The Black Tide (32 page)

I told him there were a lot of people who knew me – port officials, shipping agents, some of those who worked at the Sind Club and at the reception desk of the Metropole Hotel. Also personal friends. He nodded, beating a tattoo on his knee with his stick as he waited for his car. ‘That will help perhaps.’

The car arrived, the coastguard flag flying on the bonnet, and as we drove out of the compound, he pointed to a long verandahed bungalow of a building just beyond an area of sand laid out with mud bricks baking in the sun – ‘Afterwards, you want the hospital, it is there.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ I said.

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘We get the doctor to have a look at you. I don’t like you to die with me when you have such an interesting story to tell.’

We passed one of those brilliantly colourful trucks, all tinsel and florid paintings, like an elaborately decorated chocolate box; conclusive proof to the wandering haziness of my mind that I really was in Pakistan. From fine-ground sand and a cloud of dust we moved on to tarmac. Glimpses of the sea, long black fishing boats anchored off, their raked masts dancing in the sun – this was the eastern side of the Gwadar Peninsula, the sea still a little wild, the shore white with surf. There was sand everywhere, the sun glaring down.

‘We have a desalination plant, good water from the sea, all by solar.’ The colonel’s voice was far away, the driver’s forage cap perched on his round black head becoming blurred and indistinct against the moving backcloth of open bazaar booths and mud-brick buildings. ‘We see Ahmad Ali Rizivi now.’ The car had stopped, the colonel was getting out. ‘This is what you call the town hall. It is the house of the Assistant District Commissioner.’

We were in a dusty little open space, a sort of square. A janitor in long robes sat in the doorway. I was vaguely conscious of people as I followed the colonel up the steps and into the dark interior. A clerk sat on a high stool at an old-fashioned desk, another ushered us in to an inner office where a man rose from behind a plain wooden desk that might have been a table. He waved us to chairs hastily placed. It was cooler and there were framed maps and texts on the wall – texts from the Koran I presumed. And the inevitable picture of Jinna – Quaid-i-Azam, the man who had led Pakistan out of the Empire, out of India, to independence and partition. The pictures came and went, the voices a dark murmur as a hot wave of weariness broke over me, my head nodding.

Coffee came, the inevitable coffee, the colonel’s hand shaking me, the Assistant District Commissioner gesturing to the cup, a bleak smile of hospitality. He wanted me to tell it again, the whole story. ‘From the beginning please.’ His dark eyes had no warmth. He didn’t care that I was exhausted.
He was thinking of me only as a problem washed up by the sea on to his territory, the survivor of a wreck with an improbable story that was going to cause him a lot of trouble. There was a clerk there to take notes.

‘He is Lord of the Day,’ the colonel said, nodding at Rizivi and smiling. ‘He is the Master here. If he says Off with his head, then off with his head it is.’ He said it jokingly, but the smile did not extend to his eyes. It was a warning. Who was the Lord of the Night, I wondered, as I drank the hot sweet coffee, trying to marshal my thoughts so there would be some sort of coherence in what I had to tell him.

I have only the vaguest memory of what I said, or of the questions he asked. Afterwards there was a long pause while he and the colonel talked it over. They didn’t seem to realize I understood Urdu, though it hardly made any difference since I was beyond caring whether they believed me or what they decided to do about me, my eyes closing, my mind drifting into sleep. But not before I had the impression that they were both agreed on one thing at least – to pass the problem to higher authority just as soon as they could. People came and went. The colonel was alone with me for a time. ‘Mr Rizivi arrange air passage for you on the next flight.’ The Assistant District Commissioner came back. He had spoken to Quetta on the R/T. ‘You go to Karachi this afternoon. Already we are consulting with Oman to see if your story is true.’

I should have made the point then that the
Aurora B
would probably have sailed by the time arrangements had been made for a reconnaissance flight over the
khawr
, but my mind was concentrated entirely on the fact that I was being flown to Karachi. Nothing else mattered. We were in the car again and a few minutes later the colonel and his driver were thrusting me along a verandah crowded with the sick and their relatives to an office where an overworked doctor in a white coat was examining a man whose chest was covered in skin sores. He pushed him away as we entered, peering at me through thick-lensed glasses. ‘You the survivor of the wrecked dhow?’

I nodded.

‘They talk of nothing else.’ He jerked his head at the crowded verandah. ‘Everybody I see today. They all have a theory, you see, as to how it happened. How did it happen? You tell me.’ He lifted my eyelids with a dark thumb, brown eyes peering at me closely. ‘They say there is no
naukhada
, only a solitary English. Is you, eh?’

