The Black Tide (45 page)

‘The tankers have been sighted then?’

‘Oh yes, there’s a Nimrod shadowing them.’ The first floor area was constructed like a control tower. ‘The Operations Room,’ he said. ‘That’s the Lookout facing seaward and the inner sanctum, that curtained-off area in the rear, is the Radar Room. We’ve three surveillance screens, there, also computer input VDUs – not only can we see what’s going on, we can get almost instant course and speed, and in the case of collision situations, the expected time to impact. The last position we had for those two tankers was bearing 205° from Beachy Head, distance fourteen miles. The Navy has sent
Tigris
, one of the Amazon class frigates, to intercept and escort them up-Channel.’

‘They’re past Spithead and the Solent then?’

He checked on the stairs leading up to the deck above. ‘You were thinking of Southampton, were you?’

I nodded.

‘You really thought they were going to damage one of the Channel ports?’

I didn’t say anything. He was a Welshman, with a Celtic
quickness of mind, but I could see he hadn’t grasped the implications, was dubious about the whole thing.

‘They’re rogues, of course.’ He laughed. ‘That’s our term for ships that don’t obey the COLREGS. They didn’t report in to the French when they were off Ushant, nor to us, and now they’re on our side of the Channel, steaming east in the westbound lane. That makes them rogues several times over, but then they’re under the Iraqi flag, I gather.’ He said it as though it was some sort of flag-of-convenience. ‘Well, come on up and meet our boss, Gordon Basildon-Smith. He’s responsible for the Department of Trade’s Marine Division. We’ve got a sort of subsidiary Ops Room up here.’

It was a semicircular room, almost a gallery, for on one side glass panels gave a view down into the Lookout below. There were several chairs and a desk with a communications console manned by a young auxiliary coastguard woman. A group of men stood talking by a window that faced west with a view of the harbour and the solid mass of Dover Castle. One of them was the man who had addressed that meeting in Penzance the night Karen had destroyed the
Petros Jupiter
. ‘Good, you’re just in time,’ he said, as Captain Evans introduced me. He seemed to have no inkling that he was in any way connected with her death. ‘I want the whole story, everything that happened, everything you saw in those islands. But make it short. My Minister will be here any minute now.’

He wanted to be sure they really were the missing tankers, listening intently and not interrupting until I told him about the pictures Saltley had taken and how the old name was still just visible on the stern of the
Shah Mohammed
. ‘Yes, yes, it was in the report we had from Admiral Blaize. Unfortunately we don’t have the pictures yet. But Captain Evans here has flown off his Coastguard patrol plane with instructions to go in close—’ He turned to the Regional Controller. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, David? He has taken off?’

Evans nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Took off—’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Three minutes ago.’

There was a sudden flurry of movement as a voice announced the arrival of the Secretary of State for Trade. In an instant I was almost alone and when I looked down
through the glass panels I saw a tall, dark man with thinning hair and prominent ears being introduced to the watch officers and the auxiliaries. He said a few words to each, moving and smiling like an actor playing a part, then he was climbing the stairs to the upper deck and I heard him say in a clear, silvery voice, ‘The French have been alerted, of course?’ And Captain Evans replied, ‘We’re co-operating very closely with them, sir. In fact, it was PREMAR UN who originally alerted us – that was when they passed Ushant and failed to report in.’ He introduced us, but the Minister’s mind was on the problem he now faced. ‘What about other countries – the Belgians, the Dutch?’ Evans said he couldn’t answer that and a Navy officer present asked if he should check with Flag Officer, Plymouth. ‘I’m sure it’s been done, sir. As C-in-C Channel he’s bound to have given his opposite number in all NATO countries the information Admiral Blaize passed to us from Funchal.’

‘Check, would you,’ the Minister said.

A woman’s voice announced over the PA system that the tankers had now been picked up on the Dungeness scanner. Course 042°. Speed 18.3 knots. ‘And the Germans,’ the Minister said. ‘Make certain the Germans have been notified. They have at least two Kurdish groups in custody.’ He turned to Basildon-Smith. ‘What do you think, Gordon – leave it as it is or inform the PM?’

