he and I will take care of Lance. In this storm a man can be washed overboard very easily."

"ja." Hugo's face lit with relief.

"That's it. The Italian!" And he reached for his oilskins hanging on the bulkhead.

As he pulled them on over his pyjamas he looked at Tracey with new respect.

"You," he said. "I didn't know you were in it."

"Did you think my brother and I would stand by and let a stranger take our birthright from us?" Hugo grinned. "You're a cool one, I'll say that for you.

You had me fooled." And he went out on to the bridge.

Johnny Lance and Sergio Caporetti stood shoulder to shoulder on Kingfisher's bridge. The s.h.i.+p was taking the big green seas over her bows, solid walls of water, and the wind whipped spray that spattered the armoured gla.s.s windows of the bridge house.

Kingfisher had slipped her moorings the previous evening, leaving the big yellow buoys floating on their anchor cables and she was working free of her fetters. She was on computer navigation, holding her position over the ground against the swells and the wind by use of her engine and rudder.

"She is no good." Sergio spoke morosely. "We come too close to the rocks. I get sick in my heart looking at them." The dust clouds did not carry this far out to sea despite the vicious screeching of the wind. The visibility was a mile or more, quite enough to show the brooding twin hulks of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The storm-crazed swells burst against them, throwing white spray two hundred feet into the gloomy sky, then surging back to expose the gleaming white rock.

"Hold her," growled Johnny. Twice during the night they had changed position, each time edging down closer on the gap between the two islands. Kingfisher was battling gamely to hold her ground against the insidious sucking current that added its pull to that of the swell and the wind.

Johnny was not attempting to work any one of the gullies extensively, he wanted only to sample as much of the field as possible in the time that was left to him. The storm would not stop him - for Kingfisher was constructed to work in worse weather than this. Her compensating hose section was keeping the dredge head on the bottom despite the lift and fall of her pull.

"Calm down, Sergio." Johnny relented a little. "The computer is foolproof."

"The G.o.d d.a.m.ned computer she no got eyes to see those rocks.

Me, I got eyes - and it gives me a sick heart." Twice during the night Johnny had gone down into the control room and ordered the computer to report its recovery of diamonds. Each time the reply had been consistent - not a single stone over four carats, and a very precious few of any others.

"I'm going through to the plot. Watch her," Johnny told Sergio, and staggering against the pitch and roll he went through the door behind the bridge.

He paused behind the repeater screen of the computer, and at a glance saw that Kingfisher was holding her primary operation and all departments were running normally. He pa.s.sed the screen and leaned over the chart table.

The large-scale chart of the South West African coast between Luderitz and Walvis Bay was pinned down on the board. The Wild Goose soundings were pencilled in, and the pattern of Kingfisher's sweeps were carefully plotted around the islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide.

Johnny picked up a pair of dividers and stared moodily at the chart. Suddenly a surge of anger rose in him against those two names.

They had promised so much and delivered so little.

He stared at the names Thunderbolt and Suicide printed in italics among the maze of soundings, and his anger turned to blind red hatred.

With the points of the dividers he slashed at the chart, ripping the thick linen paper once, and twice, in a ragged cross-shaped tear.

This small act of violence dissipated his anger. He felt embarra.s.sed, it had been a petty childish gesture. He tried to smooth the edges of the tear, and through the gap he felt another loose sc.r.a.p of paper which someone had slipped under the chart. He probed a finger through the tear in the chart and wormed the sc.r.a.p out. He glanced at the scribbled t.i.tle and the lines of figures and numbers that followed.

The sheet was headed: KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.

He studied it, puzzled by the t.i.tle but recognizing the numbers as a computer programme. The writing was in Sergio Caporetti's pointed continental style. The easiest way to resolve the mystery was to ask Sergio. Johnny started back for the bridge.

"Boss," Sergio called anxiously, as Johnny stepped through the door. "Look!" He was pointing ahead into the eye of the wind. Johnny hurried to his side, the paper crumpled and forgotten in his hand.

"Wild Goose." Sergio- identified the small craft that was staggering and plunging towards them out of the gloom.

"What the h.e.l.l is he doing here?" Johnny wondered aloud. Wild Goose was lost for long seconds behind the walls of green sea, then again she was lifted high into unnatural prominence, showing the red lead of her bottom as she rode the crests; water poured from her scuppers, before she shot down the steep slope of the next wave to bury her nose deep in frothing water. She came down swiftly on the wind, rounding to and beginning to edge in under Kingfisher's counter.

