Fire And Ice Page 15

  "Handsome boat," said Stone, dipping his oars and moving on to another vantage. Tin Hau, glimpsed through a forest of aluminum and carbon-fiber masts, appeared to be the archetype for the phrase "floating gin palace." The bulkiness of its navy blue hull was cleverly disguised by a smooth, ultramodern superstructure, which, while quite high, was made to look sleek by long strips of black-tinted glass. She looked, Stone thought, like Italians had designed a shopping mall for speed.

  As he rowed closer, a flimsy-looking helicopter buzzed in across the harbor and fluttered onto her afterdeck. Two boatboys came running and helped the pilot tie the aircraft down and unload cases of liquor. Stone rowed the length of her, spotted the accommodations door midships in her side, and kept going toward the passage in the rock breakwater that led to the harbor. He paused there while a sampan picked up the helicopter pilot at the accommodations door, and studied her mooring.

  No anchor, thank God. Both anchors were secured

  within the bow, and the yacht was tied to a permanent mooring. He rowed back along her length. Her stern was tied to another permanent buoy; better and better. But when he looked between her and her smaller neighbor, he noticed they'd exchanged lines fore and aft.

  He imagined a sequence: when the tide flooded the passage, he would cast off the side lines first, then the stern line. Then start the engines. Race forward and cut the bow line.

  Run back to the bridge and try to slip away without waking up half the typhoon shelter.

  But he still had to get aboard and he still had to deal with the boatboys, who were total innocents. And possibly armed. Guns were restricted in Hong Kong, but who knew on a big private yacht? For that matter, a rigging knife in the hands of a fit twenty year old would be weapon enough, particularly at two against one.

  He thought of rowing out again, at night, and climbing up the stern line. But then he'd have to search a yacht he didn't know, to find the crew. He dipped his oars again and started slowly back to the yacht club.

  Night was falling, and the hillsides were lighting up. A cool wet wind came in from the east. Despite the exercise at the oars, Stone closed his windbreaker. A floating restaurant sampan came along, with a European tourist couple reclining on cushions in the stern, while an old Chinese woman served them dinner. Another sampan came by with an off-key string trio playing "Moon River."

  Rowing slowly, Stone backed water to allow the restaurant sampan to cross ahead of him. It pulled alongside a big motor yacht. The cook rapped on the hull. A boatboy appeared and lowered an accommodations ladder for the woman.

  Stone let the dinghy drift. In a few minutes she came back, slipped the boatboy some money, and stepped down to the floating restaurant. "You should have seen it," she told her date. "It had a bidet. Marble. With gold faucets."

  Half an hour later he was back in the hotel room with a cup of tea in his hand and Ronald at his side, staring down at the typhoon shelter.

  Stone waited, silent, and finally the Triad man asked, "

  "Okay?

  "Tell me about this ECM."

  Ronald shrugged. "All I know is I push a button and the water cops' radar goes bye-bye."

  "You're going to operate it?"

  "No. I got a kid—engineer kid. I tell him when he pushes button. Hey, relax. Comes straight from the People's Liberation Army."

  "Where are you going to operate it from?"

  "No more questions." He took a pair of VHF radio handsets from a leather case and gave one to Stone. "I guarantee, you radio me to jam the radar, I blind water cops."

  "They can hear us on this."

  "Hey, you think we amateurs? Scrambled. Nobody. hears but you and me. Any more problems?"

  Stone studied the chart for a few minutes. Then he went to the window and gazed down at the shelter. "I'll need a woman."

  "You got her."

  "Not a hooker. Just an ordinary-looking Westerner. Preferably blonde."

  Ronald thought for a moment. "No problem."

  "She's going to need a gun and know how to handle it:"

  "No problem."

  "We'll need handcuffs for the boatboys."

  "Already got 'em."

  "Tell her no shooting. She's got to look nice and ordinary, till she takes the gun out.

  Then she's got to look tough."

  "She is."

  "Tough enough to convince the boatboys not to fight." "I get it," said Ronald. "What else?"

  Stone went back for another look at the chart, then returned to the window and stared east at the route through the strait between Hong Kong and Kowloon.

