High Stand

1

The cutter lay alongside the quay at Bella Bella. It wasn’t at all the sort of vessel I had expected. It looked more like a miniature warship with its sharp upthrust bow, rakish black hull and the white-painted bridge structure rising abruptly to the spear-like thrust of the whip aerials either side of the mast, lights, radar, a tangle of high-tech equipment that gave her a very purposeful appearance. And the quay and the village behind sprawled on the hill, houses glimmering in the last of the day and the first of the moon; that, too, wasn’t what I had expected of an Indian reserve area. True, I couldn’t see any whites on the quay. The few people lounging around, and the little group slinging a baseball, were all dark-skinned. But the quay was solidly timbered, a large area with storage sheds, all of it looking very modern, and the houses behind ill modern and quite substantially built.

‘You got any place to stay?’ Jim asked me as we stood waiting to disembark. I told him I was relying on Halliday’s son, and if he didn’t turn up, then at least Tom Halliday knew one of the pilots. There was a little floatplane lying moored to a pontoon buoyed up with empty oil drums. Tom joined as, his gaze fixed on the quay. ‘Don’t see Brian there,’ he muttered.

I, too, had been searching the shoreline. A launch came in from old Bella Bella, arrowing sharp lines across the mirror-still water, its engines breaking the stillness. ‘If you do get stuck,’ Jim said, ‘you can take the launch over to Shearwater, which is round the promontory just east of here. There’s a hotel there, and now the main fishing season’s over there should be no problem about getting a room.’

‘Where the hell’s Brian?’ There was a nervous edge to Tom’s voice and I realized that, like me, he had been relying on his son being at Bella Bella to meet him. ‘You sent that cable, didn’t you? From Whitehorse? You told him when we’d be here?’

‘I said we were catching the ferry from Skagway the next night.’

‘Well then — where the hell is he?’ And he turned towards the shore again, muttering something about it being typical — ‘just typical of the boy’.

There weren’t many people going ashore at Bella Bella — a few Indians, the Eskimo and his family, and a young nurse and her husband who was a doctor, both of them working at the hospital. That was all. The Coastguard Captain was on the quay to meet Jim, a short man in black trousers and white shirt with a peaked cap and a beard that was just beginning to show signs of grey. Jim introduced us. His name was Doug Cornish.

An Indian called out, ‘Hi!’ He was pot-bellied and had a sort of swagger to him, and he stopped to add with a grin, ‘Yu, Mustache — yu no like razor eh?’ And before the skipper could think of a suitable reply the man was off up the slope to the village with a cheerful wave of his hand.

A young Indian girl standing near moved delicately forward. ‘Your name not Mustache.’

‘No.’ Cornish smiled at her.

‘Yu captain of that little boat?’ She nodded to the Coastguard cutter, gold earrings dancing to the movement of her head. She had a mass of black hair, breasts just beginning to bud under the red of her T-shirt and she wore a worldly little smile.

Cornish nodded. ‘What do you want?’

‘Your balls, Captain.’ And the smile broadened to a grin, the eyes coquettish as she whisked around with a toss of her black hair and went dancing away to join the youths practising with the baseball. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

Cornish shook his head, his cheeks red under his beard. ‘That’s the Indian for you.’ He grinned. ‘Never could get used to their uninhibited view of the human body.’ He glanced at his watch and then at Jim. ‘Shall we go on board? I’m all ready to slip.’

‘I’d like a word with you first.’ He took the Captain by the arm and walked him along the quay past a refuelling pump where they stood in conversation while we waited. Tom was staring down at the launch just mooring at the pontoon. There was a white man at the tiller and Tom called down to him, asking about Brian. ‘You seen him?’

‘A few days back,’ the man shouted back. ‘He was here at Bella Bella. Then he got young Steve to fly him up to Ocean Falls. You remember Steve, Tom — he just got in from Bella Coola, said to give you a message if you turned up. Your son’s in Ocean Falls and says to meet him there. Okay?’

Tom had moved to the edge of the quay. ‘Steve up at his place?’ he called down. ‘I’d like to talk to him.’

‘Reckon so,’ the man replied.

It was annoying, Brian not being there. I’d been relying on him, not only for additional information, but to support me in the decision I was gradually coming to and which could not be put off much longer. I was still a long way from the sort of RCMP post where I could get the appropriate high-level action I needed if I was to give the authorities the gist of that note from Miriam. Not any policeman could handle a thing like that, and I still needed Tom’s cooperation. That, above all, was where I had been relying on Brian.

My thoughts were interrupted by Jim’s voice calling us to get on board right away. The cutter’s Captain was already there, hurrying up the ladder to the bridge-housing. ‘It’s all fixed,’ Jim added as he came back for his bag and his briefcase. ‘He’s taking you both on his own responsibility, and when the operation is over he’ll drop you off at Ocean Falls.’

I called to Tom who was still talking to the launch operator. He turned, frowning. ‘He’ll take us? Why?’ He came back, looking dazed. His eyes had a hunted look as they searched my face. ‘Why?’

