by Peter Tonkin
Whose toes were they really treading on here in court thirteen of the Royal Courts of Justice, London?
The clerk of the court called her back to the present by asking the court to stand up, and the judge swept in, just as he had done last Monday. When he bowed to the assembled court, his grey face was reflected coldly in the silver paddle lying across his bench to signal that this was a case of maritime jurisdiction.
They sat, and there was silence. Then, with a discreet cough, Clive Standing rose to open the case for the plaintiff and Maggie tried to forget her worries as she began the next, and most crucial, stage of her job. It most resembled a duel, because of the elaborate ritual which surrounded each thrust and counter-thrust. Normally, she gained enormous satisfaction from the interplay of truth and partiality which was the backbone of adversarial law, but her earlier fears could not be so easily dismissed. If this was a duel, it was like the duel at the end of Hamlet: at least one of the swords was poisoned.
‘My lord, the case before us is at once simple and complex,’ Standing began. ‘It is simple because, in the final analysis, it turns upon the actions of several terrified people, lost in the grip of panic, who felt that they were confronted by circumstances wherein it was better to destroy their ship, with all the criminal responsibility which that terrible act implies, than to try and take her and her cargo to her agreed port of destination. The defendant will explain that the nature and state of that cargo left them no other reasonable course. His case will suggest that in actual fact an act of almost divine providence made the ship go down because the hull burst open spontaneously before they had, in fact, carried out their criminal design.
‘We will prove to Your Lordship’s full satisfaction that the cargo was properly packed and carefully loaded — though under difficult circumstances, it is agreed. We will show that this cargo was carefully protected throughout the voyage and regularly checked by experts placed aboard for the purpose and found to be safe. We will finally prove that, in spite of these facts, at the prompting of Richard Mariner, aboard as a representative of Heritage Mariner, a company of which he is a director, and by whom, in fact, the then captain was employed, the ship was wilfully scuttled off the east coast of America. The defendant does not dispute that he was involved with the placing of explosive charges in the bow and at the stern of the vessel, nor that he placed these charges with the intention of sinking the ship. We will leave Your Lordship in no doubt whatsoever that it was the exploding of these charges that caused an otherwise perfectly seaworthy vessel to sink, incidentally with the loss of at least two lives, if such a thing can ever be incidental.
‘Now, I said at the beginning that this submission is at once simple and complex. The simplicity, as I have already intimated, lies in the act of sabotage itself. The complexity lies in the background to the situation. The cargo, technically the possession of the Italian company Disposoco, was caught up out of the Libyan desert from under the guns of the local people and of the PLO. It was loaded aboard in the most extreme circumstances, and yet we have submission that it was properly and carefully loaded, even though the captain, Enrico Fittipaldi, was actually lying dead at the time, slain by these selfsame guns. He was later to be replaced by Captain John Higgins, an employee of Heritage Mariner, through their subsidiary company Crewfinders ...’
Throughout the morning, the case unravelled. Unusually, Standing did not put the plaintiff, Signor Verdi of CZP, on the stand first. Instead he began with the lugubrious Signor Nero of Disposoco. Taking the story in chronological order, the tall, pale, dark-eyed Italian explained how his company had purchased land in the Lebanese desert where they hoped to dispose of the waste which was their stock in trade, but how they had been forced to remove the waste, under threat of death from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation who had agreed to help the local Lebanese people. He described the care with which the waste had been moved and loaded on Napoli. He listed the names of scientific experts employed by Disposoco to oversee the process of removal, loading and transportation.
Maggie, her silky manner concealing her steely purpose, got Nero to agree that the situation in the desert had arisen because of fear about leakage from the waste, particularly the nuclear waste. In so doing, she made him describe the waste itself: drums of extremely caustic chemicals and blocks of dense concrete protecting hearts of high-yield nuclear by-products. Importantly, she made him repeat that his main motivation to move the waste from the desert had been a threat from the PLO that if no action was taken, then Disposoco’s directors would be assassinated, one by one. Further, she elicited the unthinking agreement that, when the ship was refused entry to the ports of Naples and Liverpool because of fears about her cargo, Disposoco had simply agreed with the suggestions of CZP as to the continued shipping and the final destination of the containers full of waste. But she could not shift him one inch on his statement that the cargo was properly loaded, fully monitored and at no time was there any real danger from it.
Next up for Standing was the plaintiff, Signor Verdi, who sang the praises of his company CZP and their small fleet. Napoli had not been young, he admitted, but she had been fully refitted at least once since her launch, had been treated to a new engine, and had been well maintained since she came into his company’s hands. He also sang the praises of the captain and the chief engineer, both regrettably now dead. They had been long-term company men and he was certain that neither of them would ever have been a part of anything questionable.