Basildon-Smith hesitated. ‘If we bring the PM into it, then we need to be clear as to what advice we’re going to offer.’ And, in the pause that followed, Evans’s Welsh voice said quietly, ‘What about the journalists, sir? They’ve been pressing me all morning for a statement.’

‘Yes, Gordon told me.’ The Minister’s voice was sharper and he passed a hand over his eyes. ‘How many?’

‘There must be twenty or more now.’

He turned to me, his dark eyes hostile. ‘You should have kept your mouth shut. What was the idea?’ He stared at me, and I suddenly remembered he had been a barrister before going into politics. ‘Trying to pressure us, is that it? Or trying to divert attention from your own problems. You’re accused of killing a Frenchman. That right?’ And when I
didn’t answer, he smiled and nodded, turning to Evans. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the Conference Room, sir.’

‘Ah, that nice, circular, very expensive room of yours with the pretty view of the Straits.’ He moved to the desk and sat down, his eyes fastening on me again as he took a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘We’ll assume for the moment that your statement is correct in so far as those tankers are concerned. To that extent your story is confirmed by this marine solicitor—’ He glanced down at his aide-memoire. ‘Saltley. Any news of him?’ There was silence and he nodded. ‘We must take it then that he’s still stuck in Lisbon. Pity! A trained, logical, and unemotional—’ He was looking at me again – ‘witness would have been very helpful to me. However …’ He shrugged. And then, working from his single-sheet brief, he began to cross examine me. Was I sure about the identity of the second tanker? What were conditions like when we had sighted it? ‘You must have been tired then. Are you sure it was the
Aurora BT
And then he was asking me about the night when the two of them had tried to run us down. ‘That’s what makes your story less than entirely convincing.’ And he added, ‘My difficulty, you see, is that there are three witnesses at sea and unobtainable, and this man Saltley still lost apparently somewhere between here and Lisbon.’

I pointed out, of course, that Saltley had been present when Admiral Blaize had come on board the
Prospero
in Funchal, but all he said was, ‘Yes, but again it’s secondhand. Still …’ He fired a few more questions at me, chiefly about the men who had visited us in the inflatable off Selvagem Pequena, then got up and stood for a moment at the window staring out to the harbour and an odd-looking craft with a slab-fronted superstructure and a pile of giant fenders balanced on the stern. ‘All right.’ He turned, smiling, his manner suddenly changed. ‘Let’s deal with the media. And you,’ he said to me, ‘you’ll come too and back up what I say.’

‘And the PM, sir?’ Basildon-Smith asked.

‘We’ll leave that till we’ve seen these buggers through the Straits.’

The Conference Room was big and circular with combined desks and seats custom-built on a curve to fit its shape. Venetian blinds covered the windows. The place was full of people and there were television cameras. In the sudden silence of our entry the lash of a rainstorm was a reminder of the room’s exposed position high up over the Dover Straits.

The Minister was smiling now, looking very assured as he addressed them briefly, giving a quick resume of the situation and concluding with the words, ‘I would ask you all to bear in mind that these vessels are registered in Iraq, flying the Iraqi flag. We do not
know
they are planning mischief. All we know, as fact, is that they failed to report in to the French at Ushant and that they are now steaming east in the westbound traffic lane to the great danger of other vessels.’

‘And avoiding arrest by keeping well away from the French coast,’ a voice said.

‘Yes, that is a perfectly valid point. As you know, we still do not have powers of arrest, not even in our own waters. Much as we should like these powers—’

‘Why don’t you bring in a Bill then?’ somebody asked him.

‘Because we’ve not had an experience like the French. There’s been no equivalent of the
Amoco Cadiz
disaster on the English coast.’ Inevitably he was asked whether the Prime Minister had been informed, but instead of answering the question, he turned to me and I heard him say, ‘Most of you will recall the name Trevor Rodin in connection with a missing tanker, the
Aurora B
, and some of you may have seen a Reuters report issued this morning containing statements made by him yesterday evening after he had flown in from Madeira. Because those statements will have to be borne in mind when we come to the point of deciding what action we take, if any, I thought it right that you should hear what he has to say from his own lips.’

