Black Reef

by Nick Elliott

  The chief mate called up the bosun and two ratings to help with the transfer. Then he addressed me: ‘Shall I take you around now?’

  ‘I will accompany you,’ said Horvat.

  ‘No, I’ll speak with the chief officer alone,’ I said. ‘You stay here and assist with the transfer of the body.’ He didn’t like being steamrollered, though I was beginning to enjoy it.

  The chief mate, Mornaric, was also a Croat. ‘What’s your first name?’ I asked as we walked out onto the main deck. I had to raise my voice now against the gale.

  ‘Juraj, like George. Mornaric means son of a sailor.’

  ‘Was your father a sailor?’

  He laughed. ‘No, he was a civil servant in the roads department.’

  ‘How long have you been at sea?’

  ‘Eighteen years now. I got my Master’s ticket five years ago.’

  ‘Have you had a command yet?’

  ‘No. But I am ready.’ He was in his mid-thirties, slightly built with dark hair and intelligent eyes.

  ‘That’s just as well,’ I said. ‘You’ll need to be ready now. Let’s go aft where there’s some shelter.’

  ‘Sure.’

  We walked back towards the afterdeck. The Dalmatia Star was over twenty-five years old and showing her age now. The deck was pitted with rust and I wondered about the state of the shell plating, and when she’d had her last special survey. But that wasn’t why I was there.

  Ships make distinctive noises in heavy weather, especially when they’re not underway. The Dalmatia Star groaned, clanked and screeched like some arthritic iron monster. We braced ourselves with our backs to the accommodation bulkhead. Across the heaving grey swell I could make out the coast, barely visible through the rain and murk. ‘How long had you known Captain Babic?’

  ‘Only this voyage. He joined in Thessaloniki.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d made a call there.’

  ‘We took on bunkers. And Captain Babic joined. He lives there anyway. Lived there I mean.’

  ‘Who did he relieve?’

  ‘Captain Novak. You ask many questions!’

  ‘It’s my job. Was that a routine changeover?’

  ‘No. Novak had only been on board a few weeks. I don’t know why the owners decided to replace him.’

  ‘Are you happy on board? You and your shipmates? Or were you, before the skipper’s death? Was this a happy ship?’ You can usually tell.

  ‘I’ve been with the company since I was a cadet. Yes, it was a happy ship. But the company has many troubles, you know. And now the captain …’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. I knew something of those problems but I wanted to hear about them from him. We’d headed back into the ship’s accommodation to get out of the weather. He took me to the officers’ mess and poured coffee for us both from a machine secured to the bar-top. We sat down and he glanced nervously at his watch.

  ‘Relax,’ I said, ‘we have time.’

  ‘You know we all have shares in the company,’ he said. ‘We are like a cooperative. It’s unusual in the shipping industry I know, but it works well for us. At least it did until we had the problems.’ He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one, which I declined.

  ‘Do you mind if I do?’

  ‘No, go ahead.’

  He drew deeply on it and blew the smoke high over my head. ‘The company became a target for a hostile takeover. That is the right expression I think. I don’t know the details but it all fell through. I think those behind it got into serious problems. But it left us with serious problems too. We had to sell half our fleet, that’s six ships. They were fine new vessels, not like this old lady. But it seems that wasn’t enough to get us out of trouble.’

  He stood up and went over to close the door of the mess room. ‘I don’t like what we are doing now. This cargo, what is it for?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Second-hand vehicles from Trabzon? Do you know about Trabzon?’

  ‘I know where it is, but tell me.’ Trabzon was a port on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea.

  ‘It is from where NATO’s ISAF equipment from Afghanistan and Iraq is returned to their countries of origin. It is flown in on big transport planes then shipped out through the port. That is what we have loaded: American, British, German armoured vehicles.’

  ‘What kind of armoured vehicles?’

  ‘Armoured Personnel Carriers, also Bradleys I think they are called, and British Warriors. They look like tanks. Two landing craft, and crates containing rocket launchers and mortars, shells and missiles. I was down below this morning to check the lashings. In this weather I don’t want anything heavy breaking loose. I tell you, you could start a war with our cargo.’

