The Accident Man:A Novel

57

“Have you made the calls?”
Bill Selsey looked at his colleague with sympathy in his eyes—sympathy and an intense gratitude that he’d not been the one who’d had to do every senior officer’s least favorite job.
“Yeah.” Jack Grantham looked drained of his usual air of purpose. “She was an only child, you know. Her parents’ pride and joy. A First at Cambridge, a glittering career. All that was missing was the husband and children. The worst thing is, the parents have no idea what their kid’s really been up to. At least if your boy’s in the army you know there’s always the chance of bad news. But these people were sitting there thinking their little girl had a safe diplomatic job in Switzerland. And who the hell ever gets killed in Switzerland?”
“How did you explain it? Car crash?”
“Yeah, the usual: a hit-and-run, tragic accident, death was instantaneous, she didn’t suffer. All that bollocks.”
“I got you a coffee.”
Selsey handed over a white plastic cup filled with an indeterminate brown liquid. Grantham took a drink and grimaced.
“Bloody hell, that’s awful.”
“Some things don’t change,” said Selsey. “New HQ, same old rubbish coffee.”
Grantham managed a bitter laugh. He drank some more, then shook his head.
“It wasn’t meant to be like this. I told them, just watch, don’t get involved.”
“I know,” agreed Selsey. “I said the same thing. Told her to be careful. Are we sure yet, how it all happened?”
“Pretty much. Murcheson, the other lad from Bern, spent all night with the Geneva police. He’s seen all their forensic evidence, read the witness statements. Johnsen was taking photographs right up to the moment he decided to get involved. It seems pretty clear that our Russian friend from the black BMW, the one we think killed Papin, had managed to swap vehicles. He’d got hold of a telephone company van and was using it to watch one of the properties on the street. Presumably it was the place Papin had led him to, where the Paris crew were hiding out. So he’s watching that and we’re watching him and everything’s just peachy, until for no good reason anyone can work out, the Russian decides on a change of plan and goes into this café.”
“Maybe he just fancied a decent cup of coffee?”
“Well, I can sympathize with him there. But there must have been more to it than that because Johnsen took it upon himself to go up to the café himself, and by the time he got there the Russian had grabbed a young woman—identity unknown, by the way—and was dragging her out the door. Then Johnsen decides to do his knight-in-shining-armor act and gets shot for his trouble. So then the Russian starts shooting witnesses, two in the café and Stock, who’d come rushing up the road when she saw her partner go down.”
“What a bloodbath. Still, one can’t help wondering about this mystery woman, the one who got abducted. The Russian must have wanted her very badly if he was prepared to kill four people without blinking. And he didn’t kill her, you’ll note.”
“Not yet, no.”
“So she’s the key to it.”
“Well, she’s part of the key, certainly. Because there’s something else.”
Grantham was picking up speed now, finding new reserves of energy. “At almost exactly the same time as the Russian was shooting people left, right, and center at the café, there was another fight going on up the road at an Irish pub.”
“Good grief. Sounds more like Dodge City than Geneva.”
“I know, but here’s the interesting thing. There were three victims of this pub brawl and they were all Russian, all carrying diplomatic passports. They wouldn’t say a word about what happened. But they were all armed with submachine guns and they were all taken out by one man, before they could fire a shot.”
Selsey gave a whistle of admiration. “Sounds like an impressive chap.”
“Yes, and this same mystery man was next seen running down the street shooting a pistol of his own. And guess what his target was?”
“Don’t tell me, the Russian?”
“You got it. The Russian, driving away in his van, presumably with the woman stuck in the back. So what does that tell you?”
“That the mystery man and the mystery woman were both being chased by the same bunch of Russians.”
“And the Russians got their information from Pierre Papin, who was trying to flog us a lead to the people who killed the princess. Which means . . .”
Selsey had no trouble finishing the sentence: “That if we find the mystery duo, we’ve got our killers.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe those poor bloody kids didn’t die entirely in vain.”
“Somehow, Bill, I don’t think that will bring much comfort to their parents.”
Neither man knew what to say next. Before either could think of anything, the phone rang. Grantham picked it up. He listened to the voice on the other end of the line for a few seconds, frowning at what he heard. Then he said, “Hang on a second,” and gestured at Bill Selsey, pointing at something on his desk. “Pass me that pad, quick, and a pen.”
Selsey handed them over and Grantham started writing, his phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear. Finally he put the ballpoint down and transferred the phone to his hand. “Thanks, Percy, I really appreciate this. As you may know, this all got personal for us last night. Anyway, well done. You’ve come up trumps once again.”
Grantham put the phone down and suddenly his face, so miserable a few minutes earlier, was wreathed in a beaming grin. “We’ve got them! Percy Wake seems to have persuaded his contacts that they need to be a bit more helpful. They’ve handed over two names. Surprise, surprise, it’s a man and a woman. And I’m going to have them if it’s the last thing I do.”



