Fire And Ice Page 12

  Nothing fazes you at sea. But you're. 'Jack ashore,' as the Brits say. Lost on land and lost among landsmen."

  Her words troubled Stone. They rang truer than he cared to admit. He was all right if it was physical—"Corporal Fong" would be combing his hair over heel prints for a long time—but he never should have let the Brit trick him into the police car in the first place.

  And if it weren't for the Beast he'd have blundered into the phony taxi.

  Sarah herself said that he was losing the knack of functioning ashore, and Ronnie teased that Daddy was like a sea turtle on the beach. It wasn't an uncommon failing among offshore sailors. But if he was going to get his wife and child back, he would have to become as observant on land as he was at sea. As quick, as clever, and as ballsy.

  "I've just got to get my land legs back," he said. "I'll be okay."

  Lydia stood up. "I'll have you escorted safely back to the yacht club."

  "I can't put innocent people in danger."

  "Not to worry," Lydia said with a thin smile. "They can take care of themselves. In the morning I'll get on the phone and see what I can learn about your gas carrier. But I don't hold that much hope. Anything so spectacular I'd have heard about long ago."

  Twenty minutes later, the maid came in and spoke to Lydia, who said to Stone, "You'll take the freight elevator to the parking garage."

  "Lydia, you don't believe me, do you?"

  "I want to believe you. But it's all so farfetched." "Well, what else could have happened to them?"

  "I don't know, Michael. . . . Now listen to me. Under

  no circumstances are you to breathe a word of this to

  your 'escort.' "

  "I don't understand."

  "And whatever you do, don't ask them for help. Do you promise?"

  "But I don't understand."

  "Jackals," said Lydia, "steal from lions. Failing that, they themselves are quite capable of killing."

  "I still don't understand."

  "Just promise."

  A delivery van was waiting in the garage. A pair of Cantonese in black pants and white T-shirts held open the door to the windowless rear. They indicated a carton of Radio Shack speakers for Stone to sit on. Stone waited for them to close the doors, but they just stood there, until he realized he was being watched through the dark glass of a BMW

  limousine parked behind the van.

  A flashily dressed Cantonese in his early thirties stepped out and sauntered toward him.

  He peered into the van as if he were considering buying its contents, then hitched up the knees of a tightly fitted tropical suit so white it glowed and climbed in opposite Stone.

  "My name Ronald."

  A gold watch rimmed in diamonds gleamed on Ronald's wrist. His necktie was silk. He regarded Stone with amusement and, Stone suspected, some disdain for his clothes and beard and stainless steel Rolex.

  "Mine is Michael."

  His men got in front and drew a curtain across the cargo area. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride."

  "What do they see?" Stone asked as the van pulled out and passed the apartment building.

  His escort called back and forth through the curtain in Cantonese. There was laughter, and then Ronald said to Stone, "Bruce Lee wannabes."

  "Do they recognize them?"

  "Low guys. Punks. Why Chiu Chau mad at you?" "I don't know."

  "You owe 'em money?"

  "No."

  "You sure? They very greedy guys."

  "I never met a Chiu Chau in my life. And I sure as hell don't owe 'em money. I just got here."

  "Never trust a Chiu Chau. Never. They do anything for money, always work for the highest bidder."

  "It must be some mistake."

  Ronald shrugged. "Whatever you say, man."

  Lydia's warning had had precisely the opposite effect from what she had intended—it had given him an idea. Turn the tables on the bastards and "hire" his own Triad. "Do you work for Lydia Chin?"

  "Ms. Chin very fine lady. Chins fine family."

  "My wife and I," he said, "have a hospital boat. Lydia Chin contributes to the costs."

  "Very fine lady, Ms. Chin."

  "I'm a doctor," said Stone. "If I can ever be of some service—to repay you for this kindness—please ask. I'm staying at the Hong Kong Yacht Club."

  "High-price club."

  "We have an honorary membership."

  "Ms. Chin say you do good."

  "We try. What I'm trying to say is, I appreciate this favor and—"

  "This Ms. Chin favor."