  At that moment the door burst open and Horvat entered, bearing down on us, his face red. Mornaric leapt to his feet and backed away, his back to the bulkhead.

  ‘What are you doing? This is my ship,’ he shouted prodding himself in the chest for emphasis. ‘What were you talking about here? Tell me!’

  ‘I thought it belonged to the bank nowadays,’ I said. ‘Anyway, we’re finished here.’ Horvat was a volatile thug and I didn’t want this to escalate. ‘Has the captain’s body been moved to the tug?’

  ‘What? Yes, they have taken the body. I want to know what you were talking about.’

  I got up and stood in front of him. He tried to push past me to get at Mornaric but I wouldn’t let him. He was breathing his foul breath heavily into my face. I pushed him away and he stumbled backwards, fetching up against the bar.

  ‘Calm down, Horvat. We were discussing the poor condition of this ship, and the troubles the company has. The mate is worried for his future. Now let’s get ashore. I’m content for you to hand over command to Mornaric here. I’ve conducted a preliminary interview with him and he’s shown me his Master’s ticket and service record. So let’s go shall we?’

  His face was flushed with anger. ‘I must report to my head office to see that they approve his promotion.’

  ‘Good.’ I walked to where the mate was standing and shook his hand. ‘Congratulations, Captain Mornaric. I shall also report back to the insurers and your flag state that we endorse your promotion.’ And before Horvat could argue I headed for the door.

  Chapter 2

  It was past midnight by the time the tug was moored back alongside the berth in Lisbon. Lopes, the agent, had arranged for the captain’s body to be taken to the mortuary and said he would notify the port police. Horvat had resisted these arrangements but the collective force of the agent, the padre, the tug captain and myself had overcome his opposition. Finally though, he’d chosen to remain on board the ship.

  The following morning I spent writing up my report, which I emailed to Claire Scott at the CMM in Leith. Claire was the CMM’s Chief Operating Officer. She had asked me to report back to her direct on this case since she was handling the other end of it: namely the fallout from the attempted hostile takeover of Dalmatia Shipping that Mornaric had mentioned. It was a complicated legacy case that both Claire and I had been involved in some months before. Dalmatia Shipping was one of many shipowners to have fallen victim to a conspiracy by a cabal of Japanese and Swiss-based neo-imperialist gangsters making a serious attempt to wrest control of global trade. It had failed due to the intervention of the International Maritime Task Force, a low-profile intelligence agency attached to what was once British Naval Intelligence and was now merged into the Ministry of Defence’s Intelligence Department. It had been set up as a taskforce to investigate the flood of maritime fraud incidents which reached epidemic proportions back in the 1970s. Its success in investigating these crimes secured its future and before long they were supplying intelligence to NATO and other agencies relating to piracy attacks off the east and west coasts of Africa and the South China Sea. It suited the IMTF’s masters in the Ministry of Defence to retain its taskforce status. It allowed for greater flexibility, or less accountability in other words.

/>   Claire had been enrolled into the IMTF straight from Oxford. She was a talented lawyer, and the CMM provided a perfect cover for her covert work as an intelligence officer. I had been enrolled into this shady organisation almost by default and, as I was now realising, separating my CMM work from my role as an IMTF field agent was becoming virtually impossible. The understanding had been that I would be hired to perform the “odd job” for them alongside my own business as a claims investigator, but it hadn’t worked out that way. Instead, my life had become a series of often life-threatening events over which I seemed to have little control. The money was good though.

  The CMM, as both the Dalmatia Star’s insurers and its legal counsel, was involved with the banks in restructuring Dalmatia Shipping and re-establishing it as a viable business. As part of the recovery plan some of their newer ships had been sold off but the task was far from complete. The whole process was further complicated by Dalmatia Shipping’s unusual corporate structure, with directors and both shore and seagoing staff all retaining shares, sometimes also held by family members and sometimes inherited down through several generations. There was a ton of legal issues to be resolved and it needed a nimble-minded lawyer like Claire Scott to untangle the mess.

