He dived down the companionway then, leaving me alone at the wheel. The boy was embarrassed and I knew why. Saltley might be an older man with a lopsided face, but he’d been to the right schools, belonged to the right clubs. He had the right background, and above all, he was the man their father turned to when there was underwriting trouble. Also, and perhaps this rankled more than anything, they knew my own family background.
I didn’t sleep much that night and in the morning Saltley asked me to take a noon sight myself and work out our position. It made me think he had put Mark up to it. But we were under spinnaker now, sailing on a broad reach at just over six knots, and with only another day to go before we raised the Selvagens it was obviously sensible to make use of my professional capabilities and get a check on his last fix.
I took the sights, and when I had finally got a position, there was only a mile or two in it, Selvagem Grande bearing 234°, distant 83 miles. It was now twenty-six days since the Aurora B had sailed. Only two or three more days to go. It depended how much of a lift the strong Agulhas current had given her, what speed she was making. She could be a little faster than we reckoned, or slower. It was just conceivable the rendezvous had already taken place. But Saltley didn’t think so. ‘Things always take a little longer than people reckon.’ But he was convinced the first tanker would be in position at least two days ahead of schedule, just in case, ‘That means we could find the tanker already there. I don’t think it will be, but it’s just possible.’ He gave me that lop-sided smile. ‘We’ll know tomorrow.’ And he added. ‘Wind’s falling light. We may have to run the engine later.’
It was only now, as we neared our objective, that we began to face up to the fact that if we were right, then we were the only people who could alert the countries bordering the English Channel and the southern North Sea to the possibility of a major marine disaster. In putting it like that I am being a little unfair to Saltley. The thought would have been constantly in his mind, as it was in mine. But we hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t brought it out into the open as something that could make the difference between life and death to a lot of people, perhaps destroy whole areas of vital marine habitat.
And that evening, sitting in the cockpit drinking our wine with the last of the sun’s warmth slipping down to the horizon, I began to realize how far from the reality of this voyage the three younger members of the crew were. Pam and Mark, they both knew it could affect them financially, but at their age that was something they took in their stride. Sailing off like this to some unknown islands had been fun, a sort of treasure hunt, a game of hide-and-seek, something you did for kicks, and adventure. I had to spell it out to them. Even then I think they saw it in terms of something remote, like death and destruction on the television screen. Only when I described the scene in the khawr as the dhow slid away from the tanker, with Sadeq standing at the top of the gangway, a machine pistol at his hip spraying bullets down on to us, only then, when I told them about Choffel and the stinking wound in his guts, and how bloody vulnerable we could be out there alone by the Selvagens facing two big tankers that were in the hands of a bunch of terrorists, did they begin to think of it as a dangerous exercise that could end all our lives.
That night it was very quiet. We had changed from spinnaker to a light-weight genoa at dusk and the boat was ghosting along at about four knots in a flat calm sea. I handed over to Mark at midnight and my bunk was like a cradle rocking gently to the long Atlantic swell. I woke sometime in the small hours, a sliver of a moon appearing and disappearing in the doghouse windows, the murmur of voices from the cockpit.
I was in the starb’d pilot berth, everything very quiet and something about the acoustics of the hull made their voices carry into the saloon. I didn’t mean to listen, but then I heard my name mentioned and
Mark saying, ‘I hope to God he’s right.’ And Pam’s voice answered him. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘He could be lying,’ the boy said.
‘Trevor isn’t a liar.’
‘Look, suppose he did kill that French engineer…’
‘He didn’t. I know he didn’t.’
‘You don’t know anything of the sort. And keep your voice down.’
‘He can’t hear us, not in the saloon. And even if he did kill the man, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the tankers.’
Her brother made an angry snorting sound. ‘You’ve had the flags out for him ever since the old Salt sent him off in search of the Aurora B.’
T think he’s got a lot of guts, that’s all. Getting himself on board that tanker, then getting away on the dhow with the man he was looking for. It’s quite incredible.’
‘Exactly. Salt thinks it’s so incredible it must be true. He says nobody could have made it all up. The next thing is every word he’s uttered is gospel, so that here we are, out in the Atlantic, everything hung on that one word salvage. And I’m not just thinking of the money. I’m thinking of Mum and Dad, and what’s going to happen to them.’
‘We’ve all of us got stop-loss reinsurance,’ she said. ‘Mine is for fifty thousand excess of thirty. Daddy’s is a lot more I know. It probably won’t save us, but it’ll help.’
‘I told you, I’m not thinking of the money.’
‘What then?’
‘If Trevor’s lying… All right, Pam, let’s say he’s told us the truth, say it’s all gospel truth, but we’ve got it wrong about where they’re going to meet up and there’s no tanker waiting at the Selvagens, how do we ever prove that the vessels we insured aren’t lying at the bottom of the sea? We’ve got to show that they’re afloat and in the hands of Gulf terrorists, otherwise that cleverly worded war zone exemption clause doesn’t operate.’
‘The tanker will be there. I’m sure it will’ There was a long pause, then she said, ‘It’s Daddy you’re worried about, isn’t it?’ He didn’t answer and after a while she said, ‘You’re thinking of suicide, is that it? D’you think he might — do you think he really might?’
‘My God!’ His voice sounded shocked. ‘The way you put it into words. You’re thinking of suicide — just like that, and your voice so bloody matter-of-fact.’
‘You’ve been skating around it.’ Her tone was sharp and pitched high. ‘You know you have, ever since you brought up the question of what we’ll find when we get to the island. If Trevor’s wrong and our tanker doesn’t turn up, if nothing happens to prove that the two of them are still afloat, then the money we lose — that’s everything, the house, this boat, all Mother’s jewellery, her clothes even — it will be nothing to the damage Daddy will suffer… all his friends, his whole world. At his age he can’t start again. He’d never be able to at Lloyd’s anyway. You can’t make a come-back when everybody knows you cost your Names just about every penny they possess. Do you think I don’t know this? I’ve been living with it for the last month or more, knowing that for him it’d be the end of the world. I don’t think he’d want to go on living after that. But whether he’d go as far as to take his own life…’