It was with CZP that the original Crewfinders contract had been drawn when John Higgins had replaced Enrico Fittipaldi as captain. Crewfinders had been contacted by the first officer under the advice of a passenger who knew of the firm. Who and why was not important. CZP had been happy to accept the representative of such an apparently respectable company. And when, to their surprise, the cargo had not been accepted by the authorities in Naples, CZP had been happy to continue the association rather than start looking for a new captain. Verdi said he had been deeply shocked by the refusal of the Liverpool dock workers to unload his ship, but the combined circumstances of an offer to accept the cargo from a company in Canada and the preparedness of Richard Mariner, director of Crewfinders and its parent company, to help his captain take the Napoli there had put his mind at rest. Then he began to receive reports that his ship had been lost under questionable circumstances and that some of his people had died in the incident. When he had arrived in America himself to speak to the survivors, he discovered that these reports were less shocking than the truth — that the Heritage Mariner people aboard had become so terrified of the harmless cargo that they had actually scuttled a perfectly seaworthy ship rather than carry on to safe haven in Canada.
Verdi was a smooth, self-confident little man with a bristling moustache and a habit of bouncing up and down on his toes which concealed his icy intelligence, as Maggie’s catlike charm concealed hers. They sparred warily, but he would not be moved on any important particular. The most she could do was to establish that all he knew about the actual loss of Napoli on that fateful morning nearly two years ago was hearsay, gathered from the few crewmen involved who still wanted to work for him.
As she sat down, Standing rose to say, ‘As the defendant has admitted he planted the explosives, and all I can do to further our cause is to await my cross-examination of him, that concludes matters for the plaintiff, my lord.’
The judge nodded. ‘We will hear from the defendant’s camp, and the defendant himself, I imagine, after luncheon.’
*
She didn’t actually eat any lunch because she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was much worse to come. Hunger made her wits sharper, she had found. And she would need sharp wits this afternoon. She returned to her office and went over the pleadings and the summaries again. It all turned on who the judge believed about the actual loss. The fact that Standing allowed his case to be apparently so weak just at that crucial point made her suck her teeth and hiss in a most unladylike man
ner. On her side, Richard and Captain Higgins, as well as one of his officers, Marco Farnese who had been on board at the time, would appear as witnesses. Harcourt Gibbons and Brian Chambers had also secured an agreed statement, to be read in her absence, from Ann Cable. The late lamented barrister and the wily little solicitor had understood how easy it would be for the Italians to be presented as innocently injured parties, and the defendant Richard Mariner as a strongly manipulative business tycoon relying on the partiality of an employee, Captain Higgins, to cover up for his panic and criminal misjudgment. And there was no avoiding the hard fact that, as Standing had pointed out yet again, Richard admitted to planting explosives with every intention of scuttling the ship in the first place.
Maggie suspected she was going to be like a blind man in a minefield this afternoon if she wasn’t very careful indeed.
*
If Richard had been too preoccupied to see much of the law courts on Monday, this afternoon he seemed to find every yellow brick, every grey slate of their ornate, Gothic frontage indelibly seared into his memory. He walked slowly up from the Strand, climbing the three shallow steps, their edges marked in white, and coming under the shade of the cathedral portal with its great pointed doorway before climbing the next four.
He had been in the area all day, starting out down in the City at Heritage House where he had been forced to camp last night by the hellish behaviour of the twins who were missing Robin every bit as much as he was himself. Because he was so close to the heart of things, he had been unable to sleep a wink, expecting each succeeding minute of the long, long night to bring some word of her; but there had been nothing. After Heritage House, he had gone to St Clement Dane’s Church in the Strand, scant yards away from the law courts. Here he had sat restlessly beside his father-in-law throughout the long funeral service for Sir Harcourt Gibbons. The barrister had served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, starting out as a Wellington pilot and rising onto Bomber Harris’s staff. It was apt that the statue of Harcourt’s old commander should watch him being carried in and out. And ironic that a man who had dropped so much destruction from the sky should have died in such a way himself.
Like Maggie, but for far different reasons, Richard had eaten no lunch. He had phoned the office and discovered that there was still no news. He seriously considered dropping everything there and then to go off to the Labrador Sea to find out what was happening for himself. But of course he knew that he could do nothing until this case was settled, one way or another. Finally, trying with diminishing success to contain a black enormity of rage at his own helplessness, he strode into the law courts exactly at the appointed hour.
Inside, too, he noticed more than he had done before. The awesome space of the central hall was lessened just a little by the security wall and the sensor door through which he had to pass. For some reason, this afternoon the metal bolts supporting his knee joints set off the alarm. They had given no trouble on Monday. A lesser man might have been flustered, but Richard remained calm. On the outside, at least. As he walked slowly across the great hall towards the mahogany and glass-fronted cases containing the trial list, however, he hoped that it had not been a bad omen. He and Robin needed so much luck at the moment, and luck suddenly seemed in very short supply. Perhaps you only ever got a limited amount of luck, he mused grimly. Robin and he had used up so much of theirs that they might well have no more to come. If there’s any left, he thought, let Robin have it. She needs it even more than I do, wherever she is.
He got his wish.
The trial was in the same court and yes, he was superstitious about the number thirteen suddenly. The defence began at two. He would be on the stand as soon as Maggie had completed her opening remarks for the defence. He had been in many a tight spot, not the least of which was being trapped on the bridge of the ship in question as she went down into the dark depths of the west Atlantic. This was worse.
