You could get anything on.

Especially if you knew the guy doing the screening.

Perhaps it was not surprising that half the crew were alternately getting high on cocaine, or mellowing out on hashish.

Or that he and a few fellow travellers had managed to slip through the net.

He looked out at the Mediterranean, shimmering in the heat haze.

He was from a long line of Mindanao fishermen, and the chances were that, at this exact moment, seven or eight thousand miles away, his father was chugging back towards the twinkling early evening lights of the harbour at General Santos City to offload his day’s catch.

Saltwater ran through Farouk Ebrahim’s veins, and the sea looked particularly beautiful today – so beautiful that he could have cried.

And, in fact, he did.

The tears came with a rush, as a sudden melancholia broke over him.

But they’d warned him to expect this, and as quickly as the tears had come they were gone.

He wiped his cheeks dry with the backs of his greasy hands and pulled himself together.

In another life, he would perhaps have joined his father and his uncle in their little wooden, three-man pump boat – would have spent his days pottering around the Sarangani Bay looking for mackerel and anchovies, and maybe a few bigeye scad, to sell at the bustling market.

He’d have got married, raised a family, lived as his ancestors had lived for generations, more or less.

But Allah had had other plans for him, and if He called then you answered.

Still, the calm, electric-blue sea… he could almost taste its fresh salt, feel its ancient and mystical powers cleansing his body and soul.

For a fleeting moment, he actually thought about jumping overboard.

But then, in his mind’s eye, he saw the pride on his father’s face, and it lent steel to his spine.

He would not let anyone down.

12.

SIXTY KILOMETRES BACK down the coast, in the luxurious, cream leather lounge on the lower deck of the Lucky Lady, Argun Shishani had his mobile phone to his ear once again.

He made two calls.

The first was to a Yemeni security guard on the MS Windsor Castle, who quickly passed on the message to a pair of Moroccan waiters.

The second was to a young Mindanaoan in greasy red overalls on the same ship.

When Farouk Ebrahim finished taking that second call, he looked down at the phone in his hand and thought for a moment.

Perhaps a quick call, to his mother, to tell her that he loved her, and was thinking of her?

But he quickly cast the notion from his mind – he did not want to cloud his mind with unnecessary emotions, and, more importantly, he did not want what he was about to do to come back to his family.

His trainers had warned him repeatedly of the fearsome reach and expertise of the Western intelligence agencies, and he knew that, in the coming days, every call made to and from the Windsor Castle on this voyage would be followed up and analysed.