‘… no wreckage, only the dumped remains of ships’ garbage and one oil slick that was traced to a Liberian cargo vessel.’ He said it in an aggrieved tone, resentful of the trick fate had played on him. ‘I always run a tight ship here at GODCO, maintenance, damage control, everything Al. Our record speaks for itself. Since I took over this office we’ve had a long run…’
‘Of course. I understand.’ I found myself embar-
rassed at his need of self-justification, concentrating on the pictures then, while he began talking about the absence of any radio signal. Not a single ham operator had responded to their appeal, and in the case of the Howdo Stranger, with the very latest in tank cleansing equipment…
I wasn’t listening. There, suddenly, staring up at me, was a dark Semitic face I had seen before — in Khorramshahr, on a stretcher. The same birthmark like a burn blurring the full lips, the same look of intense hostility in the dark eyes, the womanish mouth set in a nervous smile. But it was the birthmark — not even the dark little beard he had grown could hide that. Abol Hassan Sadeq, born Teheran, age 31, electrical engineer.
I turned the picture round so that Captain Perrin could see it. ‘Know anything about him?’
He stared at it a moment, then shook his head. ‘You recognize him, do you?’
‘Yes, but not the name. It wasn’t Sadeq.’ I couldn’t recall the name they had given us. It had been six years ago. Summer, and so hot you couldn’t touch the metal anywhere on the ship, the Shatt al Arab flat as a shield, the air like a steam bath. Students had rioted in Teheran, and in Abadan there had been an attempt to blow up two of the oil storage tanks. We should have sailed at dawn, but we were ordered to wait. And then the Shah’s police had brought him on board, shortly after noon. We sent him straight down to the sick bay and sailed for Kuwait, where we handed him over to the authorities. His kidneys had been damaged, he had three ribs broken, multiple internal bruising and his front teeth badly broken.
‘Interrogation?’ Perrin asked.
‘I suppose so.’
‘He wasn’t one of the students then.’
I shrugged. ‘They said he was a terrorist.’
‘A terrorist.’ He said the word slowly as though testing out the sound of it. ‘And that’s the same man, on the Aurora B. Does that make any sense to you?’
‘Only that a bomb would account for her total disappearance. But there’d still have to be a motive.’ I searched through the file, found the man’s dossier and flipped it across the desk to him. It simply listed the ships he had served on.
‘We’ll check them all, of course,’ Perrin said. ‘And the security people in Abu Dhabi, they may know something.’ But he sounded doubtful. ‘To blow up a tanker the size of the Aurora B…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s got to be a hell of a big explosion to leave nothing behind, and no time for the radio operator to get off a Mayday — a suicidal explosion, in fact, for he’d have to be resigned to his own death. And it doesn’t explain the loss of the other tanker.’
I was working through the pictures again, particularly those of the Howdo Stranger crew. There was nobody else I recognized. I hadn’t expected there would be. It was only the purest chance that I had ever set eyes on Sadeq before. And if it hadn’t been for the GODCO practice of taking crew pictures for each voyage… I was still trying to remember the name the Shah’s police had given us when they had rolled him screaming off the stretcher on to the hot deck plates. It certainly hadn’t been Sadeq.
We discussed it for a while, then I left, promising to look in the following day. After the cool interior of the oil building it seemed much hotter outside on the crowded waterfront. Noisier, too, and smellier. I crossed the Creek in a crowded launch to one of the older buildings just upstream of the warehouses. Gault’s office was on the first floor. There was no air-conditioning and the windows were wide open to the sounds and smells of the wharfs with a view over the rafted dhows to the mosque behind the financial buildings on the other side. Gault was at the door to greet me, a thin, stooped man in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt of virulent colour. He had a wide smile in a freckled, sun-wrinkled face, and his arms were freckled, too. ‘Heard you’d arrived safely.’
‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’ I asked him.
‘Well, you never know, do you?’ He stared at me, still smiling. ‘Salt telexed yesterday. Last time we met you were mate of the old Dragonera. Then you left the Gulf.’ He took me over to the window. ‘There you are, nothing changed. The Gulf still the navel of the world and Dubai the little wrinkled belly-button that handles all the traffic. Well, why is he employing you?’
‘He seems to think my knowledge of the Gulf—‘
‘There are at least two ships’ captains on Forth-right’s staff who have a bloody sight more experience of the Gulf than you, so that’s the first thing I want to know. Two tankers go missing down by Sri Lanka and you come out here, to Dubai — why?’
I began talking about Karachi then, but he cut me short. ‘I read the papers. You’re after Choffel and you’re on to something. Something I don’t know about.’ He was staring at me, his eyes no longer smiling and his hand gripping my arm. ‘Those tankers sailed from Mina Zayed loaded with Abu Dhabi crude. But still you come to Dubai. Why?’
‘Baldwick,’ I said.
‘Ah!’ He let go my arm and waved me to a leather pouf with an old mat thrown over it. ‘Coffee or tea?’
‘Tea,’ I said and he clapped his hands. A small boy with a rag of a turban appeared at the door. He told him to bring tea for both of us and squatted cross-legged on the Persian carpet. ‘That boy’s the son of one our best naukhadas. He’s here to learn the business. His father doesn’t want him to grow up to be nothing but the skipper of a dhow. He thinks the dhows will all be gone by then. You agree?’ I said I thought it likely, but I don’t think he heard me. ‘What’s Baldwick got to do with those missing tankers?’
‘Nothing as far as I know.’
‘But he knows where Choffel is hiding up, is that it?’
I nodded.
‘You’d better tell me about it then.’
By the time I had given him an account of my dealings with Baldwick the tea had arrived, hot, sweet and very refreshing in that noisy, shadowy room.
‘Where’s the tanker you’re supposed to join?’ he asked.
‘I thought you might know.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘No idea.’ And he had no information to give me on Baldwick’s present activities. ‘There’s rumours of Russian ships skulking in the Straits of Hormuz. But it’s just bazaar talk.’ As a youngster he had served in India and he still referred to the suk as a bazaar. ‘You know how it is. Since the Red Army moved into Afghanistan, the dhow Arabs see Russian ships in every hidey-hole in the Gulf. And the khawrs to the south of the Straits are a natural. You could lose a whole fleet in some of those inlets, except that it would be like putting them in a furnace. Hot as hell.’ He laughed. ‘But even if the Russians are playing hide and seek, that’s not Len Baldwick’s scene at all. Too risky. I’ve known the bastard on and off now for more than a dozen years — slave girls, boys, drugs, gold, bogus oil bonds, anything where he takes the rake-off and others the rap. Who owns this tanker of yours, do you know?’
I shook my head.
‘So you’re going into it blind.’ He finished his tea and sat there for a moment thinking about it. ‘Tell me, would you be taking that sort of a chance if it wasn’t for the thought that Choffel might be on the same ship with you?’
‘No.’
He nodded and got to his feet. ‘Well, that’s your business. Meanwhile, this came for you this morning.’ He reached across his desk and handed me a telex. ‘Pritchard.’