I told them everything, from the moment we had reached the Selvagen Islands, and then, in answer to questions, I went back over what had happened in the Gulf, the extraordinary sight of the Aurora B moored against those ochre-red cliffs. It was such a wonderful opportunity to present my case and I had just started to tell them of my escape and what had happened on the dhow, when somebody said there was a report in from the pilot of the Coastguard patrol plane. I lost them then, everybody crowding round the DoT press officer. I had been talking for nearly twenty minutes and I think their attention had begun to wander long before the report came in that confirmed the shadow of the old name showing on the Shah Mohammed.
I walked out, past some officers and a spiral staircase leading down to the bowels of the old fort, to a glassed-in passageway. The rainstorm had moved off into the North Sea and a shaft of watery sunlight was beamed on the waves breaking against the harbour walls. I thought I could see the atomic power station at Dungeness and I wondered how much of what I had said would find its way into print, or would it all be submerged in the threat posed by Sadeq and his two tankers? Something was going to happen, out there beyond the wild break of the seas, but what? Down below the horizon, beyond the black louring clouds of that rainstorm, the ports of northern Europe lay exposed and vulnerable. I should have said that. I should have talked about pollution and Pieter Hals, not concentrated so much on my own troubles. If Karen had been there, she would have seen to it that I concerned myself more with the threat to life, the sheer filth and destruction of oil slicks.
I was still standing there, trying to figure out how long it would be before those tankers came into sight, when one of the BBC’s TV news team asked if they could do an interview. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for some time, so it seems a good opportunity.’
It was a good opportunity for me, too. They filmed it outside with the Lookout and the Straits in the background and I was able to channel it so that for part of the time I was talking about the problems of pollution and what men like Hals stood for.
‘That’s the first we’ve heard of Hals being on board. You’ve claimed all along they’re terrorists. Why would Captain Hals join them?’
I couldn’t answer that. ‘Perhaps he was desperate and needed a job,’ I said. ‘Or he could have been thinking that a really catastrophic disaster in one of the major European ports would force governments to legislate against irresponsible tanker owners.’
‘Europort, for instance. Is that what you’re saying — that they’ll go for Europort?’
‘Perhaps.’ I was remembering Hals’s actual words when he had said nothing would be done — nothing until the nations that demand oil are themselves threatened with pollution on a massive scale. There was almost a quarter of a million tons of oil in those tankers. The Maas, the Noord Zee Canal, the Elbe — they were all prime targets.
I had an audience now of several journalists and was still talking about Hals when somebody called to us that the Flag Officer, Plymouth, was on the phone to the Minister requesting instructions now that a Navy frigate was in close company with one of the tankers and had identified it as the Aurora B. There was a rush for the Conference Room and I was left standing there with only a watchful policeman for company.
I was glad to be on my own for a moment, but shortly afterwards the Minister came out with Bas-ildon-Smith and they were driven off in an official car — to the Castle, the police officer said, adding that it was past one and sandwiches and coffee were available from the canteen. Several journalists and most of the TV men drove off in their cars, heading for the hotel bars at St Margaret’s. Clearly nothing was going to happen for some time. It began to rain again.
I went back into the Operations Centre and had a snack, standing looking out the windows of the Conference Room. Time passed slowly. I had a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, rain lashing at the windows. Later I strolled along the glassed-in passageway to the Lookout. There were one or two reporters there and the watch officer was letting them take it in turns to look through the big binoculars. Nobody took any notice of me until Captain Evans came in to check the latest position of the tankers. He also checked the latest weather position, then turned to me and said, ‘Care to see them on the radar?’ I think he was tired of explaining things to landlubbers, glad to talk to a seaman.
He took me through the heavy light-proof curtains at the back. ‘Mind the step.’ It was dark after the day-bright Lookout, the only light the faint glow from a computer console and the three radar screens. It was the left hand screen that was linked to the Dungeness scanner and the circling sweep showed two very distinct, very bright, elongated blips to the south and east of Dungeness. ‘What’s the course and speed now?’ Evans asked.
‘Just a minute, sir. They’ve just altered to clear the Varne.’ The watch officer leaned over, fed in three bearings on the central monitoring screen and at the touch of a button the computer came up with the answer: ‘O-six-O degrees now, sir. Speed unchanged at just over eighteen.’
‘Looks like the Sandettie light vessel and the deep-water channel.’ Evans was speaking to himself rather than to me. ‘Outside the French twelve-mile limit all the way.’ He looked round at me. ‘Should be able to see them any minute now.’ And he added, ‘That friend of yours, Saltley — he’ll be arriving at Dover airport in about an hour. Apparently he’s chartered a small Spanish plane.’ He turned quickly and went out through the curtains. ‘Try calling them on Channel 16,’ he told the woman auxiliary manning the radio. ‘By name.’
‘Which one, sir? The Ghazan Khan or the—‘
‘No, not the Iraqi names. Try and call up Captain Hals on the Aurora B. See what happens.’
It was while she was trying unsuccessfully to do this that the watch officer in the Lookout reported one of the tankers was visible. The Secretary of State came back from lunching with the Governor of Dover Castle and those not working in the Lookout were hustled out.
Another squall swept in and for a while rain obliterated the Straits so that all we could see was the blurred outline of the harbour. Saltley arrived in the middle of it. I was on the upper deck then, looking down through the glass panels, and I could see him standing by the state-of-readiness boards in front of the big map, talking urgently to the Minister and Basildon-Smith, his arms beginning to wave about. He was there about ten minutes, then the three of them moved out of sight into the Radar Room. Shortly afterwards he came hurrying up to the gallery, gave me a quick nod of greeting and asked the auxiliary to get him the Admiralty. ‘If the DoT won’t do anything, maybe the Navy will.’ He looked tired and strained, the bulging eyes red-rimmed, his hair still wet and ruffled by the wind. He wanted the tankers arrested or at least stopped and searched to discover the identity of the people running them and whether they had prisoners on board.
The squall passed and suddenly there they were, plainly visible to the naked eye, with the frigate in close attendance. They were almost due south of us, about seven miles away, their black hulls merged with the rain clouds over the French coast, but the two superstructures showing like distant cliffs in a stormy shaft of sunlight.