"What the h.e.l.l is he playing at?" Johnny protested, and then in disbelief he saw a slim figure dart from Wild Goose's wheelhouse and run to the side nearest Kingfisher.

"It's Tracey," shouted Johnny.

She reached the rail just as another swell burst over the bows and smothered her. Johnny expected to see her washed away, but she was still there clinging to the rail.

Thrusting the page of paper into his pocket, Johnny went out through the wing of the bridge and swarmed down the steel ladder to the deck, jumping the last ten feet and running the instant he landed.

He reached the side and looked down on the drowned-kitten figure of Tracey.

"Go back," he yelled. "Go back. Don't try it." She shouted something that was lost in the next smother of spray, and when it cleared he saw her poising herself to jump the gap of surging water between the two vessels.

He flung himself over Kingfisher's side and climbed swiftly down the steel rungs.

He was still ten feet above her as she gathered herself for the leap.

"Go back," he shouted desperately.

She jumped, missed her hold and fell into the murderous stretch of water between the hulls. Her head bobbed below Johnny, and he was aware of the next swell bearing down on them. It would throw Wild Goose against the steel cliff of Kingfisher, crus.h.i.+ng Tracey between them.

Johnny went down those last ten feet and hanging outwards by one arm he got his other arm around her, and with a heave that crackled in his muscles and joints he plucked her from the water just as the two vessels dashed together with a crunching impact that tore splinters from Wild Goose's planking, and left a smear of alien paint on Kingfisher's steel plating.

Wild Goose swung away, and with her diesels bellowing went bucking off into the wind.

With puddles of sea water forming around her feet from her sodden clothing, Tracey stood in the Tcentre of Kingfisher's guest cabin. Her dark hair was plastered down her face and neck, and she was s.h.i.+vering so violently from shock and the icy water that she could not talk. Her teeth chattered together, and her lips were blue with cold.

Desperately she was trying to form words, her eyes never leaving Johnny's face.

Quickly he stripped off her clothing and throwing one towel round her shoulders he began roughly to chafe warmth back into her with another.

"You little idiot," he berated her. "Are you stark staring b.l.o.o.d.y mad?"

"Johnny," she gasped through her chattering teeth.

"Christ - that was so close," he snarled at her as he knelt to rub her legs.

"Johnny, listen."

"Shut up and dry your hair." Humbly she obeyed him, her s.h.i.+vers became controllable as he crossed to the locker and found a thick jersey which he pulled over her head. It hung almost to her knees.

"Now," he said, taking her roughly by the shoulders.

"What the h.e.l.l is this all about?" And she told him in a rush of words that poured out like water from a broken dam. Then she burst into tears and stood there forlornly in the voluminous jersey with her damp hair dangling about her shoulders, sobbing as though her heart was breaking.

Johnny took her in his arms.

For a long minute Tracey revelled in his warmth and strength, but she was the first to pull away.

"Do something, Johnny," she implored him, her voice still thick with tears. "Stop them. You mustn't let them get away with it." He went back to the locker, and while he ransacked it for clothing that might fit her, Johnny's mind was racing over the story she had told him.

He watched her pull on a pair of blue serge trousers and tie them at the waist with a length of cord. She folded back the cuffs and tucked them into thick woollen socks, before thrusting her feet into a pair of sea-boots that were only a few sizes too large for her.

"Where do we start?" she asked, and he remembered the sheet of paper. He fished it out of his pocket and flattened it on the table beside the blink. Quickly he ran his eyes over the columns of figures.

His first guess was right - it was a computer programme.

"Stay here," he ordered Tracey.

"No." Her response was immediate, and he grinned.

"Listen, I'm just going up on to the bridge to keep them busy there. I'll come back for you, I promise. You won't miss anything."

How is she, boss?" Sergio Caporetti's concern was genuine. Johnny realized that he must be worrying himself into a frenzy trying to guess the reason for Tracey's arrival.

"She is pretty shaken up,"Johnny answered.

"What she want - that was big chance she takes. Nearly fish food." "I don't know," Johnny said. "I want you to take over up here.

Keep Kingfisher working. I'm going to get her to bed - I'll let you know what it's all about as soon as I find out."

"Okay, boss."

"Oh, and Sergio - keep an eye on those rocks. Don't let her drift down any closer." Johnny chose a powerful incentive to keep Sergio up on the bridge.

