Now they know where to search. And yet again, random events conspire against the Vidal family.
When Sevilla lands in Madrid, a Spanish police investigator is meeting with two fisheries officers from Senegal in Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon. As soon as the investigator receives word that Sevilla has just arrived from Dakar, he tells the two Senegalese officers that they very likely have a vessel wanted by Interpol in their harbour. When they come home, the Senegalese officers find a ship that fits the description – the Asian Warrior.
Now things happen quickly. The containers of toothfish from the Kunlun are traced to the North Vietnamese seaport Haiphong. There they are stopped and inspected by local authorities. Then samples of the fish are taken to confirm that it is Patagonian toothfish and not tuna fish, as stated on the bill of lading.
At the seaport in Haiphong the inspection officers behave as if it were an ordinary control procedure so the owner of the cargo won’t suspect that Interpol and the Spanish police are involved.
For one year the cargo of frozen toothfish has been on a circumnavigation of the world from the Southern Ocean to Thailand, then around the entire African continent, past the Horn of Africa, across the Indian Ocean and into the South China Sea before ending up in Vietnam.
All this for a few million euro.
43
THE UNLUCKIEST SHIP IN THE WORLD
SÃO TOMÉ AND PRÍNCIPE, SEPTEMBER 2015
As Peter Hammarstedt walks down towards the Palace of Justice in São Tomé, a light pink colonial building by the Ana Chavez Bay, he feels slightly uncomfortable. He is dressed in a black suit and tie, the only suit he owns. He found it in a dustbin in Söder in Stockholm and paid a tailor a few kroner to repair the lining. Five months after the shipwreck of the Thunder he will stand face to face with Luis Alfonso Rubio Cataldo for the first time. On the beach below the Palace of Justice he observes the remains of abandoned ships sticking up out of the sand like rusty bones.
Hammarstedt and Sea Shepherd’s photographer Simon Ager are the first to arrive at the courtroom. The tall windows and heavy wooden benches give the room the appearance of a church. Hammarstedt ponders over whether or not he should shake Cataldo’s hand but he believes the man may interpret this as a sarcastic gesture. He decides to refrain.
As Cataldo enters the courtroom, Simon Ager raises his camera. The Thunder captain rushes towards him but Ager wards off the attack by placing one hand against Cataldo’s chest. Then the Thunder captain continues towards Hammarstedt. With his chest pushed forward and clenched fists, he leans over him. Hammarstedt raises his hands above his head. In the background he hears Cataldo’s defence attorney scream and he leans back in his chair. The attack will appear even more violent if he demonstrates the he’s not going to defend himself, he thinks.
But the blow never comes; mumbling, Cataldo returns to the dock, where he sits staring into the shimmering hot and humid air.
During his testimony the Thunder shipmaster states that he feared for his life for 110 consecutive days.
“You were two days from port and you feared for your life. Why didn’t you go into land?” the judge asks.
“I had my orders.”
“But you are the one responsible for safety on board. For you that must be the most important thing?”
“I had my orders,” Cataldo repeats.
But he refuses to reveal whom his orders come from.
The judge shakes his head in resignation before asking the next question.
“Who do you work for?”
“I don’t know,” Cataldo replies.
After the first day of the trial, when Hammarstedt returns to the secluded bungalow by the beach, he notices that the hotel grounds are not properly fenced in. In his room he checks the window and wonders if he would hear it should somebody try to break it open.
After the incident earlier in the day, four policemen carrying MP5 machine pistols and wearing bulletproof vests stood guard in their respective corners of the courtroom. But on the way out, when Cataldo laid eyes on the Sea Shepherd activists in the cool patio on the courthouse’s ground floor, he launched another attack. Now Hammarstedt is starting to worry about his own safety. Cataldo and his men are staying at a hotel not far away.
The thought of an inebriated and vindictive Cataldo causes Hammarstedt to call the public prosecutor Kelve Nobre de Carvalho and request police protection. They agree that an agent from the federal police force will keep an eye on Cataldo, see how much he consumes at the bar and call if he should leave the hotel.
Hammarstedt is just about to fall asleep when somebody knocks on the door. He can’t see who it is, but he is sure that it is Cataldo. Gripped by fear, he picks up the water pitcher on the nightstand and jumps out of bed. For 110 days they were separated by an abysmal sea and a few tons of steel. Now there was only a thin wall.
“Who is it?” he called out.
“Open the door,” is the reply from the other side while the knocking continues.
“Who is it?” he repeats.
“Tranquilo,” is the reply from the other side of the door.
It turns out to be the police agent, a giant of a man who went by the nickname “Africa”.
“Tomorrow I will follow you to court. When the pirates see us together they will never touch you again,” he reassures him.
When Hammarstedt crawls into bed again, it’s as if the sheets are vibrating in time with the hammering of his pulse.
On the second day of the trial, Peter Hammarstedt is the first witness called to testify. The three defendants seem far less tense. They enter the courtroom joking and laughing. Chief engineer Agustín Dosil Rey sits leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees
