Owning a “mystery vessel” is not without its risks. Ahmad Khan knew that. But he also didn’t really give a damn (rich people never do). Was keenly aware that the likelihood of one of his vessels actually getting “caught” was slim. What could possibly go wrong by having an unmarked, unregistered vessel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Though, to his dismay, Ahmad was faced with the brutal knowledge that the vessel had lately drifted into the Caribbean Sea after disengaging from its “tug” (a word gay men have trouble dissociating from certain other activities). That was dangerously “jurisdictional” territory as it was. But such a phenomenon was made all the worse when the vessel capsized and started to leak oil from itself. A steady drip-drip-drip, if you will, that was starting to get out of control before anyone could do something about it.

And even when “authorities” did notice it, they realized they were unable to “proceed” with some kind of actionable plan without knowing who the vessel actually belonged to. And Ahmad was certainly never going to come forward and confess to owning this “shadow barge.” So without a way to identify the vessel through the International Maritime Organization, these “authorities” were scrambling in terms of who to assign responsibility for the cleanup. This being the most tragicomic instance of Kafkaesque bureaucracy that Jaden had ever seen. And he worked in the Ministry of Health. An entity that seemed especially useless in the face of “incidents” like these. That mitigating word, incident, never being enough to describe the extent of such an environmental atrocity. 

Jaden, like many passing the coastal shore of Scarborough (which, without the oil spill, might almost be mistaken for the Pacific Coast Highway), noticed the sea’s visible taint after days of the barge going unchecked in its spillage. All because, in the end, no one could trace who the accursed barge belonged to. Only aware that it should have been “put out to pasture” years ago, if one were going by the average lifespan of any oil tanker/barge (what’s known as “maritime vessel obsolescence”) being about thirty years. This one appeared to be the ancient age of fifty. Its cruder (no oil pun intended) elements included a “ladder” made solely of small holes carved into the side where a human foot could, Jaden supposed, technically fit into for the purposes of ascension and descension.

But obviously, no one had bothered with that, leaving the barge to float in an untended-to abyss that served as the primary risk of being a “ghost” on the water. That’s what Ahmad had wanted, so he could siphon and ferry his supply from Venezuela back to the Yanbu port in Saudi Arabia (though everyone assumed the ship was Guyana-bound). What he didn’t want was any of that precious oil (that Venezuela now had more proven reserves of even than the Saudis) to get lost in the ocean. Not because he cared that much about the ocean (no oil baron really can), but because of the loss of money. Not to mention the lid being blown off his once “clandestine” barge. 

It was so easy to have a clandestine barge, in fact, until it spilled. That was the gamble millionaires like Ahmad took when they cut corners to make even more money than they had already. So while the “authorities” struggled to figure out who they could assign blame and responsibility to for the spill, Ahmad couldn’t help but chuckle to himself ever so slightly. Because it was all but assured that the primordial barge would never be traced to him. Such was the perk of unpowered barges like this one: not a lick of open source information to be found. Or “closed” source, for that matter. Ahmad knew the company that sold it to him didn’t want it to get out that they had pawned off a prehistoric vessel on someone else who had no business continuing to operate it. And only did so because Ahmad was willing to pay top dollar for it. The anonymity that was built into the sale was well worth the price.

Unfortunately for Ahmad’s bottom line (one that he so voraciously wanted to keep growing), he had barely owned the barge for a full year before this unexpected capsizing. Perhaps he ought to have seen it coming. In truth, some part of him knew that it was only a matter of time before there was an oil spill, but he had so hoped that it would be later rather than sooner. After hoarding enough barrels for a bit of price-hiking, once he also pulled back on the circulation of his supply to make everyone feel the crunch, the sense of scarcity necessary to get them to pay any price. And they would pay any price. Those silly Americans with their perpetual need for comfort. Oil provided that comfort, try as they might to spin their yarn about wanting to be “climate-friendly.” Ahmad and everyone else in his circle knew what a load of horseshit that was. The only reason they so frequently prattled on about how much they “cared” was to absolve themselves of being the key contributors to the problem, the decimation of the climate. Ahmad had no such feigned guilt about his contributions. Because, in the end, it was true that money could save you from every possible consequence, including the apocalypse. Accordingly, he had already constructed multiple state-of-the-art bunkers throughout the globe to hedge his bets when the time came. And it would come. So why not fuck up the Earth a bit more until it did?

Ahmad also reasoned that, if this oil spill “had to” happen, at least it wasn’t close to his own home. Sure, the Caribbean Sea was an ill-fated site for it to occur, but better there than near his own precious bodies of water. The Persian Gulf had already suffered enough. The way he saw it, it was more “just” to pollute virgin waters than reinfect already contaminated ones. Or rather, not all that contaminated. The only truly big spill Ahmad could think of off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago was the Atlantic Empress oil spill of 1979. His father had spoken of it many times, telling Ahmad that this event was precisely why you never trust a Greek oil tanker (let alone a Greek person) to get a job done.

Ahmad had taken that advice to heart, only choosing to deal with South Americans if he absolutely needed to go outside the borders of the Middle East (and, increasingly, he did). Which he would continue to do with another ghost barge in the future, one he was already making plans to obtain while impuissant Trinidadians like Jaden stood by and watched as their coast blackened, as the oil seeped into coral reefs and spread to new territories. But that wasn’t Ahmad’s concern. Someone else would “deal with it.” They always did. Right?