The sight that greets him at the police station in the capital São Tomé surprises him. Several of the shipwrecked seamen are well-dressed; the majority of them even look happy. The Asians smile and joke. The rest of them, whom Nobre de Carvalho presumes come from Europe, are more aloof.
The young public prosecutor has never heard of the Thunder wanted by Interpol or the chase that has been underway at sea for almost four months. Life as a public prosecutor in Africa’s second smallest country with a mere 200,000 residents is comfortable and laid-back. One out of three residents lives in São Tomé, the only densely populated area on the two islands that can be called a city. Here Nobre De Carvalho investigates three or four murders per year, a few robberies and a corrupt politician or two. And then there are the constant banana thefts.
The first thing he does is to collect the passports of the shipwrecked seamen, then he asks the local Interpol contact to check whether arrest warrants have been issued for any of the seamen. Then he fingerprints them.
To keep the crew on the island, Nobre de Carvalho must open a criminal case and for the time being he has no opinion about whether the seamen he has before him are the victims of a shipwreck or if they have committed some kind of crime. He is at a loss. In the course of 48 hours he must decide whether he will let the crew go or open a formal investigation. The latter option is the most difficult. The crime scene is lying at the bottom of the ocean.
At the police station he also meets Wilson Morais, the secretive ship agent who is the one in São Tomé who knows the most about the Thunder. Morais has bought sandwiches, mineral water, cigarettes, juice, cakes and biscuits for the crew. In the afternoon, after the preliminary, fumbling interviews, Morais will transport the shipwrecked seamen to the hotels by the airport. The next day he will drive the crew to the island’s only airport and put them on a plane to Lisbon and freedom. But the armed policemen who are monitoring the seamen’s movements at the hotels and the ambitious public prosecutor’s involvement give Morais a disturbing feeling that his plan will go up in smoke. For the time being that is a thought he keeps to himself.
Perhaps it is a coincidence that determines the fate of the Thunder’s crew in São Tomé. The business lawyer Pieter van Welzen from the Netherlands is sitting in the shade by the swimming pool of the five star hotel Pestana near São Tomé’s esplanade when he reads the first article about the wreck of the Thunder.
After having spent a holiday in São Tomé and Príncipe on an impulse many years ago, he fell in love with the peaceful group of islands. The multilingual van Welzen is now São Tomé’s consul in the Netherlands, co-owner of a culture centre on the island and in the process of building a house in the capital. He has also become a kind of mentor for the younger public prosecutor, Nobre de Carvalho, whom he finds to be sharp, committed and fearless and among the few in São Tomé who dare to challenge the small power elite in the country.
On the Internet, van Welzen sees that the wreck of the Thunder has made the international news. He doubts that his friend the public prosecutor understands the kind of complicated case that sailed in during the night. The public prosecutor has done criminal investigations of thefts, but never illegal fishing, he has investigated corruption, but never human trafficking and environmental crime. He fears that the case could prove to be an ordeal for his friend.
If the authorities in São Tomé are going to investigate the shipwreck, they must quickly establish contact with Interpol. And they must get hold of witnesses of the incident – Sea Shepherd, van Welzen thinks. From the hotel he writes an email to Sea Shepherd’s European headquarters in his own home town of Amsterdam and offers to assist with the case. The next day he receives an answer from Captain Sid Chakravarty on the Sam Simon.
“The best thing to do at this stage would be to send a message to Interpol in Lyon,” Chakravarty writes, and includes the phone number of the Interpol agent Mario, who he knows is ready to move out.
“It would be incredibly important for Interpol to investigate the Captain and Fishing Master before they leave. The ownership of the Thunder must be established before these men disappear and Interpol is waiting for the invitation to assist,” he writes in the email.
After Pieter van Welzen has briefed him and the Director General of Public Prosecution about the case, public prosecutor Kelve Nobre de Carvalho decides to start an investigation. It would have been simpler to drop it. It is not their ship, not their crew, not their company and the Thunder has not been fishing in São Tomé’s waters. But he has witnesses and after the Director General of Public Prosecution called the telephone number they received from Sid Chakravarty, Interpol’s Incident Response Team is on its way.
The Wednesday flight to Lisbon takes off without the crew of the Thunder on board. At the hotels the shipwrecked seamen are starting to get nervous. They sleep in soft beds, splash around in the swimming pools and the ship owners have sent money for new clothes and toiletries, but they still have armed police on