In telling Tom about the operation I hadn’t said anything about drug smuggling. I’d repeated exactly the words of the radio message, a routine search operation. But I could see he had put two and two together. Like me, he had guessed it was drugs the customs officers would be searching for. He stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do. But Jim was already moving away towards the cutter. I had my bags in my hands and could hear the explosive snort of the engine starting up, one of the crew already on the quay moving to throw the bow warp off. The Captain put his head out of the sliding wheelhouse door — ‘Hurry up, or I’ll leave without you.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing for you here. Let’s get to Ocean Falls and see if Brian can help.’ And I turned, half running across the quay, not waiting for him, but sensing that he was following. The beat of the engines was loud as I tossed my bags onto the deck and hauled myself aboard. Tom was close behind me, the bow warp already gone, the props beating the water to a froth as a gap began to open up between the hull and the quay. The stern warp went slack, the bows swinging out and the stern in, and the man on the quay slipped the rope off its bollard and leapt aboard with it. The bows were steadying then, the vessel digging its stern deeper into the water as she picked up speed.

We parked our bags in the mess room aft, which was below deck and empty except for the steward clearing away the last remains of the evening meal. ‘You like some coffee, help yourself.’ He nodded to the hotplate. ‘Coffee’s available any time and if you’re real thirsty there’s the fridge — milk, orange juice, cans of tomato juice. Biscuits in the rack above the table there. Okay?’

I nodded and turned to Tom. ‘I’m going up to the wheel-house,’ I said. ‘See what the Captain can tell me.’

Tom didn’t seem to hear. He was helping himself to coffee, his hair standing up like a brush and his brow creased in a horizontal line. The cup rattled in its saucer, his hand shaking, his mind shut away with its own thoughts and fears. I went up through the hatch and out onto the sidedeck where the wind of our passage thrust at my clothes and I had to clutch my cap. We must have been doing the better part of 2.0 knots, black water streaming past and the roar of the engines from the open hatch, where one of the oilers sat reading a magazine, almost deafening. A short iron ladder led up the side of the bridge-housing to the half-shut door of the wheelhouse. I slid it back and went in, a voice on the radio saying, ‘I can’t see nuttin’. No lights, no stars, not a fuckin’ thing. Where are you, Naughty Gosling? This fishing boat Chick Chick. Can’t see nuttin’. I’m in a fog right up to my eyeballs, boy, an’ ah reck’n ah’m lost.’

The Captain reached up and switched stations. ‘Poor bloody Indian got himself lost. Next thing is he’ll call RCC — that’s the Rescue Coordination Centre at Esquimault, Victoria. If he does he’ll be out of luck.’ And he added, ‘Forecast is for fog and that bugger’s in it already. Trouble is we don’t know where he is. Seaward probably.’

‘Thickening up already, Doug.’ The Mate was standing by the radar, peering into the night ahead. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Shit! Why do we have to get ourselves dealt a bank of fog just when we’d like clear visibility?’

‘Good practice, Curly.’ The Captain’s voice sounded sour and they grinned at each other. ‘Be a long night, I reck’n.’ The Mate was short and fat with black curly hair and a voice that was hoarse as though he had a perpetual need to clear his throat and couldn’t be bothered.

‘Not going to be easy to locate that tug, is it?’ I asked.

The Mate gave me a startled look as though he hadn’t expected the stranger to voice an opinion, and certainly not on the bridge. It was the Captain who answered. ‘Soon as we’re through the Lama Passage and into the Fisher Channel we should pick up the tow on our radar.’ He glanced at my battered sea cap. ‘You understand charts?’ I nodded and he turned to the chart table that stretched along most of the rear wall of the wheelhouse below all the radios, the Decca navigation and search and rescue equipment. ‘She’s out of the Fisher now and into Fitz Hugh Sound and there’s a ship the Defence Forces base at Esquimault has been tracking by satellite sitting waiting down there by the North Passage.’ He pointed a thick hairy ringer at the open sea area to the west of Calvert Island. ‘Don’t ask me how, but somebody’s bugged her so that they’ve been able to track her all the way from somewhere south of the Californian coast. It’s a big motor yacht, I’m told.’

‘And what’s your role?’ I asked him as he stopped abruptly, leaving me in the air as to what his instructions were.

He hesitated, then said, ‘Well, I’ve let you on board, and since you’ll see what happens, no point in your not knowing the role we’re supposed to play.’ His finger tapped the open water area. ‘My instructions are to wait until I’ve got both yacht and tug on my radar scan and can report they’re closing. A chopper is standing by. The expectation is that this is the rendezvous position, that they’ll close to let the yacht lie alongside and pass her cargo over. I haven’t been told what that cargo is, but as I gather both you and Jim here have already leapt to the conclusion that it’s drugs, I can say that that’s my conclusion, too. The helicopter will be carrying a rummage party. We stand by in case there’s trouble.’

