The Black Tide

by Hammond Innes

  The bedroom door, outboard on the far side, was not only shut but bolted from the inside. I called out and after a moment a sleepy voice answered. ‘Ja. Who is it?’ And when I told him, he asked, ‘Is it already time for the night food?’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘It’s almost twenty past seven,’ I told him.

  ‘Ja. It is almost time.’

  I heard movement, then the door was unbolted and he emerged completely naked, his eyes barely open and his blond hair standing up in a tousled mop, so that if he’d had a straw in his mouth, he would have made a very good caricature of a stage yokel. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked, standing there with his mouth open in a yawn and scratching himself.

  ‘The name of the ship,’ I said. ‘I want to know what’s happened to her and why.’

  He stopped scratching then, his mouth suddenly a tight line, his eyes watching me. ‘So. You want to ask questions – now, before the voyage is begun. Why?’ And when I told him I’d just come from the wheelhouse he smiled, nodding his head. ‘Sit down.’ He waved me to the settle and dived back into the bedroom. ‘So you have seen our bombed-out radio room and come to the obvious conclusion, that there is an attempt at piracy and they make a balls of it, eh? But take my advice, Mr Rodin, do not leap to the conclusion that they are stupid people and incompetent. They learn their lesson very well.’

  ‘What happened to the radio officer?’ I asked.

  ‘Dead, I think.’

  ‘And the other officers, the crew?’

  ‘One, per’aps two, killed, also several wounded.’ There was the sound of water running and then he said, ‘Better you don’t ask about that.’ And after a moment he emerged in white shorts and shirt, running a comb through his damp hair. ‘You want to stay alive, you keep your mouth shut. These people are very tough.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You will see in good time, my friend. There are five of them and they mean business. So, if you don’t like it, better you don’t do anything quick, without proper thought. Understand?’

  I nodded, conscious that his choice of words distanced himself from them. ‘Where do you come into it?’ I asked him.

  He didn’t even answer that, slipping the comb into the breast pocket of his shirt, watching me all the time out of those very blue eyes. Finally he said, ‘Per’aps when we know each other better, then maybe we could talk freely. For the present, you are the second officer and I am your captain. That is all between us. Right?’

  I got to my feet then. I couldn’t force him to talk. But at least I knew he wasn’t part of what had already happened. ‘On the dhow,’ I said, ‘when we were coming up from Ras al Khaimah—’ I hesitated, wondering how to put it. Since I didn’t know what the operation was I couldn’t be sure he was opposed to it. But I wanted him to know that, if there was any question of pollution, and he was opposing it, he could count on me. ‘When you knew who I was, you talked about my wife. You said Karen should have been more political, that she should have threatened the authorities, demanded a law of the sea to control pollution. Those were your words. You meant them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Ja. Of course. But the Petros Jupiter, that was only a ten thousand ton spillage.’

  ‘But is that the reason you’re here, on this ship?’

  ‘What reason?’

  ‘Pollution,’ I said. ‘The same reason you risked your life in that tanker on the Niger.’

  ‘Ah, you know about that.’ He sat down and waved me back to my seat. ‘I risked my job, too. After that nobody want to employ me, not even as an ordinary seaman.’ He laughed. ‘Then I got this job.’

  ‘Through Baldwick?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was in Dubai and I hear some talk …’ He reached into a locker beside the table. ‘You like a whisky?’ He poured it neat, not waiting for me to answer. ‘You know, the first bad slick I ever see, the first real pollution? It was in South Africa. I had just taken my mate’s certificate and was on leave …’ His mother was apparently from Cape Town and he had been staying with relatives, some people called Waterman, who were English South African, not Afrikaaner, and very involved in the environment. ‘Victor was a marine biologist. Connie, too, but she had a baby to look after. You remember the Wafra?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And before that the Kazimah?’