As he had noticed everything about the building outside, so the courtroom itself seemed super-real. The wooden door, ornately carved, through which he entered at last, the slope of dark-padded seats, the wooden walls cased along one side with shelves full of fat law books. The thrust of horizontal brass poles with curtains gathered back like furled banners on either side of the judge’s bench. The length of that pale wood bench, with three doorways into the wall behind it. The overhang of wood like a half-deck above it. The smell of dust and age and leather and polish. It all swirled around him, much more real in its impact than the quiet preliminaries in which he joined with Maggie DaSilva and an unrecognised officer of the court. Much more overwhelming than his dangerous predicament, until his own counsel asked him, ‘Captain Mariner, why did you sink the Napoli?’
*
Step by step from his first strong statement that he never sank the ship, Maggie led him through his involvement with the doomed voyage — the background to Captain Fittipaldi’s death as it had been explained to him, his dealings with CZP and Disposoco, his decision to go aboard at Liverpool, his desire to support his associate and friend John Higgins who should have been on his honeymoon, not trapped with his new bride in a dangerous and deteriorating situation. And she brought him round full circle to the sinking once again. The chemical waste on the deck was leaking badly, especially after being swamped by a severe storm. It was damaging the hull and dissolving the protective coating round the nuclear waste in the hold. Ann Cable and Professor Faure, Disposoco’s chief scientist, had read dangerous and worsening levels of radiation. They believed the cargo was going critical. Professor Faure and he had planted the explosives in the forepeak. No, they had not detonated them. The chief engineer had placed explosives in the stern of the ship. No, he had not detonated them. Before any action along those lines could be taken, the hull, weakened by the corrosion of the chemical waste and by the ravages of the storm already mentioned, had failed. The ship had gone down at once. Those who had survived had been lucky to do so.
Maggie sat down. Standing rose. ‘I have only two questions for Captain Mariner,’ he said. ‘Professor Faure saw the danger to the cargo and consequently helped plant the explosives in the bow. Why is he not here to testify to the fact that the explosives he planted were never detonated?’
‘Professor Faure did not survive when the ship was lost.’
‘I see. And the chief engineer planted the charges at the stern. Why is he not here to testify that they were never detonated?’
‘The chief engineer did not survive when the ship was lost.’
‘What an unfortunate coincidence, Captain Mariner.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Captain Mariner, I put it to you that this tissue of lies rests precisely upon the fact that these men cannot testify.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And that the whole unbelievable farrago about a sound ship suddenly going down as though it were made of sugar instead of steel has been concocted to cover up the fact that you blew the ship wide open and in all probability blew up the professor and the chief engineer when you did so.’
‘No, sir!’
*
Richard sat, dazed, and watched John Higgins going over the same ground. He could hardly remember a word he had said, so great had been his concentration at the beginning and his outrage at the end. In his youth he had been a keen amateur actor and it was as though he was in the grip of post stage fright now. Then he had been able to recite complete plays — except for the lines spoken by characters he had portrayed. It was as though the fire of performance burned his dialogue out of his memory while he acted. Now he tried to recall his words in the witness box, looking for damaging admissions. But nothing would come.
Then, with a start, he realised he had missed most of John’s evidence. Concentrating again, he followed his friend’s description of the loss of his command.
At the end, Standing was on his feet again, rustling his papers vaguely, appearing almost absent-minded. ‘Can you tell me why you stayed aboard this hell ship, this
leper ship, Captain Higgins? The terms of your Crewfinders contract specify that you could have been air-lifted home at any time. The cargo was banned from Naples and Liverpool. You were not. You could have got off. Why stay?’
‘My wife’s sister was aboard. My wife and I did not want to leave her.’
‘Most commendable. What was your sister-in-law doing aboard?’
‘She was a passenger.’
‘So why could she not simply have got off along with you?’
‘She is a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.’
‘I see. And did the chief engineer plant the explosives at the stern alone?’
‘No, Salah and she helped —’
‘Salah? Who is Salah?’
‘Her ... friend ... My sister-in-law’s friend and associate.’
‘Also a member of the PLO?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope at least one of them survived? No other explosives expert except Captain Mariner seems to have done so.’
‘My sister-in-law did, yes.’
‘So this man Salah did not?’
‘No. He was killed in the engine room. My sister-in-law was the only one who escaped from the engine room.’
‘And returned to her surviving terrorist associates ...’
‘Yes.’
Maggie stood up. ‘My lord, neither the captain nor my learned friend can be certain —’
‘Quite, Ms DaSilva. I shall take that into account.’
‘But you have heard nothing from her or the PLO since?’ Standing continued.
‘Only that they hold Disposoco to blame, not us.’
‘Oh, that is most convenient ...’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Suffice it to say, then, that you and your boss and your sister-in-law were the only people who actually made it off the ship.’
‘That’s just the way it happened.’
‘Quite, Captain. But we must observe how conveniently it all fell out, especially in regard to your enhanced professional status and your employer’s good name. No, you need not say any more. I think we have heard enough, thank you.’
