The Pirate Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  As Po pored glumly over today’s trial papers, such as they were, he kept one eye on the clock, all too aware that Mr Justice Fang had ruled the proceedings would open at nine thirty, probably because the judge himself wanted to get to Shek O for the party too.

  By nine fifteen, the prosecutor was in the robing room of the Supreme Court getting ready. When he got out into court he knew he would find there a range of officials, including Captain Huuk and Commander Lee to whom he would have to express his regretful opinion that their case would not stand up for very much longer. He had tried to get them both on the telephone before he left his office, but neither was immediately available. He hoped that he would get a chance to talk to one or both of them before things got properly under way. Magnanimous withdrawal would save a lot more face than ignominious defeat.

  But when he went through into the court, neither man was there and he felt unsupported and alone, especially when the defence team swept in like a small army. He felt every eye in the packed public galleries boring into his back like so many daggers, and every hissed comment and stifled whisper seemed aimed at him.

  The conversation intensified as the prisoner was led to his place. Po could not remember ever having seen him look so alert, so intensely alive. From the prosecutor’s point of view, it was all intensely depressing.

  The clerk of the court arrived. ‘All rise,’ he demanded, and Po, an aficionado of Western culture, glanced across to his stunning opposite number, and thought to himself, it’s showtime, folks!

  Mr Justice Fang took his position, bowed, sat The court officials bowed and sat in their turn. Just as they did so, Commander Lee bustled in and took his place. ‘Sorry to be late,’ the stolid policeman imparted, sotto voce, ‘but just as we were leaving, Huuk got another of his funny phone calls. It’s Seram Queen this time.’

  Po’s mind reeled. This seemed like the final nail in the coffin of the Crown’s case. They had proceeded on the assumption that the accused, Captain Mariner, was solely responsible; that he had undertaken a range of killing, beginning with two deaths in Singapore, in order to secure a fortune for himself or for his company; that the whole thing had been a desperate half-sane one-off. And now, just as the two original victims had come all too conveniently back to life, the same thing was happening all over again to the sister ship.

  But the Commander had not finished speaking. ‘It’s probably a hoax,’ he opined. ‘I’m getting Huuk to check it out thoroughly before we even dream of taking it seriously.’ Then he sat back as Maggie rose for the final time.

  ‘I would like to call Miss Anna Leung, company secretary to the China Queens Company,’ she said.

  Anna Leung looked exhausted and nervous as she came to the witness stand. She was all too well aware of Commander Lee’s cold gaze. She would be lucky not to be standing in the dock next time she came here.

  ‘You are Anna Leung, of the China Queens Company, Singapore?’

  ‘I am known as Anna Leung, yes.’

  ‘That is not your real name?’

  ‘It is an alias I adopted at the behest of the Royal Hong Kong Police’s Criminal Intelligence Division.’

  ‘So you are, in fact, a police officer?’

  ‘I was, but I have resigned my commission. I am a private citizen now.’

  ‘Very well. Now, if we can turn to the matter in hand. For what purpose did you assume the alias of Anna Leung?’

  ‘So that I could investigate smuggling as it was carried on through the port of Singapore. More specifically through the Tanjong Pagar computerised container terminal. It was understood by my superiors that the China Queens Company was involved in such smuggling. When the operation in which I was involved began, the China Queens was owned by a front company ultimately run, we believed, by the White Powder Triad. Although they used it for their own business occasionally, they also had a lucrative sideline in hiring out the container space to other concerns who wished to transport merchandise invisibly and without the inconvenience of Customs inspections.’

  ‘I see. So the Criminal Intelligence Division arranged for you to be put in a position where you could monitor this?’

  ‘Yes, but in fact things rapidly became more complicated than we had at first calculated. When I first went in, it was assumed that the White Powder Triad would be using this system for a limited number of spectacular shipments which we could include in a series of cases which would close down the whole operation and perhaps even bring to book the senior echelons of the Triad itself.’

  ‘But things did not work out that way?’

  ‘No. Firstly, they kept their operations small. It was as though they were being warned of our intentions from inside. Secondly, they started, as I said, to let the spare container space, almost as a legitimate business would, and it became increasingly difficult to focus on what was their contraband and what was being shipped by other people. Thirdly, where we had expected confrontation and violence, there was none. The system ran simply and bloodlessly — up until the Sulu Queen incident. Goods were smuggled into the terminals at Singapore, here, wherever, in small quantities and slipped into the crates. A tiny adjustment to the loading programme on the computer, a bit of a backhander to a couple of lading officers and that was all.’

  ‘And you reported all this back to your superiors?’

  ‘Little by little, as I discovered it. But you must understand that there was never anything big. Certainly nothing big enough or priceless enough to make it worth springing our trap and closing down the operation. And it took nearly three years to get all the groundwork in place. Furthermore, I was in a perfect position to pass on wider information about the ongoing investigation into piracy of all sorts in this immediate area.

