Fire And Ice (38 page)

"Come in Veronica."

"We're here, darling. We're here."

"Mummy! Are you okay?" Used to radiophone communication, they switched from Transmit to Receive instinctively at the end of each other's sentences.

"Yes, dear. Are you?"

"Is Daddy?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart. We're both fine." How many times had he overheard one side of a radiophone conversation between sailors at sea and their families at home? I'm fine, how are you? The Swan lurched. He felt her turn away from the wind. The autopilot tugged her back.

"Oh, thank God. I was worried about the storm."

"No problem," said Stone. "Veronica did herself proud."

"Listen, Mummy. Daddy. Do you know who I mean by Santa Claus?"

"Yes, dear."

"Well, Santa Claus says remember we have each other by the short hairs. Do you know what that means?" "Yes, dear."

"He promised huge presents when we arrive."

"Do you think he'll keep his promise?" Stone asked.

There was a brief pause. Sarah's hand tightened on his. It might have been static or one of them had hit the Transmit switch later. Stone imagined the old man in the bathrobe leaning over her on one side, and the huge Moss on

the other. Finally, Ronnie came back on in mid-sentence. " . . . always keeps his promise." He looked at Sarah. Her face was alight, her whole being fueled by the sound of Ronnie's voice. Stone felt it too. She didn't sound afraid. That was the big thing. Not afraid. And yet, there was so much unsaid. Sarah covered the mike.

"There's something she's not telling

," she whispered.

Stone had utter faith in Sarah's psychic bond with their child. "But she does believe he'll let her go."

"It sounds that way. . . . " She hit the transmit button. "Ronnie? Are you eating properly?"

"Oh, yeah, Mum, Mr. J— Santa Claus told the cook to make potato chips and he did. And they got more Coke. And, before we leave, we're having a huge Chinese dinner sent aboard from the best restaurant in town."

"What are you going to have?"

"Peking duck"

"Dammit," said Stone, and Sarah looked stricken. Ronnie hated duck. She'd gotten sick on it in New Zealand. She was trying to tell them something.

He took the microphone. "Sweetie?" How to put the question? "Sweetie. When does Santa plan to sail?"

After a staticky hiss, Ronnie said, "Santa Claus says we'll cruise away in plenty of time."

"Sweetheart, you really missed a great storm." "Oh yeah?"

"Fifty-knot winds."

"You're joking."

"I wouldn't joke about fifty knots. You would have loved it."

"Hey, Mr.—Santa," he heard her call. "Mummy and Daddy were in fifty-knot winds. What? Oh. Daddy, Santa says do you need any new sails for Christmas?"

"Tell him all I want is my second mate."

"Oh! 1 gotta go. Santa says we'll talk day after tomorrow at sixteen hundred."

"Good-bye, dear," Sarah cried, but they both knew her voice was lost in the air. Stone let loose his breath.

"We'll talk to her day after tomorrow," said Sarah. "Thank God."

"She sounds pretty good," Stone ventured.

Yes, considering."

"What do you think she's trying to tell us?"

"I don't know."

Veronica gave another hard lurch. By the time Stone got to the cockpit, she had fallen ninety degrees off course. He put her back on, shut down the generator and the autopilot, and searched the sky for a break to shoot the sun. The cloud, which had lifted higher as the depression rushed on, was still too thick to penetrate. He hadn't had a fix since they left the Yangtze sea buoy. Dead reckoning put them a day and a half from the Osumi Strait. But the sea chop could have thrown them many miles off course, and he knew as much about his true position as he did about Ronnie's true condition. Why sixteen hundred? he mused. Why not noon like today?

Sarah came on deck. It was her watch. She said, "I think she was trying to warn us."

"Of what?"

"I don't know. And I don't think she knows either. . . .

Michael, I'm sorry about before. I was so upset. I feel so

much better now that we've heard her voice. Don't you?" "Did he offload any gas at that power plant?" "Just enough to lighten the ship to get in the river." "Why didn't he sell the whole cargo?"

"Gotcha."

Moss was grinning ear to ear when Mr. Jack walked onto the bridge. The OMBO

monitor displayed a chart of the eastern reaches of the East China Sea. Kyushu, the southernmost big island of Japan, thrust into it like a tongue, forming the north coast of the Osumi Strait. Moss moved his fingers on a glidepad and tapped twice. Lines of position appeared on the screen. The second line crossed the first. The third line crossed them near the intersection, forming a tight triangle.

