Fire And Ice (24 page)

Stone stepped out on deck and stared at the night-shrouded riverbanks. He told himself that he had covered some pretty good territory. And seen a number of places he had missed in the rain earlier, he added, fighting disappointment and exhaustion. Get some sleep. Early start tomorrow. He prayed there'd be no morning fog.

The Bund—the building facades floodlit—came into view after an hour. Stone, chilled to the bone and dizzy with hunger—for he had ignored Mr. Yu's dim sum and had not eaten since breakfast—told William to ask the captain to drop him at the park across from the hotel. The sampan nosed against slimy stone steps. Stone left instructions to pick him up at dawn and, assuring the protesting William Sit he could negotiate his own way to the hotel, shambled through the brightly lighted park.

Katherine was waiting in the lobby. Her face was drawn with tension. She had one hand deep in her bag. "Come to my room."

"What's wrong?"

"Security sucks."

She had had the hotel change her room to a suite with two exits. Before she would let him eat or sleep, she painstakingly walked him through an escape plan, demanding he memorize routes to the nearby fire stairs. She had embedded slivers of mirror in the wall opposite the door so she could scan the corridor through the peephole. When room service delivered, she answered the door with a gun behind her back. When he awoke at midnight, she was sitting on the edge of her bed in a loose shirt staring at him.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. Great."

"You want to talk?"

"No, I don't want to. talk. I'm thirty-three years old, I never had a guy more than six months, all I know how to do is fuck and be a cop and they won't let me be a cop. I can't see what's going to happen next."

"Well . . ."

"You gonna tell me it's gonna work out?" she asked. "No. But I got some antidepressants in my bag."

She gave him one of her quiet, empty laughs. "Thanks.

I'll pass. I'm an uppers woman, myself."

Stone closed his eyes. "Well, if you change your mind . . ."

"How can you sleep, worrying about Sarah?"

"Old habit from the boat. I sleep when I can. Doesn't mean I'm not worried sick. Every day I don't find them the ship could be steaming away or scuttled with them drowning inside."

THE DALLAS BELLE WAS MOVING AGAIN, TOWED BY SMOKEbelching tugs. The murky, squall-spattered sky had swallowed the land moments after they had departed the generating station, and when night had descended on the water, Sarah felt totally disoriented. It would be many hours before Mr. Jack slept and she could risk checking their position and course with Ronnie's GPS.

He was ensconced in his easy chair in the luxurious main lounge, drinking Canadian Club. His visitors had delivered a glossy brochure, which he pretended to read while he watched Sarah pace.

She poured herself another Pellegrino water at the bar, sipped distractedly, and made the round of the windows again. Reflected in the black glass, she and her captor looked as dead as statues.

He tossed the brochure on the coffee table. Sarah picked it up. The jacket showed a sleek black-and-white liner, the Asian Princess, registered in the Bahamas. It looked similar to the QE-2, which she had seen most recently in Singapore. The brochure was done up with four-color travel photos of Japan. The text was seductive, aimed at well-off passengers who preferred comfort to reality.

Ordinary liners stop in Yokohama, a fifteen-mile traffic jam from downtown Tokyo. Your Asian Princess docks at Takeshiba Pier in the heart of Tokyo, where she remains as your luxury hotel a short walk from Ground Zero of the dynamically modern metropolis that twelve million Tokyoites call home. Within steps lies the famed Ginza, with its wealth of department stores; the Marunouchi District, whose banks contain much of the world's wealth; the gardens of the Imperial Palace, home to Japan's revered royalty; and Tokyo Tower, Japan's tallest structure, which surpasses the Eiffel Tower of Paris, France.

Tired feet? Simply activate your personal pager to summon the Asian Princess's fleet of private limousines waiting to whisk passengers to the destinations of their choice. No overpriced, expensive hotels. No outrageous taxicab fares. No mob scenes at the airport. No crush to board public transportation. See Tokyo as it's never been seen before from your luxury stateroom aboard your floating hotel, the five-star first-class Asian Princess.

"Are you booking a cruise, Mr. Jack?"

"I bought the line. Whadaya think of my new ship?" "You do seem to guarantee your clients absolutely no contact with the real Tokyo."

"That's what the cruise business is all about. Ever go on one?"

"I'm afraid that luxury cruises are a bit beyond our means."