58

“Bugger!”
Bobby Faulkner stood helplessly in the cockpit of the 36-foot yacht the Tamarisk, his hand on the starter button of its Yanmar diesel engine, listening to the spluttering cough of a motor that didn’t want to start. A mocking jeer came from his crewman, Samuel Carver, standing at the bow of the boat, a line in his hand, waiting to cast off.
“Don’t tell me you forgot to fill her up!”
It felt like old times to Carver, going off on a mission with Bobby and QT. He’d spent all day with nothing to drag his mind away from Alix, driving himself crazy trying to work out what had happened to her, trying not to dwell too long on what her captors might be doing to her.
Along the way, he’d called Thor Larsson, received a one- word progress report on the computer decryption—“Slow”—and asked for a final piece of technical assistance. “I want to ruin their day,” he’d said. Now he was back in that familiar routine, using banter and mockery to push fear to one side, finding comfort in the unspoken affection that underpins male friendships.
Faulkner called back, “Piss off! The tank’s full, there’s just a bit of sludge in the fuel line. Should clear all right. It always does.”
Another, older voice spoke up from the stern of the boat, three or four feet behind Faulkner: “Fear not. It was just as feeble when we left Poole. But we got underway eventually.”
Carver grinned at the sound of his old commanding officer’s voice, feeling reassured by his presence, happy that for once someone else was looking out for him. The old man must be in his late fifties by now, but he still looked pretty much as Carver remembered him: quite short, stockily built, but brimming with bullish energy. There were probably a few more pounds around Trench’s waist, and the lines on his ruddy face were etched a bit deeper, but time would do that to any man. There were dark smudges around his eyes too, but Trench had explained them away soon enough.
“I was off shooting in Scotland over the weekend with some old chums. We swore we wouldn’t stay up drinking and talking all night. Told one another we were getting too old to go to bed at three and be out on the moor by eight. And then we did it all over again. Typical!”
Faulkner disappeared into the bowels of the boat to fiddle about with the engine. The other two men returned to the boat’s open cockpit. They sat down opposite each other on the cushioned benches that curled around its sides, interrupted only by the hatch on the forward side that opened onto a ladder down into the boat’s cabin.
Trench leaned forward, his elbows resting on his thighs. “So,” he began, with the look of an affectionate uncle amused by his nephew’s latest scrapes, “Bobby tells me you’ve got yourself a sexy new mail-order bride.”
Carver gave a puzzled frown. “Sorry?”
Trench chuckled. “Forgive me, dear boy. Inappropriate comment. You must be under terrible pressure, with this Russian girl of yours going missing. I was just trying to bring a touch of levity to the situation, a little joke about the way most ladies from her neck of the woods find a chap in the West. Wrong move, obviously.” He cleared his throat, then tried again. “So, tell me about this girl. I gather she’s the real thing.”
Carver grimaced. He didn’t feel in the mood for a heart- to-heart conversation.
“Maybe . . . but you never know, do you?”
“I should have thought that was the whole point. You know instantly. I did, when I met Pamela. Took one look at her and thought, ‘Bloody hell, she’s a cracker.’ ”
“Okay, yeah, that’s part of it. But it’s not that simple. You feel a certain way, but you can’t necessarily trust that feeling. You can’t be sure what she’s thinking. You don’t know what she wants, or what’s going to happen between you. Can’t be sure of anything, basically.”
The older man sighed. “Goodness me, that’s not the dashing young officer I used to know. You were always decisive, confident, absolutely sure of yourself and your men. You didn’t sit around worrying all day. You just got on with the job at hand.”
“That’s because I knew what the job was. I had orders, I knew my targets, and there was a specific definition of success. That stuff was easy. This stuff isn’t.”
Trench nodded. “Then let’s stick to specifics. What’s this female’s name? Age? Description?”
“Alexandra Petrova; just about to turn thirty; maybe five foot eight; weighs around a hundred and thirty pounds; blond hair, blue eyes.”
“Bloody hell,” repeated Trench, “she is a cracker.”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”
“How do you mean?”
“She just gets it. And I think I get her. I don’t know. . . .” Carver didn’t want to say any more.
Trench raised his eyebrows, just as Faulkner emerged through the hatch with a determined look on his face. He glanced at the two other men.
“Not interrupting, am I?”
“It’s fine,” said Carver. “We’re done. So, is this boat any closer to moving?”
“Absolutely,” said Faulkner with a triumphant smile. “Like a rocket. Gentlemen, return to your positions, if you please.”
He waited while the two men went to either end of the boat and picked up their lines, then pressed the starter again. The engine coughed, spluttered, gave a couple of encouraging chugs, then died away again.
“Damn!” muttered Faulkner. He pressed again, and again. On the fourth attempt, the engine finally sprang to life. The lines were cast off, Carver and Trench returned to the cockpit, and the boat moved away from the finger pontoon to which it had been tied.
Slowly, Faulkner picked his way down a narrow channel between the bobbing hulls and gently swaying masts of the other yachts moored at the thousand berths of Port Chantereyne, Cherbourg’s yacht marina, the largest on the entire French coastline. Within a few minutes they’d reached the relatively open water of the Petite Rade, Cherbourg’s inner harbor.
Faulkner pointed back toward the shore. “See over there, near that bloody huge ferry? That’s the ocean-liner quay. The Titanic tied up there, just before she set off to meet that iceberg.”
