Nestled one nautical mile from a tiny island in the Hebrides, the enormous cargo vessel must have looked out of place compared with the tiny fishing boats dotted across this small corner of the Atlantic. But its incongruous appearance was not the only thing worthy of note about the Cyprus-flagged reefer, designed to store large quantities of fish, which was making the penultimate stop in a decidedly suspicious journey.
For three years it had operated primarily between northern Europe and west Africa, but in mid-January it deviated from its normal route to visit Ukraine before entering the Mediterranean. As it sailed towards Gibraltar, according to the maritime analytics company Windward, there were 12 days of questionable manoeuvres as it drifted off course and deactivated its
