The Black Tide

by Hammond Innes

  I sat there, staring out as the low dunescape dropped away to the gleaming mud flats of the subqat that stretched out to a distant glint of the sea. The wind was stronger here, blowing out of the north-west, and I could have cried for the memory of that little Baluch boy, so thin, so scared, so dead these many years. We skirted Sharjah, the subqat giving way to low coastal dunes, sand blowing again in long streamers from the wheels of the leading Land Rover. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the sea, a dark blue-green shot through with the white of breaking wavetops, and the cloudless sky pearl-coloured with the glare of the sun. A glimpse of the fort that had been a radio communications centre in the early days and we were driving fast along the coast towards Ras al Khaimah, the interior of the Land Rover hot and full of sand, the dunes shimmering.

  We stopped only once, just beyond Umm al Qaiwain, for sandwiches and coffee served on the tailboard of the leading Land Rover. We didn’t stay long, for though we were under the lee of a small dune sparsely covered with brittle dried-up furze, the wind blowing straight off the sea filled the air with a gritty dusting of fine sand. Less than an hour later we pulled into Ras al Khaimah, where the Jebel cliffs begin to form a red background. Here we were given quarters in a little fly-screened motel with cracked walls and temperamental plumbing. The skeletal ribs of a half-constructed dhow thrust pale wooden frame-ends against the blue sky.

  What the hell were we doing at Ras al Khaimah? Mustafa and the Land Rovers had left as soon as our luggage had been off-loaded. And since Baldwick wouldn’t talk about it, speculation was rife, particularly among the deck officers. Accustomed to think in terms of navigation, our guess was that the ship was across the other side of the Gulf in Iranian waters, or perhaps loading at one of the island tanker terminals, Abu Masa or Tumbs. The engineers didn’t care so much. Fraser had got hold of a bottle of Scotch and the man from Marseilles, Jean Lebois, had brought some cognac with him. Baldwick and Varsac joined them and the four settled down to drink and play poker. I went for a walk.

  The motel was set in what looked like a piece of waste ground left over from the construction boom, bits of plastic, broken bottles, rusting iron scattered everywhere, half buried in the sand, and all that was left of the attempt to improve the surroundings were the remains of bushes dead of heat and neglect. But where the sand was untouched, stretching in a long yellow vista into the sun, there was solitude and a strange beauty. The wind had dropped, the sea making little flopping sounds and long white lines as the wavelets fell upon the dark glint of wet sand. And inland, beyond the radio tower, red-brown slopes rose endlessly to the distant heights of the Jebel al Harim. I sat in the sand, watching the sun go down and reading Pamela Stewart’s letter again.

  The round, rather careful writing, the conventional phrasing – I could picture her face, the simple straightforward plainness of the features, the directness of the gaze from those quiet eyes, the mobility of the over-large mouth. It was the only sexy thing about her, that large mouth. So why did I remember her so clearly? I don’t know where, or in what circumstances, you will read this, or even if it will reach you, but I wish I were able to do what you are doing. We should be able to find out the truth for ourselves, not ask somebody else to do it for us. There is that, which is a natural feeling I think, but there is also something else, something I’m not sure I understand, which is perhaps why I left you so abruptly with such a silly excuse.

  The sun was low now, the sky paling overhead, and the sails of a dhow stood black in silhouette against the pink of cloud shapes hanging over the Iranian shore. The energy packed into that strongly-shaped body, the sense of vitality, quiet and controlled – that, too, I remembered. I’ve never faced this problem before … That was how the letter ended – I’ve never faced this problem before, so bear with me. I will be thinking of you, and praying that all goes well. Nothing else, except her signature – Pamela.

  I sat there for a long time with the letter in my hand, thinking about it as the sun’s rim touched the sea and the whole desert shore blazed with fire, wondering if she had any idea what her words meant to me – that somebody, somewhere in the world, was thinking of me and believed, however temporarily, that she cared.