  Now, after what Mornaric had told me, it seemed that the owners were covertly and illegally booking highly profitable but suspect cargoes at inflated freight rates in an effort to trade their way out of their financial difficulties. What they might not have realised was that such fraudulent practices would almost certainly void their insurance cover. Because only Claire and I were privy to the finer details of the case from all its many perspectives, I expressed these concerns to her in my report.

  Then there was the matter of Babic’s death. What had driven him to suicide? If it was suicide. Or had he been murdered because he’d threatened to blow the whistle on his employers’ and fellow shareholders’ nefarious activities? If so, I didn’t hold out much hope for Mornaric’s future prospects. And what of Horvat’s role? I expressed these concerns too in my report and sent it off by encrypted email.

  In Lisbon the sun was shining and the streets were alive with tourists, shoppers, garishly painted tuk-tuks and dilapidated trams. I stopped to watch a group of black-caped students singing and playing their guitars. It was an easy city to love and the troubles of the Dalmatia Star seemed a lot further away than just a few miles off the coast. I walked on, getting lost, and finally sat down at a side-street café. As I was ordering a beer, Pedro Fernandes called.

  ‘Hey, what’s my old friend doing in Lisbon and not bothering to call me?’

  ‘How are you Pedro? I was going to, believe me.’

  ‘Ah, so he says. Listen, we need to talk – soon. Can we meet tonight?’

  ‘Sure, that’d be good. Give me a time and place.’

  ‘I’ll get a table booked. Just tell the taxi where you’re going. He’ll know it.’ And he gave me the restaurant’s name.

  I prized old friends like Pedro. Some I’d sailed with, others I’d met while working on cases over the years. They were scattered to the four winds but most had been seafarers at one time or another. The shipping business being what it was, some of these characters were above the law and others treated it as an inconvenience to be bypassed when the need arose. Pedro fell between the two.

  ***

  I could see we were heading into the Alfama district, not so far from the port: a maze of narrow cobbled streets and ancient houses leading up a steep hill from the Rio Tejo estuary towards the castle. Originally it was outside of the city walls – a squalid ghetto where only the poor lived. As Lisbon’s port grew, Alfama became the tough and deprived quarter, home to sailors and dockers, whores and pimps. It’s thrown off most of its dodgy reputation now and become a trendy artisan district, but for me it had still managed to keep much of its dilapidated charm.

  A mist had rolled in from the river as it often did at night in this city. The taxi stopped and the driver pointed up a poorly lit lane. I paid him off and headed up the cobbled pathway. At the top I could see lanterns and a gateway framed by thick foliage. As I drew closer I heard music and when I entered the place I saw a woman standing on a small stage. She was singing a melancholy lament to the accompaniment of two men playing teardrop-shaped twelve-string guitars. I knew I was hearing Fado: the blues of Portugal.

  Pedro stood up from a table in the corner and walked, or more accurately rolled over to greet me.

  ‘Come, my friend. Welcome. We’ll eat, drink and listen to the music; then we can talk.’

  He called for wine and a bottle of Dao red arrived, which we consumed while waiting for the food. Then he ordered another bottle with the arrival, in a clay pot, of the caldo verde soup made from onions, potatoes and kale with a slice of smoked sausage sitting on top, the whole broth thick with garlic and olive oil.

  ‘Good food for a cold night,’ Pedro assured me as he ladled the stew into my bowl.

  The singer had returned to the stage amidst enthusiastic applause from the diners. She was young, no more than thirty, beautiful and dressed in a low-cut black gown. The two guitarists sat either side but back from her.

  ‘She is famous, this one. She has been singing Fado since she was eight years old,’ Pedro explained. ‘This is not unusual. It is in their heart and soul; not just theirs but all us Portuguese.’

  She began singing and silence fell across the room. Her voice had a haunting beauty that commanded attention.

  ‘She is singing of longing and grief, hope and despair. Our word saudade means longing. It symbolises a feeling of loss, permanent loss.’

