On the way home from the commemoration, we end up stuck in a tailback. Wilson Morais holds in the clutch and guns the engine, as if that is going to help us advance more quickly. Suddenly he steals the march on us, telling us the rumour with which we have not yet confronted him: That he is said to have killed a money changer and driven around the city with a corpse hidden in the car.
“Has anyone told you that I’ve been in prison?” he asks. “It was a damn foolish thing I did. I learned my lesson and I don’t like talking about it.”
Then he starts talking.
“A friend of mine knew some Russians who were on the island. They carried out transport commissions for the UN and were going to spend a few days off bird-hunting in the jungle. But they had no weapons, so I rented a semi-automatic shotgun from some acquaintances in the military. The day I brought back the gun, a friend and I stopped out in the bush to test-shoot it. He started. After having fired off a few rounds he gave me the weapon. I thought it was empty and pulled the trigger. But there was still ammunition in it and I hit him in the chest.”
Then he lifts his hands off the wheel and shows us how he had held the gun.
“It was an accident, but I panicked, ran away and tried to hide. But it only took a few hours before I was arrested. It was a bloody stupid thing …”
The friend died instantaneously, leaving behind two young children. Wilson Morais spent three years in prison. He is still paying a monthly sum to the children of the deceased, he solemnly declares.
“Every now and then Cataldo and the Spaniards ask about the conditions in the prison. I haven’t tried to hide that I’ve been there.”
Once back in the city, Wilson Morais invites us to a meal of grilled fish and a couple of beers at one of the outdoor restaurants found in rows beneath the breadfruit trees in the city park.
“The Spaniards are starting to get fat,” Morais says. “Captain Cataldo goes to the gym at least, even to the discotheque. The others just sit inside, surfing and eating. I’m afraid they will lose their minds soon.”
For the two engineers from the Thunder, Agustín Dosil Rey and Luis Miguel Pérez Fernández, it is yet another bad day. One of the 450 miserable days the two have spent together since the Thunder set out on its final voyage. On the way to the Miguel Bernardo bakery they are stopped by the police. They haven’t paid the annual vehicle tax on the small motorcycle the agent Morais acquired for them. The debt of EUR 15 million increases by a few more euros.
When Wilson Morais introduces us to the Spanish prisoners, they make it clear beyond any doubt that they don’t want to talk. They go to the bakery every morning on the small motorcycle that looks like it is about to buckle beneath their weight.
They are now staring silently, each in a different direction, out towards the market place, towards the row of yellow New York taxis, towards the pack of vagrant dogs scampering around in the garbage that has accumulated along the curb of the sidewalk. They sit here every day, like two forgotten old men waiting for the final judgment.
46
THE MAN FROM MONGOLIA
SINGAPORE, FEBRUARY 2016
The Thunder’s journey was concealed by layer upon layer of lies and conspiracy. The ship was assisted and protected by anonymous agents, insurance companies, banks, corrupt servants and flag states that wanted their cut of the poaching revenues. Four of “The Bandit 6” sailed under the red and blue flag of Mongolia, the most unlikely shipping nation of them all.
“The Thunder became a huge problem,” says Tamir Lkhagvademberel, the director of the Mongolia Ship Registry.
We meet at a luxury restaurant in Singapore. The director is a husky and smiling middle-aged man incessantly fingering his gold-plated phone. He has five employees with him who listen to the conversation in silence. They were the ones who were going to punish the Thunder’s owner and officers if they broke the law or investigate the ship if it should get into an accident. Mongolia’s Navy consists of a tugboat on a lake in the north-western part of the country. It is manned by a crew of seven, only one of whom can swim.
“We have a bad reputation. That is something we are working hard to get rid of, but it is difficult to be removed from the black list. It will take us at least three years,” the director says between mouthfuls of lamb shank.
For ship owners there are a number of good reasons to sail under flags of convenience like the Mongolian. It is cheap, the ship owners are spared the annoyance of public regulations, can hire inexpensive and non-union labour and avoid taxes and cumbersome environmental and safety regulations. And they don’t ask owners hiding behind shell companies in tax havens any intrusive questions.
For somebody who runs a
