by Nick Elliott
‘You know what they suspect: that you and your shipmates deliberately scuttled the ship. If so, that can lead to a whole raft of charges.’
‘Can I speak with you alone?’
I looked at the police captain. He shrugged. I sensed he wasn’t too concerned about the fate of the crew either way. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. Rachid left the room with the officer and I turned back to Mornaric.
‘Okay, Juraj, tell me what happened. And relax will you?’
‘It was Horvat. He threatened our families. He said if we didn’t sink the ship they would be harmed, killed even.’
‘Why don’t we take it from the beginning?’ He was clearly stressed, breathing so heavily I thought he might hyperventilate. ‘Tell me what happened from the time I left the ship off the Portuguese coast. You’ve only got twenty minutes, remember.’
It turned out that once we had gone ashore with Babic’s body, Horvat had taken control with his threat of reprisals against the crew’s families. He’d ordered Mornaric to sail the ship south to Tangier. They’d hove to off the port there and after nightfall two RIBs had come alongside. There were ten men in each RIB. They had boarded and the boats had been loaded using ship’s gear and lashed to the hatch covers. Horvat had directed the operation and the ship had then continued her voyage south.
The men who had boarded were all from the same place: Novorossiysk, the Russian port on the north-east coast of the Black Sea. It was clear that they knew Horvat and deferred to him. Horvat ordered the crew and officers to double up in each others’ cabins and the mercenaries took over the crew’s quarters. They were hard, hostile men. Sometimes fights broke out amongst themselves and every day they would exercise and train with the weapons that were already on the ship. Always they were under Horvat’s command. Each morning at 0800 Horvat would communicate by satellite phone from the ship’s monkey bridge out of earshot. But one morning the second mate had overheard him talking in Russian. Then, on another occasion, Mornaric had been out on the bridge wing and had heard Horvat again up on the monkey bridge but this time speaking in English. It was a long conversation and at one point he was talking to someone about flights from Zurich to Brazzaville.
‘Any idea who he was talking to?
‘Knowing what I know now I believe it was Jawad Mendesa.’
Eight days out of Tangier the ship had reached Kazunda and anchored several miles off the port.
‘Did you ever see or hear of a submarine in the area?’ I asked him. He had not.
‘What about when the attack on the floatel took place?’
‘Those missiles came from way out in the Atlantic. Maybe from a submarine, I don’t know. It was very frightening to watch.’
‘How about the attack on the helicopter?’
‘Those were launched from the ship, by the mercenaries. The missile launcher and missiles were all part of the cargo. We secured the launcher on the hatch cover of number one hold.’ It was as we had guessed.
All but four of the mercenaries had disembarked with the RIBs. The landing craft were loaded with the APCs and the Warriors, and the convoy had headed for the coast under cover of darkness. Horvat had remained on board the ship.
‘And you assisted with all this on Horvat’s instructions?’
‘We had no choice, believe me. What would you have done in that situation? We lifted everything that was going ashore, the RIBs, landing craft and all the weapons, using ship’s gear. We just had to do what we were told.’
‘Did any of the mercenaries return to the ship?’
Mornaric gave a bitter laugh. ‘No. As soon as Horvat heard what was happening ashore he ordered us to sail north. I’m sure they were all killed in the fighting but anyway he abandoned them.’
‘I want to know where and when Mendesa comes into the picture, Juraj.’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing, but I believe he met up with the mercenaries when they went ashore. He must have taken over command from Horvat to oversee the assault on the city and the palace. But we never saw him on the ship.’
‘And when you arrived off Casablanca what were Horvat’s orders?’
‘To scuttle the ship. He took the ship’s own RIB with the four Russian mercenaries who’d stayed on board and told us to take the lifeboat. We thought he was going to shoot us all. After all, we were witnesses to everything that had happened. I think he would have done that but he knew we would have put up a fight and he didn’t want to run the risk of a fight he might lose – even with his four mercenaries. We would not have given in. We had taken a few assault rifles and pistols from the cargo and hidden them in the engine room. Anyway, he was in a hurry to get ashore. He just reminded us what would happen to our families if we didn’t sink the ship. He held that threat over our heads.’
‘Any idea where Horvat would have gone after he came ashore here?’
‘I don’t know, but he was very upset with Mendesa. I speak a little Russian. I heard him tell the mercenaries that Mendesa was the cause of the coup’s failure because the presidential guard would not support him and neither would the people. Mendesa had claimed he had the support of the people but that was a lie, he said. I got the feeling he was out to get Mendesa.’
And at that moment the port police officer came back into the room with Rachid and a sergeant. ‘Your time is up, Captain,’ the officer announced. ‘We shall discuss this case with these two gentlemen, meanwhile you and your crew will remain in our custody here.’
‘Can you help us?’ Mornaric implored me.
‘We’ll do what we can,’ I said, and with that he was escorted back to his cell.
‘Captain,’ I said to the police officer, ‘the Dalmatia Star sank in unexplained circumstances off your coast. She was in international waters at the time of the accident and so flag state law and not port state law applies. This is clear.’
Rachid nodded. ‘He is right, Captain.’
