Fair Game (31 page)

‘Fishing?’ she said. ‘Who is fishing?’

Shepherd laughed again. ‘It’s an expression. Fishing for compliments. It’s when someone is looking for someone else to say something flattering.’

She nodded. ‘OK, I understand,’ she said. ‘In that case, you only look thirty-five. Is that better?’

‘Much better,’ he said. He looked at his watch. ‘Can you drive me to the station?’

Katra dropped him outside the station, and ten minutes later he was on the train to London. He wanted to phone Charlotte Button but the train was packed and he didn’t want to be overheard so he waited until he got to Paddington before heading upstairs to Starbucks, where he bought himself a regular coffee. He found a quiet table and called her. ‘I’m at Paddington, about to go to Heathrow,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to check that the
Athena
is definite.’

‘Why the concern?’ she asked.

‘I had a chat with the navy guy, Giles. He gave me all sorts of reasons why pirates wouldn’t take a ship that size.’

‘Crazy Boy gave his uncle the name of the ship, its call sign and route,’ she said. ‘There’s no mistake.’

‘It’s just that I’m going to look pretty damn stupid if nothing happens and I sit there like an idiot all the way to Suez.’

‘You and me both,’ she said.

‘Crazy Boy’s people haven’t taken a ship that big before, have they?’

‘They’ve taken some big ships, but I’ll have to check if any of them are as big as the
Athena
. You’re telling me that size matters, are you?’

‘Giles said that the big ships are hard to board, that’s all. And that the ransom isn’t really dependent on the size of the vessel. There are easier ships around. I was just wondering why they’d chosen the
Athena
.’

‘All right, I’m on it,’ she said. ‘We’re keeping tabs on Crazy Boy and his people and if it looks as if we’re on a bum steer we’ll pull you off.’

‘That’s not as easy as it sounds,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t just pull in at the nearest port.’

‘We’ll send a helicopter.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said.

Shepherd’s Malaysia Airlines flight left Heathrow at 10 p.m. and he arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at just after five o’clock the following afternoon. There was a long queue at immigration and by the time he reached the luggage carousel his bag was already there. He slung it over his shoulder and walked through customs and bought his taxi ticket at a kiosk where there was another long queue. By the time he got into the back of a Suzuki taxicab it was after six. Port Klang was a forty-five-minute drive from the airport along a motorway. The speed limit was showing as 90 kilometres per hour but the driver kept it at a steady 120.

The Crystal Crown Hotel was a nondescript block next to a main road and his room on the eleventh floor smelled of stale cigarette smoke. There was an arrow painted on the ceiling with the word ‘Kiblat’ on it, which Shepherd knew was showing the Muslim faithful which way Mecca was. As he stared out of the window at a row of drab houses he heard an amplified call to prayer, but the hotel appeared to be hedging its bets as there was a Gideon Bible on the bedside table.

To the right was a fire station and several mustard-coloured blocks of apartments, and in the far distance were a line of dockside cranes looking like spindly birds perched at the water’s edge. He shaded his eyes with his hands but couldn’t see any ships.

He opened the minibar and popped open a can of Coke, then took out his mobile and called Jamal.

‘You are here, Mr Blackburn, excellent,’ he said.

‘What about the ship, Jamal? Has it docked yet?’

‘We have an ETA of nine o’clock tomorrow,’ said Jamal. ‘I shall collect you after eight if that is convenient?’

Shepherd thanked him and ended the call. He showered and ordered a club sandwich and coffee. The sandwich was barely edible and the coffee bland, but the food on the plane hadn’t been much better so he ate it all and then fell asleep with the television on.

He woke early to the sound of the mosque, but drifted back to sleep and woke again when the phone rang. It was 8.30 and it was Jamal, saying that he was down in reception. Jamal was in his late twenties, dark skinned with a beaming smile. He took Shepherd’s bag for him and hefted in on to his shoulder before taking him out to a black van standing in front of the hotel.

Shepherd sat in the front passenger seat while Jamal drove to the port, and like the taxi driver from the night before he had a total disregard for the posted speed limit on the motorway. For much of the time he talked in Malay on his mobile phone.