  He drank some of his whisky and sat, looking down at the glass in his hand, his mind back in the past. It was the Wafra he talked about first. That was in 1969, he said, and he had been between ships, enjoying himself, wanting to see as much as he could of the country. He had arrived there in November, just two days before the Kazimah got herself impaled on the Robben rocks. ‘Robben is an island out in Table Bay about seven miles from Cape Town.’ He paused, still looking down at his glass, and when I asked him the cause of the stranding, he shrugged and said, ‘The engine. Ja, it is always the engine. Almost every tanker gets into difficulties—’ And then he was talking about the organization for the conservation of coastal birds that had been formed the previous year and how he had spent the best part of a month helping his cousin, Connie, who was a member of the organization, collect oil-soaked penguins and take them to the cleansing centre. There had been a lot of people working desperately hard at penguin recovery, but even so her husband reckoned around 10,000 died.

  And, earlier that same year, the whole penguin population of Dyer Island, over to the west near Cape Agulhas, had been wiped out by another oil slick. ‘Everything, every bloody tanker, all the oil for Europe and the West goes round the Cape. And I come back from two months wandering through the Kalahari, and over to the Skeleton Coast and Namibia, to find Connie Waterman exhausted with the effort of dealing with the Wafra disaster. It was the breeding season and they were literally evacuating the birds from Dyer Island to prevent them being hit again.’ He paused then, lifting his head and looking directly at me. ‘That is how I have become involved in environment.’ And he added, a little smile moving the hairs of his beard, ‘Per’aps it is true what my mother says, that I am half in love with Connie.’ She had been only a few years older and he’d been tramping, no fixed abode, no attachment, seeing the world, taking life as it came. It was working with her, he said, handling the poor pitiful wrecks of birds, and all the time the terrible sense of inadequacy felt by Connie and the other men and women working so hard to save what they could, knowing that whatever they did, nothing would alter the fact that tomorrow or the next day, or the next, there would be another tanker in trouble, another oil slick, more pollution, more birds to treat – on and on and on till ‘the bloody bastards who own and run the sheeps are made to realize what it means when oil is vented, either intentionally or accidentally. And—’ He was very tense now, very worked up, the words spilling out of him with great force – ‘it is not only the Cape. It is the coasts of Europe. My own country – the Nederlands, that is very vulnerable, also the UK, France, the whole of the English Channel …’

  He stopped there, wiping his face with his handkerchief. ‘But the politicians, the bureaucrats, they don’t care. Nothing will be done, nothing at all until the industrial nations that demand all this oil are themselves threatened with pollution on a massive scale.’ He was looking straight at me, his eyes wide and staring, his whole body radiating an extraordinary intensity. ‘Then maybe they get tough, so the bastards can be arrested on the high seas. And if,’ he went on, his teeth showing white through his beard, ‘when the captain is arrested, he is thrown into the sea to float in his own filthy oil until he is half dead – like the birds, eh? – like the keel-haul updated – then, I tell you, man, – then there will be no more oil slicks, no more venting at sea. But not till then. You understand?’ He leaned forward, tapping my knee. ‘You worry about the Petros Jupiter. What about the Amoco Cadiz? And the Metula down in the Magellan Straits – fifty thousand tons in an area where the cold makes biological breakdown of the tarry mousse much slower. Tanker after tanker. And the venting and the leaks – they go on all the time. Ho
w much oil do you think is spilled into the sea from bilges, engine-rooms and illicit tank cleaning operations? You will not believe me, but I tell you, it is one and a half million tons of oil. Ja.’ He nodded, cracking his knuckles, an angry brightness in his eyes. ‘There must be a stop put to it.’ His mouth opened to emit a harsh barking laugh. ‘Drown them in it. That is good justice. Do you agree?’ He was deadly serious, his eyes very wide, almost staring, and fixed on mine as though conveying some unspoken message. ‘So. We have another talk some time. But when we are at sea,’ he added, glancing at his watch. ‘Now we will go to eat.’

  He got to his feet, padding barefoot back into the bedroom to put on some shoes, while I sat finishing my whisky and thinking about it. Almost everybody involved in the cleaning of oiled birds had probably wished at some time it was the men responsible for the slick they were trying to clean. Rough justice, but if those responsible for a spillage were forced to swim for it in their own filth … it was politically impossible, of course. Karen had talked about it. So had others at the Cornish cleansing station, the women mainly. But how many nations would agree to pass and enforce such a Draconian law?