"Tell you what, when this is all over, let me comp you and your husband. Honeymoon cruise, on the house." "Perhaps we could embark this evening?"

"Sorry, Doc." He drained his glass and motioned for a refill. "Say, tell the kid I got a surprise for youse, tomorrow."

The small, dark, high-ceiled suite that Stone shared with Katherine had an ancient telephone that chirped like a cricket. Katherine answered and passed it to Stone. It was Ronald.

"Hey, sailorman. Our Hong Kong friend say call friend in hospital."

"I'll be damned."

"Got it?"

"Thanks."

The Matilda Hospital operator switched the call through to Kerry's room, where the patient answered with, "Where the hell are you, mate?"

"China," Stone answered cautiously, sitting on the bed. "How's your shoulder?"

"I'll survive."

The salvage captain sounded friendly. But he spoke in his clear, loud master mariner's voice, and Stone could almost feel his probing eyes. "I've had second thoughts lying here. About your story."

Stone stood up, pressing the phone harder to his ear. "Did you speak to your—"

"Never mind how. I checked out the SOSUS, and they don't have much in the way of fixed sonar arrays in the western Pacific. It was intended for tracking Soviet subs entering the open oceans."

"I was afraid of that."

"But subs and helicopters are still listening. And some of what they pick up goes into ADAC—the ship-noise library."

"Good."

"It's more than good, mate. A lot more. You got lucky. Twice. As near as I can reckon, this is what happened: one of our subs on a training cruise was near the Southwest Islands when some new recruit learning sonar picked up a ship. 'What's that?' Ì don't know, sir.' `Well, let's find out.'

"They checked their recording against the sub's library," Kerry continued. "No match. So it wasn't a warship. But the instructor probably said, 'That's a mighty heavy ship for out here. He's two hundred miles from the shipping lanes.' Tells the captain, 'Hey, skipper, listen to this.' Skipper says, 'Check with HQ in Brisbane.' The Brisbane Library interfaced with your Pentagon and back came a match. Liberian-registered fiftythousand-ton LNG vessel, Amy Bowman."

"Bodman?"

"Bodman Line. Old petroleum fleet, bought up years ago, conglomerated fourteen times since then. But by the time the data came back, the ship was long gone and the sub had more important business. And that would be the end of that . . ."

"Except?" Stone prompted.

"Except that in the East China Sea the Japanese and the Australian Navy were holding a joint exercise—Aussie subs, Japanese Defense Force surface craft. Helicopters dipped sonar arrays and what did they pick up but Amy Bodman."

"Where?"

"About four hundred miles from Shanghai."

"What course?"

"Northwest."

His heart leaped. She was here! "Straight for Shanghai. Like Sarah said."

"There's more."

"What?" Stone demanded. "Come on. Spill it."

"Rushing this will not uncomplicate it. They heard a gas vessel right about where they'd expected to hear gas vessels, so it was no big deal. But with all the communications exercises, it got transmitted to Brisbane and automatically to the Pentagon. Amy is in the library."

"So she's in Shanghai," said Stone, relief washing over him.

"Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?"

"The ship stopped."

"What do you mean, 'stopped'?"

"Dead in the water. Midway between Okinawa and Shanghai. One minute engines. Next minute no engines, no propeller. I asked a mate to check out some satellite pictures for me. No go. Heavy cloud, fog, rain three days. No pictures."

"Infrared?"

"Nothing."

A chill clenched Stone's heart. Scuttled. "They sunk her."

"Maybe," said Kerry. "Maybe not. Four days after they recorded her, one of the helicopters was dipping arrays again and they recorded a strange noise. Not a screw, not an engine, not a whale. A heavy thumpthump-thump."

"I don't get it."

"Think."

"Stop fucking around!" Stone shouted. "Tell me."

"I don't want to put words in your mouth, Michael. I'm only guessing. The Navy didn't bother to analyze it. It was a commercial ship, they're busy with warships. I think I know what they heard. See if you think the same."

Stone closed his eyes and sank to the bed, trying to order the thoughts whirling through his brain. Katherine knelt behind him and started massaging his shoulders.

"Clue," said Kerry. "Remember she's a gas ship."

"A compressor!"

"Yes!"

"The cooling gear, to keep the gas cold."

"I looked her up. Amy Bodman's new enough to have cooling equipment. The old ones were just a thermos bottle, but she's new. So what they heard was a compressor going thump, thump, thump, while she sat in the rain for four days."