There was a large building on the outskirts of the port with what looked like an observation tower at the top. Jamal stopped the van and took Shepherd into the building but had him wait outside the immigration office while he went in and dealt with the paperwork necessary to get him on to the ship. Then they got back into the van and Jamal drove to the port entrance. Jamal showed his port ID to a policeman. Three young customs officers in uniforms several sizes too large for them peered curiously at Shepherd and one of them said something to Jamal in Malay. Jamal replied and they waved him through.

‘What was that about?’ asked Shepherd.

‘They were just asking who you were. They said you didn’t look like a sailor.’

‘I’m not,’ said Shepherd. ‘I work in an office usually.’

They reached the quayside and Jamal turned left. Half a dozen huge ships were lined up under rows of blue and white cranes that ferried containers back and forth. Trucks were driving away from the ships with containers on their back, and others were queuing up to have their containers unloaded.

They drove alongside the ships and for the first time Shepherd realised just how big they were. He had to tilt his head back to see even the bottom rows of the containers. The top levels were as high as a ten-storey building.

The
Athena
was at the far end of the dock. There were four massive cranes above the vessel and they were all whizzing backwards and forwards, loading containers at a dizzying speed.

Jamal brought the van to a stop and helped Shepherd out with his bag. There was a metal stairway leading up the side of the ship to the deck, some three storeys above them. ‘I leave you here,’ said Jamal. ‘Enjoy your voyage.’ He shook hands with Shepherd and climbed back into the van. Shepherd shouldered his bag and started up the stairway. Above his head the massive cranes moved back and forth, the operators sitting in plexiglass cubicles, looking down between their legs to guide the containers into place.

As he reached the deck a Filipino in blue overalls and wearing a yellow hard hat looked up from a clipboard and frowned. ‘Oliver Blackburn,’ said Shepherd. ‘From the company.’

‘The master said he wasn’t sure if you were coming or not,’ said the Filipino. There was a badge sewn over his heart that identified him as the third officer.

‘Well, I’m here,’ said Shepherd. ‘Bright eyed and bushy tailed.’

‘I’ll show you your cabin,’ said the officer. He led Shepherd through a hatch and down a wood-lined corridor to a lift. ‘The master said to put you on F-Deck; it’s where the passenger cabins are.’

‘No problem,’ said Shepherd.

The officer took Shepherd up to F-Deck and opened the door to a cabin facing the lift. Shepherd was pleasantly surprised. It was about twice the size of the hotel room he’d slept in the previous night, and a good deal cleaner. There was a bathroom to the left with a double bunk beyond it, and to the right of the cabin was a seating area with two sofas and two easy chairs around a large coffee table. Against one wall was a desk with a reading lamp and a telephone. There were three windows but the view was limited to a line of containers, though he could look up to see the crane operators still hard at work. Two of the windows were sealed but the one closest to the bed could be opened, with five large removable bolts and two hinges.

‘If you let me have your passport and your yellow fever paper I’ll take them to the master,’ said the officer.

Shepherd gave him his Oliver Blackburn documents. ‘When do I get to see the master?’ he asked.

‘He’s ashore at the moment. He’ll call down for you when he’s back on board,’ said the officer, pointing at the phone. He was wearing a transceiver on his belt and it crackled with static.

‘I’ll be needing a radio,’ said Shepherd.

‘The chief officer can arrange that for you,’ said the officer. There was a clock on the wall behind the sofas. It was just after ten o’clock in the morning. ‘You’ve missed breakfast, that’s between seven thirty and eight, but the cook does tea and coffee in the galley on B-Deck between ten and ten twenty. Lunch is from twelve to one and dinner is from six to seven. There’s a passenger recreation room across the corridor.’

‘Got it,’ said Shepherd, dropping his bag on to the coffee table. ‘Are there any other passengers?’

‘Just you, so you’ve got the room to yourself.’

‘And what time do we leave?’

‘About four, maybe five,’ said the officer, looking at his watch. ‘Depends how quickly they finish the loading.’ His transceiver crackled again. He took it off his belt and began speaking into it as he left the cabin.

