Stella Rimington: Rip Tide

UCSO had two hubs. The key administrative and financial headquarters were in London, as were most of the seventy-odd staff. It was from there that strings were pulled, major donors were smooched and soothed, governments were pressured. Here in Athens fewer than a dozen staff sufficed for assembling and despatching the aid shipments, and that suited Berger. He was not interested in the diplomatic stuff or the administrative problems that came with running a large office.

But it was the process of despatching the aid that had led to this morning’s phone call. An UCSO aid ship, bound for Mombasa on the first leg of an operation to transport aid inland to the Republic of the Congo, had been subject to a hijacking attempt. Thanks to providence, in the form of a French Navy patrol, the attempt had been foiled. But what was agitating Mitchell Berger, as he watched a black-clad woman on the street below haggling over a bag of oranges, was that this was not the first time pirates had struck. Twice before UCSO ships had been attacked, and both times the ships had been successfully hijacked.

The first incident, a year or so before, had initially seemed to be a freakish one-off. It came during a flurry of hijackings of oil tankers off Somalia; these were the richest pickings for pirates, as the multinational oil companies which owned them were usually keen to settle quickly. From UCSO the pirates had originally demanded £1 million, but after apparently recognising that they weren’t dealing with wealthy owners on this occasion, they had eventually settled with the charity’s insurers for half that sum. However, when the ship was returned, the cargo, which had been unusually valuable, had gone.

The second hijacking had come six months later. Again, the ship had been carrying high-value cargo – more than the normal quantity of drugs (morphine, anaesthetic, antibiotics), which would have fetched good money in many markets. Also, lodged in the Captain’s safe, there had been $200,000 in cash, intended for the UCSO people on the ground to use to grease certain palms, and thus ensure that the cargo arrived at its intended destination. Unsavoury but necessary; UCSO was effective precisely because it didn’t let idealism get in the way of practicality.

The ship had been recovered after a month, though this time the ransom demanded had stayed firmly fixed at £1 million. Again most of the cargo had been removed and the bank notes were no longer in the safe.

And now there had been a third attempt. Thank God it had failed, thought Berger, since after the first two, the insurance companies had raised the premium for continued cover to a near-impossible level. UCSO’s donors wanted their money to go straight to helping desperate people in desperate straits, not towards paying premiums to insurance companies in glitzy City offices.

Berger, still standing looking out of the window, was no longer noticing what was going on in the street outside. He was thinking instead about this third attack. Since the last hijacking, six other UCSO shipments had sailed unmolested through the waters off the Horn of Africa, despite an overall increase in the numbers of hijackings in the region. Why had the pirates targeted the Aristides? A Greek-registered merchant ship, which regularly sailed those waters, was surely a far less attractive target than a tanker.

Berger wanted to believe it was pure chance that UCSO had been targeted three times, but his professional experience had taught him to be suspicious of apparent coincidence. Like the two other hijacked UCSO vessels, the Aristides had been carrying an exceptionally valuable cargo. The customary medical supplies were on board, in addition to food, clothing, tents and reconstruction equipment – all the staples of the charity’s aid programme. But also on board was some particularly expensive kit – the equivalent of half a dozen field hospitals – which would allow surgical procedures to be undertaken miles away from the nearest city, ranging from simple amputations to open heart surgery and the complex treatment of burns victims. In addition there were a dozen of the latest all-terrain vehicles, and again the Captain’s safe contained cash – this time gold coins enough to open most of the doors initially closed to the charity workers on the ground. All of this was easily saleable in a way that a cargo of oil was not.

So the pirates would have struck lucky with the Aristides even if UCSO could not raise their ransom. But was it pure coincidence that all three ships that had been attacked were carrying such valuable disposable cargoes? Berger didn’t think so. Hadn’t Goldfinger remarked memorably to James Bond that meeting him once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, but their third encounter constituted enemy action?

Lunchtime was approaching and down on the street the shoppers were beginning to head home, retreating from the mounting heat. In London it would be mid-morning, a good time to call. Berger picked up the receiver and dialled. A secretary answered.

‘Hello, Val,’ he said. ‘Is David there?’

‘Yes, Mr Berger. I’ll just put you through.’

He waited patiently, thinking about the man to whom he was about to speak – David Blakey, head of UCSO and Berger’s boss.

He liked Blakey, an ex-MI6 officer who had carried the professional habits of a lifetime into his new career, although by all accounts he had been around the block a bit. Blakey had the relaxed, confident style and old-fashioned manners which to Berger spoke of an English public school education. Some of his fellow Americans would regard Blakey with scorn – a typical Brit, they’d think, with extravagant, overdone courtesy overlying a snobbish conviction of superiority. But Berger had met other Englishmen cut from the same cloth and he knew better than to underestimate them. He had studied Blakey and observed how his charm and courtesy enabled him, apparently effortlessly, to extract donations from the wealthy – the female variety in particular.

He’d seen too how in dealings with the City, the corporate world and government, another side of Blakey appeared: an analytical intelligence, a command of detail and a fierce determination to succeed. With his staff he was kind and considerate, happy for them to think (especially the younger ones) that they had worked out for themselves what in fact he had taught them, but he showed no tolerance whatsoever towards incompetence or laziness. Blakey’s reputation as a good boss had gone before him round the charity world so that UCSO, unlike many other similar organisations, was able to attract and keep staff of the highest quality.

Blakey’s familiar voice came on the line. ‘Hello, Mitchell. How are things in Athens?’

‘Well, it’s getting hot here, but it’s hotter off the Horn of Africa.’

‘Have we got another problem?’

‘No, thank God, but not for lack of trying. The Aristides was almost boarded early this morning. Fortunately a French patrol boat intervened.’

‘Any casualties?’ Blakey’s voice remained calm, but Berger could sense the tension in his response.

‘None. Though I understand there was some shooting.’

‘The French have never been slow to pull the trigger,’ said Blakey with a laugh. Then, more seriously, ‘Sounds like a close call.’

‘It was.’ And Berger knew they were both thinking how close UCSO had come to disaster. ‘The thing is, David, this is not only the third attack by pirates, but also the third time they’ve picked an especially valuable cargo. Since the last hijacking we’ve had half a dozen shipments go through unmolested – and two of them were on the Aristides. ’

‘Which would suggest they’re not targeting the ship in particular, but specific shipments on her?’

‘Exactly. I’m beginning to wonder if they know all about our cargoes.’ He paused, and the silence hung heavily between them.