"Why'd she stop?"

"Repairs, probably."

"Did she start up again?"

"Don't know. Joint exercises ended, everyone sailed home to their respective beer and saki."

"Well, has the Amy Bodman been reported missing?" "Not reported missing. Not reported overdue." "Who owns her?"

"Hard to tell. She's been leased, unleased, and released. I've had my Admiralty lawyer on it for two days. There's a cat's cradle of interlocking companies and lease schemes. I do know she picked up her cargo in Surabaya."

"We expected that."

"You know the name Jack Powell?"

"No."

"Big petroleum shipper. American. Started up back in the days of Ludwig and Aristotle Onassis. Powell was the Ludwig type, secretive. My people think it could be his."

"But why wouldn't he report it missing?"

"Maybe he owns so many he doesn't notice. Maybe he's leased her out to somebody else."

"Shouldn't be hard to ask."

"He's not returning messages. Got offices in New York, but there's no reason why he'd respond to a lowly salvor's call."

"He's certainly not going to answer mine. Have you talked to Lydia Chin?"

"Lydia tried, too. Cold shoulder. She even got one of her mega-ship friends to try. They blew him off with assistants."

"Maybe Jack Powell's on the ship."

"Doubt that."

"Of course not— Jesus, that close she could have come into Shanghai."

"I wish you luck, my friend. It could all be nothing, all coincidence. But if they were trying to hide the ship from satellites, then they got stupid, forgetting the compressor, and you got lucky. I'll keep trying to find out who owns her and I'll also keep trying Mr. Powell."

"God, I wish he were aboard." , "why?"

Y•

"My biggest fear is they'll sell the cargo and scuttle her with Sarah and Ronnie inside."

"What would a guy like that want with your wife and daughter?" Stone hung up the phone and thought it through, isolating the good news, ignoring the unanswered questions, the doubts, and even the mystery of what the hijackers were up to. The ship had stopped near Shanghai, hidden under cloud. He was sure they had started up again. They wouldn't scuttle her with her cargo. And he knew she was laden because they were still running the gas coolers.

Katherine kept massaging his shoulders. She had the strongest hands of any woman he'd ever known. "I can't wait for daylight," he said. "They've got to be here." There was a knock at the door. Katherine picked up her gun. She stood to the side of the door, checked the peephole with her makeup mirror. Then she called, "Step to your left," checked the mirrors across the hall, and opened up. Ronald sprang in, his eyes like pinpricks. "What's new?" Willing to bet money that the Triad had bribed the switchboard operator, Stone told him what he had learned. Ronald bounced around the room and Stone wondered what he was on.

"Sound good. Hey, sailorman?"

"I think so. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine."

Katherine said, "You got blood on your pants cuff." "My guys got chopped. No big deal."

"No big deal?" Stone asked. "You were thin on the ground already." Katherine asked, "Is Michael safe here?"

"No problem."

She said, "I don't like this."

Ronald whirled on her. "You no like? Fuck you-nolike." Katherine was still holding her gun. "He's my ticket outta here. I'm asking you, Is he safe?"

Ronald moved to slap her. She raised the gun, not quite leveled at his groin, but no longer pointing at the floor. And this time, to Stone's surprise, the Triad backed off. Reaching for the door, he said to Stone, "You no worry, sailorman. I take good care." When he was gone, Stone asked, "What do you think?" "He's scared. I'll bet you Chang cut him loose." "We better move."

"If they know we're here, they'll know where we move."

"Do you advise we stay?"

"I advise you find that ship tomorrow."

"HEY, Doc! Doc! BRING THE IUD. SURPRISE TIME."

Ronnie looked up from her book. "Surprise?" She hopped off the bed. "Come on, Mummy."

Several paces behind, Sarah heard her daughter gasp. "Ohmigod! Oh, it's beautiful, Mr. Jack."

Sarah paused in the doorway and stared in disbelief. In the corner opposite Mr. Jack's chair, a Christmas tree stood tall as the ceiling with blinking lights and sparkling glass ornaments. Its fresh evergreen scent permeated the cabin. Ronnie crept to it, her face bright with wonder.

"What's the matter, kid? Never seen a Christmas tree?" He was still drinking, against Sarah's orders. His face was flushed.