  "I'll do it tonight."

  "Fog tomorrow night."

  "There'll be fog tonight."

  "The met report says tomorrow."

  Down in the shelter, Stone had smelled it on the wind. "Trust me," he said, "fog tonight.

  The tide turns at ten. Tell your woman to meet me in the yacht club bar at nine-thirty."

  "You got it."

  "What's her name?"

  Ronald shrugged. "What name you want?"

  Sarah was the name he wanted. "Katherine."

  "You got it."

  "Is she American?"

  "Yes."

  "Tell her she should act like a North Dakota schoolteacher on Christmas vacation."

  "Like apple pie."

  In the yacht club library, Stone read the Shanghai section of the Sailing Directions for the east coast of China, and studied the charts. The city was immense. For twenty miles, both banks of the Huangpu River were lined with industrial belts of factories, railheads, coal yards, refineries, tank farms, power plants, and piers. It looked like a perfect place to hide a ship, and a terrible place to look for one.

  He telephoned Falconer Nautical in Central to deliver Defense Mapping Agency Shanghai charts 94219 and 94218, and a copy of the Sailing Directions. Then he went into the bar and bought a carton of Marlboros. Sarah would kill him, but a pack of American cigarettes could buy a lot of friendship on the Mainland.

  When "Katherine" entered the clubhouse bar at nine-thirty, Stone saw instantly that Ronald had delivered as promised. She looked exactly like she could be a schoolteacher from North Dakota—a tall, big-boned, pleasant-looking woman in her early thirties. She had her hair in a ponytail, a friendly, open smile, and the slightly bedazzled expression of a recent arrival to the East.

  "Katherine!" he called with a wave, and he went to greet her.

  She stood half a head taller than he and greeted him in

  the tentative manner of a new friend. "There you are. What a neat place."

  Stone introduced her to the Beast, with whom he had been drinking, and several of Simmons's friends. The bar was busy, with people crowding in from dinner. Stone ordered Katherine the Seven and Seven she requested, and while she was chatting with the others, the Beast asked, quietly, "Old friend?"

  "I met her on the Tram."

  "You dog. She's too tall for you, mate. She needs a big handsome Aussie, like me."

  "She told me she's more interested in stamina than looks," said Stone.

  Some people went out onto the terrace, and as they opened the sliding doors, a cool wet breeze entered and stirred the cigarette smoke. The lights in the shelter were turning buttery as fog rolled in from the harbor. By ten, the lights of Kowloon had disappeared and now, whenever the doors were opened, Stone could hear horns and whistles on passing vessels.

  Katherine seemed thoroughly caught up in the part she was playing. She touched his glass with hers. "So how you doing?"

  "Great. How about a boat ride?"

  "Now? Sure. Where to?"

  "We'll take a little row. Show you the shelter." "The dog," the Beast muttered beside him.

  Stone asked the bartender for a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

  "Nice meeting you, everybody," said Katherine, swinging off the barstool and slipping on her big shoulder bag. "See you later."

  "I like your friends," she said, loud enough for some to hear as they headed ou
t. Stone picked up his backpack at the desk and led her down through the boat launching area to the dinghy he had borrowed. On the dock, Katherine took off her shoes. Stone helped her in and had her sit in the back, and he faced her as he rowed.

  A hundred yards from the dock, whose lights were fading in the fog, he said, "Might be a good idea to open the champagne."

  "In a minute." She fished in her bag. Stone glimpsed a big machine pistol. Handcuffs clinked. She came up with a capsule. In one smooth motion, she broke it under her nose, inhaled sharply, and tossed the husk overboard.

  "Hey, wait a minute. I need your head on straight."

  "Fuck you."

  Stone back-watered one oar and turned the boat around. "Where are you going?"

  "I'll drop you at the dock," he said, stroking deep and pulling hard.

  "No, wait."

  He saw sudden terror on her face. "If you think I'm boarding that yacht with a drug addict waving a gun, you're even crazier than you look."

  "Wait. Wait. Just listen."

  "You're carrying a goddamned automatic. You'll probably pull the trigger and forget to let go."

  "I know how to use it. I'm a cop."

  "Cop?"

  "Ex-cop."

  "You're an ex-cop? How'd you end up—"

  "You really want to know how I got from Minneapolis to Hong Kong? Let's go. Please.

  They'll kill me if I don't deliver. Please. I'll do whatever you say. Just let's do it. Now.

  Please."

  Stone turned the boat around and rowed. "Open the champagne."

  Shifting heavily to make room for the glasses, she fumbled with the bottle, sent the cork sailing, and poured to the brim. She drained her glass in one swallow and filled it again; then, eyes bright, she leaned closer with his glass and dribbled the wine over his lips while he rowed.

  "So what's the scoop?"

  "See that sampan with the couple eating? If, during dinner, the woman wants to powder her nose, the sampan driver will take her to a yacht, where, for a tip, the boat-boys will let her use the bathroom."

  " 'Powder her nose?' Where'd you beam down from, Mars?"

  "The scoop is we're going to knock on the side of Tin Hau, wave twenty bucks, and ask to use the facilities."

  "And they're just going to let me aboard?"

  "Like any other tourist who has to pee."

  "And if they don't?"

  "We'll do something else."

  Katherine fell silent as Stone rowed down the twisting channel between the junks. Music and televisions blared. Sampans darted, bearing families on visits, and tourists and prostitutes. She studied one passing and said, bleakly, "That's where they'll put me if I screw up."

  "So don't screw up."

  "Fuck you. What are you doing this for? Money?" "Do you really want to hear how I got to Hong Kong from Minneapolis?"

  A smile made her mouth pretty, and she fell silent again. As they drew near Tin Hau, Stone shipped his oars and reached for his champagne and refilled Katherine's glass.

  "Am I allowed?" she asked.

  "Pretend you're having fun."

  "I thought I'm supposed to look like I have to pee."

  The dinghy drifted into the channel where the yacht was moored. Stone made a show of draining his glass. "Hang on, I want to eyeball her, see who's aboard."

  Her decks were deserted, her lights out except for the ports in the bow, the crew's quarters. Her anchors were still stowed and her mooring lines had not been exchanged for chain. The stern line drooped, but the bow line was stretched tightly as the flood tide pushed her stem. A generator sputtered from her side, probably the auxiliary, as the main generator wouldn't be needed with the yacht essentially shut down for the night.

  "Hey, look out!"

  "Just waking them up," Stone told her as he bumped the dinghy into the high hull. Then he rowed to her mid-ships and knocked on the accommodations door. He had money in his hand.

  Nothing happened. He knocked again. And while he waited, he looped the dinghy's painter around a miniature Panama chock beside the door.

  "I hear someone," she whispered.

  The dog latch turned in its recess. Stone said, "You're

  on," and, to the face that peered out the crack in the door, he said, "Could the lady use your head?"

  The boatboy took in the dinghy, the champagne, and Katherine.

  "Oh, please," wailed Katherine. "I'm dying. Tell him in Chinese."

  "He's not Chinese," said Stone. "He's Tanka."

  That Stone knew the distinction drew a smile. The boat-boy swung the door inward, lowered a pair of hanging steps, and offered Katherine his hand.

  "Right back, honey," she called and disappeared onto the yacht, accompanied by a second boatboy, while the first stayed with Stone.

  The Tanka appeared to be in his twenties, well built, and in peak condition. He gazed down from the yacht, expressionless, until he noticed Stone's waterproof backpack stowed under the seat—odd gear for a champagne row. Suddenly his eyes got big and his body stiffened. Stone caught the glint of the gun barrel against the back of his head and heard the sharp click of handcuffs snapping shut. Prodding him from the doorway, Katherine called down, "Welcome aboard."

  Stone scrambled up, closed the door, and followed Katherine and her prisoner down a corridor to the head, where she had already chained the other boatboy to the plumbing.

  He huddled, terrified, his lips parted by a gag. Stone spread his hands wide and said, "

  Nobody'll be hurt."

  Katherine chained his partner and gagged him too. "Careful he doesn't choke on that."

  "It's a ball gag," she said matter-of-factly. "They use them in the brothels."

  The Tanka were watching anxiously. Stone said to the man who'd let them aboard, "You speak English." He nodded.

  "Okay. The sooner we're out of here, the sooner I can put you off in the dinghy. Do you understand?" Both nodded.

  "Do I have to switch on fuel and oil pumps in the engine room, or can I just crank her up from the bridge? Katherine, take the gag off this one. . . ."

  "From bridge."

  "Just switch them on and hit the starters?"

  "Yeah."

  Stone squatted down beside him and locked eyes. He jerked his thumb at Katherine. "

  She's a crazy drug addict. If there's trouble she's going to start shooting. I can't control her. So I'm asking you again, can I just crank 'em up from the bridge?"

  "All on bridge."

  "Good. Now you got single bow and stern line?" "Yes."

  "Any more lines?" Stone asked, to see if he would lie. "Two lines yacht beside."

  "Good. Katherine, stay with them."

  "He's lying," she said, "or he's holding something back."

  Stone squatted down again. "Anything else I should know about? Just so nobody gets hurt?"

  The Tanka exchanged sullen glances.

  "What? I'm warning you guys, you don't want us getting caught."

  The man they had ungagged said, "Port engine, kaphlooey."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Changing oil pump."

  "Christ on a crutch." Stone rocked back on his heels, cursing Ronald's lousy intelligence.

  "How fast will she go on the starboard engine only?"

  "Twelve knots."

  "Is that bad?" asked Katherine.

  "It means they can chase us with sailboats."

  "OKAY. TAKE 'EM DOWN TO THE ENGINE ROOM. You GUYS

  fix the oil pump—don't tell me you can't. You're not getting off till that engine's up again."

  The boatboys exchanged a look. The one who spoke English said, "No part."

  "What do you mean?" But Stone knew. Halfway through the job they'd had to stop to wait for a part. A gasket, it turned out. There'd be no oil pressure without it. "Okay," he told Katherine. "You stay with them."

  "What about the engine?"

  "If we can get out of here without waking up half the typhoon shelter, maybe we'll be okay."
/>   "Maybe."

  "You owe Ronald. My family's counting on me."

  On the main deck he kept to the shadows, cast off the two side lines and the heavy stern line. Then he found a fire axe and laid it beside the taut bow line.

  Up on the lofty bridge deck he could see over the tops of the smaller boats. The typhoon shelter looked quiet, with only the occasional moving light of a sampan. He could see over the stone breakwater. The harbor was enveloped in thick fog. But as he hunted for a switch to light the control console, he saw a blinking blue light approaching the breakwater pass.

  Stone froze, eyes locked on the pass. It was a patrol boat, emerging from the fog. There were two cops aboard,

  one steering, one on the radio. Had he tripped a silent alarm?

  The boat entered the pass slowly, circled the small basin which was surrounded by moored boats. It was a semirigid inflatable powered by a pair of enormous outboards, capable of thirty knots. A stanchion on the bow held a radome. It went out again into the harbor, sped up, and vanished.

  Stone played his penlight over the console and moved a toggle with trembling fingers.

  The starboard engine gauges gave off a faint red glow. He turned the key. The fuel alarm buzzed discreetly. He ground the starter.

  Needles spun and from far below came a muted rumble. He turned on the radar, the depth finder, and the running lights. Then he hurried down to the main deck and ran forward. The bow line was taut as steel cable as the tide pushed the hull. Standing clear, Stone swung the axe at the point where the two-inch line met the mooring bollard. The rope knocked the axe out of his hand and twanged into the dark.

  The yacht began to drift back on the next line of boats. He raced to the dark main cabin, up the stairs, into the darkened bridge, guided by the red lit console. A glance aft showed Tin Hau's stern was yards from the bow of a big staysail schooner and closing fast. He engaged the starboard prop. The deck trembled and the tachometer dropped precipitously as the cold engine threatened to stall.

  He fed it fuel, gently nursing it. The tach needle trembled. He looked back. The staysail schooner's masts were gyrating wildly. He thought that Tin Hau's stem had crashed into her bow. But as Tin Hau moved ahead, he realized it was only her prop wash that was manhandling the schooner.