Sea of Gold

by Nick Elliott

  And why no surface wreckage? Muldijk’s salvage firm had spent days prior to the Geo Venturer’s departure from Singapore defining the search area using the Astro Maria’s distress alert as a starting point and factoring in drift through current and wind conditions. And once past the Sunda Strait, the Super Puma had flown regular zig-zag sorties from the ship searching for surface debris; all this in addition to previous searches by the Australian and Indonesian search and rescue services. Nothing.

  The Australian helicopter pilot, who, I noticed, along with the ship’s officers, was holding his hand over his wine glass every time the bottle went round the table, leaned forward: ‘Don’t underestimate how hard it is to find a small floating object in the middle of the sea my friends. You’re talking needles and haystacks.’

  The speculation went on but the jet-lag was catching up with me. I left them to it and went to bed, hoping for a dreamless sleep.

  ***

  In fact it took just six days before the deep-tow sonar system found what we were looking for. When word spread we gathered in the ship’s office to watch the slave display monitors.

  What we were seeing was a playback of what the operators had seen minutes earlier. At first, when the sonar data appeared on the screens as eerie green images, all that was visible was a scattering of what might or might not have been debris strewn across the seabed.

  Then, as the scan moved to the west of the debris, two darker, well-defined forms emerged and the detached voice of Danny, the senior operator, came over the PA: ‘That’s it,’ he said softly. The two distinct shapes that had emerged showed what could only be a ship’s hull broken in half, with scatterings of debris either side.

  There was a collective murmur as we peered at the images, but no one spoke. A sense of awe pervaded the room as we took in what was appearing before us. There was no doubting what it was. It only remained to identify her as the Astro Maria and reveal what secrets she was hiding, and for that the ROVs with their HD cameras, saws, manipulators and various other gadgets, had to go down.

  So just a week after I’d joined the ship, Drake 15, one of the Geo Venturer’s W-ROVs, the size of a small car, was launched by crane over the ship’s side. Two little eyeball ROVs equipped with lights and cameras, had already begun their descent. These would hover around the site while Drake 15 with thrusters at full power to counter her positive buoyancy, would fly down onto the wreck itself.

  Or so we thought, until the weather decided otherwise.

  CHAPTER 17

  The north-west monsoon season had sprung up from nowhere and would last through until May. The day would start with a bank of cloud moving across the horizon from the north bringing frequent downpours. As the hours passed, gale-force winds would blow up. The wind and rain squalls would come and go but the heavy swell that had developed rolled the ship ceaselessly and a sense of unease settled over those aboard her.

  We’d been warned that operations might be disrupted. The concern was over the umbilical cord of Drake 15, the big work-grade ROV which carried a complex bundle of control cables and fibre optics. The decision was made to bring her up to the surface and back on board.

  ‘The whole assembly is bloody heavy,’ explained Danny, the Australian ROV pilot. ‘It can get dragged back and forth in a storm and decouple before you know it if this pitching and rolling becomes any worse. Couple of years back we were on the edge of a typhoon in the South China Sea and lost the dynamic positioning lock in a storm surge. The ROV disappeared and we were totally screwed in a very short time.’

  No one was going to argue but it was frustrating. With Drake 15 back out of the water and the operation suspended, nerves began to fray. Meal-times became tense affairs with arguments breaking out over everything from the food we were served, which was excellent, to why the helicopter was late. It was the bad weather of course but there were those who were determined to blame the pilot. With the ship corkscrewing but locked into a fixed position by its dynamic positioning system, some became seasick, which irritated those who weren’t affected.

  People hung around in disparate groups. Some spent time in the gym, others in the bar. I kept busy sending reports to Michael Kyriakou and trying to keep up to date with my caseload by email. Zoe was asking what the weather was like and could she leave the office early on Friday, again.

  On the third day of the bad weather I went along to the mess for a drink before dinner. There were half a dozen others there including Sidney Waterson, the lawyer from the Astro Maria’s P&I Club. He was sitting at the bar and looked like he’d been there all day.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here anyway, McKinnon?’

  ‘Just came in for a beer, Sidney,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ His voice was slurred and his face red. ‘You’ve barged your way onto this case when you knew full well your two-bit Caledonian fucking Mutual had nothing to do with it. You should learn to keep your nose out of other people’s business.’

  I ordered my beer from the Filipino steward behind the bar.

  ‘Cheer up Sidney, it’s happy hour.’ I said, keeping my tone light. ‘Anyway, you know I was brought in by the owners to investigate the casualty independently. I’m not working for the CMM on this one.’

  He wouldn’t back off. He was drunk and resentful. ‘You know damn well this is a P&I matter. You’ve no right to be here.’

  He was swaying on his stool. The bar had fallen silent as people sensed a row brewing. I took a sip of my beer and turned to talk to Mike Horrocks, the explosives man. But Sidney Waterson wasn’t finished.

  ‘Anyway, what’s Kyriakou paying you? You’re in his pocket, aren’t you?’

