by Carlos Luxul
‘June,’ Dan had said. ‘The world will be a better place in June.’
‘It will,’ Julie happily agreed.
But now it was early January and though the sun may have been shining, it was bitterly cold. From the window he could see St Jude’s Gardens, just along Bell Street, where frost was on the ground in the shadows and a handful of early snowdrops clustered around the bases of bare trees.
From a work perspective, not much had happened over Christmas, but he’d taken ten days off and needed to catch up, go through his files and update his correspondence.
‘Any news?’ he said, glancing round.
Vikram shook his head while he finished a mouthful of Christmas cake. ‘Quiet.’
‘And?’ Dan said, nodding at Richard Nuttall’s empty chair.
‘Not sure,’ Vikram said. ‘I think he’s seeing his old boss.’
‘Figures.’ Dan pondered. ‘At least I can eat his piece of cake …’
Vikram turned away. ‘Is our team going to be short of a player, and perhaps one more …?’
Dan shrugged. ‘Not my intention.’
‘Oh yeah, I nearly forgot,’ Vikram said, swinging round again in his chair. He slipped his glasses from his nose, polishing them with a blue-and-yellow checked handkerchief. ‘There was something. Just before New Year I was in Thames House, coming out of a meeting. I heard voices along the corridor. JC and someone else. And I thought I recognised the other voice. It was getting loud and I heard your name, and Pakistan and Hak. So I slowed down, stayed around the corner. Anyway, that’s all I heard.’
‘Loud … like arguing loud?’ Dan said.
Vikram nodded.
‘And then?’
‘Nothing. So I turned the corner and there’s JC and LaSalle. They hadn’t heard me coming. They both stopped, looked at me, and I just walked past.’
‘Did she say anything later?’
‘No.’
Dan pondered it for a moment. ‘Well, thanks for that,’ he said, turning back to his desk.
He checked the AIS website for the Ocean Dove’s position. On Christmas Eve the ship had left Bar Mhar for Dubai, arriving on Boxing Day. Using the ship’s precise coordinates, he narrowed the location down to the Halliburton wharf in Dubai’s Jebil Ali port complex.
It sailed again on 29 December, heading for Balikpapan, Indonesia. The ETA was 14 January, a direct voyage of sixteen days.
Okay, he thought, it completed repairs in Bar Mhar, ballasted to Dubai and loaded a full cargo. It was very likely to be oil-related machinery and almost certainly on Halliburton’s behalf, though from time to time third-party cargo passed over their terminal.
Dan had been to Balikpapan, as first officer on the Astrid with Lars Jensen as his captain. It was a hotspot for the oil industry, with oil majors and service companies clustered around the giant refinery operated by Pertamina, the state oil company. It was perfectly typical of the kind of trade a ship like the Ocean Dove would be active in. So what could he deduce from it? The answer was absolutely nothing.
A picture was forming in his mind of the Ocean Dove, its cargo, and the negotiations that led to it being fixed by Bulent Erkan, who he knew from Hugh Pinchon, the shipbroker at the Lloyd’s reception, as a ‘really short fat guy, all Armani and Gucci and giant Rolex, but a great guy.’
Dan looked at his LinkedIn picture in the file again, trying but failing to connect his own preconceptions with the broker’s description. Yes, he was a fat guy, but wasn’t that a thin person’s face underneath before too much of the good life had taken its toll? The mouth was too small now and the lips too thin, encased in those jowls. And could that be a hint of cruelty in those eyes, or were they just struggling for room?
Mubarak hadn’t got around to adding a picture to his profile, but, interestingly, he’d sailed on the Ocean Dove when it was owned by Claus Reederie in Germany – as Lars had said in Hull. He’d been its first officer and then its captain. Dan knew there was nothing unusual in officers transferring with a ship when it was sold to new owners. It brought continuity, particularly on the technical side, where a chief engineer may have been on a ship since it was built and knew all its foibles.
