The Black Tide

CHAPTER ONE

Gibraltar was a strange interlude, quite unreal in a sense, the Rock towering above us and most of those in the marina in holiday clothes and a holiday mood. The sun shone and it was quite warm by day, except in the wind which blew hard from the east. There was a lot to do, for the boat had been stripped of everything to get at the hydraulics, which ran the length of the hull and had sprung a leak, and there were stores to get, water and fuel to load. Each day I listened to the BBC news on the radio above the chart table, half expecting to hear my name and hoping to God I wouldn’t.

I had asked Saltley, of course, as soon as he’d arrived on board. But as far as he knew no warrant had been issued for my arrest. ‘I’m not at all sure the Choffel business comes within their jurisdiction.’ We were down in the bare saloon then, his bags opened on the table as he changed into work clothes of jeans and T-shirt. Pamela was changing up for’ard and Mark had taken the taxi back into town. ‘It’s probably a question of where the killing took place.’

‘He was shot on the dhow.’

‘Yes, yes.’ I think he was a little tired after his flight, his voice impatient. ‘That’s Arab territory. But the dhow was tied up alongside the tanker, and if it could be proved that the Aurora B was still a British ship, then they would have jurisdiction, the killing having occurred on British territory.’ He zipped up his trousers and reached for the drink I had poured him. ‘Personally I don’t think she’s a hope in hell of getting you arrested. So just relax and concentrate on the job in hand, which is finding that bloody tanker.’

‘But if you thought that, why did you tell Jean Kerrison to get me on the next ferry to France?’

He looked at me over his drink, the lop-sided face and the china blue eyes suddenly looking a little crafty. ‘I wasn’t taking any chances, that’s all. I wanted you here.’ He raised his glass, smiling. ‘Here’s luck — to us both.’ And he added, ‘I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I do know something about the law as it applies internationally. For that girl to have you arrested, she’s either got to prove you killed her father on British territory or get whatever country it happened in — the Oman, say — to order your arrest, and since this yacht is British territory it then depends on whether we have an extradition treaty with the Oman.’

‘But when she went to the police… Jean Kerrison heard a programme on the radio, an interview with her, which ended with her saying she was going straight to the police and a warrant would be issued for my arrest on a charge of murder. Did she go to the police?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But presuming she did, what would happen next? What action would the police take?’

‘I think it would depend on the evidence she produced. I imagine it’s pretty thin but, if she did convince them, then her statement would be sent on to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions with whatever comments the police felt were warranted, together with the results of any enquiries they may have instituted. It would be up to the Public Prosecutor then.’

‘And what happens when they discover I’ve fled the country?’ I was remembering the Special Branch man’s instructions to notify the nearest police station of any change of address. They would almost certainly trace me to Balkaer and question the Kerrisons. I was angry with him then, feeling he was using me. Fleeing the country was the most damning thing I could have done.

‘They may notify Interpol,’ he said. ‘But by the time they’ve traced you to Gibraltar we’ll almost certainly be at sea. Forget about it,’ he added. ‘If we find that tanker waiting for us out there by the Selvagens, then that part of your story will be confirmed. Once they believe that, they’ll believe the rest.’

I had to accept that, since it was my only hope, but I should have stayed. I should have faced her accusations, reiterating the truth of what had happened. Instead, I had run away at the instigation of this ruthless bastard who was only interested in finding the missing tankers and saving his friend’s skin. If I’d had any guts I’d have walked off the boat then and there and taken then next plane back to London. But I didn’t. I stayed on board and each day I listened to the BBC news, waiting, always waiting to hear my name mentioned.

We sailed for the Selvagens on Saturday, February 6. It was just six days since the Kerrisons had driven me into Penzance to catch the Brittany ferry, seventeen days since the Aurora B had left her bolt-hole in the Musandam Peninsula. ‘She’ll be about halfway,’ Saltley said. ‘Just rounding the Cape probably.’ We were standing at the chart table, the boat heeled over as we ploughed our way through the Straits, thrashing to windward with the bows slamming and sheets of spray hitting the mains’l with a noise like gunshot. ‘That is, if she’s steaming at full speed. Pity we’ve lost that levanter.’ He smiled at me, looking more like a gnome than ever in his bulky oilskins. ‘Hope you’re a good sailor. It could be a hard beat.’

Only the previous day the wind had gone round to the south-west and now it was blowing force 5 to 6, a dead-noser, for it was south-west we needed to go. ‘I had reckoned on reaching the islands in less than six days, which would make it Day Twenty-two of the Aurora B’s voyage. But if it’s going to go on blowing from the south-west we’ll be increasing our miles through the water considerably. It could make a difference of two or three days.’

We had the Rock and the African shore in sight all through the daylight hours. It was wind against current most of the time, with steep breaking waves and a movement more violent than I had ever previously experienced. It was impossible to stand without holding on to one of the hand grips all the time and in the cockpit we were all of us wearing our safety harnesses clipped to securing wires.

It was towards dusk, when the wind had eased slightly, that I took my first trick at the helm under Pamela’s supervision, the others having got their heads down in preparation for the long hours of darkness when they would be standing lone watches. It was only then, with my hands gripping the wheel, that I began to appreciate the extraordinary power of an ocean-racer. Until then I had only seen them at a distance, but now, feeling that wind-driven power under my hands and vibrant throughout the ship, I experienced a feeling of intense excitement, a sense of overwhelming exhilaration as though I were a god riding the sea on a white-winged Pegasus. And when Pamela clapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’ll do, mate,’ I felt a wave of pleasure as though I were a kid and had passed some sort of a test. She got up then, bracing herself with a hand on the bar-taut mainsheet. ‘You’re on your own now. I need a pee and there’s the evening meal to get.’

She left me to my own devices then, so that for almost two hours the ship was mine, and as we powered to windward I found myself revelling in the extra thrust that came from slight adjustments of the wheel, the way I could slide her over the worst of the waves, and once in a while Pamela, keeping an eye on me from the galley, gave me a little smile of approval. With no make-up on, a dirty old woollen cap pulled down over her head and yellow oilskins she looked more like a ship’s boy than the owner’s daughter, and how she could cook with the boat pitching and slamming I couldn’t imagine. When Toni Bartello finally relieved me and I went below I found I had no interest in food and had to get my head down or be sick.

The seasickness didn’t last, but the sou’wester did. The wind seemed fixed in that quarter, staying there for almost a week, sometimes light, sometimes blowing a near-gale, and always we were beating.

It was a strange life, the five of us cooped up together, at such close quarters, and in some respects in such rugged conditions, that it was almost the equivalent of serving as a seaman in the Navy two centuries ago. Most of my working life had been spent at sea so that it was difficult for me to understand at first why anyone would do it for pleasure, particularly a girl. So little space and no privacy, the violence of the movement — and yet it worked, our lives ruled by the sea and the wind, and little time or energy to think who it was had left the bunk warm for me when I came below tired after a sail change or a long spell at the wheel with the salt of the wind-driven spray crusted on my face.

The sun shone most of the daylight hours and when the wind dropped and we had the engine on, all of us up in the cockpit with a drink in our hands, then it was different. We were relaxed, talking uninhibitedly about our lives, or speculating what we would find when the Selvagens appeared over the horizon. Would we find the Howdo Stranger sitting there, waiting? And if so, what would she be called now, what false name would they have painted on her bows and stern? We had a lot of fun inventing names for her, and for the Aurora B, laughing uproariously at simple jokes, like twinning them and calling them Castor and Bollocks. We laughed a lot at silly ordinary things, ate enormously and drank well. It was, in fact, a singularly happy ship, made more so I think by the presence of a girl who was a good cook, a good sailor and good company. There were times when I found it difficult to take my eyes off her, for it was getting warmer all the time and, ghosting along in light airs after Saltley had decided we needed to save our fuel, she was wearing very little at the midday pour-out.

We were drinking wine, not spirits, but it was strong Spanish stuff and I suppose my interest in her showed. It was on the eighth day, when the wind had at last gone round to the north-west, where it should have been all the time. I had the middle watch and when I took over from Mark he brewed us mugs of cocoa and joined me in the cockpit. ‘Lovely night,’ he said, staring up at the stars. He was silent for a long nme after that, so I knew he had something on his mind. At last he came out with it. ‘Look, Trevor — hope you don’t mind, but I think I’d better tell you.’ He paused there, not looking at me, his face in silhouette against the light of the compass. ‘About Pam,’ he went on awkwardly, burying his face in his mug and speaking very quietly. ‘I know she admires you, thinks you’re quite a guy, in fact. And you’re not exactly — well, disinterested. I don’t mind myself, your eyeing her I mean. But if I’ve noticed it, then Salt will have, too, and he is… well, in love with her, I suppose. It’s generally recognized — in the family, I mean — that she’ll marry him in the end. You see, he’s been after her ever since she left finishing school — oh, before that… since ever almost — hanging round her like a bee round a honeypot.’ He finished his cocoa and got up very abruptly. ‘You don’t mind my mentioning it, I hope, but if you could just keep your mind concentrated on the job in hand…’

He dived down the companionway then, leaving me alone at the wheel. The boy was embarrassed and I knew why. Saltley might be an older man with a lopsided face, but he’d been to the right schools, belonged to the right clubs. He had the right background, and above all, he was the man their father turned to when there was underwriting trouble. Also, and perhaps this rankled more than anything, they knew my own family background.

I didn’t sleep much that night and in the morning Saltley asked me to take a noon sight myself and work out our position. It made me think he had put Mark up to it. But we were under spinnaker now, sailing on a broad reach at just over six knots, and with only another day to go before we raised the Selvagens it was obviously sensible to make use of my professional capabilities and get a check on his last fix.

I took the sights, and when I had finally got a position, there was only a mile or two in it, Selvagem Grande bearing 234°, distant 83 miles. It was now twenty-six days since the Aurora B had sailed. Only two or three more days to go. It depended how much of a lift the strong Agulhas current had given her, what speed she was making. She could be a little faster than we reckoned, or slower. It was just conceivable the rendezvous had already taken place. But Saltley didn’t think so. ‘Things always take a little longer than people reckon.’ But he was convinced the first tanker would be in position at least two days ahead of schedule, just in case, ‘That means we could find the tanker already there. I don’t think it will be, but it’s just possible.’ He gave me that lop-sided smile. ‘We’ll know tomorrow.’ And he added. ‘Wind’s falling light. We may have to run the engine later.’

It was only now, as we neared our objective, that we began to face up to the fact that if we were right, then we were the only people who could alert the countries bordering the English Channel and the southern North Sea to the possibility of a major marine disaster. In putting it like that I am being a little unfair to Saltley. The thought would have been constantly in his mind, as it was in mine. But we hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t brought it out into the open as something that could make the difference between life and death to a lot of people, perhaps destroy whole areas of vital marine habitat.

And that evening, sitting in the cockpit drinking our wine with the last of the sun’s warmth slipping down to the horizon, I began to realize how far from the reality of this voyage the three younger members of the crew were. Pam and Mark, they both knew it could affect them financially, but at their age that was something they took in their stride. Sailing off like this to some unknown islands had been fun, a sort of treasure hunt, a game of hide-and-seek, something you did for kicks, and adventure. I had to spell it out to them. Even then I think they saw it in terms of something remote, like death and destruction on the television screen. Only when I described the scene in the khawr as the dhow slid away from the tanker, with Sadeq standing at the top of the gangway, a machine pistol at his hip spraying bullets down on to us, only then, when I told them about Choffel and the stinking wound in his guts, and how bloody vulnerable we could be out there alone by the Selvagens facing two big tankers that were in the hands of a bunch of terrorists, did they begin to think of it as a dangerous exercise that could end all our lives.

That night it was very quiet. We had changed from spinnaker to a light-weight genoa at dusk and the boat was ghosting along at about four knots in a flat calm sea. I handed over to Mark at midnight and my bunk was like a cradle rocking gently to the long Atlantic swell. I woke sometime in the small hours, a sliver of a moon appearing and disappearing in the doghouse windows, the murmur of voices from the cockpit.

I was in the starb’d pilot berth, everything very quiet and something about the acoustics of the hull made their voices carry into the saloon. I didn’t mean to listen, but then I heard my name mentioned and

Mark saying, ‘I hope to God he’s right.’ And Pam’s voice answered him. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘He could be lying,’ the boy said.

‘Trevor isn’t a liar.’

‘Look, suppose he did kill that French engineer…’

‘He didn’t. I know he didn’t.’

‘You don’t know anything of the sort. And keep your voice down.’

‘He can’t hear us, not in the saloon. And even if he did kill the man, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the tankers.’

Her brother made an angry snorting sound. ‘You’ve had the flags out for him ever since the old Salt sent him off in search of the Aurora B.’

T think he’s got a lot of guts, that’s all. Getting himself on board that tanker, then getting away on the dhow with the man he was looking for. It’s quite incredible.’

‘Exactly. Salt thinks it’s so incredible it must be true. He says nobody could have made it all up. The next thing is every word he’s uttered is gospel, so that here we are, out in the Atlantic, everything hung on that one word salvage. And I’m not just thinking of the money. I’m thinking of Mum and Dad, and what’s going to happen to them.’

‘We’ve all of us got stop-loss reinsurance,’ she said. ‘Mine is for fifty thousand excess of thirty. Daddy’s is a lot more I know. It probably won’t save us, but it’ll help.’

‘I told you, I’m not thinking of the money.’

‘What then?’

‘If Trevor’s lying… All right, Pam, let’s say he’s told us the truth, say it’s all gospel truth, but we’ve got it wrong about where they’re going to meet up and there’s no tanker waiting at the Selvagens, how do we ever prove that the vessels we insured aren’t lying at the bottom of the sea? We’ve got to show that they’re afloat and in the hands of Gulf terrorists, otherwise that cleverly worded war zone exemption clause doesn’t operate.’

‘The tanker will be there. I’m sure it will’ There was a long pause, then she said, ‘It’s Daddy you’re worried about, isn’t it?’ He didn’t answer and after a while she said, ‘You’re thinking of suicide, is that it? D’you think he might — do you think he really might?’

‘My God!’ His voice sounded shocked. ‘The way you put it into words. You’re thinking of suicide — just like that, and your voice so bloody matter-of-fact.’

‘You’ve been skating around it.’ Her tone was sharp and pitched high. ‘You know you have, ever since you brought up the question of what we’ll find when we get to the island. If Trevor’s wrong and our tanker doesn’t turn up, if nothing happens to prove that the two of them are still afloat, then the money we lose — that’s everything, the house, this boat, all Mother’s jewellery, her clothes even — it will be nothing to the damage Daddy will suffer… all his friends, his whole world. At his age he can’t start again. He’d never be able to at Lloyd’s anyway. You can’t make a come-back when everybody knows you cost your Names just about every penny they possess. Do you think I don’t know this? I’ve been living with it for the last month or more, knowing that for him it’d be the end of the world. I don’t think he’d want to go on living after that. But whether he’d go as far as to take his own life…’

‘I’m sorry, Pam. I didn’t realize.’

