by Carlos Luxul
‘We do it now,’ Choukri said, impatient.
‘It’s better later,’ Khan said. ‘It’s all a process. The men need to see it too.’
‘Okay,’ Choukri nodded reluctantly.
It was cooler in the hold today, but also more sultry in the listless air, which refused to move. The sun was there somewhere, trying its best to break through, held back by a blanket of hazy cloud. The morning’s work had seen the steel-mesh walkways bolted in place, pipes and cables connected and neatly clipped along the undersides. There were signs at every junction box for ‘on’ and ‘off’ or ‘do not switch off’. Each gun placement was identical down to the last detail, the size, colour, and sequence of cable and hose.
~
After lunch, Khan wiped the back of his hand across his forehead as the men settled into position in front of him. At the front was the chief and his engineers, Choukri, Faisel, and four mechanically adept crewmen – one to each gun. Mubarak stood to one side. At the back were Snoop, Assam and the rest of the crew. The command table was folded down with the laptop open on top.
The covers had been removed from one of the guns, its inner workings laid bare. Khan explained the components, how they interacted with one another and how they should be cared for, pointing out the lubrication points and the quantity, frequency and type of oils and greases.
‘They’re beautifully made, they’re robust, and they’re new,’ Khan said. ‘They won’t be any trouble if you follow procedure. But we have to keep them in perfect condition. My main concern during the voyage is damp and humidity. Don’t forget they’re designed with seawater in mind. They’re well protected, but we don’t want to leave anything to chance, eh?’
The chief nodded, his eyes turning to four dehumidifiers that had appeared during the morning and were lined up to one side against the hold wall.
‘We’ll do a test run now. And pay attention to the maintenance areas I’ve identified,’ Khan said, lifting a finger to one of his engineers who was standing to one side by the main power box.
He pulled the switch. The hum of the guns cowed the crew into silence, their ears cocked, eyes staring.
‘Choukri. Will you please. You remember the sequence?’
‘Exactly.’ Choukri stepped across to the table, adjusting the angle of the laptop screen. ‘Now?’
‘Now,’ said Khan.
All four guns leapt into action, without sound suppression in the hollow shell of the hold. They were dry runs with neither ammunition nor explosion, but the crew shrank back, their faces apprehensive at the barrels pumping in unison.
Khan basked in their reaction as the men slowly regained their composure, turning to one another, exchanging wide-eyed looks and blowing out their cheeks.
‘Okay, again,’ Khan said. ‘And close attention this time.’
He nodded to Choukri who keyed the sequence. The chief leant in. All eyes were fixed on the guns, but not Khan’s. His were roaming the faces of the men, relishing the charged atmosphere.
With the second demonstration complete and the crew’s undivided attention, Khan drew them closer, pointing out key features and technicalities. The chief was learning fast and able to answer many of the crew’s questions himself. Khan stood back, looking around, catching Choukri’s eye, exchanging a glance of satisfaction over his protégé.
Khan turned to the men and called them across to an ammunition carousel, explaining its processes and how each shell was fed in turn, where pinch points and jamming might occur and how to overcome them. After a while he backed away, leaving them in the chief’s hands to practise their routines.
Choukri beckoned Khan over, the two of them looking on with pride. The men were working well together, encouraging each other and delighting in their progress as they got to grips with it.
‘No problem there,’ Choukri said.
‘No problem at all.’
‘And now the manual procedures,’ Choukri said, gesturing to Faisel.
Khan switched the laptop on and set the programme to the start page, explaining every feature, tab and drop down, moving the cursor around to all of them in turn. Each gun had its targets preloaded. For simplicity, just one click would trigger them all from the start through to the end and, at any time, a gun could be deselected and fired manually, before another click would put it back into automatic sequence with the others.
Choukri and Faisel leant in, their eyes following every move. From time to time they took over the controls and duplicated what Khan had just shown them, practising the routines, building their confidence. The system had a sound logic and an absence of abbreviations and techie buzzwords. Each tab gave a detailed description of what it would do. Nothing had been left to guesswork or assumption.
