'Las Malvinas son nuestras!' he echoed heatedly. 'Who first sighted the Falklands a century before the British ever came near – a Spaniard, Americo Vespucci, in 1502…'
Brockton said over his glass, 'Vespucci wasn't a Spaniard. He was a Florentine.'
The derision in my snort was like throwing petrol on a fire to Grohman. Now and then he stumbled to find an English word as his speech free-wheeled angrily.
'Maybe, maybe, but he sailed for Spain, Vespucci did. It was also he who discovered the Tierra San Martin long before the British or Americans, nearly three centuries later…'
'Tierra San Martin?' I asked. 'Where now would that be?'
'He means what the rest of the world calls the Antarctic Peninsula,' Brockton filled in ironically. 'All nations agreed to standardize the name in the sixties. Except Argentina.'
I was glad to have Paul to support me in this verbal duel. He seemed to be particularly well informed for a newspaper-man.
'For a hundred and fifty years we have been wronged,' Grohman went on, knocking over the wine bottle with a vehement gesture of his left hand. 'The Malvinas originally belonged to Spain. They were stolen by the British! After the Spanish colonies in the New World had revolted against Spain, the Malvinas passed legally to the new United Provinces of La Plata and we tried to occupy them – legally…'
Brockton again came to my assistance. 'You are over-simplifying, friend. The whole story is much more complicated than that and although I don't hold with British colonial methods, in this case they were right.'
Brockton's cool assessment seemed merely to provoke Grohman further. 'It is not only the Falklands that the British stole! All the groups of islands on the southern flank of what you call the Drake Passage were stolen from Argentina by Britain. Who rightly owns what you Americans call Graham Land, or the South Shetlands, or the South Orkneys? We registered our claims in the properly recognized international way during World War II when we left a formal document buried in a metal cylinder asserting our rights to the whole sector between twenty-five and sixty-eight degrees west and southwards of latitude sixty south…'
Brockton said roughly, 'Argentina waited until they thought they could catch Britain with her pants down because of the war. If I remember right, however, the British had sense enough to send a warship and remove all signs of Argentinian occupancy and the emblems they planted.' 'It was typical of British aggression…' Grohman began.
'Listen,' I interrupted. 'I didn't come here to hear a lot of historical crap about who owns what. All I know is that the Falklands are British, that my ship is held up there, and that I mean to get her out. Falklands, Malvinas - whatever.'
'You must understand, that is why Jetwind is detained!’ Grohman retorted. 'In 1966 a group of Argentinian patriots staged a token invasion by air of the Falklands to reaffirm our claims to the islands. Argentina does not recognize British sovereignty – the Malvinas are ours! That is why I went to the mainland! I reported to the proper authorities the death of Captain Mortensen. Jetwind must remain in Port Stanley pending clarification of the circumstances of Captain Mortensen's death. That is why, when he was killed, I made for Port Stanley. It is an Argentinian matter.' 'Go and tell that to the Royal Navy,' I retorted.
My attitude towards Jetwind's first officer was clear: he had committed a severe dereliction of duty towards his ship's owner, and I had yet to discover what lay behind his smoke-screen of politico-historical claptrap. I was not prepared to accept his explanation at face value. Yet Brockton surprised me. He was deadly serious towards Grohman and seemed to weigh judicially every word he said, despite the fact that he himself seemed better armed with fact than the Argentinian.
Grohman turned contemptuous. 'The Royal Navy! Do you remember 1976? Do you remember your so-called research ship, the Shackleton, snooping about in our waters with depth-charges and electronic gear aboard? The Argentinian destroyer Almirante Storni opened fire on it for illegal activities. The Shackleton turned and ran for Port Stanley…'
'That appears to be a common occurrence in these parts’ I remarked.
'The British warship was probing our naval secrets!' rapped out Grohman. 'We opened fire legitimately when it refused to surrender..
Once again Brockton came to my rescue. 'The Shackleton was simply an oceanographic research ship measuring the extent of continental drift off the Horn,' he said briskly. 'Your so-called depth-charges were seismic charges for use in sonic underwater observations. The Almirante Storni demanded that she submit to arrest – on the high seas. The British captain quite rightly sought shelter in the nearest British port – Port Stanley. His ship holed up there until the storm blew over. It was all part of Argentina's continuing campaign of harassment over the Falklands.'
Grohman looked as if he could have knifed Brockton. 'We have proclaimed a two-hundred-mile territorial limit round the Malvinas,' he said. 'Therefore the British warship was inside Argentinian territorial waters.'
I drained my drink and got up. 'I am not prepared to listen to any more of this nonsense,' I said. 'Tomorrow I fly to Port Stanley. Are you accompanying me, Grohman, or are you staying here?' 'I am coming.'
'Good. We'll be on the same plane. I intend taking Jetwind to sea as soon as possible.'
Grohman gave an unamused smile. 'You call my reasons nonsense. You will see tomorrow they are not.' 'Say what you mean, man!'
Brockton had also risen to his feet, apparently more concerned than I was at Grohman's air of truculent triumph.
'An Argentinian warship – the same Almirante Storni -is at this moment on her way to Port Stanley to detain Jetwind.’
Chapter 8
I disbelieved him – until next day.
Our plane was over the ocean, about an hour out from Comodoro Rivadavia, heading for the Falklands. The scheduled flight time was about two and a half hours. The obsolescent F-27 Argentina Air Force plane was grinding its way southeastwards; the mainland was out of sight behind. The day was clear and bright but the far horizon was a purplish line – the menace of Southern Ocean weather, the unsleeping threat of Cape Horn. It looked a good day down on the surface. Only occasionally did I spot a white crest. It was a rare in-between day when the wind was making up its mind from which quarter to rip in next -northwest or west.
I had just been handed a thin, stale sandwich and a cardboard cup of synthetic fruit juice by a cabin dogsbody who sported an Air Force uniform and a rash of acne. He, like the rest of the four-man crew, treated Brockton and myself like patients with a highly infectious disease. Brockton had the window-seat next to me. Suddenly his stocky frame stiffened and his square jaw went rigid like a bull mastiff confronting the bull.
He dropped his voice below the level of the other passengers' hearing. 'Grohman wasn't conning you, Peter. Look out there.'
I was slow to pick up the ship's profile against the mirror of water.
'That's her – the Almirante Storni.’ Brockton's voice was full of concern.
I craned forward to see; out of the corner of my eye I noted one of the flying crew slide back the curtain into the cabin and beckon Grohman into the cockpit. Grohman was sitting with a group of four fellow-countrymen. At take-off I had wondered what their business might be in Stanley.
'How can you tell at this distance?' I asked Brockton in surprise.
He scraped at his jaw with his knuckles, as if the quality of his shave worried him.
'Ex-United States Fletcher class’ he replied. 'You can identify 'em anywhere by that high mast for'ard with the heavy stay on the port side. It supports the radar gear.'
When the destroyer rose on a wave, I made out her distinguishing feature.
'Gives the ship a lopsided appearance,' I said. 'How do you know though that she's the Almirante Storni?’
'The U.S. turned over some Fletchers to Argentina in the fifties,' he said. 'They were a pretty successful class. They did a great job during the war, odd mast or not.' 'Y'ou're sure she's the Almirante Storni?’ 'Sure.'
The previous evening I had dismissed Grohman's statement about the warship's mission to detain Jetwind as patriotic claptrap; now the evidence on the sea below was irrefutable.