She seemed to ignore that, for she went on almost as though he hadn’t spoken: ‘And don’t start hitting out at Trevor without stopping to think what it’s like to see your wife burn herself up in an attempt to save some seagulls. Or at me either. I may have hung out some flags as you put it, but what have you done, or Salty, any of us? He found the tanker and though he wasn’t doing it for us—‘ There was a crash and I heard her say, ‘Bugger! That’s my hat gone overboard.’ There was a stamp of feet on deck, the sound of sails flapping. A few minutes later the girl’s figure slipped past me as she went to her quarters up for’ard.

I woke to the smell of bacon frying, the sun already burning up the dawn clouds. A haze developed as the morning wore on, the sun very hot and Pamela dressed in shorts with a loose-tailed shirt reading a book on the foredeck in the shadow of the spinnaker. It wasn’t until after lunch that we began to detect a smudge like a tiny cloud growing on the horizon. It was straight over the bows and couldn’t be anything else but Sel-vagem Grande. It grew steadily in size, and though our eyes were constantly searching, there was no satellite smudge that could represent the tanker.

By 15.00 we could see the island quite clearly and had altered course to pass to the north of it. It was a sort of Table Mountain in miniature, the highest point

597 feet according to the Admiralty pilot, and cliffs rising sheer to 400 feet. These cliffs formed an unbroken line, heavily undercut and edged white by the breaking swell, their flat tops arid and desolate with a cap of black basalt sitting on the red sandstone like chocolate on a layer cake. No trees anywhere, no sign of vegetation, just the two layers of rock with a new light structure perched like a white pimple on the summit of one of the basalt picos.

The wind was backing into the north and for a time we were busy handling the spinnaker and setting a working genoa. It was blowing force 3 or 4 by the time we got everything stowed and by then we were close off the northern end of the island with no sign of any other vessel. There was still a chance that the tanker was hidden from us by the southern part of the island, but our hopes faded as we rounded Punto do Risco and began to run down the western side. There were plenty of shearwaters, which is the main reason the Portuguese government declared the island a nature reserve, but otherwise the place looked totally lifeless. There were some shacks by the landing place on the south-western side and a roped pathway climbed steeply to the lighthouse, but apart from that, the only sign of any human presence was the mass of Communist slogans painted on the rocks. This ugly display of giant graffiti had presumably been put there by fishermen who had been ardent supporters of the revolution.

Off the landing place we turned back on to our original course, heading for Selvagem Pequena ten miles away. This is quite a different sort of island, being little more than an above-water reef, but with the wind increasing we could soon make out the white of waves breaking on the horizon. By sunset the remains of the wrecked tanker were visible and we could see right across the island to where waves were breaking on the smaller reef island of Fora a mile or so to the west. From Fora a chain of above-water rocks six to twelve feet high extended several miles to the north. This was the Restinga do Ilheu de Fora, but there was no tanker waiting there, and with visibility now vastly improved, we could see there wasn’t even a fishing vessel anywhere within a radius of a dozen miles of us. We were the only vessel afloat in the neighbourhood of the Selvagen Archipelago.

Once this had sunk in we felt suddenly very lonely. The islands had an atmosphere of their own. If there was any place at sea that could be described as unfriendly I felt this was it and I found myself remembering that word spooky. It was a strange word to use about a group of islands, but now that I was among them I knew it described their atmosphere exactly. They were spooky and I wondered how long Saltley would be willing to hang around them waiting for a tanker that might never turn up.

I voiced my misgivings that evening, not in front of the others, but to Saltley alone. We had had an excellent meal hove-to on the starb’d tack four miles to the east of Selvagem Pequena, the light on the main island just visible over the bows. I took him up on deck on some pretext or other and told him bluntly that I’d no real confidence in the conclusion we had reached. ‘I’m not even sure Choffel used the word salvage. It sounded like it, that’s all. If you remember, I made that quite clear.’

He nodded. ‘Understood. But Mike and I didn’t come to the same conclusion solely on the basis of what you had told me. We worked it out for ourselves. Unless they were going to operate independently, they’d want to rendezvous as near the target as possible.’

‘It doesn’t have to be an island,’ I said. ‘There’s all the mainland coast, or better still a fixed position out at sea.’

He shook his head. ‘The mainland would be too risky, but we did give a lot of thought to a sight-fixed rendezvous. It’s what you or I would choose. But we’re navigators. Terrorists tend to be urban creatures. They wouldn’t trust a rendezvous that was arrived at by using a sextant and tables stuffed with figures. They’d want a fixed point they could see.’ We were in the bows then and he had his hands in his pockets, balancing himself easily to the plunging movement of the ship. ‘You picked on the Selvagens, so did we, and the more we thought about it, the more ideal they appeared. And now I’ve seen them—‘ He turned his head to port, staring westward to where the sound of the seas pounding Selvagem Pequena came to us as a continuous deep murmur. ‘No ship’s captain wants to tangle with that lot. They give this group a wide berth, and the silly idiot who ran his vessel on to the rocks there only goes to make the point that it’s a bloody dangerous place.’ He turned then, walking slowly back towards the empty cockpit lit by the faint glow of the lights below. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘Our friend will turn up. I’m sure of it.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But probably not tomorrow or the next day or the next — just how long are you prepared to hang around here?’

‘For three weeks if necessary,’ he said. And when I asked him if we’d got enough food on board, he answered curtly, ‘If we have to stay that long, it’s water, not food, will be the problem.’

I thought it might be the humans, too, for the prospect of hanging around these godforsaken islands for three weeks appalled me. But, as his words indicated, we were committed now and no point in leaving until we were absolutely sure this wasn’t the meeting place.

That night it came on to blow. Even though we were hove-to there was a lot of movement and the noise of the wind in the rigging and waves breaking made it difficult to sleep. Saltley seemed to be up and about most of the night checking our position against the light on Selvagem Grande and some time in the early hours, at the change of the watch I think, the ship was put about with a great crashing of gear and slatting of sails, feet pounding on the deck and somebody shouting to run her off as the jib sheet was caught up on the winch. All this I heard as in a dream, clinging to my bunk, not wishing to be roused from the half-sleep in which I lay. A cold wind came down through the open hatch and when, after running for some minutes, they turned about again, bows into the wind and hove-to, I distinctly heard Mark call out, ‘The light’s gone.’ And a moment later — ‘It’s raining. I can’t see a bloody thing.’ As I fell back into slumber again, I was thinking of the red painted slogans on the rocks and the waves breaking over the Pequena and Fora reefs, hoping to God Saltley knew his stuff as an inshore navigator.

The next thing I knew the first grey light of a dismal dawn was filtering into the saloon. Toni Bartello was shaking me violently. ‘We’re reefing. Get up please.’ And as I stirred he yelled in my ear — ‘Oilskins and seaboots. There’s a lot of water in the cockpit and it’s raining like hell.’

It was a foul morning, the wind near gale force and poor visibility. I have seen plenty of rough seas, but it’s one thing to observe them from high up in the closed-in comfort of a big ship’s wheelhouse, quite another to face steep breaking waves virtually from sea level. Saltley told me to take the wheel while the rest of them, all except Pamela who was still fast asleep, reefed the main and then changed down to storm jib, and all the time the crash of seas bursting against the hull, spray flying across the deck and everything banging and slatting as the boat bucked and rolled and the wind came in blustering gusts.

‘Where are the islands?’ I yelled to Saltley as he half fell into the cockpit. We were hove-to again and nothing visible except a bleak circle of storm-tossed water and grey scudding clouds.

‘Over there,’ he yelled, putting on his harness and making a vague gesture towards the porthand shrouds.

All that day we only saw them once, but that once was enough to scare us badly, for we suddenly saw heavy breaking seas quite close on the starb’d bow and as we put about, I caught a glimpse of that wrecked tanker’s superstructure, a dim ghost of a shape seen through a blur of rain and spray. After that Saltley took no chances and we ran south for a good hour before turning and heaving-to again.

Later the rain eased and the wind dropped, but we had been badly frightened and even when there were no more clouds and the stars paling to the brightness of the young moon, we still kept to two-man watches. Dawn broke with high peaks aflame in the east as the sun rose firing the edges of old storm clouds. No sign of the islands, no ship of any sort in sight, the sea gently heaving and empty to the horizon in every direction.

Fortunately we were able to get sun sights and fix our position. We were some twenty miles east southeast of Selvagem Pequena. We had already shaken out the reefs and now we set the light-weight genoa. The contrast was unbelievable, the ship slipping fast through the water, the sea almost flat calm and the decks dry, not a drop of spray coming aboard.

Saltley took the opportunity to check his camera. It was a good one with several lenses, including a 300 mm. telephoto lens. He also took from his briefcase some official GODCO pictures of both the Howdo Stranger and the Aurora B. He asked us to study them carefully so that if our tankers turned up, however brief the sighting, we’d still be able to identify them. Later he put them in the top drawer of the chart table so that if we needed to check any detail they’d be ready to hand.

It was the middle of the afternoon before we raised Selvagem Grande. We sailed all round it and then down to Pequena and Fora. No tanker, nothing, the wind falling very light, the sea almost a flat calm with ripples that caught the slanting sun in reflected dazzles of blinding light. It was quite hot and towards dusk a haze developed. This thickened during the evening till it was more a sea fog, so that we had another worrying night with no sign of the light on Selvagem Grande and no stars and the moon no more than a ghostly glimmer of opaque light.

In the end we turned eastward, sailing for three hours on a course of 90°, going about and sailing a reciprocal three hours on 270°. We did that twice during the course of the night and when dawn came there was still the same thick clammy mist and nothing visible.

We were making towards Selvagem Grande then and by the time breakfast was over and everything washed up and stowed, the sun was beginning to burn up the mist and just visible as a golden disc hung in a golden glow. Water dripped in rainbow drops from the gold-painted metal of the main boom and the only sound on deck was the tinkling gurgle of water slipping past the hull.

Shortly after 10.00 I handed the wheel over to

Pamela. Saltley was dozing in his bunk, which was the starb’d quarter berth aft of the chart table, and Toni and Mark were up in the bows servicing the snap-shackle end of the masthead spinnaker hoist which was showing signs of chafe. I paid a visit to the heads, had a shave and then began checking Saltley’s DR position. I was just measuring off the distance run on each course during the night when Pamela called down to ask me how far off the island was supposed to be.

‘According to the dead reckoning at ten o’clock approximately nine miles,’ I said. ‘Why — can you see it?’

‘I think so.’

‘Speed through the water?’ I asked.

She checked the electric log and reported 4.7 knots. We had covered perhaps 2V2 miles since the last log entry. ‘I’ve lost it now,’ she called down. ‘The mist comes and goes.’

I dived up into the cockpit then, for if she really had seen the island it must be a lot closer than Saltley’s dead reckoning indicated. The sun’s pale disc was barely visible, the mist iridescent and so full of light it hurt the eyes. Visibility was little more than a mile. She pointed away to port. ‘The bearing was about two-thirty.’

‘The island should be on the starb’d bow,’ I told her.

T know.’ She nodded, staring into the mist, her eyes narrowed, all her hair, including her eyebrows, sparkling with moisture. ‘I just caught a glimpse of it, very pale and quite sheer.’ But in a mist it is so easy to imagine you can see what you are expecting to see. ‘I’m sure it was those sandstone cliffs.’

I stayed with her, conscious of her proximity, the female scent of her, finding the bluntness of her hands on the wheel, the intentness of her square determined face somehow attractive. She was such a very capable girl, so unemotional, quite the opposite of Karen. There had been an early morning watch when everybody was still asleep and she had joined me in the cockpit, sitting so close that every time the boat rolled I could feel the pressure of her body against mine. I had touched her then and she had let me, till without saying a word, but smiling quietly to herself, she had gone below to get breakfast. But that was two days ago, when we were hove-to in the gale.

‘There!’ She pointed and I saw the mist had thinned. Something glimmered on the edge of visibility. The boat lifted on a swell and I lost it behind the port shrouds. ‘Gone again,’ she breathed. It was as though we were sailing along the edge of a cloud, a lost world, all blinding white, sea and air merged together and fleeting glimpses of blue overhead. Then I saw it myself, like a pale cliff rising out of the opaque miasma which was the horizon.

Her brown hands shifted on the wheel, the boat turning to put that pale glimmer of a cliff close on the port bow, our sight of it unobstructed by the sails. I was standing now, my eyes narrowed against the sun-glare, the mist coming and going and nothing visible any longer but a glimmering void. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘I’m steering two-forty. Shall I hold on that or get back to two-seventy?’

I hesitated. Had we really seen the cliffs of Sel-vagem Grande, or had it been a trick of the mist in the confusing glow of the sun’s hidden light? I brushed the moisture from my eyelashes, watching for the horizon to appear again. ‘I’ll hold on then,’ she said. ‘I’m certain it was the cliffs.’

I nodded, imagining I saw something again. But when I shifted my gaze I could see the same vague shape on the edge of visibility wherever I looked. A trick of the light. I closed my eyes, resting them against the glare, and when I opened them I could see a horizon emerging and there, over the bows, was that cliff, shining palely in that opaque world of mist and sun. ‘Something there,’ I murmured, reaching for the binoculars, and she nodded, standing herself now and steering with her bare foot on the wheel, her hair hanging loose and all bright with moisture like an autumn web. Swirls of mist and a little breeze cat’s-pawing the surface of the sea. The binoculars were useless, making the mist worse. Then the veil was drawn back, drifting astern of us, and suddenly we were in hazy sunshine, with the horizon hardening to a line and those cliffs emerging again and sprouting a funnel.

No doubt about it now, it was a ship hull-down ahead of us. I shouted to Saltley, my voice echoing Pamela’s, and the others came tumbling up on deck, The breeze was picking up and we were moving through the water at a good five knots. Nobody spoke, all of us staring intently, willing it to be the ship we were looking for. The minutes passed slowly, the hull gradually lifting above the horizon until at last we knew it was a tanker. What is more, she was hove-to; either that or she was anchored, for the bearing didn’t change.

The time was 11.17. The date February 19. Day thirty since the Aurora B had sailed. Saltley turned to Pamela. ‘I think I’d like you sunbathing on the fore-deck. A bikini if you would, Pam, and a towel so that you can wave as we go close under their stern. I’ll be down below taking pictures through the hatch.’

Mark took the helm and Saltley briefed him very precisely. What he wanted was clear photographic evidence of the name and port of registry painted on the tanker’s stern. We would then sail up the vessel’s port side and he would take shots of the name on the bows.

By the time Pamela came on deck again, stripped almost to the bare flesh and bronzed like a young Amazon, the mist was a dirty smudge astern of us, the sun shining out of a clear blue sky. There was more wind now, the boat close-hauled and slipping fast through the water, the air getting warmer. The tanker was lying with her bows pointing north. She was about three miles away, and beyond her, to the north-west, we could just see the black basalt tops of Selvagem Grande lifting above the horizon.

Through the glasses it was already possible to see that the superstructure, which had looked almost white glimmering at us through the mist, was in fact painted emerald green, the funnel white with a bright red band and two golden stars. The hull was black and as soon as all the details of the vessel were clearly visible Saltley was checking them against the photographs laid out on the cockpit seats. It was difficult to be sure about her tonnage, but everything else matched, except the colour. The Howdo Stranger had been painted in the GOD CO colours of blue hull with a blue funnel above a sand-yellow superstructure.