  "I would still like to be of service. Anything I can do." Ronald looked him up and down.

  "What kind of doctor?"

  "Emergency doctor."

  "You mean like accidents?"

  "Any kind of accident."

  "Like shooting accident?"

  "Exactly."

  "Knife accident."

  "You got it."

  "How about girlfriend accident?"

  Stone hesitated. "She'd be better in a clinic." Ronald's face closed up. Stone said hastily,

  "If for any

  reason she can't get to a clinic, she'll be safe with me. And my wife."

  "How much?"

  "No money."

  "What you want?"

  "Information."

  "About what?"

  "A missing ship."

  "Don't know ships."

  "Come on, Ronald, this is Hong Kong—biggest port in the world—and if you work with Lydia Chin, you gotta know ships."

  "No say I work with Ms. Chin."

  "I'm talking about a big liquefied natural gas carrier that's missing."

  "How much worth?"

  "The ship's worth plenty. But the cargo's worth a hell of a lot more."

  "How much?"

  "Millions."

  Ronald's shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug. "Ms. Chin very fine lady," he said. "What else you want?" "Transportation?"

  "Take plane."

  "Private transportation."

  "Where?"

  "Shanghai."

  "Gas ship in Shanghai?"

  "Maybe."

  "Big city, Shanghai. What else you want?"

  " 'Old friends' in Shanghai?" Stone was asking for introductions.

  " 'Old friends?' What else?"

  "A visa for Shanghai."

  "China Travel Office. Visa, two days."

  "I'd like to keep my passports out of the computers." "You talking big accident, Doc."

  Ronald had a word with the yacht club's doorman before he walked Stone to his room.

  He even checked that it was empty before he said good night.

  Stone wedged a chair back under the doorknob, got into bed, and lay awake, wondering how to get to Shanghai. He was scared—scared for Sarah and Ronnie, and scared tonight for himself. Finally he turned on the light, took the Brit's gun out of his backpack, and stashed it under his pillow.

  WHEN THE TELEPHONE WOKE STONE, HE STILL HAD HIS HAND

  on the gun. Sunlight. was streaming through the window. His watch said ten. He remembered he was in the yacht club.

  "Hello."

  "It's Kerry. I'm rushing—meet me at Shit and Feathers at one o'clock."

  The salvage captain hung up before Stone could protest: he had no business wandering around the city. At least the Eagle's Nest was in the Hilton Hotel, about as public as you could get. To be on the safe side, he walked over to the Police Officers' Club and shared a cab going to Central.

  The Eagle's Nest occupied the top floor. Once-magnificent views of the colossal harbor were somewhat curtailed by newer, taller buildings. But it had retained its popularity as a business lunch place for expat and Chinese alike.

  Stone assumed that one of Kerry's major clients must have booked their spectacular window table. The strait between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and the vast anchorage beyond, was speckled with anchored ships and edged by liner piers and enormous container ports. He could see west to Lantau Island, no
rth to the mainland, despite the new buildings shouldering close.

  Kerry arrived at one on the dot.

  The Australian was small for a tugman; short and slim, he couldn't have weighed more than one-fifty. How he

  had passed his deckhand apprenticeship, muscling heavy lines, could be attributed only, Stone thought, to an aggressiveness that bordered on the ferocious and had served him well in the cutthroat salvage business.

  "Where's your beautiful wife?"

  "I came alone." Until he saw him cut through the crowded restaurant like an attacking destroyer, Stone had planned to come right out and tell him why he needed him. But if Lydia wouldn't believe his story, why would Kerry?

  "What's up?"

  He held an unlimited-tonnage, all-oceans ticket and, like most master mariners Stone had met, had the cold eye that accompanied fast decisions and merciless judgment.

  "First of all," Stone said, "have you heard anything about a gas carrier being taken?"

  "Taken? What do you mean, 'taken?' "

  "Hijacked."

  "No."

  "Nothing?"

  "Not a peep."

  "You monitor distress calls."

  "Every signal in the Western Pacific. Customers calling. What's going on?"

  "Okay, let's say they didn't get off a distress." "Obviously not."

