Hammond Innes - The Black Tide

‘Yes, of course. I’ve still got the typescript, by the way. But what I was trying to say — I was like somebody who’s been carnivorous all her life and is suddenly faced with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. It’s so totally different. That’s what I meant by new dimension. Do you understand?’

I nodded, not sure whether I did or not. No man likes to be faced with an attractive girl making a statement of rejection, and certainly not in the dawn with the sun coming up and the sea and the sky and the land ahead all bright with the hopes of a new day. ‘Forget it,’ I said again. ‘You’ve no cause to reproach yourself. I’ll keep the letter under my pillow.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘And when I’m feeling particularly low …’ Saltley’s head appeared in the hatch and she took her hand away.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘I knew you’d understand.’ And she jumped to her feet. ‘Two eggs for the helm?’ she asked brightly. ‘Our last breakfast and everything so lovely. Two eggs and four rashers.’ She nodded and disappeared below to the galley. Saltley stared at me a moment, then his head disappeared and I was alone again, my thoughts no longer on the book, but on Karen and what I had lost. The future looked somehow bleaker, the feeling of separation from the others more intense.

It was shortly after noon when we turned the end of Funchal breakwater, lowering sail as we motored to a berth alongside a Portuguese tug. I had been to Madeira only once before, tramping in an old Liberty ship, and then the long dusty breakwater had been almost empty. Now it was crowded, for there was some sort of NATO exercise on with warships of half a dozen nations lying alongside and US off-duty sailors already at baseball practice among the cranes and stacked containers.

Saltley didn’t wait for Customs and Immigration. At the end of the jetty, beyond a complex huddle of masts and radar, with Canadian and Dutch flags fluttering in the breeze, there was a missile destroyer flying the White Ensign. Neatly dressed in his shore-going rig of reefer, blue trousers and peaked cap, he crossed the tug and was lost immediately among the stevedores working two Panamanian-registered cargo ships. He had a long walk, for the tug to which we

had moored was only about a third of the way along the jetty, just astern of a Portuguese submarine and only a few yards beyond the fort, its stone wall rising sheer out of the rock on which it was built.

Nobody seemed interested in our arrival and we sat on deck in the sunshine, drinking beer and watching the kaleidoscope of tourist colour across the harbour, where crowded streets climbed steeply up from the waterfront with slender ribbons of roads disappearing in hairpin bends a thousand feet above houses smothered in bougainvillaea. I could see the twin towers of Monte and the Crater’s cobbled way dropping sheer into the town, and to the west the massed array of big hotels culminated in a promontory with Reid’s red roofs and hanging gardens dropping to the sea.

It was the medical officer who arrived first, just after we had finished a very late lunch. He was still in the saloon improving his English over a Scotch when Saltley returned. He had contacted Lloyd’s and reported the two GODCO tankers still afloat, but under different names. Fortified by Navy hospitality, he had then waited for Lloyd’s to contact the authorities and check with their Intelligence Services for any listing of the Shah Mohammed and the Ghazan Khan. It had been almost an hour before he had the information he wanted. Both tankers had recently been acquired by an Iraqi company with offices in Tripoli and both had been registered in Iraq on January 16, port of registry Basra. As far as could be ascertained from a quick check Lloyd’s had no information as

to their present whereabouts, possible destination, or nature of cargo, if any. ‘And the authorities show no inclination to get Britain involved,’ Saltley added as Pamela sat him down to a plate of tinned ham and egg mayonnaise.

It was late afternoon before we were cleared and by then the destroyer’s Captain was on board with a Rear-Admiral Blaize, who was in charge of the NATO exercise, a small man with rimless glasses, his face egg-shaped and very smooth so that he had a cold hostile look until he laughed, which he did quite often. Saltley’s suggestion that the tankers be stopped and searched if they entered the English Channel had been rejected. ‘The Navy is not empowered,’ the Admiral said, ‘to take that sort of action on the high seas in peacetime. I can tell you this, however. In view of the fact that Mr Rodin is on board here with you, and the public interest that was aroused by certain statements he made before leaving the country, MoD are passing the information you’ve given on to the Foreign Secretary, copy to the Department of Trade. I imagine the Marine Division of the DoT will be keeping watch on the situation through HM Coastguards. Oh, and a personal request from the Second Sea Lord. I think you said he’s a sailing friend of yours.’

‘I’ve met him several times,’ Saltley said.

‘He asked me to say he thinks it important you return to London as soon as possible and bring Rodin with you. I’m having one of my officers check now and make provisional reservations on the first flight

out, whether it’s to Gatwick, Heathrow or Manchester. That all right with you?’

Saltley nodded and the Admiral relaxed, leaning back against the pilot berth. ‘Now perhaps I can have the whole story first hand.’ His eyes fastened on me. ‘I think perhaps if you would run over very briefly your side of it, the events that led to all of you setting off for a doubtful rendezvous in the Selvagen Islands.’ He laughed. ‘Wish they’d given me authority to mount a search. It would have been good practice for the motley crowd I’m commanding at the moment.’ He laughed again, then stopped abruptly, sipping his pink gin and waiting for me to begin.

It was the first of a number of times I would be called upon to repeat my story in the next few days. And when Saltley had finished describing the meeting of the tankers and how they had nearly run us down in the dark, the Admiral said, ‘I think what I would do in the circumstances is keep a very close watch on them after they enter the Channel and alert other nations of our suspicions. As soon as they enter territorial waters, then it’s up to the nation concerned to take whatever action is considered appropriate.’

‘Will you be advising the MoD to that effect?’ Saltley asked.

‘I’ll be making a report, certainly.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked, Admiral.’ Saltley was leaning across the table, his voice urgent. ‘At twenty knots the Western Approaches are only three days’ steaming from where we last saw them, just west of Selvagem Grande. This time tomorrow they could be

into the Channel. They could be into Le Havre, Southampton, Portsmouth even, by first light the following morning. That’s how urgent it is.’ And he added, ‘If it were Brest now…’

There was a tap on the doghouse roof and a naval lieutenant peered down through the hatch to say there was only one seat vacant on the first plane out in the morning, which was a TAP scheduled flight via Lisbon. He had booked that and also a seat on a tourist charter plane to Gatwick later in the day.

‘No flights tonight?’ Saltley asked.

‘None, sir. The next flight out is the one to Lisbon.’ And he went on to tell us that the captain of the Portuguese tug had to meet a freighter coming in and required us to shift our berth immediately.

We did this as soon as the Admiral had left, moving our warps to the submarine, which now had a queue of Portuguese sightseers entering by the for’ard hatch and coming out at the stern, some of the bulkier ladies severely testing the serious demeanour of the sailors detailed to assist them. As soon as we were tied up, Saltley and I packed our bags and we all went ashore to the Casino Park, the big circular concrete and glass hotel built on the high ground overlooking the old town and the harbour. Our first priority was hot baths, and having booked two rooms and checked that there was no way we could reach London any quicker, Saltley got on the phone to Michael Stewart while Pamela bathed in his room and the rest of us shared my bathroom and shower.