Something told him that despite the fraternal language, the Afghan was not his friend. The raw hatred charged the atmosphere on the tiny bridge like a silent scream.
Martin’s hand slipped inside his robe for the knife. Ibrahim was first; the gun had been underneath the map on the chart table. It was pointing straight at Martin’s chest. The distance to cross was twelve feet. Ten too many.
A soldier is trained to estimate chances and do it fast. Martin had spent much of his life doing that. On the bridge of the Countess of Richmond, enveloped in her own death cloud, there were only two: go for the man; go for the button. There would be no surviving either.
Some words came into his mind, words from long ago, in a schoolboy’s poem, ‘ To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late . . .’ And he recalled Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, talking by the camp fire. ‘We are all sentenced to die, Angleez. But only a warrior blessed of Allah may be allowed to choose how!’ Colonel Mike Martin made his choice . . .
Ibrahim saw him coming; he knew the flicker in the eyes of a man about to die. The killer screamed and fired. The charging man took the bullet in the chest and began to die. But beyond pain and shock there is always willpower, just enough for another second of life.
At the end of that second both men and ship were consumed in a rose-pink eternity.
David Gundlach stared in stunned amazement. Fifteen miles ahead, where the world’s largest liner would have been in thirty-five minutes, a huge volcano of flame erupted out of the sea. From the other three men on the night watch came cries of ‘What the hell was that?’
‘Monterey to Queen Mary 2. Divert to port, I say divert to port. We are investigating.’
To his right Gundlach saw the US cruiser move up to attack speed and head for the flames. It was clear the Countess of Richmond had sustained some terrible accident. His job was to stay clear; if there were men in the water the Monterey would find them. But it was still wise to summon his captain. When the ship’s master arrived on the bridge his First Officer explained what he had seen. They were now a full eighteen miles from the estimated spot and heading away fast.
To port the USS Leyte Gulf stayed with them. The Monterey was heading straight for the fireball miles up ahead. The captain agreed that in the unlikely event of survivors the Monterey should search for them.
As the two men watched from the safety of their bridge, the flames began to flicker and die. The last blotches of flame upon the sea would be the remnants of the vanished ship’s fuel oil. All the hyper-volatile cargo was gone before the Monterey reached the spot.
The captain of the Cunarder ordered that the computers resume course for Southampton.
EPILOGUE
There was an inquiry. of course. It took almost two years. These things are never done in a few hours, except on television.
One team took the real Java Star: from the laying of her keel to the moment she steamed out of Brunei loaded with LPG, destination Fremantle, Western Australia.
It was confirmed by independent witnesses with no reason to lie that Captain Herrmann was in charge and that all was well. She was seen by two other ships’ masters rounding the north-eastern tip of Borneo Island shortly after that. Precisely because of her cargo, both masters noted she was well away from them, and recalled her name.
The single recording of her captain’s last Mayday message was played to a Norwegian psychiatrist who confirmed that the voice was a fellow-Norwegian speaking good English, but that he appeared to be speaking under duress.
The captain of the fruit ship that had noted her given position and diverted to the spot was traced and interviewed. He repeated what he had heard and seen. But experts in fire at sea reckoned that if the fire in the Java Star’s engine room was so catastrophic that Captain Herrmann could not save her, it must have ignited her cargo eventually. In which case there would be no fabric-tented life-rafts left floating on the water where she sank.
Filipino commandos carried out a raid, supported by US helicopter gunships, on the Zamboanga Peninsula, ostensibly on Abu Sayyaf bases. They trawled and brought back two jungle-dwelling Huq trackers who occasionally worked for the terrorists but were not prepared to face a firing squad for them.
They reported they had seen a small tanker in a narrow creek in the heart of the jungle being worked on by men with oxyacetylene torches.
The Java Star team entered its repo
rt within a year. It declared the Java Star had not been sunk by an onboard fire, but had been hijacked intact; and, further, that a lot of trouble had been gone to in order to persuade the marine world that she no longer existed when in fact she did. The entire crew was presumed dead already, and this had to be confirmed.
Owing to need-to-know, all the arms of the inquiry were working on the various facets without knowing why. They were told, and believed, that it was an insurance investigation.
Another team followed the fortunes of the real Countess of Richmond. They proceeded from the office of Alex Siebart in Crutched Friars, City of London, to Liverpool and checked out the family and crew. They confirmed all was in good order when the Countess unloaded her Jaguars at Singapore. Captain McKendrick had run into a friend from Liverpool on the docks and they shared a few beers before he sailed. And he telephoned home.
Independent witnesses confirmed she was still in the command of her lawful captain when she took on valuable timber at Kinabalu.
But an on-the-spot visit to Surabaya, Java, revealed she never even stopped there to take on her second part-cargo of Asian silks. Yet Siebart and Abercrombie in London had received confirmation from the shippers that she had. So it was forged.
A likeness of ‘Mr Lampong’ was created and Indonesian Homeland Security recognized a suspected but never-proven financial supporter of Jemaat Islamiya. A search was mounted but the terrorist had vanished into the human tides of South-East Asia.
The team concluded that the Countess of Richmond had been boarded and hijacked in the Celebes Sea. With all her papers, ID radio codes and transponder stolen, she would have been sunk with all hands. Next of kin were advised.
The clincher came from Dr Ali Aziz al-Khattab. The wiretaps on his phones revealed he was booking a departure to the Middle East. After a conference at Thames House, home of MI5, it was decided that enough was enough. Birmingham police and Special Branch took down the apartment door of the Kuwaiti academic when the listeners confirmed he was in the bath, and he was escorted away in a towelling robe.
But Al-Khattab was clever. A total strip search of his apartment, car and office, cellphone and laptop revealed not one incriminating detail about him.