Twelve

When they had first arrived in Bagghar and found a cheap hotel, Tintin had been determined to shake off the Captain as soon as possible. He didn't need anyone else around him when he was working, especially not someone as volatile and unpredictable as Captain Haddock. Not that Tintin didn't like the man: far from it. They'd had some good conversations while they were crossing the desert together and Tintin viewed the man as a friend. Tintin had friends – plenty of them – but he tried to keep them at a distance as much as possible. Not because he didn't enjoy their company: he did. He liked talking and hanging out just as much as anyone else. He just didn't like deflecting questions about himself constantly, and it was getting harder to find new ways to change the conversation whenever the Captain slipped a new question in.

He thought about it as they strolled through the market on their way to the harbour master's office. He heard the Captain talking, but the words didn't penetrate his skull. Ahead of him, a figure had caught his eye. It was an almost-familiar figure. It took a few seconds for his brain to make the connection, but when it did he stopped dead in his tracks.

Allan!

It was! It was First Mate Allan of the Karaboudjan, and he was looking awfully well for a dead man.

His feet took over as he dove ahead, forgetting all about the Captain. He was so used to working alone, with only Snowy for company, that the Captain completely slipped his mind. All he could see was Allan's back getting further and further away as he left the market behind and turned into the thin, winding streets of Bagghar.

Tintin ran until he had narrowed the gap between himself and the First Mate. Then he slowed down and started shadowing him cautiously, ducking into doorways whenever it looked like Allan was about to turn around. But the man didn't turn around. Instead, he walked purposely, never dreaming that he was being followed. He knew where he was going too. It seemed like he knew the streets like the back of his hand. Wherever he was heading, he'd been there before.

This could be it! Tintin thought. He's going to his contact.

Ahead of him, Allan turned a corner and Tintin hurried to catch up but it was too late. The street was far from deserted – there were plenty of people walking along it – but Allan was gone. He had disappeared into one of the houses that lined the narrow street. Tintin paused for a moment, thinking his options through. If he stayed here there was a chance he would be noticed or recognised. On the other hand, he could go and try to find some sort of disguise – a burnous perhaps – and come back later.

There was something he was forgetting. He looked down at Snowy, who looked up and wagged his tail. Crap! The Captain! He shook his head and turned back, heading towards the market to see if he could find his friend. With any luck, the Captain would have had the good sense to go straight to the harbour master's office.

x

The Captain couldn't believe his luck: somehow, he'd managed to lose the only ginger kid wearing a bright white polo shirt in Morocco. It hadn't been his fault though… Well, not exactly. He'd followed Tintin at a run, but some idiot selling oranges or some crap had walked out right in front of him, and the Captain had bumped into him, shouldering the wicker basket and spilling the oranges. Instead of doing what a normal person would do (mumble something vaguely polite and pick up the oranges himself, like a good Englishman), the orange seller – or whatever he was – had made a huge row and half the market had waded in to stop the Captain from 'escaping'.

Escaping. Pah! It wasn't like he'd stolen anything! By the time the police had shown up and started cracking heads, the Captain had extracted himself from the mini-riot and Tintin was long gone.

Morose and bloody annoyed, the Captain had gone to the docks, intending to go straight to the harbour master's office, but then he'd spotted a small French restaurant and felt a bit peckish. He ordered himself a bottle of wine and drank it, unable to make up his mind about which bit of foreign swill he should order with it, but by the time he'd finished the wine he wasn't hungry any more. Well, he could have gone for a Big Mac, but there didn't seem to be any kind of a burger joint around. So he'd gone back to the restaurant and ordered another bottle of wine.

What was I doing again?

He stared at the ashtray, his pipe balanced carefully on the edge, and tried to think. He had something important to do, but for the life of him he couldn't remember.

Wait. Was I supposed to find McDonalds?

No. That wasn't it. Something else.

Find Tintin?

Hmm. That would be hard. The Captain had tried to go after him, but the streets were maze-like and the Captain didn't know them well enough to go wandering. He'd only been to Bagghar a handful of times and most of those times were spent either on his ship or in the tourist pubs near the docks.

Something Tintin said… Find the Karaboudjan, or something along those lines. He had a vague inkling that he was too drunk for this sort of thing. His memory wasn't the best when he was sober and when he was drunk it was useless.

The harbour master!

The thought came to him like a bolt from the blue. That was it! Tintin said we should go to the harbour master's office.

Right. He had his plan. Now all he had to do was to find a way to stand up. He pushed his chair back and waited until the world stopped spinning. Don't I need to pay for this wine first? he wondered. Yes. Yes, I definitely have to do that.