We were in the Lama Passage then, the waterway narrowing to the width of a quite ordinary-sized river, forests of trees green on either side, a pale tide-band of exposed rock close above the surface of the water and our wake arrowing out behind us to surge against it. It would have been too dark to see it if we hadn’t had the spotlight trained on it, and as we entered the narrows, our speed unreduced and wisps of fog, Doug Cornish switched on the powerful beam of the ‘nightsun’ searchlight that seemed to pierce even the fog.

Our speed at that time was just over 18 knots, rocks and lit beacons ahead; I watched Cornish’s face for some sign of nervousness, a flicker of hesitation. There was neither.

‘Starb’d helm.’

‘The wheel spun under the helmsman’s hand and he repeated, ‘Starb’d helm.’

‘Helm amidships and steer one-six-o.’ And a moment later, the helmsman reported, ‘Steering one-six-o.’

After that we just stood there, watching the Fisher Channel shoreline, which on the port side was barely visible, and waiting. The watch changed, the helmsman handing over and collecting the coffee mugs scattered about the wheelhouse.

‘Everybody coffee? Milk and sugar?’ he asked me. ‘No sugar,’ I said, and Jim asked for two lumps. The engine beat and the swish of the bow wave, the slop of the water against the starb’d side of the channel, all these were constant sounds. Only the sound from the radio and occasional verbal exchanges between skipper and mate interrupted the monotonous, almost sleep-inducing background noises of a vessel under way.

The Captain was bent over the radar, his eyes glued to the scanner, talking quietly to the Mate, and Jim had pushed open the door and was searching the Channel through a pair of ship’s binoculars. I turned to the white expanse of Chart 1933 spread out on the chart table. There was a pair of dividers in the rack and I measured off the distance from where we had turned out of the Lama Passage to Cape Calvert and the open water of North Passage, then checked it off against the minutes of latitude shown vertically on the edge of the chart. A minute is the equivalent of a nautical mile and die dividers indicated just on forty.

‘You a sailor?’ It was the Captain’s voice.

I nodded.

‘The tide’s with us so we’re probably doing twenty over the ground. We’ll be up with them in two hours. Sailing boat?’ he asked.

He lived at Fulford in the Gulf Islands and kept a small cruiser in the harbour there. ‘I named her Salish after one of the Indian tribes from the south — like Bella Bella is named for one of the northern tribes; the Haidas and the Bella Bellas were very fierce at one time.’ Mugs of coffee appeared on a tray and we talked about boats for a time, then his eyes began to watch the clock. At twenty-three minutes past the hour he switched on the HF single sideband radio and two minutes later he was talking to RCC at the southern end of Vancouver Island. He gave his ETA at the target as approximately 22.55 and it was arranged that unless contrary advice was received from him the helicopter would lift off from Port Hardy at 22.10 hours to be on call within range of the target as the Kelsey closed with the tug and ordered it to heave-to. ‘Good luck and let’s hope this isn’t another FBI rabbit that isn’t going to come out of the hat.’ The radio went silent and he switched it off.

‘What was the last tip-off you had, Captain?’ There was a wind on our backs and it was Tom’s voice.

I turned — we both turned. He was standing in the starb’d doorway, leaning against it, his voice a little high but otherwise relaxed. ‘Was it another log tow?’

‘No.’ The Captain was leaning a little forward, peering at Tom from under his bushy brows. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said, the easy-going, friendly manner suddenly gone.

‘My name’s Tom Halliday.’ He came in, shutting the door behind him and holding out his hand. ‘You’re Captain Cornish, I take it. I have to thank you for taking Philip and myself on this trip with you.’ The Captain ignored the outstretched hand. He was frowning as Tom, quite unabashed, went on, his voice tending to slur some of the words, ‘I think you know the “target” as you call it, the tow taking logs from the Cascades, which I own, down to Seattle for milling. I would like to talk to the people running this operation if I may. Can you get them on the radio please?’

‘No, I cannot.’ Doug Cornish’s reaction was immediate, his tone uncompromising. ‘And you will kindly ask permission before coming on my bridge. Do you understand, Mr Halliday?’

Tom smiled and shrugged, not in the least put out. ‘So sorry. Of course. Permission requested, Captain.’ It just didn’t seem to occur to him his manner and the slightly supercilious tone in his very English voice were not the best way to approach a Canadian skipper on his own ship. And he didn’t hesitate, but went straight on, ‘You do understand, don’t you, this operation, which from all the talk I’ve been listening to on board is a drugs snatch, could result in a woman’s death — in a woman being murdered?’

The frown on Cornish’s face deepened. ‘Are you drunk or something? What woman? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘My wife,’ Tom said. ‘If this is drugs …’ He paused, shaking his head and looking suddenly uncertain. ‘I want to talk to them. Whoever has set this operation up. I have to warn them — they’ve threatened to kill her.’

‘Who have?’ There was disbelief in the Captain’s voice. ‘What are you talking about?’ He sounded exasperated.