Johnny left him and went below, stopping only at the guest cabin.

"Come on." Tracey followed him, lurching unsteadily with Kingfisher's antics in the high sea.

Two decks down they reached the computer control room and Johnny unlocked the heavy steel door, then locked it again behind them.

Tracey wedged herself against the bulkhead and watched as Johnny seated himself at the console and clipped the rumpled sheet into the board.

Reading from the sheet he typed the first line of figures on the keyboard. Immediately the computer registered a protest.

"Operator error," it typed back. Johnny ignored its denial and typed the second line. This time it was more emphatic.

"No procedure. Operator error." And Johnny typed the next line of figures. He guessed that whoever had stored this programme in the computer's memory would have placed a series of blocks to prevent accidental discovery. Again the denial flashed back at him.

"Operator error." And Johnny muttered, "Thrice before the c.o.c.k crows," striking an incongruously biblical note in the tense atmosphere of the control room.

He typed the last line of figures and the denial faded from the screen. The console clicked like a monstrous crab, then suddenly it started to print again.

KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.

INSTALLED OCTOBER 1969. AT LAS PALMAS BY HIDEKI KAMINIKOTO.

DOCTOR OF SCIENCE.

TOKYO UNIVERSITY." The little j.a.panese had been unable to resist autographing his masterpiece. Tracey and Johnny crouched over the screen, staring at it with awful fascination as the computer began spelling out its report. It began with the number of hours worked, and the weight of gravel processed during that time. Next it reported the weight of concentrates recovered from the cyclone and finally, in a series of columns, it printed out the weights and sizes of all the diamonds won from the sea. The big Blue showed up in the place of honour, and wordlessly Tracey touched the figure 320 with a forefinger.

Johnny nodded grimly.

The computer ended by giving the grand total of carats recovered, and Johnny spoke for the first time.

"It's true," he said softly. "It doesn't seem possible - but it is." The click and hum of the computer ceased, and the screen went blank.

Johnny straightened up in the chair.

"Where would they put it?" he asked himself, as he ran quickly over the line of recovery. He stood up from the chair and peered through the leaded gla.s.s peephole into the X-ray room. "It must be this side of the cyclone, this side of the drier - " He was speaking aloud. Between the drier and the X-ray room." Then there bobbed to the surface of memory the modification in design which he had meant to query, but which he had forgotten.

"The inspection plate on the conveyor tunnel!" He punched his fist into his palm. "They moved the inspection plate! That's it! It's in the conveyor tunnel." His hands were frantic with haste as he unlocked the steel door of the control room.

sergio, Caporetti paced his bridge like a captive bear, puffing so furiously on his cheroot that sparks flew from its tip. The wind howled hungrily around the wheelhouse, and the swells still marched in from the north.

Suddenly he reached a decision and turned to the helmsman.

"Watch those G.o.dd.a.m.n rocks - watch them good." The helmsman nodded and Sergio shambled through the chartroom to his own cabin. He locked the door behind him, and crossed to his desk. Fumbling with his keys he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and reaching under the pile of cheroot packets he brought out the canvas bag.

Weighing it thoughtfully in his hand, he looked about the cabin for a more secure hiding place. Through the canvas he could feel the nutty irregular shape of the stones.

"That Johnny, he a clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he muttered. "It better be good place." Then he reached a decision. "Best place where I can watch them all a time." He opened his jacket and stuffed the bag into his inside pocket. He b.u.t.toned the jacket and patted the bulge over his heart.

"Fine!" he said. "Good!" And stood up from the desk. He hurried back, unlocking the door into the chartroom, and headed for the bridge.

He stopped in the middle of the chartroom, and his head swung towards the repeater screen of the computer. The buzzer was going like a rattlesnake, and the red bulb that warned of a new procedure was blinking softly.

Fearfully Sergio approached the screen and stooped over it. A single glance was enough, and he rushed from it to the chart table. He saw the cross-shaped tear in the chart.

"Mary Mother!" He ripped back the thick crackling paper and searched under it. He stepped back from the table and hit himself across the chest.

"Fool!" he said. "Idiot!" He spent ten seconds in selfcastigation, then he looked about for a weapon. The locking handle of the cabin was a twelve-inch steel bar with a heavy head. He pulled out the pin and worked it loose. He slipped it into the waistband of his trousers.

"I'm going below," he told the helmsman curtly, and clambered down the companionway. Swiftly he moved through the s.h.i.+p, balancing easily to her roll and pitch.