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The cruiser steadied her speed at ten knots and turned north-east for Kudat, the access to the Sulu Sea and the terrorist hideout in Zamboanga Province of the Philippines.
It had been a gruelling journey, with only catnaps on the aeroplanes. The rocking of the sea was seductive, the breeze after the sauna-heat of Labuan refreshing. Both passengers fell asleep. The helmsman was from the Abu Sayyaf terror group; he knew his way; he was going home. The sun dropped and the tropical darkness was not long behind. The cruiser motored on through the night, past the lights of Kudat, through the Balabac Strait and over the invisible border into Filipino waters.
Mr Wei had finished his commission before schedule and was already heading home to his native China. For him it could not have come too quickly. But at least he was on a Chinese vessel, eating good Chinese food rather than the rubbish the sea dacoits served in their camp up the creek.
What he had left behind he neither knew nor cared. Unlike the Abu Sayyaf killers or the two or three Indonesian fanatics who prayed on their knees, foreheads to the matting, five times a day, Wei Wing Li was a member of a Snakehead triad and prayed to nothing.
In fact the results of his work were a to-the-rivet replica of the Countess of Richmond, fashioned from a ship of similar size, tonnage and dimensions. He never knew what the original ship had been called, nor what the new one would be. All that concerned him was the bulbous roll of high-denomination dollar bills drawn from a Labuan bank against a line of credit arranged by the late Mr Tewfik al-Qur, formerly of Cairo, Peshawar and the morgue.
Unlike Mr Wei, Captain McKendrick prayed. Not as often, he knew, as he ought, but he had been raised a good Liverpool–Irish Catholic; there was a figurine of the Blessed Virgin on the bridge just forward of the wheel, and a crucifix on the wall of his cabin. Before sailing he always prayed for a good voyage and on returning thanked his Lord for a safe return.
He did not need to pray as the Sabah pilot eased the Countess past the shoals and into her assigned berth by the quay at Kota Kinabalu, formerly the colonial port of Jesselton where British traders, in the days before refrigeration, and if they had acquired tinned butter in the monthly drop-off, had to pour it on to the bread from a small jug.
Captain McKendrick ran his bandanna kerchief round his wet neck once again and thanked the pilot. At last he could close up all the doors and portholes and take relief in the air conditioning. That, he reckoned, and a cold beer would do him nicely. The water ballast would be evacuated in the morning and he could see his log-cargo under the lights of the dock. With a good loading crew he could be back at sea the evening of the next day.
The two young divers, having changed planes at Kuala Lumpur, were on a British Airways jet for London and, it not being a ‘dry’ airline, had consumed enough beer to send them into a deep sleep. The flight might be twelve hours but they would be gaining eight on the time zones and touching down at Heathrow at dawn. The hard-frame suitcases were in the hold but the divebags were above their heads as they slept.
They contained fins, masks, wetsuits, regulators and buoyancy control jackets, with only the diving knives in the suitcases in the hold. One of the divebags also contained an as yet undiscovered Malaysian landing card.
In a creek off the Zamboanga Peninsula, working by floodlights from a platform hung over the stern, a skilled painter was affixing the last ‘D’ to the name of the moored ship. From her mast fluttered a limp Red Ensign. On either side of her bow and round her stern were the words ‘Countess of Richmond’ and, at the stern only, the word ‘Liverpool’ beneath. As the painter descended and the lights flickered out, the transformation was complete.
At dawn a cruiser disguised as a game-fisherman motored slowly up the creek. It brought the last two members of the new crew of the former Java Star, the ones who would take the ship on her, and their, last voyage.
The loading of the Countess of Richmond began at dawn when the air was still cool and agreeable. Within three hours it would return to its habitual sauna heat. The dockside cranes were not exactly ultra-modern but the stevedores knew their business and chained logs of rare timber swung inboard and were stowed in the hold below by the crew that toiled and sweated down there.
In the heat of midday even the local Borneans had to stop and for four hours the old logging port slumbered in whatever shade it could find. The spring monsoon was only a month away and already the humidity, never much less than ninety per cent, was edging towards a hundred.
Captain McKendrick would have been happier at sea, but loading and the replacement of the deck covers was achieved at sundown and the pilot would come aboard only in the morning to guide the freighter back to the open sea. It meant another night in the hothouse so McKendrick sighed and again found refuge in the air conditioning below decks.
The local agent came bustling aboard with the pilot at six in the morning and the last paperwork was signed. Then the Countess eased away into the South China Sea.
Like the Java Star before her, she turned north-east to round the tip of Borneo, then south through the Sulu Archipelago for Java, where the skipper believed six sea containers full of eastern silks awaited him at Surabaya. He was not to know that there were not, nor ever had been, any silks at Surabaya.
The cruiser deposited its cargo of three at a ramshackle jetty halfway up the creek. Mr Lampong led the way to a longhouse on stilts above the water that served as a sleeping area and mess hall for the men who would depart on the mission that Martin knew as Stingray and Lampong as Al-Isra. Others in the longhouse would be staying behind. It was their labours that had prepared the hijacked Java Star for sea.
These were a mix of Indonesians from Jemaat Islamiya, the group who had planted the Bali bombs and others up the island chain, and Filipinos from Abu Sayyaf. The languages varied from local Tagalog to Javanese dialect with an occasional muttered aside in Arabic from those further west. One by one Martin was able to identify the crew and the special task of each of them.
The engineer, navigator and radio operator were all Indonesians. Suleiman revealed that his expertise was photography. Whatever was going to happen his job, before dying a martyr, would be to photograph the climax on a digital radio camera and transmit via a laptop computer and satphone the entire datastream for transmission on the Al-Jazeera TV network.
There was a teenager who looked Pakistani, yet Lampong addressed him in English. When he replied the boy revealed he could only have been British-born and -raised but of Pakistani parentage. His accent was broad English north country; Martin put it as coming from the Leeds/Bradford area. Martin could not work out what he was for, except possibly as cook.
That left three: Martin himself clearly granted his presence as the personal gift of Osama bin Laden; a genuine chemical engineer and presumably explosives expert; and the mission commander. But he was not present. They would all meet him later.
In the mid-morning the local commander Lampong took a call on his satellite phone. It was brief and guarded, but enough. The Countess of Richmond had left Kota Kinabalu and was at sea. She should be coming between Tawitawi and Jolo Islands around sundown. The speedboat crews that would intercept her still had four hours before they need leave. Suleiman and Martin had changed from their western suits into trousers, flowered local shirts and sandals that had been provided. They were allowed down the steps into the shallow water of the creek to wash before prayers and a dinner of rice and fish.
All Martin could do was watch, understanding very little, and wait.
The two divers were lucky. Most of their fellow passengers were from Malaysia and were diverted to the non-UK passport channel, leaving the few British easy access to immigration control. Being among the first down to the luggage carousel, they could grab their valises and head for the nothing-to-declare Customs hall.
It might have been the shaven skulls, the stubble on the chins or the brawny arms emerging from short-sleeved flowered shirts on a bitter British March morning, but one of the customs officers beckoned them to the examination bench.
‘May I see your passports, please?’
It was a formality. They were in order.
‘And where have you just arrived from?’
‘Malaysia.’
