The Black Tide

by Hammond Innes

  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 30 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 Sandettié,’ 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 him, and 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 SANDETTIE 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 Sandettié 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 s
ea. 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 Sandettié. 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 wasn’t her voice.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I startled you.’ 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 every thing – every thing 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 lather 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 w
hen 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.

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  Epub ISBN 9781448156917

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  Published by Vintage 2013

  Copyright © The Estate of Hammond Innes 1982

  First published in Great Britain by

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