There was little doubt in my mind, or in Saltley’s. Every little detail of the deck layout matched, and as we closed with her, making to pass close under her stern, I knew she was about the same tonnage. ‘Don’t forget,’ Saltley said to Mark as he dived below. ‘Get right under her stern, then gybe.’

We came down on her very fast, the black hull growing, until it towered above us, massive as an iron breakwater. High up on the bridge wing there was a little knot of men watching us. I counted seven, a motley group with only one of them in any sort of uniform. Pamela was lying stretched out on the fore-deck. Two men in overalls appeared on the upper deck just below the lifeboat, one of them pointing as Pamela sat up and turned her head. Then she got languidly to her feet. They waved and we waved back, the group on the bridge watching us. I saw the flash of binoculars and then we lost them as we passed under the massive steel wall of her stern. And there close above us was the name, Shah Mohammed — Basra picked out in white and startlingly clear against the black of the hull.

A man leaning over the stern rail was joined by others, all of them waving. The yacht yawed, swinging round. ‘Duck!’ Saltley shouted. The boom came over with a crash, the sail slatting, everything in a tangle, and down below Saltley crouching out of sight, the camera with its telescopic lens directed at the ship’s name, the shutter clicking. Even with the naked eye we could see the second O of the original name just showing as a faint raised shadow in the gap between Shah and Mohammed.

Everything was very quiet, no sound of engines as we sorted out the deck, coming round on to the port tack and sailing up the side of the tanker. In repainting the hull they appeared to have used only one coat, for here and there glimpses of the old blue showed through the black, and when we reached the bows, there it was again, the shadow of the O just visible in the middle of Shah Mohammed, which was again painted white so that it stood out with great clarity.

Saltley passed up an aerosol foghorn and Mark gave three blasts as we sheered away, back on to our original course. The tanker remained silent, the same little knot of watchers now transferred to the port bridge wing. Through the glasses I could see one of them gesticulating. Then, when we were almost a mile away, the Shah Mohammed suddenly emitted two deep long-drawn-out belches from its siren as though expressing relief at our departure.

The question now was, did we head for the nearest port with the evidence we had or wait for the Aurora B to show up? I wanted to get away now. I hadn’t liked the look of the little group on the bridge wing. All the original crew must be locked up in her some-

where and the sooner she was arrested the more chance there was that they’d be got out alive. But Saltley was adamant that we must wait. ‘Who do you suppose is going to arrest her?’

‘Surely the Navy—‘

‘In international waters? Didn’t you see the flag she was flying, the colours they’d painted her in? Black, white and green, with red and two stars on the hoist, those are the Iraqi colours. I think Lloyd’s List will show the Shah Mohammed to be properly registered as an Iraqi vessel. They’re sure to have made it legal, to that extent, and if they have, then the Navy couldn’t possibly act without government authority, and you can just imagine the British government authorizing the seizure of a ship belonging to Iraq. It could upset the Arab world, spark off a major international row.’

I thought his twisted legal mind was splitting straws. ‘And if we wait,’ I said, ‘until we have evidence of the two ships meeting — what difference will that make?’

He shrugged. ‘Not a lot, I admit. But two ships meeting at a lonely group of islands does suggest a purpose. At least it’s something I can argue.’

‘But you’ve got the proof already,’ Mark insisted. ‘That’s the Howdo Stranger out there. No doubt of it. Repainted. Renamed. But it’s still the same ship, the one Dad insured and the owners claim has disappeared. It’s there. And you’ve got photographs to prove it.’

‘Given time and a court of law.’ Saltley nodded. ‘Yes, I think we probably could prove it. But I’ve got to persuade top-level civil servants at the Foreign Office to advise the Secretary of State he’s justified in authorizing what amounts to a flagrant breach of international law. I’ve got to convince them there’s no risk to them or to the country, that what they find on board will prove absolutely the hostile and deadly nature of the operation.’ He was standing in the hatch and he leaned forward, his hands on the teak decking. ‘If you can tell me what that operation is…’ He paused, his eyes staring at me, very blue under the dark peaked cap. ‘But you don’t know, do you? You don’t know what it’s all about and you never thought to question Choffel about it.’ His eyes shifted to the stationary tanker. ‘So we wait for the Aurora B. Agreed?’ He stared at us for a moment, then, when nobody answered him, he turned abruptly and went down into the saloon.

A moment later he was back with glasses and a bottle of gin, a conciliatory gesture, for I don’t think he liked it any more than I did. We drank in moody silence, none of us doubting now that the Aurora B would appear in due course, but all wondering how long it would be before we were released from our lonely vigil.

The rest of the day proved fine and bright. We lay hove-to off the western coast of Selvagem Grande till nightfall, then shifted our station two miles to the north with the light bearing 145°. There was no sign of the tanker. I was certain she was still there, lying hove-to without lights. Saltley was certain, too, but when the moon rose and still no sign of her, he had the sail hoisted and we back-tracked towards the position where we had originally found her.

I didn’t like it and I said so. I was certain our metal mast would show up as a clear blip on their radar screen. After a while we turned south-west towards Selvagem Pequena, reducing sail until we were moving at little more than three knots. We heard the swell breaking on the rocks before we could see the island, and then suddenly there was our tanker lying just to the south of Fora.

We turned then, heading north, back towards Selvagem Grande. ‘I think she’s seen us.’ Mark was watching through the glasses. ‘She’s under way and heading towards us.’

We hoisted the genoa again and seemed to hold our own for a while, then she came up on us very fast, steaming at full ahead and pushing a mountain of water ahead of her broad deep-laden bows. We altered course to starb’d as though making for the landing place on Selvagem Grande. The tanker also altered course, so that the bows were less than a cable’s length away as she steamed up abreast of us. A searchlight stabbed the night from high up on her superstructure, Doding the water round us until it picked up the e of our sails and fixed on us, blindingly, as be long black hull went thumping past. The stink of diesel fumes enveloped us seconds before we were picked up by the massive bow wave and flung sideways nto the suck and break of such a massive bulk being driven through the water at about fifteen knots.

For a moment all hell seemed to break loose. Toni

Bartello was flung against me so that I ended up half-bent over one of the sheet winches with a sharp pain in the lower part of my rib cage. Pamela was on her knees clinging to the guardrail and down below the crash of crockery and other loose objects flying about the saloon was almost as loud as the slatting of sails and boom. And all the time the searchlight remained fixed on us.

Then suddenly we were out of the wash, everything preternaturally quiet. Blackness closed over us as the searchlight went out. It took a little while for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Somebody said, ‘She had her nav lights on.’ I could see the broad back of her now, the stern light showing white and the Iraqi flag picked out by the steaming light on her after-mast. Moonlight gradually revealed the surface of the sea. Was this her final departure? Had the Aurora B arrived in the darkness? We searched the horizon, but no sign of another tanker, and shortly after 03.00 we lost sight of the Shah Mohammed behind the dark outline of Selvagem Grande.

When dawn broke the sea was empty and no vessel in sight.

We were north of the island ourselves then, all of us very tired and arguing wearily about what we should do. In the end, we turned downwind with the intention of checking that the tanker hadn’t returned to her old position south of Fora. Shortly after noon I heard Toni Bartello wake Saltley to tell him he had sighted the smaller islands and a tanker lying to the south of them.

We were all up then, putting about and changing sail so that we lay hove-to with the tanker just in sight like a sheer rock on the edge of visibility. We kept it in sight all afternoon, lying drowsily on deck, stripped to the waist and warm in the sun.

Towards evening the wind began to back, the air thickening till we could no longer see the tanker. A small boat came out from under the lee of Pequena, its bows lifted and moving fast. It was an inflatable with three men in it. We could hear the sound of its outboard clear and strident above the growing rumble of the reef surf as it made straight towards us. Only when it was a few yards off did the man at the wheel cut the engine and swing it broadside to us. One of the three stood up, clasping the top of the windshield to steady himself. ‘Who is Captain here?’ His face was narrow with a high-bridged nose and a little black moustache, and his accent was similar to Sadeq’s.

Saltley stepped into the cockpit, leaning forward and gripping hold of the guardrail. ‘I’m the captain,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘What you do here please?’ the man enquired.

‘Are you Portuguese?’

The man hesitated, then shook his head.

‘You’re from that tanker?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Shah Mohammed?’

Again the hesitation. ‘I ask you what you do here?’ he repeated. ‘Why you wait in these islands?’

‘We’re waiting for another yacht to join us. And you — why are you waiting here?’

‘How long before the yacht arrive?’

‘A day, two days — I don’t know.’

‘And when it arrive, where you go then?’

‘The Cape Verde Islands, then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Are you the captain of the Shah Mohammed!’

‘No.’

‘Well, tell your captain he came too close last night. I shall, of course, make a report. You tell him.’

‘Please? I don’t understand.’ But obviously he did, for he said something to the man at the wheel and the engine burst into raucous life.

‘What are you waiting here for?’ Saltley yelled to him.

The man waved a hand to the driver and the engine quietened to a murmur. ‘We wait here for instructions. We have new owners. They have re-sold our cargo so we wait to know where we go.’ He leaned his weight on the inflated side of the boat. ‘You in Selvagen Islands before this?’ And when Saltley shook his head, the man added, ‘Very bad place for small ships, Por-toogese fishermen no good. Understand? They come aboard in the night, kill people and throw them to the sharks. Okay?’

‘Do you mean they’re pirates?’ Saltley smiled at him. ‘You understand the word piracy?’

The man nodded. ‘Yes, pirates. That is right. These very perilous islands. You go now. Meet friends at Cape Verde. Okay?’ Without waiting for a reply he tapped the driver on the shoulder. The motor roared, the bows lifted and they did a skid turn, heading back towards Pequena.

‘What did he mean by pirates?’

Saltley looked round at Mark. ‘A warning probably. Depends whether I satisfied him we were going transatlantic’

That night, just in case, we had two of us on watch all the time. The wind continued to back until it was sou’westerly with a thin cloud layer. Towards dawn the clouds thickened and it began to drizzle. Visibility was down to little more than a mile and no sign of the tanker. After feeling our way cautiously south and west for nearly two hours we suddenly saw broken water creaming round the base of a single rock. This proved to be Ilheus do Norte, the northernmost of the chain of rocks running up from Fora. We turned due south, picked up Selvagem Pequena, skirting the island to the east in thickening visibility.

We wasted more than two hours searching to the south’ard before turning north-east and heading for Selvagem Grande. We were running then in heavy rain and we were tired, so that when we did sight the vague outline of a ship on our starb’d quarter it took us a little time to realize it wasn’t the Shah Mohammed. It was coming up on us quite slowly and at an oblique angle, its shape lost for a moment in a downpour, then reappearing, closer and much clearer. Its hull was black, the superstructure a pale green and the white funnel had a red band and two stars; the same colours as the Shah Mohammed, but there was a difference in the layout, the stern deck longer, the davits further aft and the derricks were a different shape. I recognized her then. ‘It’s the Aurora B.’ I said, and Saltley nodded, standing in the hatch with the GODCO photographs in his hand.

She was called the Ghazan Khan now, the name painted white on the bow and standing out very clearly against the black of the hull. She passed us quite close, steaming at about eight knots, the grating platform at the top of the lifted gangway plainly visible, the memory of Sadeq standing there firing down at us suddenly vivid in my mind. We altered course to cross her wake and again the name Ghazan Khan was painted on her stern and the port of registry was Basra.

Day Thirty-two and the time 14.47. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Saltley said. ‘AH we need now is a picture of the two of them together.’

We got this just over an hour later, the two tankers lying within a cable’s length of each other a mile or so to the east of Selvagem Grande. We went in close enough for Saltley’s telescopic lens to record the white-painted names on the two fat sterns, then veered off to take shots of the two of them in profile. We didn’t go in close, for the Ghazan Khan had her gangway down and the Shah Mohammed’s high speed inflatable was alongside. They could, of course, be going over the plans for their operation, but it did occur to me they might also be considering what to do about us. We went about and headed south-east for Tenerife, sailing close-hauled into a confused and lumpy sea.

The wind was still backing and as darkness fell Saltley made a near-fatal decision, ordering Pam to take the wheel and put her about, while the rest of us eased the sheets and got her going at her maximum speed downwind. It was certainly much more comfortable, and though the island of Madeira was further than the Canaries, if the wind continued to back and held in the south all next day it would be a lot quicker, and he needed to get to a telephone as soon as possible.

The course took us to the west of Selvagem Grande and as we picked up the faint glimmer of the light through a mist of rain, I wished Stewart had fitted his yacht with radar. Presuming the tankers had now left for their final destination, I would like to have known what course they were steering. Saltley joined me at the chart table and we discussed it for a while, all the various possibilities, while the aroma of onions assailed us from the galley as Pamela fried up a corned beef hash.

I had the first watch, taking over from Mark as soon as I had finished my evening meal. The course was just west of north, the rain dying away to intermittent showers and the wind almost dead aft so that we were running goose-winged with the main to port and the genoa boomed out to starb’d. Alone at the wheel I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I was the odd man out. The other four were all part of the yacht, part of the owner’s life, moving in a world entirely different from mine. Through the hatch I could see them sitting over their coffee and glasses of Spanish brandy, talking excitedly. And well they might, for they had the proof they needed.

But what about me? What had I got out of the voyage? I was back to the uncertainty of that wild accusation, to fear of arrest, perhaps trial and conviction. All very well for Saltley to say that, once the tankers had reappeared, the nature of their operation known, then confirmation of the statements I had made would include acceptance of my version of what had happened to Choffel. But there was no certainty of it and already I was feeling that sense of withdrawal from the others that is inevitable when an individual knows he is destined to take a different path. Brooding over it, sitting at the helm of that swaying, rolling yacht with the wind at my back and the waves hissing past, everything black, except for that lit saloon and Pamela, with her arms bare to the elbows and the polo-necked sweater tight across her breasts, talking animatedly — I felt like an outcast. I felt as though I were already consigned to oblivion, a non-person whom the others couldn’t see.

Ridiculous, of course! Just a part of that accident of birth that had plagued me all my life, drawn to the Middle East yet not a part of it, neither a Christian nor a Moslem, just a lone, lost individual with no real roots. I was thinking of Karen then, my one real lifeline — apart from my poor mother. If only Karen were alive still. If only none of it had happened and we were still together, at Balkaer. In the darkness I could see the fire and her sitting in that old chair, the picture superimposed on and obliterating the lit saloon below. But her face… I couldn’t see her face, the features blurred and indistinct, memory fading.

And it was then, with my mind far away, that I heard a sound above the hiss of the waves and the surge of the bows, a low murmur like an approaching squall.

The sound came from astern and I looked over my shoulder. There was a lot of wind in the sails and it was raining again, but the sound coming to me on a sudden gust was a deep pulsing murmur. A ship’s engines. I yelled to Saltley and the others. ‘On deck!’ I yelled, for in a sudden panic of intuition I knew what it meant. ‘For your lives!’ And as they came tumbling up I saw it in the darkness, a shadow coming up astern of us, and I reached forward, pressing the self-starter and slamming the engine into gear. And as I yelled to them to get the boom off the genoa, I felt the first lift of the mass of water being driven towards us.