He pushed open the throttle and took the engine up to full speed as they passed a huge circular fortification and moved into the outer harbor, the Grande Rade. The harbors were enclosed by giant sea walls, and another castle guarded the final opening into the English Channel.
“Get to work, chaps,” said Faulkner. “Time to get our sails rigged.”
Soon the two great white triangles of the mainsail and the jib were outlined against the darkening sky, and for a few moments Carver was lost in the glorious freedom of a yacht meeting the open sea, heeling away from the breeze. Faulkner turned off the engine, and now the only noise came from the flapping of the sails, the gentle creaking of lines under pressure, and the rush of water and air. Away to the north, black clouds were massing on the horizon. Carver tapped Faulkner on the shoulder and pointed to them.
“That doesn’t look too friendly,” he said.
“Cold front coming down from the Arctic,” Faulkner replied. “It’s due to hit us sometime in the next two or three hours. The wind’s westerly now, force four. It’s going to veer to the north and freshen to five or six, maybe seven at times. Pretty windy, but don’t worry, the Rustler can handle it and the tides are in our favor most of the way. Still, there’s rain forecast too, so it won’t be pleasant. I’ve got a spare set of rain gear stowed under the bed in the bow cabin. You can use those. Might as well get them on now, while you’ve got the chance.”
Carver went below. He made his way through the Rustler’s cramped main cabin, squeezing past the galley and on between a wooden table and a seating area till he came to a plain wooden door. It opened into an even tighter space, most of which was occupied by a sleeping area shaped like a mutilated triangle, squeezed into the bow of the boat. The mattresses were hinged by the hull of the boat and lifted up to reveal storage spaces below. Carver rummaged around until he found a pair of orangey red waterproof trousers and a matching Windbreaker. The jacket was built to keep out a hurricane, with a collar that zipped all the way to Carver’s chin and wristbands that fastened with Velcro.
As he tightened them, he thought about the two other men on the boat, how the apparently casual, even amateurish appearance both presented to the world hid huge reserves of courage, competence, and, when necessary, ruthlessness. He thought back to all the times they had given, taken, and passed on instructions, about the precision with which they were trained to recall and repeat what was said to them. They all knew the devastating effect that even tiny misunderstandings could create in times of war.
Carver went back over all that had been said and he knew that he had been betrayed. He wondered whether both of his old comrades had been in this together. One of them he knew now was an enemy; the other might yet be an innocent dupe. So what did that make him? A dupe, certainly, but hardly innocent. The pieces of a puzzle that had been jumbled in his mind began to fall into place and a picture emerged. It was a portrait of himself, but it was hardly flattering. It showed a man who had been fooled, not once but repeatedly, a man who had extended his trust to a tiny handful of people and chosen the wrong ones every time. One of these days, if he lived that long, he would go back over it all in his mind and work out, not where he had gone wrong—that was now obvious—but why. These men had been his friends, his brothers-in-arms. Once they had been willing to risk their lives for him. What had he done since then to make them want to betray him? Perhaps you didn’t have to do anything. His mother had given him up just for being born.
He’d dealt with that. He could deal with this.
So where would the battle take place? A yacht in a storm was a lousy place for a fight. It was cramped, it was constantly pitching and rolling, and everyone onboard was wearing wet, bulky clothing. Sticking a gun in a set of waterproof pants was no problem. Getting it out in a hurry was a lot trickier. And standing steady enough to take an accurate shot would be damn near impossible.
The key point was the hatch and the ladder between the cockpit up on deck and the cabin down below. Anyone caught there would be a sitting duck. The next few hours would consist of an unacknowledged jockeying for position in which two, maybe all three of the men onboard would silently compete to be in the right place when the moment finally came for one of them to show his hand. Meanwhile, Carver intended to stack the odds in his favor.
Stashed away in the same storage space as the weatherproof clothing, Carver found what he’d need later. For now, though, he was going to keep things nice and civil, as if he still thought they were all good friends. Them against the world, just like the good old days.
He walked back to the cockpit hatch and stuck his head through.
“Anyone fancy a cup of coffee?”
He took the orders and put the kettle on the galley’s gas stove. He filled three mugs, added milk and sugar, and went back up on deck. Now there was one last task.
The yacht’s mast was supported by ropes, or shrouds, that stretched up to its top from the side of the hull. They were kept taut, away from the side of the mast, by two horizontal spars, or spreaders. A white plastic pot, about eighteen inches high, had been hoisted up to the port-side spreader. The pot was a radar reflector, designed to ensure that the yacht’s position was known to passing vessels. It was secured by a line tied to a cleat at the bottom of the mast.
Carver made his way over to the cleat. He loosened the line, held it in his hand, and called back to the cockpit, “Sorry, Bobby, this has got to go.”
“What are you talking about?” shouted Faulkner.
“I can’t be on anyone’s radar screen.”
“Have you gone totally mad? We’re about to do a night crossing of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Five hundred ships sail along or across the Channel every day, and if any one of them so much as touches us, it’ll be like an elephant stepping on a matchbox. We’ll sink. And then you’ll never enter the bloody country at all. Nor will the rest of us.”
Carver gave an affable, who-cares grin. “Then we’ll just have to keep our eyes open, won’t we?”



