The Black Tide

His taxi arrived a few minutes later and as he got up from the table, he paused for a moment, staring at me. ‘See you in Dubai,’ he said. ‘And no tricks, see?’ He was smiling at me, but not with his eyes. For a moment he stood there, looking down at me. Finally he nodded as though satisfied, turning abruptly and going out to the waiting taxi.

Flights south were leaving on schedule, but Paris and all the north of France was fogged in. It looked as though we’d be kicking our heels in Nantes for some hours yet and I went in search of the papers. The only English ones I could find were the Telegraph and the Financial Times and I looked through them over a fine a I’eau in the bar. There was no news of the missing tankers in either of them, the front page of the Telegraph full of the trial of terrorists charged with the Piccadilly bomb outrage, and there had been a demonstration outside the Old Bailey in which shots had been fired at the police. It was in the Financial Times that I found a small paragraph tucked away on an inside page headed tanker claim rejected: ‘Solicitors for a Lloyd’s syndicate operated by Mr Michael Stewart have rejected a claim by the NSO Harben company of Schiedam in respect of the loss of the tanker Petros Jupiter. No reason has been given, but it is presumably based on their assessment of the

evidence that will be given at the Enquiry due to begin on January 27. The amount of the claim is put at over Ł9 million for the hull alone. This is the largest marine insurance claim so far this year.’

Just before midday we were informed that it was unlikely we would get away until the following morning. A definite decision would be made after lunch. I got hold of a city plan and walked down to the riverside quays where the cargo ships lay. The sun was quite warm, the streets all dripping with melted snow. At the offices of the Reaux shipping company my request to speak to somebody who had actually known Choffel resulted in my being shown into a tiny waiting-room and left there for a long time. The walls were hung with the framed photographs of ships, most of them old and faded, and there was a table with copies of French shipping magazines. Finally, a youngster, who spoke good schoolboy English, took me along the quay to a small grain carrier that had only just come in. There I was introduced to an elderly chief engineer who had been on the Tarzan in 1959.

He described Choffel as a quiet man who didn’t say very much, just got on with the job. He had had very little French at that time, but was eager to learn because he wanted to live in France. I asked him why, but he just shrugged.

‘Was he a good engineer?’

‘Mais out — excellent.’ And then he said something that came as a complete surprise to me. He said, ‘Henri Choffel, vous savez, il etait anglais.’ English! That was something that hadn’t occurred to me. But then

suddenly things began to fall into place. The girl — it explained the lilt, that sense of familiarity, that vague likeness to Karen, the name even. Of course, Welsh! How would a French engineer know the difference — Welsh, English, it was all one to him.

But it didn’t help me to an understanding of the man, and he couldn’t tell me what ships he’d been on or where he came from. I asked him what sort of company Choffel had kept when they were in port, but apparently he had usually stayed on board, studying French and talking to the French members of the crew. He was on the Tarzan almost a year, and by the time he was promoted to another of the Reaux ships he was quite fluent. There was only one other worthwhile thing he told me. Choffel had had the word FORMIDABLE and the date 1952 tattooed across his chest. The old man pronounced it, of course, in the French way, but it could just as easily have been English and the name of a ship.

Barre was out to lunch by the time I reached his office, but I arranged with his secretary for a telex to be sent to Pritchard advising that a search be made for the name of any Welshman serving as a conscript in the engine-room of HMS Formidable in 1952. It was a chance. Once Pritchard had the man’s original name, he’d be able to find out what merchant ships he’d served in later and whether any of them had been wrecked shortly before he had joined the Tarzan under the name of Henri Choffel.

Back at the hotel, after a meal and a bottle of wine at a little restaurant by the river, I found Varsac waiting

anxiously for me in reception with his bags packed. Paris was now clear and our flight would be leaving Nantes at 16.10. I got my key and was told there was a Mademoiselle Choffel wishing to speak with me. She was having a coffee in the bar.