Jude motioned towards Ben. ‘And this is … this is …’ As if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words ‘my father’.
Ben respected that. He had never deserved the title, anyway. ‘Ben,’ he finished for Jude. ‘Jude and I go back a long way.’
The happiest person in the mess canteen was the large black man introduced to Ben and the others as Hercules. He couldn’t stop chuckling and grinning as he navigated across to the table and served more mugs of steaming coffee for the honoured guests. A grey parrot with a red tail and suspicious eyes was perched on his shoulder, regarding them all with great disdain.
‘I see you got reunited with Murphy,’ Jude said, forcing a smile.
Hercules tenderly held up a finger for the parrot to gnaw at. ‘Yeah, he was the only one of us who had the sense not to let himself get caught by those motherfuckers.’
‘Who’s a pretty boy, then?’ Jeff said to the bird.
‘Up yours, buttcrack,’ the bird shot back, giving him a look that would terrify a hawk.
‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’ Jeff said.
‘He don’t like to be patronised,’ Hercules said.
‘Sorry I spoke.’
Ben smiled and took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like something that had been ladled up from the recesses of the ship’s hold and mixed with engine oil, but it was strong and hot and that was good enough.
‘Speaking of those motherfuckers,’ Gerber said when Hercules had gone weaving off over the listing floor, ‘I’m not going to ask you fellas how you did it, where you came from or who you are. But I am going to thank you, on behalf of all of us, for saving our bacon, which you well and truly did.’
‘Yeah, man,’ Condor mumbled. ‘We were dead meat.’ The thought of actual dead meat almost made him vomit, and he went back to groaning and clutching his stomach.
Jude looked solemnly at the three of them. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then say nothing,’ Ben said.
‘We do this kind of thing all the time, dear boy,’ Jeff said.
‘That’s right,’ Tuesday laughed. ‘Piece of cake. Especially the hanging-on-like-grim-death-to-a-manned-torpedo-with-eighty-pounds-of-RDX-high-explosive-strapped-six-inches-from-my-bollocks part. I’d do it again tomorrow.’
‘Let’s hope we won’t need to,’ Ben said. ‘And let me just say this, that the person everyone should be thanking is Jude. He’s the one who sent the message.’
‘Jude already knows how grateful we are,’ Gerber said. ‘But hey, does no one else know about this?’
‘Not that we’re aware of,’ Jeff replied. ‘And we’d prefer to keep it that way until we’re off this ship, so as to avoid any unwanted, uh, entanglements, know what I mean?’ Turning to Jude, he said, ‘Seriously, mate, I feel like shit that I got you into it. If I’d thought there was the slightest risk of you getting hit by pirates—’
‘It wasn’t pirates,’ Jude cut in. ‘This was no ordinary attack.’
Ben looked at him. ‘What are you saying, Jude? How do you know that?’
The rest of them sat in silence and sipped coffee as Jude laid it all out, starting with his visit to the bridge, the radar alert and the appearance of the three passengers who had turned out to be hijackers and murdered the captain and ship’s mates right in front of his eyes.
‘Pender, he was the one in charge, except he was calling himself Carter. I think he bribed Captain O’Keefe to let them on board in secret. O’Keefe said something about a deal. I think he knew what was about to happen. I think he was paid to let it happen. That’s why he seemed to turn a blind eye when the radar showed up the boats heading towards us. But he didn’t realise they were going to kill anyone, least of all him.’
‘Fuckers,’ Condor breathed. Gerber looked sombre. They were hearing this story for the first time, too.
‘You’re saying this Pender hired Khosa and his men to attack the ship?’ Ben asked.
Jude nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like to me. Then after he killed the captain, he killed his own accomplices. But then when Khosa saw it, he double-crossed Pender and tried to take it for himself.’
‘Slow down,’ Ben said. ‘You’re not making any sense. Saw what? Tried to take what?’
‘This,’ Jude said. ‘This is what this whole thing is all about.’
He took out the diamond.
Jude held the diamond out on the flat of his palm. It was as if the canteen lights had suddenly grown brighter. A hush fell over the table. Tuesday boggled at the sight of it, and almost spilled his coffee in his lap.
‘That’s not real,’ Jeff said, gaping. ‘No bloody way.’
Jude quickly explained how he’d taken it from Pender, and how Pender had later accidentally allowed Khosa to see it when they were all on deck. ‘They murdered him for it like stepping on a beetle.’
‘He had it coming,’ Gerber muttered.
‘May I?’ Ben took the diamond from Jude and examined it. He’d never seen anything like it before. ‘I’d say it’s real, all right.’
‘Oh, so you’re the big expert now,’ Jeff said, without taking his eyes off it.
‘People are liable to start massacring each other over a lot of things,’ Ben said. ‘But a lump of cut glass isn’t one of them.’ He handed it back to Jude.
‘What would it be worth?’ Jude asked.
Jeff whistled. ‘If you have to ask, mate, you can’t afford it. Millions? Tens of millions?’
‘Hundreds of millions,’ Ben said. ‘Question is, where did it come from?’
‘I think Pender stole it,’ Jude said. ‘Who from, I have no idea. Someone in Oman, I thought. That would explain why he was on the ship, why he bribed his way on board incognito. He needed to get out of the country unnoticed.’
‘To Dar es Salaam?’ Jeff said. ‘Or Mombasa, maybe?’
‘Except he had no intention of going that far,’ Jude said. ‘He could have disembarked at Djibouti just as easily, but he didn’t. He wanted to disappear into thin air with the diamond. That’s why he set up the attack, to intercept us midway.’
‘A staged pirate attack,’ Ben said. It made an awful lot of sense. But it also raised more questions, and he could see from Jude’s expression that he had already figured that much out for himself.
‘Question is, why he’d need to get away in the middle of the Indian Ocean,’ Jude went on, frowning. ‘Why not just wait until we hit port? It doesn’t add up. Unless maybe he was scared that the police were on to him and would be lying in wait to grab him at the docks.’
Ben could see another possibility. ‘Or unless there was a third party involved. If we can suppose that Pender was the active partner in the robbery, the one who did the crime and took the biggest risk, it would make sense that maybe someone employed him to snatch it and deliver it to them, either at Mombasa or Dar es Salaam.’
‘A sleeping partner,’ Jeff said, cottoning on to the idea. ‘Mister Big. The head honcho.’
‘Who at this point may