The Black Tide

The seat belt sign came on, the flaps slid out from the wings and I heard the rumble of the undercarriage going down. I felt suddenly sick, a void in my stomach and my skin breaking out in a sweat. It was nerves, the tension of waiting, wondering what was going to

happen. And then we were down with the runway lights flashing by and I braced myself, breathing deeply, telling myself I had nothing to be afraid of, that the truth was the truth, something I couldn’t be shaken on, so that eventually they must believe me.

The plane came to a halt and a chill wind blew in as the fuselage door was thrown back. We filed out past the chief stewardess, who said her usual piece, hoping I’d had a good flight, and I saw her eyes widen in confusion as she realized who it was. And when I boarded the bus one of the airport staff got in with me and kept his eyes on me all the way to the arrivals area.

The time was just after 19.30 GMT when I joined the queue at the UK passport desk. It moved quickly so that in a moment I was handing my temporary papers to the immigration officer. He glanced at them and then at me, his glasses reflecting the glint of the lights, his eyes faintly curious. ‘What happened to your passport, sir?’

‘I lost it.’

‘Where?’

‘I left it on board a tanker in the Persian Gulf.’

He looked down at some papers on the desk beside him. ‘And this is your correct name — Trevor McAl-istair Rodin?’ He turned and nodded to a man over by the wall. ‘This gentleman will look after you now.’ The man came quickly forward, positioning himself at my elbow. He took my papers and said, ‘This way please.’

He led me through into the Customs hall, where

he arranged for my baggage to be cleared and brought to me. ‘Am I under arrest?’ I asked, not sure whether he was airport police or CID.

‘Just a few questions, that’s all at this stage.’ We went upstairs and into one of the airport offices, and when he had sat me down at the desk facing him, I asked to see his credentials. He was a detective-inspector of the Surrey police force. I started to tell him about the tankers then, but he stopped me almost immediately. ‘I’m afraid that’s nothing to do with me. I’m told the information you gave the captain of your aircraft about tankers and terrorists has already been passed to the proper authority. My concern is a much earlier statement you made, about how you escaped in some native craft in the Persian Gulf with a French engineer named Choffel. I’d be glad if you’d now go through that again, so that I can prepare a statement for you to sign.’

I tried to argue with him, but he was insistent, and he gave me the usual caution about the possibility of evidence being used against me. And when I told him about the statement I had already made in London a month ago, he said, ‘That’s the Metropolitan area, Special Branch by the sound of it.’ He was an ordinary-looking man, quite human. ‘I have my orders, that’s all.’

‘Who from?’

‘The Chief Constable.’

‘But not because of what I said about those tankers. It’s because Choffel’s daughter has accused me of killing her father, isn’t it?’

‘She made a statement, yes.’ ‘But there’s no warrant for my arrest.’ He smiled then. ‘Nobody has told me to do anything more than get a statement from you, all right?’ ‘And it’ll go to the Chief Constable?’ He nodded. ‘He’ll then pass it on to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions or not as he thinks fit. That’s why I had to caution you.’ He pulled his chair into the desk and got his pen out. ‘Now, shall we get started? I don’t imagine you want to be all night over it any more than I do.’

There was nothing for it then but to go over the whole story from the beginning, and it took time, for he was summarizing it as we went along and writing it all out in longhand. By 08.30 I had only got as far as my arrival on the tanker and the discovery that it was the Aurora B. He rang down to somebody for sandwiches and coffee to be sent up from the cafeteria, and it was while we were eating them, and I was describing how Sadeq had stood at the top of the gangway firing down on to the deck of the dhow, that the door opened and I turned to find myself looking up at the shut face and hard eyes of the man who had visited me in my Stepney basement.

He handed a piece of paper to the detective. ‘Orders from on high.’ ‘Whose?’

‘Dunno. I’m to deliver him to the Min of Def — Navy.’ He turned to me. ‘You slipped out of the country without informing us. Why?’ I started to explain, but then I thought what the hell — I had been

talking for an hour and a half and I had had enough. ‘If you haven’t bothered to find out why I’m back here in England, then there’s no point in my wasting your time or mine.’