Shepherd unpacked his bag, hung up his shirts and trousers and put his socks and underwear into one of the drawers. The bathroom was a good size with a toilet and a large shower. He put his washbag on a shelf and cleaned his teeth and then went across the corridor to check out the recreation room. It was slightly bigger than his cabin with a sofa that curved around one corner facing a flatscreen television and DVD player, and half a dozen blue easy chairs and a couple of coffee tables. The television was on a sideboard that ran almost the full length of the outside wall of the cabin. Next to the television was a stack of DVDs in cardboard folders, most of which appeared to be Chinese counterfeit copies of recent Hollywood blockbusters, including all the
Pirates of the Caribbean
films.

He figured that the best way of meeting his shipmates would be at lunch, so he slotted in one of the Johnny Depp DVDs, dropped down on to the sofa and swung his feet up on to the coffee table, figuring that it was entirely appropriate that he should pass the time watching a pirate movie. He smiled to himself as he realised that actually he was watching a pirate pirate movie, which made it doubly appropriate.

Shepherd went down to the officers’ mess at midday on the dot. The
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie had been something of a disappointment and it had nothing to do with the quality of Johnny Depp’s performance. The printing on the cardboard had been professional enough and the disc looked right, but the film had clearly been shot on a video camera by someone sitting in a cinema, probably somewhere in China. The soundtrack was barely audible, though he could clearly hear people coughing and rustling sweets and laughing whenever anything funny happened on screen, and every now and again he’d see the head and shoulders of someone sitting in front of the lens.

He walked down the stairs to B-Deck and along to the officers’ mess, which was on the port side of the ship. A note next to the door said that overalls and workboots weren’t allowed. He pushed open the door. Facing him was a long table running the width of the room, with just one man sitting at it with his back to the door. He looked over his shoulder. He was in his fifties, grey haired and with a couple of days’ stubble on his chin, and he looked at Shepherd over the top of horn-rimmed spectacles. In front of him was a plate of steak and green beans.

‘Hi,’ said Shepherd, holding out his hand. ‘Oliver Blackburn.’

‘Hainrich,’ growled the man, ignoring Shepherd’s outstretched hand. ‘Chief officer.’ He turned his back on Shepherd and went back to eating his steak.

Shepherd looked around the room. There was a long sideboard against one wall that seemed to be the twin of the one in his recreation room, and two circular tables each with six chairs around it. The chairs also matched the ones in his recreation room. The people who had outfitted the vessel had obviously brought in a job lot of furniture. A place had been set at one of the round tables.

A Filipino messman in a white uniform and a black and white checked apron came out of the galley and smiled at Shepherd. He motioned for him to sit at the single place setting but Shepherd pointed at the table where the chief officer was sitting. ‘OK if I sit there?’ he asked. The messman looked confused and scratched his head. ‘Chief, is it OK if I sit with you?’ There were six other places set at the long table.

The chief officer shrugged without looking up from his meal. ‘You’re a company man, I guess you can sit where you want,’ he growled.

Shepherd sat down at the head of the table, farthest from the door, and the messman hurriedly transferred the place setting. To Shepherd’s left were two windows, identical to the ones in his cabin, but instead of a view of the containers he could see a red lifeboat. In between the two windows was a framed poster of a gloomy Van Gogh painting of a church at night, and on the wall behind the sideboard was a larger print, also by Van Gogh, of a wheat field on a summer’s day.

Through a door at the far end of the mess room Shepherd could see the stainless-steel cupboards and cooking stations of the galley, where a Filipino in grubby whites was standing with his arms folded, a spatula in one hand.

‘Soup?’ asked the messman as he finished resetting Shepherd’s place.

‘Soup would be great,’ said Shepherd, and the man hurried off to the galley.

‘So you’re a time and motion man, are you?’ said Hainrich, his head bent down low over his plate as he worked on his steak.

‘Human resources,’ said Shepherd.

‘Looking to cut back the crew even more, huh?’ He had a Polish accent that reminded Shepherd of Katra when she had first arrived in England. ‘The bloody owners won’t be happy until they’ve got computers running the whole ship and done away with human beings completely.’

‘I’m just here to see how things run,’ said Shepherd. The last thing he wanted on his first day on board was to have an argument with the chief officer. ‘I file a report and that’s me done.’