Hammond Innes: The Black Tide

I pointed out, of course, that Saltley had been present when Admiral Blaize had come on board the Prospero in Funchal, but all he said was, ‘Yes, but again it’s secondhand. Still…’ He fired a few more

questions at me, chiefly about the men who had visited us in the inflatable off Selvagem Pequena, then got up and stood for a moment at the window staring out to the harbour at an odd-looking craft with a slab-fronted superstructure and a pile of giant fenders balanced on the stern. ‘All right.’ He turned, smiling, his manner suddenly changed. ‘Let’s deal with the media. And you,’ he said to me, ‘you’ll come too and back up what I say.’

‘And the PM, sir?’ Basildon-Smith asked.

‘We’ll leave that till we’ve seen these buggers through the Straits.’

The Conference Room was big and circular, with combined desks and seats custom-built on a curve to fit its shape. Venetian blinds covered the windows. The place was full of people and there were television cameras. In the sudden silence of our entry the lash of a rainstorm was a reminder of the room’s exposed position high up over the Dover Straits.

The Minister was smiling now, looking very assured as he addressed them briefly, giving a quick resume of the situation and concluding with the words, ‘I would ask you all to bear in mind that these vessels are registered in Iraq, flying the Iraqi flag. We do not know they are planning mischief. All we know, as fact, is that they failed to report in to the French at Ushant and that they are now steaming east in the westbound traffic lane to the great danger of other vessels.’

‘And avoiding arrest by keeping well away from the French coast,’ a voice said.

‘Yes, that is a perfectly valid point. As you know,

we still do not have powers of arrest, not even in our own waters. Much as we should like these powers—’

‘Why don’t you bring in a bill then?’ somebody asked him.

‘Because we’ve not had an experience like the French. There’s been no equivalent of the Amoco Cadiz disaster on the English coast.’ Inevitably he was asked whether the Prime Minister had been informed, but instead of answering the question, he turned to me and I heard him say, ‘Most of you will recall the name Trevor Rodin in connection with a missing tanker, the Aurora B, and some of you may have seen a Reuters report issued this morning containing statements made by him yesterday evening after he had flown in from Madeira. Because those statements will have to be borne in mind when we come to the point of deciding what action we take, if any, I thought it right that you should hear what he has to say from his own lips.’

He nodded towards me, smiling as those near me moved aside so that I stood isolated and exposed. ‘May I suggest, Mr Rodin, that you start by giving the gist of the information you gave the Second Sea Lord last night, then if there are any questions …” He stepped back and I was left with the whole room staring at me. Go on. Tell us what you said. Do what the Minister says. Urged by their voices I cleared my throat, cursing the man for his cleverness in switching their attention to me and getting himself off the hook. Then, as I began speaking, I suddenly found confidence, the words pouring out of me. I could feel their

attention becoming riveted, their notebooks out, scribbling furiously, and the faint whirr of cameras turning.

I told them everything, from the moment we had reached the Selvagen Islands, and then, in answer to questions, I went back over what had happened in the Gulf, the extraordinary sight of the Aurora B moored against those ochre-red cliffs. It was such a wonderful opportunity to present my case and I had just started to tell them of my escape and what had happened on the dhow, when somebody said there was a report in from the pilot of the Coastguard patrol plane. I lost them then, everybody crowding round the DoT press officer. I had been talking for nearly twenty minutes and I think their attention had begun to wander long before the report came in that confirmed the shadow of the old name showing on the Shah Mohammed.

I walked out, past some officers and a spiral staircase leading down to the bowels of the old fort, to a glassed-in passageway. The rainstorm had moved off into the North Sea and a shaft of watery sunlight was beamed on the waves breaking against the harbour walls. I thought I could see the atomic power station at Dungeness and I wondered how much of what I had said would find its way into print, or would it all be submerged in the threat posed by Sadeq and his two tankers? Something was going to happen, out there beyond the wild break of the seas, but what? Down below the horizon, beyond the black louring clouds of that rainstorm, the ports of northern Europe lay exposed and vulnerable. I should have said that. I should have talked about pollution and Pieter Hals,

not concentrated so much on my own troubles. If Karen had been there, she would have seen to it that I concerned myself more with the threat to life, the sheer filth and destruction of oil slicks.

I was still standing there, trying to figure out how long it would be before those tankers came into sight, when one of the BBC’s TV news team asked if they could do an interview. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for some time, so it seems a good opportunity.’

It was a good opportunity for me, too. They filmed it outside with the Lookout and the Straits in the background and I was able to channel it so that for part of the time I was talking about the problems of pollution and what men like Hals stood for.

‘That’s the first we’ve heard of Hals being on board. You’ve claimed all along they’re terrorists. Why would Captain Hals join them?’

I couldn’t answer that. ‘Perhaps he was desperate and needed a job,’ I said. ‘Or he could have been thinking that a really catastrophic disaster in one of the major European ports would force governments to legislate against irresponsible tanker owners.’

‘Europort, for instance. Is that what you’re saying — that they’ll go for Europort?’

‘Perhaps.’ I was remembering Hals’s actual words when he had said nothing would be done — nothing until the nations that demand oil are themselves threatened with pollution on a massive scale. There was almost a quarter of a million tons of oil in those tankers. The Maas, the Noord Zee Canal, the Elbe — they were all prime targets.

I had an audience now of several journalists and was still talking about Hals when somebody called to us that the Flag Officer, Plymouth, was on the phone to the Minister requesting instructions now that a Navy frigate was in close company with one of the tankers and had identified it as the Aurora B. There was a rush for the Conference Room and I was left standing there with only a watchful policeman for company.

I was glad to be on my own for a moment, but shortly afterwards the Minister came out with Basildon-Smith and they were driven off in an official car — to the Castle, the police officer said, adding that it was past one and sandwiches and coffee were available from the canteen. Several journalists and most of the TV men drove off in their cars, heading for the hotel bars at St Margaret’s. Clearly nothing was going to happen for some time. It began to rain again.

I went back into the Operations Centre and had a snack, standing looking out the windows of the Conference Room. Time passed slowly. I had a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, rain lashing at the windows. Later I strolled along the glassed-in passageway to the Lookout. There were one or two reporters there and the watch officer was letting them take it in turns to look through the big binoculars. Nobody took any notice of me until Captain Evans came in to check the latest position of the tankers. He also checked the latest weather position, then turned to me and said, ‘Care to see them on the radar?’ I