Ark Storm (51 page)

(Let’s get this out of the way now: we should have known. We didn’t. We were idiots. We didn’t do our due diligence. It sounds like a copout to say we relied on our Captain but we did. We shouldn’t have done to that extent. In mitigation, you don’t board an aeroplane and interrogate the pilot. We were complacent and we made a mistake and we paid for it. Very nearly fatally.)

But back then, we sail blithely on, in a state of blissful ignorance. For the next few hours anyway.… We have no idea what is awaiting us as we sail towards disaster.

3

Abu Musa

We see the island of Abu Musa from a distance. It isn’t very big, about twelve square kilometers, but it is hilly and it stands out in the endless expanse of blue. We have been at sea for hours and I am looking forward to mooring up and diving into the warm, clear waters. As we approach the island, my husband turns to me.

‘Bloody hell, this place is tooled up!’

Bristling down at us from their cliff top positions are three anti-aircraft gun emplacements. We know it is a military base of some kind. What we don’t know is that it belongs to the wrong side as far as international relations are concerned.

You might think that mooring up on a military island would be inadvisable even if they were on the same side as us but there are many beautiful areas in and around the Emirates with military installations which happily coexist with tourists. There is one in the Musandam Peninsula in Oman, not far across the border from Dubai. It has a military base and it is a major tourist destination. The military and the tourists keep to their own sectors. You just know not to attempt to scale the razor wire. No harm is done. So for a few moments more we are still all ignorant of what we are sailing into. Rupert and Brad are both excited by the prospect of mooring up here.

I feel deeply unhappy looking at the guns, but here’s the thing: I don’t want to be a spoilsport, I don’t want to rain on the parade, I don’t want to be a
girl
and say
oh my—guns! I don’t like this, let’s get the hell out of here.
So I stay silent. And my misgivings mount.

We sail closer. At first, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of life but suddenly there is furious activity.

Then out come the gunboats.

4

Gunboats and Kalashnikovs

The interrogation starts straight away. None of the men speaks particularly good English but a few of them can manage a bit. Gesticulating with their Kalashnikovs, they yell at us:

‘Why are you here? Who are you? What you want?’

We try to explain.
We are tourists. We are sailing a boat. We are on holiday.

It is obvious they do not believe us.

‘Mobile phone! Give us phones.’

Reluctantly, we hand them over. My phone is my lifeline to the other world. It is the thread that connects me to my children. Giving it away means cutting that thread. I have no choice. I hand it over.

‘Camera!’ They yell, eying my compact Samsung that sits on the table on the deck.

‘Give camera!’

I give it to them. They look at it. It is not very sophisticated but I don’t think they know how it works. They are getting very upset about the camera. It seems to be the focal point of all their anger and their excitement. I want to calm them down. I think they fear that we have taken pictures of the island. I want to reassure them. So I do something very stupid. For the right reasons I do the wrong thing. I open the back of the camera and I expose the film to the brilliant sunlight.

Now they really kick-off. They scream at me. Their manic gesticulation goes up a few gears. I wonder if they will hit me. I quickly realise that while from the perspective of the innocent what I have done is guileless, if I were guilty then what I have done is destroy evidence. It’s all about perspective.

The hysterical interrogation continues. The sun begins to set. As darkness falls, the atmosphere on the boat begins to change. For the worse.

5

The Wrong Side

Night falls. This far from civilisation the stars are brilliant in the dark sky. There
is
light though. High-security beams shine out from the island of Abu Musa, cutting a golden path across the inky sea. It could look pretty if it weren’t so terrifying.

The men are arguing, shouting, debating amongst themselves. The air crackles with tension. They fall silent. It seems like a judgement has been made, a decision taken. We are told to start our engines. We are told to turn around. With our armed escort, gunboat to the right, gunboat to the left, we motor away from the island.

In my novels I write about the metaphorical tightrope that we often walk unknowingly. On one side all is fine, on the other lies peril. I have now fallen off that tightrope onto the wrong side. It is as if I have walked into the pages of one of my books. Only here, I’m not in charge of the outcome.

My mind is racing. What’s happening? What are they going to do with us? My logical brain answers my own question: we are either being freed or we are going to be shot and our bodies dumped over the side. The men have an air of grim intent. It feels and it looks from their expressions that we are about to be executed.

About 400 yards offshore, we are told to cut the engines. The men are becoming very agitated now. Their eyes dart back and forth. They glance at us, then each other. Their looks are horribly aware. They know something we don’t.

They tell us to line up on the side of the boat. Hearts pounding, we do as we are told. What choice do we have? Dive into the sea and swim to Dubai?

Then the flanking boat behind us veers away and heads back towards the island. Out of range …

My husband and I look at each other. We know what the other is thinking. What a stupid way to die. It’s not the first time I’ve had occasion to think that, but this time there really does seem no way out.

The men on the remaining boat form up opposite us. We are perhaps twenty feet from them. Easy targets.… Armed with their Kalashnikovs, they cannot miss. They ready their guns.

6

A Fate Measured in Seconds

Rupert and I look at each other. A last goodbye. What do you say when you think you have just seconds left to live? Standing on the deck, rocking slightly in the wash left by the departing gunboat, I feel an overwhelming regret, for messing up, for leaving my children orphans, for dying like this, so stupidly, so pointlessly. I look at the Kalashnikovs pointing at me and my husband and at Brad. I don’t think of the bullets ripping into me. I think of my children, I fill my head with their faces.
I’m sorry,
I say to them,
I’m so sorry.

And then the radios crackle into life. We hear shouted commands. The posture of the men changes instantly. They snap to attention. They lower their weapons, they click on their safeties. We are told to restart our engines. We are facing out to sea. We were about to be executed, now are we about to be freed? My emotions have gone into a zone all of their own, too extreme to process or to vent. I think it must be shock. I say nothing. I just stand in the darkness on the boat glancing at my husband and occasionally at Brad.

