Of Crab Tins and Diamonds

Chapter 1: Of Interveiws and Pencil Shavings

Allan was disappointed.

No, scratch that.

He was very disappointed.

Wiping his face in the blistering afternoon heat, Allan Thompson looked up from papers spread before him in unbridled disgust.

"This is it?"

"Allan!"

"What? I'm just asking, for Pete's sake."

"Allan," A male voice hissed in his ear, as he rolled his eyes underneath the brim of his cap, "He's standing right in front of you! Show some respect!"

"Yes, mother..." Allan whispered mockingly under his breath, forcing his eyes back down on the paper before writing a few illegible marks with his chewed up pencil.

Seeing that his friend was too preoccupied to pay any attention to the man waiting quietly in front of them, Tom, Allan's faithful friend and second-in-command, gave the grungy sailor a strained smile.

"Thank you for your resume...uh... Sir. We'll keep in touch."

Returning the kind gesture with his own gap-toothed grin, the strange man, whose name Tom already forgotten, staggered off, muttering under his breath about "blasted sirens" and how he "needed a drink of water from this heat."

Waiting till the man rounded the corner of the nearest building, Tom let his smile falter, a loud groan escaping his mouth before his forehead smacked against the wooden table.

For hours on end, Captain Allan , joined by none other than his best friend (and apparently honorary mother), Tom, had been conducting interviews and questioning in the middle of Brussels port. When his last radio operator quit nearly a year before, the crew of the nearby merchant freighter, the Karaboudjan, tried their hand at the job and stocked up on all the material about radios and telegraphs they could find.

Now, the captain was much more desperate.

Tired of ineligible hire and shoddy workmanship, Allan searched desperately for a new radio man, combing through the streets of Brussels and going to the ports offices in search of anyone eager for a job. But, even with countless flyers and Help Wanted signs slapped and stapled around the vast port and in numerous flea markets scattered across the city, the duo of sailors found no such luck of acquiring a new shipmate, or better yet, an eligible radio man.

Sure, people came, hungry for adventure, eager for a job but, were they eligible as a radio man?

Maybe.

If you squinted.

Letting a tired sigh spiral out of his mouth, Allan placed the pencil in between his teeth, wishing he had remembered to grab a new pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket when he placed it in his cabin. As he sank further into his chair, he let his head rest on the worn table he had set up in front of his large freighter, the Karaboujan. The noise of countless repairs and improvements rung from inside the steel ship, making interviews inside impossible and interviews outside just as worse. In the blistering afternoon sun, Allan had long since shed off his signature tan long coat, the thick sleeves of his dingy grey turtleneck rolled all the way up to his elbows. Turning his head, Allan could clearly see that Tom, for once, went with a smarter choice and sported his thin yellow shirt, his favorite grey hat left in his cabin for the day.

A bell chimed, gulls screeched and laughed overhead but, silence seemed to stretch for an eternity between the two.

It was Allan that broke it first.