  Pedro was a sentimentalist, but listening, it was hard not to be moved. The meaning and emotion of the songs came through without me understanding a word of the lyrics.

  A dish he called Arroz de Pato arrived next: duck with rice, cooked in red wine and crowned with more smoked sausage. ‘The rice absorbs the juices of the duck,’ Pedro informed me. He was a self-confessed gourmet with the figure to prove it.

  The Fado singer took a break and finally, as a third bottle of the Dao arrived, the conversation turned to business.

  ‘People are asking what you were doing on that ship yesterday, my friend.’

  ‘Really, who?’

  ‘I will tell you only what I have heard. Now I know it’s a P&I case, for your CMM people, all above board, but these people seem to think you have another agenda. Like your Piraeus, Lisbon is also a leaky sewer, Angus. It always has been. So I hear things. It seems your friend Lopes, the ship’s agent, was looking to supplement his income. He has told people that your questioning of the owner’s superintendent was somewhat intrusive. You probed him about the cargo, where the ship had loaded and where she was going to discharge.’

  ‘Come on, Pedro. It was routine stuff.’ Pedro was a marine surveyor who’d been at sea himself for years. He knew the importance of putting things in context, of building a background picture when it came to a ship’s condition, of the cargoes she carried, her owners’ operational standards, their preventive, or more often, breakdown maintenance programmes, crew training and qualifications, and a host of other factors.

  ‘Maybe it was,’ he said. ‘As routine as suicide can be, that is. And you and I both know that suicide rates among seafarers have more than tripled in the last three years alone.’

  ‘Yes, and it’s triple that of shoreside workers too, but that doesn’t stop me asking what drove Captain Babic to end his life – if he is the one who chose to, that is.’

  ‘What, you think he was murdered?’

  ‘I don’t know, Pedro. It’s possible. Maybe the post mortem will tell us more.’

  ‘Well, who can say?’ Pedro wiped his mouth fastidiously with a white linen napkin to remove any trace of food or red wine.

  ‘But to continue with these events I have learned of, there is a bank here, Banco Imperio. It is they whom Lopes reported to, through an intermediary I suspect, and it is they who have been asking questions about you
. They are wondering if you are more than just a marine insurance investigator. Of course, I’m not going to ask you about that but let me tell you something about this bank.’ He took another sip of his wine, turned round to see that no one was eavesdropping on our conversation and leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘The bank was established many years ago when Portugal still had an empire. They did much business in our African colonies, and in Macau too. Then during the war they were one of several banks here who were receiving gold from the Nazis in payment for wolfram, or tungsten as you call it, for the German war effort. You know what a kinetic energy penetrator is?’

  ‘No, but you’re going to tell me aren’t you.’

  ‘It’s a type of ammunition designed to penetrate vehicle armour. Like a bullet, it does not contain explosives but uses kinetic energy to pierce the target. That is what the tungsten was needed for – to harden the steel. We exported great quantities of this mineral as ore to Germany and much of it was paid for in gold, gold that had been looted by the Nazis.

  ‘You know that Portugal was neutral and one of the few centres of tungsten production. We sold the ore to both sides, the British and the Germans, and the German armaments industry was almost entirely dependent on supplies from Portugal. You’re beginning to see the picture now.

  ‘So because of this trade, Portugal became the second largest receiver of Nazi gold after Switzerland. At first payments were in currency, but then our central bank, Banco de Portugal, found that much of this was counterfeit and our president, Antonio Salazar, insisted that all future payments be made in gold. The Nazis helped themselves to gold from the central banks of the countries they invaded, and from individuals too – mostly from Jews.

  ‘Now then, Banco Imperio, the bank that is showing such interest in you, has been investigated many times over its wartime gold receipts, and has been heavily criticised, yet still it survives.’

  ‘That’s fascinating, Pedro, but why are they interested in the Dalmatia Star?’

  ‘We can only speculate. They have received this information about your visit to the ship because they have some interest in her, and especially her cargo. Lopes believes the ship is carrying armoured vehicles and weapons too perhaps. What does this tell you?’