Fire And Ice (34 page)

They talked, slowly and intermittently like acquaintances at a party, reporting their separate experiences since

the Dallas Belle had steamed away from Pulo Helena. The mud-gray water and the damp cold were in such contrast to the brilliant colors and tropic heat of the Pacific that the events seemed long ago.

"I wonder," Stone ventured, "could we sail to Taiwan and beat him to Tokyo by plane?"

"Impossible," said Sarah. "He'll have thought of that." She described Mr. Jack and his connections to his old comrades of the Chinese army. "He'll put the word out at any airport we can reach, either to arrest us or to kill us on sight. Besides, he's got Ronnie. We have to do exactly what he says."

Stone reluctantly agreed. "Who does he think we are? Did you give him the coup story?" Sarah said, "I didn't have to. Moss guessed we were òn the lam.' But Mr. Jack really didn't care, he was so sure you'd never find us."

Stone told her how Kerry had helped and about Ronald and the Brit assassin and Katherine and the stolen yacht.

They skirted the numbing fear they felt for Ronnie. It was necessary in order to function as they fled the shadow of China. But their unspoken agreement was at the price of intimacy and each felt like a stranger. All they had in common now was the working of the boat, and in that practiced skill they were not strangers but campaigners—old companions girding themselves for the long haul to Japan.

A red tower with a six-second flasher and a bell marked the end of the dredged channel, and here they turned east onto the Great Yangtze Bank. With thirty miles safely traversed and Veronica moving offshore, Stone began to hope they might have pulled it off. The fog had lifted, but the cold sky was heavy, visibility still less than a mile. The Bank was dotted with fishing boats.

The swell marching in from the East China Sea turned choppy in the shallow water, causing the boat to pitch uncomfortably. Stone felt the early queasiness of seasickness. The sails would steady the Swan, but he hated to present such a big target. They stripped the cover off the main and hanked on an inner forestay sail and a jib. Daylight began leaking from the sky. In another hour it would be dark enough to raise the sails.

"I'll get a handle on the weather."

He went below, turned on the SSB, and listened with half an ear for the English version, while he rummaged through his charts. The large-scale North Pacific Ocean, Western Part was the best he had aboard for Japan until they reached the Japanese archipelago. For Tokyo Bay and approaches, he had the charts from their visit to Hiroshi's father. He chewed Saltines to settle his stomach, while he plotted the two legs of their route: 480 miles east across the East China Sea; through the Osumi Strait—south of Kyushu, the southernmost big island of Japan—then 540 miles across the Philippine Sea to Tokyo.

They'd be butting into the northeast monsoon wind most of the way, which meant that Veronica's light, full-bellied South Pacific cruising sails, designed to run before the trade winds, had to be replaced. On the first leg, the shallow East China Sea would generate a hard chop that would slow the boat. Later in the voyage, the powerful Kuroshio, the Black Current, would give them a boost. They'd need it: the wind was sure to get weird in the lee of the Japanese Islands.

The weather report switched to English. Stone spread a clear plastic sheet over the chart and plotted on it the highs and lows and ridges and troughs that the announcer was reading in a deadpan, computerlike voice. He noted the time for this baseline by which he could track the weather. A front had stalled; now it was moving again. The gale he'd feared earlier would disperse the fog would catch up with the Swan by morning. He compared his barometer to the Pilot Chart for December. Normal was 30.3; the Swan's read 29.9 and falling. Better change the mainsail, now.

He hurried forward into Ronnie's cabin, which was wedged in the forepeak like a pyramid on its side. He averted his eyes from her stuffed animals and the posters she had taped to the ceiling. He hauled out a stiff mainsail they had taken along with the carbon fiber mast off the wrecked racer. It was a mesh weave of Technora yarn, coated with Mylar laminates. Remarkably light, it would stabilize the boat by reducing weight aloft and carve a course close to the wind.

Sarah screamed, "Michael."

He dropped the sail, raced up on deck. She pointed astern and passed him the binoculars. Out of the gloom came a knife-edged hull flashing red lights and cutting an immense bow wave. A People's Liberation Army patrol.

