Looking with dissatisfaction at his list, Berger decided he needed a break. Elena was out that afternoon at the dentist, so he went to make himself a coffee in the small cubicle kitchen along the corridor. As he waited for the kettle to boil, he went to the fridge to get the milk out. Through the thin stud wall he could hear the two Greek girls next-door, chatting away and laughing together. Suddenly their voices lowered. Berger closed the fridge door silently, the better to listen. His Greek wasn’t entirely fluent, but he could follow their conversation easily enough.
‘They were leaving the building when my friend saw them,’ Anastasia was saying in lowered tones. ‘It wasn’t his wife he was with.’
Falana giggled briefly, then said soberly, ‘It might be nothing. He does business with many clients, I’m sure. This could have been one of them.’
‘Ah,’ said Anastasia teasingly. ‘It’s admirable that you are so trusting. But there’s a small problem with your idea.’
‘What’s that?’ Falana squeaked.
‘They were leaving a hotel. And not the kind with a restaurant or bar. More the type where you rent a room by the hour.’
They were both giggling now, and Berger suddenly reached out and quietly pulled the kettle’s plug from the wall – he didn’t want its boiling to be audible next-door.
Falana said, ‘But how did your friend know it wasn’t his wife? They might want privacy – who knows? Maybe his parents live with them.’
Anastasia laughed alone now, scathingly. ‘Honestly, Falana, since when were you so naïve? Though I’m sure Mo would be delighted to hear you defend him this way.’
Berger was suddenly furious with himself. He hadn’t even included Mo Miandad, the shipping agent, on his list – yet the man was in the office two, sometimes three, times a week.
‘No,’ said Falana stubbornly, ‘it could well be his wife. It’s perfectly likely.’
Now Anastasia’s laughter was openly scornful. ‘Don’t be so stupid! Mo’s wife is Pakistani, right?’
‘So?’ said Falana wearily.
‘ So…’ said Anastasia mockingly ‘… the woman my friend saw him with was European. She had blonde hair.’
And Berger plugged the kettle back into the wall, happy now for the girls in the adjoining room to know that he was there.
But he was astonished by what he’d just heard. Years of being paid to know what was going on had prepared him for surprises – people were erratic, unpredictable, and sometimes fantastically secretive, which meant that however close you kept your ear to the ground, however canny a student of human nature you became, there was always room for the discovery that rocked you on your heels.
She had blonde hair. Well, that narrowed things down – zeroed them in, actually. Berger would have been prepared to believe a lot of things about the unpleasant Claude Rameau, but clandestine trysts with Mo Miandad in a flea bag hotel would not have been one of them.
To: Liz Carlyle
From: Peggy Kinsolving
Re: The Aristides
Ref: TH/CTE-cna342
The Aristides is a container ship leased by UCSO from Xenides Shipping. UCSO has an Athens office because Greece remains an important hub of commercial shipping, and it allows easy shipment of aid to either the continent of Africa, or via the Indian Ocean, Asia and the Far East. Though most ships, including the Aristides, fly flags of convenience for tax purposes (Liberia and Panama remain most popular), the Greek-owned maritime fleet is the largest in the word, accounting for 16% of global cargo tonnage.
The Aristides is a relatively small container ship, with a capacity of 2,500 TFO – TFO stands for Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit, which is the length of each container. A big cargo ship is anything over 7,000 TFOs and the largest can top 15,000. The advantage of the Aristides’ s comparative smallness is that it does not have to use only those ports with crane facilities – it has its own small crane on board. This allows the vessel flexibility in its choice of harbours, though it most commonly unloads in Mombasa, Kenya, which remains the major distribution point for its African shipments – and Africa in turn is the largest recipient of UCSO aid.
Despite their size, container ships have small crews – as few as 15 or 20 on board. The Aristides sails with a larger contingent of about 30, because of the team required to maintain and operate the crane. All passengers and crew live in the accommodation block at the stern of the ship, near the engine room.
On the voyage when the most recent hijack attempt was made, the Aristides was sailing with 31 crew members, of whom 25 were seamen. These sailors were recruited by Xenides Shipping, and were a mixture of nationalities. The captain (Erich Steffer, to whom I spoke on the phone) was Belgian, as was his second in command; two other officers were Danes (brothers), one was Italian, and one Greek. The crewmen were from Asia and the Far East: 10 South Koreans, 2 Indonesians, 5 Filipinos, 2 Vietnamese, and 6 Pakistanis.