  ‘Listen Sidney,’ I said moving towards him. ‘If you’d bothered to do your job properly, if you’d made any attempt to get off your fat arse and understand this owner, or any Greek owner for that matter – the importance of family, their ethos, how personally they take their business – if you’d taken a more sympathetic approach instead of simply reminding them of the limitations of their cover, then I wouldn’t need to be here.’ I was getting into the swing of it now.

  ‘If you’d shown one grain of interest in the who, the why, the how of this case, if you’d done any of these things, then the owner might have trusted you to accomplish something useful for him. But you didn’t. Instead you’re sitting drunk on a bar stool contributing nothing. Your Club doesn’t deserve to keep the Kyriakou account.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ he muttered into his beer.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard me, you arrogant prick. You think you can play by your own rules, that’s your problem.’

  Sidney didn’t offer much resistance when I pulled him off his bar stool and frogmarched him out onto deck. The drink had made him feeble. Outside the monsoon rain was coming at us horizontally, the ship twisting and turning in the confused sea state.

  ‘Go back to your cabin and sober up,’ I said, then as an afterthought, ‘Tell me Sidney, what’s your theory on this case? Who do you reckon’s behind it all?’

  He was lurching around, struggling to keep his balance on the slippery, plunging deck. I grabbed hold of him to stop him falling.

  ‘I don’t trust anyone in this case. Least of all you and your tin-pot CMM.’

  ‘Come on, Sidney. What are you on about? We’re no threat to you. What’s your problem with the CMM?’

  ‘It’s just what I hear. Not the claims side, but your underwriting department are a chancy lot.’

  ‘So what would that have to do with this case?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘Your underwriters are a high-handed bunch is what I’m saying.’ And with that he proceeded to vomit over himself. I stepped back to avoid the splatter but still got half his lunch over my shoes.

  I escorted him to his cabin. He became remorseful, the way some drunks do. ‘I’m such an idiot when I drink. I’m sorry, mate
. Will you apologise for me to the others?’

  I thought that was a bit rich, but after I’d cleaned up my shoes and helped him out of his clothes I went back to the bar and told them Sidney was sorry.

  The little drama had attracted attention.

  ‘That was well said, Angus,’ Stephen Barclay declared. He was a bit drunk himself and his shaved head was shining with sweat. It was the first time we’d really spoken since I’d arrived onboard. ‘Old Sidney’s had one too many I’m afraid, but no need for him to start off on you. We need all the help we can get to solve this riddle.’

  ‘What’s your own theory then, Stephen?’

  ‘Dunno. The ship was in class – 100A1 as our friends would say – so nothing to do with me really. Just along for the ride.’

  ‘Did Kershope tell you to come?’

  He looked at me. ‘His Lordship? Our masters move in mysterious ways, eh Angus? No actually, just suggested.’

  ***

  Two days later we awoke to bright skies and a calmer sea. Drake 15 was already back in the water and on her journey down to the deep by the time I came out on deck.

  She finally reached the wreck, which at four thousand seven hundred metres lay almost three miles down, on the following day. A few of us – Charles Harrison, Stephen Barclay, Yvonne Grey from Coreminex, Mike Horrocks, Wil Muldijk and myself – were allowed into the control room and told to keep quiet and stand well back from the ROV pilots and their monitors.

  We were there for several hours, watching as the video footage came through. The after part of the ship was more or less intact and had settled into the mud, listing slightly to one side. The forward part had been more severely damaged and it looked as if most of the debris had flown off from here. After a couple of runs along the length of the wreck, Drake 15 was flown into the space between where the two halves of the hull had separated. The two eyeballs were positioned above and either side to improve the lighting of the scene. Slowly the cameras travelled up and down the fracture lines of the ship’s deck and shell plating.

  Then, as if in a well-rehearsed drama, and as the camera traversed her starboard bow, the ship’s name, white against the black hull, appeared clearly, despite the opaque waters.

  Drake 15’s next job was to cut away small pieces of bent and fractured steel, bringing them to the surface in her basket for later metallurgic analysis. Meanwhile, her sister craft, imaginatively named Drake 16, would fly down and commence a lengthy search of the wreck in way of the fracture lines.

  Mike Horrocks was keen to pursue this next stage of the investigation. ‘It should tell us whether the explosions were detonated by a timing device on board or by someone pressing a button from a remote location - another ship or an aircraft, or,’ he added speculatively, ‘even a crewmember who had left the ship earlier?’

  By the following evening Mike had seen enough to give us all his tentative verdict, couched in the usual caveats, as to the explosion itself, if not what or who had triggered it. We were gathered in the ship’s office like a bunch of eager school kids while he stood by one of the whiteboards armed with different-coloured marker pens.

  ‘From what we’ve seen from the videos I’d guess it was a twin series of controlled explosions expertly set to cut through the hull and deck plating, then through the ship’s beams. So this is the scenario I’m picturing.’ He turned to the whiteboard and started drawing neat little diagrams as he spoke. ‘They probably laid detonating cords with explosive fill running down the middle. That would detonate at seven and a half thousand metres per second. It’s ideal for setting off multiple charges to get an almost instantaneous detonation.

