The Black Tide

He nodded. ‘So I gather. You and he — you talk the same language. You’re both concerned about pollution. He won’t talk to us here, but he may to you, when he sees you right alongside him. Commander Fellowes has his instructions. Make contact with him, that’s all I ask. Find out what the target is.’ He nodded to the naval liaison officer, who took hold of my other arm and before I could do anything about it I was being hurried down the stairs and out to the car park. The noise of the helicopter was very loud. It came low over the top of the Lookout and I watched, feeling as though I was on the brink of another world, as it settled like a large mosquito in a gap between the gorse bushes. The pilot signalled to us and we ducked under the rotor blades. The door slid open and I was barely inside before it took off, not bothering to climb, but making straight out over the Dover cliffs, heading for the Tigris.

Five minutes later we landed on the pad at the frigate’s stern and I was taken straight to the bridge where the captain was waiting for me. ‘Fellowes,’ he said, shaking me by the hand. ‘We’re going close alongside now. Hope you can get some sense out of them. They’re an odd-looking crowd.’

The bridge was built on a curve, not unlike the Lookout, but the changed view from the windows was quite dramatic. From the shore-based Operations Centre the tankers had been no more than distant silhouettes low down on the horizon. Now, suddenly, I was seeing them in close-up, huge hunks of steel-plating low in the water, the Aurora B looming larger and larger as the relatively tiny frigate closed her at almost thirty knots. ‘We’ll come down to their speed when we’re abreast of the superstructure, then the idea is for you to go out on to the open deck and talk direct.’ He handed me a loud hailer. ‘Just press the trigger when you want to speak. Don’t shout or you’ll deafen yourself. It’s a pretty loud one, that.’ He turned his head, listening as the ship’s name was called on VHF. It was the Dover Coastguards wanting to know whether contact had yet been made with the Aurora B. He reached for a mike and answered direct: ‘Tigris to Coastguard. Helicopter and passenger have just arrived. We’re all set here. Am closing now. Over.’

We were coming in from the west at an oblique angle, the bulk of the Aurora B gradually blotting out the shape of the other tanker, which was about a mile to the east. The Dover cliffs showed as a dirty white smudge on our port side and there were several ships in the westbound lane, foam at their bows as the waves broke over them. Closer at hand, two small drifters danced on the skyline, and almost dead ahead of us, I could see the ungainly lanterned shape of a light vessel. ‘The Sandettie,’ Cdr Fellowes said. ‘We’ll be in the deepwater channel in ten to fifteen minutes.’ Behind

him the radio suddenly poured out a torrent of French. It was the fishery protection vessel now shadowing the tankers from the eastbound lane. We could just see it past the Aurora B’s stern steaming north-east ahead of a large ore carrier. ‘Ready?’ Fellowes asked me, and I nodded, though I didn’t feel at all ready. What the hell was I going to say to Hals?

I was still thinking about that, the loud hailer gripped in my hand, as he led me out on to the starb’d side deck below the tall square needle of the radar mast. The Tigris was turning now, her speed slowing as we ranged alongside the tanker’s superstructure. I could see the length of its deck, all the pipes and inspection hatches that I had stumbled over in the night, the long line of the catwalk. And right above me now the wheelhouse with faces I recognized framed in its big windows. Sadeq was there and the Canadian, Rod Selkirk, and two men I didn’t know, both of them dark and bearded. And then Hals appeared, his pale hair and beard framed in the glass of the bridge wing door. I raised the loud hailer to my lips. Captain Hals. I had my finger locked tight round the trigger and even my breathing came out in great audible puffs. This is Rodin. Trevor Rodin. I was with you in the Gulf, that khawr — remember? It’s Rodin, I repeated. Please come out on to the bridge wing. I want to talk to you.

I thought he was going to. I saw the uncertainty on his face, could almost read his intention in the expression of his eyes. We were that close, it seemed. I must speak to you, Pieter. About pollution. He moved then. I’m certain of it, reaching out to slide

open the door. But then Sadeq was beside hum am one of the others. A moment later they were gone, all three of them, the glass panel empty.

‘Ask for his destination,’ Fellowes said. ‘That’s what CINCHAN wants and he’s got the SoS breathing down his neck. Try again.’