  ‘Then things became more complex still. With the nearing of the date for the handing back of the Crown Colony to the People’s Republic of China, the senior Triad members began to move their power bases and their business enterprises out of Hong Kong. The China Queens Company’s headquarters were there and both of the ships are registered there, but their main shipping offices were in Singapore. It was a perfect situation for the Criminal Intelligence Division but it was that which let us down. The White Powder Triad put the company on the market. As the company which owned the business was seemingly quite legitimate, it found a legitimate buyer.’

  ‘Heritage Mariner, of London.’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘So, if Heritage Mariner are legitimate, why were you left in place in the Singapore office?’

  ‘Because the system continued to function, as far as we knew, under the aegis of the White Powder Triad. Although they no longer owned the ships, they still had full control over the ghost containers.’

  ‘Now, please be quite specific about this, Miss Leung. What evidence did you have that Heritage Mariner themselves were involved in this enterprise?’

  ‘In the smuggling? None whatever.’

  ‘Which officers of the company have you met, Miss Leung?’

  ‘Of Heritage Mariner? Mr Charles Lee and Captain Richard Mariner.’

  ‘And what evidence did you find that they, either individually or in concert, were involved with the smuggling?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Surely, Miss Leung, with the company now in legitimate hands, you made representations to your superiors that it was time to recall and reassign you?’

  ‘No. As I said, the containers were still being used, though without the knowledge of Captain Mariner or Mr Lee, as far as I am aware. Furthermore, I heard a whisper that the White Powder Triad were going to try one last huge operation just before the handover of Hong Kong, before the Chinese authorities moved into the Crown Colony. I heard that they were going to ship two containers full of crack cocaine out of the Philippines. It was just the sort of operation which the Criminal Intelligence Division were looking for.’

  ‘The sort of operation you had been specifically placed to warn the Criminal Intelligence Division about?’

&n
bsp; ‘Just so. And so I stayed in place.’

  ‘But you had a stronger reason even than duty to keep you in place, did you not, Miss Leung?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I had fallen in love with Captain Walter Gough, master of the Sulu Queen. We had planned for some time to run away together. We had been saving up what we could towards buying the home in which your Mr Tan discovered us yesterday morning.’

  ‘Please explain that plan to us, Miss Leung.’

  ‘The last time Wally was due to come through Singapore, he was going to fake peritonitis. He had had a grumbling appendix for years. He had to take care to know all the symptoms in case he had an attack at sea and so it was easy for him to reproduce them to order. He would be rushed into hospital and then discharge himself as soon as his ship had sailed and we would run away together.’

  ‘And how did Captain Mariner become involved in your machinations?’

  ‘Well …’ Anna Leung took a deep breath and continued to look at her hands as they writhed against each other on the edge of the witness box in front of her. ‘Wally decided that this run had to be the one. But he knew nothing about my real involvement or about the consignment that the White Powder Triad were apparently planning to move. His first officer, Brian Jordan, was the only one who took back-handers on the Sulu Queen’

  ‘I see. So?’

  ‘Brian Jordan was an adequate first officer but he was by no means qualified to take command of the ship if the captain fell ill. But we couldn’t risk having the Sulu Queen sitting in Singapore while a new captain was found. To begin with, such a situation would slow down the movement of both ships and put the whole Criminal Intelligence Division investigation at risk. And

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it would make it absolutely impossible for Wally and me to vanish in the way we had planned.’

  ‘I see. So what did you do?’

  ‘Wally suggested I should think up some reason or other to get Richard Mariner out. They had known each other socially on and off for years. Captain Mariner was the chief executive of the company which now owned the ships and he had made his reputation with his own company Crewfinders which specialises in replacing sick or injured officers on ships all over the world. It seemed to us, therefore, that there would be no question that he would be able to take over the ship straightaway. It was a very good idea. It solved all our problems. I agreed to do it. I sent Captain Mariner a message which I believed he would find irresistible. I warned him that his ships were being used for smuggling purposes and were the subject of an investigation. I warned him not to contact the authorities until after he had spoken to me directly. He knew me. He came. At once. Without question. It broke my heart to betray such a man.’ Anna Leung glanced up briefly. Her gaze met Richard’s for a second and then fell again.

  ‘What then?’ Maggie persisted, an edge in her voice.

  ‘I timed my information so that he would arrive mere hours before the Sulu Queen. I took him to Tanjong Pagar and let him see what happened during the turnaround. He went aboard the ship to find out what was going on and to inform the authorities in Hong Kong. Wally faked his attack and came back with the pilot. He gave me a series of messages Captain Mariner wished me to send. Some were letters and some were electronic messages on disk for me to send on the Superhighway. I sent none of them. I destroyed them all.’ Once again, she looked across at Richard and this time their gazes locked for a longer period as his face worked with growing revelation.

  ‘Miss Leung?’ Maggie’s voice cracked like a whip and the exhausted witness jumped as though she had been struck.

  ‘Wally and I left for Manila later that night, exactly as planned,’ she concluded sadly, her voice beginning to break and her eyes to fill with bitter tears. ‘For nearly two months we have been living on an island which has no contact with the outside world. We visited Laoag only once and I now see that this was a fatal mistake. We knew nothing of what happened subsequently until Mr Tan told us yesterday, and would still know nothing of it now had Wally not sent that postcard to his wife.’