Choukri lifted his hands and turned to Khan. ‘It’s perfect. Easier than booking an airline ticket online.’
Khan beamed in delight before checking his watch. It was late in the afternoon. The shells in the demonstration carousel were lifted out and taken back to the storage containers. It would be the crew’s job during the voyage to fill the carousels. Two hundred and forty tonnes of ammunition needed to be carried by hand from the containers.
With the last of the packing up completed, the men filed out of the hold, leaving just Khan, Choukri and Mubarak. Above them the hatch was rolling into position, the steel panels rumbling and clanking in their guides. Then there was quiet, just the whirr of dehumidifiers, one between each gun and its ammunition carousel.
‘It’s up to us now,’ Khan said, glancing to each of them before turning to look down the hold, the guns looming ever more powerful in the thin light, their shadows magnified, spread across the floor, climbing the walls. ‘Did you ever truly believe we’d reach this point?’
Choukri turned to him, his face set. ‘I did. And I truly believe we’ll reach the final one. This I believe.’
‘I sometimes wondered, but I do now,’ Mubarak said, his eyes becoming cautious, almost pensive, as he looked around. ‘It seems inconceivable that no one has stirred, not a soul. Or are they watching us now, up in the cliffs or orbiting the atmosphere. Is there a squadron of ships out there below the horizon, the Americans, the French, British, Dutch. Perhaps the Russians and Chinese too, in solidarity – can the world really be asleep?’
Twenty-six
Dan opened the curtains and let the sun in. It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning. He’d been up since six with Phoebe and it was now time for Julie to greet the day. She rolled away and pulled the covers over her face. He turned them back and guided her hand to the cup he had put on the bedside table.
‘The park before lunch?’ he said.
‘After a bath.’
‘I’ll take Phoebe now. You come when you’re ready,’ he said, stepping across the hallway to the bathroom and running the taps.
Getting used to a sabbatical was difficult for both of them. Dan had made himself as useful as possible, avoided the pub and kept the weed box in check. Having time for Phoebe was proving rewarding, though sometimes taxing. He was having to come to terms with the guilty truth that it could also be boring. So far, the time on his hands had not caused any friction at home and he was grateful for that.
He let the pram roll ahead with a ‘Wheee!’ Phoebe repeated it with excitement. She was picking words up quickly, using them randomly and pronouncing them in a way that was difficult to understand, but was definite speech. For every word she knew, or thought she knew, there were ten more she understood. Unsteadily but enthusiastically, she had been on her feet for a couple of months now and was fast becoming a real walking, talking, living person.
With a foot absently rocking the pushchair, he settled down on a park bench and checked his messages. The Ocean Dove was on his mind, but resisting the temptation to meddle was taking precedence. All he knew was that its current destination was South Africa and there was nothing contentious he could read into that.
There was still an urge to check the AIS, OceanBird’s website and var
ious information sources, but he knew he had to be seen to be playing the game. Nine months in the service had been long enough to appreciate that they had the resources to monitor him and probably would. He realised and accepted that he did not have sufficient knowledge of the system to circumvent it. As part of his remit he subscribed to countless shipping news wires and trade sites, but he was careful to avoid anything that could be interpreted as pushing the bounds of credibility. Taking a general interest was one thing. Specific searches were another.
Jo Clymer had suggested he should use his free time wisely. As patronising as it was, he clearly remembered her tapping her nose darkly, before adding, ‘So don’t be tempted …’
Nothing new had arrived from Copenhagen, which didn’t surprise him. Besides, the full report into the Danske Prince wasn’t expected for months and it was unlikely fresh information would come to light.
Now it seemed the only real option was to try to let it wash out of his system. It was easy to say and proving difficult to live with. Brighter moments hinged on LaSalle, a man he accepted he could not read properly, but someone who was surely his ally. At least he hoped that was the case. He’d lost count of the number of times he had turned their discussions over, trying to recall every word and gesture, interpreting them afresh, examining each nuance from a new angle, giving them credence where none was necessarily due.