But then the men tell us to turn and motor back to the island. They order us to moor up on the pontoon. They tell us to wait. They do not tell us why. But we are alive and my heart pounds as if it is telling me:
I am here! You are here!
As if it knew that, but for seconds and the grace of God, we would not have been …

A plane roars through the night sky, coming in to land on the island. A few minutes later, two men in smart uniforms accompanied by three men in less smart uniforms materialise on the dock. These are men from the mainland. They are the superiors of the men on the island. They have come to decide our fate.

7

Interrogation

These men speak much better English than the island dwellers. It is not perfect but it is good enough. They are older than the other men. They are calmer. They do not carry Kalashnikovs but they are armed. Pistols nestle in holsters at their waists. I feel with them in charge we are unlikely to be harmed—at least not in the foreseeable future. Then I stop myself. What a ludicrous concept! The future is normally something we think we can influence if not control. (I’m well aware that this is not the case for many people. The ability to control our future is a middle-class, First World conceit, but it is one that is based on the very real power that we abrogate to ourselves via education, money and status.) But this is way outside my control. I really cannot foresee what is going to happen.

We are told to sit round the table. In a surreal parody of a social dinner, the men take their seats. The questions begin.

‘Who are you? Why are you here? What is your business?’

And to me specifically:

‘Why did you expose the film? What pictures did you take? What did you see?’ Over and over again the same questions. Over and over we give the same answers.

They are particularly exercised about the fact that our
ship to shore
radio does not work. They tell us in their calm, measured voices that the base on the island had repeatedly radioed asking us to identify ourselves, telling us not to come any closer, that if we did so we would be shot.

Rupert and I and Brad exchange glances. How close had we come to being blown out of the water without even knowing it? While we sailed in towards the island, looking at the gun emplacements, men manning those emplacements were looking back at us. Like something out of a film noir, we were in their sights without knowing it.

As I had stood in my bikini fantasising about jumping over the side and swimming, my body had been picked out in that circular scope. Head to toe, shoulder to shoulder, I had been standing in a ring of death.

But we had heard none of the requests, the demands, the threats. Viewed in that light, our arrival could be seen as threatening. Again, it’s all about perspective.

You would like to think that you had some sixth sense, some presentiment of ultimate peril. My instincts were kicking up but the thing is, you just don’t think anything
that
bad can happen when you’re brought up in our fine First World cultures. In our world, this sort of thing really does not happen unless you deliberately put yourself in harm’s way, unless you go into the armed forces or the security services.

The questions continue. These men are naval officers and they cannot understand why our captain could have put out to sea with a malfunctioning ship-to-shore radio. They seem to see in that negligence a deliberate conspiracy.

Middle Easterners are notorious conspiracy theorists. They thrive on intrigue. Perhaps it is the legacy of courtly rule and censorship. This leads to rampant speculation and foments a vivid imagination. And when you are the
Evil Empire
you are particularly paranoid. Most of the world really is out to get you.

The questions continue into the night. We are exhausted. Our defrosting lasagna lies sweltering in the heat. While we are being interrogated, our boat is searched by the island dwellers. They find our whisky. They display it triumphantly to our interrogators.

‘What is this? Alcohol? You are bringing
alcohol
into the
Islamic
Republic of Iran?’ Demand the naval officers.

‘This is not Iran!’ we protest. ‘This island is owned by the United Arab Emirates!’

The men raise their eyebrows. Their lips twitch. They look vaguely amused. They do not engage in this surreal debate. Never has there been a clearer example of possession equalling ownership.

‘It is an offence to bring alcohol into the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ they declare. ‘You are breaking the law.’

It is obvious at this stage that they are looking for justifications to hold us hostage. Anything will do.

‘We are not breaking the law, because this is not Iran,’ I persist, perpetuating the fiction, at least in my own mind.

They do not dignify my comment with a response. I ask them what they are doing with us. Rupert asks for our phones so that we might ring our embassies. The answer is a shake of the head. It is very obvious that the rules of normal engagement do not apply here. There is no phone call to a lawyer, no emergency call to an embassy. (Then again in distressingly many cases in the bastions of Civil Liberties of the West those calls are not permitted either. Though let me add, those imperfect democracies are a hell of a lot better than the alternatives.)

With instructions in Farsi to the island dwellers, the naval officers leave us, promising to return tomorrow.

Brad goes off to his cabin, Rupert and I go to ours and we lie in the darkness and we try to sleep while above deck the men with guns keep watch.

I think of my children. I think of them sleeping at home in their beds. They are safe and that gives me comfort. I wonder when I will see them again.

BOOKS BY LINDA DAVIES

Now Available

Hostage

I know it’s all going horribly wrong when I see two gunboats approaching at speed. They are bristling with men wielding Kalashnikovs.

Davies tells the true story of her harrowing experiences as a hostage in Iran after she was kidnapped while sailing the Persian Gulf in 2005. Riveting, insightful, and laced with black humor,
Hostage
is a real-life thriller as enthralling as any work of fiction.

Also Available

Nest of Vipers

Wilderness of Mirrors

Into the Fire

Something Wild

Final Settlement

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

LINDA DAVIES is half Welsh, half Danish—or half Celt, half Viking—and loves myths, legends of warriors, and the sea. A graduate in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, she worked for seven years as an investment banker before escaping to write novels. Davies’s first novel,
Nest of Vipers,
has been published in more than thirty countries and sold more than two million copies. She is a winner of the Philip Geddes Prize for journalism. Davies is married with three children. She lives by the sea in Suffolk.