CHAPTER 19
The Coastguard
As the naval officer reached the deck of the Sea Witch, the Coastguard cutter Admiral Ashbourne arrived at Condor Rock whooping its siren. The ladder retracted into the helicopter and the aircraft returned to the pad on the deck of the cutter. The officer, who had climbed down to where Kurt and the others were standing, removed his gloves and helmet. They gasped as they saw how young he looked, no more than twenty two or three.
“Good afternoon, I am 2nd Officer Hartmann of the SA Coastguard, may we go into your lounge please?”
“Certainly, we have a stateroom on this vessel, this way please.” Kurt gestured towards the doorway and Hartmann stepped through followed by the three men. He stopped and surveyed the array of specimen bottles and the lobster tank. His moving eyes stopped when they reached Analise.
“Good evening Ma’am, I’m Hartmann, SA Coastguard.”
“Welcome aboard Mr Hartmann.”
“Thank you Miss er…….”
“Van Rensberg, Analise, Marine Biologist.”

“My commander sends his regards and sincere apologies for this messy incident in which you were involved. If we could sit down at a table, I have a report to complete for the South African authorities. SMC is powerful and although the Namibian government will not support or comment on the foolishness of their actions today, the company will try to escalate this to Jo’burg. The diamond industry is almost treated like they are all immortal I’m afraid.”
Analise gestured to one of the tables flanked by leather chairs and they sat down opposite each other. Rafi and Kurt sat at each end while Tom and Margie sat on a nearby settee. Analise tossed her hair slightly like she always did when it was a matter of her authority in question; she took a deep breath and followed up on his statement.
“We are sorry too, if we hadn’t been here, none of this would have happened.”
“No ma’am, you cannot accept any of the blame. This vessel has every right to be here and SMC has only mineral rights here, nothing else. All too often they ride rough shod over innocent members of the public and the local police take backhands to turn a blind eye.”
“I was thinking more of the three men in the boat, I mean if my captain hadn’t……..”
“Oh, you mean the small motor boat that got hit by debris from the gunbus helicopter-----“ he winked and gestured to his notepad, “That’s what it says here in my eye-witness report.”
“Oh,” Analise responded in surprise, “well, thank you, but there’s no need to cover it up, I mean, they were threatening us.”
“It’s no cover up. All we saw from the helicopter was a burning piece of debris fall into the moving boat which hit the fuel tank and that was that. OK?”
“OK, I guess that’s it. Do you need our testimony at all?”

“It might help, did you have any radio contact at all? Did you take a radar log?”
“Tom ---?”
Tom sat forward, “Mr Hartmann, I look after communications, radar, sonar and so-on, how can I help?”
“Did you speak to the helicopter pilot at all?”
“Yes I did.” Tom was known for his thoroughness in everything, including record keeping.
“Did you record or log it at all? What about radar?”
“Yes we always write into the log any contact, I also ran the tape at the same time as I thought there might be repercussions. The pilot had a transponder and our radar is amongst the most up to date, with GPS linking. I made sure that I took snapshots of the radar with the transponder data and the precise GPS location every 10 seconds until the gunbus was destroyed. I have the exact co-ordinates of the gunbus at the time it began firing.”
“That’s fantastic! I will need to take that away with me, can you make an electronic or hard copy for me?”
“I’m on to it, right away.” Tom left to carry out the officer’s request.
“Is this the work you are doing?” Hartmann asked gesturing towards the specimen jars on the worktop.

Analise stood up and walked over to them and smiled proudly as she responded to his question, “Oh yes, boring to a busy man like you I’m sure, but it’s vital to the survival of this dwindling species.”
“Yes I’m sure it is – are there live ones in the tank?”
“Yes, look at this male here – he’s the biggest I’ve ever seen, look at those pincers they must be a good 16cm long – that would give you quite a nip!”
“Is that why you’ve put rubber bands round the pincers then?”
“Oh no, that’s to protect themselves, they are so close to each other, they could inflict injuries on one another even unintentionally – though I have to admit, it helps when I need to get hold of one of them.”

At that moment Tom returned from the comms room with a CD and hard copy printed out. “I think everything you need is here on this disk, but I have printed off hard copy in any case.”
“Thank you Tom, “ Analise took the disk and paper from Tom, “Mr Hartmann, here, you may take this data away with you.”
“Thank you ma’am.” Hartmann stood up as he took the items from Analise, “well, I see no need to disturb you any further, I can write up my report now without prejudice. Tom, would you mind hailing my commander and get them to pick me up?”
“We can do better than that Mr Hartmann, Tom, go and hail the cutter, tell them we are returning 2nd Officer Hartmann in our motor dinghy. Rafi, please launch the dinghy and escort Mr Hartmann to the boarding deck.”
“Thank you ma’am, er, Miss Van Rensberg, that is appreciated.”
He picked up his helmet and gloves, returned his note pad and pen to his pocket and placed the disk and hard copy into a small case he had unfolded from another pocket. He followed Rafi out of the stateroom whilst Tom returned to the comms room.
Kurt looked at Analise, “Well, I think we fooled him alright, I was thinking it was all over for us, our cover would be blown, but I do now think that this has all worked in our favour.”
Analise did not answer, she stood thoughtfully gazing at the dinghy making its way across to the cutter, the dying sun shimmering off the bow wave as it cut through the water. She turned back towards Kurt. “Yes, I think you may be right on that.”
“Yes, the way I see it is this, SMC has now had its fingers well and truly burnt. They also will have to bring the dredger out again for fear that we may dive for and retrieve their diamonds. Now, I calculate that her last position was 500 metres within South African waters, which means we could legally dive there. The Namibian government will not want to upset their closest and richest ally, so they will not send the corvette out whilst the cutter is here, Mexican stand off.”
“True, but we can’t do anything whilst the cutter is anchored here either.”

