The Black Tide

He met me in the pantry area, a tall, thin, worried-looking man with stress lines running down from the nose and greying hair. The door to the flight deck was firmly closed. ‘I read something about you, some weeks back. Right?’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I cannot, I’m afraid, communicate with the media. That’s a matter for the airport authority. If they see fit, they’ll contact them.’

‘But you’ll tell them about the tankers, won’t you?’ I asked.

‘I’ll tell them, yes. But it will be for you to convince them after we’ve landed. Okay?’ He half turned towards the door to the flight deck, then checked. ‘You mean what you’ve written here, do you?’ He held the

torn scrap from Highlife under my nose. ‘Terrorists. Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure,’ I said.

‘You escaped in a dhow. I remember now.’ Grey, worried eyes stared at me for a moment. ‘But that was in the Gulf. How do you know these tankers will be in the Channel now?’

I told him how we had sailed out to the Selvagen Islands, had seen them rendezvous there and then been nearly run down in a deliberate attempt to obliterate us. ‘The way you say it—’ He was watching me very closely. ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Why are you on your own? What happened to the marine solicitor?’ And when I told him Saltley had taken the early flight via Lisbon, there was a sudden wariness in his eyes and I was conscious of a tenseness building in him. He glanced at the stewardess. ‘Get Dick, will you. He’s my navigator,’ he said, and began talking about air speed, winds and our ETA at Gatwick, his voice suddenly matter-of-fact.

The navigator was a big man and as soon as he had shut the flight deck door, the captain turned to me and in a quiet, slightly strained voice said, ‘Mind if we check you over?’

‘For weapons, do you mean?’

‘Just in case.’ He nodded to the navigator and the two of them pressed forward, forcing me to the back of the pantry, where the captain ran his hands under my arms and between my legs, the muscles of his neck corded into tense knots and the navigator standing off, his fists clenched ready.

‘Is that necessary?’ I asked as he straightened up, letting out his breath, his body relaxing.

‘We have to be careful.’ His eyes still had that wary look. ‘You know about the controllers’ strike at Lisbon, I suppose?’

I stared at him, a feeling of shock running through me. ‘Strike? I don’t know anything about a strike.’ I was thinking of Saltley marooned in Lisbon and myself alone with nobody to confirm my story.

‘You could have heard about it at the airport. The staff were full of it.’

‘I heard nothing. I didn’t ask.’

His mouth was shut in a tight line, the jaw muscles visible as he watched me. ‘No — well, probably you didn’t know then. They walked out during the morning, a manning schedule we were told. But we’ll be landing soon. I’ve no time to check with Lisbon. They could take an hour or more to make sure whether your man is stranded there or not.’

‘So you’ll do nothing?’ I suppose my own fears, the strain in my voice, something communicated itself to him, for the wary look was back in his eyes.

‘I’ll report to Gatwick, of course. Fve said that already.’

‘And the media?’

He hesitated. ‘I’ll have a word with the PR man, if he’s still there. He likes to know when there’s a—’ He checked himself. I thought perhaps he had been going to say ‘when there’s a nut on board’. ‘When anything unusual is happening. That satisfy you?’

I didn’t know whether he believed me or not, but I

knew it was the best I could hope from him. I nodded and he let me out of the pantry then, requesting me in a neutral, official voice to return to my seat. I was conscious of the two of them and the chief stewardess watching me as I pushed past the queue for the toilets and went back down the aisle. By the time I was in my seat again the officers had disappeared, the door to the flight deck was closed and the stewardesses were seeing to last minute requests as they had a final clear up. The man next to me was still sleeping, the engines whispering very quietly now as we lost height. Everything was normal again.

The only thing that wasn’t normal was my state of mind. I could think of nothing but the fact that Saltley wouldn’t be around when we landed in England. I would be on my own, the only person available to the authorities who had seen those tankers rendezvous in the Selvagens. Would they believe me without Saltley’s physical presence to confirm it? A voice on the telephone from Lisbon wasn’t the same at all. Would they believe anything I said? I was thinking of the captain, the wariness, the tenseness, the way he had summoned the heaviest of his crew, the search for arms. Would Forthright’s help, or Lloyd’s — would their Intelligence Services have discovered anything to corroborate my story?