At low points, he wondered if he had indeed lost faith in his own judgement – the bitterest aspect to deal with. ‘Let it go,’ he would unconvincingly tell himself, repeating the mantra aloud whenever he found himself drifting back to perspectives, angles, levels and subsidiary levels.
But certain perspectives, angles, levels and subsidiary levels still worried him. The look Hak had given him when he had asked who knew about the Bar Mhar raid was still clear in his mind. The implication was plain. It was a foundation stone of the security business: those who needed to know would know.
There was no hiding from it. Deep down, he knew his reticence had been motivated in part by self-preservation. The correct course would have been to report to LaSalle immediately, regardless of what Hak had implied. And what exactly had he implied – that if Dan wanted to play with the big boys, he’d better observe the big boys’ rules? Saving face with Hak, someone he both put his trust in and instinctively mistrusted, was bordering on shameful. He should have disclosed it. In the marrow of his bones and bone-headedness, he knew it.
A couple of weeks into his sabbatical, Dan had called LaSalle, who made time to meet him, though not at Alf’s. The coffee wasn’t quite up to standard, but LaSalle managed to organise a plate of biscuits.
‘But the facts,’ LaSalle had said. ‘From the size and nature of the timber fragments, the deduction is they were ship’s timbers and very probably from a dhow. The sizes were consistent with the supposition and so were the round holes – the dhow builders’ traditional peg fixings. One fragment was made from two pieces joined together by pegs, which more or less confirms it. Moreover, the planking indicated trauma, from impact and explosion, and detailed tests confirmed both. Chemical analysis established that fragments of paint and hull coatings embedded in the timber were precisely the same as the types used on the Danske Prince, and minute traces of steel were consistent with the type and grade of plate used by its shipbuilding yard. The outer faces of the timbers were encrusted with typical marine matter, organisms and detonated ammonium nitrate, so it’s clear the explosion did not come from the dhow – the force of it went into the dhow, from the outside. The only conclusion is that the dhow made contact with the Danske Prince and suffered the consequences of one of the ship’s cargoes exploding, the ammonium nitrate, for reasons unknown. The impact of the explosion was substantial and in close proximity, which corresponds with where the ammonium nitrate was stowed on the Danske Prince. The cargo was close to the waterline at the bow, presumably the point of impact. It makes no sense for the ship’s stern to collide with the dhow, and contact along either side is equally unlikely. If that had been the case it would have been a glancing blow, with significantly less impact. It has to be the bows. That alone makes sense. And the precise chemical composition of the traces of ammonium nitrate match precisely with the formula used by SAPET. So there is no reason to doubt it was their product, though I grant you there is also no suggestion as to the how and why. No human traces were found at the accident site, so the dhow was presumably unmanned, and nothing associated with a dhow was found either, no net or sail fragments, no fittings or equipment of a type either a dhow or its crew might reasonably have, indicating everything was washed from it and lost to the sea a long time ago. The dhow may have been waterlogged, partially submerged, difficult to see – and it may have been in that state for many months or years.’
Dan sat there perfectly still. His eyes were fixed on LaSalle, who had spoken for two minutes without drawing breath and without referring to notes.
‘From the size and scale of the timbers,’ LaSalle continued, ‘the dhow was unlikely to have been less than twenty metres long. It was of heavy construction, ocean-going. The principal timber was acacia, with traces of mangrove. Traditionally, the only dhow builders surrounding the Indian Ocean who use acacia are from Yemen. India uses native teak from Kerala, as do the yards of the Arabian Gulf who import it in large quantities. In East Africa, particularly Zanzibar, coconut is the preferred material. So everything points to a dhow built in Yemen, but there’s nothing to suggest it remained there. Dhows are bought and sold. It could have changed hands many times without a single record of any transaction. Putting an age on the dhow is impossible. The fragments were carbon dated, but that sheds no light at all on when the vessel itself was built, merely confirming the age of the timbers.’
