The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  ‘Them posh birds,’ Nuttall said. ‘Do any good?’

  Dan’s eyes switched between the two of them, inwardly correcting ‘them’ to ‘those’. It grated, mainly because it reminded him of his younger self.

  ‘No chance,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the point. It’s the—’

  ‘I had a posh bird once,’ Nuttall cut back in. ‘Fucking filthy she was.’

  Vikram stirred his coffee, his eyes alternating between his cup and Dan.

  ‘The difference – it’s politics?’ he said.

  ‘At the officer college I had no problem with the physical, the practical, and I was surprised they didn’t get ahead of me in the classroom. Some were bright but plenty weren’t, and by the end they were leaning on me, and the instructors knew it. But I never felt I fitted in.’

  ‘Because of – background?’ Vikram said.

  ‘Suppose. It’s the difference in the backgrounds. Same here. Look at them, the top universities, the intellectual set.’

  Vikram raised an eyebrow. ‘The game players. Our best minds against the best the enemies of the state can offer, continued long into the night in the clubs, debating with their mandarin contemporaries from the other establishment pillars …’

  ‘You put it better than me.’ Dan smiled. ‘And then you’ve got your Clymers, the manager types from Cambridge and McKinsey. And I’m none of them.’

  ‘No, you’re like me.’ Nuttall laughed. ‘The cunt who does all the work.’

  Dan turned, his eyes hardening. ‘Call yourself a cunt any time. But never me.’

  Nuttall shifted in his seat, raising his hands and sitting back.

  Vikram broke the silence. ‘You make too much of it. This right stuff? I’m not sure I know what that is, but I don’t see any of the wrong stuff.’

  ‘Maybe. But that’s not my point. It’s just that here, and in the navy, there’s a type that fits. Doesn’t matter what you are, it’s just who you are – someone that fits or doesn’t fit.’

  ‘I don’t feel this,’ Vikram said. ‘The recruitment process was clear. It’s open to anyone and it’s simply a matter of taking it. I just don’t get your reluctance. From where I’m sitting there’s no lack of talent – it can only be a matter of perception.’

  They’d been over the ground before and Dan didn’t answer. Vikram had made it clear he felt Dan had to know this, finding it difficult to understand why he was wary of acknowledging it, as if accepting that this was the game would be evidence of a flaw. They knew that MI5 answered directly to government and they knew that ministers wanted people they could do business with, people who would run the service on corporate lines and present the public with an organisation that appeared to be accountable. The rewards would not initially be financial, though that might come later through networking and the prestige of awards, and Dame Jo Clymer would no doubt find lucrative sidelines in later life, perhaps on the supervisory board of Goldman Sachs or BP, or back at McKinsey. And as Vikram had said, ‘In twenty-five years I might be Sir Vikram Mehta.’

  Alf held the door open for them as they left, nodding his usual, ‘Grazie.’

  Walking up Bell Street to the office, Dan’s mind was drifting back to when he joined the navy as a junior rating at sixteen. Later, the promotion board encouraged him to try for his commission at the staff college. With officer’s braid on his shoulders he’d served on patrol boats, frigates and destroyers, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. On the verge of further promotion and, to the navy’s great irritation, he opted not to extend his commission. ‘You’re switching to commercial shipping?’

  He’d started on a multipurpose ship, the Astrid, captained by Lars. Then he switched to a container line before moving on to his first command: a bulk carrier in the Atlantic grain and steel trades. Now, with a wife and baby daughter and his thirty-seventh birthday approaching, he felt it was better if he was closer to home.

  It was as easy to have doubts at MI5 as in the navy, doubts he hadn’t felt for years. He held fraught memories of transiting from the ranks to the officers’ college – the etiquette, the chat, that he’d left his comprehensive school at sixteen, wasn’t good with table cutlery and countless other things it was mutually understood that he didn’t understand. When he left the navy for commercial shipping, the switch had been frictionless. Now, those distant concerns were rekindling and, despite his efforts to make himself acceptable at MI5, he feared he had entered another world that held barriers.