Everything happened in a rush then. Saltley seized the wheel, and as the boom came off the genoa, he did something I would never have done — he put the yacht about, screaming at me to tag on the genoa sheet. Mark and Toni were back in the cockpit, the winch squealing as the big foresail was sheeted home, the yacht heeling right over and gathering speed as she powered to windward, riding on the tanker’s bow wave, spray flying in solid sheets as the black hull thundered past our stern, smothering us with the surge of her passage. We were driving down the side of the tanker’s hull then, back-winded and trying to claw our way clear, trie tip of our mast almost touching the black plates as we yawed. And then we were into the wake, everything in sudden appalling turmoil, the boat swamped with water. It swept clean across us.

Somebody slammed the hatch, trying to close the doghouse doors as he was flung into the guardrails with a cry of pain. I grabbed him, then lost him as I was swept aft, my feet half over the stern before I could seize hold of anything.

I was like that for a moment and then we were clear, Saltley still gripping the wheel like a drowned limpet, the rest of us distributed all over the cockpit area. ‘Did you see a light?’ Mark shouted in my ears. ‘Somebody flashing a light — up by the stern. I swear it was.’ His hair was plastered to his skull, his face dripping water. ‘Looked like Morse. A lot of flashes, then daa-daa… That’s M isn’t it?’ Pamela’s voice called up from below that there was a foot of water in the saloon. ‘Or T. It could be a T repeated.’ I lost the rest, listening to something else.

Saltley heard it, too, the deep rumble of an engine borne on the wind and dead ahead of us. ‘Ease sheets!’ he screamed and spun the wheel as the bows of the second tanker emerged like a half-tide rock out of the darkness ahead. The yacht turned away to starb’d, but too slowly, the wall of water taking us on the port bow, slamming us over, then lifting us and sweeping us from end to end. We took it green, a sea breaking over my chest and flinging me against Saltley. Somebody was gripping hold of my ankles as I was swept to starb’d, and then the rumbling giant was sliding past our starb’d quarter and the sails were drawing, pulling us away from that sliding wall of steel. The wake hit us as the tanker passed, but not as badly as before. Suddenly all was quiet and we were free to pick ourselves up, the boat slipping smoothly through the water and the sound of those engines fading into the night like a bad dream.

We were lucky. None of us had been wearing safety harness, and though we were all suffering from bruises and cuts and were in a state of shock, nobody had been washed overboard and no bones had been broken.

It was only after we were back on course, everything sorted out on deck and beginning to clear up below, that I remembered the light Mark had seen flashing from the stern of that first tanker. But he couldn’t tell whether it had been the flash of a torch or a cabin light being switched on and off, the flashes seen through the circle of a porthole. It could even have been somebody accidentally triggering off the safety light on a lifebuoy.

One thing we were in no doubt about, the two ships coming up on us like that had been deliberate, an attempt to run us down. It couldn’t be anything else, for they had been steaming west of north and on that course there was nothing after Madeira anywhere in the north Atlantic until they reached Greenland.

We finished the bottle of brandy, deadening the shock of such a near disaster, then went into two-man watches for the rest of the night. And in the morning, with the wind beginning to veer into the west and the sky clearing to light cirrus, we could see the Desertas lifting above the horizon and clouds hanging over the high mountains of Madeira.

All day the islands became clearer and by nightfall Funchal was just visible as a sparkling of lights climbing the steep slopes behind the port. The wind was in the west then and falling light, a quiet sea with a long swell that glinted in the moonlight. I had the dawn watch and it was beautiful, the colours changing from blue-green to pink to orange-flame, the bare cliffs of the Desertas standing brick-red on our starb’d quarter as the sun lifted its great scarlet rim over the eastern horizon.

This I knew would be the last day on board. Ahead of me Madeira lifted its mountainous bulk into an azure sky and Funchal was clearly visible, its hotels and houses speckled white against the green slopes behind. I could just see the grey top of the breakwater with its fort and a line of naval ships steaming towards it. Just a few hours now and I would be back to reality, to the world as it really was for a man without a ship. It was such a lovely morning, everything sparkling and the scent of flowers borne on the wind, which was now north of west so that we were close-hauled.

I began thinking about the book then. Perhaps if I wrote it all down, just as it had happened… But I didn’t know the end, of course, my mind switching to Balkaer, to that morning when it all started with the first of the oiled-up bodies coming ashore, and I began to play with words, planning the way it would open. Twelfth Night and the black rags of razorbacks washing back and forth down there in the cove in the slop of the waves…

‘Morning, Trevor.’ It was Pamela, smiling brightly as she came up into the cockpit. She stood there for a moment, breathing deeply as she took in the scene, her hair almost gold as it blew in the wind, catching the sunlight. She looked very statuesque, very young and fresh. ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ She sat down on the lee side, leaning back and staring into space, not saying anything, her hands clasped tight together. I sensed a tension building up and wondered what it was, resenting the intrusion, words still building in my mind.

Ripples stirred the surface of the sea, a flash of silver as a fish jumped. ‘Something I’ve got to tell you.’ She blurted the words out in a tight little voice. ‘I admire you — what you’ve done this last month, the sort of man you are, your love of birds, all the things you wrote. I think you are a quite exceptional…’

‘Forget it,’ I said. I knew what she was trying to say.

‘No. It’s not as easy as that.’ She leaned forward on the lift of the boat and put her hand over mine on the wheel. ‘I don’t regret that letter, you see. It’s just that I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand myself really, but I think what it was — I was reaching out for a new dimension. That’s what you represented to me, something different, something I’d never really come across before. Are you a vegetarian?’

‘I’ve eaten everything I’ve been given, haven’t I?’ I said it lightly, trying to laugh her out of the tense seriousness of her mood.

‘But in Cornwall, you were vegetarian, weren’t you?’

‘Karen was. I conformed. I had to. We’d no money to buy meat, and we grew our own vegetables.’

‘Yes, of course. I’ve still got the typescript, by the way. But what I was trying to say — I was like somebody who’s been carnivorous all her life and is suddenly faced with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. It’s so totally different. That’s what I meant by new dimension. Do you understand?’

I nodded, not sure whether I did or not. No man likes to be faced with an attractive girl making a statement of rejection, and certainly not in the dawn with the sun coming up and the sea and the sky and the land ahead all bright with the hopes of a new day. ‘Forget it,’ I said again. ‘You’ve no cause to reproach yourself. I’ll keep the letter under my pillow.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘And when I’m feeling particularly low…’ Saltley’s head appeared in the hatch and she took her hand away.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘I knew you’d understand.’ And she jumped to her feet. ‘Two eggs for the helm?’ she asked brightly. ‘Our last breakfast and everything so lovely. Two eggs and four rashers.’ She nodded and disappeared below to the galley. Saltley stared at me a moment, then his head disappeared and I was alone again, my thoughts no longer on the book, but on Karen and what I had lost. The future looked somehow bleaker, the feeling of separation from the others more intense.

CHAPTER TWO

It was shortly after noon when we turned the end of Funchal breakwater, lowering sail as we motored to a berth alongside a Portuguese tug. I had been to Madeira only once before, tramping in an old Liberty ship, and then the long dusty breakwater had been almost empty. Now it was crowded, for there was some sort of NATO exercise on with warships of half a dozen nations lying alongside and US off-duty sailors already at baseball practice among the cranes and stacked containers.

Saltley didn’t wait for Customs and Immigration. At the end of the jetty, beyond a complex huddle of masts and radar, with Canadian and Dutch flags fluttering in the breeze, there was a missile destroyer flying the White Ensign. Neatly dressed in his shore-going rig of reefer, blue trousers and peaked cap, he crossed the tug and was lost immediately among the stevedores working two Panamanian-registered cargo ships. He had a long walk, for the tug to which we had moored was only about a third of the way along the jetty, just astern of a Portuguese submarine and only a few yards beyond the fort, its stone wall rising sheer out of the rock on which it was built.

Nobody seemed interested in our arrival and we sat on deck in the sunshine, drinking beer and watching the kaleidoscope of tourist colour across the harbour, where crowded streets climbed steeply up from the waterfront with slender ribbons of roads disappearing in hairpin bends a thousand feet above houses smothered in bougainvillaea. I could see the twin towers of Monte and the Crater’s cobbled way dropping sheer into the town, and to the west the massed array of big hotels culminated in a promontory with Reid’s red roofs and hanging gardens dropping to the sea.

It was the medical officer who arrived first, just after we had finished a very late lunch. He was still in the saloon improving his English over a Scotch when Saltley returned. He had contacted Lloyd’s and reported the two GODCO tankers still afloat, but under different names. Fortified by Navy hospitality, he had then waited for Lloyd’s to contact the authorities and check with their Intelligence Services for any listing of the Shah Mohammed and the Ghazan Khan. It had been almost an hour before he had the information he wanted. Both tankers had recently been acquired by an Iraqi company with offices in Tripoli and both had been registered in Iraq on January 16, port of registry Basra. As far as could be ascertained from a quick check Lloyd’s had no information as to their present whereabouts, possible destination, or nature of cargo, if any. ‘And the authorities show no inclination to get Britain involved,’ Saltley added as Pamela sat him down to a plate of tinned ham and egg mayonnaise.

It was late afternoon before we were cleared and by then the destroyer’s Captain was on board with a Rear-Admiral Blaize, who was in charge of the NATO exercise, a small man with rimless glasses, his face egg-shaped and very smooth so that he had a cold hostile look until he laughed, which he did quite often. Salt-ley’s suggestion that the tankers be stopped and searched if they entered the English Channel had been rejected. ‘The Navy is not empowered,’ the Admiral said, ‘to take that sort of action on the high seas in peacetime. I can tell you this, however. In view of the fact that Mr Rodin is on board here with you, and the public interest that was aroused by certain statements he made before leaving the country, MoD are passing the information you’ve given on to the Foreign Secretary, copy to the Department of Trade. I imagine the Marine Division of the DoT will be keeping watch on the situation through HM Coastguards. Oh, and a personal request from the Second Sea Lord. I think you said he’s a sailing friend of yours.’

‘I’ve met him several times,’ Saltley said.

‘He asked me to say he thinks it important you return to London as soon as possible and bring Rodin with you. I’m having one of my officers check now and make provisional reservations on the first flight out, whether it’s to Gatwick, Heathrow or Manchester. That all right with you?’

Saltley nodded and the Admiral relaxed, leaning back against the pilot berth. ‘Now perhaps I can have the whole story first hand.’ His eyes fastened on me. ‘I think perhaps if you would run over very briefly your side of it, the events that led to all of you setting off for a doubtful rendezvous in the Selvagen Islands.’ He laughed. ‘Wish they’d given me authority to mount a search. It would have been good practice for the motley crowd I’m commanding at the moment.’ He laughed again, then stopped abruptly, sipping his pink gin and waiting for me to begin.

It was the first of a number of times I would be called upon to repeat my story in the next few days. And when Saltley had finished describing the meeting of the tankers and how they had nearly run us down in the dark, the Admiral said, ‘I think what I would do in the circumstances is keep a very close watch on them after they enter the Channel and alert other nations of our suspicions. As soon as they enter territorial waters, then it’s up to the nation concerned to take whatever action is considered appropriate.’

‘Will you be advising the MoD to that effect?’ Saltley asked.

‘I’ll be making a report, certainly.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked, Admiral.’ Saltley was leaning across the table, his voice urgent. ‘At twenty knots the Western Approaches are only three days’ steaming from where we last saw them, just west of Selvagem Grande. This time tomorrow they could be into the Channel. They could be into Le Havre, Southampton, Portsmouth even, by first light the following morning. That’s how urgent it is.’ And he added, ‘If it were Brest now…’

There was a tap on the doghouse roof and a naval lieutenant peered down through the hatch to say there was only one seat vacant on the first plane out in the morning, which was a TAP scheduled flight via Lisbon. He had booked that and also a seat on a tourist charter plane to Gatwick later in the day.

‘No flights tonight?’ Saltley asked.

‘None, sir. The next flight out is the one to Lisbon.’ And he went on to tell us that the captain of the Portuguese tug had to meet a freighter coming in and required us to shift our berth immediately.

We did this as soon as the Admiral had left, moving our warps to the submarine, which now had a queue of Portuguese sightseers entering by the for’ard hatch and coming out at the stern, some of the bulkier ladies severely testing the serious demeanour of the sailors detailed to assist them. As soon as we were tied up, Saltley and I packed our bags and we all went ashore to the Casino Park, the big circular concrete and glass hotel built on the high ground overlooking the old town and the harbour. Our first priority was hot baths, and having booked two rooms and checked that there was no way we could reach London any quicker, Saltley got on the phone to Michael Stewart while Pamela bathed in his room and the rest of us shared my bathroom and shower.

I came down to find the night outside the glassed-in reception area very still and studded with stars. I ordered a glass of sercial and stood at the window sipping the fortified wine and looking up to the floodlit castle and all the myriad lights twinkling on the slopes high above. Pamela joined me and we took our drinks outside, strolling through the lawned gardens to the stone parapet overlooking the harbour. The water below us was oily calm, the lights of the ships along the jetty reflected in the flat black surface. We stood there for a time, talking quietly, both of us strangely relaxed and at ease. But then, as we finished our drinks and began to walk slowly back, Pamela suddenly said, ‘I think I should warn you, about Salt. He’s quite ruthless, you know. He’ll use you. He’s good at his job, you see.’ She looked up at me, smiling a little hesitantly. ‘Some day I’ll probably marry him, so I do know the sort of man he is, how single-minded he can be. Right now he has only one interest, and it’s not the same as yours. He’s not really concerned with the damage those tankers could do, except incidentally as a potential insurance claim. He just wants to prove their true identity. That lets my father’s syndicates out and chalks up another success for him. Do you understand?’ She had stopped by a rose bed, her blunt fingers toying with a dark red bloom as she leaned down to smell it. ‘Where there’s fraud involved he’s like a bloodhound. He’ll follow the scent quite regardless of anybody else.’

‘Yes, but anything I say can only support his case.’

She nodded, her eyes large and luminous in the dim light. ‘I expect you’re right, but we won’t be alone again after this and I felt I should warn you. On board you’ve seen perhaps his nicest side. But on the job, remember he’s a real professional and determined to be accepted as the best there is. Anyway, good luck when you reach London.’ She smiled abruptly, then went on into the hotel to join the others who were now standing at the bar.

Later we took a taxi to Gavinas, a fish restaurant built out over the sea beyond the old whaling station to the west of Funchal. We had fish soup, I remember, espada, which is the black scabbard fish peculiar to Madeira, the light vinho verde to drink and fresh strawberries to finish with. It was a strange meal, for it was part celebration, part farewell, and sitting over our coffee and Malmsey we were all of us a little subdued, Saltley and myself faced now with the problem of convincing the authorities, the other three with a voyage of some 800 miles ahead of them. And all the time the flop and suck of the waves around the concrete piers below us.

We left shortly after ten and the last we saw of the depleted crew was three faces calling farewell from the dark interior of the taxi as it drove them on from the Casino Park to the harbour. ‘Think they’ll be all right?’ Saltley murmured. ‘Mark’s taken the boat from Plymouth to the Hamble and once across the Channel, but Madeira to Gib…’ He stared dubiously at the taxi’s rear lights as it swung into the Avenida do Infante. ‘And Pamela, too,’ he muttered. ‘Mike would never forgive me if anything happened to them.’

‘They’ll be all right,’ I said.

