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 foredeck. 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 GODCO 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 foredeck. 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 somewhere 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 authorising 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 authorising 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 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 le
ss than a cable’s length away as she steamed up abreast of us. A searchlight stabbed the night from high up on her superstructure, flooding the water round us until it picked up the white of our sails and fixed on us, blindingly, as the 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 into 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, Portoogese 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. All 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 possib
le.
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 to 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.
The Black Tide Page 31
