Plantation A Legal Thriller

by J M S Macfarlane

  Chapter 88

  It seemed to Ashby that the fax for Christoforou’s hotel booking in Lagos was likely to have originated from Hellas Global in Athens however that remained to be proved.

  Later that afternoon, he rang Stefanides. He told him he’d discovered that Christoforou had been in Lagos at the end of March 1980. Someone in Athens had booked his hotel for him. Their identity, for the present remained unknown. This was for Stefanides to uncover and should be an easy task for him.

  Next, Ashby spoke with Simon Wells to bring him up to date with events in Athens and Lagos. The way in which Hellas Global had conspired with Christoforou to sink the Stratos was becoming clearer. Yet, there was still a long way to go : the entire scheme needed to be uncovered if the twenty million pounds was to be out of reach of the fraudsters.

  Ashby told Wells that he needed information on the three ships in port in the week of Chistoforou’s arrival : the Viking Trader, the Marseillaise and the Western Constellation.

  As it was still mid-day in London, Wells said he’d ring back in two hours. Fortunately, the information was virtually at his fingertips : as with all ‘mariners’ (the underwriters handling marine business), he had a small library on the subject – directories, handbooks and guides for ships and their histories, owners, agents, brokers, surveyors, charterers, freight forwarders, stevedores and the like.

  For over a solid hour, he checked and cross-checked each of the maritime reference works and phoned Meredith and the LRE for anything he thought was missing. When he’d covered every entry for each of the three ships in the manuals, he rang Ashby back.

  “Right, this is what I have. The Viking Trader is a dry carrier built in Japan in 1969. It’s owned by the Norske-Nord Line of Oslo and freights goods between southern Africa and northern Europe. It’s one of twelve ships in the Norske fleet and mainly works out of Hamburg, Rotterdam and Le Havre. Its risk record is good, no major incidents in the past five years, it’s flagged as a Panamanian company but the ultimate owners are Norwegian. Nothing remarkable about them. Survey rating is A1.”

  “Doesn’t sound controversial,” said Ashby. “Still, they might have picked up Christoforou somewhere along the African coast. Who knows ? What about the next one ?”

  “The Marseillaise as the name implies is a carrier owned by the MedMarchant line of Le Havre and Lyon and was built in Italy in 1948. MedMarchant are a French nominee company with the parent company based offshore in the Bahamas. There are sister companies in the group in Spain and Greece. The LRE Register said that the Marseillaise had been laid up in Sierra Leone and was sold by MedMarchant to a Liberian company. The Marseillaise transports cargo from around Europe and the Mediterranean to anywhere in Africa. There have been some incidents in the past, one or two minor collisions and accidents. Four re-fittings in the past five years.”

  “Could you find out more about MedMarchant and its parent company – company searches would probably take weeks. See if the brokers know anything about them. Who are the present owners ?”

  “A Liberian company called Benin Maritime Services. They should be easy to trace through the brokers too.”

  “How about the third one ?”

  “Western Constellation is a container ship operating out of Rotterdam, owned by a Panamanian company, Themis Maritima SA with the holding company, Themis Aegina based in Piraeus, Athens. She was built in Japan in 1964 and was converted to carry containers in the mid seventies. In addition to containers, she also carries mixed freight between European and Mediterranean ports, mostly to western and southern African countries. She has a moderately good risk record with a few incidents during the past ten years and has had two major re-fittings. Themis Aegina is represented in Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Namibia.

  “There’s a Nigerian connection – can you find out who they are and we’ll have a word with them here,” said Ashby. “To sum up, two of the shipping lines have Greek connections and one has a Nigerian agent.”

  Wells said it would take him another hour to speak with the brokers. After more floor-pacing by Ashby in Lagos and within the space of an iced Guinness to cool him down, Guinness being the local preferred beverage, the ‘phone in his hotel room rang again.

  “For the Marseillaise, the brokers say that they haven’t come across MedMarchant – which I have to say is unusual – and that it must be quite a new company. There’s also nothing available from the brokers about the parent company in the Bahamas which is also unusual. The new owners, Benin Maritime Services are based in Lagos. Also, the agent for the Western Constellation is in Lagos,” And he gave Ashby both addresses.

