The Black Tide (24 page)

‘You will be told soon.’

‘Do you know it?’ He didn’t answer that, his foot on the chair, bending to tie the laces of a new pair of canvas deck shoes. ‘What about the name of the ship?’ I asked.

‘They don’t have a name for it yet.’

‘But the original name?’

‘It has been painted out.’

‘Yes, but what was it?’

‘You ask too many questions.’ He came back into the day cabin, and at that moment the door of the office was swung open and a voice behind me said, ‘Captain. I told you, no one is to go on the bridge.’ It was a soft, sibilant voice, the English quite fluent. ‘Is this the man?’

I swung round to see a slight, dark figure standing in the doorway. He was bearded, with thick, curly black hair, dressed in very pale khaki trousers and tunic, a chequered scarf at his throat and a pistol holstered in his leather belt. But it was the face, the dark eyes, the birthmark just visible beneath the beard … I jumped to my feet. ‘Qasim!’ The
name was out before I could stop myself, before I had time to think what his presence meant.

I saw the sudden wariness in his eyes, the hesitation as he considered his reply. ‘We have met before?’ He sounded uncertain, his hand going, almost automatically it seemed, to the pistol in its holster.

‘The Shatt al Arab,’ I said, recovering myself. ‘Remember? You were brought on board by the Shah’s police and we took you to Kuwait.’

He thought back, frowning. ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ He nodded, his hand coming slowly away from the gun. ‘I remember now.’ He was smiling then, some of the tension going out of him. ‘You were very good to me, all of you, on board that ship. And I had had a bad time of it, you know.’

‘You made a good recovery I see.’

‘Yes, I am fully recovered, thank you. But my name is Sadeq now. Abol Sadeq.’ He came forward into the day cabin holding out his hand. ‘I am sorry. I remember your face, of course. You were the second mate, I think. But I forget your name. Excuse me.’ I told him my name and he nodded and shook my hand. ‘Of course.’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘You have lost your wife. Mr Baldwick told me. I am sorry.’ The dark eyes stared at me a moment. ‘Are you the man who is in the wheelhouse just now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not, if I’m second mate?’

He laughed then. ‘Of course. Why not. But why don’t you stay with the others? You don’t like to drink? Or is it that you’re curious?’ He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. ‘You don’t answer.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve never been on a ship where the bridge was barred to the mates.’

‘Well, now you are on such a ship. Until we sail.’ He turned to Hals. ‘Didn’t you warn them?’

Hals shook his head. ‘I left that to Baldwick.’

‘But you are the captain and I told you …’ He stopped there and gave a little shrug. ‘It does not matter now. I have just been in the mess and I told them myself.’ He turned back
to me. ‘There is a guard on the deck. He is an Arab, one of the Shihuh who inhabit this part. You could have been shot.’ He nodded curtly, a gesture that seemed to dismiss the subject for he was suddenly smiling, his expression transformed into one of friendliness. ‘I did not expect somebody on board to whom …’ He hesitated. ‘I think perhaps I owe you my life.’

‘You don’t owe me anything,’ I said.

He shook his head, still with that friendly smile. ‘If not my life, then my good health. I remember you sat by my bed. You gave me courage to stand the pain and now I must consider how to repay you.’ He was frowning again as though faced with a sudden intractable problem, and he turned abruptly, walking quickly out through the office.

I waited till he was gone, then shut the door and faced Hals. ‘You know who he is?’ I asked.

‘Ja. He is the boss. He directs this expedition.’

‘But you don’t know his background?’

‘No. Only that he gives the orders. He has the money and the others do what he tells them.’

‘Are they Iranians, too?’

‘Ja, I think so.’

‘Terrorists?’

‘Per’aps.’

‘Do you know what his politics are?’

‘No. But when you meet him before, you talk with him then. You must know what he is.’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. And I told him the circumstances in which we had met. ‘All I know is what the Shah’s police said, that he was a terrorist. That means he was either a Communist or a supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini.’

