If anyone had been watching the two of them propping each other up as they moved forwards, clasped to one another like drowning souls, they’d have thought Martin and Elena were drunk. But on the way to deck C they didn’t bump into anybody, due to the fact that Elena had taken them down a hidden route. Most employees had no business being in the Sultan’s basement, certainly not in this area which housed the cargo hold. Here they stored all the spare parts that weren’t needed on a crossing. To get there you took the cargo lift rather than the metal emergency stairs.
‘A short cut,’ Elena had mumbled, but then lost her bearings at the bottom of the steps when they got to a tubular room lined with pipes, where you had to duck to avoid hitting your head.
Martin felt as if he’d been transported inside a submarine of the sort he’d seen in films. The pipes had vents that could be opened with bilious-green wheel valves. There was a cupboard that seemed to consist of several fuse boxes with numerous instruments whose needles were barely moving.
Elena responded to his question as to which direction they should take by calling the captain on her phone and asking him the way. Martin was amazed that Bonhoeffer was able to understand his fiancée given that she was still mumbling, but after a brief exchange he appeared to have put her on the right track because she pointed to the left and let him go first.
The route brought them to a white bulkhead which required considerable strength to open. Martin needed both hands to shift the wheel and push open the metal door that was as thick as that of a large safe.
The room beyond was wider and darker. It smelled of dust and diesel. Dirt littered the floor and spiders’ webs hung from the instruments inside the cupboard, which looked older than the ones they’d just passed.
‘Where are we?’ he asked Elena, who was leaning exhausted against one of the dusty boxes.
‘No idea. An old control room. Over there…’ she said, gesturing to another door on the far side, too weak to finish the sentence.
Martin went in the direction she’d indicated.
He stepped on thoughtlessly discarded screws, tissues, paper and other rubbish that hadn’t been disposed of for ages, and at the end of the room came to another bulkhead, which was even more difficult to open than the previous one.
Beyond it he discovered a cathedral.
Or at least that was his first impression when he crossed the threshold into a room the height of a house, lit merely by a strip of halogen lamps on either wall.
At the far end – in the altar area, so to speak – was a shimmering oval copper tube, not unlike a brewing copper. Two thirds of its shell bulged into the room, while the rear third was integrated into the Sultan’s outer hull. A sort of fire ladder ran up the vessel and vanished into the darkness five metres above Martin’s head.
‘Here it is!’ he called out, to let the doctor know that he’d found the blue shelf. As they’d descended into the depths of the ship’s hull she’d explained to him where the term came from and why the waste disposal plant was no longer in use.
He looked back, but couldn’t see Elena in the entrance, nor did she answer him.
She was probably just catching her breath. He’d go and check on her in a minute, but before then he wanted to take a closer look at the blue shelf and its surroundings.
He climbed several steps to a platform that ran along the perimeter of the vessel, and looked around. Anouk was nowhere to be seen. He called her name, but there was no reply.
Martin peered up.
The rubbish, he guessed, would probably be pushed into the shaft by a device at the top, a deck and a half higher up.
The shaft! The water in the well!
In his mind he saw Anouk’s detailed drawing.
Given how curved the ship’s hull was here, at least a third of the bottom of the tube must be over the raging Atlantic. As soon as the shaft was full, all you had to do was open the floor and the waste would tumble into the sea.
From his vantage point at the bottom of the blue shelf he couldn’t figure out what equipment would be needed to accomplish this. He was wandering around the vessel, wondering whether to climb the ladder, when he discovered a door. It was head-high, presumably a staff entrance for cleaning or servicing inside.
Martin put his hand on the door which was secured by a lever that reminded him of the closing mechanism of an aeroplane door. He was rattling it when he suddenly felt an intense quaking beneath his feet, accompanied by a bloodcurdling crunching sound.
I thought the blue shelf wasn’t in service.
The vessel appeared to have come to life and it felt as if something inside was moving.
Martin was even more startled by a movement behind him.
‘Elena?’
He’d assumed the shadow on the vessel and the draught on his neck was from the doctor, finally catching up after overcoming her exhaustion; but he hadn’t reckoned on this thin, faceless figure standing in the gloom, its head wrapped in a hoodie. He recognised who it was even though they’d met only once. The person was holding a bucket.
Martin was about to call out their name when the figure leaped forwards and hit him on the side of the head with an object that looked like a laptop but felt like a brick when the edge thundered against his temple.