Tom started to stutter something, then stopped. ‘Ask Philip here. He’s a lawyer. Maybe you’ll listen to him.’

And so I was brought into it and quietly I told the Captain of the cutter something of what I knew. I couldn’t help it. Tom, drugged to the eyeballs, had blurted it out and now I had to back him. In any case, perhaps it was as well, since it made up my mind for me.

But then the incredible happened. They didn’t believe it. That Doug Cornish, standing there at the chart table with his Mate watching the scan, on the threshold of an awkward boarding operation with an American tug for target, wouldn’t believe me was something I hadn’t expected. That he wouldn’t believe Tom, whom he clearly suspected of being an alcoholic, was fair enough. Tom wasn’t easy to take at times. But that he wouldn’t accept it from me, after we’d been standing there at the chart table talking about our respective boats and drinking coffee together… ‘But the man’s right,’ I said. ‘He’s telling the truth. They’re holding Miriam Halliday and once they know her husband is on board…’

Then we’ll keep him below. That way they’ll never know — will that satisfy you?’

I must have been arguing with him for fifteen minutes or more, but he absolutely refused to contact his RCC base. ‘You can talk to them afterwards,’ he said finally. ‘Once we know whether there’s drugs on board or not. As soon as the operation’s over, then you can talk to them. Not before. Okay?’ And that was his final word. I couldn’t budge him, nor could Tom, whose tone of voice had changed to one of pleading, tears in his eyes and his voice half-choked with emotion. I could see his change of manner had affected Cornish. He was no longer resentful and there was compassion in his voice as he put his hand on Tom’s arm and said, ‘Look, even if I accept the truth of what the two of you have been saying, I can’t do anything about it. I’m just the skipper of a Coastguard vessel. I carry out orders, and my orders now are to stand by this tug while specialist officers of another branch of government service carry out a search. Afterwards you can talk to whoever you like. And now, Mr Halliday,’ he added, ‘I suggest you go below and leave me to get on with my job.’

Tom hesitated, glancing at me, and then he turned without another word and went stumbling down the ladder to the sidedeck. ‘Better keep an eye on him.’ The Captain’s hand was on my arm, propelling me towards the door, and as I went out I saw him look across at Jim Edmundson with lifted brows, and seeing Jim nod, I checked and said, ‘It’s true what he told you. He had a note from her. She’s being held hostage — ’

‘That’s a matter for the police.’ Cornish’s face had suddenly taken a shut look. ‘Nothing to do with me. You keep him off my bridge. Understand?’ His head thrust forward, his eyes on mine, waiting till I acknowledged his order with a nod. ‘Okay, then after this little business is over I’ll drop you both at Ocean Falls, or he can go on to the Cascades with Jim Edmundson, whichever he likes.’ He turned back to the radio. ‘Any sign of that tow?’ The Mate shook his head and Cornish thrust him aside and buried his eyes in the eyepiece of the scanner.

Tom was waiting for me at the bottom of the ladder, his hand clutching at me. ‘What do I do?’ His voice trembled, on the verge of tears.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing you can do — except keep out of sight when we meet up with the tow. They don’t know you’re on board.’

‘That man Lopez, he was with us when we came ashore.’

‘So was Camargo,’ I said. ‘All those two know is that a man you met on the ferry got you a lift on a Coastguard cutter. That’s all.’

‘But as soon as we reach the tug — ’

‘That’s all,’ I repeated. ‘All they’ll be able to report. And it’ll take time for them to contact whoever it is that’s employing them. It’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before they connect the Kelsey and us with the stopping and searching of the tug, and then all sorts of things may be happening.’

‘You think they’ll find coke on board?’ His hand was still gripped tight on my arm. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘How the hell do I know? But if that yacht makes a rendezvous with the tug and the customs boys search it … Then the offices of the SVL Company in Seattle will be raided and the tug boat owners, Angeles Georgia Towing, as well. If all that happens, then they won’t be worrying about Miriam.’

It seemed to satisfy him. He stared at me a moment and I could see his mind grappling with the implications. Then he nodded. ‘Ya. Guess you’re right, Philip. And the Captain — he’ll believe us then, won’t he? I mean, if they find one of the ships stuffed with coke, he’ll have to believe us, an’ then he’ll let me talk to this RCC base of his and the authorities will be alerted and they’ll start a big search. Ya …’ He was nodding his head again. ‘Maybe it’ll all work out for the best. The poor darling — I just hope to God…’ There were tears in his eyes then and he let go my arm, snuffling into his handkerchief and turning aft. ‘Where’s the heads?’

I told him where it was and he went aft, balancing himself carefully with his hand on the deckhouse rail. When he returned he asked ‘How long’ve we got- before we close that tow? An hour?’