He looked around and caught sight of an older man with a huge, porn-star moustache and an apron, and called him over. "How much?" he managed to say, gesturing to the empty bottle of wine. This was the test: if he could pay and thank the man politely, he wasn't too drunk. If he fell over he was too drunk and should probably go back to the hotel to sleep it off, and hope Tintin showed up in the morning.

"Thirty five dirham," the man replied shortly.

The Captain screwed up his face and thought about the exchange rate. It wasn't actually that bad: about six quid for a bottle of decent wine. He shrugged and rooted around in his pocket for his wallet. Hmm. Not there. He calmly tried his other pocket. Hmm. Not there either. He tried the other one again, and then the other, and then started to freak out. "My wallet's been stolen!" he exclaimed. "Son of a…" He stood up and started rooting in earnest while the waiter shook his head and braced himself for trouble.

"Police!" the Captain roared. "Somebody call the police!"

"Settle down, sir," the waiter said irritably. "Shouting like that won't help!"

But it did: the restaurant opened up onto the docks, and the Captain was sitting outside at a pavement table. Further along the way two policemen were patrolling, and when they heard the Captain's shout they came running. "What's going on?" one asked gruffly. "Why all the shouting?"

"My wallet's been nicked!" the Captain shouted. "City full of bloody thieves, that's all it is! If there's a shower worse than the Germans, then it's the shower below in the market!"

"Alright," the policeman said, approaching the Captain warily, "calm down, sir, calm down." His companion followed gingerly, reaching for the billy-club he wore on his belt. They were used to dealing with drunken sailors, and this one had the look about him. As he moved forward, his foot collided with something. He looked down and saw that he had kicked something under the table. He ducked down and retrieved it before showing it to the Captain.

"Is this your wallet, sir?" he asked politely.

"Oh," said the Captain. He grinned, his drunken state of mind removing the shame and leaving him with only the comedy of the situation. "My bad."

"Take it and be quiet," the first policeman said, disgusted. "And next time we see you causing a row, it'll be straight into the drunk tank with you. Understand?"

"Aye-aye, Admiral!" The Captain tossed a couple of dirham at the waiter and saluted the two policemen. "Message received loud and clear!" He toddled off then, staggering hopefully in the direction of the hotel. He had best go and sleep it off.

x

About a half an hour later, the Captain realised he was going completely in the wrong direction. The hotel, he remembered, was back on the other side of the market. All he was doing was wandering along the seafront and getting in the way.

Still, he thought, there's some damned fine ships here. Damned fine.

He tried to keep an eye out: sometimes you could be lucky and find a friend's ship. Some of the Captain's best nights out had come about after finding an old friend in the same port. He couldn't remember half of them, but he supposed that was the mark of a good night out. He didn't recognise any of the ships here though. There was very few of them, which was surprising when you considered the size of the port. The few ships that were in port lay scattered around the bay.

He had walked quite a bit. He was almost at the end now. Not of the dock: that curved away for almost another mile. But there were only three more ships left, and he was already level with the first of them.

The Santa Veronica. He didn't recognise her.

He made a vow with himself: he'd check the names of the two remaining ships, and if he didn't know either of them he'd turn around and go home. He couldn't say fairer than that, could he?

The Fatima. He didn't recognise her either.

It was peaceful now: the row of warehouses on the right were closed. Each piece of cargo had been stripped from the ships, and probably replaced with new crates and boxes to ship somewhere else. But the job was done, and the ships would lie overnight and be refuelled in the morning. They'd all sail before noon with the new cargo, and they could be carrying anything: food, clothes, books. The Captain had once delivered an ape to a film star. It was his only claim to fame. He knew a man that swore to delivering a shipment of hamburgers to Elvis Presley, but the Captain didn't believe that. Everyone knew that the King got his burgers flown in by helicopter. The strangest thing he'd ever heard of being shipped was –

Drugs.

That's the Karaboudjan.

The thought filtered through his brain as he reached the last ship. It was a relief, in a way: for the last few minutes he'd been experiencing a jarring feeling of déjà vu. It had felt like a hundred other drunken stumbles back to his ship. It had felt horribly familiar and profoundly depressing. It was almost as though his drunken feet had done what comes natural to them, and managed to find their way home at last.

He looked up, dumbfounded, at the familiar prow. The letters emblazoned across it no longer read Karaboudjan. Oh no: they'd taken that from him too. They'd stolen his dark spirit when they'd stolen his ship, and replaced it with a burning anger as he stared up at the golden-lettered Djebel Amilah.

Fury built inside of him, and his first thought was to board the ship and start cracking heads. When the red mist began to clear, he realised that it was just the drink talking. What he needed to do was find the police. And if he'd learnt anything from his time in Bagghar, the best way to do that was to shout very loudly.

Which is how Captain Haddock found himself spending a night in the drunk tank.