Saltley failed to get Admiral Fitzowen and after a long talk with somebody else at the Admiralty, he put in a call to Stewart. ‘I’ve a damned good mind to contact the Prime Minister myself,’ he said as he joined me by the window. ‘Two pirated ships sailing under false names with a naval escort and we do nothing. It’s bloody silly.’ I don’t know whether it was anger or tiredness, but there was a slight hesitancy in his speech that I had never noticed before. In all the time I had been with him in the close confines of the Prospero I had never seen him so upset. ‘There’s thirty or forty million involved in the hulls alone, more on the cargoes. I told the Minister and all he says is that underwriting is a risk business and nobody but a fool becomes a Member of Lloyd’s without being prepared to lose his shirt. But this isn’t any ordinary risk. A bunch of terrorists — you can’t counter claim against them in the courts, there’s no legal redress. The bloody man should act — on his own responsibility. That’s what we have Ministers for. Instead, he’s like a little boy on the pier watching some pretty ships go by.’
The bearing of the tankers was very slowly changing. Both VHF and R/T channels were filling the air with irate comments from ships finding themselves heading straight for a bows-on collision, the CMS watch officer continually issuing warnings for westbound traffic to keep to the inshore side of the land and maintain a sharp radar watch in the rainstorms.
They were all in the Lookout now, the Minister, Basildon-Smith and Captain Evans, with Saltley hovering in the background and everybody watching to see whether the tankers would hold on for the Sand-ettie light vessel and the deepwater channel or turn north. A journalist beside me muttered something to the effect that if they ran amok in Ekofisk or any of the bigger North Sea oilfields there could be catastrophic pollution.
It was at this point that I was suddenly called to the Lookout and as I entered the big semicircular glassed-in room I heard the Minister ask what the state of readiness of the Pollution Control Unit was. His voice was sharp and tense, and when Evans replied that he’d spoken to Admiral Denleigh just before lunch and the whole MPCU organization was alerted, but no dispersant stock piles had yet been moved, he said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. You already told me. No point in starting to shift vast quantities of chemical sprays until we have a better idea of where they’ll be needed.’
‘They may not be needed at all, sir,’ Evans said.
The Minister nodded, but his expression, as he turned away, indicated that he hadn’t much hope of that. ‘I should have been speaking at a big party rally in Aberdeen this afternoon.’ His voice was high and petulant. ‘On oil and the environment.’ He was glaring at the Head of his Marine Division as though he were to blame for bringing him south, maybe losing precious votes. But then he saw me. ‘Ah, Mr Rodin — this man Hals. He’s not answering. We’ve tried repeatedly, VHF and R/T. Somebody’s got to get through to him.’
His eyes were fixed on mine. ‘You’ve met him. You’ve talked to him. I’m sending you out there. See if you can get through to him.’
‘But—‘ I was thinking of the dhow, the way I’d left the ship. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘How do you mean — get through to him?’
‘Tigris is sending a helicopter for you. It’s already been flown off so it should be here any minute. Now about this story of somebody flashing a light from one of the tankers. Saltley here says you and a young man on this yacht both thought it was some sort of signal. Morse code. Is that right?’
‘I didn’t see it myself,’ I said, and started to tell him about the circumstances. But he brushed that aside. ‘The letter M, that’s what Saltley here has just told me. Is that right?’
‘Several quick flashes, then two longs,’ I said. ‘We were in the tanker’s wake then—‘
‘Two longs, that’s M in Morse, is it?’
‘Or two Ts. But we were being flung about—‘
‘You think it could have been part of a name.’ He turned to Saltley again. ‘One of the crew held prisoner on board signalling with a torch or a light switch, trying to give you the destination.’ He moved forward so that he was standing by the radar monitor, his eyes fastening on me again. ‘What do you say, Rodin? You stated quite categorically that in the case of the Aurora B, members of the crew were being held prisoner. Was this an attempt, do you think, to communicate and give you the target these terrorists are aiming at?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ I said.
‘No more than a possibility?’ He nodded slowly. ‘And the only one to see it was this boy. In a panic, was he? You’d nearly been run down.’
‘Excited,’ I told him. ‘We all were, but nothing wrong with his ability to observe accurately.’
He smiled thinly. ‘Then it’s a pity he wasn’t able to decipher more of the message — if it was a message. There’s an M in several of our estuary names, the Thames, the Humber—‘.
‘And the Maas,’ Evans said sharply. ‘Ports like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Bremen, and Rotterdam, there’s two Ts there.’ He pointed to the plot marked up on the large scale chart laid out on the flat surround below the Lookout windows. ‘If it’s our coast they’re headed for, they’ll have to turn soon or they’ll be blocked by the Fairy and North Hinder banks.’
‘Suppose the target were the North Sea oilfields?’
Evans shook his head. ‘Those tankers are already loaded. They’d have no excuse.’
The chop-chop-chop of a helicopter came faintly through the glass windows. I turned to Saltley. ‘Is this your idea?’ I was remembering Pamela’s warning that evening in Funchal. ‘Did you put it into his head?’ I could see myself being lowered by winch on to the deck of the Aurora B. ‘Well, I’m not going,’ I said, watching, appalled, as the helicopter emerged out of the rain, sidling towards us across the wind.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘All we want is for them to see you, on the bridge of the Tigris. A loud hailer. It’s more personal than a voice on the air.’
I think the Minister must have sensed my reluctance, for he came over and took me by the arm. ‘Nothing to be worried about. All we want is for you to talk to him, make him see reason. And if you can’t do that, then try and get the destination out of him. In any terrorist situation, it’s getting through, making contact — that’s the important thing.’
‘Hals isn’t a terrorist,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘So I gather. You and he — you talk the same language. You’re both concerned about pollution. He won’t talk to us here, but he may to you, when he sees you right alongside him. Commander Fellowes has his instructions. Make contact with him, that’s all I ask. Find out what the target is.’ He nodded to the naval liaison officer, who took hold of my other arm and before I could do anything about it I was being hurried down the stairs and out to the car park. The noise of the helicopter was very loud. It came low over the top of the Lookout and I watched, feeling as though I was on the brink of another world, as it settled like a large mosquito in a gap between the gorse bushes. The pilot signalled to us and we ducked under the rotor blades. The door slid open and I was barely inside before it took off, not bothering to climb, but making straight out over the Dover cliffs, heading for the Tigris.
Five minutes later we landed on the pad at the frigate’s stern and I was taken straight to the bridge where the captain was waiting for me. ‘Fellowes,’ he said, shaking me by the hand. ‘We’re going close alongside now. Hope you can get some sense out of them. They’re an odd-looking crowd.’
The bridge was built on a curve, not unlike the Lookout, but the changed view from the windows was quite dramatic. From the shore-based Operations Centre the tankers had been no more than distant silhouettes low down on the horizon. Now, suddenly, I was seeing them in close-up, huge hunks of steel-plating low in the water, the Aurora B looming larger and larger as the relatively tiny frigate closed her at almost thirty knots. ‘We’ll come down to their speed when we’re abreast of the superstructure, then the idea is for you to go out on to the open deck and talk direct.’ He handed me a loud hailer. ‘Just press the trigger when you want to speak. Don’t shout or you’ll deafen yourself. It’s a pretty loud one, that.’ He turned his head, listening as the ship’s name was called on VHF. It was the Dover Coastguards wanting to know whether contact had yet been made with the Aurora B. He reached for a mike and answered direct: ‘Tigris to Coastguard. Helicopter and passenger have just arrived. We’re all set here. Am closing now. Over.’