Now he paused, looking across as if to say It’s all complicated, it’s all imprecise, unknowable and unprovable – do I need to go on?
Not really, Dan thought. There was nothing he could add and nothing had been overlooked. Having lived with and churned over every last detail for so long, had LaSalle missed even the slightest nuance he would have pounced on it. But the best he could manage was to pick up the tone. ‘The Danes made enquiries in the dhow communities and coastguards, hospitals, charities,’ he said. ‘It could be months before there’s clear info. They might have to go back a long time, and the further they go the more unreliable the information’s going to be. The dhow could have been drifting for years.’
‘That it could.’ LaSalle nodded. ‘And then there’s the compelling data. So I regret, Dan, there is an inevitability to all this. The ship hit a dhow and the cargo exploded – and that should be the end of the matter.’ LaSalle took the last biscuit from the plate and snapped it, offering half across the table. He pondered for a while. ‘Tell me, do you know Captain Ahab?’
Dan thought for a moment. He knew the name, but couldn’t place it immediately with a ship or shipowner and certainly not with the Ocean Dove. ‘No …’ he said, cautiously.
‘Moby Dick. The obsessed Ahab. Obsessed with his great white whale.’
Dan frowned and sat back. ‘That’s not fair,’ he said, looking away, annoyed with himself, annoyed at confusing a literary captain with a literal one, and annoyed at exposing who he was. Everyone knew about the whale now. At the final Monday meeting before his suspension a wag had said, sotto voce, ‘Thar she blows,’ to general amusement all round. But, as he raised his eyes again, he could see that point scoring had not been on LaSalle’s mind.
‘The word “fair” is never far from your lips,’ LaSalle said. ‘You seem to set great store by fairness in our unfair world. And no, it’s not fair, but people will associate you with the analogy. And if you hang on to it like a dog with its bone, I’m not sure they’ll be without justification.’
‘I hear you.’
‘Good.’ LaSalle nodded, crunching the last morsel of biscuit. ‘And how’s your lady solicitor?’
‘Out of hospital and mending.’
‘That’s good to hear.
And Perkowski’s tidied it up?’
‘I wouldn’t quite say tidy. Seems we’ve got a skilled car thief who’s skilled at avoiding CCTV – but just a crap driver, apparently.’
‘So it would seem,’ LaSalle said. ‘Well, time has passed. Perhaps we can assume it’s concluded itself satisfactorily.’
Dan nodded, though not wholly in agreement, more in hope, and as he had noted himself, the past few weeks had seen him less cautious, less suspicious, less inclined to start at sudden noises or question strangers in the street about other strangers.
It wasn’t difficult to understand LaSalle’s push for conclusion, for no logical case to answer in the fate of the Danske Prince, no threat from the Ocean Dove, no one trying to terminally remove his obstacle of a presence. Now was an opportunity for a fresh start, for a rewarding career. Yes, it was understandable, and LaSalle certainly wasn’t a well-intentioned uncle advocating the long-term goal of a secure government pension. That was wide of the mark, he realised. It also felt like a disservice to even venture there.
The memories were fading, replaced with awareness of the here and now, the tantalising primacy of the future. He turned sharply as Julie appeared at his side, shaken from his thoughts.
‘How’s my daughter?’ she said, looking down into the pram before sitting beside him.
‘Happy,’ he said, gathering his wits. ‘See how I’ve got the sun on the lower part of the blanket but not on her face.’ He smiled. ‘I’m getting good at this.’
Julie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not bad. You’re a fast learner – at some things.’
‘But slow at others,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry,’ he added, holding her eye. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such an arse lately.’ He nodded to himself, staring down before looking back to her. ‘I saw LaSalle again, and he was clever about it …’
He felt her shift a little closer to him. She didn’t know LaSalle – referring to him as the Suffolk man, the father figure that Dan was so impressed with – but she’d let him know that while she understood she was reluctant to share his faith.