STONE FELT HIS SPIRIT DISSOLVE. EVENTS OF THE PAST TWENTY

hours swirled through his mind like half-remembered passages in hastily skimmed books: his first sight of Sarah, the Chinese soldiers chasing him through the brush, the trains, Ronald's execution, the black man swooping from the sky. He raised dead eyes to the oncoming boat and stood paralyzed at the helm. A siren howled, an incongruous noise from city canyons.

Sarah went to the mast and raised the jib, which the northeast wind tried to fill.

"Trim the sheet, Michael."

His heart went to her. "We can't run, darling."

Sarah pushed past him and sheeted in the jib. The sail bellied and the boat heeled even as its motion grew steady. "A sail looks innocent. Quick. Help me raise the main." The siren got loud.

They threw off the ties and were cranking the crackling sail the last notch up the mast when the patrol boat burbled alongside. A bullhorn blared Chinese. While Stone Cranked in the mainsheet, causing Veronica to pick up speed and the patrol boat to quicken its idling engines, Sarah cupped her hands to call, "Do you speak English?"

"Stop your vessel," came the reply. They had a machine gun on the bow and another on the roof. The boat had a modem fiberglass hull, diesel powered. Stone recognized the whine of turbochargers, but what struck him forcefully was the spit and polish of the crew, poised with boarding lines, and the officer with the bullhorn.

"We're stopping," Stone called across the water. "We have to turn to port." The machine gun tracked them as he headed to weather. The Swan spilled her wind. Sarah finished tying off fenders. The patrol boat eased alongside and sailors threw lines that Stone and Sarah secured fore and aft.

The officer boarded, preceded by two men with snub-nosed machine guns. "What," he demanded, "are you doing in PRC waters?"

"We are guests of the Shanghai government." "Papers." Stone handed them over. The officer's face was in the shadow of his peaked cap, his eyes invisible behind dark glasses. He read the Chinese letters and then the English translations. Surreptitiously, he fingered the embossed letterhead.

"Yacht marina?" he asked.

"A place for cruising yachts to moor and replenish and repair."

"I know what a marina is. I lived in one while I attended school in California. Marina del Ray. This would be for Western cruising tourists?"

"Exactly."

"And now you are leaving?"

"We'll be returning to Hong Kong to talk to our investors."

"I see no exit stamp on your passport."

"We waited at the harbor master, but everyone was tied up with that big fire. So we finally decided to just leave. As we were guests of the government—"

"And where is your passport, Madam?"

"My wife was injured," Stone said. "We were hit by the wake of a fireboat. She nearly fell overboard—lost her handbag, with the passport."

Sarah pulled up her sleeve to reveal her bandaged arm; blood had stained the gauze. The officer frowned. "Have you weapons aboard?" "No." The officer gave an order and two men went below to search.

"Drugs?"

"Only medicine. My wife and I are both doctors." "Why are doctors sent to scout marinas?"

"Many doctors own boats," Stone said with a straight face. "As I'm sure you saw in Marina del Ray."

"You were heading east. Hong Kong is southwest."

"Sea room," said Stone. "It looks to me like we've got a front heading our way. We don't want to get caught on a lee shore."

The naval officer agreed.

"And did you find marina sites?"

"Several."

"Where?"

"I'm afraid that's confidential until I've reported to the investors."

"Have you considered a military amusement site?"

Stone looked at Sarah. "I'm not sure what that is."

"It is quite the new thing," said the officer, as the boats squeaked against the fenders and the machine gun–toting sailors stood by impassively. "The tourist is invited to shoot real weapons—assault rifles, mortars, even rocket launchers. Perhaps yachtsmen could try out a submarine. It is a new idea, and one to be considered. Here is my card." He unbuttoned a crisp shirt pocket and passed a card to Stone and another to Sarah. On the back, in English, it said SECTORS OF ACTIVITY: REAL ESTATE, FOREIGN TRADE, ETC."

"The People's Liberation Army has joined the march to prosperity," the officer explained in his accentless English. "Perhaps we even lead the effort to open up to the outside world."

"Excellent," said Stone.

"Perhaps if the officials of Shanghai prove difficult, you will remember my card."

"We certainly will," said Stone. He presented the business card Ronald had provided.

"Obviously the People's Naval Forces have excellent sources of waterfront property and we would supply the

best in dredges and materiel. In fact, when you think about it, it is hard to imagine such an enterprise without us."