‘Don’t he tell you which, when you are sitting beside his bed in the sick bay on board your ship?’

‘I didn’t ask him. The man was in desperate pain. I wasn’t even sure he’d live till we reached Kuwait and got him to a doctor. You don’t cross-examine a man when he is close to death and slipping in and out of a coma.’

‘Okay, so you don’t know any more about him than I do.’ He gave a shrug, turning towards the door. ‘We go and feed now.’

‘There’s something else,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘This ship. You really mean you don’t know its name?’

‘Is that important?’

‘It’s the
Aurora B
,’ I said.

By the time Hals and I entered the officers’ mess-room the big table at the after end had been laid and there was a steward in attendance dressed in white trousers and tunic. The chief engineer was back, sitting beside Rod Selkirk with a beer in front of him, but not talking now. Sadeq wasn’t there, nor was Baldwick. The steward began sounding a gong as the captain went straight to his place at the head of the table. The others followed, and when we were all seated, the steward brought in plates piled with vegetables in a dark sauce. It was a Pakistani dish, the vegetables cold, the sauce curry-powder hot. ‘Jesus! We got ter put oop wi’ this rubbish!’ Fraser’s voice expressed the instinctive disgust of those unaccustomed to Eastern food.

I ate almost automatically, not talking, my mind still stunned by the knowledge that this was the
Aurora B
. Saltley wouldn’t believe it. Not that I had any means of contacting him, but if I had, I knew I’d find it difficult to convince him – not only that the tanker was still afloat, but that within a few days of our meeting I was actually dining on board the
Aurora B
. It didn’t seem possible. And opposite me, only one place further down the table, was the little Welshman who had sunk the
Petros Jupiter
and was now being employed … I glanced across at him, wondering – employed to do what?

A terrorist in charge of the voyage and an engineer who was an expert in sabotage! And what was I to do about it? Knowing what I did … I was still looking at the chief engineer as he turned his head. Our eyes met for an instant and it was as though some spark of telepathy passed between us. But then he had turned away, to the man on his left. It was Lebois and he was speaking to him in French.

He was like a chameleon, French one moment, Welsh the next, and his name was Price. Even Baldwick called him
that, though he knew damn well his name had been Choffel for years now. ‘Price!’ he called as he came in with some letters in his hand. Presumably they had come up with us from Dubai in the dhow. ‘A letter for you,’ he said and handed it to him.

The curried vegetables were followed by a steak and some ugly-looking potatoes. The steak was deep frozen and tough, and for those who refused to face up to the potatoes there was sliced white bread that was already staling in the heat. The only thing that seemed to have maintained its freshness was the array of bottled sauces in the centre of the table. I hoped the dhow had loaded some provisions in Dubai, something more interesting than those shipped at Ras al Khaimah, otherwise I could see tempers getting very frayed. Varsac pushed his plate away, Lebois too. Clearly the French were not going to take to Pakistani cooking.

Somebody – Hals, I think – wondered jokingly how long scurvy took to develop. We were discussing this, and the length of time hunger-strikers had taken to die of starvation, when I was suddenly conscious of the Welshman staring at me, his steak untouched, the letter open in front of him and a small white square of pasteboard in his hand. It was a photograph. He glanced down at it quickly, then looked across at me again, his eyes wide, the shock of recognition dawning. I knew then that the letter must be from his daughter and the photograph in his hand one of those she had taken in Nantes as I was leaving for the airport. His mouth opened as though to say something, and in that moment he seemed to disintegrate, a nerve twitching at his face, his hand trembling so violently the photograph fell into his plate.

With a visible effort, he pulled himself together, but his face looked very white as he grabbed up the photo, still staring at me with an expression almost of horror, his hands fluttering as he tried to fold the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he got suddenly to his feet, muttering ‘Excuse me’ as he hurried out of the room.

‘Malade?’ Lebois asked. Varsac muttered something in reply, reaching across and scooping up the meat from the abandoned plate. A hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up to
find Baldwick standing over me. ‘Come outside a moment.’ I followed him to the door. ‘What did you say to him?’ he demanded, his little eyes popping with anger.

