The Black Tide

‘If they do come up-Channel, then we’ll monitor their movements and alert other countries as necessary.’ The door had opened behind me and he nodded. ‘In which case, we’ll doubtless see each other again.’ He didn’t shake hands. Just that curt, dismissive nod and he had turned away towards the window.

Back along the echoing corridors then to find Shut-face still waiting. A room had been booked for me at a hotel in the Strand and when he left me there with my bags he warned me not to try disappearing again. ‘We’ll have our eye on you this time.’

In the morning, when I went out of the hotel, I found this was literally true. A plain clothes man fell

into step beside me. ‘Will you be going far, sir?’ And when I said I thought I’d walk as far as Charing Cross and buy a paper, he said, ‘I’d rather you stayed in the hotel, sir. You can get a paper there.’

I had never been under surveillance before. I suppose very few people have. I found it an unnerving experience. Slightly eerie in a way, a man you’ve never met before watching your every movement — as though you’ve been judged guilty and condemned without trial. I bought several papers and searched right through them — nothing. I could find no mention of anything I had told those two journalists at Gatwick, no reference anywhere to the possibility of pirated tankers steaming up the English Channel.

It could simply mean they had filed their stories too late, but these were London editions and it was barely ten o’clock when I had spoken to them. Hadn’t they believed me? I had a sudden picture of them going off to one of the airport bars, laughing about it over a drink. Was that what had happened? And yet their questions had been specific, their manner interested, and they had made notes, all of which seemed to indicate they took it seriously.

I didn’t know what to think. I just sat there in the foyer, feeling depressed and a little lost. There was nothing I could do now, nothing at all, except wait upon others. If they didn’t believe me, then sooner or later the Director of Public Prosecutions would make up his mind and maybe a warrant would be issued for my arrest. Meanwhile … meanwhile it seemed as though I was some sort of non-person, a dead soul

waiting where the souls of the dead wait upon the future.

And then suddenly the Special Branch man was at my elbow. There was a car at the door and I was to leave for Dover immediately. I thought for a moment I was being deported, but he said it was nothing to do with the police. ‘Department of Trade — the Minister himself I believe, and you’re to be rushed there as quickly as possible.’ He hustled me out to a police car drawn up at the kerb with its blue light flashing and two uniformed officers in front. ‘And don’t try slipping across to the other side.’ He smiled at me, a human touch as he tossed my bags in after me. ‘You’ll be met at the other end.’ He slammed the door and the car swung quickly out into the traffic, turning right against the lights into the Waterloo Bridge approach.

It had all happened so quickly that I had had no time to question him further. I had presumed he was coming with me. Instead, I was alone in the back, looking at the short-haired necks and caps of the men in front as we shot round the Elephant amp;c Castle and into the Old Kent Road. There was a break in the traffic then and I asked why I was being taken to Dover. But they didn’t know. Their instructions were to get me to Langdon Battery as quickly as possible. They didn’t know why, and when I asked what Langdon Battery was, the man sitting beside the driver turned to me and held up a slip of paper. ‘CNIS Operations Centre, Langdon Battery. That’s all it says, sir. And a Dover patrol car will meet us at the last roundabout before the docks. Okay?’

The siren was switched on and we blazed our way through the traffic by New Cross Station. In moments, it seemed, we were crossing Blackheath, heading through the Bexley area to the M2. The morning was grey and windtorn, distant glimpses of Medway towns against the wide skies of the Thames estuary and my spirits lifting, a mood almost of elation. But all the men in front could tell me was that their instructions had come from the office of the Under-Secretary, Marine Division, at the Department of Trade in High Holborn. They knew nothing about any tankers. I leaned back, watching the forestry on either side flash by, certain that the ships must have been sighted. Why else this sudden call for my presence at an operations centre near Dover?