Fire And Ice (13 page)

Marcus Salinis disagreed. Why, he wanted to know, had none of his contacts, who were scattered throughout Micronesia, heard of any hijacking? And why weren't there any rumors on the ham radio network? "You're talking piracy. Where's the crew? Where's the ship that hasn't reported in and is overdue by now? How come nobody knows she's missing?"

"It's a big ocean."

"Everybody's expected someplace."

Stone suspected a sophisticated paper shuffle. Ships and leases and petroleum cargoes were sold and exchanged routinely. They'd have covered their trail with forgeries documenting false sales, resales, and registrations and backed it all up with phony radio reports. A captain looking down the barrel of an assault weapon would radio exactly what he was told to radio. Just as a doctor with a child would do exactly as she was told. Clinging to his theory, embellishing it on the Air Mike flight to Manila, he had speculated that the injured "old man"—the captain, in marine parlance—had actually been the hijackers' leader, wounded in the takeover. As they couldn't put into port for medical attention, they had seized Sarah to doctor him until they sold the gas and abandoned ship.

Here, his thinking turned fuzzy. And frightening.

How would they escape after they got their money? They could not leave the ship moored to the pierhead of the power plant that had paid them. Nor could they sell it. Which meant that they would have to scuttle her—open her sea cocks to sink her out beyond the fifty-fathom line.

But what would they do with Sarah and Ronnie?

The jetliner commenced its descent to Hong Kong. This was his first arrival by air. Twenty-five years ago he had steamed into Hong Kong, a young Navy doctor interning aboard a warship. All his subsequent visits had been with Sarah on Veronica. A dark haze on the horizon finned up as the blue hills of Guangdong Province rolling northward into the continent. The city's peaks and islands spilled into the sea, dominating an otherwise undistinguished coast. He oriented himself by the hills of High Island and the deep incision of Tai Pang Bay, and on final approach from the southeast saw the jampacked typhoon shelter at Causeway Bay, its surface carpeted thickly with junks and sampans; the Hong Kong Yacht Club occupied the west end.

Cheklapkok terminal was a madhouse. Neither of the flights nor the quick stop at Manila had prepared him for the crush of people or the noise, to which he was extremely sensitive after weeks at sea. Funneled toward Immigration and Customs, he fingered his passport with a queasy sensation of running naked through enemy territory. This was Stone's first visit since China had taken over the former British Crown Colony. The communists had promised to allow capitalism to flourish in the quintessentially capitalist city for the next fifty years, but the People's Republic was a dictatorship, and God knew what new computerization the Beijing rulers had added to the British immigration controls, or how thoroughly they would scrutinize his papers. He caught his reflection in a glass partition. He looked harmless enough. Joanna Salinis had offered him a haircut, and he had trimmed his beard, while a castaway's sunburn wasn't much different from a tourist's sunburn. She had found him fresh clothes, too—

khaki pants, a short-sleeved shirt, and an expensive looking oiled-cotton windbreaker that she claimed someone had forgotten in the Paradise Hotel, but which he suspected she had bought. December in Hong Kong, he'd be glad of it.

His worn backpack looked a little off the image of "Physician, retired," which he had entered after occupation on the landing entry card. He shrugged out of it and carried it by the handstrap. Hong Kong welcomed all, but it was essentially a business city where a blue suit and a tie commanded respect. Under purpose of visit, he had written, "Joining yacht."

He had debated which passport to present. His US. document was an excellent forgery, but he hated to use it where a sophisticated system might challenge the false number. It was safer in the remote islands, where he and Sarah were usually greeted as honored guests, and officials were fortunate to possess a working ballpoint pen. He decided instead to present a somewhat genuine Republic of Palau passport which Marcus had arranged four or five years ago, and which supported the general cover of an American doctor retired to paradise. The Chinese immigration officer scrutinized it and his landing card, on which Stone had given the Hong Kong Yacht Club as his local address, and waved him through.

He removed his U.S. passport from its hidden compartment in the knapsack and stuffed it in his pocket in case Customs searched the bag. But he was passed through without a search, and was carried on a tide of shoppers, housemaids, tourists, and Asian business travelers into a chaotic arrival hall, where greeters from the five-star hotels directed guests to their limousines. A mainland farmer with a cardboard suitcase bumped into Stone, apologizing frantically. A Beijing bureaucrat shoved between them. Stone disentangled himself from both of them and headed for the doors.