  It started me thinking about the ship again and Hals saying that nothing would be done until the industrial nations were faced with the threat of massive oil pollution. Was that his plan? An interesting voyage, he had said – different nationalities, different motives. ‘What’s our destination?’ I asked him.

  ‘You will be told soon.’

  ‘Do you know it?’ He didn’t answer that, his foot on the chair, bending to tie the laces of a new pair of canvas deck shoes. ‘What about the name of the ship?’ I asked.

  ‘They don’t have a name for it yet.’

  ‘But the original name?’

  ‘It has been painted out.’

  ‘Yes, but what was it?’

  ‘You ask too many questions.’ He came back into the day cabin, and at that moment the door of the office was swung open and a voice behind me said, ‘Captain. I told you, no one is to go on the bridge.’ It was a soft, sibilant voice, the English quite fluent. ‘Is this the man?’

  I swung round to see a slight, dark figure standing in the doorway. He was bearded, with thick, curly black hair, dressed in very pale khaki trousers and tunic, a chequered scarf at his throat and a pistol holstered in his leather belt. But it was the face, the dark eyes, the birthmark just visible beneath the beard … I jumped to my feet. ‘Qasim!’ The name was out before I could stop myself, before I had time to think what his presence meant.

  I saw the sudden wariness in his eyes, the hesitation as he considered his reply. ‘We have met before?’ He sounded uncertain, his hand going, almost automatically it seemed, to the pistol in its holster.

  ‘The Shatt al Arab,’ I said, recovering myself. ‘Remember? You were brought on board by the Shah’s police and we took you to Kuwait.’

  He thought back, frowning. ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ He nodded, his hand coming slowly away from the gun. ‘I remember now.’ He was smiling then, some of the tension going out of him. ‘You were very good to me, all of you, on board that ship. And I had had a bad time of it, you know.’

  ‘You made a good recovery I see.’

  ‘Yes, I am fully recovered, thank you. But my name is Sadeq now. Abol Sadeq.’ He came forward into the day cabin holding out his hand. ‘I am sorry. I remember your face, of course. You were the second mate, I think. But I forget your name. Excuse me.’ I told him my name and he nodded and shook my hand. ‘Of course.’ He was looking at me curiously. ‘You have lost your wife. Mr Baldwick told me. I am sorry.’ The dark eyes stared at me a moment. ‘Are you the man who is in the wheelhouse just now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not, if I’m second mate?’

  He laughed then. ‘Of course. Why not. But why don’t you stay with the others? You don’t like to drink? Or is it that you’re curious?’ He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. ‘You don’t answer.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve never been on a ship where the bridge was barred to the mates.’

  ‘Well, now you are on such a ship. Until we sail.’ He turned to Hals. ‘Didn’t you warn them?’

  Hals shook his head. ‘I left that to Baldwick.’

  ‘But you are the captain and I told you …’ He stopped there and gave a little shrug. ‘It does not matter now. I have just been in the mess and I told them myself.’ He turned back to me. ‘There is a guard on the deck. He is an Arab, one of the Shihuh who inhabit this part. You could have been shot.’ He nodded curtly, a gesture that seemed to dismiss the subject for he was suddenly smiling, his expression transformed into one of friendliness. ‘I did not expect somebody on board to whom …’ He hesitated. ‘I think perhaps I owe you my life.’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ I said.

  He shook his head, still with that friendly smile. ‘If not my life, then my good health. I remember you sat by my bed. You gave me courage to stand the pain and now I must consider how to repay you.’ He was frowning again as though faced with a sudden intractable problem, and he turned abruptly, walking quickly out through the office.

  I waited till he was gone, then shut the door and faced Hals. ‘You know who he is?’ I asked.

  ‘Ja. He is the boss. He directs this expedition.’

  ‘But you don’t know his background?’