"We are most fortunate to have met you," replied Stone. "And now, my wife and I are anxious to get offshore before that gale hits."

"Of course." He snapped an order. The searchers came up empty-handed. The sailors stood by on the lines. Stone extended his hand. The officer took it in both of his. -Bon voyage."

The lines were cast off. A channel of water opened between the two craft. The PLA boat swung slowly away. Stone held his breath. Radio antennas swayed as the boat pitched on the chop; any second, they could get orders to track down a certain sailboat. He waved the officer's business card. The diesels roared and the boat pounded toward the invisible coast.

They gathered the fenders, trimmed the sails, and cleared the decks. The wind was freshening. The Swan grew lively. A decent sailor in light airs, she was built for the winds that sent most boats to harbor, and Stone felt her stir like a lioness waking up hungry.

He shut down the engine and feathered the propeller. His queasiness forgotten, he worked the sails, coaxing speed out of her. They began overtaking some of the dieselpowered fishing boats. Quite abruptly, the sonar showed the water depth double, then triple. They had left the rivers behind and were moving over the Great Yangtze Bank. With twenty and thirty meters of water under her keel, and nothing between them and Japan but the lights of fishing boats returning with the night, they could sail for days by the compass alone.

"What do you think he'll do if we don't make Tokyo on time?"

"He's totally unpredictable," said Sarah.

"Well, if he just drops her, Ronnie knows to call Hiroshi's father. . . . What the hell is he up to?"

A sudden gust banged into the sails, a cold, harsh wind that stung the face. Veronica heeled over and buried her rail.

"Let's take a reef in the main—in fact, let's take it down and put up the Technora."

"Are you up to it? You look destroyed, Michael. You should sleep."

"Yeah. Come on, while we still have the light."

Together, they humped the sail up the companionway. Then they lowered the stretched and aged Dacron main, detached it from the boom, bagged it, and dragged it below. It was getting darker. The boat was banging into the chop, and the Technora felt stiff as tin in their cold hands.

They unrolled it on the pitching deck, found the tack of the sail, and began inserting the plastic slugs on the foot into the slide that ran the length of the boom. They secured the tack to the gooseneck, attached the head to the mast, and slid in the slugs that held the front of the sail. Sarah found the battens and they installed them in the pockets, further stiffening the cloth. Then Stone put his weight to the halyard. They turned on the work lights.

"Evil-looking thing."

The sail was black. Its aerodynamic shape molded the wind like a slab of steel. The boat was laboring, overpowered in the rising wind. They took a reef, making the triangle of the sail narrower and lower.

The reef was quickly followed by a second reef. The wind was rising, hard and gusty out of the northeast. The Swan drove into it, close-hauled. She shipped some spray and the occasional sea, which sluiced the decks of the accumulated grit of Shanghai. While Sarah steered, Stone rigged a dodger, a canvas and clear plastic screen that sheltered the cockpit. Then he heated canned soup, which he brought in covered mugs to the helm. It had been years since they had sailed in cold weather, and they were both shivering.

"You look a mess," said Sarah. "Get some sleep." She touched his face, which was lined like that of a man twenty years older.

"You okay?" he responded.

"Better than you at the moment. Go below, sleep." He was so tired things were beginning to spin.

"Michael?"

"Yeah?" He looked back. She was trying to smile. "Give me a hug?" He bounded to her and pulled her into his arms.

"Wait." She pulled free and opened her bulky jacket. Stone opened his, and they joined again in soft warmth. "It was a wonderful rescue."

"Half a rescue."

"We'll get her back."

"Sure we will." He looked ahead, where the horizon was turning black. "Wake me if this gets worse." "Sleep."

He started down the companionway, paused. "Why'd he let us go?"

"All I can think is he had no clout with the fireboats—couldn't keep a lid on it."

"So what? He could straighten it out eventually, with the friends you've described."

"Maybe not in time."

"In time for what? Selling the cargo?"

"I don't know," she said. "But he's planning something, and he's afraid of our talking."

"We'll speak to Ronnie day after tomorrow. And we'll make him promise another call. The son of a bitch. He can't hurt her as long as we're loose with a radio." He staggered down the companionway and shut the hatch. It was quiet below; the noise of the wind and water was distant. He felt guilty for deserting Sarah, who had looked nearly as tired as he felt.