But the euphoria didn’t last long and even before she stepped on board, it had been replaced by a stark reality. Returning to her normal life also meant seeing through her responsibilities to the end. Because the only way she could have shirked her duties would have been to have died. While she had been faced with that possibility, she had forgotten them. So her reprieve was temporary after all. She had work to continue. She could never return to China if she failed to complete her task. Impossible. Before getting to Somalia she had considered running away to live somewhere else in the world. But those she worked for would not forgive that. They would find her, one day, eventually. She would then pay a terrible price. But worse still, if she did manage to escape, those she held dear to her heart would suffer in her place. Her family, back in China, would suffer the consequences.
She would rather die than let that happen.
The basket was winched aboard and lowered to the deck. Most of the twenty-five-man crew, a mixture of Western officers and Filipino hands, watched from some part of the bulker. The captain and bridge crew stood on the bridge wings. On the deck, waiting for the basket to descend, stood Bob and the rest of his boys, except the pair who had picked up Stratton and the girl. When they had radioed ahead that the two people were an English Caucasian man and a Chinese woman, the word had spread and everyone wanted to see for themselves.
Stratton and the girl stepped off the side of the basket as it hovered inches from the steel deck. They could practically hear the whispered questions about who they were and what they had been doing in the middle of the Gulf of Aden.
Among the crew there had been the usual round of the more obvious suppositions and explanations: they had fallen overboard; they had been in a small boat that had sunk; they had been in a plane crash. But no one could work out how they’d managed to be speeding through the water having somehow attached themselves to the cargo ship while being pursued by murderous Somalis. At this point the conspiracy theorists among the crew, and there were always several, had a field day. One suggested they were submariners who had ejected from their vessel. Yet the fact that one of them was a girl served to enhance the most popular theory: they were spies of some kind and more probably assassins. The lack of any vaguely intelligent explanation as to what they could have been spying on or who they intended to assassinate did not deter this theory. Even those who declared the whole idea preposterous couldn’t help being lured to it in the absence of anything else.
‘Thanks very much,’ Stratton said with a smile. He held out his hand. ‘John Stratton.’
‘Bob Haldon.’ A firm handshake. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
There was an awkward pause. They both stood for a couple of seconds. Stratton knew what he needed from the man but he waited. There were some rather obvious bureaucratic requirements.
On seeing Stratton face to face Bob had lost some of his confidence in regard to the questions he wanted to ask. He would have had no problem asking anything of a stranger under normal circumstances. Bob could be very direct. The same would have applied if Stratton had been an ordinary bloke, despite his anything but ordinary arrival. But there was something very unordinary about the man standing in front of him, soaking wet and looking at him with bright-green, intelligent eyes. Bob had never had anything to do with special forces, but he knew one when he saw him, or at least thought he did. This bloke, with his long hair, had the bearing and stature of someone who dealt with extreme adventures of a military nature. Bob felt certain of it. And although he had sneered at the stories going around about the couple, he couldn’t think of any other explanation for such an outrageous arrival.
Bob had had time to think about and time to prepare a few questions. But after a glance at the girl, he realised something. ‘I expect you could both do with a drink and something to eat perhaps,’ he said.
‘A wet would be fantastic,’ Stratton said.
Bob gave his men a glance, like he had discovered something. ‘This way,’ he said, indicating one of his men to lead off.
The girl discarded her sweater and buoyancy aids. The security guys almost tripped over themselves to help her, fumbling with the oversized kit as she removed it. She smiled politely, which only caused an even greater quality of fumbling.
Stratton walked behind the leading guard towards the superstructure. Bob followed a few steps back, leaning close to one of the other security guards.
‘I’ve sussed him,’ Bob said. ‘He said he’d like a wet. That’s a naval term.’
‘He’s a sailor?’ the guard said. ‘You think he fell off one of the navy patrol ships.’
‘No, you twat. Does he look like a bloody sailor? He’s a boot-neck. A Marine. We say “wet” for a brew as well as the matelots.’
The line trooped into the superstructure and straight into the galley. But Bob paused outside and out of earshot of Stratton and the girl.
‘So what’s a Marine doin’ out ’ere in the middle of nowhere then?’ he asked, a rhetorical question. ‘Think a little outside of the box. He’s obviously no ordinary soldier, is he?’
‘You reckon he’s a super soldier, do yer?’
‘What else?’
‘Not SAS?’
‘Exactly,’ Bob said, looking at him. ‘He’s Special Air Service.’
‘Bugger me,’ the lad said.
‘Keep it down,’ Bob urged. ‘They get very funny about it if they think you know. Just act normal.’
Bob straightened himself up and walked into the galley where Stratton and the girl sat sipping cups of piping hot sweet tea.
‘How is it, then?’ Bob asked.
‘Nectar,’ Stratton replied.
The girl nodded, then bit down on a biscuit.
‘You must be starved,’ Bob said. ‘’Ere, George, pop into the kitchen and see what there is to eat. We’re in between meals,’ he added by way of an explanation to the strangers.
‘You’re very kind,’ Stratton said. ‘Thank you for everything.’
A man stepped into the doorway. He looked very much an authority figure. Bob straightened on seeing him.
‘Sir,’ Bob said to the man. ‘This is the captain,’ he announced to Stratton.
Stratton got to his feet and offered his hand to the portly, white-haired and -bearded older man. ‘John Stratton, sir,’ he said.
The captain shook hands with a smile, his whiskers stained brown from tobacco smoke. ‘Welcome aboard. I trust you’re being well looked after.’
‘We’re doing fine.’
‘Well,’ the captain started, broaching unfamiliar territory. ‘When you’ve settled in, perhaps you can pop up to the bridge. Obviously we have some paperwork to do.’
‘I’d like to crack on with that right away, if I may. I need to make contact with the UK immediately. I’m a member of Her Britannic Majesty’s military.’
Bob gave the others another look.
‘Right,’ the captain said. He looked glad that some light had been shed on the mystery, if only a little. ‘Let’s get you upstairs and on the blower.’
Stratton glanced at the girl. ‘This is a colleague. She works for the Chinese government. I expect she’ll be needing the same.’
The girl gave a nod but she looked discomfited.
The captain could do nothing more than shrug politely, clearly in new territory. ‘Whatever you need. Glad to be of service. I’ll be on the bridge.’