"Would you step this way, sir?"

The voice came from behind him, crisp with authority. He turned to see two uniformed police, a tall blond Brit backed up by a Chinese.

THE BRIT WAS TALLER THAN STONE, HIS GRIP FIRM AS HE

took his elbow to guide him through the crowd, which parted before the uniforms. Surprised to see a Western officer, Stone put on the brakes.

"Who are you?"

"Window dressing," the Brit answered easily. "The Chinese kept some of us on—

demoted to sergeant—as the sight of smiling bobbies is supposed to make Western businessmen more comfortable with Hong Kong's new government. Now if you'll just step this way . ."

"What's the problem?" asked Stone.

"Just a formality, sir. We'll have you on your way in a moment, I'm sure."

"Wait a minute. What formality? I've just been through Immigration."

"So they reported." His grip tightened and the Chinese cop moved in closer.

"Ease up," said Stone. "I'm not going anywhere. I just asked you what the problem is." He tried to slow their progress, but the Chinese cop took his other arm and now the crowd began to stare at what looked like an arrest. Two cops at the terminal exit saw them coming and held the door open, saluting the tall Brit as they marched Stone out to an unmarked Rover at the curb.

"Wait a minute. What is this?"

Without letting go of his arm, the Chinese cop opened the rear door and the sergeant said, "Let's not make the situation worse, sir. Get in quietly and we'll take this up at headquarters."

Stone stood his ground. "I'm asking you to tell me what the hell is going on." The sergeant stared hard. "As soon as we get to headquarters you may ring the American consulate. Unless you oblige me to summon assistance." He nodded toward the cops who had held the door. "In which event, sir, I promise you'll first spend an unpleasant night in a filthy cell. Now—if we understand each other—get in the car." The last thing Stone could afford was delay. If this was routine, his Palauan passport was good. It had already passed muster at Immigration, and Senator—ex-President—Salinis could confirm it by phone. He had friends at the yacht club. And he could call on Lydia Chin's lawyers.

"All right."

The sergeant climbed in beside him. The silent Chinese cop drove out of the airport, over the Kowloon Bridge and into narrow streets, grinning whenever he whooped the siren. Stone was lost immediately, as they inched past factories and tenements and down twisty lanes overhung with clothing-draped fire escapes and stacked red neon signs. But he had the impression they were heading inland up the Kowloon Peninsula rather than down toward the harbor.

"Corporal Fong," said the sergeant, "ease off on the hooter. It's not like we've caught the Great Train Robbers." He gave Stone an ironic wink, as if to say, Natives will be natives. But instead of reassuring Stone, something he had said earlier at the terminal, which had been nagging at him, now traveled like ice down his spine.

"Do you really think I'll need the American consul?" "I shouldn't think so," the sergeant replied casually. "Still, good to know they're there. What?"

"It would be," said Stone, "if I were an American citizen."

"I beg your pardon?" The sergeant turned to face him, his eyes glittery.

"Immigration should have told you."

"Told me what?"

"That I'm from Palau."

Corporal Fong glanced in the rearview mirror, then stepped hard on the gas, and as the sergeant reached inside his tunic, Stone tumbled belatedly to the realization that he had not been arrested but kidnapped.

"Who the hell—" he demanded, shock exploding into rage. He'd sailed the canoe two hundred and fifty miles across the open Pacific to find Sarah and nearly died on the Angaur reef. He'd be goddammed if his search would end in a Mong Kok alley. Stone jammed his shoulders against the seat back, levered both legs with all his strength, and kicked the driver, bracketing the man's ear with his heels. Thrown hard against the window, Corporal Fong's eyes rolled back in his head. The Rover sideswiped a truck and skidded across the street and into a fish stall, scattering shoppers and crushing plastic tubs of live carp.

When it hit the solid brick wall behind the flimsy stall, the car's air bag exploded in Corporal Fong's face, and the sergeant was thrown to the floor. He kicked Stone. Stone punched wildly with one fist and dove into the man's tunic with the other. The sergeant kneed him, knocking the wind from his lungs, but Stone probed deeper, fighting for the gun. A powerful hand closed around his throat. He tucked his chin, found hard metal, and yanked. It was a small .22 caliber automatic—an assassin's weapon. He pushed the barrel into the sergeant's throat. The man let go of him.