‘He’s only nineteen, you know.’ The taxi disappeared down the hill and he turned abruptly into the hotel. ‘Well, let’s have a drink. I expect you’re right.’

It was over that drink that he suddenly said to me, ‘You may find there’s some delay when you get to Gatwick. If there is, don’t worry. These next few days could be very hectic, so any little problem you encounter may take a while to resolve.’

His words could only mean one thing. ‘You heard something — when you were on the destroyer.’

He didn’t answer and I was remembering what Pamela had said about him. ‘They’ll arrest me, is that what you mean?’

‘No, I don’t think so. But since we won’t be together on the flight home I thought it only fair to warn you.’ Which meant, of course, he wouldn’t lift a finger to help me unless it suited him and he thought I could be useful. ‘The deadline is very tight,’ he murmured half to himself. ‘If they are in the Western Approaches tomorrow evening, then I’ve got to get planes up and the ships located by the following morning.’

‘They may not be bound for the Channel.’

‘Where do you think they’re headed for — the States?’ He gave me a lop-sided smile and shrugged. ‘The Americans would have them boxed in and boarded before they were within miles of the eastern seaboard, and they know it. They’ll be in the Channel tomorrow night, I’m certain they will.’

We went to our rooms shortly afterwards and in the morning he was gone. The moment of reality had arrived. I was on my own again, and though I was prepared for it, it still came as a shock after living for several weeks in the close company of others. But then the coach arrived and for a while my thoughts were diverted by the long coastal drive to Santa Cruz and the airport with its views of the Desertas and the lighthouse standing white and lonely on the eastern tip of Madeira.

We were flying against the sun so that it was dark by the time we were over the Channel. The man next to me was sleeping peacefully to the background hum of the engines, everybody in the plane very quiet, even the stewardesses no longer rushing about. All during the flight I had been thinking over what Saltley had said the previous night, and now, over the English Channel, with a strange feeling in my guts that those tankers were somewhere down below me, I found my mind made up. If they were going to detain me at the airport — and I was certain Saltley knew something that he hadn’t passed on to me — then I had nothing to lose. I tore a page out of the inflight magazine Highlife and scribbled on a blank space: Please request press or other media representatives Gatwick to meet Trevor Rodin on arrival — 2 Iraqi tankers, Shah Mohammed and Ghazan Khan, expected English Channel imminent. Terrorists on board. Target not yet known. URGENT URGENT URGENT. Rodin. I reached up and rang for the stewardess.

She was tall and slightly flushed, her hair beginning to come adrift and a faint smell of perspiration as she leaned over the recumbent figure next to me and asked whether she could get me anything. I handed her the slip of paper and when she had read it, she continued to stare at it, her hands trembling slightly. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m quite sane.’

Her eyes darted me a quick look, then she hurried away and I saw her conferring with the senior stewardess beside the pantry, both of them staring in my direction. After a moment the older girl nodded and slipped through the door to the flight deck. I sat back then, feeling suddenly relaxed. It was done now. I had committed myself, and even if the captain didn’t radio ahead, the girls would almost certainly talk.

After a few minutes the head stewardess came down the aisle to me. ‘Mr Rodin?’ I nodded. ‘Would you come with me, sir. The Captain would like a word with you.’

He met me in the pantry area, a tall, thin, worried-looking man with stress lines running down from the nose and greying hair. The door to the flight deck was firmly closed. ‘I read something about you, some weeks back. Right?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I cannot, I’m afraid, communicate with the media. That’s a matter for the airport authority. If they see fit, they’ll contact them.’

‘But you’ll tell them about the tankers, won’t you?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell them, yes. But it will be for you to convince them after we’ve landed. Okay?’ He half turned towards the door to the flight deck, then checked. ‘You mean what you’ve written here, do you?’ He held the torn scrap from Highlife under my nose. ‘Terrorists. Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure,’ I said.

‘You escaped in a dhow. I remember now.’ Grey, worried eyes stared at me for a moment. ‘But that was in the Gulf. How do you know these tankers will be in the Channel now?’

I told him how we had sailed out to the Selvagen Islands, had seen them rendezvous there and then been nearly run down in a deliberate attempt to obliterate us. ‘The way you say it—‘ He was watching me very closely. ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Why are you on your own? What happened to the marine solicitor?’ And when I told him Saltley had taken the early flight via Lisbon, there was a sudden wariness in his eyes and I was conscious of a tenseness building in him. He glanced at the stewardess. ‘Get Dick, will you. He’s my navigator,’ he said, and began talking about air speed, winds and our ETA at Gatwick, his voice suddenly matter-of-fact.

The navigator was a big man and as soon as he had shut the flight deck door, the captain turned to me and in a quiet, slightly strained voice said, ‘Mind if we check you over?’

‘For weapons, do you mean?’

‘Just in case.’ He nodded to the navigator and the two of them pressed forward, forcing me to the back of the pantry, where the captain ran his hands under my arms and between my legs, the muscles of his neck corded into tense knots and the navigator standing off, his fists clenched ready.

‘Is that necessary?’ I asked as he straightened up, letting out his breath, his body relaxing.

‘We have to be careful.’ His eyes still had that wary look. ‘You know about the controllers’ strike at Lisbon, I suppose?’

I stared at him, a feeling of shock running through me. ‘Strike? I don’t know anything about a strike.’ I was thinking of Saltley marooned in Lisbon and myself alone with nobody to confirm my story.

‘You could have heard about it at the airport. The staff were full of it.’

‘I heard nothing. I didn’t ask.’

His mouth was shut in a tight line, the jaw muscles visible as he watched me. ‘No — well, probably you didn’t know then. They walked out during the morning, a manning schedule we were told. But we’ll be landing soon. I’ve no time to check with Lisbon. They could take an hour or more to make sure whether your man is stranded there or not.’

‘So you’ll do nothing?’ I suppose my own fears, the strain in my voice, something communicated itself to him, for the wary look was back in his eyes.

‘I’ll report to Gatwick, of course. Fve said that already.’

‘And the media?’

He hesitated. ‘I’ll have a word with the PR man, if he’s still there. He likes to know when there’s a—‘ He checked himself. I thought perhaps he had been going to say ‘when there’s a nut on board’. ‘When anything unusual is happening. That satisfy you?’

I didn’t know whether he believed me or not, but I knew it was the best I could hope from him. I nodded and he let me out of the pantry then, requesting me in a neutral, official voice to return to my seat. I was conscious of the two of them and the chief stewardess watching me as I pushed past the queue for the toilets and went back down the aisle. By the time I was in my seat again the officers had disappeared, the door to the flight deck was closed and the stewardesses were seeing to last minute requests as they had a final clear up. The man next to me was still sleeping, the engines whispering very quietly now as we lost height. Everything was normal again.

The only thing that wasn’t normal was my state of mind. I could think of nothing but the fact that Saltley wouldn’t be around when we landed in England. I would be on my own, the only person available to the authorities who had seen those tankers rendezvous in the Selvagens. Would they believe me without Saltley’s physical presence to confirm it? A voice on the telephone from Lisbon wasn’t the same at all. Would they believe anything I said? I was thinking of the captain, the wariness, the tenseness, the way he had summoned the heaviest of his crew, the search for arms. Would Forthright’s help, or Lloyd’s — would their Intelligence Services have discovered anything to corroborate my story?

The seat belt sign came on, the flaps slid out from the wings and I heard the rumble of the undercarriage going down. I felt suddenly sick, a void in my stomach and my skin breaking out in a sweat. It was nerves, the tension of waiting, wondering what was going to happen. And then we were down with the runway lights flashing by and I braced myself, breathing deeply, telling myself I had nothing to be afraid of, that the truth was the truth, something I couldn’t be shaken on, so that eventually they must believe me.

The plane came to a halt and a chill wind blew in as the fuselage door was thrown back. We filed out past the chief stewardess, who said her usual piece, hoping I’d had a good flight, and I saw her eyes widen in confusion as she realized who it was. And when I boarded the bus one of the airport staff got in with me and kept his eyes on me all the way to the arrivals area.

The time was just after 19.30 GMT when I joined the queue at the UK passport desk. It moved quickly so that in a moment I was handing my temporary papers to the immigration officer. He glanced at them and then at me, his glasses reflecting the glint of the lights, his eyes faintly curious. ‘What happened to your passport, sir?’

‘I lost it.’

‘Where?’

‘I left it on board a tanker in the Persian Gulf.’

He looked down at some papers on the desk beside him. ‘And this is your correct name — Trevor McAl-istair Rodin?’ He turned and nodded to a man over by the wall. ‘This gentleman will look after you now.’ The man came quickly forward, positioning himself at my elbow. He took my papers and said, ‘This way please.’

He led me through into the Customs hall, where he arranged for my baggage to be cleared and brought to me. ‘Am I under arrest?’ I asked, not sure whether he was airport police or CID.

‘Just a few questions, that’s all at this stage.’ We went upstairs and into one of the airport offices, and when he had sat me down at the desk facing him, I asked to see his credentials. He was a detective-inspector of the Surrey police force. I started to tell him about the tankers then, but he stopped me almost immediately. ‘I’m afraid that’s nothing to do with me. I’m told the information you gave the captain of your aircraft about tankers and terrorists has already been passed to the proper authority. My concern is a much earlier statement you made, about how you escaped in some native craft in the Persian Gulf with a French engineer named Choffel. I’d be glad if you’d now go through that again, so that I can prepare a statement for you to sign.’

I tried to argue with him, but he was insistent, and he gave me the usual caution about the possibility of evidence being used against me. And when I told him about the statement I had already made in London a month ago, he said, ‘That’s the Metropolitan area, Special Branch by the sound of it.’ He was an ordinary-looking man, quite human. ‘I have my orders, that’s all.’

‘Who from?’

‘The Chief Constable.’

‘But not because of what I said about those tankers. It’s because Choffel’s daughter has accused me of killing her father, isn’t it?’

‘She made a statement, yes.’ ‘But there’s no warrant for my arrest.’ He smiled then. ‘Nobody has told me to do anything more than get a statement from you, all right?’ ‘And it’ll go to the Chief Constable?’ He nodded. ‘He’ll then pass it on to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions or not as he thinks fit. That’s why I had to caution you.’ He pulled his chair into the desk and got his pen out. ‘Now, shall we get started? I don’t imagine you want to be all night over it any more than I do.’

There was nothing for it then but to go over the whole story from the beginning, and it took time, for he was summarizing it as we went along and writing it all out in longhand. By 08.30 I had only got as far as my arrival on the tanker and the discovery that it was the Aurora B. He rang down to somebody for sandwiches and coffee to be sent up from the cafeteria, and it was while we were eating them, and I was describing how Sadeq had stood at the top of the gangway firing down on to the deck of the dhow, that the door opened and I turned to find myself looking up at the shut face and hard eyes of the man who had visited me in my Stepney basement.

He handed a piece of paper to the detective. ‘Orders from on high.’ ‘Whose?’

‘Dunno. I’m to deliver him to the Min of Def — Navy.’ He turned to me. ‘You slipped out of the country without informing us. Why?’ I started to explain, but then I thought what the hell — I had been talking for an hour and a half and I had had enough. ‘If you haven’t bothered to find out why I’m back here in England, then there’s no point in my wasting your time or mine.’

He didn’t like that. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, his orders being simply to escort me, and the local inspector waiting to get his statement completed. It took another half hour of concentrated work to get it into a form acceptable to me so that it was almost ten before I had signed it. By then two journalists had tracked me down, and though the Special Branch man tried to hustle me out of the terminal, I had time to give them the gist of the story. We reached the police car, the reporters still asking questions as I was bundled in and the door slammed. Shut-face got in beside me, and as we drove out of the airport, he said, ‘Christ! You got a fertile imagination. Last time it was a tanker hiding up in the Gulf and an Iranian revolutionary firing a machine pistol, now it’s two tankers and a whole bunch of terrorists, and they’re steaming into the Channel to commit mayhem somewhere in Europe.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

He looked at me, his face deadpan, not a flicker of reaction in his eyes. ‘I don’t know enough about you, do I?’ He was staring at me for a moment, then suddenly he smiled and I caught a glimpse of the face his wife and children knew. ‘Cheer up. Presumably somebody does or our branch wouldn’t have been asked to pick you up.’ The smile vanished, his face closed up again, and I thought perhaps he didn’t have a family. ‘Lucky the local CID were taking an interest in you or you might have gone to ground in another East End basement.’ And he added, his voice harder, more official, ‘You can rest assured we’ll keep tabs on you from now on until we know whether those tankers are real or you’re just a bloody little liar with an outsized capacity for invention.’

There wasn’t much to be said after that and I closed my eyes, my mind wandering sleepily in the warmth of the car. Somebody at the Admiralty wanted a firsthand account of our meeting with those tankers. The Second Sea Lord — a friend of yours, the admiral at Funchal had said to Saltley — and Saltley wasn’t here. Was it the Second Sea Lord who wanted to see me? Whoever it was, I’d have to go over it all again, and tomorrow that statement I had signed would be on the Chief Constable’s desk, and he’d pass it on. Any official would. It was such a very strange story. He’d leave it to the Director of Public Prosecutions. And if those tankers blew themselves up… There’d be nobody then to prove I hadn’t killed Choffel. They’d all be dead and no eye-witness to what Sadeq had done.

That feeling of emptiness returned, sweat on my skin and the certainty that this shut-faced man’s reaction would then be the reaction of all officialdom — myself branded a liar and a killer. How many years would that mean? ‘Why the hell!’ I whispered to myself. Why the hell had I ever agreed to return to England? In Tangier it would have been so easy to disappear — new papers, another name. Even from

Funchal. I needn’t have caught that charter flight. I could have waited and caught the next flight to Lisbon. No. The controllers were on strike there. I was thinking of Saltley again, wondering where he was now, and would he back me, could I rely on him as a witness for the defence if those tankers were totally destroyed?

It was past eleven when we reached Whitehall, turning right opposite Downing Street. ‘The main doors are closed after eight-thirty in the evening,’ my escort said as we stopped at the Richmond Terrace entrance of the Ministry of Defence building. Inside he motioned me to wait while he went to the desk to find out who wanted me. The Custody Guard picked up the phone immediately and after a brief conversation nodded to me and said, ‘Won’t keep you a moment, sir. 2LS’s Naval Assistant is coming right down.’

My escort insisted on waiting, but the knowledge that two such senior men had returned to their offices in order to see me gave me a sudden surge of confidence. That it was the Second Sea Lord himself who was waiting for me was confirmed when a very slim, slightly stooped man with sharp, quite penetrating grey eyes arrived, and after introducing himself as Lt Cdr Wright, said, ‘This way, sir. Admiral Fitzowen’s waiting to see you.’ The sir helped a lot and I seemed to be walking on air as I followed him quickly down the echoing corridors.

The Admiral was a big, round-faced man in a grey suit which seemed to match the walls of his office. He jumped up from behind his desk to greet me. ‘Saltley told me you could give me all the details. I was talking to him on the phone to Lisbon this morning.’

‘He’s still there, is he?’ I asked.

But he didn’t think so. ‘Told me he’d get a train or something into Spain and fly on from there. Should be here some time tomorrow. Now about those tankers.’ He waved me to a seat.

‘Are they in the Channel?’