I nodded, feeling his hands running over my body. ‘No fractures. Some bruising, nothing else.’ He pulled open my shirt, a stethoscope to his ears, his voice running on. Finally he stood back, told me there was nothing wrong with me except lack of sleep and nervous exhaustion. He gave me some pills and made me take one of them with a glass of water right there in the stuffy confines of his little consulting room. After that I don’t remember anything at all until I was in a Land Rover being driven out to the airfield, the wind and dust blowing, the land flat, a desert scene with passengers and officials standing in the glare of the sun, baggage lying around them on the ground.

The plane came in, a Fokker Friendship bright as a dragon-fly against the hard blue of the sky, the gravel airfield spouting long streamers of dust as its wheels touched down. The adjutant himself saw me on to the plane and remained beside it until the door of the fuselage was finally closed. We took off and from my window I had a good view of Gwadar as we climbed and banked, the hammer-headed peninsula with an area of water and green trees like an oasis on one corner of its barren top, and below it, in the sand, the glass-glinting square of the desalination plant, then the town, neat acres of brown, the white of the coastguards’ buildings, and the sea on either side with the fishing boats lying off or drawn up on the sand. And against it all I suddenly saw Choffel’s face, his mouth wide open, the black hair plastered to his white forehead and his arm raised as he sank from sight in the wash of a wave. Somewhere down there his body floated in the blue sea, pale skeleton bones beginning to show as the fish picked him clean.

I remember thinking about the eyes and that I should have done something to help him. His features were so appallingly vivid as I stared through the window at the line of the coast stretching away far below.

And then the wheels touched down and I opened my eyes to find we had landed in Karachi. One of the pilots came aft from the flight deck insisting that nobody moved until I had got off the plane. There was a car waiting for me and some men, including Peter Brown, the Lloyd’s agent. No Customs, no Immigration. We drove straight out through the loose-shirted untidy mob that hung around the airport entrance, out on to the crowded Hyderabad-Karachi road, the questions beginning immediately. Sadeq – I had referred to a man called Sadeq. Who was he? What did he look like? But they knew already. They had had his description from the oil company’s Marine Superintendent in Dubai. They nodded, both of them, checking papers taken from a coloured leather briefcase with a cheap metal clasp. Peter Brown was sitting in front with the driver, neatly dressed as always in a tropical suit, his greying hair and somewhat patrician features giving him an air of distinction. He was a reserved man with an almost judicial manner. It was the other two, sitting on either side of me in the back, who asked the questions. The smaller of them was a Sindhi, his features softer, his dark eyes sparkling with intelligence. The other was a more stolid type with a squarish face heavily pockmarked and horn-rimmed glasses slightly tinted. Police, or perhaps Army – I wasn’t sure. ‘He had another name.’

‘Who?’ I was thinking of Choffel.

‘This Sadeq. A terrorist, you said.’ The small man was riffling through the clipful of papers resting on his briefcase. ‘Here – look now, this telex. It is from Mr Perrin at the GODCO offices in Dubai.’ He waved it at me, holding it in thin dark fingers, his wrist as slender as a girl’s. ‘He said – that’s you, I’m quoting from his telex you see … He said Sadeq was an Iranian terrorist, that he had another name, but that he did not know it, which may be true as it is several years back during the Shah’s regime.’ He looked up. ‘Now you have met him again perhaps you recall his other name.’ He was peering at me sideways, waiting for an answer, and there was something in his eyes – it is difficult for eyes that are dark brown to appear cold, but his were very cold as they stared at me unblinkingly. ‘Think very carefully please.’ The voice so soft, the English so perfect, and in those eyes I read
the threat of nameless things that were rumoured of the security section of Martial Law prisons.

‘Qasim,’ I said, and he asked me to spell it, writing it down with a gaudy-coloured pen. Then both of them were asking questions, most of which I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know what offences Qasim had committed against the Shah’s regime before the Khomeini revolution or what he was doing on board the
Aurora B
under the name Sadeq, why he had hi-jacked the ship, what the plan was. I didn’t know anything about him, only his name and the fact that the dead Shah’s police had said he was a terrorist. But they didn’t accept that and the questioning went on and on. I was being grilled and once when I nodded off the little man slapped my face. I heard Brown protest, but it didn’t make any difference, the questions continuing and becoming more and more searching. And then, suddenly, when we were into the outskirts of Karachi on the double track of the Shahrah-e-Faisal, they stopped. ‘We will take you to the Metropole now so you can sleep. Meanwhile, we will try to discover some more about this man Choffel.’ He leaned over to Peter Brown. ‘Let us know please if you have any information about these ships from London.’