‘A little more,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I’m going to get some coffee then.’ I went with him down to the mess-room and with the coffee I had some biscuits and cheese out of the fridge. By the time I had finished he was sprawled on the bulkhead settle half asleep. I got my anorak and went up on deck. The wind of our passage was too great for me to stand on the sidedeck, so I took up a position aft where I could look back from the shelter of the deckhouse along our wake to the vague outline of the mountains and the dark of the shore either side of the broad ribbon of water we were steaming down. The fog was no more than a gossamer-thin veil of mist now that we were out of the narrower Fisher Channel and into Fitz Hugh Sound.

There was a sudden flurry of activity, the engine-room telegraph jangling, the engines juddering and the wake changing to a confused froth as the cutter heeled sharply to port, one engine still going ahead, the other astern as we turned 180° and headed back up the Sound, hugging the western shore, then swinging steadily in towards it to round a lit buoy, land closing in on our starb’d side. I was on the sidedeck then, one of the crew tumbling down the ladder from the bridge. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

‘We’ve sighted them, heading seawards through the Hakai Passage. Skipper says…’ But the rest was lost in the noise of the engines, the rush of the bow wave, his words swept away by the wind.

I went up to the bridge then, thinking to hell with it. He could only throw me off again, and as long as Tom was safe down below … The Captain and the Mate were standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the radar, the helmsman rigid with concentration. The Chief was there talking to Jim. I slipped over to the chart table. It was Kelpie Point we had rounded, not a lit buoy, but a beacon on a little rock island, and the Hakai Passage ran north of Calvert and Hecate Islands almost due west out of the Sound to the open sea. A small cross had been pencilled just by a lit beacon north of Starfish Island. I turned expecting to see the flash of it, but there was nothing. ‘Steer two-two-five.’

‘Two-two-five,’ the helmsman repeated.

Cornish moved to the chart table in a couple of strides. ‘Fog’s thicker here,’ he said, using the sliding rule to pencil in the line of our course through the passage, checking the distance with the dividers, then scribbling 220° — 8m. ‘Say the tow is making something over five knots, then we’ll be alongside in less than an hour.’ Without turning his head he ordered, ‘Steer two-two-o.’

‘Two-two-o.’

‘Your friend all right?’ He gave me a quick sideways glance, and when I said he was sleeping he nodded. ‘Best thing for him.’ Then he was back at the scanner, no word about my leaving the bridge, so I stayed, making myself as inconspicu ous as possible. Apparently the tow was visible on the radar. But then the Captain straightened up, stretching and rubbing his eyes. ‘Well, that’s that, out of sight now round Starfish and Surf heading south beyond the South Pointers. Another hour.’ He sighed and turned to me. ‘You ever been on this coast before, Mr Redfern?’

I shook my head.

‘Show you something,’ he said, smiling and beckoning me back to the chart. ‘See that reef?’ He indicated the Pacific Ocean end of the passage, the southern side. ‘The South Pointers. There’s a big drying rock there and the tug’s gone outside. Had to, of course. But there’s a way through between the reef and Surf Island that’s marked thirty — that’s fathoms on this chart so it’s almost sixty metres deep if I’ve got the nerve to risk it. The fog’s thick out there. Have to do it on radar.’ He was staring down at the chart, using me as a sort of sounding board for his thoughts. ‘Not as bad as the Spider. I took the Kelsey through the Spider once. But then it was broad daylight and good visibility, even the little Fulton Passage quite straightforward.’ He spread the chart out, and I saw the short cut he proposed to take and all the rocks, it looked about as bad as anything I had ever seen.

But that’s the way we went, and the engines going flat out as we steamed south-west through the litter of rubbish, the Captain glued to the radar giving alterations of helm without reference to the chart, and all the time the single sideband radio squawking last-minute instructions as the Mate reported to RCC that our ETA and visual sight of the tow was now less than fifteen minutes away.

A few minutes and we were through, the helm to starb’d as we steered seaward. Cornish reached for the mike. ‘Distance off two and a quarter miles, fog fairly thick, sea calm with a slight swell.’ We were in fact rolling quite heavily. He had switched to VHP and was talking to the chopper pilot.

The next ten minutes seemed to drag interminably. The Mate was now at the scanner, the wheelhouse dark and everybody staring out through the windshield, searching the void, fog swirling round the bows. ‘A light, sir.’ It was the helmsman. ‘Bearing Green 10.’

‘Okay, have got.’ Cornish had the binoculars up to his eyes. ‘Steer two-five-o.’ And then he was through to the helicopter pilot again, talking him down over the target. I could see the towing lights now, all blurred by the fog, and as the shadowy shape of a big barge loaded with logs began to emerge the Captain reached for the engine-room telegraph and rang for slow ahead on both engines.

‘God!’ the Mate said, peering through the glasses. ‘That’s pretty ancient, that thing. What is it, an old scow?’

We were passing it close now, moving up on the tug’s port side. ‘Scows are usually wood.’ Cornish reached over and took the glasses. ‘That’s steel,’ he said.

‘Yeah, steel. And it’s got a wheelhouse — a sort of caboose on its backside. I wonder where they got it — off the scrap heap most like. It’s as rusty as hell.’