And Hassan Khan, CEO at Bar Mhar? He scrolled down. Khan was every inch the marine engineer: neat and studious, keen to list all his qualifications, certificates and appropriate experience. Dan looked through his profile, stopping at Karachi Shipyard, where Khan was proud to say he had led the team responsible for the weaponry installation on the sword-class frigates.
So, there was Khan, a young and ambitious engineer with good qualifications and a solid start to his career at the Gulf Arabian Shipbuilding and Repair Yard. Then he’s offered the chance to go home, to Karachi, to a good position. Perhaps he didn’t ‘lead’ the team on the frigates. Perhaps he was responsible for something mundane lower down the chain? After all, it was only LinkedIn, where a licence to embroider was happily exploited by the vast majority of its users. And that was when he went off the rails and became involved with Bofors guns. Oh yeah? Really, with his expert knowledge of weapons plastered all over the web …
Closing the file, his eyes drifted to the window, wishing he was on the Ocean Dove. Its tropical outlook was more attractive than outside, where flurries of snow were swirling in the wind along Bell Street.
He swivelled his chair round. ‘You said you recognised LaSalle’s voice. I didn’t know you knew him?’
‘I don’t really,’ Vikram said, turning to face him. ‘It’s this India Liaison Group thing.’
‘Do I know about that?’
‘The inter-agency cooperation initiative?’
Dan shook his head.
‘I’m on the India Group. JC put me up for it. There’s us, MI6 and GCHQ. We had a kick-off meeting after work a couple of weeks ago. Just drinks, informal, you know. And LaSalle was there. He’s chairing the India Group.’
‘Who else was there?’
‘JC, some guys from GCHQ and some others from Six.’
‘Some others like Azmi, Salim Hak, Nick Pittman?’
‘Yeah. Azmi and Hak. I didn’t know you knew them.’
Dan shrugged. ‘I got a call from Salim Hak about the Ocean Dove and he wanted to meet. And JC was on to me about getting in touch with him.’
‘Circles …’ Vikram said.
‘What do you reckon on Salim Hak?’
‘I couldn’t really tell you, but I know he used to be field, and a good operator by all accounts. Broke his back in Afghanistan and got captured. Then the Taliban smashed his hand up with a rifle butt. Held him for five months, apparently. Can’t have been pleasant,’ Vikram added, with understatement.
‘No,’ Dan said. ‘So now he’s behind a desk. And Azmi?’
Vikram smiled. ‘The old man? Supposed to be something of a legend in the service. But I don’t know him.’
‘I can’t make Hak out. One minute he’s staring straight into your eyeballs, and the next he’s drilling holes in the floor. All public school and posh “dear boy”. You should see him put the wine away, and then he’s joking about being a Muslim – but I kinda like him.’
‘Azmi’s a Muslim too. At least I assume he is. It’s a Muslim name, and so’s Akhtar. And I don’t think he drinks. Only had fruit juice when I saw him.’
‘I met him. Bit weird, but clever. Maybe too clever. A hard nut too – doesn’t take prisoners.’
‘Doesn’t suffer fools gladly is the term, I think.’ Vikram smiled. ‘Oh yeah,’ he added, ‘and Salim Hak’s some kind of international backgammon player. Had to leave early to catch a flight to a tournament.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Can’t remember. Somewhere warm. He joked about it, you know,’ Vikram said, eyeing the weather outside disapprovingly and shaking his head.
‘Monte Carlo, Rimini?’
‘I can’t remember. Does it matter?’
‘No,’ Dan said, turning back to his desk.
Outside, the snow was gusting in th
e wind, random, haphazard, unlike the information lined up neatly against him. The argument, or, more accurately, the factual data, was firmly against his hypothesis. As he chewed it over, he had to concede it was barely a hypothesis and more simply a suspicion. All he had was conjecture about something that didn’t smell right to him. Others disagreed and pointed conclusively to the data. And should he care, he wondered. Clymer had told him he was losing his focus, and looming over it all was the promise he had made to Julie – to make a conscious effort to understand, live with, and bend himself to the security service.