  And then the sun was down, the cliffs behind me darkening and the dhow was feeling its way into the creek. I walked quickly back along the sands, hearing the tonk-tonk of its diesel in the fast-gathering dusk, and when I was back, at the point where the creek widened out into a large flat sheet of water, I found it lying at anchor right off the motel. I knew then that it was bin Suleiman’s dhow, but nobody came ashore from it, so that I wasn’t sure Pieter Hals was on board until we embarked the following morning.

  The shamal was blowing again then and even in the shelter of the creek it took time to embark the six of us, the dhow’s only tender being a small wooden boat. Baldwick came with us and there was a quantity of locally-grown produce to load. It took altogether six trips, so that it was almost eleven before the anchor was up and we were motoring seaward. The sky was a clear, bright blue and the sun shone warm on the red cliffs, the waters of the Gulf foaming white at their base. It was a wonderful day for a sail, but where would we end up? Rod Selkirk and I were standing together on the leeward side of the high poop, both of us watching the bearded figure of bin Suleiman motionless beside the helmsman, a loose end of his turban flying in the wind. The low sand spit slid away to port and the dhow thrust its curved beak into deeper water. Would he hold his course and head for Iran, or turn along the coast?

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Selkirk said. ‘Why all the secrecy?’ He had spoken to Hals when he came forward, but had got nothing out of him.

  We were plugging almost dead to windward, no sails set, the dhow beginning to slam as the bows thrust into the steepening waves. ‘Sure looks like Iran,’ he said, and at that moment bin Suleiman nodded to the helmsman. The long wooden arm of the tiller was thrust over and the dhow came slowly round on to a north-easterly heading. Shouts and the deck erupting into violent activity as the big lateen sail was hoisted up the mainmast. Soon both sails were set, the engine stopped, and we were creaming along, rolling heavily with the spray flying silver in the sun and a long vista of ochre-red cliffs opening up to starboard, the Straits of Hormuz not 50 miles away.

  Pieter Hals came up from below. I think he had been checking the stores loaded at Dubai. He stood for a moment in the waist of the dhow staring out at the coast, towards the little port of Mina Saqr nestled right against the mountains. I had been there once, in the dhow that had taken me to Baluchistan. I moved across the deck to join Hals. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked him.

  ‘One of the khawrs.’ His voice sounded vague, his mind on something else.

  The khawrs were rocky inlets. There were a lot of them cutting deep into the Musandam Peninsula on the south side of the Straits, none on the Iranian side. ‘So our ship is not in Iran?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why is it anchored in one of the khawrs?’

  He didn’t answer, still staring at the coast. And when I repeated the question, he turned his head slowly, staring down at me vacantly, his mind still far away. His eyes were a light blue, crease-lines in the skin at the corners, and there were freckles under the sun-bleached beard. ‘You’re Rodin, are you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Your wife,’ he said. ‘I read about that.’ He held out his hand. ‘Ja. She is an example to us all.’ He stared at me. ‘Tell me, did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’ But something in his eyes gave me the answer.

  He waited.

  ‘I was at a meeting,’ I said. ‘She did it on the spur of the moment. When she heard the result.’

  ‘When she heard they weren’t going to do anything to prevent the next oil spill.’

  I nodded, wishing I hadn’t spoken to him now, wanting to get away. ‘She didn’t realize the whole ship would be blown up,’ I muttered quickly. ‘She was not a very practical person.’

  ‘No?’ He smiled. ‘Eminentl
y practical, I should say. Ja. But not political. A pity that. Her death achieved nothing. She should have threatened, made terms, forced them to do something. A law of the sea to control pollution. Powers of arrest, and the death penalty, if necessary – with naval vessels and aircraft constantly on patrol in restricted waters with power to take immediate action, against any ship, of any nationality. Only that way will we stop the destruction of our marine environment. You agree?’

  I nodded. It was what we had so often talked about.

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’ He was frowning. ‘You’re not one of my boys. You’re Len Baldwick’s lot.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  The blue eyes seemed to look right through me. ‘You don’t know, do you? So, why are you here?’

  ‘Is Choffel one of your boys?’ I asked him.

  ‘Choffel?’

  ‘The man who calls himself Price. David Price.’

  ‘The chief engineer.’

  ‘Somebody sent a dhow to pick him up from a French ship in the Straits.’

