Chapter 34
The barman led them to a table in the corner of the bar where it was quieter. A bottle of ouzo was opened, three glasses were poured and topped up with water. The barman kept looking at the hundred dollars as did Yannis.
“Captain Constantinos Christoforou. The Aegean Star. The Captain Stratos,” said Ashby. “What can you tell me about them ?”
The old man's English wasn't good so the barman translated the question in Greek and gave Yannis’s answer :
“Yannis says he knew Christoforou – he didn’t sail on either of those ships himself but he knows men who did.”
“You’re not telling me a story, are you ? To get money out of me ? If you are, I’ll go to the police.”
“It is the truth – ask Yannis – he will tell you what you want to know.”
Ashby told them about the sinking of the Aegean Star and the Marine Board of Enquiry.
“The second mate said that Christoforou had scuttled his ship. I want to find out if the mate was telling the truth.”
“Not a problem – Yannis says he knows him because the Enquiry was talked about in the port – and he knows where to find him.”
Once again, Ashby was uncertain if they were leading him on. He was in a rough part of town, they might take him somewhere, beat him up, rob him and leave him for dead. The risk might be offset if payment was made after they’d seen the mate.
Yannis said there wasn’t much work on ships at that time and plenty of seamen were unemployed. The second mate of the Aegean Star didn’t have a ship. When Ashby mentioned the thousand dollars, Yannis told him the address where the mate could be found.
Apparently, the place where they had to go was on the other side of the harbour. The mate lived in a ramshackle, old hut. Because of the downturn in the shipping trade, he probably needed money like all the other seafarers who hung around the port.
If its Captain had sunk the Aegean Star, Ashby wanted to know what the same man had done on the Captain Stratos, off the coast of Portugal. If what the mate alleged was true, a similar fate might have befallen both ships.
As it was late, he told the barman (whose name was Nikos) that he would return to his hotel. Ashby gave him his card and wrote the telephone number of his hotel room on the back. Yannis was to set up a meeting with the mate the following day. Although he hadn't planned on staying in Athens any longer, if he could discover what had happened to the Aegean Star and the role Christoforou played, he would wait until Monday. The government offices would then be open and he could confront the Star’s owners and get them to tell him all about Christoforou.
Before he left Piraeus, Ashby said “Alright, I’m trusting you. Here’s the hundred. If I find what I’m looking for, there’ll be a lot more money for you both – but – I have to have the proof I need to take back to London.”
The next morning after a breakfast of dried out breadsticks and thick, black Greek coffee, the barman rang him to say that they would meet the mate at lunchtime. A few hours later, Ashby was back at the taverna and then all three of them took a taxi to the far side of the harbour and the loading terminal.
The taxi dropped them in a deserted area. An occasional hut or cabin was dotted around the peninsula. At one of these, Yannis knocked on a panel which was the door and a man emerged from inside : he was hunched over with a sore back, had the seafarer’s three-day growth, unkempt black hair and was wearing the clothes he’d slept in.
There was an exchange of words between Yannis, the barman and the man who was supposed to be the mate. Glances were thrown in Ashby’s direction, then the man set up a small fire at the front of the hut and began to brew some coffee. Everyone except Ashby lit up cigarettes and when the coffee was ready, they were given crates to sit on.
The man then turned to Ashby and asked in English : “You interested in Aegean Star ?”
“Yes. Were you the second mate before it sank in 1979 ?”
“You pay for information ?”
Ashby said he’d been through that with Yannis. Nikos the barman quickly interceded in Greek to assure the mate that money was on offer.
The man seemed satisfied with this. Yes, he had been the second mate. As proof of this, he produced his marine ticket. As it was in Greek, Ashby couldn't discern either way whether he was being told the truth (although the barman vouched that it was a second mate’s ticket).
He asked the man about the ship’s owners, the type of cargo it was carrying, the route that it was taking when it sank, the condition of the ship and what his duties were as second mate.
From what Meredith had told him about the Aegean Star, the man knew who the owners were, right enough. No, there wasn’t any cargo on the return run (the ship had taken a short single load to Cyprus from Piraeus). He knew where the shipping office was – the same place visited by Ashby the previous day. He’d collected his wages there. He also gave a description of Christoforou together with further information about the Captain’s background and experience and about the condition of the Aegean Star at the time. From the limited information which Ashby had, all of it corresponded with what he’d heard from Meredith. It also fitted with Yannis’s knowledge of Christoforou and the ship.
He asked the mate what had happened on the Star’s last voyage.
At first, the mate hesitated before going any further. Another exchange in Greek took place between the barman and the mate in which the latter said he wanted most of the thousand dollars offered by Ashby. The barman scoffed derisively : they could sort that out later ; the mate had to get on with it and tell them what had happened.
