Diplomatic Piracy

By Robert G. Morris

Retired foreign officer John Pauley, on a freighter headed for South America, encounters a ship that has been seized by pirates, and watches them change its name to Flying Dutchman. The Russian navy captures the pirates, but the ship suffers a second takeover. Crack journalist Manuela Alvarez and John locate the ship with its captive crew, many of whom are sick. Manuela learns the ships destination but must weigh writing a great story against endangering the crew, whether she should sacrifice her story for their sake, just as a womans sacrifice released the legendary Dutchman from sailing forever.

Robert G. Morris is from Des Moines and has a Ph.D. degree in physics from Iowa State University. After teaching and doing research, he joined the U.S. foreign service in 1974 and worked on nuclear nonproliferation, science cooperation and environmental protection issues in Washington, Paris, Bonn , Buenos Aires and Madrid. He retired in 1992 and lives with his wife in Oregon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456823276

Robert G. Morris

About the Author Robert G. Morris is from Des Moines and has a PhD in physics from Iowa State University. After teaching and doing research, he joined the US Foreign Service in 1974 and worked on nuclear nonproliferation, science cooperation, and environmental issues in Washington, Paris, Bonn, Buenos Aires, and Madrid. He has three sons; Beverly, his wife of fifty-nine years, died in 2014. The author dedicates this book to her memory.

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Copyright © 2009 by Robert G. Morris.

ISBN: Softcover    978-1-4568-2326-9

ISBN: Ebook        978-1-4568-2327-6

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Chapter 1    John Pauley’s New Commission

Chapter 2    Slow Boat to South America

Chapter 3    Casey Jones

Chapter 4    The Storm Continues. So Does Casey’s Story

Chapter 5    Any Port in a Storm

Chapter 6    The Phantom Ship

Chapter 7    Arrival. Party at Spencer’s

Chapter 8    John Calls at Embassy Buenos Aires

Chapter 9    Facts and Speculation

Chapter 10  New Information

Chapter 11  Mission to Moscow

Chapter 12  Briefing

Chapter 13  Argentina Stirs

Chapter 14  John’s Report Takes Shape

Chapter 15  Piracy Set to Music

Chapter 16  Back to Moscow

Chapter 17  Focus Shifts Away from the Southern Cone

Chapter 18  Casey Returns and Learns to Tango

Chapter 19  Manuela on the Trail of the Pirates

Chapter 20  Manuela Takes a Trip

Chapter 21  The Story of the Decade

Chapter 22  Manuela Ponders Her Story

Chapter 23  The Uncertain Fate of Manuela’s Story

Chapter 24  Casey Pays a Visit

Chapter 25  The Story Appears

Chapter 26  Casey Takes His Leave

Chapter 27  A Big Break

Chapter 28  The Vice-Consul

Epilog

Chapter 1

John Pauley’s New Commission

John Pauley, a retired United States foreign service officer, was embarked on a small ship designed primarily to carry freight between North and South America. It was his first trip on a freighter, although he had been on cruise ships with his wife Barbara, to Hawaii and Alaska. He had flown from one assigned foreign post to the next: Washington to Bonn, to Colonia, to Mexico and back to Washington again before Colonia once more. In retirement, he now had a year’s commission from the World Peace Foundation to prepare a study on nuclear activities in South America. Because he had no time constraints, no schedule, he had decided to go on a freighter.

His friends who knew something about freighters all told him about the frustration of freighter travel. You never know when the boat sails, when it will arrive, even where it’s going.

They agreed when John told them that Maria Elena’s call at Buenos Aires, where he would take a plane for the short flight to Juan de Solís, capital of Colonia, was nearly certain, but heaven only knew when, they said.

It was his assignment to Colonia which had introduced him to nuclear issues in South America. John was trained as a physicist, and while there he determined that the country’s vaunted nuclear program was a sham directed by an incompetent German scientist. For this discovery Colonia had declared John persona non grata, a diplomatic pariah, and had expelled from the country.