  Bell Street was not without its attractions. There were mature trees, bare at this time of year. Midway along, a small garden was set to one side. The original buildings were mostly on the cusp of Victorian and Edwardian, with notable exceptions due to bomb damage from the war. One of them was MI5’s overspill office, a charmless example of 1950s austerity and expediency.

  The office’s lower floor was occupied by Gold Star Cars, a minicab firm staffed mainly by Ghanaians. Some of the drivers may have held dubious residency or work permits. If they were hiding in plain sight, they were of no concern to MI5, which was one of its valued customers for non-sensitive trips.

  A street door opened on to a cramped hallway and steep, narrow stairs leading to the upper floors. Their office was really only big enough for two. The ceiling was low, the walls crammed with filing cabinets, shelves, charts and Post-it notes. A threadbare set of carpet tiles lined the floor. Three desks were squeezed in; Dan, the team’s first recruit, had taken the one by the window. Being close to fresh air was an advantage, with Richard Nuttall’s predilection for farting, each one proudly announced with ‘Bingo’.

  Lunch was a sandwich from Alf’s. Dan ate it at his desk and checked the online shipping news sites. Lloyd’s List was giving prominence to the fate of the Danske Prince and praising the efforts of the Ocean Dove, but there was little solid information. Tradewinds had nothing new to add except a quote from Bulent Erkan, CEO of OceanBird, the Ocean Dove’s owners. ‘My ship has done all it can in this terrible tragedy. I’ve told my captain and my crew to give their full support to the international effort.’

  Nice words, Dan thought. But is it all about you, Bulent? ‘My ship, my captain, my crew.’ What about the eight missing Danes?

  Both the Danske Prince’s and Ocean Dove’s owners had websites, though he knew the Danish company already: a respected operator with their fleet all named after kings and queens and other noble ranks. The Ocean Dove’s owners were new to him. Their site, oceanbird-marine.com, was professional and open with its information.

  The ‘About us’ section had a biography of Bulent Erkan – Turkish, commercial maritime degree, trained in an Istanbul shipowner’s office, five years in Hamburg, four in Rotterdam. So, Dan thought, you learned your trade, made the right contacts, sweet-talked some backers and went your own way with some second-hand ships from good homes in Germany, from people you no doubt knew. It all rang true. There were also contact details on the site for OceanBird’s partners around the world, including their London brokers, a well-known firm.

  After closing the site, he ran Bulent Erkan through the internal systems. Nothing.

  Initial information was sketchy and there was little to go on. It was difficult enough to justify his interest to himself, let alone to Clymer. She had made her position clear, and Richard Nuttall’s words came into sharp focus as he recalled his last assessment.

  ‘I’m a team builder, Dan. It’s what I do … I need team players, Dan. Is that you?’ Clymer had said.

  He clearly remembered holding her eyes and replying, ‘Absolutely,’ before she looked down and ticked a box on the form in front of her.

  And Nuttall, he thought, though usually full of piss and wind, was on the money: ‘If anyone has to tell you what they do, you can be absolutely sure they don’t fucking do it.’

  Dan logged into the AIS site and plotted the voyage record of both the Danske Prince and the Ocean Dove. The AIS was only concerned with ships’ positions and routes, so there was no mention of cargo.<
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  Bar Mhar was listed as the Ocean Dove’s destination, a place and name he was unfamiliar with. Last night, its identity and location had failed to register when Lars mentioned it. He made a mental note to check.

  He sat back and turned the information over, distracted by the ringing of his mobile, the caller unidentified on the screen.

  ‘Good afternoon. Salim Hak, MI6 Pakistan desk,’ a cultured voice said. ‘I recall a Daniel Brooks when I was up at Sidney Sussex – a Trinity man, if memory serves?’

  ‘Another Dan Brooks I’m afraid. I was Dartmouth.’

  Up was the key, which Dan had quickly learned to recognise, always accompanied by an archaic sounding name – Gonville & Caius or Brasenose. This time it was Sidney Sussex, and his stock reply of ‘Dartmouth’ was shorthand for an alternative route, a leading military college rather than Oxford or Cambridge: a choice, not an impediment.