"Who sent you?"

"Get fucked."

In the front seat, Fong thrashed around the deflated air bag, which had lacerated his face, and tried to open the door. Stone shifted the gun from the Brit's throat to his eye. "Who sent you?"

"I don't know," the Brit said coolly. "I do know you don't have the balls to shoot." The door locks clunked; Fong staggered from the car. A crowd had gathered around the wreckage, pointing at the damaged cars and the fish flopping on the sidewalk. The Brit backed away from Stone, feeling for the door. The only way to stop him was to shoot him. But the curious mob had surrounded the car and real cops would be coming any second. Or had he been a doctor too long to take a life no matter how provoked?

"Wait. Tell whoever sent you that all I want is my wife and daughter."

"Come with me. I'll bring you to them."

"Where?"

"Not far," he answered. "Come on."

It was a lie. He wanted to believe, he would give anything to believe. But they wouldn't have pulled the police charade if they had Sarah and Ronnie. The Brit was only a hired killer, which he proved the instant he saw that Stone didn't buy the lie: "Pray the real cops get you first," he said.

He jumped from the car and scattered the crowd, his blond hair a beacon above the small, dark Chinese.

Stone jammed the gun in his backpack and ran the other way. A two-man uniformed patrol rounded the corner, shoving through the crowded lane. Stone turned to run. If the police found the gun in his pack . . . They spotted him. For a second he panicked. Then, suddenly, he felt alert, the adrenalin pumping pure as fire. He ran to the cops, waving, calling, "Can you direct me—can you direct me to the Peninsula Hotel?" They rushed past him. A thumb jerked toward the street they had come from. Checking his back repeatedly, he ran until the streets grew wide. He hopped a bus, got off where the Nathan Road was lined with hotels and office towers. Who had hired the Brit? How had he known where to find him?

A busy MTR subway station seemed safe. Stone plunged into it and caught a train under the harbor to Central.

With a moment to think, the truth was chilling. Whoever had taken Sarah and Ronnie on the Dallas Belle had the power to strike far beyond the ship.

Marcus had been right. It was he they had come for in Palau. But how had they known he would be there? Had they forced Sarah to tell them where he would go if he got off the atoll? How much had they hurt her to make her talk? She was brave. He tried to close his mind to that. When he couldn't, he prayed that concern for Ronnie's safety would have kept Sarah from being too brave for him.

A different explanation took shape in his mind. A possibility far more palatable, and he clung to it desperately. Could the Dallas Belle's hijackers have traced Sarah's telephone call to Marcus Salinis? Then wiretapped his telephones in case Stone sought help from the same friend Sarah had?

Of course. That was how they had tracked him. Marcus himself had admitted his phones were tapped. But at Koror, Stone had been too tired and confused to challenge the senator's claim that his political enemies were the culprits. They must have traced her call—by sat phone records or signal monitors. The attack at the house and the attempted kidnapping at the airport both followed from there.

The yacht anchored off Marcus's house and the phony cops at Cheklapkok were both complicated, expensive operations, which meant they would try again. He had to learn what he could learn in Hong Kong and get out—before they nailed him. From the Central MTR station, Stone telephoned Lydia Chin. She was still not back from the Mainland, said her secretary. "Maybe you call back later."

"Tell her I'm at the yacht club."

He took another train to Causeway Bay and walked, heading toward the water and down Gloucester Road, which paralleled a highway that blocked the shore. Just beyond the Excelsior Hotel, he opened an unmarked metal door, scanned the street again for the tall blond Brit, raced down a flight of stairs and through a pedestrian tunnel under the highway. He emerged beside the typhoon shelter. The yacht club was at the tip of the peninsula; anyone getting there had to first cross the parking lot of the Officers' Club of the Hong Kong police.

No messages.

The yacht club bar overlooked the shelter and Victoria Harbor. A thousand dim lights glowed on the yachts and junks and sampans moored gunnel to gunnel, while across the black water, millions blazed on Kowloon's shore.