Hammond Innes: The Black Tide

think he was tired of explaining things to landlubbers, glad to talk to a seaman.

He took me through the heavy light-proof curtains at the back. ‘Mind the step.’ It was dark after the day-bright Lookout, the only light the faint glow from a computer console and the three radar screens. It was the left hand screen that was linked to the Dungeness scanner and the circling sweep showed two very distinct, very bright, elongated blips to the south and east of Dungeness. ‘What’s the course and speed now?’ Evans asked.

‘Just a minute, sir. They’ve just altered to clear the Varne.’ The watch officer leaned over, fed in three bearings on the central monitoring screen and at the touch of a button the computer came up with the answer: ‘O-six-O degrees now, sir. Speed unchanged at just over eighteen.’

‘Looks like the Sandettie light vessel and the deepwater channel.’ Evans was speaking to himself rather than to me. ‘Outside the French twelve-mile limit all the way.’ He looked round at me. ‘Should be able to see them any minute now.’ And he added, ‘That friend of yours, Saltley — he’ll be arriving at Dover airport in about an hour. Apparently he’s chartered a small Spanish plane.’ He turned quickly and went out through the curtains. ‘Try calling them on Channel 16,’ he told the woman auxiliary manning the radio. ‘By name.’

‘Which one, sir? The Ghazan Khan or the—’

‘No, not the Iraqi names. Try and call up Captain Hals on the Aurora B. See what happens.’

It was while she was trying unsuccessfully to do this that the watch officer in the Lookout reported one of the tankers was visible. The Secretary of State came back from lunching with the Governor of Dover Castle and those not working in the Lookout were hustled out.

Another squall swept in and for a while rain obliterated the Straits so that all we could see was the blurred outline of the harbour. Saltley arrived in the middle of it. I was on the upper deck then, looking down through the glass panels, and I could see him standing by the state-of-readiness boards in front of the big map, talking urgently to the Minister and Basildon-Smith, his arms beginning to wave about. He was there about ten minutes, then the three of them moved out of sight into the Radar Room. Shortly afterwards he came hurrying up to the gallery, gave me a quick nod of greeting and asked the auxiliary to get him the Admiralty. ‘If the DoT won’t do anything, maybe the Navy will.’ He looked tired and strained, the bulging eyes red-rimmed, his hair still wet and ruffled by the wind. He wanted the tankers arrested or at least stopped and searched to discover the identity of the people running them and whether they had prisoners on board.

The squall passed and suddenly there they were, plainly visible to the naked eye, with the frigate in close attendance. They were almost due south of us, about seven miles away, their black hulls merged with the rain clouds over the French coast, but the two

superstructures showing like distant cliffs in a stormy shaft of sunlight.

Saltley failed to get Admiral Fitzowen and after a long talk with somebody else at the Admiralty, he put in a call to Stewart. ‘I’ve a damned good mind to contact the Prime Minister myself,’ he said as he joined me by the window. ‘Two pirated ships sailing under false names with a naval escort and we do nothing. It’s bloody silly.’ I don’t know whether it was anger or tiredness, but there was a slight hesitancy in his speech that I had never noticed before. In all the time I had been with him in the close confines of the Prospero I had never seen him so upset. ‘There’s thirty or forty million involved in the hulls alone, more on the cargoes. I told the Minister and all he says is that underwriting is a risk business and nobody but a fool becomes a Member of Lloyd’s without being prepared to lose his shirt. But this isn’t any ordinary risk. A bunch of terrorists — you can’t counter claim against them in the courts, there’s no legal redress. The bloody man should act — on his own responsibility. That’s what we have Ministers for. Instead, he’s like a little boy on the pier watching some pretty ships go by.’

The bearing of the tankers was very slowly changing. Both VHF and R/T channels were filling the air with irate comments from ships finding themselves heading straight for a bows-on collision, the CMS watch officer continually issuing warnings for westbound traffic to keep to the inshore side of the land and maintain a sharp radar watch in the rainstorms.

They were all in the Lookout now, the Minister, Basildon-Smith and Captain Evans, with Saltley hovering in the background and everybody watching to see whether the tankers would hold on for the Sandettie light vessel and the deepwater channel or turn north. A journalist beside me muttered something to the effect that if they ran amok in Ekofisk or any of the bigger North Sea oilfields there could be catastrophic pollution.

It was at this point that I was suddenly called to the Lookout and as I entered the big semicircular glassed-in room I heard the Minister ask what the state of readiness of the Pollution Control Unit was. His voice was sharp and tense, and when Evans replied that he’d spoken to Admiral Denleigh just before lunch and the whole MPCU organization was alerted, but no dispersant stock piles had yet been moved, he said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. You already told me. No point in starting to shift vast quantities of chemical sprays until we have a better idea of where they’ll be needed.’

‘They may not be needed at all, sir,’ Evans said.

The Minister nodded, but his expression, as he turned away, indicated that he hadn’t much hope of that. ‘I should have been speaking at a big party rally in Aberdeen this afternoon.’ His voice was high and petulant. ‘On oil and the environment.’ He was glaring at the Head of his Marine Division as though he were to blame for bringing him south, maybe losing precious votes. But then he saw me. ‘Ah, Mr Rodin — this man Hals. He’s not answering. We’ve tried repeatedly, VHF and R/T. Somebody’s got to get through to him.’

His eyes were fixed on mine. ‘You’ve met him. You’ve talked to him. I’m sending you out there. See if you can get through to him.’

‘But—’ I was thinking of the dhow, the way I’d left the ship. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘How do you mean — get through to him?’

‘Tigris is sending a helicopter for you. It’s already been flown off so it should be here any minute. Now about this story of somebody flashing a light from one of the tankers. Saltley here says you and a young man on this yacht both thought it was some sort of signal. Morse code. Is that right?’

‘I didn’t see it myself,’ I said, and started to tell him about the circumstances. But he brushed that aside. ‘The letter M, that’s what Saltley here has just told me. Is that right?’

‘Several quick flashes, then two longs,’ I said. ‘We were in the tanker’s wake then—’

‘Two longs, that’s M in Morse, is it?’

‘Or two Ts. But we were being flung about—’

‘You think it could have been part of a name.’ He turned to Saltley again. ‘One of the crew held prisoner on board signalling with a torch or a light switch, trying to give you the destination.’ He moved forward so that he was standing by the radar monitor, his eyes fastening on me again. ‘What do you say, Rodin? You stated quite categorically that in the case of the Aurora B, members of the crew were being held prisoner. Was this an attempt, do you think, to communicate and give you the target these terrorists are aiming at?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ I said.

‘No more than a possibility?’ He nodded slowly. ‘And the only one to see it was this boy. In a panic, was he? You’d nearly been run down.’