  ‘Oh, very good,’ Hak said, credentials established and accepted. ‘Got his blue for boxing, I think …’

  ‘What can I do for you, Salim?’ Dan said, keying MI6’s directory on his screen.

  ‘My boss suggested I call you.’

  ‘Nick Pittman?’ Dan said, his eyes scanning the listing.

  ‘No, the big boss.’

  ‘I see,’ Dan said, checking the screen again. ‘Didn’t know he knew me.’

  ‘I think LaSalle told him.’

  ‘Edmund LaSalle?’ Dan said, surprised.

  ‘Is there another?’

  ‘Guess not. But I didn’t think he knew me either.’

  ‘There’s not much LaSalle doesn’t know,’ Salim Hak said. ‘Look, I’ve got something to discuss with you. Can we meet?’

  Dan put the phone down, opened a new file and logged it into the system. But then he hesitated. The file name he’d chosen was Danske Prince, but it was a dead ship so he pressed delete. It was the Ocean Dove that was still alive.

  Vikram and Richard Nuttall had both left the office for appointments. With the place to himself it was an opportunity to work through some of his backlog. There were over fifty thousand cargo ships on the world’s seas and another fifty thousand lesser vessels – fishing boats, harbour launches and so on – and about a hundred and twenty commercial ports in the UK. He was one man and the word he heard most was ‘budget’.

  By four o’clock it was dark outside. He tried to concentrate but his attention was drifting. Standing in the corridor and shoving a plastic cup in the coffee machine, his mind was in the Indian Ocean. I can see you, Ocean Dove, in the shadows, ploughing your steady course. And when you get there, what are you going to do? There’s something about you, Ocean Dove, I don’t like.

  ~

  Early that evening in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Bulent Erkan was making calculations at his desk in OceanBird Marine’s office. The Ocean Dove would arrive in Bar Mhar shortly and he needed to get it working again, earning money.

  Sharjah was in the middle of a conurbation. Its more glamorous neighbour, Dubai, was joined to its hip on the west, with Ajman to the east. There were no apparent borders or boundaries. Each merged seamlessly with the other, though Sharjah was independent with its own absolute ruler and constitution, just one of the seven Emirates that made up the UAE.

  OceanBird had a suite of rooms on the top floor of a respectable building in the industrial district, close to the port. In the reception area were scale models of ships in display cases. Arranged neatly in a symmetrical block on one wall were chrome-framed photographs and ISO certificates for quality, health, safety, environment and all the other pertinent accreditations of an efficient company.

  The office was mostly open plan, with two separate meeting rooms, a reception area screened with plants, and Bulent’s private room. From his desk he had a view of the creek, the distant sea, and the car park where his Porsche SUV was being washed. They were a small team of about a dozen. Bulent took care of the commercial side, assisted by a chartering broker, and there were a few technical, operations and accounting people.

  Bulent keyed a button on his desk phone. The display said the call was from a local shipbroker.

  The voice on the speaker said, ‘I can’t get him higher than three-seventy-five thousand, lumpsum.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bulent said. ‘Fix it and send me the recap. And tell Bill he has to let me win at tennis next time.’

  ‘I’ll tell him. Get back to you.’

  Bulent’s calculations had shown his bottom line was three hundred and fifty thousand, so getting an extra twenty-five thousand dollars was satisfying. The broker would confirm it with the client, the marine supervisor at the local Halliburton office. He would joke about the tennis and draw up the charter party.

  The cargo was fixed, shipping-speak for a contract. Good job, Bulent thought; the local broker was doing a good job with Halliburton, the giant American oilfield services company. OceanBird were getting closer to them, building the relationship. This was their third Halliburton cargo – a valuable name to drop when he spoke to other multinationals, especially in the lucrative oil-and-gas market.

  The contract was for oilfield machinery to be shipped from Dubai to a project in Indonesia. It was lucrative work for the ship, unlike its current voyage. It would bring in real money. Freight rates were on the floor and the Emir always demanded money.

