Given the currently prevailing chaos in Libya, this is a puzzle that it is unlikely they will manage to solve, but in the opinion of the inspection officer, the story illustrates just how far the pirates are willing to go to dupe and confuse the authorities.
Forged documents and bizarre relations with Libya contrast strikingly with the books the investigators find in the captain’s wretched cabin. He likes poetry. And in quiet moments he has sharpened his wits working on complicated sudoku.
Two mopeds transport us through the naval base on the island and to an open grassy plain screened off by sail canvas. It is an intensely clear day; the Viking is moored by the quay a few hundred metres away and surrounded by soldiers. From a distance the ship seems to loom large, almost impressively. A 70-metre ship, the Viking is the largest of “The Bandit 6”.
Then the crew is led out of a barracks and across an open field, in a silent line. They plod along slowly, wearing the same grungy T-shirts they had on when they were arrested a few days before. Captain Juan Domingo Nelson Venegas González is first; the Chilean’s body is agile and his expression is alert. When he sits down, he greets us with a forced smile. Around us stand half a division of naval officers listening to every word that is spoken.
“I didn’t hear about Interpol until we arrived here. We have been in two or three ports without anything happening. Then you figure everything’s OK, right?” he begins.
According to the captain, the last voyage on the Viking was a diabolical trip. The ship remained docked at a shipyard in Bangkok for a long time with a broken gearbox and when they went south in September, she was boarded and inspected by the Australian Border Force northwest of Christmas Island.
After they had been fishing for a few weeks, the ship’s generator broke down. Instead of going to their usual delivery sites in Angola, the Congo and Sri Lanka, they had to dump 20 tons of rotting fish into the ocean. Captain Venegas claims that it was cod and not toothfish. With the generator out of order the bilge pumps didn’t function either, which made the Burmese crew uneasy and nervous. At one point there were incidents of insurgency and attempted mutiny on board. Because no incomes were generated from the fishing, the ship owner stopped paying. Now six months had gone by since the Burmese crew and the officer had received their wages.
“The owner has not even given us money for food. I have to pay for that out of my own pocket,” Venegas complains.
The owner of the Viking he describes as a “guy from Singapore named Eric Tan”, but says that the ship is registered with a Nigerian company.
“The only thing I know about the owner is that he has disappeared. Nobody can find him and I don’t know why he has abandoned us. I am in a lot of hot water because of him. We have only just learned that our papers are forgeries. Everything is fake, the flag, the documents. I trusted my boss. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
“So you’re innocent in all of this?”
“I’m not innocent. I am the captain.
“If you’d Googled the Viking, you would have quickly discovered that the ship was wanted.”
“We don’t have Internet on the ship. The owner says it’s far too expensive. Besides I have more important things to do than surf the Internet.”
At first he doesn’t answer the question about whether he has been in Antarctica. After a few seconds of silence, he looks up.
“I know there’s ice in the Antarctic, but I’ve never seen it. There are many good fishing grounds between the 42nd and 43rd parallels. Both shellfish and cod,” he says.
When we show him a picture of the Viking near the ice edge in the Antarctic, he nods, uncomprehending.
“How long have you been a seaman?”
“Don’t ask me. I can’t stand to think about it. I’ve been a farmer, worked in cold storage facilities, with fish farming and shellfish farming.”
“When did you go on board the Viking for the first time?”
“Everybody asks me that but I am under incredible pressure from all sides. I can’t even remember my children’s birthdays any longer.”
“But you know the ship well?”
“Give me any fishing vessel at all and in the course of 12 hours I will know all the ship’s details from top to bottom. The engine, the generators, ballast, the bridge. Everything. But if you give me a battleship, I won’t be able to understand anything,” he says.
“I don’t want the owner to die, but I do want him to suffer like me. I thought a suitable punishment would be to put him in a chair and pour honey over him. Beneath the chair I’ll put a bucket of ants. Then the ants will crawl up and eat their way through his ass,” he says, leans forward and looks down at the grass.
“Funny, right?”
The base commandant stands up and signals that the meeting is over.
“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether I’ll have to spend months or years in jail, I don’t know,” Captain Venegas says and is led out of the shade, across the scorching heat of the grassy plain and over to the Viking. The next day he will sail the ship for the last time. Then the old pirate vessel will meet its destiny, the bomb enthusiast the Minister of Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti.
On 14 March 2016, the Minister of Fisheries flies journalists and ambassadors to the beautiful Pangandaran Beach in Java with her own airline company Susi Air. The Viking rests on a sandbank waiting for its executioner.
“This is Indonesia’s contribution to the global community in the endeavour to eliminate illegal fishing,” the fisheries minister says.
Then there is an explosion.
48
OPERATION YUYUS
GALICIA, MARCH 2016
Every day Antonio “Tucho” Vidal Suárez gets into his grey Land Rover and drives