  ‘And by placing shaped charges into the explosive it would direct and concentrate the blast. You create a distance between it and the target and it will cut through the steel like a knife through butter. The space allows a jet to form and cut through the target. It would hit it at three or four million pounds per square inch. So the cords and detonators would have been laid in precise patterns, blasting holes in the deck plates to expose the steel beams beneath.’

  He paused turning to face us. ‘I know it’s technical but you’re getting the idea, right? Stay with me.’

  A few of us nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Then,’ he continued, ‘in the second phase, large punching charges of plastic explosives would have gone off, with a central mound of explosive being detonated milliseconds later. The punch would have blown the plates clean away. Then they’d have used V-shaped charges to slice through the beams. By then all integrity would have been lost. She might have been held together by shreds but she’d be heading down within seconds.’

  He paused again looking around at us. ‘This was an elaborate and expert job, believe me: a surgical operation. And whoever did it wanted to make very sure indeed that no one lived to tell the tale. They could have got the same result using much less force, but this way the end would come fast.’

  He delivered all this in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. I found it hard to follow but none of us was left unmoved when visualising the end. It had been a catastrophic event all right, but at least it had been quick.

  We returned to the bar, everyone talking at once, discussing the implications of what Horrocks had said. Yvonne Grey touched my arm. ‘Can I see you for a minute?’

  CHAPTER 18

  We went outside to the foredeck where it was secluded and perched in the shade of the helideck.

  ‘I don’t want to mention this to the others,’ she began, then hesitated.

  She was in her late thirties, tall and tanned with short blonde hair. She had the athletic look common to people from her part of the world who could take advantage of the climate to pursue a healthy lifestyle. Her manner was earnest. She was taking this job seriously and clearly cared that eighteen men had lost their lives as a result of someone blowing up her cargo.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Well, someone we couldn’t fully account for came on board during loading in Durban.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know what it’s like. There are all sorts milling around. This guy was a white – elderly. He produced a business card saying he was a surveyor acting for the flotation production line’s manufacturer – the jaw crusher, ball mill, classifier, the magnetic separator – that kind of stuff.

  ‘He said because it was all under warranty he needed to check it was correctly stowed and secured for the voyage.’

  ‘I thought all this kit was second-hand, from one of your South African operations.’

  ‘It was. But some was still under warranty. That’s not unusual.’

  ‘Do you have his card?’

  She dug it out from her bag. It gave the name David Tully.

  ‘Anything else about his description?’

  ‘No. Only that he seemed on familiar terms with the stevedores and the tally clerks. And that he took a lot of photos. Our cargo superintendent wasn’t suspicious but he just mentioned it to me at our post-shipment meeting. The equipment was all legitimate and manifested so we didn’t discuss it further, but I remember now that Ken, our man, said this guy was on board for some hours and insisted some of the crates were stowed in the wings of the tween-decks under the hatch coamings in holds three and four, which seemed fair enough but hardly necessary. I just put it down to him being particular so didn’t think anything more about it. Until now.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. Oh, Ken said the guy mentioned he’d been working on the east coast of Africa for years. That was about it.’

  It was all too much of a coincidence. David Tully had to be Derek Timson. He’d been working the African coast for the last thirty years of his career.

  ‘Come to my cabin,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  ‘Not your etchings?’ She looked at me dubiously.

  ‘Actually, something like that.’

  Once in the cool of the little cabin I pulled up Timson’s photos on my laptop.

  ‘Whe
re the hell did you get these?’ Yvonne was looking intently at the images of the cargo.

  ‘I stole them from a dead man’s apartment in the south of England,’ I confessed. ‘I’m telling you this because he was your David Tully, aka Derek Timson and, for reasons that baffle me, he either rigged the explosives that blew up the ship, or at least ensured the crates containing the charges were stowed in exactly the right position to ensure the ship was blown in two. That to me is the more likely scenario. Timson wasn’t an explosives expert and Horrocks is convinced it was a professional job. But we can’t ask him because the last time I saw him he was stuffed into a rubbish bin outside his flat. He’d been murdered.’

  Her tan seemed to fade. ‘God, I find all this so frightening, Angus. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. We don’t actually have to do anything other than pass this on to Harrison. After all, it’ll be the flag state that initiates any criminal investigation. But whilst Nawihiki might be a reputable ships’ register, they’re limited in terms of their investigative resources, never mind the question of their jurisdiction in a case as complex as this.’

  I hesitated. How much should I tell her of my suspicions and theories? She answered the question for me.

  ‘As I see it there are two parties at the heart of this: Coreminex and Kyriakou. And they’re both sitting here on this couch. My brief is to take whatever measures I think necessary to determine what happened to our cargo and who is responsible for its loss. I’m to work with our insurers but I’m not answerable to them. As I understand it, your brief is similar with regard to the ship.’

  She was right. The others on board, or most of them, all had legitimate reasons to be there and pursue their own lines of enquiry, but at the heart of it all were the owner and the charterer, which translated as myself and Yvonne.