59

Alix was alone in the darkness. They had treated her well enough so far. The first night, Yuri had let her sleep in peace. That had surprised her. It wasn’t his usual technique. During the day that followed, the questions were insistent but polite, even civilized. How did she meet the man? Why did she go with him? Why hadn’t she killed him? Had she even tried? Since she had let him live, what had she learned from him? Where was the computer? And what had she given away?
Only that last question had been asked with any undercurrent, Yuri barely bothering to disguise the implication that more than information was at stake. Still, she had not been mistreated. The chalet staff had treated her with a distant familiarity, more like an occasional guest than a prisoner. She had been served the same food as everyone else, been allowed to drink the same wine.
But all the while she’d known it couldn’t stay this way forever. Sooner or later, Yuri Zhukovski’s patience would run out. He’d want answers to darker, deeper questions and he wouldn’t care how much he had to do to her to get them. Sooner or later, he would grow bored of simple conversation and resort to the physical methods that would tell him what he needed to know.
Yuri was operating under intense pressure, that much was obvious. A crisis was brewing somewhere in the vast web of corporations that formed his business empire. He had spent hours shut away in his study calling his most senior associates and negotiating with clients, while Alix was left under Kursk’s icy supervision, his eyes following her every movement with an unbroken, implacable hatred, not just for her personally (though that was enough) but for everything she represented.
Whenever Yuri emerged to continue his interrogation, she could see the stress that gripped him in the grinding tension of his jaw and the obsessive clenching and releasing of his fists. She would pay for that tension, she was certain. He would let it loose on her.
Eventually she had been ordered upstairs and left by herself in a heavily shuttered room until he was ready to deal with her. She had little idea how long she had spent trying to prepare for what was bound to come. It might have been one hour, it might just as easily have been three. Time seemed to move at a different speed in that velvety darkness.
And then she heard footsteps in the hallway outside. She knew what they meant. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm, focusing on her pounding heart and slowing her pulse as she let her breath go. She must stay still now, stay silent. There would be screaming enough in the hours to come.