‘Scows are wood,’ Cornish repeated. ‘And they’re flat-sided for on-deck loading. That’s a barge.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Mate grinned. ‘It’s a barge — as you say, sir.’

It must have been at least zoo feet long, very low in the water with a little wheelhouse aft and the logs stacked end-to-end so high that if there was a man steering the thing he would have to be constantly in and out of the wheelhouse to peer ahead.

We were past the tow, the tug now visible through swirls of mist. Cornish rang the engine-room to reduce revs still further and ordered the helmsman to close the tug’s port side. Then, when there was barely a ship’s length between the two vessels, the lights all haloed and blurred in the seething billows of fog, he lifted the loudhailer mike off its hook and put it to his lips: ‘This is Coastguard Cutter Kelsey. Do you hear me? This is Coastguard cutter Kelsey. You are to heave-to please. I repeat — heave-to. Do you hear me?’

And back out of the fog came an American voice: ‘I hear you. This is Micky Androxis of American tug Gabriello. I am towing. I cannot heave-to.’

‘You can reduce speed gradually and turn to port.’

no

‘Why? Why should I reduce speed?’

The Mate’s voice cut in then. ‘Captain, I’ve got another blip, just westward of the tow. Looks like it’s heading north.’

Cornish nodded. ‘That’ll be the yacht, I imagine.’ The men were moving up the starb’d side of the cutter, automatic rifles gripped in their hands. They took up positions in the bows as Captain Cornish repeated his order to heave-to. The tug-master pointed out once again that he was in command of an American-registered ship. ‘As a Coastguard officer you have no authority to order me to stop — or to board, Captain. You understand?’

Cornish smiled, lifting his shoulders and his eyes in an expression of mock resignation. ‘Seems he knows all the answers.’ And he added, ‘Something I don’t believe an ordinary tugmaster would be likely to know.’ He told the helmsman to close right in, and repeated his order to heave-to.

‘You have to have police on board for me to do that, brother. You don’t give me orders. But I take them from an RCMP officer. Okay?’

‘A real sea-lawyer,’ Cornish muttered as a light glimmered through the fog astern and the faint whoop-whoop-whoop of chopper blades reached us as they beat at the thick humidity. ‘Police now arriving,’ Cornish snapped over the loudhailer. ‘Start slowing down — at once.’

The helicopter was hovering over the barge, lights picking out the piled-up logs and a man being lowered onto the stern, the rotor blades just visible so that it looked like a ghostly dragonfly, everything veiled, the fog iridescent. Our spotlight held the tug in a merciless glare, the froth of water moving past the two hulls gradually lessening as the speed of both vessels decreased. I saw a second man drop onto the barge, unfasten the harness that had attached him to the winch wire and, as it was reeled in, the helicopter emerging more clearly from the fog, whirls of grey vapour as it slanted forward to take up a position over the tug’s long after run, a man swinging down, pushing himself clear of the thick towing hawser, his feet reaching for the steel plates of the deck gleaming wet in our spotlight. Others followed.

‘Last man coming down now.’ It was the pilot’s voice over our loudspeaker. ‘I’ll be leaving you then, Skip. I’m at call if they want me. I’m to pick them up at Namu, or else they’ll send an amphibian up for them. Okay — you got that? You’re to collect the bods when they’ve finished the job and deliver them to Namu. The motor yacht, incidentally, is Colombian-registered. She’s hove-to with a Mounty and two customs boys on board. Over.’

Cornish already had the mike to his mouth. ‘That’s presuming tug, yacht and barge are cleared by the rummage party. What happens if they’re not cleared?’

‘Then I guess all three vessels will be under arrest,’ came the answer. ‘Customs will stay on board, so will the police officer. They’ll make for Port Hardy most like. Wherever it is, you and I won’t have to worry about them. They’ll have borrowed their own transport. Okay?’

‘Yes, okay.’

‘Then I’ll get going. See if I can find my way back in this dirty crud. Ta-ta — let’s both of us hope they locate whatever it is they’re looking for. Out.’ And the big chopper lifted away, swinging its blunt nose westward, its landing lights suddenly cut off. Almost immediately it vanished from sight behind the grey, silvery wall that marked the iridescent limit of our own and the tug’s lights.

Cornish hung up the VHP mike and turned to the Mate. ‘Curly, have the deckies stand by to go alongside. We’ll hitch onto the tug and give the engines a rest. The sea’s calm enough.’

Not only was the Angeles-Georgia tug called the Gabriello, but she was manned by an ethnic mixture of Greek, Mexican and Italian Americans. The captain was of Welsh-Cretan extraction, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, truculent little man, who strutted around the deck of his flat-iron of a ship shouting at us, ‘Yu guys are wasting your time. Yu won’t find no contraband on my ship. Nothing. D’yu hear? Yu won’t find nothing illegal. Yu look on the barge. That bumboat’s none of my responsibility. Yu look there if yu think anybody got liquor or drugs. I bring it up empty, yu understand. Empty as a dead man’s arse, but what those timber cowboys put in her besides logs, Christ only knows. Not me. It’s nuthin’ to do with me wot yu find there.’