  "Have you heard of any ships overdue?"

  "No. Except my current customer, of course, who is going to be goddamned more overdue if he doesn't produce some money very soon. But, no. Nothing— Wait." His suntan wrinkled and he passed a scarred hand over his mouth. "Ah. You know the Moluccas?"

  "We don't go down there." The Banda Sea touched on Sarah's East Timor.

  "No, I wouldn't either—not without a rocket launcher." "What about it?"

  McGlynn squeezed his mouth and gazed across the harbor as if memory would echo somewhere on the blue hills of China. "When are we talking about? Recent?"

  "Last week. Tuesday, maybe early Wednesday."

  "Yes. All right, mate. Early last week. Somebody tripped twenty-one eighty-two. I have a boat in the yard

  at Surabaya and she copied and replied. Turned out it was a screwup. Somebody fell and hit the switch."

  Stone nodded. Most single-sideband long-range radios had a dedicated emergency switch, like the panic button on a burglar alarm. "They radioed back?"

  "Right. 'No problem, thanks for responding, sorry to trouble you. Over and out.' "

  "How did you know it was in the Banda Sea?"

  "I didn't. But since you asked it occurred to me that a couple of days later another one of my captains came into Surabaya towing a supply barge. He and the laid-up captain were having a pint, and he happened to mention he'd picked up a call about the same time in the Banda Sea. Except he heard his on channel sixteen, VHF."

  Stone gripped the tablecloth and leaned closer. Ship to low-lying tug, VHF radio range was no more than forty miles. "What did the ship say when he responded?"

  "Nothing. Just the one call, and when he tried to raise her, he got nothing back."

  "What did he do?"

  "What the hell could he do? The man had a five-thousand-ton barge on a half-mile wire.

  He put the cook in charge of the radio, told the lookouts to keep a weather eye, and tried to canvass other shipping—there wasn't any."

  Stone was hanging on every word, praying for a breakthrough. Kerry misunderstood and got defensive. "No way my captain was going to cast the barge loose and start a search pattern on his own. Could have been a screwup. Could have been the last signal before they sunk. Nothing to go on. Just a Mayday. No name, no call sign, no position."

  "Like maybe the caller was shot resisting a hijacking and managed to get to the radio room before they finished him off?"

  "That's a lot of maybe."

  "Maybe," said Stone. But Kerry hadn't been the one who'd found a bullet-riddled body in the Pulo Helena lagoon. "Where would that be, six-seven hundred miles southwest of Pulo Helena?"

  "With New Guinea in between. What's going on, Michael?"

  Thirty-forty hours steaming for a fast ship. "But no name," Stone asked. "No call signs on either transmission. Wouldn't the single-sideband automatically send a call sign?"

  "This one didn't— What's going on? Where's Sarah?"

  "You're not going to believe this." Stone told him what had happened at Pulo Helena.

  The salvage captain listened without interruption until Stone was through.

  "Hell of a story. And a hell of a piece of seamanship, Michael. They're going to be mighty surprised to find out you're in Hong Kong."

  Would that they were, Stone wanted to say, but Kerry looked incredulous already. "Fact is, the distress calls really tell me nothing, except they strengthen my hijack guess."

  "It tells me it's just possible you didn't dream this up." "Possible?" Stone echoed.

  McGlynn returned his coldest captain's stare. "Michael, in my business I see every scam you could imagine. You know how many scuttlings I get called on? They radio me to make them look legitimate. 'Gee, the ship was sinking. The salvage tugs came, but it was too late. Fortunately, they picked up our lifeboat.' Sometimes I feel like a pirate's ferry service."

  "Why would I scuttle my boat?"

  McGlynn said, "Let me ask you something . . . How good are your papers?"

  "What?"

  "Is Veronica reliably documented?"

  "She's registered in Los Angeles."

  "Will her papers pass muster?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think you know what I mean. Christ, Mike, everyone knows something's bent about you two."

  "I've heard that. Everybody thinks Sarah and I are running from an angry husband."

  "I don't," said McGlynn. He had a look on his face of a hanging judge.