‘So I am formally requesting that you release Captain Mornaric and his crew. Rachid here will arrange accommodation for them pending their repatriation to Croatia. I authorise these expenses on behalf of the ship’s owners and her P&I insurers. Rachid, you will receive the authority in writing from the CMM’s office in Scotland. Furthermore, in the unlikely event of any pollution from the ship’s fuel tanks affecting the Moroccan coastline, any cleaning up and compensation expenses will also be taken care of under the terms of the ship’s liability insurance. And if Captain Mornaric is required to attend any local enquiry, then we undertake on the owner’s behalf that he will make himself available here in Casablanca and Mr Benjelloun will provide legal counsel. I believe that will take care of this matter and you need have no further concerns.’
‘I hear what you say, but as you both must know, an act of barratry has been committed, an act of gross misconduct committed by a master or crew of a vessel, and this includes illegal scuttling.’
Rachid interjected: ‘We would argue that in legal terms a crime has not been committed. If the ship was deliberately scuttled, and we do not concede that it was, then the master and his crew would have done so under duress, under threat from a senior employee of the ship’s owners. If the owner himself chooses to wreck the ship, no crime is committed as the owner is simply destroying his own property. Mr McKinnon has offered you a convenient solution, a way of avoiding a lengthy criminal trial with an uncertain outcome. I would urge you to take his offer seriously and convey it to your senior officers.’
‘You know the law and I hope you are right,’ the officer replied. ‘I have no wish to detain them further than is necessary. Provided my superiors agree and we receive these assurances from the insurers in Scotland, then I will authorise their release. ‘
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Rachid, would you report these discussions to the CMM and ask them for their authority to settle on the terms I’ve outlined? It should only be a formality.’
We left it like that. Mornaric and his crew had been through a hell of an ordeal. I was reasonably confiden
t they would be released within the next week or two. What I wasn’t so sure of was what might happen to them once back in Croatia if Horvat was still storming around.
And I was no closer to finding Mendesa.
Chapter 25
‘You don’t have to do it, Angus. There are others who are paid and trained to clean up this kind of mess.’
‘How many times have you told me this in the past?’
‘So don’t. Your job is done my love. Drop the whole thing and let Six or the Cousins take care of the bastards. I imagine the CIA would be more than happy to send a bunch of Navy SEALS in to avenge the murder of their brothers-in-arms.’
‘I have to,’ I said. Cold-blooded executions were not in my line of work, but with Mendesa it was different. It was personal.
This was the first chance I’d had to see Claire since I’d left for Kazunda several weeks ago and I was relieved to find her in good spirits. She was still in the Hospital da Luz. She’d told me she was making good progress but the doctors wanted to keep her there for observation. That wasn’t quite the way I’d heard it from Doctor Sanches when I’d spoken to her on the phone the previous day. I’d told her I wanted a straight answer and not platitudes. Claire was making good progress, she’d confirmed. Mentally, she’d recovered well. There was no brain damage though she remembered nothing of the accident, which was normal. Her leg though would take months to heal completely.
But Claire was having none of that. She’d been assigned a young physiotherapist called Santiago who was drop-dead gorgeous she enthused, and was helping her regain her normal range of motion, strength and functional mobility in the injured leg.
‘They’re removing the fixed cast next week and I’ll get a removable one to replace it.’
She was still using crutches, but to demonstrate her progress she walked up and down the living room which formed part of a private suite they’d given her. And she’d still got the security detail to protect her round the clock.
‘I haven’t a clue what it’s all costing and neither do I care. I just want to get out of here on my own two legs unaided by these things,’ she said, waving the crutches around.
Claire had always been fit. She’d run the Edinburgh Marathon twice. Now she talked of doing the toughest foot race on earth, the Marathon des Sables – six marathons in six days, carrying everything you need to survive for the week, in the Sahara Desert.
‘I’ll do it too,’ she said. ‘You can look like that Angus, but watch me. I will.’
I didn’t want my scepticism to discourage her. She needed goals to focus on.
‘So they’ve briefed you,’ I said, bringing the conversation back to the case.
‘Yes, they have. And we’ve made some progress. I’m still your case officer, remember?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘They want you back in Blighty. There’s a meeting in London the day after tomorrow. I’ll be participating from here. We’ve got all the COFDM comms in place for the video link.’ I hadn’t a clue how Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing worked but I’d been told it was very secure.
I smiled. ‘And you were just telling me my job was done. What kind of meeting?’ I asked warily.
‘Don’t go all paranoid, darling. They’re not going to give you the third degree. You’re the big hero now. They just want you to brief them. It’s poor old Grant who’s being roasted alive over in Langley.’
‘You told me once paranoia was a job skill in this business. Anyway, who’s attending?’ I was still suspicious.
‘It’s IMTF – Amber Dove’s back by the way, long story – Six and, wait for it, some bloke from the SBS.’
‘What’s been happening then?’
‘Well, while you were in Casablanca playing nursemaid to the Dalmatia Star’s crew, others have been busy going after the bad guys.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Horvat and what remained of his band of merry mercenaries high-tailed it back to Novorossiysk. As we thought, he was GRU: military intelligence, the clumsy idiots who tried to do away with the Skripals in Salisbury. They’re being reined in by Putin we understand. Anyway, we’ve got an international arrest warrant out on Horvat and we’re watching him too. I don’t think he’ll be leaving Russia any time soon.’