We were tied up to that tug for almost six hours, right through the night until dawn came and the sun began burning up the fog, our whole world turning from sepia to silver and aglow with the warmth of a hidden furnace. I slept a little. Not much. Tom I don’t believe slept at all; by morning his face was haggard, his eyes puffed and slightly inflamed. Once, sitting beside me with a cup of coffee, he had talked about drugs, comparing the operation that was being carried out now with the attitude of US authorities to liquor back in the 1920s. ‘Prohibition put liquor underground. It was hoodlums and mobsters that handled it then. Now it’s respectable and people accept that there’ll be deaths on the road and mayhem on the football terraces as the result of over-indulgence.’ He was drawing a comparison between drink and drugs and, though he was clearly trying to justify his own use of cocaine, I knew far too little about it to argue with him.

His point was that it was the outlawing of drugs, the prohibition of them — and he emphasized that he was only talking about cocaine and the coca leaf — that had made the traffic lucrative and driven it underground into the hands of the criminal element. At one time coke had been respectable, the liquors derived from the coca leaf regarded as beneficial as well as stimulating. An Italian had distilled a liquor from it that was like an elixir, sending it to all the crowned heads of Europe, to the President, even the Pope — all had praised it. And there was that great American drink, based on it and still imprinted with the name. ‘No coke in it now. Suddenly the medical boys turned against it and the world became teetotal on drugs, coke in particular. Pity!’ His hands were trembling, the coffee cup rattling, a nerve twitching the muscles of his jaw. ‘If there wasn’t so much money in it, then bastards like that — ‘ he nodded towards the ship’s hull plates creaking against the big plastic fenders that separated us from the tug — ‘wouldn’t have muscled in on the towing contract I had.’ He shook his head, his shoulders sagging. ‘I never should have sold that timber. So much money… Jesus Christ! It seemed such waste — the money I needed just standing there.’ Tears of self-pity stood in his eyes. ‘Temptation… The Devil, if you like — God! You lawyers, you sit there on your bums, smug as the last trump, never stepping out of line, conforming and keeping to precedent, turning your nose up at lesser mortals and passing judgment on them for their indiscretions… And now there’s Miriam. What the hell happens to her when they’ve found the drugs and Wolchak hears I was on this bloody Coastguard cutter? He’ll think it’s my fault. He’ll blame me.’

‘They haven’t found anything,’ I said, trying to comfort him. ‘They’ve been over three hours at it — ‘

‘No, but they will. They will.’ He was quite certain this was the drugs route to Chicago. ‘They virtually told me so. Anyway, it all adds up.’

But the fact was they didn’t find any drugs. One member of the tug’s crew, a Mexican, had a small amount of cannabis tucked away amongst some socks at the bottom of his suitcase. And on the big motor-cruising yacht, which was carrying a package group of hunters from California up to Prince Rupert, they had found one of the party in possession of narcotic cigarettes. But they hadn’t charged either the American or the Mexican, merely confiscating the cigarettes and the cannabis. They had also found three hand guns. But none of this was what they had been looking for.

Almost six hours they had spent rummaging the three vessels and that was all in the way of contraband they had found. It was the two officers on the barge that finished first. ‘Guess there’s not so very many nooks and crannies on a barge you can hide things.’ The man had smiled ruefully, adding that they hadn’t been looking for the odd little bag of the stuff.

‘The tip-off was that the yacht would be carrying big bags or containers of raw cocaine.’ But when the yacht was finally cleared to proceed, and the officers ferried across to the cutter in the inflatable workboat, they admitted that, not only was there no coke on the vessel, but the passengers were all genuine Californian businessmen taking a hunting holiday.

As one of them put it with what I thought was a touch of envy: ‘Get away from the wife, get as drunk as a coot, talk smut and do what you dam’ well like with nobody around to tell you don’t. Reck’n the company running them hunting cruises got it made. They were all as rich as hell and enough booze on board to give any ordinary fella the shakes in a week.’ All they had managed to achieve in the three and a half hours they had been on board was to collect the bugging device that had enabled the yacht to be tracked by satellite.

Dawn broke and the last of the customs men came aboard just before seven. They were dead tired and all of them below, drinking coffee and eating into the cook’s supplies of sausages and bacon, as Cornish gave the order to throw off the warps, the engines picking up as we got under way and turned our bows to the north, followed by the complaints and curses of the tug’s dark-haired skipper. He was out on the sidedeck, shaking his fist. Then, just before disappearing into the fog, he grinned at us and made a rude gesture.

As well as the customs men, and the RCMP officer neat in his uniform of blue blouse and trousers with yellow stripe, there was an American, a short, explosive little man with a crumpled, weatherbeaten face. When I went down for coffee shortly after we had got under way he was holding forth to the others along the lines that the bastards had got away with it this time, but next time they played yachts and barges in Canadian waters they’d be escorted into harbour ‘and I’ll bloody see that all three vessels are taken to pieces bit by bit.’

