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

by Matthew Campbell

Plakakis was in a restaurant, about a month after he arrived, when another Greek, a thickset man who walked with a noticeable limp, came over to say hello. He introduced himself as Vassilios Vergos, and, to Plakakis’s surprise, he was also in business with Ba’alawi and Nashwan, who were investors in the local branch of his salvage company, Poseidon. Plakakis was pleased by the coincidence. What were the odds, as he later put it, that there would be a pair of “Greek guys in the middle of nowhere”? Vergos lived on one of Poseidon’s boats, and Plakakis began visiting him frequently. Often, the salvor hosted him for Greek meals that he prepared in the tiny galley, simple affairs of grilled fish or stew that, for a man so far from home, felt like the height of luxury. Vergos was hopeless with technology, and in return for his hospitality, Plakakis began teaching him to send emails and make Skype calls, the two men sitting shoulder to shoulder as Vergos fumbled with the mouse. They also tried to push business each other’s way. When he spoke to ships’ captains and port agents about bunkering, Plakakis might mention that Poseidon was available for services like underwater cleaning. The company could also furnish security details, putting groups of armed Yemenis sourced by Nashwan onto a Poseidon tug called the Voukefalas—named, rather grandiosely, for the horse that Alexander the Great rode into battle—to escort passing ships. Plakakis soon learned that Vergos had an extreme emoti...