‘He murdered Luca Babic. He’s played a leading role in this whole affair. He needs to be brought to account.’
‘Yes, well good luck with that, unless you want to go after him in Russia, which I don’t recommend. Do you think Horvat was acting under Mendesa’s instructions or vice versa?’
‘It depends who you talk to. They’d probably each tell you they were the other’s controller. Anyway, it’s Mendesa who’s the chief bastardo in all this.’
‘And that’s the big news. We have eyes on Mendesa.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He boarded a ship in Ceuta. You know we’ve been perfecting a crafty way of locating ships that don’t want to be found?’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Well, as you know, they like to switch off their AIS.’ The Automatic Identification System tracks ships of over 500 gross tons providing identification, position, course and speed. It’s used by other ships, vessel traffic services and, when necessary, by the intelligence services,
particularly the IMTF.
‘We just run a satellite search across a set of coordinates which spots all ships in that area, then discount those that do have their AIS on. That leaves those that don’t but should have and we work from there. It becomes a process of elimination, then analysing the suspects. Simple. And now with the new software they’ve given us it takes less than five minutes to get the result.’
‘So where’s this ship headed?’
‘We don’t know. She’s still in Ceuta. She was on our list of suspect vessels, that is to say AIS off when it should have been on. She’d already taken on bunkers there. She sailed, then returned to port. So they ran some checks and found she’d been chartered out to a firm that might ring a bell with you.’
‘West Africa Development Factoring?’
‘Bingo! The sovereign wealth investment arm of the former Kazunda government, which Mendesa had wrested control of. He’s not stupid is he.’
‘So what’s the next step? I could be down in Ceuta tomorrow.’ It was only fifty miles east of Tangier, to where there were regular flights from Lisbon.
‘Hold your horses, sweetheart. They want to wait and see where she’s headed before they act.’
‘But Mendesa is definitely on the ship?’
‘Correct.’
‘And this is where the SBS comes in, I presume.’ The Special Boat Service, the UK’s maritime special forces unit, had been under the command of the Royal Navy since 2001, and so was closely affiliated with the IMTF. When needed, they served as the IMTF’s armed gang, providing on-tap black-op services anywhere there was the kind of trouble suited to their particular talents.
‘Possibly. You’ll find out at the meeting, I imagine. Listen, Angus, there’s something else you need to know.’ She propped her crutches against the wall and sat down beside me on the little sofa. She was very close and her hair brushed against my face. It smelled fresh and her scent was so familiar I was stirred by the intimacy of it. I put my arm round her and we kissed. She was soft and warm. It seemed an age since we’d been together like this. Then she pulled away gently.
‘Easy, tiger,’ she said in a soft, sultry voice that only made me want her more. I took a deep breath.
‘Tell me.’
‘You know I’d been to see someone from Banco Imperio before the “accident”?’ This was something I’d been meaning to ask her about, but had put to the back of my mind as events overtook us all.
‘I’d made a contact there: a junior manager in the business development department. We got on well and she invited me to her house for dinner. I met her husband and children, even her old mother, who lived with them. They stayed in a little place on the coast
north of Cabo da Roca. It was just one of those contacts you make on a case: someone you think might have something of interest to tell you. Her name is Maria Da Rosa.’
‘What was your cover?’
‘I told her I was looking for potential investors for an ailing shipowner client: white knights and all that. True, right? We had wine and a nice dinner. We talked. And she told me something which at the time I dismissed as unimportant. After the hit I forgot everything about that evening. I woke up here and gradually some things began to come back, but nothing about that evening, not the dinner, not the crash.’
‘Just as well.’
‘Yes, but then, just a couple of days ago, she came to see me. She’d heard what had happened. She’d tracked me down and asked the hospital if she could visit. I cleared it with the security guys and said yes. And then in she walks with a huge bunch of flowers. She said she felt so guilty for not coming to see me earlier but her mother had been ill, et cetera.
‘So what did she say?’
‘I told her I had no recollection of anything that had happened that evening and asked her what we’d been discussing. She reminded me that I’d said I was exploring possible rescue options open to Dalmatia Shipping and asked her whether Banco Imperio might be interested in investing. That night she had told me that her boss had been spending a lot of time in Zurich lately but she didn’t know what for. She added that she’d mentioned my suggestion to him and he’d said he’d be happy to discuss it with me, if and when I was well enough. She said he was in Zurich now and due back at the weekend.’
‘Do you think they had anything to do with the attempt on your life, and mine?’
‘It’s possible isn’t it. But she was genuinely upset when she came to visit me. She didn’t have to, did she. And she told me something else. I asked her whether the bank was strong enough to take on a risky investment like Dalmatia Shipping. She said the bank had billions in gold bullion stored in its vaults. I asked her where the vaults were. I was fishing. The vaults are in Porto, she said.’
‘We don’t know enough about them do we,’ I said, ‘except that they have a dubious record. Pedro warned me to stay away from them and I met Mariana instead.’