‘Don’t reckon there’ll be a next time,’ the lanky RCMP officer said.

‘Oh, yes there will. For these guys there’s always a next rime. Once they’ve got the smell of the money up their nose, you’ll see — nothing will stop them.’ He was from the State of Michigan, too angry at their failure to find what they’d been looking for and too wrought up not to argue, his feelings running deep. I had barely filled my cup before he was talking about the drugs situation in Chicago and how it had grown as a result of two rival groups of the same mafioso family — the Papas and the Mamas — fighting it out in the streets.

v I was on my way back to the wheelhouse, but then he suddenly mentioned the name Wolchak. It was such an unusual name that I stopped, listening as he told how this fat little Polish-Lithuanian Jew, who was the financial brains of the paternal gang, the Papas, had been away in South America organizing the supply side of the drugs racket when the fighting broke out.

‘Most of the famiglia, both Papas and Mamas, got themselves burned, so when little Josef returns there’s only pieces to pick up, and as finance director that had always been his job, picking up the pieces. Jeez! I’d have given anything to have found the little guy right there on board that smug-looking Greek’s tug.’ And he went on to say there had only been one occasion when anybody had come near to pinning anything on Josef Wolchak and that was long before he had anything to do with the Chicago gangs, when he was trying to raise the starting price to buy in to a half-bust real estate company. He had come in to Idlewild airport — ‘it was Idlewild then so you can tell how long ago it was. He had flown in from BA. He had these walking sticks with him, half a dozen of them, the wood all beautifully carved. Souvenirs, he said, and as luck would have it the customs officer dropped one. Then, as it lay, one end on the edge of a weighing machine platform, a motorized trolley drove over the other end of it, snapping it in half. The stick was hollow and a white powder ran out. That was the only time the authorities ever came near to nailing him, and the only time, I guess, he ever ran anything himself. After that he was too big.’ I ‘How did he get away with it?’ somebody asked.

‘Story is he threatened to sue them for the price of the stick. Said they were valuable antiques, made by the Quechua Indians up in the mountains of Bolivia, the powder nothing to do with him and probably just lime put there by the Indians to fill the hollow interior and make the sticks heavier and more solid. Maybe it’s apocryphal, but even if it is, it’s in character, for he’s bluffed his way right up to the top of a very nasty, very dangerous heap. And not just bluff. He was the first of the gang bosses to recruit out of South America.

But it’s like I say; once they smell money, then greed takes over, and if they’ve got away with it once, they’ll have another go at it.’

‘Have you got a picture of Wolchak?’ I asked.

He swung round from the table, his little eyes narrowed. ‘You know him?’

‘I’ve met a man named Josef Wolchak, that’s all,’ I said. ‘It’s an unusual name.’

‘Not so unusual.’ He peered at me. ‘You’re a Limey, aren’t you?’ And when I nodded, he asked me where I’d met this man Wolchak. In the end he took my name and address, scribbling it down in his notebook, the connection between the Wolchak who had bounced into my office and the origin of the logs that filled the barge making me even more convinced that the narcotics division had been deliberately set on a false trail.

He asked me a lot of questions, but as I had only met the man that once, and for a very short time, my answers were not very helpful. He promised to send me a photograph so that I could check it against my recollection of the Wolchak who had visited me in my office, and after that I made my excuses and returned to the wheelhouse. By then we were back in the Hakai Passage, having passed seaward of the South Pointers reef, the sun burning up the fog and the salmon leaping. Twice I sighted bald eagles, once in the distance, diving from a dead tree lookout post to seize an unsuspecting fish in its claws, the second time as we rounded Kelpie Point — there were two of them, juveniles Cornish said, standing on the rock right beside the flashing beacon, watching us with complete unconcern. We were so close I could have cast a line at their feet. ‘God bless America.’ The Mate put his hand over his heart, grinning as he posed to attention.

The big, corrugated iron packing sheds and the power station at Namu shone bright silver in the sun as we ghosted in to lie alongside the wooden jetty and say goodbye to the customs men and the RCMP officers, the American Drug Enforcement officer going with them. They went glumly, knowing their search had been one hundred per cent thorough and yet with the uneasy feeling that somewhere, somehow, they’d been fooled. When they had gone, all of them heading for the hotel, Cornish stretched his arms, his mouth opening in a great yawn. ‘Well, that’s that. Anybody coming for a walk?’

I said I would, and the Chief also volunteered. His engines were shut down, the crew told they were clear of duty until we sailed at noon. Perhaps I should have slept, like Tom who was flat out, propped against the deckhousing aft, his mouth open and snoring loudly as he lay in the sunshine, his anorak bundled up under his head as a pillow. If I had known … But writing about it afterwards one always has the advantage of hindsight. At the time all is in the future and one has no idea what lies in store — otherwise, fortune-tellers, star-gazers and entrail inspectors would be out of business.