by Carlos Luxul
‘Can’t ask for more,’ Dan said. ‘And I’m grateful, for everything.’ He looked around the room and gestured to Melissa, acknowledging her presence and the fact that Lars could easily have contrived to keep them apart.
Lars had phoned him a few days ago and gone some way towards explaining his scepticism in Hull. Dan had apologised, accepting he could have handled his side of it better. Earlier this morning, over coffee, Lars had gone further, speaking of the shock in Denmark and the government minister, new to his post, who wanted it cleaned up quickly – clean being the operative word.
Dan turned back to Melissa. ‘You said you might be able to enlarge it?’
‘It’s possible, I think …’ she said. ‘But the only equipment powerful enough is back home, and it’ll take a while.’
~
Dan had a window seat on the flight back to Heathrow. There was an empty blackness over the North Sea with neither moon nor starlight, without horizon or reference point. He closed his eyes and thought about Melissa, wondering where her blur was going to fit into the scheme of things.
It was Clymer’s responsibility to monitor every case. If someone failed to raise or update something, she had to revive it and demand action where appropriate, either to further the case or close it. So far, to their mutual satisfaction, he had kept quiet and so had she, until the last Monday meeting.
‘So, the Bofors file. That’s closed now?’ Clymer had said.
‘No it’s still open. I sent you an update.’
‘You did?’ she said, scrolling through her inbox and adding, with a roll of her eyes, ‘If it’s important you must highlight it.’
‘Anyway, I found out that the Ocean Dove shadowed the second shipment of Bofors guns in July.’
‘What do you mean by shadowed?’ she said, keying his dashboard and putting it up on the main conference screen for everyone to note.
‘The second shipment went down West Africa and when it passed Angola the Ocean Dove came out of Soyo port and stayed on its tail for two weeks.’
‘On its tail?’
‘Yes. Twelve hours behind.’
She studied the screen, her brow furrowing. ‘It’s clearly dragging your score down. Twelve hours – that would be out of sight, wouldn’t it?’
‘About a hundred and forty miles away.’
‘So it’s hardly shadowing?’
‘Well, in shipping terms it’s relative. And there’s something else. On the final voyage, when the Danske Prince disappeared, the two ships had been together for five days, but it was only on Saturday afternoon they found themselves alone with no other ships around. It was the first window of opportunity.’
‘Opportunity for what?’ Clymer said, the creases on her forehead deepening, before countering his suppositions with words like ‘conjecture’, ‘coincidence’, and ‘perhaps’. Eyes around the table switched between the two of them and, during one particular silence, everyone’s concentration broke at the sound of a pencil snapping. ‘Show me,’ she added, gesturing behind her.
Dan got up from the table and ran his hand over the wall map, explaining the ships’ routes along the coastlines and through the Mozambique channel to where they eventually split from each other in the Indian Ocean. His efforts to draw a difference between coincidence of geography and the trading patterns of ships, and the very same ship being bang on the spot five months later met only with a terse ‘unproven’ or ‘I don’t buy that’. It was the same with the six days leading up to the Danske Prince’s disappearance and the ‘window of opportunity’ on the Saturday afternoon.
With an impasse the inevitable consequence, Clymer overcame it by turning her back and moving peremptorily to the next case, leaving Dan standing by the map with an isolating walk back to his seat.
‘Can you give me two minutes when we wrap up?’ Dan said, pulling his chair out, his tone neutral but his voice loud enough to drown others.
Clymer looked along the table, the tip of her tongue probing a new shade of lipstick, a curious beige that didn’t match her hair, eyes or clothes, though she seemed pleased with it.
‘Can it wait? I’ve got an eleven o’clock,’ she said.
‘Two minutes?’ Dan repeated. He’d expected the prevarication, the reflex of letting everyone know that her time was precious and meticulously planned.
‘If you must.’ She nodded.
When the meeting closed, Dan picked up his things and walked round the table, sitting down in the seat next to Clymer’s.
‘You’ve got my report and I want a conclusion, and so do you,’ he said.
Clymer leant back in her chair, her body language telling him that she noted his directness and tone.
