In this record year of a raging and deadly viral pandemic, the Belgian authorities were on secret alert, awaiting for weeks, the Guyana scrap metal shipments that came in five separate containers aboard a loaded transoceanic vessel.
But even the most experienced officers ended up astonished by what they finally found behind the rusting mass of wheels, axles and gears that tumbled out, from a suspicious crate, on to the hard paving of the sprawling Antwerp port one cold, grey day, in late October.
Carefully joined in sections, a massive steel box loomed, its six sides welded shut. It fitted so snugly into the 20 foot-long common red shipping container, the only other space remained at the top. Deliberately jammed within that dark gap was an ugly jumble of this country’s metallic detritus thrown together in countless anonymous pieces ripped from shuttered factories, damaged vehicles and broken buildings.
