During the entire voyage he has shared a cabin with the first engineer, a robustly built 57-year-old from Ribeira in Spain. For the past few weeks the Spaniard has been reticent and silent; he keeps to himself, as if he is carrying some enormous sorrow. When he is asked to go into the engine room, sometimes he just shakes his head, crawls into his berth and lies down facing the bulkhead. He is constantly complaining to Alberto Zavaleta Salas about insomnia. One night he tells him that he has money problems at home in Galicia.
Just as Alberto Zavaleta Salas is about to fall asleep he registers that the light in the upper berth is switched on. Then he hears the engineer climbing down from the berth, followed by a dull thump. As he turns over to face the room, he sees the Spaniard collapsing onto the little writing desk and against the wardrobe.
Is he drunk? Zavaleta Salas wonders, but then he catches sight of the blood dripping down onto the floor. He throws himself out of bed and notices that the man is hanging forward, lifeless, his body shaking as if ravaged by shivering contractions. He slaps him on the cheek and shouts his name, but the man doesn’t respond.
Then he discovers the deep gashes in both the engineer’s wrists. Alberto Zavaleta Salas steps over him, opens the door leading out into the ship’s corridor and calls for help.
It takes hours for the water ambulance to arrive. The engineer is already bandaged up and conscious, he begs Zavaleta Salas to accompany him to the hospital in Phuket, and to call his family home in Ribeira.
He has slashed his wrists with a razor blade, but all he says is that he’s afraid.
When the police arrive, he refuses to be interrogated.
Sea Shepherd’s founder Paul Watson is the first to applaud the arrest and investigation of the Kunlun in Thailand. But information has also been leaked from the local investigation indicating that the Kunlun will be chased from Thailand without being penalized.
“That’s the problem with illegal fishing all over the world. A combination of bribes, corruption, inadequate legislation and a huge demand for fish enables the illegal fishing to continue. There is no excuse for Australia’s or New Zealand’s failure to seize the ship and cargo when they had the chance. There is no excuse for their not forcing the Kunlun into a port the way Sea Shepherd is now doing with the Thunder,” Paul Watson says.
On social media, Watson also uses the occasion to propose a final option for the captain of the Thunder:
The Captain of the Thunder and his officers must be feeling lonely, neglected and very insecure at the moment. No fuel, no provisions, no instructions, no assistance. But there is a way out for them. They need only surrender their vessel to the authorities where they can make a deal to finger their Spanish bosses in return for leniency and a place in a witness protection program. I believe the Thunder’s days are almost over.2
On one of the last days of March Zavaleta Salas receives permission to sign off from the arrested ship and travel home to Lima. The ship owners no longer have any use for him.
Late in the evening, as he is packing his suitcase, the Kunlun’s new shipmaster arrives, a middle-aged Asian-looking man who does not speak Spanish. Zavaleta Salas greets him curtly and watches as the rest of the Indonesian crew crowd around him to tell him of the countless adversities that have plagued the Kunlun.
After the engineer’s suicide attempt, he has barely eaten or slept and he has been arguing constantly with the fishing captain Sevilla. Even though he is leaving, he can feel panic and paranoia taking hold of him. He imagines that the Spanish ship owner has full control over the authorities and the police and that somebody could easily get rid of him if they were to perceive him as a threat and a snitch.
Before he leaves the Kunlun for the last time, Zavaleta Salas runs down to the fish factory and retrieves a fish slicing knife which he hides in the waistband of his trousers.
In the harbour, the agent’s car is waiting for Zavaleta Salas. First they drive to the office in Phuket to pick up the airplane tickets, subsequently they continue out towards the airport. He can feel the hard handle of the knife pressing against his abdomen when he is sitting in the back seat of the car; he fantasizes about what he will do if the car drives off onto a byroad. Should he jump out and run? Should he fight back?
Finally he sees the approach to Phuket’s international airport. He bids the agent’s driver a terse farewell. Once out of the car, he walks around the car park and finds a bin where he gets rid of the knife.
He doesn’t feel safe until he feels the landing gear fold up against the body of the plane. In the future it will be money that determines his loyalty. If the ship owner pays him what he owes him and simultaneously gives him a bonus for being loyal, he will not speak to anyone. Home in Chimbote he has something he believes can be extremely valuable. A number of notes he took in secret of positions, dates, times, almost illegible scribblings, filling the margins of tiny scraps of paper. Together they constitute his version of what happened to the Tiantai – the black-listed ship that disappeared without a trace and under mysterious circumstances in the Antarctic in March 2014.
34
THE ARMPIT OF AFRICA
GULF OF GUINEA, APRIL 2015
4 April. Operation Icefish is taking place somewhere nobody could have anticipated.
The heat wears down the crew’s concentration, energy