  ‘Baldwick sent it.’ He stood there, frowning. ‘Choffel? Ah!’ His hand slammed down on the wooden capping of the bulwarks. ‘So that’s it. That’s who he is.’ He seized hold of my arm, staring at me. ‘Choffel! The Petros Jupiter. He was the engineer, ja?’ He nodded, his lips under the pale beard spreading to the ghost of a smile. ‘Goed! Zeer goed!’ And suddenly he was laughing. ‘Different nationalities, different motives – it will bekom an interesting voyage, I think.’ He was still laughing, a wild look in those pale blue eyes. I thought of him then as he had appeared in the press, holding the whole world at bay, a bomb in his hand and a loaded tanker under his feet. He was moving away from me, crossing the deck and climbing slowly up the steps to the poop that looked high enough and old enough to have Bligh himself pacing its deck. He seemed lost in his thoughts again, and I stood rooted to the spot, wondering just how mad or unpredictable he would prove to be. The captain of a tanker, whose whereabouts I still didn’t know, officered by men of different nationalities, different motivations. An interesting voyage, he had said, laughing, and the cold pale eyes looking wild.

  It was a long day, sailing on a close reach, the shamal virtually a westerly, deflected by the red volcanic mountains. A great dish of rice and goat meat was cooked in the waist over a charcoal fire and we ate it squatting on the poop with the wooden pulpit-like thunderbox on the windward side, the mountains falling away and deep indents appearing in the coastline, so that the heat-hazed outline of its jagged cliffs had the fluted look of a red-hot organ. I had never been this close to the upthrust finger of the peninsula that was the southern side of the Straits of Hormuz. It looked hellish country, which doubtless explained the nature of the people who inhabited it. The Shihuh had a bad reputation.

  And then, just as the sun was slanting so low that the whole dragons’-toothed line of jagged cliffs turned a bright blood-red, we turned and headed in towards them. The great sail was dipped for’ard of the mast and brought round on to the port side, the wind on the starboard quarter and the dhow piling through a sea so red it was like molten lava. It was a fantastic sight, the sun going down and the world catching fire, red rocks toppling in pinnacles above us and all of us staring unbelievingly as we ran suddenly into black shadow, the narrow gut opening out into a great basin ringed with sheer rock cliffs, and the whole wild, impossible place as red as the gates of hell, sculpted into incredible, fluted shapes.

  At the far end, clamped against the red cliffs, red itself like a hugh rock slab, a shape emerged that took on the appearance of a ship, a long flat tank of a ship with the superstructure at the far end of it painted the same colour as the cliffs, so that the one blended into the other, an optical illusion that gradually became a reality as we furled our sails and motored towards it in the fading light, the sound of our diesel echoing back from the darkening cliffs. It was hot as hell and a red flag with a hammer and sickle fluttered above the dim reddish outline of the tanker’s funnel.

  2

  We had known, of course, the instant we turned into the khawr that this was where the ship lay; what came as a surprise was to find her jammed hard against the side of the inlet instead of anchored out in the open. The light was going fast, the shape of her merging into the towering background of rock, no colour now, the red darkening to black, and the gloom of the heat-stored cliffs hanging over us. She was a VLCC, about 100,000 tons by the look of her, the side-windows and portholes of her superstructure painted out so that she looked blind and derelict, like a ship that had been stranded there a long time. I think all of us felt a sense of eeriness as we bumped alongside, the hot reek of metal, the stink of oil and effluent that scummed the water round her, the silence disintegrating into a jabber of voices as we gave vocal expression to our feelings at this strange embarkation.

  But it wasn’t just the circumstances of the vessel. There was something else. At least there was as far as I was concerned. I was conscious of it as soon as I had climbed aboard, so that I stood there, shocked into immobility till the heat of the deck coming up through the soles of my shoes forced me to move.