‘Don’t know yet, not for sure. PREMAR UN — that’s the French admiral at Cherbourg — his office has informed us that two tankers were picked up on their radar surveillance at Ushant some forty miles offshore steaming north. They had altered course to the eastward just before moving out of range of the Ushant scanner. It was dark by the time we got their report and the weather’s not good, but by now there should be a Nimrod over the search area and the French have one of their Navy ships out looking for them.’ He began asking me questions then, mostly about the shape and layout of the vessels. He had pictures of the GODCO tankers on his desk. ‘So Saltley’s right, these are the missing tankers.’

I told him about the O of Howdo Stranger still showing faintly in the gap between Shah and Mohammed. ‘Salt made the same point. Says his photographs will prove it.’ He leaned towards me. ‘So what’s their intention?’ And when I told him I didn’t know, he said, ‘What’s your supposition? You must have thought about it. Some time in the early hours we’re going to have their exact position. If they are in the Channel I must know what their most likely course of action will be. You were on the Aurora B. That’s what it says here—‘ He waved a foolscap sheet at me. ‘When you were in England, before Saltley got you away in that yacht, you made what sounded at the time like some very wild allegations. All right…’ He raised his hand as I started to interrupt him. ‘I’ll accept them all for the moment as being true. But if you were on the Aurora B, then you must have picked up something, some indication of their intentions.’

‘I had a talk with the captain,’ I said.

‘And this man Sadeq.’

‘Very briefly, about our previous meeting.’ I gave him the gist of it and I could see he was disappointed.

‘And the Englishman who recruited you — Bald-wick. Didn’t he know anything about the objective?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me about your conversation with the captain then.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Pieter Hals. Dutch, I take it.’

It was the better part of an hour of hard talking before he was finally convinced I could tell him nothing that would indicate the purpose for which the tankers had been seized. At one point, tired of going over it all again, I said, ‘Why don’t you board them then? As soon as you know where they are—‘

‘We’ve no authority to board.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I didn’t care whether he was a Sea Lord or what, I was too damned tired of it. ‘Two pirated ships and the Navy can’t board them. I don’t believe it. Who’s responsible for what goes on in the Channel?’

‘Flag Officer, Plymouth. But I’m afraid CIN-CHAN’s powers are very limited. He certainly hasn’t any powers of arrest. Unlike the French.’ He gave a shrug, smiling wryly as he went on, ‘Remember the Amoco Cadiz and what the spillage from that wreck did to the Brittany coast? After that they instituted traffic lanes off Ushant. Later they insisted on all tankers and ships with dangerous cargoes reporting in and staying in a third lane at least twenty-four miles off the coast until they’re in their correct eastbound lane, which is on the French side as they move up-Channel. And they have ships to enforce their regulations. Very typically the British operate a voluntary system — MAREP, Marine Reporting.’ And he added, the wry smile breaking out again, ‘I’m told it works — but not, of course, for the sort of situation you and Saltley are envisaging.’

I brought up the question of boarding again, right at the end of our meeting, and the Admiral said, ‘Even the French don’t claim the right of arrest beyond the twelve-mile limit. If those tankers came up the English side, there’s nothing the French can do about it.’

‘But if they’re on the English side,’ I said, ‘they’d be steaming east in the westbound lane. Surely then—‘

He shook his head. ‘All we can do then is fly off the Coastguard plane, take photographs and in due course report their behaviour to their country of registry and press for action.’

I was sitting back, feeling drained and oddly appalled at the Navy’s apparent helplessness. All the years when I had grown up thinking of the Navy as an all-powerful presence and now, right on Britain’s own doorstep, to be told they were powerless to act. ‘There must be somebody,’ I murmured. ‘Some minister who can order their arrest.’

‘Both Saltley and yourself have confirmed they’re registered at Basra and flying the Iraqi flag. Not even the Foreign Secretary could order those ships to be boarded.’

‘The Prime Minister then,’ I said uneasily. ‘Surely the Prime Minister—‘

‘The PM would need absolute proof.’ He shrugged and got to his feet. ‘I’m afraid what you’ve told me, and what Saltley has said to me on the phone, isn’t proof.’

‘So you’ll just sit back and wait until they’ve half wrecked some European port.’

‘If they do come up-Channel, then we’ll monitor their movements and alert other countries as necessary.’ The door had opened behind me and he nodded. ‘In which case, we’ll doubtless see each other again.’ He didn’t shake hands. Just that curt, dismissive nod and he had turned away towards the window.

Back along the echoing corridors then to find Shut-face still waiting. A room had been booked for me at a hotel in the Strand and when he left me there with my bags he warned me not to try disappearing again. ‘We’ll have our eye on you this time.’

In the morning, when I went out of the hotel, I found this was literally true. A plain clothes man fell into step beside me. ‘Will you be going far, sir?’ And when I said I thought I’d walk as far as Charing Cross and buy a paper, he said, ‘I’d rather you stayed in the hotel, sir. You can get a paper there.’

I had never been under surveillance before. I suppose very few people have. I found it an unnerving experience. Slightly eerie in a way, a man you’ve never met before watching your every movement — as though you’ve been judged guilty and condemned without trial. I bought several papers and searched right through them — nothing. I could find no mention of anything I had told those two journalists at Gatwick, no reference anywhere to the possibility of pirated tankers steaming up the English Channel.

It could simply mean they had filed their stories too late, but these were London editions and it was barely ten o’clock when I had spoken to them. Hadn’t they believed me? I had a sudden picture of them going off to one of the airport bars, laughing about it over a drink. Was that what had happened? And yet their questions had been specific, their manner interested, and they had made notes, all of which seemed to indicate they took it seriously.

I didn’t know what to think. I just sat there in the foyer, feeling depressed and a little lost. There was nothing I could do now, nothing at all, except wait upon others. If they didn’t believe me, then sooner or later the Director of Public Prosecutions would make up his mind and maybe a warrant would be issued for my arrest. Meanwhile… meanwhile it seemed as though I was some sort of non-person, a dead soul waiting where the souls of the dead wait upon the future.

And then suddenly the Special Branch man was at my elbow. There was a car at the door and I was to leave for Dover immediately. I thought for a moment I was being deported, but he said it was nothing to do with the police. ‘Department of Trade — the Minister himself I believe, and you’re to be rushed there as quickly as possible.’ He hustled me out to a police car drawn up at the kerb with its blue light flashing and two uniformed officers in front. ‘And don’t try slipping across to the other side.’ He smiled at me, a human touch as he tossed my bags in after me. ‘You’ll be met at the other end.’ He slammed the door and the car swung quickly out into the traffic, turning right against the lights into the Waterloo Bridge approach.

It had all happened so quickly that I had had no time to question him further. I had presumed he was coming with me. Instead, I was alone in the back, looking at the short-haired necks and caps of the men in front as we shot round the Elephant &c Castle and into the Old Kent Road. There was a break in the traffic then and I asked why I was being taken to Dover. But they didn’t know. Their instructions were to get me to Langdon Battery as quickly as possible. They didn’t know why, and when I asked what Langdon Battery was, the man sitting beside the driver turned to me and held up a slip of paper. ‘CNIS Operations Centre, Langdon Battery. That’s all it says, sir. And a Dover patrol car will meet us at the last roundabout before the docks. Okay?’

The siren was switched on and we blazed our way through the traffic by New Cross Station. In moments, it seemed, we were crossing Blackheath, heading through the Bexley area to the M2. The morning was grey and windtorn, distant glimpses of Medway towns against the wide skies of the Thames estuary and my spirits lifting, a mood almost of elation. But all the men in front could tell me was that their instructions had come from the office of the Under-Secretary, Marine Division, at the Department of Trade in High Holborn. They knew nothing about any tankers. I leaned back, watching the forestry on either side flash by, certain that the ships must have been sighted. Why else this sudden call for my presence at an operations centre near Dover?

Half an hour later we were past Canterbury and at 11.22 we slowed at a second roundabout just outside Dover with the A2 dipping sharply between gorse scrub hills to the harbour. A local police car was waiting where the A258 to Deal branched off to the left and we followed it as it swung into the roundabout, turning right on to a narrow road leading directly to the square stone bulk of Dover Castle. To the left I had fleeting glimpses of the Straits, the sea grey-green and flecked with white, ships steaming steadily westward. A shaft of sunlight picked out the coast of France, while to the east a rainstorm blackened the seascape. Just short of the Castle we swung left, doubling back and dipping sharply to a narrow bridge over the A2 and a view of the docks with a hydrofoil just leaving by the eastern entrance in a flurry of spray.

The road, signposted to St Margaret’s, climbed sharply up rough downland slopes round a hairpin bend, and in a moment we were turning through a narrow gateway into MoD property with tall radio masts looming above a hill-top to our left.

Langdon Battery proved to be a decaying gun emplacement of First World War vintage, the concrete redoubt just showing above a flat gravel area where a dozen or more cars were parked. But at the eastern end the emplacement was dominated by a strange, very modernistic building, a sort of Star Wars version of an airport control tower. We stopped alongside a white curved concrete section and an officer from the local police car opened the door for me. ‘What is this place?’ I asked him.

‘HM Coastguards,’ he said. ‘CMS — Channel Navigation Information Service. They monitor the traffic passing through the Straits.’

We went in through double glass doors. There was a desk and a receptionist drinking coffee out of a Government issue cup. My escort gave her my name and she picked up a microphone. ‘Captain Evans please… Mr Rodin has just arrived, sir.’ She nodded and smiled at me. ‘Captain Evans will be right down.’

Opposite reception was a semicircular enclave with display boards outlining the work of the Operations Centre — a map of the Straits showing the east-west traffic lanes and the limits of the radar surveillance, diagrams showing the volume of traffic and marked drop in collisions resulting from traffic separation, radar surveillance and the reporting in by masters carrying noxious and dangerous cargoes, pictures of the Coastguards’ traffic patrol aircraft and of the Operations Room with its radar screens and computer console. ‘Mr Rodin?’

I turned to find a short, broad man with a lively face and a mane of greying hair. ‘David Evans,’ he said. ‘I’m the Regional Controller.’ And as he led me up the stairs to the left of the reception desk, he added, ‘The SoS should be here shortly — Secretary of State for Trade, that is. He’s flying down from Scotland.’ ‘The tankers have been sighted then?’ ‘Oh yes, there’s a Nimrod shadowing them.’ The first floor area was constructed like a control tower. ‘The Operations Room,’ he said. ‘That’s the Lookout facing seaward and the inner sanctum, that curtained-off area in the rear, is the Radar Room. We’ve three surveillance screens, there, also computer input VDUs — not only can we see what’s going on, we can get almost instant course and speed, and in the case of collision situations, the expected time to impact. The last position we had for those two tankers was bearing 205° from Beachy Head, distance fourteen miles. The Navy has sent Tigris, one of the Amazon class frigates, to intercept and escort them up-Channel.’

‘They’re past Spithead and the Solent then?’ He checked on the stairs leading up to the deck above. ‘You were thinking of Southampton, were you?’ I nodded.

‘You really thought they were going to damage one of the Channel ports?’

I didn’t say anything. He was a Welshman, with a Celtic quickness of mind, but I could see he hadn’t grasped the implications, was dubious about the whole thing.

‘They’re rogues, of course.’ He laughed. ‘That’s our term for ships that don’t obey the COLREGS. They didn’t report in to the French when they were off Ushant, nor to us, and now they’re on our side of the Channel, steaming east in the westbound lane. That makes them rogues several times over, but then they’re under the Iraqi flag, I gather.’ He said it as though it was some sort of flag-of-convenience. ‘Well, come on up and meet our boss, Gordon Basildon-Smith. He’s responsible for the Department of Trade’s Marine Division. We’ve got a sort of subsidiary Ops Room up here.’

It was a semicircular room, almost a gallery, for on one side glass panels gave a view down into the Lookout below. There were several chairs and a desk with a communications console manned by a young auxiliary coastguard woman. A group of men stood talking by a window that faced west with a view of the harbour and the solid mass of Dover Castle. One of them was the man who had addressed that meeting in Penzance the night Karen had destroyed the Petros Jupiter. ‘Good, you’re just in time,’ he said, as Captain Evans introduced me. He seemed to have no inkling that he was in any way connected with her death. ‘I want the whole story, everything that happened, everything you saw in those islands. But make it short. My Minister will be here any minute now.’

He wanted to be sure they really were the missing tankers, listening intently and not interrupting until I told him about the pictures Saltley had taken and how the old name was still just visible on the stern of the Shah Mohammed. ‘Yes, yes, it was in the report we had from Admiral Blaize. Unfortunately we don’t have the pictures yet. But Captain Evans here has flown off his Coastguard patrol plane with instructions to go in close—‘ He turned to the Regional Controller. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, David? He has taken off?’

Evans nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Took off—‘ He glanced at his watch. ‘Three minutes ago.’

There was a sudden flurry of movement as a voice announced the arrival of the Secretary of State for Trade. In an instant I was almost alone and when I looked down through the glass panels I saw a tall, dark man with thinning hair and prominent ears being introduced to the watch officers and the auxiliaries. He said a few words to each, moving and smiling like an actor playing a part, then he was climbing the stairs to the upper deck and I heard him say in a clear, silvery voice, ‘The French have been alerted, of course?’ And Captain Evans replied, ‘We’re co-operating very closely with them, sir. In fact, it was PREMAR UN who originally alerted us — that was when they passed Ushant and failed to report in.’ He introduced us, but the Minister’s mind was on the problem he now faced. ‘What about other countries — the Belgians, the Dutch?’ Evans said he couldn’t answer that and a

Navy officer present asked if he should check with Flag Officer, Plymouth. ‘I’m sure it’s been done, sir. As C-in-C Channel he’s bound to have given his opposite number in all NATO countries the information Admiral Blaize passed to us from Funchal.’

‘Check, would you,’ the Minister said.

A woman’s voice announced over the PA system that the tankers had now been picked up on the Dun-geness scanner. Course 042°. Speed 18.3 knots. ‘And the Germans,’ the Minister said. ‘Make certain the Germans have been notified. They have at least two Kurdish groups in custody.’ He turned to Basildon-Smith. ‘What do you think, Gordon — leave it as it is or inform the PM?’

Basildon-Smith hesitated. ‘If we bring the PM into it, then we need to be clear as to what advice we’re going to offer.’ And, in the pause that followed, Evans’s Welsh voice said quietly, ‘What about the journalists, sir? They’ve been pressing me all morning for a statement.’

‘Yes, Gordon told me.’ The Minister’s voice was sharper and he passed a hand over his eyes. ‘How many?’

‘There must be twenty or more now.’

He turned to me, his dark eyes hostile. ‘You should have kept your mouth shut. What was the idea?’ He stared at me, and I suddenly remembered he had been a barrister before going into politics. ‘Trying to pressure us, is that it? Or trying to divert attention from your own problems. You’re accused of killing a Frenchman. That right?’ And when I didn’t answer, he smiled and nodded, turning to Evans. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the Conference Room, sir.’