Dan leant in closer. ‘I know you don’t fancy this, but I do, so I want it sorted. Your calendar says you’re free at two o’clock on the tenth.’
Vikram had been waiting for him on the steps outside Thames House.
‘Done,’ Dan said, sweeping past.
‘And a leap to where?’
‘Dunno,’ Dan said. ‘And I don’t care.’
In the corner of his eye he saw Vikram stop. He could feel the eyes raking his back as he strode over the paving slabs. From behind he heard, ‘Yes you do. And that’s the problem, you care too much.’
‘Let’s get a coffee,’ Dan said, without looking back.
They stood outside Alf’s. The east wall was out of the wind but in the sun, which was surprisingly warm.
Breaking the silence, Vikram raised a sympathetic eyebrow. ‘“I’m a team builder – it’s what I do …”’ he said, laughing at his weak impression of Clymer. They laughed harder when Dan tried it, his own effort even worse.
‘And thanks for your help,’ Dan said, referring to the report Vikram had helped edit. ‘You know, sorting out my punctuation.’
Vikram took a sip of coffee and licked the froth from his lips. ‘It’s better than you think – or maybe not as bad.’ He smiled.
Dan had worried about his written English ever since the shock of comparison with the other navy officer cadets. It was true, he did tend to steamroller through form and structure. But he worked hard at it and felt no shame, merely accepting it wasn’t one of his strong points. Not long after they had first met, Dan had shared his doubts with Vikram, and Vikram had told him that as far as he was concerned, his acknowledgement and acceptance of it seemed to mark him as intelligent, perhaps even confirm it.
‘Funny thing was,’ Dan said, ‘when I left I realised she hadn’t said a word, not one. It was just me doing the talking. I said I wanted the meeting and that was it. Then I just picked my stuff up and fucked off.’
Vikram looked at him. ‘Wait till you see her.’
‘True,’ Dan had said, knowing he needed to get his case thoroughly rehearsed, factually. From a personal perspective, he regretted the argument was becoming obscured and less about fact as it was about will.
Disembarking at Heathrow, he checked his messages. A new one caught his immediate attention.
‘We need to meet. There’s been developments.’
~
The next morning, Dan took his usual route to the office from Westminster Tube station, across Parliament Square, around the back of the abbey and along Great Cuthbert Street. It had snowed in the night and frozen hard in the early hours of the morning.
The road was rutted and ridged. Cars and vans edged along cautiously to the muted sound of ice crushing beneath them. The pavement was alternately crisp under snow or thinly iced and slippery where well-intentioned efforts had cleared it from entrances.
He blew into his hands and looked up; a woman in a dark blue overcoat was a dozen paces ahead, picking her way gingerly towards him. She skidded to a halt, the coat-tail swaying around her legs. With a jerk of her head and a gloved hand shooting out to the railing, her startled eyes fixed on a point over Dan’s shoulder.
It was barely a scream, more a cry of shock, but he clearly heard her a split second before the sound of a racing engin
e registered. It was directly behind, not off at an angle in the road, and it was coming hard at him. The tyres were biting for grip, shrieking as they lost and found it again.
His head spun round, his hand heaving on the railing as he sprang into a leap. Half over the rail with his head staring down and legs flailing in an arc, he felt the low retaining wall shudder beneath. Sparks flew in the corner of his eye as metal ground against brick and rail. Something solid, a bonnet or a windscreen, rammed into the sole of his foot and spun him round. He pivoted on the rail and crashed down in a heap on the other side.
With his face half buried in snow, he heard a dull thud, a sharp gasp and the sound of an engine accelerating and the crashing of gears. It took a moment to gather himself, mentally and physically. By the time he’d pulled himself up, the van was fishtailing down the road and slewing into a side street.
Everything hurt, but he knew in an instant that nothing was broken. He hobbled the few short paces along the railing to the gap. Just shy of the entrance the woman in the blue coat lay in a tangle, a leg skewed at an obtuse angle. Red was already vivid against snow white.