60

Magnus Leclerc had been given a number to call in case of emergency. He’d been told it was very unlikely that anyone would complain about the phoney money transfer. But just in case, there were people who’d want to know about it. And they’d be very grateful for the information.
It wasn’t easy to summon up the courage. He’d had a lot to think about.
If he were exposed, as Vandervart had threatened, it would destroy his marriage. The more he thought about it, the less that looked like a problem. He’d be rid of Marthe for good, and the only thing he felt about that was relief.
He’d lose his job too, of course, and the status that came with it. There’d be a certain amount of humiliation, even mockery, to be endured. But underneath, he knew, plenty of his banking peers would be thinking that they’d have liked a crack at the bombshell in the white lingerie. They’d say old Magnus was a sly old dog, didn’t know he had it in him. He’d be back in business within months.
Or maybe not. Maybe he’d just give them all the finger and fly away to the Cayman Islands. He’d spent years quietly saving, skimming, and pocketing money. He could spend the rest of his life on a beach if he felt like it.
Put it like that, and there didn’t seem much to be lost by talking. But what if he kept his mouth shut?
There was a reason Vandervart had wanted Malgrave’s number. He obviously wanted his money, by any means necessary. That would mean big, big trouble. Sooner or later, people would work out that Leclerc had been the root cause of that trouble. And they wouldn’t be happy. He did not like to think how they would react. On the other hand, Vandervart would not stop at sending a few videos to the media if he felt he had been betrayed.
Leclerc spent a sleepless night in the spare room, then went into work still unsure of his next move. Finally, he dialed two numbers. One was the number Malgrave had given him.
A woman’s voice answered. “Consortium. How can I help you?”
He was put through to a man who spoke in a courtly English accent. The man thanked Leclerc profusely for his information, then asked him where he could be contacted later in the day, “just in case we need to ask you any further questions, check the details of what this man Vandervart was after, that sort of thing.”
Leclerc was eager to be as helpful as possible. He provided his phone numbers and his home address. He wanted the man to appreciate how sorry he was about the Vandervart problem. He would do everything he could to make up for his carelessness. The man was most understanding. “I sympathize with you, monsieur,” he said. “You have been through a terrible ordeal. Anyone would have reacted the same way.”
When he put down the phone, Leclerc was sweating. He wiped his forehead and loosened his tie. Then he called a second number. It belonged to a travel agent. He asked for the earliest flight to Miami. The agent booked him first class on the next morning’s British Airways flight to London, Heathrow, connecting there with the lunchtime departure for Miami. Leclerc used his company credit card.
He went home that evening after work and tried to act normally. The arguments were no worse than usual, the silences between them no more deafening. They were sitting in the living room after dinner, Leclerc lying back in his leather recliner watching a badly dubbed American cop show on TV, when the doorbell rang.
He grabbed the remote control and turned the sound down on the TV. The bell rang three more times, harder and more insistently. “Go and answer it,” he ordered Serge, a sullen, gangly boy of seventeen who was the younger of his two children. The kid remained motionless in his chair, letting everyone know how much he resented this intrusion into his busy schedule of sitting around, before hauling himself to his feet. He slammed the door as he left the room and stalked into the entrance hall.
Leclerc craned his head in the direction of the front door. He heard it open. He heard his son say, “Who—?” Then he heard a cracking sound like a cross between a bat hitting a ball and an eggshell cracking against a bowl. Next came the muffled thud of something heavy flopping down onto the floor.
Marthe was the first to react. She leaped from her seat and was halfway to the door to the hallway when it opened and two men walked into the room. They had pump-action shotguns in their hands. There was blood on the butt of one of the guns.
The first man through the door had fiery, spiky orange red hair. He almost collided with Marthe in the middle of the living room floor, barely breaking stride as he swung his knee into her midriff. Marthe bent double, soundlessly, the air knocked out of her, and he shoved her backward, sending her skittering into the wall.
Leclerc’s daughter, Amelie, a thin, plain young woman of nineteen, screamed. The second man, round-faced and full- lipped, punched her in the mouth to shut her up, then threw her across the room. She ended up in a heap next to her mother.
No more than five seconds had passed since the men had entered the room. Leclerc was still stuck in his recliner, watching helplessly as his womenfolk were attacked. He struggled to his feet, his eyes widening as one of the men swung his shotgun around until it was pointing at his guts. The other had his weapon aimed at the two women, huddled together against the far wall.
The two men glanced at each other. The red-haired man gave a quick, commanding jerk of his head. And then they both started firing.



