Fire And Ice (21 page)

"Thanks, but I'll pass," said Stone. "I got worse problems." It had been eight days since the ship had taken Sarah and Ronnie. Ample time to steam twice the distance to Shanghai. They could be in any of fifty ports. Or drowned in fifty fathoms.

"NOT EXACTLY SHANGHAI, IS IT, Doc?" MR. JACK CALLED

mockingly from the bed. His voice was stronger, his New York accent sharper. Sarah was at the porthole, watching the tugs.

Belching steam and coal smoke, they were working the ship alongside a pier in a cold, driving rain. But instead of the 1920s European skyline of Shanghai's Bund, all she could see was gray marsh and mud flats that stretched to the horizon, dwarfing an electric power station that could have been any coastal generating plant in the world. The pier extended a half mile into an otherwise empty bay. Across the marsh, the flat sweep of the land was briefly interrupted by four tall chimneys. At their feet crouched the turbine house, a building of mud-colored brick. Pylons marched inland, while a pipeline connected the plant to the domed liquid natural gas storage tanks that huddled like gigantic igloos along the shore.

The old man's mind was labyrinthine, as complex as the mare's nest of piping that connected the gas manifolds on the pierhead to the storage tanks. But this much Sarah had learned since her patient had regained his faculties: he said nothing without a purpose; every question was a test.

And so she answered, "I've never seen Shanghai."

In fact, thanks to Ronnie's GPS, she knew their position to the degree, minute, and second. If her memory of Shanghai's coordinates was correct, then they were fairly close, perhaps an inlet of the Huangpu River or along a stretch of Hang-chou Bay. Surely the power pylons marching off to the northeast served a city.

The mud flats could be on the Yangtze River a bit north or Ch'ung-Ming Island in its delta or the city of Hangchou south and west. The Dallas Belle's chart room would hold the answer, she supposed, staring gloomily out the rain-streaked glass. She felt herself sliding deeper and deeper into depression, drugged by it, unable to think clearly. The long days and nights of captivity had been blending together ever since the tugs had picked up the drifting ship.

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."

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 winterweight 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.