  Cement from the UAE to Mozambique was not a money-spinner. Neither was ballasting an empty ship back from Mozambique to Pakistan where it would sit for nine days of repairs and maintenance work, and then Bulent would have to dig deep to make the payments to the shipyard.

  Fuck it, he thought. At least I can soften the blow by showing them it’s now earning proper money from a proper charterer. The Emir would also relish the irony of working for Halliburton. He could hear his childlike, almost girlish giggle. He’d heard it once before, when he’d told him they were contracted to Bechtel, another American company, the world’s largest builder of oil and gas processing plants and the CIA’s favourite conduit of the gossip from global energy boardrooms.

  Three

  On Tuesday evening, Dan took the underground to Monument station and walked up Lime Street to Lloyd’s. Lights cloaked the building in a blue haze, hanging around it like a shroud and reflecting from glass and stainless steel to its neighbours in the cold wintry air. As he crossed the underwriting room to the lifts, he passed the Lutine Bell and wondered if it had tolled for the Danske Prince.

  The lift rose through the cavernous atrium to the 1688 room, the name commemorating the foundation date of the original Lloyd’s coffee house. Here, the American Bureau of Shipping was holding its reception. He handed his invitation in to the desk clerk, pinned a name badge on and walked into the room. The ceiling was low, clad in steel with glass down two sides, and views of the blue shroud beyond. About four hundred people were making a lot of noise. A woman from ABS greeted him and glanced at his badge.

  ‘Hi, Dan. Welcome,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Come and meet some of the guys and let’s get you a drink.’

  She led him over to a dark-suited group and beckoned to a waiter. Introductions were made – ABS people, underwriters, brokers, agents.

  ‘You’re with the ministry?’ an underwriter said, his well-lunched jowls folded into the collar of a worn but handmade shirt under a Charterhouse school tie. He ran his eye over Dan, checking for hints and prompts – his tie: neutral, his bearing: tall, broad shouldered and straight backed.

  ‘So, lieutenant commander on destroyers, then a container ship, then the MOD. I say.’

  ‘My first ship was a multipurpose – and that was my favourite.’

  ‘Multipurpose eh? Not my type. You should talk to Hugh Pinchon from BDN, the loud one in the chalk stripes making all the noise over there,’ he said, pointing to a group across the room.

  BDN, Dan thought, OceanBird’s London brokers, remembering it from their website. He shook some hands, swapped business cards, made small talk and worked his way around the room. Psychometric profil
ing had been part of his induction training at MI5, how to read people, what they said and didn’t say, their body language and tics. Instructors started by dismantling the inductee, exposing their ‘tells’ and remodelling them into something that made all the right impressions but gave little away. The training concentrated on individuals and groups. In this setting he could read the room. He knew where the power was, who had something to hide, and who was trying too hard to show they had nothing to hide.

  But this was a reception at Lloyd’s, not a terrorists’ convention. Even here, however, some things were better left hidden – the dubious tax returns, the understanding ladies in Paddington who spanked bottoms and told them they were naughty boys, the sixes scored as fives at the golf club.

  Hugh Pinchon was indeed loud and in expensive chalk-striped cloth. He was also approachable, wanting to be approached, paying close attention to the group he was with but keeping an eye and ear roaming beyond it as well. His posture was open, one leg planted at an angle, allowing an opening, his hands active and visible, his voice loud, beckoning you in, wanting your attention. But Dan didn’t accept the invitation.

  On the other side of Pinchon’s group was a tall, elegant woman displaying the same characteristics. Dan approached her but not until at least five minutes had passed since the underwriter made the suggestion. It wouldn’t do to have anyone think there was some kind of necessity.

  The woman was a partner at one of the big shipbroking houses. They chatted for a while, a couple of others at their shoulders joining in, intrigued by the ministry, breaking the ice with the usual well-intentioned jokes about Walther PPKs.

  She made the introduction to Pinchon, whose antennae had already picked up buzzwords.