Dan knelt at her side. She blinked hard, lifting her head a shuddering inch, trying to look along to her feet.
‘No,’ Dan whispered. ‘Stay still.’
There were voices over his shoulder, a man and a woman crossing the pavement on the other side of the road, the door to their office open behind them.
‘Go back,’ Dan yelled, raising a hand. ‘Call an ambulance! And bring blankets.’
He took his raincoat off and eased it under the woman’s head, muttering encouragements and running his eye over her, smoothing down the blue coat that had risen up over her knees. There was blood on her face but it was superficial, perhaps grazed against brick.
The people from the office appeared at his side, four of them now, a man and three women. There were no blankets but they had brought coats. One of the women was kneeling at Dan’s side, holding the shaking gloved hand at the end of the blue sleeve.
Dan looked back along the path. There were tyre tracks in the snow stretching back twenty-five metres. He looked the other way, searching his memory for everything he’d seen and heard in those brief seconds, closing his eyes for a moment and trying to lock in the images.
It was a typical street, neither a thoroughfare nor a rat run. The buildings were red-brick Victorian and tall, four or five storeys, some with semi-basements, most with a low wall and black iron railings. There were trees, but not all along, and not where it had mattered. There were permit-parking bays on the other side of the road and no-parking signs on his. The woman in the blue coat might have seen precisely where and when the van mounted the pavement, he thought, but as he looked down at her trembling face, he knew now was not the time to ask.
He glanced around. The man from the office was looking along the road too.
‘Did you see it?’ Dan said.
He shook his head gently. ‘Only heard. I looked up when I heard. My desk’s by the window,’ he said, turning and pointing. ‘And the guy’s just gone and run away. God help us.’ He sighed.
‘The guy?’ Dan said, looking him in the eye.
The man raised his hands. ‘I didn’t see. I’m just, you know …’
It was an interminable wait. Time limped by like a beggar as Dan knelt in the snow, racking his brain for something meaningful to say to the woman on the ground, who was shivering from fright, pain and the cold. After what seemed an age, everyone turned at the sound of a siren at the top of the street. One of the women from the office stepped into the road, waving her arms.
~
Vikram heard feet on the stairs. They were slower than the ones he was expecting. He looked up as Dan walked through the open door, his eyes dropping to the torn trousers and bloody knee.
‘Couldn’t get me a coffee?’ Dan said, flinging his raincoat down.
Dan was in his boxer shorts when Vikram returned, peering over a shoulder and running a hand across his grazed back. He sat down, flexing a leg out and turning the ankle left and right, up and down. ‘It’s bigger than the other one, all swollen,’ he said, looking up and taking a sip of coffee. ‘A van … Great Cuthbert Street. It just came up the pavement. I got over some railings but a woman wasn’t so lucky. She’s in an ambulance. Got hit hard, I think. Not good. Not for her …’
‘An accident?’ Vikram said neutrally.
Dan blew his cheeks out. ‘I guess. The driver didn’t hang around.’
‘What, hit and run?’
Dan nodded. ‘Just fucked off up the road.’
Vikram looked at him. ‘Here. Get up. Let’s have a look at you.’
He stepped around Dan, running his eyes up and down. A large patch of bruising on the shoulder and back was starting to show, with another by the hip. His knee was scraped raw and there was grazing on a hand. And an ankle was discoloured and puffed up.
‘You look okay, but you should get it checked out – go over to Thames House,’ he added, meaning the in-house medical centre.
‘I’m all right,’ Dan said, slipping his shirt back on and pulling his torn trousers up. ‘Wish I could say the same about that poor woman.’
‘And don’t forget, it has to be reported,’ Vikram said, raising an eyebrow.
Agency protocols were clear. Any personal incident of any nature had to be disclosed, however commonplace it might seem to the individual involved.
‘Yeah, I know. I’ll sort it out later.’
Thirteen
Jawad helped himself to coffee in Bulent’s office. ‘Moritz is going well,’ he said. ‘We’ll sign next week and then the contractors start dismantling.’
‘Have you appointed one?’
‘Not yet, but I sent them a letter of intent yesterday. They’re cool. And you?’