  I have always been sensitive to atmosphere. I remember, when I was about ten, I went with a camel train to Buraimi and burst into tears at the sight of an abandoned village with the well full of stones. I had no idea at the time why it upset me so, but long afterwards I discovered that Wahabi raiders had thrown all the males of that village down the well before blocking it up. And it didn’t have to be the destruction of a village, or of whole armies, as in the Khyber where that dreadful little triangle of flat land in the depths of the pass shrieks aloud of the thousands trapped and slaughtered. Standing on the deck of that tanker, with the cliffs leaning over me and the stars brightening, I could accept the fact of her extraordinary position, tucked in against the rock face, the mooring lines looped over natural pinnacles. The flag, too. Given that this was some sort of fraud, then the painting of the hull to match the ochre-red of the rock, the blanking out of all the windows, these became sensible, practical precautions, and the flag no more than a justification for the ship’s concealment should the crew of an overflying aircraft be sharp enough to spot her. Everything, in fact, however strange, had a perfectly rational explanation – except the atmosphere.

  An Arab was coming towards us along the flat steel promenade of the deck. He had a gaunt, pock-marked face and a nose like the beak of a ship. There was a suggestion of effeminacy in his voice as he greeted bin Suleiman, but beneath the old sports jacket I glimpsed the brass-bound leather of crossed braces and belt, the gleam of cartridge cases against the white of his flowing robes. This was a Bedu and equipped for fighting. ‘Gom,’ he said, in soft, guttural English, and he took us back along the deck to the steel ladder that reared up on the port side of the superstructure. I could hear the faint hum of a generator deep in the bowels of the ship as we climbed to the level of B deck, where he opened the door for us, standing back and motioning us to enter.

  One moment I was standing on the grating, darkness closing in from the east, and to the west, behind the first outcrops of the Jebel al Harim, the last of the sunset glow still lingering in the sky, the next I had stepped inside, into the blacked-out accommodation area, everything darkened and the lights glowing dimly. Rod Selkirk’s quarters were, as usual in this type of tanker, on the starboard side, mine the next cabin inboard, so that both mates were immediately below the captain’s quarters on C deck. I had a wash and was stowing my gear when Rod poked his head round the door. ‘Officers’ saloon is just down the alley from me, and they got beer in the cold box – coming?’

  ‘Pour one for me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right with you.’

  ‘Sure. Be seeing you then.’

  He closed the door and I stood there for a moment, looking vaguely round for the best place to stow my empty bags, conscious that his sudden need of company reflected my own mood, the sense of being alone and on the brink of a voyage whose end I didn’t wan
t to think about. The cabin was hot and airless, the two windows looking for’ard obscured by an ochre-coloured wash, the lights dim. I scratched at the window glass with my thumb nail, but the wash was on the outside. It annoyed me that I couldn’t see out, the place seeming claustrophobic like a prison cell. I changed into my clean white shirt, combed my hair back, my face pale and ghostly in the damp-spotted mirror, then turned to the door, thinking of that beer.

  It was then, when I was already out of the cabin and had switched off the light, that the windows were momentarily illuminated from the outside, a baleful glow that revealed a tiny diamond-gleam of white where a brush stroke had lifted clear of the glass. It was in the bottom right-hand corner of the further window, but it was gone before I could reach it, and when I crouched down, searching with my eye close to the glass, I had difficulty in locating it. Then suddenly there was light again and I was looking down on to the deck of the tanker, every detail of it picked out in the beam of a powerful torch directed for’ard at two figures standing in the bows. I saw them for an instant, then they were gone, the torch switched off, and it took a moment for my eye to adjust to the shadowy outline of the deck barely visible in the starlight. A man, carrying something that looked like a short-barrelled gun, came into my line of vision, walking quickly with a limp towards the fo’c’sle, and when he reached it the torch shone out again, directed downwards now, three figures, dark in silhouette, leaning forward, their heads bent as they peered into what was presumably a storage space or else the chain locker.

  They were there for a moment, then there was again no light but the stars and I couldn’t see them any more, only the dim shape of the fo’c’sle with the two anchor windlasses and the mooring line winch. Several minutes passed, my eye glued to the little peephole of clear glass, but the figures did not reappear, the steel of the deck an empty platform with the black silhouette of the cliffs hanging over it. Once I thought I saw the glow of a light from a hatchway, but my vision was becoming blurred and I couldn’t be sure.