A Ravel of Waters

'Are you crazy? An obligation to inform foreign authorities about Jetwind's activities in a British port! What the devil has Jetwind got to do with Argentina? Your authorities were difficult enough about granting my "white card" when they heard I was Jetwind's new skipper.' 'That police officer will lose his job for granting it.'

That jolted me. 'How would you know? It only happened this morning.'

The slightest sneer tugged at the left-hand corner of his mouth. 'I have friends.'

'It seems so, Grohman. They seem more important than sticking to your job. What is behind all this coming and going?'

My tone needled him into replying just as Paul arrived with the Scotch. Grohman stuck to the wine. He banged down his glass angrily.

'I was doing what was right. You do not understand – or you do not even want to understand – how delicate the political situation is over the question of the Falklands.'

'There's enough about it written over every wall in town,' I observed.

'Las Malvinas son nuestras!' he echoed heatedly. 'Who first sighted the Falklands a century before the British ever came near – a Spaniard, Americo Vespucci, in 1502…'

Brockton said over his glass, 'Vespucci wasn't a Spaniard. He was a Florentine.'

The derision in my snort was like throwing petrol on a fire to Grohman. Now and then he stumbled to find an English word as his speech free-wheeled angrily.

'Maybe, maybe, but he sailed for Spain, Vespucci did. It was also he who discovered the Tierra San Martin long before the British or Americans, nearly three centuries later…'

'Tierra San Martin?' I asked. 'Where now would that be?'

'He means what the rest of the world calls the Antarctic Peninsula,' Brockton filled in ironically. 'All nations agreed to standardize the name in the sixties. Except Argentina.'

I was glad to have Paul to support me in this verbal duel. He seemed to be particularly well informed for a newspaper-man.

'For a hundred and fifty years we have been wronged,' Grohman went on, knocking over the wine bottle with a vehement gesture of his left hand. 'The Malvinas originally belonged to Spain. They were stolen by the British! After the Spanish colonies in the New World had revolted against Spain, the Malvinas passed legally to the new United Provinces of La Plata and we tried to occupy them – legally…'

Brockton again came to my assistance. 'You are over-simplifying, friend. The whole story is much more complicated than that and although I don't hold with British colonial methods, in this case they were right.'

Brockton's cool assessment seemed merely to provoke Grohman further. 'It is not only the Falklands that the British stole! All the groups of islands on the southern flank of what you call the Drake Passage were stolen from Argentina by Britain. Who rightly owns what you Americans call Graham Land, or the South Shetlands, or the South Orkneys? We registered our claims in the properly recognized international way during World War II when we left a formal document buried in a metal cylinder asserting our rights to the whole sector between twenty-five and sixty-eight degrees west and southwards of latitude sixty south…'

Brockton said roughly, 'Argentina waited until they thought they could catch Britain with her pants down because of the war. If I remember right, however, the British had sense enough to send a warship and remove all signs of Argentinian occupancy and the emblems they planted.' 'It was typical of British aggression…' Grohman began.

'Listen,' I interrupted. 'I didn't come here to hear a lot of historical crap about who owns what. All I know is that the Falklands are British, that my ship is held up there, and that I mean to get her out. Falklands, Malvinas -whatever.'

'You must understand, that is why Jetwind is detained!’ Grohman retorted. 'In 1966 a group of Argentinian patriots staged a token invasion by air of the Falklands to reaffirm our claims to the islands. Argentina does not recognize British sovereignty – the Malvinas are ours! That is why I went to the mainland! I reported to the proper authorities the death of Captain Mortensen. Jetwind must remain in Port Stanley pending clarification of the circumstances of Captain Mortensen's death. That is why, when he was killed, I made for Port Stanley. It is an Argentinian matter.' 'Go and tell that to the Royal Navy,' I retorted.

My attitude towards Jetwind's first officer was clear: he had committed a severe dereliction of duty towards his ship's owner, and I had yet to discover what lay behind his smoke-screen of politico-historical claptrap. I was not prepared to accept his explanation at face value. Yet Brockton surprised me. He was deadly serious towards Grohman and seemed to weigh judicially every word he said, despite the fact that he himself seemed better armed with fact than the Argentinian.