‘Ah, that nice, circular, very expensive room of yours with the pretty view of the Straits.’ He moved to the desk and sat down, his eyes fastening on me again as he took a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘We’ll assume for the moment that your statement is correct in so far as those tankers are concerned. To that extent your story is confirmed by this marine solicitor—‘ He glanced down at his aide-memoire. ‘Saltley. Any news of him?’ There was silence and he nodded. ‘We must take it then that he’s still stuck in Lisbon. Pity! A trained, logical, and unemotional—‘ He was looking at me again — ‘witness would have been very helpful to me. However…’ He shrugged. And then, working from his single-sheet brief, he began to cross-examine me. Was I sure about the identity of the second tanker? What were conditions like when we had sighted it? ‘You must have been tired then. Are you sure it was the Aurora B?’ And then he was asking me about the night when the two of them had tried to run us down. ‘That’s what makes your story less than entirely convincing.’ And he added, ‘My difficulty, you see, is that there are three witnesses at sea and unobtainable, and this man Saltley still lost apparently somewhere between here and Lisbon.’

I pointed out, of course, that Saltley had been present when Admiral Blaize had come on board the Prospero in Funchal, but all he said was, ‘Yes, but again it’s secondhand. Still…’ He fired a few more questions at me, chiefly about the men who had visited us in the inflatable off Selvagem Pequena, then got up and stood for a moment at the window staring out to the harbour at an odd-looking craft with a slab-fronted superstructure and a pile of giant fenders balanced on the stern. ‘All right.’ He turned, smiling, his manner suddenly changed. ‘Let’s deal with the media. And you,’ he said to me, ‘you’ll come too and back up what I say.’

‘And the PM, sir?’ Basildon-Smith asked.

‘We’ll leave that till we’ve seen these buggers through the Straits.’

The Conference Room was big and circular, with combined desks and seats custom-built on a curve to fit its shape. Venetian blinds covered the windows. The place was full of people and there were television cameras. In the sudden silence of our entry the lash of a rainstorm was a reminder of the room’s exposed position high up over the Dover Straits.

The Minister was smiling now, looking very assured as he addressed them briefly, giving a quick resume of the situation and concluding with the words, ‘I would ask you all to bear in mind that these vessels are registered in Iraq, flying the Iraqi flag. We do not know they are planning mischief. All we know, as fact, is that they failed to report in to the French at Ushant and that they are now steaming east in the westbound traffic lane to the great danger of other vessels.’

‘And avoiding arrest by keeping well away from the French coast,’ a voice said.

‘Yes, that is a perfectly valid point. As you know, we still do not have powers of arrest, not even in our own waters. Much as we should like these powers—‘

‘Why don’t you bring in a bill then?’ somebody asked him.

‘Because we’ve not had an experience like the French. There’s been no equivalent of the Amoco Cadiz disaster on the English coast.’ Inevitably he was asked whether the Prime Minister had been informed, but instead of answering the question, he turned to me and I heard him say, ‘Most of you will recall the name Trevor Rodin in connection with a missing tanker, the Aurora B, and some of you may have seen a Reuters report issued this morning containing statements made by him yesterday evening after he had flown in from Madeira. Because those statements will have to be borne in mind when we come to the point of deciding what action we take, if any, I thought it right that you should hear what he has to say from his own lips.’

He nodded towards me, smiling as those near me moved aside so that I stood isolated and exposed. ‘May I suggest, Mr Rodin, that you start by giving the gist of the information you gave the Second Sea Lord last night, then if there are any questions…” He stepped back and I was left with the whole room staring at me. Go on. Tell us what you said. Do what the Minister says. Urged by their voices I cleared my throat, cursing the man for his cleverness in switching their attention to me and getting himself off the hook. Then, as I began speaking, I suddenly found confidence, the words pouring out of me. I could feel their attention becoming riveted, their notebooks out, scribbling furiously, and the faint whirr of cameras turning.

I told them everything, from the moment we had reached the Selvagen Islands, and then, in answer to questions, I went back over what had happened in the Gulf, the extraordinary sight of the Aurora B moored against those ochre-red cliffs. It was such a wonderful opportunity to present my case and I had just started to tell them of my escape and what had happened on the dhow, when somebody said there was a report in from the pilot of the Coastguard patrol plane. I lost them then, everybody crowding round the DoT press officer. I had been talking for nearly twenty minutes and I think their attention had begun to wander long before the report came in that confirmed the shadow of the old name showing on the Shah Mohammed.

I walked out, past some officers and a spiral staircase leading down to the bowels of the old fort, to a glassed-in passageway. The rainstorm had moved off into the North Sea and a shaft of watery sunlight was beamed on the waves breaking against the harbour walls. I thought I could see the atomic power station at Dungeness and I wondered how much of what I had said would find its way into print, or would it all be submerged in the threat posed by Sadeq and his two tankers? Something was going to happen, out there beyond the wild break of the seas, but what? Down below the horizon, beyond the black louring clouds of that rainstorm, the ports of northern Europe lay exposed and vulnerable. I should have said that. I should have talked about pollution and Pieter Hals, not concentrated so much on my own troubles. If Karen had been there, she would have seen to it that I concerned myself more with the threat to life, the sheer filth and destruction of oil slicks.

I was still standing there, trying to figure out how long it would be before those tankers came into sight, when one of the BBC’s TV news team asked if they could do an interview. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for some time, so it seems a good opportunity.’

It was a good opportunity for me, too. They filmed it outside with the Lookout and the Straits in the background and I was able to channel it so that for part of the time I was talking about the problems of pollution and what men like Hals stood for.

‘That’s the first we’ve heard of Hals being on board. You’ve claimed all along they’re terrorists. Why would Captain Hals join them?’

I couldn’t answer that. ‘Perhaps he was desperate and needed a job,’ I said. ‘Or he could have been thinking that a really catastrophic disaster in one of the major European ports would force governments to legislate against irresponsible tanker owners.’

‘Europort, for instance. Is that what you’re saying — that they’ll go for Europort?’

‘Perhaps.’ I was remembering Hals’s actual words when he had said nothing would be done — nothing until the nations that demand oil are themselves threatened with pollution on a massive scale. There was almost a quarter of a million tons of oil in those tankers. The Maas, the Noord Zee Canal, the Elbe — they were all prime targets.

I had an audience now of several journalists and was still talking about Hals when somebody called to us that the Flag Officer, Plymouth, was on the phone to the Minister requesting instructions now that a Navy frigate was in close company with one of the tankers and had identified it as the Aurora B. There was a rush for the Conference Room and I was left standing there with only a watchful policeman for company.

I was glad to be on my own for a moment, but shortly afterwards the Minister came out with Bas-ildon-Smith and they were driven off in an official car — to the Castle, the police officer said, adding that it was past one and sandwiches and coffee were available from the canteen. Several journalists and most of the TV men drove off in their cars, heading for the hotel bars at St Margaret’s. Clearly nothing was going to happen for some time. It began to rain again.

I went back into the Operations Centre and had a snack, standing looking out the windows of the Conference Room. Time passed slowly. I had a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, rain lashing at the windows. Later I strolled along the glassed-in passageway to the Lookout. There were one or two reporters there and the watch officer was letting them take it in turns to look through the big binoculars. Nobody took any notice of me until Captain Evans came in to check the latest position of the tankers. He also checked the latest weather position, then turned to me and said, ‘Care to see them on the radar?’ I think he was tired of explaining things to landlubbers, glad to talk to a seaman.

He took me through the heavy light-proof curtains at the back. ‘Mind the step.’ It was dark after the day-bright Lookout, the only light the faint glow from a computer console and the three radar screens. It was the left hand screen that was linked to the Dungeness scanner and the circling sweep showed two very distinct, very bright, elongated blips to the south and east of Dungeness. ‘What’s the course and speed now?’ Evans asked.

‘Just a minute, sir. They’ve just altered to clear the Varne.’ The watch officer leaned over, fed in three bearings on the central monitoring screen and at the touch of a button the computer came up with the answer: ‘O-six-O degrees now, sir. Speed unchanged at just over eighteen.’

‘Looks like the Sandettie light vessel and the deep-water channel.’ Evans was speaking to himself rather than to me. ‘Outside the French twelve-mile limit all the way.’ He looked round at me. ‘Should be able to see them any minute now.’ And he added, ‘That friend of yours, Saltley — he’ll be arriving at Dover airport in about an hour. Apparently he’s chartered a small Spanish plane.’ He turned quickly and went out through the curtains. ‘Try calling them on Channel 16,’ he told the woman auxiliary manning the radio. ‘By name.’

‘Which one, sir? The Ghazan Khan or the—‘

‘No, not the Iraqi names. Try and call up Captain Hals on the Aurora B. See what happens.’

It was while she was trying unsuccessfully to do this that the watch officer in the Lookout reported one of the tankers was visible. The Secretary of State came back from lunching with the Governor of Dover Castle and those not working in the Lookout were hustled out.

Another squall swept in and for a while rain obliterated the Straits so that all we could see was the blurred outline of the harbour. Saltley arrived in the middle of it. I was on the upper deck then, looking down through the glass panels, and I could see him standing by the state-of-readiness boards in front of the big map, talking urgently to the Minister and Basildon-Smith, his arms beginning to wave about. He was there about ten minutes, then the three of them moved out of sight into the Radar Room. Shortly afterwards he came hurrying up to the gallery, gave me a quick nod of greeting and asked the auxiliary to get him the Admiralty. ‘If the DoT won’t do anything, maybe the Navy will.’ He looked tired and strained, the bulging eyes red-rimmed, his hair still wet and ruffled by the wind. He wanted the tankers arrested or at least stopped and searched to discover the identity of the people running them and whether they had prisoners on board.

The squall passed and suddenly there they were, plainly visible to the naked eye, with the frigate in close attendance. They were almost due south of us, about seven miles away, their black hulls merged with the rain clouds over the French coast, but the two superstructures showing like distant cliffs in a stormy shaft of sunlight.

Saltley failed to get Admiral Fitzowen and after a long talk with somebody else at the Admiralty, he put in a call to Stewart. ‘I’ve a damned good mind to contact the Prime Minister myself,’ he said as he joined me by the window. ‘Two pirated ships sailing under false names with a naval escort and we do nothing. It’s bloody silly.’ I don’t know whether it was anger or tiredness, but there was a slight hesitancy in his speech that I had never noticed before. In all the time I had been with him in the close confines of the Prospero I had never seen him so upset. ‘There’s thirty or forty million involved in the hulls alone, more on the cargoes. I told the Minister and all he says is that underwriting is a risk business and nobody but a fool becomes a Member of Lloyd’s without being prepared to lose his shirt. But this isn’t any ordinary risk. A bunch of terrorists — you can’t counter claim against them in the courts, there’s no legal redress. The bloody man should act — on his own responsibility. That’s what we have Ministers for. Instead, he’s like a little boy on the pier watching some pretty ships go by.’

The bearing of the tankers was very slowly changing. Both VHF and R/T channels were filling the air with irate comments from ships finding themselves heading straight for a bows-on collision, the CMS watch officer continually issuing warnings for westbound traffic to keep to the inshore side of the land and maintain a sharp radar watch in the rainstorms.

They were all in the Lookout now, the Minister, Basildon-Smith and Captain Evans, with Saltley hovering in the background and everybody watching to see whether the tankers would hold on for the Sand-ettie light vessel and the deepwater channel or turn north. A journalist beside me muttered something to the effect that if they ran amok in Ekofisk or any of the bigger North Sea oilfields there could be catastrophic pollution.

It was at this point that I was suddenly called to the Lookout and as I entered the big semicircular glassed-in room I heard the Minister ask what the state of readiness of the Pollution Control Unit was. His voice was sharp and tense, and when Evans replied that he’d spoken to Admiral Denleigh just before lunch and the whole MPCU organization was alerted, but no dispersant stock piles had yet been moved, he said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. You already told me. No point in starting to shift vast quantities of chemical sprays until we have a better idea of where they’ll be needed.’

‘They may not be needed at all, sir,’ Evans said.

The Minister nodded, but his expression, as he turned away, indicated that he hadn’t much hope of that. ‘I should have been speaking at a big party rally in Aberdeen this afternoon.’ His voice was high and petulant. ‘On oil and the environment.’ He was glaring at the Head of his Marine Division as though he were to blame for bringing him south, maybe losing precious votes. But then he saw me. ‘Ah, Mr Rodin — this man Hals. He’s not answering. We’ve tried repeatedly, VHF and R/T. Somebody’s got to get through to him.’

His eyes were fixed on mine. ‘You’ve met him. You’ve talked to him. I’m sending you out there. See if you can get through to him.’

‘But—‘ I was thinking of the dhow, the way I’d left the ship. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘How do you mean — get through to him?’

‘Tigris is sending a helicopter for you. It’s already been flown off so it should be here any minute. Now about this story of somebody flashing a light from one of the tankers. Saltley here says you and a young man on this yacht both thought it was some sort of signal. Morse code. Is that right?’

‘I didn’t see it myself,’ I said, and started to tell him about the circumstances. But he brushed that aside. ‘The letter M, that’s what Saltley here has just told me. Is that right?’

‘Several quick flashes, then two longs,’ I said. ‘We were in the tanker’s wake then—‘

‘Two longs, that’s M in Morse, is it?’

‘Or two Ts. But we were being flung about—‘

‘You think it could have been part of a name.’ He turned to Saltley again. ‘One of the crew held prisoner on board signalling with a torch or a light switch, trying to give you the destination.’ He moved forward so that he was standing by the radar monitor, his eyes fastening on me again. ‘What do you say, Rodin? You stated quite categorically that in the case of the Aurora B, members of the crew were being held prisoner. Was this an attempt, do you think, to communicate and give you the target these terrorists are aiming at?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ I said.

‘No more than a possibility?’ He nodded slowly. ‘And the only one to see it was this boy. In a panic, was he? You’d nearly been run down.’

‘Excited,’ I told him. ‘We all were, but nothing wrong with his ability to observe accurately.’

He smiled thinly. ‘Then it’s a pity he wasn’t able to decipher more of the message — if it was a message. There’s an M in several of our estuary names, the Thames, the Humber—‘.

‘And the Maas,’ Evans said sharply. ‘Ports like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Bremen, and Rotterdam, there’s two Ts there.’ He pointed to the plot marked up on the large scale chart laid out on the flat surround below the Lookout windows. ‘If it’s our coast they’re headed for, they’ll have to turn soon or they’ll be blocked by the Fairy and North Hinder banks.’

‘Suppose the target were the North Sea oilfields?’

Evans shook his head. ‘Those tankers are already loaded. They’d have no excuse.’

The chop-chop-chop of a helicopter came faintly through the glass windows. I turned to Saltley. ‘Is this your idea?’ I was remembering Pamela’s warning that evening in Funchal. ‘Did you put it into his head?’ I could see myself being lowered by winch on to the deck of the Aurora B. ‘Well, I’m not going,’ I said, watching, appalled, as the helicopter emerged out of the rain, sidling towards us across the wind.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘All we want is for them to see you, on the bridge of the Tigris. A loud hailer. It’s more personal than a voice on the air.’

I think the Minister must have sensed my reluctance, for he came over and took me by the arm. ‘Nothing to be worried about. All we want is for you to talk to him, make him see reason. And if you can’t do that, then try and get the destination out of him. In any terrorist situation, it’s getting through, making contact — that’s the important thing.’

