“Unfortunately for you, we have been watching every move aboard this ship for the last two weeks. We know about your Syndicate connections and, I have to say, to have had two senior members of the organisation aboard, in what will have been assumed by their masters to be your âsafe care' will not be well received at all will it!” Alex raised his hand again as the captain rose in defence. “In addition you are about to lose a most valuable cargo.” Alex looked forward where he could see Big J and some of the crew already trying to operate the heavy deck hatch opening gear. The captain's eyes followed Alex, a look of horror in his eyes when he saw the men hammering at the hydraulic clamps with heavy sledgehammers. “In short Captain they will be very disappointed to say the least. Yes or no?” Alex questioned sarcastically. “Now I'll also bet that you have a large maritime mortgage on this vessel and I'd take an even bigger bet that it's with your Syndicate partners?” he added quickly.
The captain slumped into the navigator's chair.
“You guessed right on all counts and now I'm undoubtedly fucked. So what happens next?” he spat out defiantly.
“You better tell me how you became involved and what exactly your roll has been with the Syndicate,” Alex invited him in a quiet conciliatory tone. “There may be a way of getting you off the hook but I'd need to understand the full story. OK?”
“Chief, why don't you go and help the other crew unload our cargo before they bugger everything up completely!” The captain smiled encouragement to the exasperated engineer who'd been watching Big J's crew hammering away at his precious cargo hatches.
“You'll be OK?” the old chief queried, looking across suspiciously from his captain and friend to Alex and then to John, who was taking little notice of the conversation; trying to figure out the ship's controls was of more interest to him.
“Don't worry old friend I'll be OK; you best go and show them how to open the hatches without sinking the ship!” the captain smiled.
The chief left the bridge without any more encouragement.
Alex watched him leave, and then turned to the captain. “Been together long?” He nodded towards the departing chief engineer.
“Ten years,” he sighed, then went on to tell his story. It was typical of the majority of Syndicate vassals.
It had all started on his first trip as captain of a small refrigerated coaster built with a reinforced icebreaking bow. Their commission was to make the first run into the coastal ports of the Baltic Sea at the end of the winter freeze. They would be delivering cargo and collecting mostly frozen fish products for the return journey.
They'd sailed through the Kiel Canal and up to Stockholm and then across to Finland where they port-hopped along that jagged coast, collecting and delivering a wide variety of goods. Their last port was Vaasa, where they refuelled and decided to rest for a couple of days before starting back to the Swedish side of the Baltic and the return journey.
They'd been drinking in a rather seedy back street bar and hosting a couple of local females.
“Couldn't quite call them ladies, if you understand!” the captain smiled briefly as he reminisced.
Towards the end of the evening one of the locals, possibly a sailor or fisherman, shouted drunkenly across to their table.
“Don't think you're going to get anywhere with one of our girls!” He stood up unsteadily. “If you want a girl go back to Cyprus and find one there!”
Recognising trouble at once, they paid their bill and stood up to leave. The captain gave each of the girls a ten dollar bill smiling, “No harm done eh girls?” and walked out of the bar.
They'd hardly gone ten paces when one of the girls ran out calling after them.
“Don't go! We have some more fun yes?”
The chief turned grinning,
“OK little girl, come to Papa. We have some fun OK?” He held out his arms, inviting her to join him.
At that moment, the drunken man from the bar appeared at the doorway.
“I told you to leave her alone!”
He staggered as he advanced, his hand outstretched towards the chief; he was holding a vicious-looking filleting knife.
The girl screamed, “No Sven, no!”
She ran towards him, ignoring the weapon. It all happened in a split second. She seemed to launch herself at the man. It was certainly not intended but he pinioned her on the knife, which entered her chest cavity at the sternum and pierced her heart. The blood gushed from the tiny wound. The chief dived at the man and punched him with the heel of his hand to the side of the head. The blow, which carried his full body weight added to the man's forward momentum, was devastating. The man stopped dead in his tracks and toppled over, striking his head on the smooth granite kerb. His skull cracked like eggshell, driving bone splinters into his brain. He died within a few seconds. The captain joined in the mêlée by grabbing at the dying girl, who had collapsed onto her knees, and gazing transfixed at the blood pumping from her chest. She looked up with appealing eyes at the captain but did not speak and then fell forward to the ground. The captain, who never knew why, grabbed the knife and jerked it from the woman's chest and stood dazed and staring in disbelief at the blood-soaked weapon.
It was the chief who came to his senses first.
“Christ Cap, what a mess!” he exclaimed, looking at each of the prostrate forms in the road then back to the captain. Trying to come to terms with the desperate situation, he pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and tried to slow the flow of blood still pumping from the woman's chest. The captain looked up in alarm, suddenly aware of another man who stepped out of the shadows.
“Having a bit of trouble Captain?” The man asked coolly.
“Who are you?” the captain asked, a tremble in his usually confident voice.
“You could call me your âguardian angel' because I think you are going to need me to help you out of this rather nasty little mess don't you?” the man offered somewhat cynically.
For the two sailors, the whole episode was like scene from a horror movie. Standing over two dead bodies, both men liberally covered in blood, the captain still holding the knife that had killed the girl. On top of which they were in a foreign port, where once the locals scented blood justice could be hard to find. It was an impossible dilemma.
Incredibly, the stranger offered to clean up the whole mess for them. All they needed to do, he instructed, was to “ go straight back to your ship and wait for me there. I'll be with you in about an hour.”
For them, it was like being offered he last two lifebelts as the ship slips below the waves. So without any further thought they agreed and jogged back to the ship relieved to get away from the place.
Within the hour, the stranger appeared as promised. He quickly explained, “I am associated with a group known as the Syndicate and just by chance had been completing some business here. When I saw your little problem I realised that you need help. My colleagues in the Syndicate are always happy to give assistance to honest traders down on their luck so I had no problem persuading them that I should help out”! He smiled benignly.
