Medusa

I went over it all in my mind, sitting in the blazing sun beside the half-cleared outline of that fallen taula — the night of that Red Cross barbecue in the Quarries, the cave and the loss of the child, the murder of Jorge Martinez, that big beautiful catamaran and the blind stupidity of my desire to own it.

And Soo. My mind kept coming back to Soo. The only sheet anchor I had ever had. And I had lost her. Give my love to Soo, he had said with that funny little smile. And he was there, on that frigate, and she could see the ship from her bedroom window. Pray for me, he had said.

Hell! It was I who needed praying for, sitting alone beside a religious monument fashioned by Bronze Age men some three thousand years ago, and wanted by the police.

Shortly after four, with Mahon active again after the three-hour break, a convoy of over half a dozen yachts left. There was activity in the port area now. But still no sign of either Petra or Lennie, and no means of crossing the water to Mahon. The narrows on the north side of Bloody Island are barely three hundred metres wide and I was greatly tempted to swim across, but it would undoubtedly be under observation, and apart from the Naval Base, I was certain the whole peninsula that formed the northern arm of the harbour was in the hands of the new regime. How much of Menorca they held, outside of the Mahon area, I had no means of knowing. Not all of it probably. Several times I thought I heard firing away to the south-west, in the direction of the airport. Then suddenly there was the sound of engines, a distant rumble from the far end of the port, by the new cargo quay.

It was the Libyan freighter getting under way, the harbour tug pulling her bows clear and swinging them round, so that they were pointed straight towards me. At the same time, the harbour master’s launch left the Estacion Maritima, accompanied by two other launches. I was standing by the red-flashing beacon again when they passed through the narrows, but I couldn’t see who was on board the harbour launch. It was flanked by what looked like a harbour police launch and a customs launch. Only the harbour master’s launch went alongside Medusa’s ladder, and though somebody attempted to go on board, his way was blocked by a burly petty officer standing immovably halfway up it.

The little tableau remained motionless for some time, the man on the grating gesticulating very energetically and an officer, Sykes probably, on the deck above. I watched them arguing through the glasses until my attention was distracted by the increasing rumble of ships’ engines. The freighter, with the tug leading it, was approaching the narrows. It was low in the water, not yet unloaded, so it could hardly be intending to leave port. And behind me, just visible beyond the rocks above Petra’s landing place, I could see the bows of the small oil tanker lying in Cala Figuera beginning to swing as she fetched her anchor.

The tug was through the narrows by then and headed direct for Medusa. The beat of the freighter’s engines slowed as she passed so close to me I could see that the Arabic letters of her name had been painted over some earlier name, the outline of which suggested that she had originally been Greek, possibly Russian, for the faint lettering appeared to be Cyrillic. The rusty plates slid by, the bridge housing at the stern seeming to tower over me.

In the distance I could just hear the tug exchanging words with the harbour launch over loudhailers, and at the same time Gareth appeared on the frigate’s bridge wing. He had his hand to his mouth, holding a mike I think, because even at that distance I could hear his voice quite clearly, it was so powerfully amplified. He spoke in English, very simply: ‘I have to warn you that any ship coming within two hundred metres of my anchorage will be regarded as having committed a hostile act.’

He turned then and I think he must have given an order, for as Lieutenant Sykes hurried to his side and began repeating what he had said in Spanish, the turret of the two 4.5-inch guns slowly swivelled, the barrels no longer aimed at the heights above Cala Llonga, but being lowered, slowly and menacingly, to point directly at the freighter.

It flashed through my mind then what a chance he was taking — or was he bluffing? For a British warship to open fire on the ship of a country we were not at war with, however unfriendly that country might be, and to do it while anchored in the harbour of a Nato ally … It didn’t bear thinking about and I almost held my breath as I waited to see what the freighter would do, wondering whether Gareth was acting on his own initiative or whether he was covered by explicit orders. I hoped, for his sake, that it was the latter.