‘Hals isn’t a terrorist,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘So I gather. You and he — you talk the same language. You’re both concerned about pollution. He won’t talk to us here, but he may to you, when he sees you right alongside him. Commander Fellowes has his instructions. Make contact with him, that’s all I ask. Find out what the target is.’ He nodded to the naval liaison officer, who took hold of my other arm and before I could do anything about it I was being hurried down the stairs and out to the car park. The noise of the helicopter was very loud. It came low over the top of the Lookout and I watched, feeling as though I was on the brink of another world, as it settled like a large mosquito in a gap between the gorse bushes. The pilot signalled to us and we ducked under the rotor blades. The door slid open and I was barely inside before it took off, not bothering to climb, but making straight out over the Dover cliffs, heading for the Tigris.

Five minutes later we landed on the pad at the frigate’s stern and I was taken straight to the bridge where the captain was waiting for me. ‘Fellowes,’ he said, shaking me by the hand. ‘We’re going close alongside now. Hope you can get some sense out of them. They’re an odd-looking crowd.’

The bridge was built on a curve, not unlike the Lookout, but the changed view from the windows was quite dramatic. From the shore-based Operations Centre the tankers had been no more than distant silhouettes low down on the horizon. Now, suddenly, I was seeing them in close-up, huge hunks of steel-plating low in the water, the Aurora B looming larger and larger as the relatively tiny frigate closed her at almost thirty knots. ‘We’ll come down to their speed when we’re abreast of the superstructure, then the idea is for you to go out on to the open deck and talk direct.’ He handed me a loud hailer. ‘Just press the trigger when you want to speak. Don’t shout or you’ll deafen yourself. It’s a pretty loud one, that.’ He turned his head, listening as the ship’s name was called on VHF. It was the Dover Coastguards wanting to know whether contact had yet been made with the Aurora B. He reached for a mike and answered direct: ‘Tigris to Coastguard. Helicopter and passenger have just arrived. We’re all set here. Am closing now. Over.’

We were coming in from the west at an oblique angle, the bulk of the Aurora B gradually blotting out the shape of the other tanker, which was about a mile to the east. The Dover cliffs showed as a dirty white smudge on our port side and there were several ships in the westbound lane, foam at their bows as the waves broke over them. Closer at hand, two small drifters danced on the skyline, and almost dead ahead of us, I could see the ungainly lanterned shape of a light vessel. ‘The Sandettie,’ Cdr Fellowes said. ‘We’ll be in the deepwater channel in ten to fifteen minutes.’ Behind him the radio suddenly poured out a torrent of French. It was the fishery protection vessel now shadowing the tankers from the eastbound lane. We could just see it past the Aurora B’s stern steaming north-east ahead of a large ore carrier. ‘Ready?’ Fellowes asked me, and I nodded, though I didn’t feel at all ready. What the hell was I going to say to Hals?

I was still thinking about that, the loud hailer gripped in my hand, as he led me out on to the starb’d side deck below the tall square needle of the radar mast. The Tigris was turning now, her speed slowing as we ranged alongside the tanker’s superstructure. I could see the length of its deck, all the pipes and inspection hatches that I had stumbled over in the night, the long line of the catwalk. And right above me now the wheelhouse with faces I recognized framed in its big windows. Sadeq was there and the Canadian, Rod Selkirk, and two men I didn’t know, both of them dark and bearded. And then Hals appeared, his pale hair and beard framed in the glass of the bridge wing door. I raised the loud hailer to my lips. Captain Hals. I had my finger locked tight round the trigger and even my breathing came out in great audible puffs. This is Rodin. Trevor Rodin. I was with you in the Gulf, that khawr — remember? It’s Rodin, I repeated. Please come out on to the bridge wing. I want to talk to you.

I thought he was going to. I saw the uncertainty on his face, could almost read his intention in the expression of his eyes. We were that close, it seemed. I must speak to you, Pieter. About pollution. He moved then. I’m certain of it, reaching out to slide open the door. But then Sadeq was beside hum am one of the others. A moment later they were gone, all three of them, the glass panel empty.

‘Ask for his destination,’ Fellowes said. ‘That’s what CINCHAN wants and he’s got the SoS breathing down his neck. Try again.’

But it was no use. I kept on calling over the loud hailer, but there was no response. And no faces at the window, the bridge appearing blind now as the tanker ploughed on. ‘Well, that’s that, I guess.’ Fellowes turned away, walking quickly back to his wheelhouse. I remained there, the wind on my face, sensing the heel of the ship as the Tigris pulled away from the tanker, dropping back until the light vessel became visible beyond the blunt rounded stern. It was so close now that the name SANDETTlE stood out very clear on its hull. We were in the deepwater channel.

It was then, just as I was turning to follow the captain back into the shelter of the frigate’s bridge, that something happened, up there on the tanker’s high superstructure. The door to the bridge wing was suddenly slid back, four men stumbling out in a cloud of thick billowing smoke. And the tanker was turning. I could see the bows shifting away from us, very slowly. She was turning to starb’d, towards the Sandettie bank, towards the other tanker. And her speed was increasing. She was drawing ahead, her stern turning towards us so that I could no longer see what was happening, the bridge wing empty, no sign of anybody, only the smoke hanging in a haze behind the superstructure. I dived back into the frigate’s wheelhouse and as I came through the door I heard Fellowes’ voice calling: ‘Tigris to Coastguard. Something odd going on. The Aurora B is shifting course. She’s turning to starb’d. Also she’s on fire. There’s smoke pouring out of the wheelhouse area. Looks as though she intends to close the other tanker. Over.’

‘Any change of speed?’ It was Evans’s voice.

‘Yes, she’s increased at least a knot. Her bows are pointing diagonally across the channel now. And she’s still turning…’

‘Aurora B. Aurora B.’ It was Evans again, his voice a little higher. ‘You’re standing into danger. Ghazan Khan. This is Dover Coastguard. We have you on our radar. You are approaching collision course. I repeat — collision course. You are standing into danger.’

Silence then. A deathly hush on the frigate’s bridge and the tanker still turning. And just below the clouds, circling ponderously, was the Nimrod, the pilot quietly confirming that from where he was, right above the tankers, collision appeared inevitable. Then, suddenly, a new voice: ‘Tigris. This is the Secretary of State for Trade. I want you to stop that tanker, put a shot across the bows. Acknowledge.’

‘I can’t, sir,’ Fellowes replied. ‘Not at the moment. She’s stern-on to us and the other ship’s right ahead of her in the line of fire.’ And almost in the same breath he was dictating a signal to CINCHAN and ordering gun crews closed up. The loudspeaker crackled into life again, a different voice calmly reporting: ‘On collision course now.’ It was the watch officer on surveillance duty in the Radar Room fourteen miles away. ‘Two minutes forty-seven seconds to impact.’

‘My God!’ It was the Minister again. ‘Tigris.’ His voice was suddenly firm and decisive. ‘That rogue tanker. Open fire immediately. On the stern. Take the rudder off, the propeller too.’

‘Is that an order, sir?’ And as the Minister said, ‘Yes, yes, an order,’ a voice I recognized as Saltley’s said, ‘If that Navy ship opens fire, I have to tell you it could be argued later that you were responsible for the subsequent collision.’

There was a short silence. Fellowes was handed a signal, gun crews were reporting and the frigate was gathering speed, turning to starb’d. I could see the bows of the Aurora B, now barely half a mile from the long low shape of the ship she was going to ram, and in that moment I had a clear mental picture of the wheelhouse and Hals standing there in the smoke and flame steering his ship to total destruction. It was deliberate. It had to be. Like Karen — immolation, death, it didn’t matter, the object a disaster that would shake Europe into action. And in the silence the Minister’s voice shouting, ‘Open fire, man. Hurry! There’s barely a minute to go.’

I heard Fellowes give the order, and in that same moment a new voice erupted on the air: ‘Rodin! Are you there? Can you hear me?’ It was Pieter Hals. ‘It’s fixed now. Nothing they can do.’ There was a crash, a spurt of flame from the for’ard gun turret and instantaneously a matching eruption from the tanker’s stern. It was low down on the waterline, a single shot, and the whole blunt end of the Aurora B instantly disintegrated into a tangle of steel, like a sardine can ripped open at one end. The ship staggered at the impact, smoke and flames and the debris of torn-out steering gear and bollards splashing the sea. But it made no difference. The gaping hole, and the sea rushing in — it didn’t alter her course, it didn’t stop her progress through the water. With her steering entrails hanging out of her stern she went ploughing on, and in the sudden silence Hals screaming, ‘It’s fixed, I tell you. Nothing you can do about it. Seconds now…’ There was a noise like ripping calico, the sound of a great gasp of air — ‘Go-o-d!’

I heard it, but somehow I didn’t take it in, the moment of Pieter Hals’s death. My gaze, my whole consciousness was fixed on the Aurora B’s bows. They were turning now, turning back to her original course — but too slowly. Steadily, relentlessly they were closing the gap that separated them from the other tanker. There was no further order to fire, nothing Tigris could do, the oil-filled bulk of the tanker ploughing on and everybody holding their breath waiting for the moment of impact.

It came, strangely, without any sound, a crumpling of the bows, a curling up and ripping open of steel plates below the Howdo Stranger’s superstructure, all in slow time. And it went on and on, for the collision was at an oblique angle and the Aurora B went slicing up the whole long side of the other tanker, ripping her open from end to end, and the sound of that disembowelment came to us as a low grinding and crunching that went on and on, endlessly.

It stopped in the end, after what seemed a great while, the two black-hulled leviathans finally coming to rest with barely two or three cables of open water between them, water that became dark and filthy, almost black, with the crude oil bubbling out of them, the waves all flattened by the weight of it. No fire. No smoke. Just the oil bubbling up from under the sea like a volcano erupting.

The Nimrod made a slow pass over the scene, the pilot reporting — ‘From where I’m sitting it looks as though both tankers are aground on the Sandettie. One has her port side completely shattered. She was going astern at the moment of collision so she really got herself carved up. She still has her engines at full astern. I can see the prop churning up the seabed, a lot of brown mud and sand mixing with the oil pouring out of her tanks. The other tanker — the rogue — she’s got her bows stove in, of course, and it looks as though she’s holed on the starb’d side right back as far as the pipe derricks. A lot of oil coming out of her, too…’

And Pieter Hals dead. I was quite certain he was dead. That sound had been the chatter of automatics. ‘Looks like the Kent coast is going to get the brunt of it,’ Fellowes said quietly. The forecast was for the westerly winds to back south-easterly and increase to gale force in the southern North Sea. And since oil slicks move at roughly one-thirtieth of the wind speed he reckoned the first of the oil would come ashore right below the Langdon Battery Operations Centre at about noon the next day.

It was two days later, after dark, that I finally arrived back at Balkaer, stumbling down the cliff path in the starlight, the squat shape of the cottage showing black against the pale glimmer of the sea. There’d be a fire to welcome me, Jean had said when I’d phoned her from London, and now I could see the smoke of it drifting lazily up. I could hear the beat of the waves in the cove, the sound of them surging along the cliffs. Suddenly I felt as though I had never been away, everything so familiar. I would lift the latch and Karen would come running…

The key was there in the door and it wasn’t locked. I lifted the latch and pushed it open. The bright glow of the fire lit the interior, shadows flickering on the walls, and I was thinking of her as I closed the door, shutting out the sound of the sea in the cove. And then I turned, and my heart stood still.

She was sitting in the chair. In her own chair. Sitting there by the fire, her hands in her lap, her head turned towards me and her face in shadow. She was watching me. I could feel her eyes on me and my knees were like water.

‘Karen!’, I heard myself breathe her name, and the figure rose from the chair, her firelit shadow climbing from wall to ceiling, so big it filled the room.

She spoke then, and it wasn’t Karen, it wasa’l voice.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I startled y The voice was liquid, a soft lilt that was Welsh like Karen’s, but a different intonation. ‘Jean Kerrison—* she pronounced it Jarne. ‘They’re out this evening, at St Ives. So she gave me the key, said I could wait for you here.’

‘Why?’ I had recognized her now and my voice was hostile, thinking of the miles of beaches black with oil, all those ships, men working round the clock — the Petros Jupiter all over again, and now Choffel’s daughter, here at Balkaer. Had they found his body? Was that it? Was he still alive? ‘Why?’ I said again. ‘Why have you come here?’

She gave a shrug. ‘To say I am sorry, I suppose.’ She had turned away so that the fire’s glow was on her face and I could see the determined line of the jaw, the broad brow beneath the jet black hair. ‘Did Jarne tell you she came-to see me? In London. Almost a month ago, it was. She came to my hotel.’

‘Jean — to London!’ I was still staring at her.

‘She want to tell me about the ship my father is in, the Petros Jupiter, and how you were out in a boat searching for your wife in a fog when she destroyed it. She want to tell me also what kind of man you are, so that I would know, you see, that you were not the man to kill my father.’ I had moved towards the fire and the flames lit her face as she looked at me, her expression strangely serene. ‘She is very fond of you, I think.’ And she added, ‘You are a lucky man to have people like Jarne and Jim Kerrison who will do so much for you. She almost convince me, you see.’

‘So you still think I killed him?’

‘It’s true then. You don’t know.’ She half shook her head, sitting down again and smiling gently to herself. ‘I don’t believe it when she tell me you don’t know.’

I stared at her, feeling suddenly very tired. ‘What is all this? Why are you here?’

‘I tell you, to say I am sorry. I didn’t believe you, but now I know.’ And then she blurted it out: ‘I have withdrawn everything — everything I say about you. I should have done that after Jarne saw me, but instead I went back to France. I do not say anything, not then. But now… There is a full statement from the Pakistani crew. Everything you say about how my father is shot and wounded is confirmed. It was that man Sadeq.’ She hesitated, and there were tears in her eyes. Then she said, her voice almost choked with emotion, ‘So now I am here. To apologize to you, and to ask you something…’ Again the hesitation. ‘A favour.’ There was a long silence. At length she said, ‘Will you tell me what happened please, on the Aurora B, when you meet my father, and later, particularly later, when you are together on the dhow.’

I had slumped into my usual chair, unable to think of anything at that moment but the fact that I was cleared. Free! Free of everything now, except the past. Just as he had said, no one can escape that.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I want to know.’

‘It’s all in my statement.’

‘I know it is. I have read it. But that is not the same, is it now? I would like you to tell me yourself.’

Go through it all again! I shook my head.

‘Please,’ she pleaded. And suddenly she was out of the chair, squatting on the rush matting at my feet. ‘Don’t you understand? What I did to you, the accusations, the anger, the hate — yes, hate — was because I loved him. He was such a gentle, kindly man, and with my mother dead, he was all I had. He brought me up, and whatever he did wrong was done out of love for my mother. Try to understand, will you — and forgive.’ Silence then and the firelight flickering on her face, her eyes staring at me very wide. ‘What did you talk about, on that dhow? What did he say? He must have said much. All that time together, two days. Two whole days.’

I nodded slowly, the memory of him in that stinking cubby-hole under the poop coming back. And now, looking down on her, crouched there at my own fireside, I understood her need. She was his daughter. She had a right to know. So in the end I told her everything, even admitting to her that when I’d joined him on the dhow it had been with the intention of killing him.

She didn’t comment on that. She didn’t interrupt me once, and as I talked, her face so intent, her dark eyes seeming to hang on my words, it was like talking to Karen again.