  "Oh yeah? What do you hear?"

  "The only reason I never questioned you was the first time I saw you, you were driving Veronica through a pass even the natives wouldn't dare to rescue some little kid. I figured, whatever crimes you did in the past, you were making up for it. But, we were discussing Veronica's papers."

  "Her papers are in order. She's had a few name changes over the years. She was Ashante when we bought her. We changed it to Sarah. After Ronnie was born, we changed it again to Veronica."

  "Bought her?"

  "The bill of sale went overboard in Typhoon Mary." "Along with the canceled check?"

  McGlynn permitted himself a thin smile.

  "We paid cash, actually. That is, Sarah bought her for cash."

  "And the seller?"

  "A Congo River man."

  "Who just happened to own a top-of-the-line Finnish-built sailing yacht. Did you get a good price, for cash?"

  A trace of McGlynn's smile lingered, so Stone said, "He did recommend an immediate name change and a cruise in foreign waters."

  "And some name changes for you two as well?" Stone thought it was fair to answer that question enigmatically. "You know us as who we are."

  Kerry's expression hardened. "A stolen yacht isn't why you're running. What'd you do, mate? What do you need me for? Why can't you just go to the U.S. Navy?"

  If there was anyone he could trust, it was this friend who cared so much for Sarah. But he had been hiding his past as much from himself as from the world, and the habit died hard. He had to accept he had no choice.

  "I'll give it to you in a nutshell, Kerry," he said briskly. "I'm wanted for a double murder, which I didn't commit, and piracy, which I did."

  "If you want my help, mate; you better come up with a bigger nutshell."

  "Give me a break, Kerry."

  "No, you give me a break. You want me to believe you? Convince me."

  Stone took a deep breath. "We never told anybody. You'll see why. . . . Sarah's father—the general—was assassinated in a coup attempt. When the coup collapsed, they got the idea of covering themselves by pinning the murder on me."

  Kerry's reaction to the revelation was t
o ask coolly, "What were you doing in Nigeria?"

  Stone was still trying to form a careful answer, when suddenly he felt the old pain return as raw and startling as an explosion in his face. He took a moment to compose himself.

  "My first wife's name was Katherine. We'd cashed in our shares of an ultrasound medical probe we'd developed, and gone sailing. Sort of a second honeymoon, since we'd been too busy for our first. Bought a big fat Halberg-Rassy centerboard ketch. Your basic first boat when you have more money than sense. Rolled our guts out crossing the Atlantic, and finally anchored up in London. That's where I met Sarah. She was interning at King's Hospital."

  "Found yourself a new first mate?" Kerry smirked, but his voice trailed off when he saw Stone's eyes glisten.

  "Kerry, there isn't a night on watch I don't grieve for Katherine. Or wonder what the hell I could have done different to save her life."

  "Sounds like you still love her."

  "I do."

  "More than Sarah?"

  "No. Of course not. If I had a thousand lives I'd never find again what I found with Sarah."

  "Sorry, mate." The salvage man looked away. When he could finally face Stone again, he saw him fighting back the tears.

  "Katherine and Sarah hit it off—the three of us became great friends. Sarah was younger than we, just surfacing from the drudgery of medical school, so excited to be alive again.

  It was fun to be around her. So when her old man ordered her home to Lagos, we promised to sail down to pay her a visit. Landed smack in the middle of what turned out to be a very short-lived coup. A gang of junior officers liquored up by our local CIA agent."

  McGlynn stared down at a sea-battered PRC freighter

  cutting off the Star Ferry. Stone took a long breath and struggled to get the details right.

  "Sarah's father was one hundred percent committed to civilian rule, which made him their first target. What they didn't realize was that his units would remain loyal; he'd trained them like British soldiers, taught 'em to stay out of politics. When the coup went sour, the bastards got the bright idea of making the assassination look like a murder—a crime of passion—like I'd caught the general making love to Katherine and killed them both in a jealous rage."

  "They murdered your wife too?"

  "For verisimilitude. Shot her in her bed. Dumped the general's body on top of her.