The Captain, having recovered his composure, was naturally suspicious.
“So what do we have to do in return for this generous gesture?” he asked directly.
“You are very perceptive and yes there is always a price to pay but I am sure you will find that our way is to be reasonable. In fact we are known to be extremely generous and reward success in abundance. It also has to be said that failure or disloyalty should never contemplated; the price is far too high.” He pursed his lips. “You understand me?”
He went on, “The Syndicate is looking to acquire and operate their own coastal shipping company, allowing them to move cargo without the bureaucracy associated with legitimate shipping companies. They have agreed that you could have the contract!”
They needed little further persuasion when the man explained that the woman was the daughter of the tough local mayor. The fisherman was a local bad boy so it had been easy to persuade the policeman that he had killed the girl. The police were still curious however as to how the bad boy had died.
“We don't need to assist them do we? I have been able to assure them that two foreign sailors went straight back to their ship when they left the tavern and so could not have been involved,” he smiled benignly. “That is unless my memory were suddenly to be jogged.”
Still in shock from the sudden nightmare, they were easily recruited.
Soon after returning to their homeport, they transferred to their new ship. They never saw the stranger again. For a couple of years they ran the chartered coaster for their Syndicate masters; the cargoes always seemed to be legitimate, and though the paperwork was frequently either inadequate or so messy no one understood it, it all seemed to be reasonably above board.
Then the captain had the idea of owning his own vessel and chartering it to the Syndicate. They had been very understanding and had willingly provided the funds to purchase the much larger vessel. With the new capacity, business picked up and their voyages became much longer. They had to look the other way more frequently now but had never had any problems, “Up until now at any rate!” the demoralised captain muttered.
Alex listened without interrupting the man's flow as he unburdened his story but now it was Alex's turn. He had heard similar stories before. The Syndicate happily trade on any weakness to ensure loyalty. The formula for success within the organisation was simple: look after us and the rewards are generous; failure however is not an option to be considered, its fatal consequences too dreadful to contemplate.
“Well Captain, it sure looks as though you're in the shit now doesn't it!” Alex pointed as the first container of weapons was lifted from the hold by the ship's own derrick and then traversed swaying erratically to the side of the ship. Each one had been fixed with a small charge of explosive to be detonated as they entered the water. It would blow a hole in the containers big enough to make them sink rapidly to the irretrievable depths below.
“We wouldn't want any of those containers floating about the ocean as a danger to shipping would we?” Alex smiled contentedly.
“They'll probably kill me for this you know!”
“I'd say they certainly will and they won't be quick about it either! Tell me,” Alex changed the subject suddenly, “about a year or so ago did you handle a cargo of gold bullion out of Manila, accompanied by four Singapore business men?”
The captain was obviously surprised by the question.
“How could you know about that?” He sat upright in his chair. “Are you Syndicate?” His anxiety was clear.
“No I'm not Syndicate. If I were, do you think I'd be dumping this cargo into the ocean?” He leaned forward. “You see I have made it my business to know a great deal about the Syndicate's various activities and intend to purge their evil regime from the face of the earth. So consider this to be your lucky day as you have the choice of helping me or otherwise.” Alex folded his arms. “You see we have placed magnetic mines under the hull of your ship. I can detonate them any time I choose. You are only here because the captain of the tug insisted that I respect the natural law of the sea. Otherwise I would have blown you all to bits, without so much as a minute's thought.” He paused. “Now what happened to that cargo and the passengers?”
By now the captain was totally demoralised his dreams of sailing the oceans of the world before retirement in relative comfort were all in tatters. Numb from the sudden impact of it all he muttered barely audibly, “They were transhipped.”
“What do you mean transhipped?” Alex raised his voice.
“We had a sudden change of orders. We were ordered to rendezvous with another vessel and transferred the gold and the passengers to them. It was one of those fast ocean-going junks. I'm pretty sure it was the one operated by the group known as The Yellow River Pirates - the Syndicate usually use them for anything that is shipped to or from China.” He looked up, almost unaware of what he had been saying. “I never learned about their final destination; in fact I never asked.” He sat up and looked more positively at Alex. “You should know, we're not encouraged to ask questions about Syndicate business.”
The first charge was detonated as the container dropped into the water; it floated for a few seconds then slipped gurgling below the oily calm sea.
“Captain, you can see that I'm not bluffing.” Alex headed for the door. “I'm going to give some thought to what we do with you and your ship. I suggest that you sit here quietly until I return.” He gave “a keep an eye on him” nod towards John and went down to the deck as the next container emerged from the hold and swung into the air.
8
With Sophie rescued from the nightclub and safely packed into the rear of the pickup, they hurried back to the old fishing harbour where Remi and Marion waited nervously.
Oscar jumped from the pickup, hardly waiting for it to come to a complete stop.
“We found her!” he greeted Marion triumphantly. “Greg as well.”
He looked back as Greg, still stripped to the waist and the angry red weals from flogging showing across his shoulders and back, eased himself from the pickup.
“My God what have you been up to?” Marion gasped, staring in horror at the blood stained men standing before her. Sophie, assisted by Annie, emerged next from the vehicle and fell tearfully into Remi's open arms.
Annie was still holding the child on her hip as Dick stepped forward and unconsciously slipped his arm around her waist.
“What a bloody mess,” he whispered close to her ear and then led them across to the boat, still rocking gently at its mooring.
Greg borrowed the pickup and drove the others back to the bungalows. “We'll have time to clear our things before any of Len's pals figure out what happened back at the club,” Greg reasoned as they pulled into the drive. “Quick as you like though - no point in taking any chances eh?” he grinned encouragingly.