The Lloyd’s agent nodded. ‘Of course. And you will let me know the result of the Omani airforce reconnaissance.’

The little man pursed his lips, a smile that was almost feminine. ‘You’re finding this story difficult to swallow, are you?’ Brown didn’t answer and the man leaned forward. ‘Do you believe him?’ he asked.

Brown turned and looked at me. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. ‘If he isn’t telling the truth, then he’s lying. And I don’t at the moment see any reason for him to lie.’

‘A man has disappeared.’ The cold dark eyes gave me a sideways glance. He took a newspaper cutting from the clip of papers. ‘This is from the Karachi paper
Dawn
, a brief news item about a tanker being blown up on the English coast. It is dated ninth January. Karen Rodin. Was that your wife?’

I nodded.

‘It also says that a French engineer, Henri Choffel, accused of sabotaging the tanker and causing it to run
aground, is being hunted by Interpol.’ Again the sly sideways glance. ‘The man who is with you on this dhow – the man you say is shot when you were escaping from the
Aurora B
– his name also is Choffel … What is his first name, is it Henri?’

‘Yes.’ I was staring at him, fascinated, knowing what he was thinking and feeling myself suddenly on the edge of an abyss.

‘And that is the same man – the man Interpol are looking for?’

I nodded.

‘Alone on that dhow with you, and your wife blown up with the tanker he wrecked.’ He smiled and after that he didn’t say anything more, letting the silence produce its own impact. The abyss had become a void, my mind hovering on the edge of it, appalled at the inference he was drawing. The fact that I hadn’t done it was irrelevant. It was what I had planned to do, the reason I was on the
Aurora B
. And this little man in Karachi had seen it immediately. If it was such an obvious conclusion … I was thinking how it would be when I was returned to the UK, how I could avoid people leaping to the same conclusion.

The car slowed. We were in Club Road now, drawing into the kerb where broad steps led up to the wide portico of the Metropole. We got out and the heat and the dust and noise of Karachi hit me. Through the stream of traffic, beyond the line of beat-up old taxi cars parked against the iron palings opposite, I glimpsed the tall trees of the shaded gardens of the Sind Club. A bath and a deck chair in the cool of the terrace, a long, ice-cold drink … ‘Come please.’ The big man took hold of my arm, shattering the memories of my
Dragonera
days as he almost frog-marched me up the steps into the hotel. The little man spoke to the receptionist. The name Ahmad Khan was mentioned and a key produced. ‘You rest now, Mr Rodin.’ He handed the key to his companion and shook my hand. ‘We will talk again when I have more information. Also we have to decide what we do with you.’ He gave me a cold little smile and the Metropole seemed suddenly a great deal more luxurious. ‘Meanwhile
Majeed will look after you.’ He nodded in the direction of his companion who was talking now to an unshaven loosely-dressed little man who had been hovering in the background. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ he asked the Lloyd’s agent.

Peter Brown shook his head. ‘I’ll see Rodin settled in first.’

‘As you wish.’ He left then and I watched him go with a sense of relief, his slim silhouette changing to powder blue as the glare of the street spotlighted his pale neat suit. ‘What is he – Intelligence?’ I asked.

Brown shrugged. ‘Calls himself a Government Information Officer.’

‘And the other?’

‘Security, I presume.’

We took the lift to the second floor, tramping endless cement-floored corridors where bearers, sweepers and other hangers-on lounged in over-employed idleness. The Metro-pole occupies a whole block, a great square of buildings constructed round a central courtyard. The first floor is given over to offices, almost every room with a sign over it, the names of countless small businesses and agencies. I glanced at my watch. It was still going, the time 17.36. We stopped at a door and the policeman handed the key to the unshaven little man who had accompanied us. He in turn handed it to the bearer who was now in close attendance. The room was big and airy, with a ceiling fan turning slowly and the windows open and looking out on to the huge courtyard. Kites were coming in to roost on the trees and window ledges, big vulture-like birds, drab in the shadows cast by the setting sun. ‘You will be very comfortable here.’ The policeman waved his hands in a gesture that included the spartan beds and furniture, the big wardrobes and tatty square of carpet, a note of envy in his voice. The Metropole to him was probably the height of glamour.