His report to LaSalle was overdue and needed to be sent. It was complete, but he was comfortable with neither it nor with the situation. As for ‘observations’, as LaSalle had put it, they were somewhere between brief and absent. What, he reasoned, could he read into Azmi, or Hak for that matter? He was finding them both obscurely unreadable and, until he felt he was standing on firmer ground, there was an unwillingness to aim an opening salvo anywhere near his own foot.
The report was clear that he’d withheld nothing from Azmi, Pittman or Hak. All his theories and scenarios had been shared, all their questions answered straightforwardly. They knew what he was thinking without ambiguity. The only omission, from both the report and during the meeting, was any mention of the second voyage being shadowed by the Ocean Dove. It hadn’t been his intention to withhold it; it was more a case of the right moment failing to present itself. Though now, in hindsight, and without properly understanding if it would prove significant, something was telling him he should be pleased he hadn’t disclosed it.
The Christmas break had offered plenty of time for thought, but not sufficient for insight. At times he’d allowed himself the luxury of feeling he might have achieved something. LaSalle had taken an interest and he carried considerable weight. That he had his own agenda was beyond dispute. But what exactly was it? Dan gnawed the top of his pen.
One thing was clear. LaSalle wanted information carried to and from MI6 and, for a man in his position, he’d gone to some lengths to select an appropriate vehicle. Yes, he took a good, hard look at me. Dan nodded to himself; LaSalle had checked personnel files, argued with JC – and won, of course. Then he’d carefully selected the venue, allotting more time than would otherwise have been reasonably due, and humoured me.
But was that strictly true? he thought. Perhaps he had weighed LaSalle wrongly. Perhaps the setting, the tone, offering coffee and a selection of Alf’s biscuits with one of the gods, privately, informally, was his trick, to demonstrate how easy it was to make mistakes about people and about caseloads. He would have had every right to sit there, showing little more than disdain for the banality of the proceedings and the tiresomeness of a green case officer who was stepping out of line, but he hadn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t an act.
At no time had he mentioned the Ocean Dove and India or Pakistan in the same breath. Neither had he specifically said the file should be closed, though it was beyond doubt that he knew Clymer’s position. Admittedly, he’d been clear he felt the case held little water, but he hadn’t said ‘bin it’. Dan clearly remembered what he had said. ‘I’m not closed-minded to the improbable.’ Why would a man who weighed his words as carefully as an Antwerp merchant weighed diamonds leave a door ajar? To encourage me to do his bidding?
His train of thought was broken by an incoming message from Lars.
‘We got everything from the French. They wanted to keep it and do the investigation in France. No way we accept that. Tried to call you but missed. Give me a call. I got something for you.’
Eleven
‘Hi, Jawad, real good to meet you.’
‘Please, my friends call me Joe.’
‘Okay, Joe, that’s great. Let’s get you some coffee. Max will be with us shortly.’
Joe took a seat. The meeting room was on the eighth floor. Its windows looked down on a square, half in shadow from the buildings around it. There was a video-conferencing screen at one end of the room, whiteboards on the wall and a dozen plush chairs surrounding a large table. He’d dressed carefully in plain black shoes, black socks, charcoal grey suit, a dark blue tie over a pale blue shirt and a modest watch just showing under the cuff. His hair was neatly cut and he was clean-shaven. The impression he wanted to give was lawyer, surgeon or private banker. In the shaving mirror he’d practised bringing a twinkle to his eye, a twinkle that would suggest a discreet and successful practice in any one of those professions, with clients who trusted him and enjoyed his company.
An oversized white cup and saucer was placed at his side. ‘You wanna get chocolate shakings on that?’
‘Thank you.’ Joe smiled.
The door swung open and a tall man in his early forties swept around the table, his hand outstretched. ‘Hi, Max Paulsson. Aaron been looking after you?’
Pumping Joe’s hand, he held rock-steady eye contact before taking a seat next to his colleague.
Joe pushed two business cards across the shiny grain. ‘Jawad Balal, MSc, BEng, Head of Process, STC Chemical Corporation.’
