The Black Tide

But Ferrers couldn’t remember the name, only that there had been a Greek engineer involved. From what they said I gathered the cabinet contained confidential casualty information that included the background of ships’ officers and crew members known to have been involved in fraud. Then Spurling was muttering to himself, still frowning in concentration: ‘A crook Lebanese company owned her. Can’t recall the company’s name, but Beirut. That’s where the ship was registered. A small tanker. I’m sure it was a tanker.’ And he added, ‘Pity you can’t remember the name. Everything in that file is listed under the name of a ship.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then you’d better start searching again.’

‘I’ve been through two years of casualty records already this morning. That’s seventy microfiches.’

‘You love it.’ Spurling grinned at me, nodding to a shelf full of thick loose-leafed volumes on the wall behind us. ‘All our casualty records are microfilmed and filed in those binders. The VDU there acts as a viewing box and you can get a print-out at the touch of a button. It’s Barty’s own personal toy. Try the winter of seventy-five, seventy-six.’

‘Back to where we first started keeping records?’ Ferrers got slowly to his feet. ‘It’ll take me an hour to go through that lot.’

Spurling smiled at him wickedly. ‘It’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’

Ferrers gave a snort. ‘May I remind you we’re supposed to be keeping tabs on over six hundred vessels for various clients.’

‘They’ll never know, and if you pull the information Forthright want out of the box who’s to say you’re wasting your time?’ Spurling looked at me and dropped an eyelid, his face deadpan. ‘Come to think of it, I doubt if it was winter. They were several days in an open boat. Try March or April, seventy-seven.

She had her tanks full of arms, that’s why you remember her.’

Ferrers nodded, reaching down the second volume from the far end of the shelf. I watched him as he searched quickly through the fiche pockets, extracted one and slipped it into the scanning slot. Immediately the VDU screen came alive with information which changed quickly as he shifted from microfilm to microfilm. And when he had finished with that fiche, I put it back in its pocket for him, while he began searching the next. Each fiche, measuring about 6x4 inches, was imprinted with rows of tiny little microfilms hardly bigger than pinheads.

He was over half an hour, working first forwards through 1977, then backwards into ‘76. He worked in the silence of total concentration, and with Spurling’s attention divided between his typewriter and the telephone, they seemed to have forgotten all about me. At one point Spurling passed me a telex giving the latest report on the Petros Jupiter salvage situation. Smit International, the Dutch salvage people, had announced their intention of withdrawing from any further attempt to salvage the wreck. Their divers had only been able to operate for two days since the explosion, a total of 8 hours. But apparently this had been sufficient to establish the general condition of the wreck, which was now lying in three sections to the north of Kettle’s Bottom with only the skeletal remains of the superstructure awash at low tide. The effect of the explosion, followed by the intense heat generated by the ignition of the five tanks containing

oil, had been such that they regarded any attempt to salvage the remains of the vessel as quite profitless. And they added that, in its present position, they did not consider it a danger to shipping. Further, all tanks were now completely ruptured and empty of oil.

There were three sheets of the telexed report and I had just come to the end of it when Ferrers suddenly exclaimed, ‘Got it! The Stella Rosa. March 20, 1976.’ Spurling looked up and nodded, smiling. ‘Of course. The Stella Rosa.’

‘Outward bound from Tripoli to Algiers.’ Ferrers was reading from the scanner, his face close to the screen. ‘Arms for the Polisario — Sam-7s and Kalashnikovs.’ He straightened up, pressing the button that gave him the print-out, and when he had it, he passed it to Spurling. But by then Spurling had the Stella Rosa file out and was running quickly through it; ‘Skipper Italian, Mario Pavesi from Palermo. Ah, here we are. Second engineer Aristides Speridion. No address given. Not among the survivors. First engineer — now we have something — guess who? None other than Henri Choffel, French. He was picked up and is described here as suspect on his past record. He was chief engineer of the Olympic Ore and is thought to have been implicated in her sinking in 1972. At the Enquiry into the sinking of the Stella Rosa he claimed it was Speridion who opened the sea cocks.’ He passed the file to Ferrers. ‘Good hunch of yours.’

Ferrers gave a little shrug. ‘No indication then that Speridion got away in a boat?’

Spurling shook his head. ‘No. And no record that

he managed to land on Pantelleria. All it says is — no indication that he is still alive.”