He nodded towards me, smiling as those near me moved aside so that I stood isolated and exposed. ‘May I suggest, Mr Rodin, that you start by giving the gist of the information you gave the Second Sea Lord last night, then if there are any questions …’ He stepped back and I was left with the whole room staring at me.
Go on. Tell us what you said. Do what the
Minister says
. Urged by their voices I cleared my throat, cursing the man for his cleverness in switching their attention to me and getting himself off the hook. Then, as I began speaking, I suddenly found confidence, the words pouring out of me. I could feel their attention becoming riveted, their notebooks out, scribbling furiously, and the faint whirr of cameras turning.

I told them everything, from the moment we had reached the Selvagen Islands, and then, in answer to questions, I went back over what had happened in the Gulf, the extraordinary sight of the
Aurora B
moored against those ochre-red cliffs. It was such a wonderful opportunity to present my case and I had just started to tell them of my escape and what had happened on the dhow, when somebody said there was a report in from the pilot of the Coastguard patrol plane. I lost them then, everybody crowding round the DoT press officer. I had been talking for nearly twenty minutes and I think their attention had begun to wander long before the report came in that confirmed the shadow of the old name showing on the
Shah Mohammed
.

I walked out, past some officers and a spiral staircase leading down to the bowels of the old fort, to a glassed-in passageway. The rainstorm had moved off into the North Sea and a shaft of watery sunlight was beamed on the waves breaking against the harbour walls. I thought I could see the atomic power station at Dungeness and I wondered how much of what I had said would find its way into print, or would it all be submerged in the threat posed by Sadeq and his two tankers? Something was going to happen, out there beyond the wild break of the seas, but what? Down below the horizon, beyond the black louring clouds of that rainstorm, the ports of northern Europe lay exposed and vulnerable. I should have said that. I should have talked about pollution and Pieter Hals, not concentrated so much on my own troubles. If Karen had been there, she would have seen to it that I concerned myself more with the threat to life, the sheer filth and destruction of oil slicks.

I was still standing there, trying to figure out how long it would be before those tankers came into sight, when one of
the BBC’s TV news team asked if they could do an interview. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for some time, so it seems a good opportunity.’

It was a good opportunity for me, too. They filmed it outside with the Lookout and the Straits in the background and I was able to channel it so that for part of the time I was talking about the problems of pollution and what men like Hals stood for.

‘That’s the first we’ve heard of Hals being on board. You’ve claimed all along they’re terrorists. Why would Captain Hals join them?’

I couldn’t answer that. ‘Perhaps he was desperate and needed a job,’ I said. ‘Or he could have been thinking that a really catastrophic disaster in one of the major European ports would force governments to legislate against irresponsible tanker owners.’

‘Europort, for instance. Is that what you’re saying – that they’ll go for Europort?’

‘Perhaps.’ I was remembering Hals’s actual words when he had said nothing would be done – nothing until the nations that demand oil are themselves threatened with pollution on a massive scale. There was almost a quarter of a million tons of oil in those tankers. The Maas, the Noord Zee Canal, the Elbe – they were all prime targets.

I had an audience now of several journalists and was still talking about Hals when somebody called to us that the Flag Officer, Plymouth, was on the phone to the Minister requesting instructions now that a Navy frigate was in close company with one of the tankers and had identified it as the
Aurora B
. There was a rush for the Conference Room and I was left standing there with only a watchful policeman for company.

I was glad to be on my own for a moment, but shortly afterwards the Minister came out with Basildon-Smith and they were driven off in an official car – to the Castle, the police officer said, adding that it was past one and sandwiches and coffee were available from the canteen. Several journalists and most of the TV men drove off in their cars, heading for the hotel bars at St Margaret’s. Clearly nothing was going to happen for some time. It began to rain again.

I went back into the Operations Centre and had a snack, standing looking out of the windows of the Conference Room. Time passed slowly. I had a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, rain lashing at the windows. Later I strolled along the glassed-in passageway to the Lookout. There were one or two reporters there and the watch officer was letting them take it in turns to look through the big binoculars. Nobody took any notice of me until Captain Evans came in to check the latest position of the tankers. He also checked the latest weather position, then turned to me and said, ‘Care to see them on the radar?’ I think he was tired of explaining things to landlubbers, glad to talk to a seaman.