  There was a moment of silence as the desolation in the woman’s voice echoed around the court.

  Then Maggie said quietly, as though she were not in open court at all, ‘Well, that just about does it for me.’ She turned, and her voice echoed also as she said straight to Mr Justice Fang, ‘My Lord I invite the prosecution to consider their position because on the basis of this evidence it appears their case has collapsed. There is nothing left for my client to answer, except perhaps how he came to handle the weapons left by the pirates who killed his crew, believing that they were smuggling cocaine when they were in fact unknowingly smuggling pirated videotapes and while the authorities stood by and waited to make their sure-fire case against the mandarins of the White Powder Triad.’

  ‘Mr Po?’ asked the judge gently. ‘Has the Crown anything to add?’

  Mr Prosecutor Po looked over his shoulder and Commander Lee simply shook his head. The young Chinese barrister rose as though he had been stricken with arthritis during Anna Leung’s testimony. ‘No, My Lord,’ he said quietly. ‘My learned friend has expressed the situation to perfection and the Crown has nothing to add. Under the circumstances, we will offer no further evidence. Captain Mariner has nothing more to answer. He is an innocent man, My Lord.’

  Someone in the gallery started clapping and even Mr Justice Fang’s glaring demand for silence was overcome in the ovation like a drop in a downpour.

  Ten minutes later, Richard, dazed by his sudden freedom and by the memories which Anna Leung’s testimony had reawoken in his head, was led out into the corridor outside the courtroom. He was escorted by Andrew on one side and Gerry Stephenson on the other. Maggie swept before him with Lata at her side, the women clearing a way through the cheering crowd more effectively than a squad of policemen could have done. Behind him came Mr Prosecutor Po and the square bulk of Commander Victor Lee. They had progressed no more than four steps when Daniel Huuk came running through from the reception area and, looking past the tall, disorientated figure of the man he had shot seven weeks earlier, called out to his immediate chief in a voice of agonised suspense, ‘Commander! It’s the Seram Queen! She’s just been spotted drifting to the south of the Wenwei Zhou. And the pirates are still aboard!’

  *

  Robin Mariner sat on the tiny platform at the top of the radio mast like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, pointing Edgar Tan’s pistol down the ladder between her widespread ankles and waiting for the first pirate to try and climb up after her like the evil Israel Hands.

  Far below her, the main deck was a bustling hive of industry as the topmost containers were winched off the piles of deck cargo and swung out over the starboard side to be dumped in the restless water among the bodies floating there. It was a glorious morning, just coming up to noon, and the sun beat down upon her unprotected head and shoulders, causing sweat to run uncontrollably into her tired eyes, but her concentration did not waver. She had ten bullets left and was determined to use them all. The platform itself was four square metres of thick, bulletproof steel and it could only be overlooked from a helicopter. As the pirates did not seem to have a helicopter, the only way to get her was to come up the ladder after her. It was a long ladder, coming up to a square trapdoor. The trapdoor was too small to shoot through from anywhere below. She hadn’t seen any heavy artillery or rocket launchers. The platform was too small and too high a target to make a lob with a grenade even remotely feasible. No. If they wanted her, they would have to climb the ladder to get her. But the ladder could only be climbed by one man at a time. The first ten men to start at the bottom would never make it to the top. Number eleven would lose his teeth and his eyes on the way through the trap. And then she would wing it. In the meantime she was safe and she was set. Now for part two of her cunning plan.

  Letting go of the pistol’s stock with her left hand, she pulled the emergency beacon she had taken
from the lifeboat a lifetime ago last night out of her pocket and switched it on. It had a range of more than fifty kilometres from up here, and by her best calculation the ship was less than ten kilometres south of the Wenwei Zhou. This thing should ring alarm bells everywhere from here to HMS Tamar. She put it beside her on the steel platform, and, while she waited for someone somewhere to answer its urgent summons she thought back over the last eleven all too active hours.

  Captain Sin had been the last man onto the bridge in answer to her alarm. This was because — like any captain sensible of his position — he had dressed before leaving his cabin. ‘Now just what the hell you up to, missy?’ he yelled across the milling crowd of night-dressed crewmen who were packed nervously into the open space of the navigation bridge waiting for her detailed explanation.

  ‘I believe the men on the Vietnamese boat are pirates and they came aboard in order to put the radio and radar out of commission so that they can help their pirate colleagues come aboard. My evidence for this is the fact that the men have been up and about in secret. The equipment in question is out of commission and my two watchmen, as well as Fat Chow, have vanished.’

  ‘This is a dream! You make this up. You hysterical woman, missy!’

  ‘No Captain! I saw a fleet of small craft immediately behind us before the radar went down. I saw blood on a boiler suit which could only have come from the arm of one of the men in the sickbay. I posted two watchkeepers on the poop and they are gone. I asked Fat Chow to keep an eye on the survivors and he is gone. I tell you all, this is the way it must have started for the Sulu Queen but they didn’t know what we know. What have you got aboard worth killing for, Captain Sin? What are you smuggling?’