“Lisa my sweet naïve girl….”
“Kurt, do not insult me, you are so infuriating, naivity has nothing to do with my comment, I resent that remark!”
“I apologise my love, what I was about to say was that when my contact releases that radio controlled helicopter and SMC launch their gunbuses, sorry, gunbus in singular, both the corvette and the cutter will set sail at high speed, leaving the dredger to us.”
“When’s that going to happen?”
“Well, I’ve got to call them off – they were due to do that in an hour, but the dredger’s not here. I have got to put them off.”
“How are you going to call them off, every frequency is bound to be monitored, just looking for something to make an issue over?”
“I have a code.”
“OK, well, go with Tom to the comms room and do it, the sooner the better, we don’t want it deployed now do we?”
“Sure, it was the next thing on my list, Margie, do us a favour, make us a pot of tea, thanks my dear.” He winked at Margie and gave her one of his grins. She melted. She had been about to say that she wasn’t the tea lady, but that smile disarmed her as it always did. She headed for the kitchen. Analise shook her head and tutted and Kurt headed for the comms room.

“Tom, I’ve got to send a message out to my friends in the north, on marine band 7, can you organise that, as quick as you can, we have only a few minutes to do so?”
“That’ll be monitored by the Coastguard and maybe the SMC.”
“There’ll be no problem, get it set up, you’ll see.”
Tom uncovered the marine transceiver, twiddled a few dials and adjusted the mast amplifier matcher to prevent radio frequency rebound and passed the microphone to Kurt. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this but, I will, press this when you want to talk, hold it down, release it when you finish talking, and remember to say ‘over’ at the end of each piece so that your contact knows they can reply.”
“OK, here goes then,” Kurt pressed the talk button, “White Lady, White Lady this is Sea Witch on MB7, do you read, please respond, over.”
A hiss from the speakers was all that met their ears, there was no response. Kurt pressed the switch again.
“White Lady, White Lady, this is Sea Witch on MB7, are you receiving, over.”
“Sea Witch, Sea Witch, roger, this is White Lady receiving, Kurt, good to hear from you. How are you, over?”
“White Lady, is that you Bill, over?”
“Sea Witch, roger, I was expecting a call from you, over.”
“White Lady, Bill, we found a casket full of canon balls today, quite a large one, so we’ve got to move it somehow. It’s in the way and it’s a big headache for us. Over.”
“Sea Witch, roger Kurt, I bet it is, can we help in any way?”
“White Lady, Bill, negative, it’s too big, we need to get a lifter out. We’d leave it only it is jeopardising our work here. Whilst we still struggle with it, we won’t be able to make our link up with you this evening. We’ll have to postpone, over.”
“Sea Witch, Kurt, that’s a shame, I was looking forward to that. Maybe tomorrow then, or soon anyway, over?”
“White Lady, Bill, I was looking forward to it too, I’ll get back to you with a different day once we get rid of the casket. Once the lifter is out, maybe we can get together, I call you then, over.”
“Sea Witch, OK Kurt, we’ll keep the channels open, look forward to hearing from you, over and out.”
“Done!” said Kurt as he slid the microphone back to Tom.
“Coded message, well done, so what’s the casket full of canon balls then?”
“The Coastguard cutter.”
“The lifter is the dredger, right?”
“Got it, they now know we have a military ship nearby and the dredger isn’t here.”
“I’m glad he understood that, I bet anyone else listening wondered what the hell you were talking about, let them puzzle over it, it won’t help them one bit!”
“He knows to wait on standby and we will call him when we want the diversion.”
“That’s great!”

They both headed back to the stateroom together, Kurt stopping briefly to watch the dinghy, dwarfed by the huge frame of Rafi steering it back to the Sea Witch. They stepped into the huge room to join the women. Margie was holding a tray laden with tea cups, a tea pot, milk and sugar, a welcome sight after the day they had just been through. Analise was standing looking towards them. She had that air she always had when there was something important to be said.
“We’ll just wait for Rafi, he shouldn’t be long, “ she said as she paced back and forth across the floor.
A few minutes later and Rafi appeared, panting a little from running up three flights of stairs. Analise looked from one to the other, smiling a little a she did so.
“Lisa my sweet, what’s cooking?” asked Kurt from his usual pose against the bar, while Tom and Margie flopped into the biggest of the four settees and Rafi sat down at the table.
Analise took a breath and began, “I have an idea.”
© Bob Curby