Hammond Innes - The Black Tide

‘And the Englishman who recruited you — Baldwick. Didn’t he know anything about the objective?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me about your conversation with the captain then.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Pieter Hals. Dutch, I take it.’

It was the better part of an hour of hard talking before he was finally convinced I could tell him nothing that would indicate the purpose for which the tankers had been seized. At one point, tired of going over it all again, I said, ‘Why don’t you board them then? As soon as you know where they are—’

‘We’ve no authority to board.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I didn’t care whether he was a Sea Lord or what, I was too damned tired of it. ‘Two pirated ships and the Navy can’t board them. I don’t

believe it. Who’s responsible for what goes on in the Channel?’

‘Flag Officer, Plymouth. But I’m afraid CINCHAN’s powers are very limited. He certainly hasn’t any powers of arrest. Unlike the French.’ He gave a shrug, smiling wryly as he went on, ‘Remember the Amoco Cadiz and what the spillage from that wreck did to the Brittany coast? After that they instituted traffic lanes off Ushant. Later they insisted on all tankers and ships with dangerous cargoes reporting in and staying in a third lane at least twenty-four miles off the coast until they’re in their correct eastbound lane, which is on the French side as they move up-Channel. And they have ships to enforce their regulations. Very typically the British operate a voluntary system — MAREP, Marine Reporting.’ And he added, the wry smile breaking out again, ‘I’m told it works — but not, of course, for the sort of situation you and Saltley are envisaging.’

I brought up the question of boarding again, right at the end of our meeting, and the Admiral said, ‘Even the French don’t claim the right of arrest beyond the twelve-mile limit. If those tankers came up the English side, there’s nothing the French can do about it.’

‘But if they’re on the English side,’ I said, ‘they’d be steaming east in the westbound lane. Surely then—’

He shook his head. ‘All we can do then is fly off the Coastguard plane, take photographs and in due course report their behaviour to their country of registry and press for action.’

I was sitting back, feeling drained and oddly

appalled at the Navy’s apparent helplessness. All the years when I had grown up thinking of the Navy as an all-powerful presence and now, right on Britain’s own doorstep, to be told they were powerless to act. ‘There must be somebody,’ I murmured. ‘Some minister who can order their arrest.’

‘Both Saltley and yourself have confirmed they’re registered at Basra and flying the Iraqi flag. Not even the Foreign Secretary could order those ships to be boarded.’

‘The Prime Minister then,’ I said uneasily. ‘Surely the Prime Minister—’

‘The PM would need absolute proof.’ He shrugged and got to his feet. ‘I’m afraid what you’ve told me, and what Saltley has said to me on the phone, isn’t proof.’

‘So you’ll just sit back and wait until they’ve half wrecked some European port.’

‘If they do come up-Channel, then we’ll monitor their movements and alert other countries as necessary.’ The door had opened behind me and he nodded. ‘In which case, we’ll doubtless see each other again.’ He didn’t shake hands. Just that curt, dismissive nod and he had turned away towards the window.

Back along the echoing corridors then to find Shut-face still waiting. A room had been booked for me at a hotel in the Strand and when he left me there with my bags he warned me not to try disappearing again. ‘We’ll have our eye on you this time.’

In the morning, when I went out of the hotel, I found this was literally true. A plain clothes man fell

into step beside me. ‘Will you be going far, sir?’ And when I said I thought I’d walk as far as Charing Cross and buy a paper, he said, ‘I’d rather you stayed in the hotel, sir. You can get a paper there.’

I had never been under surveillance before. I suppose very few people have. I found it an unnerving experience. Slightly eerie in a way, a man you’ve never met before watching your every movement — as though you’ve been judged guilty and condemned without trial. I bought several papers and searched right through them — nothing. I could find no mention of anything I had told those two journalists at Gatwick, no reference anywhere to the possibility of pirated tankers steaming up the English Channel.

It could simply mean they had filed their stories too late, but these were London editions and it was barely ten o’clock when I had spoken to them. Hadn’t they believed me? I had a sudden picture of them going off to one of the airport bars, laughing about it over a drink. Was that what had happened? And yet their questions had been specific, their manner interested, and they had made notes, all of which seemed to indicate they took it seriously.

I didn’t know what to think. I just sat there in the foyer, feeling depressed and a little lost. There was nothing I could do now, nothing at all, except wait upon others. If they didn’t believe me, then sooner or later the Director of Public Prosecutions would make up his mind and maybe a warrant would be issued for my arrest. Meanwhile … meanwhile it seemed as though I was some sort of non-person, a dead soul

waiting where the souls of the dead wait upon the future.

And then suddenly the Special Branch man was at my elbow. There was a car at the door and I was to leave for Dover immediately. I thought for a moment I was being deported, but he said it was nothing to do with the police. ‘Department of Trade — the Minister himself I believe, and you’re to be rushed there as quickly as possible.’ He hustled me out to a police car drawn up at the kerb with its blue light flashing and two uniformed officers in front. ‘And don’t try slipping across to the other side.’ He smiled at me, a human touch as he tossed my bags in after me. ‘You’ll be met at the other end.’ He slammed the door and the car swung quickly out into the traffic, turning right against the lights into the Waterloo Bridge approach.

It had all happened so quickly that I had had no time to question him further. I had presumed he was coming with me. Instead, I was alone in the back, looking at the short-haired necks and caps of the men in front as we shot round the Elephant amp;c Castle and into the Old Kent Road. There was a break in the traffic then and I asked why I was being taken to Dover. But they didn’t know. Their instructions were to get me to Langdon Battery as quickly as possible. They didn’t know why, and when I asked what Langdon Battery was, the man sitting beside the driver turned to me and held up a slip of paper. ‘CNIS Operations Centre, Langdon Battery. That’s all it says, sir. And a Dover patrol car will meet us at the last roundabout before the docks. Okay?’

The siren was switched on and we blazed our way through the traffic by New Cross Station. In moments, it seemed, we were crossing Blackheath, heading through the Bexley area to the M2. The morning was grey and windtorn, distant glimpses of Medway towns against the wide skies of the Thames estuary and my spirits lifting, a mood almost of elation. But all the men in front could tell me was that their instructions had come from the office of the Under-Secretary, Marine Division, at the Department of Trade in High Holborn. They knew nothing about any tankers. I leaned back, watching the forestry on either side flash by, certain that the ships must have been sighted. Why else this sudden call for my presence at an operations centre near Dover?

Half an hour later we were past Canterbury and at 11.22 we slowed at a second roundabout just outside Dover with the A2 dipping sharply between gorse scrub hills to the harbour. A local police car was waiting where the A258 to Deal branched off to the left and we followed it as it swung into the roundabout, turning right on to a narrow road leading directly to the square stone bulk of Dover Castle. To the left I had fleeting glimpses of the Straits, the sea grey-green and flecked with white, ships steaming steadily westward. A shaft of sunlight picked out the coast of France, while to the east a rainstorm blackened the seascape. Just short of the Castle we swung left, doubling back and dipping sharply to a narrow bridge over the A2 and a view of the docks with a