Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry

by Matthew Campbell

Baker-Harber, who kept a bag always packed in his office for just this sort of assignment, arrived the next morning, in time to see the sailors from the Michael disembark from a rescue boat. He recognized one of them almost immediately, even though the man had recently shaved off his beard. The tall, gaunt figure walking down the gangplank was a ship’s engineer named Stylianos Komiseris. Baker-Harber had sparred with him in a London courtroom months earlier over another suspected scuttling. In that case, Komiseris had spent four days in the witness box, explaining, among other things, why he had declined an offer of help from salvors. Baker-Harber could hardly forget Komiseris, who’d sworn he could only speak Greek but greeted his opponent outside court every day, in perfect English, with a cheery, “Good morning, Mr. Baker-Harber.” Komiseris’s testimony had caused peals of laughter in court. He’d claimed the salvors had simply misunderstood him. He wasn’t saying “No, no!” when they came to his aid. What he’d actually been saying was “Nai, nai!”—Greek for “Yes, yes!” As the two met again, in a tropical harbor more than four thousand miles from London, the English attorney could hardly believe his eyes. When Komiseris spotted Baker-Harber standing on the jetty, he threw up his hands and laughed nervously, exclaiming, “It’s you!” Baker-Harber took some photographs to capture the moment, then pursued Komiseris to a nearby shop, where he cornered the engineer and extracted a wr...