  “There’s no news of the movements of the Marseillaise which is also unusual. The Western Constellation has been in its home port of Rotterdam for the past week.”

  Within the hour, Ashby was at the office of the Nigerian representative for Themis Maritima who looked after the company’s business when the Western Constellation docked in Lagos. A ten minute conversation was enough for him to know that Themis and its ship had no connection with Hellas Global or Christoforou. The Constellation carried completely different types of cargo, serviced container ports and had endless certifications from the LRE and the local shipping surveyors.

  That left Benin Maritime Services. Mzenga, the adjuster was busy searching for anything he could turn up about them as he’d never previously heard of them. On a map, he showed Ashby the location of Benin Maritime’s office which was near the harbour.

  On arriving there, Ashby entered a decrepit, run-down building and reached the third floor out of breath as there was no lift. At the time, no-one was in so he decided to wait in the corridor. Over an hour later, someone appeared.

  As the occupant of the office was unlocking his door, Ashby approached him and asked “Benin Maritime Services ?”

  “Mmm ?” came the uncertain reply.

  “May I have a quick word with you ?”

  “Yes ?” said the man, immediately recognising Ashby as a busybody.

  “Your company is the owner of the freighter, Marseillaise ?”

  At the mention of the ship, the man merely smiled and looking directly at his inquisitor, asked “Who are you and what do you want ?” while taking his key out of the door, not moving from the corridor and staring up at Ashby who was slightly taller than him. He was a Yoruba from the south of Nigeria and wore a white business shirt, grey jacket and a straw hat. His face betrayed a playful arrogance, as if Ashby was a fool and deserved to be treated as one.

  “I understand you know Captain Christoforou ?”

  At this, the man broke into a gut-wrenching laugh and said with a crazed smile, “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of him. And now, I’m very busy – if you will excuse me.”

  Ashby decided to play his last card and said “We don’t want to call in the police unless we have to, Mr...... ?” as he waited for the man to introduce himself but instead was met with silence.

  The man’s tone then changed to a mixture of irritation and amusement.

  “I’ve told you, whoever you are, that I don’t know anything. I don’t like threats so my advice to you is just to go away and don’t bother me again,” whereupon the door was slammed in Ashby’s face.

  The rebuff was hardly subtle. The message was that Benin Maritime would ignore any further enquiries and was steadfastly unco-operative. Plainly, they had something to hide. This made Ashby all the more determined to find out what it was.

  On returning to his hotel, he found Mzenga waiting for him.

  “From the look on your face, Mr Ashby, you’ve had no luck. But nil desperandum. I may have been more fortunate than you.”

  “A student of Horace. So, tell me, what have you found ?”

  “I think we can forget the Viking Trader and the Western Constellation. My view is that the Marseillaise is the odd one out. This afternoon, I did a company search. Benin Maritime isn’t even registered as a company. The owner of the building where they have their office said that he
deals with a certain Akuwe Kikuna. He’s mentioned on some of the bills of lading and port tax forms for the Marseillaise when she’s docked in Lagos. Kikuna is known to the police here but is very slippery – and not just in Nigeria but in several other countries including Ghana and Sierra Leone.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. It was probably Kikuna who I saw at their office this afternoon. He laughed when I mentioned Christoforou.”

  “We contacted several of our offices in west Africa about each of these ships. Our Freetown office said that the Marseillaise left there yesterday and is headed for Cape Town, to arrive the day after tomorrow for a quick turn-around of twelve hours.”

  “That’s interesting. I’d like to take a look over her if possible.”

  “We also spoke to a few of our contacts in the port and around the docks to see whether anyone remembered the Greek Captain. The photograph you gave us helped. We spoke to a customs officer who said he remembered a Greek man similar to the man in the photo. He wasn’t certain it was the same man but it looked a lot like him. He remembered this particular Greek because he’d argued with him about payment of local taxes when his ship docked. The customs man said he’d been surprised that a ship’s master disputed paying port taxes.”

  “When was this ?”

  “It wasn’t when the Marseillaise was here. The customs man looked up his records and said it was in May 1979. We asked him whether the same Greek captain had arrived on the Marseillaise. His records showed it was a different ship – the Provincial.”