“Ok, I tell you – but you must swear you do not tell anyone. Ok. So – in Nicosia – our crew wait in bar to join our ship, Aegean Star to go to Piraeus – Christoforou comes to us, he is drunk. He buys us ouzo. He points to door and says to first mate and me ‘Outside’. He ask us if we want make some money – v e r y easy. We say you betcha, Captain. What we have to do ? The Captain – he says owners of Aegean Star want quick money. Aegean Star – she very, very old ship, just good for scrap, she almost sinking now – so, we help her. No-one knows what happens – impossible to discover – he will fix it, no problem. We say we do it. First mate and me – we tell crew. They say they don't care – we all want money for our families. Captain says ‘Leave off ship’s hatch covers, stop pumps and hit rusty bulkhead, at front of bow, make a leak, then ship down she goes, we get time to get away in boats. We send distress signal and get picked up by nearest ship. Everyone knows what to do. So. We leave Nicosia. Next day, Captain says ok, we do it here. Soon, ship gets heavy at bow with water pour in – then she dip, bow first. We take two lifeboats, send help signals and in one hour – ship is gone. Aegean Star no cargo, back from Nicosia to Piraeus, we picked up, all tell same story – we say ship sank after hitting something in water, maybe a wreck – hole opened up in bow – we not able save her. Big shame but ship very old.”
The mate described how the Captain had arranged for payments to be made to the crew, two weeks after they came ashore in Athens. All of them met him outside the city when he was supposed to pay them off. Initially, he’d told them they would each receive a thousand US dollars on top of their wages which, at the time, was a lot of money for sailors. When the time for the payout arrived, he only gave them five hundred dollars, not the thousand which had been promised. This angered the mate that Christoforou had gone back on his word : it was obvious he’d kept half of the crew’s share for himself.
The mate said that he’d been so furious about it, he’d gone to the Marine Board to tell them only part of the truth of what had happened. When Christoforou and the owners heard what he’d done, the Captain eventually backed down and gave them all the remaining five hundred each which had been promised. After the payment was made, the mate was told in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut or he would suffer the consequences. When the surveyor from the Board of Enquiry asked him to tell them everything about how the ship sank, he refused and the Enq
uiry was later terminated. Before that happened, the Board summoned Christoforou to answer a lot of questions. In the end, his master’s ticket was reinstated and the whole thing fizzled out.
The mate said he hadn’t seen Christoforou since then but had heard that a second ship commanded by him had also gone down and that had made him laugh – the Captain was up to his old tricks and trying it on again.
Ashby asked him if he knew anything further about the other ship or if he knew anyone with any information about it. Was he willing to make a statement or even go to London to tell the court the truth ? To this, the mate refused point blank and said that he didn't want any more trouble but as he needed the money, he’d been willing to speak about it to Ashby alone and to no-one else.
Ashby took out the thousand dollars and waved it at them. “This is for you all. If you can find out anything – anything at all about the Captain Stratos there will be lots more for you.”
At this, a heated dispute broke out between the mate and Yannis who were shouting at each other in Greek. Both of them were on the point of pulling out knives. The mate tried to punch old Yannis but the barman pushed the mate away and he fell onto the ground. Yannis said something unintelligible to the barman who called to Ashby who was on the point of leaving.
“Mister, one moment....we want to ask...”
“Yes ?”
The mate was yelling at the others in Greek. At the same time, he was shouting to Ashby in English, “No, you go now. Go away or is trouble.”
In between the barman and Yannis shouting back at the mate, the barman said, “If we find out about Captain Stratos, how much ?”
The mate had by this time gotten up from the ground to tackle the barman who landed an uppercut to the other’s chin and then kicked him in the side.
“He’s nothing, he’s just rubbish. Don’t worry about him.”
Ashby looked at the mate writhing on the ground.
“You want to know how much – well, it depends on how good the information is. If it helps us a bit, it could be a few thousand. If it helps us a lot, it could be a very big reward – maybe fifty thousand dollars, maybe more. And here’s the thousand – you can sort it out with the others.”
The barman’s eyes lit up, he smacked his lips and took Yannis to one side where they whispered so that the mate wouldn’t hear them. Then the barman said to Ashby : “We must speak alone. I will come to your hotel at six o’clock this evening, yes ? ”
Then he indicated to Ashby the direction to the nearest highway where he could flag down a taxi and said “Six tonight. We will talk then,” and motioned to Yannis to help him pick up the mate off the ground.
On the way back to his hotel, it seemed likely to Ashby that his father was right : Christoforou, the master of the Captain Stratos, was a fraudster and a criminal, having scuttled his previous ship, the Aegean Star. He wouldn’t have done this alone ; the ship’s owners would have profited from the policy on the hull. But did he also scuttle the Captain Stratos ? Nikos the barman had asked for a meeting. Someone, somewhere in Piraeus knew what had gone on. The probability of this being true, had narrowed the odds from twenties down to two to one.
Plantation A Legal Thriller Page 34