'Don't forget to confirm the cargo before anything else.'

'OK. What if it isn't there?'

'It is.'

'So why check it?'

'Because I need you to tell me when you get back that you physically saw it.'

The target ship was parked up between two Libyan navy patrol boats in the military section the other side of the harbour. I deliberately didn't say 'moored' because it got a rise out of Lynn. He knew about boaty stuff. I didn't know many of the technical terms and I didn't need to learn them. That was the navy's job. As far as I was concerned it was parked up, and that was fine.

Lynn had a small sailing boat of his own in a marina about fifteen Ks away. I'd spent the last four days living in it while he briefed me. The sitting and eating area downstairs was full of pictures of him and his wife in the creeks of north Norfolk. Nelson country, he called it.

I'd fucked up; by showing a spark of polite interest in a shot of the two of them standing outside their local, the Hero, I had opened the door to a serious history lesson, beginning with how the great man had been born a few miles up the road from their home.

The Egyptian-registered Bahiti could carry up to 150 tonnes of cargo. When the chairman's wife smashed a bottle of Cairo's fizziest against its side, all the bodywork was probably a gleaming white. Twenty or so years of saltwater and neglect had streaked it with rust. A crane was mounted at the bow for loading and unloading. The rest of the topside was flat, apart from the bridge tower at the back end. It looked like a miniature oil-tanker.

Lynn had his binos up too as forklifts hummed around us, laden with yet more crates and what looked like a consignment of dustbin lids. A group of dockers leant against walls smoking, waiting for the next job to come along or some German to bollock them for being Arabs.