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unloaded and he and the Captain, Georgio Houlas, had a conversation in the Captain’s less than tidy cabin. The Captain, a short, chunky individual, dressed in jeans, a dark high-necked sweater and a dirty peaked cap that might once have indicated a ship’s officer, sat comfortably in the chair beside his desk and waved his visitor to a dilapidated couch against the bulkhead. He accepted a cigar from the visitor and both lit up.
    The immaculate dress of the visitor contrasted with the slovenly look of the Captain. Manfred Koch wore an expensive tailor-made suit in a rich dark tan colour with a matching shirt and tie, shoes polished to a high gloss. The visitor looked totally out of place in the shabby cabin of the old tramp freighter, but his demeanor did not indicate that he felt out of place.
    “Well, Georgio,” began the visitor, letting the smoke dribble from his nostrils, “what happened?”
    “What happened? We got caught in that storm and both engines quit. That was one helluva storm, Manfred. The engine breakdown was legitimate. We had two other problems. One was that we—what do you call it— collided —with a fishing boat.”
    “You what? What was a fishing boat doing out there in that storm?”
    “He got caught, same as we did, and his engine quit, too. We didn’t see him for waves and wind. We were just drifting, trying to keep her head into the wind. He was small, an on-shore fishing boat, I think they call those little fishing boats, and he was down in a trough when we hit him. When we hit him—Huh! When the storm blew us into him. No chance for him at all. The three guys on board got into their dingy, but we had to take them on board. They were wearing immersion suits and who could tell how long before they might have been located. We didn’t have any choice, so we picked them up.
    “I got them in the cabin here and shot them. After midnight, Stevanos and I stripped off their immersion suits and tossed them overboard. They must be long gone to the bottom by now.”
    “How’d you explain that to the crew?”
    “Said they washed overboard in the storm. Not used to being on a big ship.”
    “And the crew believed you?”
    “Did they have a choice? Who could prove it? We had enough problems: we lost both engines. Lost ’em about an hour or so before we hit the fishing boat. Not enough power to keep us pulling through those waves. The starboard engine broke a piston rod, and the port side couldn’t hold it by itself and just gave out. Those are very old engines, Manfred. But tell the owners.” Georgio spat into the wastebasket already overflowing and stinking with paper along with garbage from meals taken in the cabin. “They don’t care as long as they get the stuff delivered and pocket their millions.
    “Tell you the truth, I was a little scared in this storm myself and the crew were really scared. We were drifting, blown by that damned wind and the tide actually toward Rocky Island. We drifted about fifty miles or so before the tug got to us. Thankfully we’d drifted back out to sea by that time. There would have been a lot of questions asked if we had let anybody know how close in we were when we lost our engines.”
    “But your biggest problem was having the cocaine on board.”
    “True—damn true. Stevanos and I went down after we called for help from the tug, and took an axe to the three containers, and beat up the bags of cocaine. Took us almost all night. Next morning the storm was dying down and I got the crew down there shovelling the stuff overboard. Nobody complained.”
    “And you tossed a couple of hundred million dollars worth of stuff overboard.”
    “What did you want me to do? Let the ship sink and lose my life? Let customs find the cocaine? Tell me.”
    “Well, Nicolai is one unhappy man right now. I can tell you that. That stuff was worth two hundred and fifty million on the street.”
    “Tell Nicolai he can come and ride this cruddy old ship if he wants. I can