Later, Colonia was host to a conference called to agree on readmission of Cuba to the family of nations. The meeting foundered when assassins narrowly missed killing the visiting US secretary of state. Then a new US ambassador picked John as one of his deputies when he was appointed assistant secretary of state for Latin America. In Washington John expanded hemispheric cooperation in areas such as peaceful uses of nuclear energy but failed to get the United States to participate.

In those days John was a serious, intent young man. He had remained serious but his dark hair was now partly gray, if no thinner, showing he was no longer young. In fact he was in his sixties. Detached, some may have termed him. Intense, others might have said. Slender, all would have agreed. And open, interested, despite his apparent detachment. A fitting description for an ex-scientist.

John then returned to Colonia as a new ambassador’s deputy. This was when his son Charley experimented with drugs brought to Colonia by an embassy daughter. Thought to have stumbled on mass graves of civilians executed by the army, Charley was imprisoned. John and the young girl rescued Charley but she was killed.

John’s old friend Henry Nielsen became ambassador and called for help. A murderer was picking off ambassadors to Colonia in Spanish alphabetical order and the turn of Estados Unidos was coming up soon.

More recently John had gone back to Colonia again with a delegation hoping finally to observe justice in a series of civil rights cases called up for review after egregious miscarriages of justice for defendants previously. After this episode John became a near-witness when a government general defeated a terrorist army, but who then went over to the terrorist side, like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, with similar tragic results.

It was the leader of this delegation seeking justice in the old civil rights cases, Chairman Roy Rivers, who sat on the board of the Foundation and recommended John Pauley to carry out this nuclear study, citing John’s exposé of Colonia’s nuclear hoax and his service since retirement. John easily received the commission from the Foundation board. Not heavily endowed, the Foundation offered him travel and expenses, but no stipend. If his report was published he would get a small royalty. To John it appeared to be a useful retirement activity in a subject about which he felt strongly and in which he had already participated when he revealed the nuclear hoax in Colonia. This new assignment could prove thorny, he thought, since Argentina and Brazil had well-documented nuclear programs (although not explicitly for weapons) and neither had been a prompt nor eager signatory to the 1968 United Nations Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, designed to prevent further manufacture, use or receipt of nuclear weapons. Colonia’s nuclear program, based on the German’s direction, never amounted to much, but members of the army had made threats from time to time that it would start it up again.

John was under no illusion that commissions like his were useful or generally of even marginal value in influencing world events. Yet it he was essentially an optimist, willing to try to use his special knowledge and experience to contribute to world peace.

So here he was on a freighter of the Bunkers Line, with all of three thousand tons displacement, sailing slowly around the coast of Brazil bound for Buenos Aires.

Chapter 2

Slow Boat to South America

John had been told to board Maria Elena in Norfolk. The provisional course led through the Leeward Islands to the northern reaches of South America, then east and south along the extensive coast of Brazil. The freighter had space for twelve passengers but only three of the double cabins would be occupied. John had a double to himself, and an elderly couple from Virginia occupied another double.

The ship’s crew was largely Malaysian. The officers were European. They shared their mess with the passengers; the rest of the crew ate together on a lower deck. Between meals the mess was termed a wardroom where officers and crew could relax, talk read, smoke and drink endless cups of coffee from a large urn kept filled by two Asian mess boys who also brought the meals up from the galley, where a cook prepared the food.

From the airport John took a taxi to the harbor and for a time the frustrated driver could not find the ship’s pier. John realized that schedules were tentative. He had received an e-mail directing him to be at a particular pier at a particular time. As the harried taxi-driver was about to despair of getting another fare that day, he stopped and asked a dock worker for directions. A minute later he drove John up to Maria Elena. John paid the exorbitant fare and considered the amount of the tip. Of the figures that occurred to him he chose the highest. The driver in good heart wished him luck.