‘Nothing. It was the letter.’

‘Well, leave him alone. Understand? He’s chief engineer and they need him.’ He leaned down, his heavy-jowled face close to mine. ‘You can’t blame him for wot your wife done to herself. That wot you had in mind?’ And when I didn’t say anything, he went on, speaking slowly as though to a child, ‘Well, if it is, cut it out, d’you understand – or you’ll get hurt.’ And he added, still leaning over me, his face so close I could smell the whisky on his breath, ‘This isn’t any sort of a kindergarten outfit. You just remember that. Price is nothing to do with you.’

‘His name’s Choffel,’ I said.

‘Not on board here it isn’t. He’s David Price. That’s wot you call him. Got it? And another thing—’ He straightened up, jabbing his forefinger at my chest. ‘Don’t go letting on to the others wot he done to the
Petros Jupiter
. They got enough to think about without they start chewing that over in the long night watches.’

‘And what’s he going to do to this ship?’ I asked him.

He tried to turn it into a joke then. ‘Think you’re going to have to swim for it?’ He laughed and patted my shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right.’

‘How do you know? You’re going back in the dhow, aren’t you?’ And I added, ‘What happened to the first crew?’

The question took him by surprise. ‘The first crew?’

‘The
Aurora B
was last heard of in the Arabian Sea, just a few hours after she cleared the Hormuz Straits.’

I thought he was going to hit me then. ‘How do you know what ship this is?’

‘Sadeq,’ I said.

‘Yes, he told me you had met before. Asked my why the hell I’d recruited you. But what’s that got to do with the
Aurora B
?’

‘He was on the
Aurora B.
’ And I told him about the crew pictures Perrin had showed me. ‘So what happened to the crew?’

‘I should’ve dumped you,’ he muttered. ‘Soon as I knew
you’d been talking to Perrin and Gault, I should have got rid of you.’

‘Hals thinks there’s probably one dead and two or three injured. What about the others?’

‘None of my business,’ he growled. ‘And none of yours, see. You ask questions like that—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Go on, get back to your meal and forget about it.’ And he pushed me away from him, turning quickly and going through the fire doors into the alleyway beyond. I was alone then, very conscious of the fact that Baldwick himself was beginning to get scared. He didn’t want to know about the crew of the
Aurora B
. He didn’t dare think about it, because if somebody had been killed, it wasn’t just piracy he was mixed up in; it was murder, too.

I went back to my place at the table, but by then the others had almost finished their meal and I wasn’t hungry. The questions they asked me made it clear they were under tension, all except Hals, who seemed relaxed and not in the least concerned about the nature of the voyage or where we were bound. I remember afterwards, when I was sitting with a whisky in my hand and a growing feeling of exhaustion, Rod Selkirk asked him how long the ship had been in the
khawr
and what sort of crew she had, and he said he didn’t know, that, like ourselves, this was the first time he had been on board. And he added, glancing quickly at me, ‘The crew is mainly Pakistani, but there are others also on board.’ And he took the opportunity to warn us not to leave the area of our quarters. ‘Which means, of course, we are confined to this deck and the one above – decks B and C. That is, until we sail.’ And he added, ‘There are guards to see that this order is obeyed, and they are armed. So you stay in your quarters please, all of you.’

They wanted to know the reason, of course, but all he said was, ‘I don’t know the reason no more than you. I don’t know anything about this voyage, except that we are all being well paid for it. I will try and do something about the food, but it is not important. We are signed on for a single voyage, that is all.’

‘Weel, here’s to the end o’ it then.’ Fraser raised his glass,
then saw mine was empty, sloshed some more whisky into it and went round the others, moving carefully as he topped up their glasses, whistling softly through his teeth. ‘If we had a piano noo—’ The tune he was whistling was Loch Lomond, and when he’d finished the round, he stood swaying in front of us and began to sing: