Fire And Ice Page 17

  Endless days adrift, engines stopped, in fog and rain, until the terrible afternoon she and Ronnie had crept through the bowels of the ship: Moss materializing like a creature from hell, Mr. Jack's vicious threat to order Moss to "punish" her. The word made her feel as powerless as a slave.

  His threat had coincided with the sudden dramatic appearance of the trio of tugs flying red flags and billowing smoke like a Turner seascape. And had lingered throughout the long tow at four knots. What landfall beside this marsh in the middle of nowhere would mean to her and Ronnie, she didn't want to guess.

  Now she counted time by the degrees Mr. Jack strengthened and poor Ah Lee's bruises yellowed. She hardly remembered the gas leak—the pluming cloud in the sky—and her frantic run for the satellite phone, when she still felt brave.

  "Hey, kid!"

  Ronnie looked up from the book he had given her. "Yes, Mr. Jack?"

  "Run down and tell the cook we want ice cream sundaes."

  Ronnie looked at Sarah. She nodded it was all right. As soon as she was out the door, Mr.

  Jack said, "Say, Doc? Ronnie's told me all about growing up on the sailboat. What about you? Where you from? You a Brit?"

  "I'm Nigerian," she answered, wondering at his sudden interest.

  "Talk like a Brit."

  "My father was a soldier. He sent my mother and me

  to England during the Civil War. We lived with his former

  C.O. My mother died and I was sent to convent school." "Your father was a British soldier?"

  "Until Independence. Then he helped form the Nigerian Army."

  "What was his name?"

  "Soditan. Josiah Soditan."

  "Really? I met him."

  "You're joking."

  "Let me tell you something, sweetheart, if you're in the oil business in Nigeria, you damned well better know the generals."

  "My father was not corrupt."

  The old man shrugged, winced. "I wouldn't know. Pulled out twenty years ago when I saw the whole kit and kaboodle sliding downhill. What a mess they made of that country.

  Nigeria could have ruled Africa. Your father mixed up in those coups?"

  "No."

  Mr. Jack looked at her sharply. "Big man, wasn't he? Bigger than Moss?"

  "Much bigger," said Sarah, and, to her surprise, she started to cry.

  "Hey, hey, hey. What are you crying for? I told you you'll be okay if you don't step outfit line."

  "I'm worried sick about my husband."

  The rocky planes of Mr. Jack's face softened and he looked, Sarah thought, almost grandfatherly, almost gentle. "Relax, Doc. He's doing fine."

  "You don't know that!"

  "He's holed up in the Hong Kong Yacht Club."

  She didn't dare believe him. It had to be a trick. And yet . . . She watched with hope flaming inside her as Mr. Jack fumbled for a manila envelope that lay on his night table.

  Unable to pick it up with his nailless fingers, he slid it off the table onto the bedsheets.

  She took it gingerly, not knowing what to hope for.

  "Open it."

  Sarah opened the flap and extracted a fax of a photograph. Her heart jumped. It was shot at long range through

  a window, but the thrust of his shoulders and the demanding angle of his head could only be Michael Stone. "This was taken at the Hilton."

  Sarah felt suddenly so light she could float. She turned to Mr. Jack with joy that Michael was alive and an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude.

  "Thank you." But even as she uttered the words, the cruelty made her sick: she was thanking a monster for inflicting less pain. Ronnie wasn't the only one susceptible to Stockholm syndrome.

  "How did you—how did you get this picture? How did you find him in Hong Kong?"

  "Come on, Doc, who do you think you're messing with here? We monitor everything incoming and outgoing. You telephoned Marcus Salinis in Koror. Moss had my people tap Salinis's phones and your husband called Hong Kong. When he flew there we were waiting for him."

  She was shocked. She had feared they knew about the satellite phone call, but it had never occurred to her that Mr. Jack's power ranged so far beyond the ship—that he was part of something much larger. Or that simply escaping from the ship would not guarantee survival.

  "Who's the man he's talking to?" Mr. Jack asked.

  Every instinct demanded she deny she knew Kerry; but surely he knew the salvage man's identity already. Mr. Jack was an intriguer. And this was, under the guise of kindness, another test of her trustworthiness. "That's Captain McGlynn," she admitted. "He owns a salvage company."

  "Good answer, Doc. What do you think they're talking about?"

  "I'm sure you can guess, Mr. Jack."

  "Yeah, well .. ."

  "When was this snapshot taken?"

  "Couple of days ago. How in hell did he get off that atoll?"

  Sarah smiled. Her heart was swelling with relief and pride. "Sailed, I would think."

  "What do you think he's going to pull next?" "God knows."

  "God isn't here. Care to guess?"

  Sarah shook her head.

  "I'm just curious," said Mr. Jack. "He's no threat. No way. I just hope for his and your sake he doesn't pull some dumb stunt."

  Sarah looked down at her hands. She knew Michael too well to suppose he would sit around the Hong Kong Yacht Club very long.

  Mr. Jack chuckled. "Tell you something, sweetheart. If I'd been functional the day we met you, I'd have brought him aboard with you and the kid. What do you think he's up to? You told him you thought we were heading for Shanghai or Taiwan. Where you think he'll go?"

  "I honestly don't know."

  "Think he'll go to the authorities?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you don't think so."

  Again she looked away, her mind racing as she realized belatedly that their entire conversation, including his assurances about Michael, had been a prelude to this interrogation.

  "You'll find," he said silkily, "another picture in that envelope."

  An extreme close-up fell into her lap. It showed the hairs in Michael's beard, the squint lines radiating from his eyes, and the several scars that chronicled the accidents of a life at sea. He looked thin and haggard as he leaned closer to Kerry. She was startled and saddened by how much gray had permeated his beard, a spreading stain she had barely noticed when they were together but which in this photograph spoke of the age of an exhausted, desperate man.

  She touched the white crescent scar under his eye. It never tanned, and every time she looked in his face it reminded her of the demon in her heart.

  "What's that?" asked Mr. Jack. He nudged her finger. "Is that a birthmark?"

  "A scar."

  His shrewd eyes raked her face. She wondered if the truth might fool the old man into believing she had warmed to him. It was worth any advantage.

  "I hit him with the binoculars."

  "You? Miss sugar and kindness? Why?"

  "He told me he didn't love me."

  "So why are you bugging me to let you go back to him?"

  "He was lying." "why?"

  "To protect me."

  "From what?"

  "It was many years ago. I was very young. I'd never been in love before."

  "Marriage cure you of that?"

  Sarah fixed him with a deep and steady gaze. "He is the air I breathe."

  Michael had been trying to protect her, insulting their love in a clumsy attempt to drive her away. To this day she could feel the weight of the binoculars in her hand, and the snarl lifting her lips from her teeth like an animal. She would always be the soldier's daughter, she thought bitterly, forever failing to smother her father's blood with high ideals and her faith in God.

  "Moss thinks you two are on the lam. Wha'd you do, rob a bank?"

  It was hard to concentrate: she was so happy for this proof that Michael was alive.

  "Hey, it doesn't matter to me," the old man said. "I don't give a damn
who your husband asks for help. He'll never find the Dallas Belle. We don't exist. . . ."

  "Is that by plan?"

  "Better believe it. It took a lot of planning not to exist. A lot of planning and a lot of money."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Why don't you just worry about keeping me alive?"

  "Which is precisely why I want you in hospital." As she spoke her hand drifted automatically to her stethoscope. She slipped the other into the side pocket of the steward's jacket she had taken to wearing as her white medical coat. "I am worried about infection. I'm worried about pneumonia."

  "I've known plenty of people have caught infections and pneumonia in the hospital, Doc.

  I'm better off on the ship than in some filthy Chinese hospital."

  "It's a two-hour flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong," Sarah retorted.

  "Can't do it, Doc. Besides, I don't see Shanghai, do you?"

  She ignored the jibe. "I am particularly concerned about the potential for a stroke."

  "Stroke?" He looked at her sharply. "What are you talking about?"

  "By all reports, and by the strength of your constitution, it's obvious to me that you are an active man."

  "There's a room full of Nautilus machines on C deck. I keep in shape. That's why I'm healing fast."

  "Yes, quite. But in my experience, sudden layups like yours spawn strokes. Lying immobile, day after day, is dangerous for an older man who is ordinarily active."

  "I'm not getting any strokes."

  "I can't treat a stroke. Treatment in the first twenty-four hours is crucial to minimize the damage and ensure the recovery. Surely a man your age has seen friends struck down by stroke. You know the results."

  "Not in the cards, Doc. . . . You think maybe I should have some therapy. Physical therapy?"

  "Perhaps Moss can walk you about . . . perhaps a little work on your machines. How long will we be here?" "Not long."

  "Then what?"

  "One step at a time, Doc. . . . " He smiled. "Besides, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  Sarah retreated to the window. The rain was falling harder. The ship had stopped moving so gradually she hadn't noticed, and it was now tied to the pier. The three tugs were steaming off into the rain, flags snapping in the wind, trailing the acrid stench of burning coal.

  God knew what Mr. Jack was up to, but at least she had managed to frighten him with talk of a stroke.

  "Hey, Doc," he called across the cabin, "if you're practicing any kind of African voodoo mental telepathy with your husband, tell him he won't be as lucky in Shanghai as he was in Hong Kong."

  "What do you mean?" she asked, alarmed that he had already tried to hurt Michael and would try again. "Shanghai is my town."

  A SHANGHAI PILOT TOOK TIN HAU'S HELM SEAWARD OF THE

  bar, and Stone felt his sense of time shift backward as he compared the riverbanks to chart 94219. Cold, damp air muffled the sound of engines; horns and whistles moaned.

  Coal smoke hung heavy on a lifeless wind. Pungent in his nostrils, stinging his eyes, it spread across the mud flats, mingling indistinctly with the sky.

  The sight of three ancient steam tugs preceding the yacht up the channel—the immediate source of the smoke—furthered the impression of being far away in another time, as did the wooden barges, lighters, and motor sampans, and legions of seamen doing the work of machines. Dickens's London would have smelled the same.

  Stone shifted his attention to an enormous Wusong shipyard coming up on the starboard side. Icy rain swept the deck. He backed into the cabin, water dripping from the winter-weight trenchcoat Ronald's Yangtze fishing boat had delivered along with their visas.

  After two days' study of the chart, he knew both banks of the river by heart. But the Huangpu snaked through the biggest city in the world, and paper and ink had not prepared him for the sheer size of the harbor, the breadth of the river, or the endless stretches of mud flats.

  The Donghai yard began to rise on the riverbank. He was stunned by the immensity of the search he had set himself. In this yard alone, a forest of gantries and derricks crowded around a dozen hulls; some were practically curtained from view by bamboo scaffolding, while over one slip stood a shed roof broad enough to shelter a battleship.

  According to the chart and the Sailing Directions, there were nine such shipyards in the fifteen miles of navigable water depicted, six dry docks, a refinery, and ninety-eight wharfs alongside tank farms, terminals, and factories. Fifteen creeks, canals, and rivers slipped off into the interior, some possibly deep enough for the Dallas Belle. And, as the Sailing Directions dated from 1979, when port development had just begun, the numbers might easily have doubled by now.

  The next shipyard had its slips covered by a pair of sheds so broad and tall that the gantries stood under their roofs. One berth was empty. The other contained a cruise liner.

  In the gray morning, he saw the purposeful wink of welding and cutting torches and fiery cascades of sparks as workmen swarmed on the bamboo scaffolding that crosshatched its wedding-cake superstructure.

  The cold rain came down harder. Things could be worse, he thought. December was a month notorious for morning fog. Suddenly the rain became a cloudburst, dense as fog.

  As it swept in, it obscured the riverbanks, imprinting upon Stone's eye a murky, gray impression of thousands of Chinese commuters under black umbrellas and slick raincoats crowding onto the pontoons of a ferry head.

  "Look at all those people." Katherine shuddered. "Millions of 'em. Like ants— God, I want to go home."

  Stone said nothing. She had been a good shipmate, quick to help with boat chores and always ten minutes early on watch. She had known when to talk and when not to, and despite her myriad problems, she moved with a brave assurance that he found appealing.

  But "home" was not an option for a cop who'd been caught riding shotgun for her drug-dealer boyfriend. She'd told him about it the second night as Tin Hau pounded through the Taiwan Strait. An assistant DA, hot for her, had warned her in time to flee the indictment.

  When at last the squall moved on, he could see fading astern a petroleum tank farm where the Dallas Belle might be unloading. He marked it on the chart. Ahead, on either bank of the river were more ferries, the passengers arriving on bicycles. Then another shipyard, half hidden up a broad creek.

  Rain swept the river again, and again he couldn't see a hundred yards. He paced the deck, traversing the yacht, frustrated and confused, his binoculars useless, his chart soaked.

  After an interminable wait, while shipyards and piers slipped by, unseen, the rain lifted briefly. He glimpsed a coal yard, hundreds of sampans crowding its docks, and then, on the east side of the river, the enormous Shanghai Shipyard, where he searched in vain for the sand-colored Dallas Belle.

  The rain descended like a curtain, and again he was blind. When at last it lifted, the Bund stood a mile ahead, rising above the chaos of the river like a Wizard-of-Oz vision of stately colonial banks and trading houses, stone skyscrapers, and a nineteenth-century clock tower. Stone looked back. Astern were miles of riverbank he hadn't seen.

  The slow-moving yacht stopped and the pilot worked her against a wharf. Stone threw lines to longshoremen, who singled her up and secured a gangway. People's Liberation Army soldiers in green uniforms took up position at its foot, and a customs officer in navy blue boarded. He stamped Stone's and Katherine's visas, which allowed them three months in China.

  Stone changed into dry clothes, a business suit sent by Ronald with a note, You dress like slob, sailorman. It fit the cover story that he was scouting sites for a luxury marina.

  Katherine had to help him knot the first tie he had worn in years. She said, "I guess I'm supposed to wait here. Maybe I'll catch you later."

  He packed his papers, letters of introduction, and business cards, took his backpack. "

  Thanks for everything." He would have embraced her with a friendly hug, but all her defenses were up. He offered his hand.
<
br />   "Good luck with your family."

  A passenger ship had docked ahead of them and the pier was crowded with waiting relatives, watched impassively by the bored-looking PLA soldiers. It was, he thought, despite the washout of his river surveillance, almost too easy.

  Five soldiers. A couple of plainclothes cops. And a neatly dressed Shanghainese waving from the edge of the throng. Stone worked his way through hugging relatives and cardboard boxes and introduced himself.

  "I am William Sit," said the Shanghainese, with a shy smile. "I will be your translator. I am an English teacher. It is certain that your visit will help me a lot in learning modern English."

  "Your English sounds great."

  "Maybe there is a bit difficulty in understanding the idioms and slangs. You will give me more help and courage."

  "You got it," said Stone, hefting his backpack impatiently. "Shall we . . . ?"

  Sit looked confused. Confusion turned to embarrassment. "Shall we . . . ?"

  "Go," said Stone. "Shall we go?"

  "Go! Yes. Yes. My friend has a taxi. He will drive us." His friend, who wore a black suit and a chauffeur's cap, was named Wang. Mr. Wang. His taxi was black, shiny, and well kept, and Sit explained as they got in that Mr. Wang drove for a state factory but had taken time off to drive Stone.

  "Shall we?" asked Sit. "Shall we go to the hotel?" "Do you have any messages for me?"

  "No."

  "How close is the hotel?"

  "Only one mile."

  "Fine." Ronald's letter had said that "certain people" might contact him at the hotel. "

  Then we'll drive around the waterfront."

  "Mr. Wang will drive you if you prefer, but your friends have arranged a boat."

  "Okay, let's just hit the hotel and then—"

  Sit looked desperate. "Hit?"

  "I want to check in and get my messages, and then he can drive us to the boat."

  "Shall we?" responded Sit, with a smile.

  William Sit spoke to Mr. Wang—explaining to Stone

  that he was speaking the Shanghainese dialect Wu—and the taxi drove out of the Waihongqiau dockyard past a long procession of the other ship's passengers carrying their bundles into the city.