The Afghan

“Every one. Large and small, right down to tiny. The hazardous-cargo team here is only two guys, but they’re good. As a matter of fact, they are down to the last handful of LPG tankers.

“As for the general freighters, the sheer numbers mean that we had to cut off at those under ten thousand tons. Except when they enter the American forbidden zone along each seaboard. Then the Yanks spot them and investigate. “For the rest, every major port in the world has been apprised that Western intelligence thinks there may be a hijacked ghost ship on the high seas, and they must take their own precautions. But, frankly, any port likely to be targeted by Al Qaeda for massacre would be in a Western, developed country; not Lagos, Darak; not Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. That leaves our non-American list of possible ports at under three hundred.”

There was a tap on the door, and a head came round. Pink-cheeked, very young, name of Conrad Phipps.

“Just got the last one in, Sam. Wilhelmina Santos, out of Caracas, bringing LPG to Galveston, confirms she is okay, Americans prepared to board her.” “That’s it?” asked Hill. “Every LPG tanker in the world accounted for?”

“It’s a small menu, Steve,” said Seymour.

“Still, it looks as if the LPG tanker idea was a blind alley,” said Hill. He rose to leave, and return to London.

“There is one thing that worries me, Mr. Hill,” said the cargo egghead. “It’s Steve,” said Hill. The SIS has always maintained the tradition of first names, from the highest to the humblest, with the sole exception of the chief himself. The informality underwrites the one-team ethos. “Well, three months ago an LPG tanker was lost with all hands.”

“So?”

“No one actually saw her go down. Her captain came on the radio in high distress to say he had a catastrophic engine-room fire, and did not think he could save his ship. Then… nothing. She was the Java Star.” “Any traces?” asked Seymour.

“Well, yes. Traces. Before the captain went off the air, he gave his exact position. First on the scene was a refrigerator ship coming up from the south. Her captain reported self-inflating dinghies, life belts and various flotsam at the spot. No sign of survivors. Captain and crew have never been heard from since.”

“Tragic, but so what?” asked Hill.

“It was where it happened, sir. Er… Steve. In the Celebes Sea. Two hundred miles from a place called Labuan Island.”

“Oh, shit,” said Steve Hill, and left for London.

While Hill was driving, the Countess of Richmond crossed the equator. She was heading north by northwest, and only her navigator knew exactly where. He was going for a spot eight hundred miles west of the Azores and twelve hundred miles east of the American coast. If extended due west, her track would bring her to Baltimore, at the top of the vastly populated Chesapeake Bay. Some of those on board the Countess began their early preparations for the entry into paradise. This involved the shaving of all body hair, and the writing of the last testaments of faith. These testaments were done into the camera lens, and were read aloud by each writer.

The Afghan read his as well, but he chose to speak in Pashto. Yusef Ibrahim, from his time in Afghanistan, had learned only a few words of the language, and he strained to understand, but even if he had been fluent he could not have faulted the testament.

The man from the Tora Bora spoke of the destruction of his family by an American rocket, and his joy at soon seeing them again while bringing justice at last to the Great Satan. As he spoke, he realized that none of this was ever going to reach any shore in physical form. It would all have to be transmitted by Suleiman by data stream before he, too, died, and his equipment died with him. What no one seemed to know was how they would die, and what justice would be visited upon the USA -the exceptions being the explosives expert and Ibrahim himself. But they revealed nothing.

Given that the entire crew was surviving on cold ca

And the damage would be spotted. A saboteur would be known about at once. The loss of the dinghy would be a setback, but not enough to abort the mission. And there might be time to patch the damage. He dropped the idea, but kept the rag-sheathed knife strapped to the small of his back. Each spell at the bridge, he tried to work out which port they were going to and what was inside the sea containers that he might be able to sabotage. Neither answer surfaced, and the Countess steamed north by northwest.

The global hunt switched and narrowed. All the marine giants, all the tankers and all the gas ships had been checked and verified. All the ID transponders conformed to their required transmissions; all the courses conformed to their predicted routes; three thousand captains had personally spoke to their head offices and agents, giving date of birth and other personal background details, so that even if the captains were under duress no hijackers could know whether they were lying or not.

The USA, her Navy, Marines and Coast Guards stretched to the limits without furlough or time off, was boarding and escorting in every cargo vessel seeking berth in a major port. This was causing economic inconvenience, but nothing big enough to inflict real damage to the biggest economy on earth. Following the tip from Ipswich, the origins and ownership of the Java Star were checked with a fine-tooth comb. Because she was small, her owning company concealed itself behind a “shell” company lodged with a bank that turned out to be a brass plate in a Far Eastern tax haven. The Borneo refinery that had provided the cargo was legitimate, but knew little about the ship itself. The freighter’s builders were traced-she had had six owners in her lifetime-and they provided plans. A sister ship was found, and swarmed over by Americans with tape measures. Computer imaging produced an exact replica of the Java Star, but not the ship itself.

The government whose flag of convenience she flew when last seen was visited in force. But it was a Polynesian atoll republic, and the checkers were soon satisfied that the gas tanker had never even been there. The Western world needed answers to three questions: Was the Java Star really dead? If not, where was she now? And what was her new name? The KH-11 satellites were instructed to narrow their search to something resembling the Java Star.

DURING THE first week of April, the joint operation at Edzell air base in Scotland stood down. There was no more it could do that was not now being done far more officially by the main Western intel-gathering agencies. Michael McDonald returned with relief to his native Washington. He stayed with the hunt for the ghost ship, but out of Langley. Part of the CIA’s mission was to reinterrogate any detainee in any of its covert detention centers who might, before capture, have heard a whisper of a project called al-Isra. And they called in every source they had out in the shadowy world of Islamist terrorism. There were no takers. The very phrase referring to the magical journey through the night to great enlightenment seemed to have been born and died with an Egyptian terror financier who went off a balcony in Peshawar in October. With regret, Colonel Mike Martin was presumed to have been lost on mission. He had clearly done what he could, and if the Java Star, or another floating bomb, was discovered heading for the USA, he would be deemed to have succeeded. But no one expected to see him again. It had simply been too long since his last sign of life in a diver’s bag on Labuan.