It was a long day, sailing on a close reach, the shamal virtually a westerly, deflected by the red volcanic mountains. A great dish of rice and goat meat was cooked in the waist over a charcoal fire and we ate it squatting on the poop with the wooden pulpit-like thunderbox on the windward side, the mountains falling away and deep indents appearing in the coastline, so that the heat-hazed outline of its jagged cliffs had the-‘ fluted look of a red-hot organ. I had never been this close to the upthrust finger of the peninsula that was the southern side of the Straits of Hormuz. It looked hellish country, which doubtless explained the nature of the people who inhabited it. The Shihuh had a bad reputation.
And then, just as the sun was slanting so low that the whole dragons’-toothed line of jagged cliffs turned a bright blood-red, we turned and headed in towards them. The great sail was dipped for’ard of the mast and brought round on to the port side, the wind on the starboard quarter and the dhow piling through a sea so red it was like molten lava. It was a fantastic sight, the sun going down and the world catching fire, red rocks toppling in pinnacles above us and all of us staring unbelievingly as we ran suddenly into black shadow, the narrow gut opening out into a great basin ringed with sheer rock cliffs, and the whole wild, impossible place as red as the gates of hell, sculpted into incredible, fluted shapes.
At the far end, clamped against the red cliffs, red itself like a huge rock slab, a shape emerged that took on the appearance of a ship, a long flat tank of a ship with the superstructure at the far end of it painted the same colour as the cliffs, so that the one blended into the other, an optical illusion that gradually became a reality as we furled our sails and motored towards it in the fading light, the sound of our diesel echoing back from the darkening cliffs. It was hot as hell and a red flag with a hammer and sickle fluttered above the dim reddish outline of the tanker’s funnel.
CHAPTER TWO
We had known, of course, the instant we turned into the khaivr that this was where the ship lay; what came as a surprise was to find her jammed hard against the side of the inlet instead of anchored out in the open. The light was going fast, the shape of her merging into the towering background of rock, no colour now, the red darkening to black, and the gloom of the heat-stored cliffs hanging over us. She was a VLCC, about 100,000 tons by the look of her, the side-windows and portholes of her superstructure painted out so that she looked blind and derelict, like a ship that had been stranded there a long time. I think all of us felt a sense of eeriness as we bumped alongside, the hot reek of metal, the stink of oil and effluent that scummed the water round her, the silence disintegrating into a jabber of voices as we gave vocal expression to our feelings at this strange embarkation. But it wasn’t just the circumstances of the vessel. There was something else. At least there was as far as
I was concerned. I was conscious of it as soon as I had climbed aboard, so that I stood there, shocked into immobility till the heat of the deck coming up through the soles of my shoes forced me to move.
I have always been sensitive to atmosphere. I remember, when I was about ten, I went with a camel train to Buraimi and burst into tears at the sight of an abandoned village with the well full of stones. I had no idea at the time why it upset me so, but long afterwards I discovered that Wahabi raiders had thrown all the males of that village down the well before blocking it up. And it didn’t have to be the destruction of a village, or of whole armies, as in the Khyber where that dreadful little triangle of flat land in the depths of the pass shrieks aloud of the thousands trapped and slaughtered. Standing on the deck of that tanker, with the cliffs leaning over me and the stars brightening, I could accept the fact of her extraordinary position, tucked in against the rock face, the mooring lines looped over natural pinnacles. The flag, too. Given that this was some sort of fraud, then the painting of the hull to match the ochre-red of the rock, the blanking out of all the windows, these became sensible, practical precautions, and the flag no more than a justification for the ship’s concealment should the crew of an overflying aircraft be sharp enough to spot her. Everything, in fact, however strange, had a perfectly rational explanation — except the atmosphere.
An Arab was coming towards us along the flat steel promenade of the deck. He had a gaunt, pock-
marked face and a nose like the beak of a ship. There was a suggestion of effeminacy in his voice as he greeted bin Suleiman, but beneath the old sports jacket
I glimpsed the brass-bound leather of crossed braces and belt, the gleam of cartridge cases against the white of his flowing robes. This was a Bedu and equipped for fighting. ‘Gom,’ he said, in soft, guttural English, and he took us back along the deck to the steel ladder that reared up on the port side of the superstructure.
I could hear the faint hum of a generator deep in the bowels of the ship as we climbed to the level of B deck, where he opened the door for us, standing back and motioning us to enter.
One moment I was standing on the grating, dark-Bess closing in from the east, and to the west, behind the first outcrops of the Jebel al Harim, the last of the sunset glow still lingering in the sky, the next I had stepped inside, into the blacked-out accommodation area, everything darkened and the lights glowing dimly. Rod Selkirk’s quarters were, as usual in this type of tanker, on the starboard side, mine the next cabin inboard, so that both mates were immediately below the captain’s quarters on C deck. I had a wash and was stowing my gear when Rod poked his head round the door. ‘Officers’ saloon is just down the alley from me, and they got beer in the cold box — coming?’
‘Pour one for me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right with you.’
‘Sure. Be seeing you then.’
He closed the door and I stood there for a moment, looking vaguely round for the best place to stow my empty bags, conscious that his sudden need of company reflected my own mood, the sense of being alone and on the brink of a voyage whose end I didn’t want to think about. The cabin was hot and airless, the two windows looking for’ard obscured by an ochre-coloured wash, the lights dim. I scratched at the window glass with my thumb nail, but the wash was on the outside. It annoyed me that I couldn’t see out, the place seeming claustrophobic like a prison cell. I changed into my clean white shirt, combed my hair back, my face pale and ghostly in the damp-spotted mirror, then turned to the door, thinking of that beer. It was then, when I was already out of the cabin and had switched off the light, that the windows were momentarily illuminated from the outside, a baleful glow that revealed a tiny diamond-gleam of white where a brush stroke had lifted clear of the glass. It was in the bottom right-hand corner of the further window, but it was gone before I could reach it, and when I crouched down, searching with my eye close to the glass, I had difficulty in locating it. Then suddenly there was light again and I was looking down on to the deck of the tanker, every detail of it picked out in the beam of a powerful torch directed for’ard at two figures standing in the bows. I saw them for an instant, then they were gone, the torch switched off, and it took a moment for my eye to adjust to the shadowy outline of the deck barely visible in the starlight. A man, carrying something that looked like a short-barrelled gun, came into my line of vision, walking quickly with a limp towards the fo’c’sle, and when he reached it the torch shone out again, directed downwards now, three figures, dark in silhouette, leaning forward, their heads bent as they peered into what was presumably a storage space or else the chain locker.