Two came back in return. He thanked his hosts and picked each card up individually with both hands, reading them in detail before placing them carefully in front of him on the table, face up. Sitting across from him was Max Paulsson, Senior VP Commercial Development, Red Oak LLC. At his side was Aaron Epstein, Lead Counsel and Compliance.
‘So, Jawad,’ Max said, sitting back and clasping his hands behind his head, ‘I’ve got five minutes and then I’ll leave you and Aaron to sort the details out. Tell me about STC.’
Joe smiled, said, ‘Call me Joe,’ and gave them a short history of his company, its capabilities and aspirations.
‘Sounds great, Joe, but I gotta tell you, I’m not keen on your valuation. Aaron brought me up to speed on the preliminary discussions last week,’ he said, sucking through expensive dental work.
‘The price?’ Joe smiled. ‘You know how we Arabs love to argue with our friends. Let’s leave that for later – something we can look forward to.’ He twinkled.
‘Over dinner tonight.’ Max twinkled back, running his thumbs under his braces.
Joe leant across the table. ‘We can conclude and make down payments by end February, dismantle and pack in March, April, May, and ship out in June with stage payments every month.’
‘Could be okay …’ Max said. ‘But I’m not too bothered about timescales.’
It seemed to Joe that it was probably more than okay, more than Max could have hoped for. He sensed that the man from Red Oak was feeling increasingly confident that he had the measure of the man from STC, which could only be a good thing. He also knew the schedule was critical.
‘It’s a great plant and a great site,’ Max continued. ‘The city needs commerce and services and great places to live and hang out. We’re leveraging global aspirations. You’ve seen it there – that site’s like broken teeth in what will soon be a very kissable mouth,’ he said with a leer.
‘Progress.’ Joe smiled enthusiastically. Sure, he’d seen it. He’d been there last week to inspect the plant. He’d seen the strata of the city change quickly from the window of his taxi, its concentric circles of wealth fanning out wider. The city fathers were extending the good life to all its places, if not all its citizens. Everywhere was to become an attractive space and an idealised place to live, work and relax. The city wanted commerce and services, and heavy industry was to be banished to unseen zones. The Red Oaks were to be encouraged, the Moritz’s squeezed. With every minute the taxi had driven further from the city, the decay had ratcheted up. He’d looked from his window at the weather-stained concrete of high-rise blocks, boarded-up shops, graffiti, the growing feeling of torpor, the people becoming fatter. It had seemed ironic that they wore tracksuits – presumably the only things that would fit. Any sign of energy was draining away in the betting shops, pay-day loans, chicken takeaways, money-transfer kiosks and tattoo parlours, where those with no voice could indulge a little self-expression.
‘More coffee?’ Aaron said.
‘Please,’ Joe replied, getting up and walking round the table, where Aaron was loading fresh beans. ‘What’s the story behind Red Oak?’
They were an investment fund, Aaron explained, concentrating on prestige residential developments globally, most of which they pre-sold to high-net-worth investors looking for safe havens in places like Vancouver, Paris, Geneva, New York, London or Sydney.
‘Developments typically generate revenues of between three and five hundred million,’ Aaron said. ‘And we’ve got nearly three billion in funding available.’
‘But why are you based here, in Moscow?’
Aaron smiled. ‘Ah. The money’s mostly Russian. And a lot of the end clients are Russian too. But our European HQ’s in London and we’ve got marketing satellites in Geneva and Paris, and New York of course.’
‘Of course,’ Joe agreed. ‘And so you just bought out old Moritz?’
‘Yeah, Max closed it out a while back.’ He paused. ‘You know, the original Benyamin Moritz fled from Germany in the thirties and set his chemical company up just before the Second World War. And it did well. Then globalisation changed the game and Ben junior gave up the fight. But he’s old and no one’s coming through the family – a daughter in TV production in California and another one teaching speech therapy to kids in Africa. So we bought it, lock, stock and barrel. And the plant will be sold,’ he smiled knowingly, an eyebrow raised, ‘and the site redeveloped.’