‘The same,’ Bulent said. ‘Just waiting really. I can put the Ocean Dove into Bar Mhar for fitting out any time.’ He paused. ‘What’s it like, this Moritz place, you know, for the guns?’
Jawad looked away for a moment before answering. ‘Well, I’m no expert, but I’d say it’s perfect. There’s nothing there, just the river.’
‘Will we get the time?’
Jawad weighed it. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it. But I think so. And is anyone really looking at us with all that going on? Anyway, people see what they’re conditioned to expect. They see something but can’t rationalise it – our brains are preprogrammed to expect one thing and unable to believe or process what we actually see. They won’t see the ship …’
Bulent took a mouthful of coffee and sat back. ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that but I guess you’re right. There’s just one thing,’ he added, getting up from his desk and stepping across to a map on the wall. ‘We can’t risk Suez. There’s no way of knowing what might happen in the canal. Sometimes they just look at the documents and wave you through. The next time they give you all kinds of shit.’
He pointed to Pakistan and ran his finger over the map, tracing the route.
‘Don’t we have friends there?’
Bulent shrugged. ‘Sure, but that’s someone else who needs to know, and someone who has to be on duty the day we transit. You know what the canal is to Egypt, all politics and jealousy. Do we risk that?’
‘No,’ Jawad said. ‘I guess we don’t. Does Choukri know?’
‘Not specifically. I mean I haven’t discussed it, but he must be thinking the same.’
‘Well, it’s news to me, so you’d better make sure,’ Jawad said. ‘In fact, better make sure everyone knows. It could throw all the schedules out.’
‘Right,’ Bulent said, a smile spreading over his face. ‘Can’t Rashid deal with it?’
Jawad grinned. ‘Great idea. Anyway, I put all the Moritz stuff in a report for Choukri. First thing I hear from him: I need more, give me all the details. All underlined.’
‘Exactly,’ Bulent grunted, mimicking Choukri. ‘I spoke to him the other day and got my balls chewed off. He
was in a right fucking mood about something.’
Jawad acknowledged with a shake of his head.
‘Fancy Nobu tonight?’ Bulent said.
Jawad turned and laughed.
Bulent gave him a sideways glance. ‘I said something funny?’
Jawad came over and sat down. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s just the Moritz guys, or I should say the Red Oak guys. They took me to Nobu in Moscow and it brought it all back. It’s strange, but I think those wankers made my mind up for me.’
Bulent eyed him questioningly.
‘They’re some kind of investment fund, hedge type thing. There’s two of them. One’s the bull, a real hand-pumper, strutting his stuff, slick as snake-shit and totally insincere. He’s fabricated a personality from the pick-n-mix box, self-help books and copying other people. And he’s crap at business, doesn’t understand it like we do – and that’s a worse sin! And me? I’m just a rag-head fresh out of the desert. So I can’t be on his level. I can’t ever reach it. And I shouldn’t even dare think about it. The other guy, the contracts guy, he’s small in every way. He hasn’t got a personality but he’d like one, and the bull is his ideal. But in reality the bull’s only a steer, all horn and no balls, a wannabe baller. I think he was raised in a field next to the bulls, looking over the fence, copying the moves and picking up the lingo, you know …’
Jawad looked up. Bulent’s elbows were propped on the desk, hands folded under his chin, his head still.
‘So they took me to a hip bar where the beautiful people hang out and poured drinks into me,’ Jawad continued. ‘Then we went to Nobu, where I struggled with the chopsticks and burned my mouth with this strange wasabi stuff.’ He flicked a hand disdainfully. ‘So, we’ve eaten and we get down to money, and I pay too much, and he thinks it’s too little. And so what. The price is worlds apart and we’re worlds apart, literally. They say globalisation has shrunk the world, turned it into a village, but from where I was sitting it couldn’t have been more different, more remote. These guys have retrenched. They’re not reaching out. They only look inwards. It’s all win-win for them and people like us just don’t count. We have no needs, no rights. It’s their right to have everything. They look at you but they just don’t see you.’