John decided he would need it as he approached the gangplank. It led from the wet, greasy pier to the wet, greasy ship—black hull stained with rust, dirty white superstructure still dripping rain from the previous night’s storm, once-yellow-brown derricks now secured. A second rickety gangplank extended from the rear of the ship to the pier. No one was on deck either to hinder or encourage his going on board. Once on the deck he wandered about among the stacked metal containers looking for someone to hail. He put down his single suitcase in the relative dryness under a ladder and contemplated climbing toward the bridge. Just then a crew member came out of one of the hatches. Seeing John he hailed him in a language John didn’t recognize. They began a dumb show that offered little understanding to either. As John was giving in to despair, a man came out on what passed for the bridge, hailed first the crewman, then John. Are you John Pauley?

John admitted he was.

The other, who was an officer, started down the steps. Welcome aboard, he called with a semblance of civility. He turned to the crewman and spoke some words that ended with Cabin A. To John he said, You’re just in time. We get underway in a quarter of an hour. Then he thought to introduce himself. I’m Karl Branson, first officer. Captain Halvorson is sleeping. In fact, most of the crew are sleeping. We had a busy time of it unloading and loading cargo.

He turned to the crewman and John divined that he was asking if the last passenger had come on board. From the tone of the crewman’s answer and the officer’s reaction John could tell that he had not. Well, he added parenthetically, he had better hurry. We’re going to leave this port at four. He continued, There’s coffee in the wardroom. Molo will show you after he shows you your cabin." He then spoke a few more words to the crewman and climbed back to the bridge.

Before entering the wheelhouse he called back to John. Days we sail there’s no fixed time for meals. The mess boys usually have something to eat laid out pretty much all day.

What if the passenger misses the departure? John asked.

We leave word when we’ll reach our next port and he is responsible for catching up to us.

John thought this a little harsh but went without comment to his cabin and hung up the one suit he was carrying and unpacked his shaver and toothbrush. He decided to see if there was a sandwich to be had in the wardroom. Indeed, there were many open-faced Scandinavian sandwiches made with different breads, pickled herring, pickled onions, pickled beets and just plain pickles, along with deviled eggs and half a dozen cheeses. No one else was in the wardroom, not the other passengers and not the ships officers who were all preparing to put the ship to sea, not a messboy. He ate one sandwich and carried another on to the small platform outside the wardroom.

The ship had come alive with crew and officers. There was little talk, the officers giving the simple, familiar orders to unmoor the ship. Finally only one thick rope still held the ship to the pier.

Crew on the pier prepared to release this line from its iron stanchion and those on board were ready to haul it in and pull up the gangplank after those ashore reboarded.

A very loud whistle mounted on the ship’s funnel made John jump. As he recovered from the surprise a taxi careened across the pier and came to an uncertain halt on the wet pavement. Wait! I’m coming, shouted a man as he jumped from the taxi. The officers arrested the preparations to get underway and the crew stood watching and listening. Anything to relieve the boredom of shipboard life!

The captain was now on the bridge and spoke quietly to the first officer who then actually gave the orders. Are you Mr. Jones? he called.

Yes. I’m coming. He threw some bills at the driver and took his suitcase.

Branson, give Mr. Jones some help there. Cabin B.

The first officer of course knew very well which cabin.

John and the crew watched Mr. Jones climb the gangplank with Branson coming up with the suit case. The minute they were both on the deck the captain gave the order to cast off the last line. The crew that had been ashore then climbed the gangway while others hauled in the hawser. The deck crew manhandled the gangway on board, the ship’s whistle split the gray afternoon with a cracked, throaty sound and amid more bells ringing on the bridge and answered from belowdecks, the ship edged away from the pier, ever so slowly at first, then faster, until after a few minutes buildings and people on the shore were only small objects.

When John turned away from the shore Mr. Jones was nowhere to be seen. John went back to the wardroom for some more sandwiches and some cheese.

Chapter 3

Casey Jones

When John woke up the morning after the ship’s departure from Norfolk the sea was running high. He lurched out of his cabin and along the companionway to the officers’ mess. Most of the officers had already eaten and departed. So far