  ‘No. Only that he gives the orders. He has the money and the others do what he tells them.’

  ‘Are they Iranians, too?’

  ‘Ja, I think so.’

  ‘Terrorists?’

  ‘Per’aps.’

  ‘Do you know what his politics are?’

  ‘No. But when you meet him before, you talk with him then. You must know what he is.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. And I told him the circumstances in which we had met. ‘All I know is what the Shah’s police said, that he was a terrorist. That means he was either a Communist or a supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini.’

  ‘Don’t he tell you which, when you are sitting beside his bed in the sick bay on board your ship?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him. The man was in desperate pain. I wasn’t even sure he’d live till we reached Kuwait and got him to a doctor. You don’t cross-examine a man when he is close to death and slipping in and out of a coma.’

  ‘Okay, so you don’t know any more about him than I do.’ He gave a shrug, turning towards the door. ‘We go and feed now.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This ship. You really mean you don’t know its name?’

  ‘Is that important?’

  ‘It’s the Aurora B,’ I said.

  3

  By the time Hals and I entered the officers’ mess-room the big table at the after end had been laid and there was a steward in attendance dressed in white trousers and tunic. The chief engineer was back, sitting beside Rod Selkirk with a beer in front of him, but not talking now. Sadeq wasn’t there, nor was Baldwick. The steward began sounding a gong as the captain went straight to his place at the head of the table. The others followed, and when we were all seated, the steward brought in plates piled with vegetables in a dark sauce. It was a Pakistani dish, the vegetables cold, the sauce curry-powder hot. ‘Jesus! We got ter put oop wi’ this rubbish!’ Fraser’s voice expressed the instinctive disgust of those unaccustomed to Eastern food.

  I ate almost automatically, not talking, my mind still stunned by the knowledge that this was the Aurora B. Saltley wouldn’t believe it. Not that I had any means of contacting him, but if I had, I knew I’d find it difficult to convince him – not only that the tanker was still afloat, but that within a few days of our meeting I was actually dining on board the Aurora B. It didn’t seem possible. And opposite me, only one place further down the table, was the little Welshman who had sunk the Petros Jupiter and was now being employed … I glanced across at him, wondering – employed to do w
hat?

  A terrorist in charge of the voyage and an engineer who was an expert in sabotage! And what was I to do about it? Knowing what I did … I was still looking at the chief engineer as he turned his head. Our eyes met for an instant and it was as though some spark of telepathy passed between us. But then he had turned away, to the man on his left. It was Lebois and he was speaking to him in French.

  He was like a chameleon, French one moment, Welsh the next, and his name was Price. Even Baldwick called him that, though he knew damn well his name had been Choffel for years now. ‘Price!’ he called as he came in with some letters in his hand. Presumably they had come up with us from Dubai in the dhow. ‘A letter for you,’ he said and handed it to him.

  The curried vegetables were followed by a steak and some ugly-looking potatoes. The steak was deep frozen and tough, and for those who refused to face up to the potatoes there was sliced white bread that was already staling in the heat. The only thing that seemed to have maintained its freshness was the array of bottled sauces in the centre of the table. I hoped the dhow had loaded some provisions in Dubai, something more interesting than those shipped at Ras al Khaimah, otherwise I could see tempers getting very frayed. Varsac pushed his plate away, Lebois too. Clearly the French were not going to take to Pakistani cooking.

  Somebody – Hals, I think – wondered jokingly how long scurvy took to develop. We were discussing this, and the length of time hunger-strikers had taken to die of starvation, when I was suddenly conscious of the Welshman staring at me, his steak untouched, the letter open in front of him and a small white square of pasteboard in his hand. It was a photograph. He glanced down at it quickly, then looked across at me again, his eyes wide, the shock of recognition dawning. I knew then that the letter must be from his daughter and the photograph in his hand one of those she had taken in Nantes as I was leaving for the airport. His mouth opened as though to say something, and in that moment he seemed to disintegrate, a nerve twitching at his face, his hand trembling so violently the photograph fell into his plate.