61

The cold front hit just after midnight, the weather changing as suddenly as the channels on a TV. One moment they were sailing smoothly toward their destination with a fresh, mild wind blowing on a beam reach from the west, directly across their northerly course; the next, the air was ten degrees colder and the wind had shifted forty-five degrees to the north, picked up speed, and filled with stinging rain that beat down with an incessant intensity.
The angry new wind picked fights with everything it met. It drove into a sea that was flowing down the Channel on an ebb tide, piling the rolling swell into shorter, steeper waves that crashed into the boat, tossing it, bouncing it, dropping it like a toy.
There was no point in all three of them staying on deck, so they agreed on a roster of two-hour watches. The course was set by auto helm. Whoever was topside simply had to keep an eye out, ready to override the system and take the helm if the need arose. Carver went first; Trench volunteered to go second. That way, Faulkner could take an uninterrupted break till it was time for his watch. He needed the rest. He’d spent well over twelve hours at the helm. By the time his watch was over, it would almost be dawn. They’d all get up then.
Carver didn’t expect any trouble during his time on duty. When he was standing in the cockpit, anyone wanting to attack him would have to climb up a ladder and through the hatch, coming out of the light into the darkness. Unless he fell asleep at the tiller, no one was going to overpower him that way. He’d be vulnerable only when he went back down below deck.
At the end of his watch, Carver stepped up to the hatch, gripped the top, then swung his legs through, missing the ladder completely and jumping straight down into the cabin. He landed in a crouch on the heaving floor. Trench was sitting on the edge of the main table in the center of the cabin.
“Bloody hell,” he said coolly. “That was a bit dramatic.” There was a mug in his hand. “Hot toddy,” he said, holding it up appreciatively. “You should try some. We left some for you in a Thermos. It’s in the galley.”
Trench nodded to his left, where Bobby Faulkner was stretched out on a settee. “Fast asleep. Poor chap was absolutely shattered.”
“Think I’ll crash too,” said Carver. “Anyway . . . your turn. Good luck. It’s bloody cold and wet up there.”
Trench grimaced and went, “Brrrr . . . ,” just like any man about to go out into foul weather. He made his way past Carver and put his mug in the galley sink. He showed no outward signs of tension or even alertness, yet he never completely turned his back as he scuttled up the ladder and out into the cockpit, pulling the hatch closed behind him as he went.
Carver let him go. Trench might just have been inviting an attack. And there was no guarantee Faulkner was really asleep. He didn’t want to find himself fighting both men at once.
He picked up the Thermos and poured himself a mug of toddy, savoring the steamy fumes of brandy, honey, lemon, and tea. But just as he was about to take the first sip, he was distracted by a clack of hard plastic from the cabin floor. There were two mugs down there, knocking into each other. Faulkner must have had a drink too.
And now he was lying unconscious, passed out on the settee. Carver went over and shook him hard, but there was no response.
Well, that settled one thing. It would be a straight fight, Trench against Carver, master against pupil. And by the time Bobby Faulkner awoke from his drugged stupor, only one of them would be alive to greet him.



62

The Scandwave Adventurer was longer than three football fields laid end to end. It weighed around one hundred thousand tons and it could carry over six thousand standard shipping containers at a speed of more than twenty- five knots. That made it around fourteen thousand times heavier than Faulkner’s yacht and a little over three times as fast. The combination of size, weight, and speed also made it about as maneuverable as a runaway steam roller.
Knowing all this, its designers had given their vessel every possible assistance. It had state-of-the-art radar, satellite tracking, and telecom equipment. The skipper knew the precise position of his ship on the surface of the globe. He could track every other ship for miles around. In shallow waters he could map the precise contours of the ocean floor beneath him, making it virtually impossible to run aground. As the men who managed the Scandwave Shipping Corporation regularly told themselves, no one needed experienced crew these days. The technology sailed the damn boat all by itself.
So when the wind changed that night and the cold, biting rain came in from the north, the watchman posted on the exposed, narrow deck, high up in the icy air beside the bridge, did not stand up proud and tall, exposing himself to the bitter blast, because that was his duty and he was proud to do it. No, he sat right down, with his back against the deck’s low steel wall, cupped his hands to make a tiny shelter from the wind, and lit a cigarette. He was damned if he was going to get cold and wet on the pittance they were paying him, when the rain was so heavy he could barely see the bow of his own ship, let alone anything farther out to sea. And besides, there was a guy who sat by the radar screen. Let him watch out for passing traffic.
And so it was that the Scandwave Adventurer, bound from Rotterdam to Baltimore, sailed west down the English Channel, with its load of six thousand containers, while the Tamarisk, bound from Cherbourg to Poole, sailed due north, across the English Channel, with its load of three tired men. And neither had the faintest idea of the other’s existence.