"There they are."

Mr. Jack studied the screen. "Okay. Get to the airport.

But don't underestimate those two. Captain still can't believe they made it through that storm."

Moss grinned. "They never met a storm like me." "And for crissake don't get caught by the Japs." "Hey, I wouldn't rat you out, Mr. Jack." Mr. Jack reached out and laid his mutilated hand on the black man's shoulder. "I know you wouldn't, Moss. But I don't want to lose you. Huh?"

The poor bastard practically wept with gratitude. And Mr. Jack thought, not for the first time, how little you had to do to hijack a lonely man's soul.

"WHY SELL THE GAS IN TOKYO WHEN HE'S SO WELL CONnected in China?"

"Maybe some crooked Japanese offered him more money." A clear sun shot at noon the day after they spoke to Ronnie put the Swan 360 miles east of Shanghai, 130 miles southwest of Nagasaki, and less than 120 miles from the Osumi Strait. With luck, if the clear weather held, they might by nightfall see the first glimmer of the Kusakaki lighthouse.

The northeast monsoon was still postdepression boisterous—a powerful twenty-five knots—and Veronica was flying under double-reefed main and her high-cut inner forestay sail. But the sea, which had deepened remarkably when their course took them at last over the hundred-fathom line, was, compared to the past three days, almost orderly. Large waves moved in stately procession, crowned with white crests. A royal blue color demarked the Japanese-Pacific waters from the East China Sea. An hour after Stone's noon shot, they saw their first ships. A bright green car carrier steamed out of the east, bound for Shanghai or Hong Kong. Another, riding high and light, overtook them at twenty knots, racing for the Osumi Strait, and dwindled quickly. The high sky was streaked with the trails of jetliners converging on Tokyo. Though they were still some six hundred miles and four hard days' sailing from the city, something about nearing the Strait and the first of Japan's main islands felt like their goal was in reach and the worst was over.

When Stone relieved Sarah at two, she stayed up in the cockpit with him, sitting close within his arm while he steered with one hand. They talked quietly, musing over the relative merits of staying on in Tokyo to visit with Hiroshi's family or sailing due south to warm water. It helped to pretend that there was no question they'd have Ronnie back and that life would go back to normal within a few days.

The winter light faded from the sky. A few pale stars winked behind the clouds. Ducking to look under the sails, which were sheeted in hard on the starboard side, they began to sense an intermittent glow on the horizon. Illusory, at first, it materialized as a faint halo—Kusakaki Light flashing at twenty-second intervals.

The western approach began about twenty-five miles ahead. Sixty miles beyond it they would enter the Osumi Strait. There, a thirty-degree turn to the left—if the wind would allow—and northeast to Tokyo Bay.

Eight hours later, at one in the morning, Stone was below—having just signed off a VHF

radio conversation with the third mate of a Yokohama-bound Korean ore carrier that had overtaken them at sixteen knots a half mile to port.

"Sixteen-second double white flasher off the port beam," Sarah called down the hatch. He checked the chart—where he had plotted the position the Korean had given him—and the Light Lists. "It's Sata Misaki Light on the southern tip of Kyushu. Look for a fifteensecond red flasher on the starboard bow. I doubt you can see it yet—about twenty miles." He heard her safety harness shackle rasp along the jack line as she headed toward the bow for a look around the sails. She galloped back, calling, "I see the glow! Fifteensecond red." Stone brought her a covered mug of tea. "That's Kisika Said. Japanese is driving me nuts. Saki means point. Zaki

means point. Misaki means point. Hana means point. Kaku means point. Pii means point."

"We say point, cape, headland, promontory. Why shouldn't they?"

"They're supposed to be more efficient. Why the hell, if Mr. Jack is as rich as he's supposed to be, is he stealing natural gas? Why go to so much trouble for ten or twenty million bucks when he's already worth a hundred times that?"

"Maybe he's bankrupt."

He picked up the binoculars and scanned a confusing mass of lights between the boat and Kyushu, ten miles to port. It was difficult to distinguish the fishing boats, coasters, and ships from buildings on the shore.

"Goddamned carnival out there."

He jiggled the glasses. The shore lights dissolved into strings of tiny dots as the movement of the glasses revealed the pulsing AC current. The sea lights, which burned on direct current, shone steadily.

"Okay, wait till we're right between Sata and Kisika and we go to east northeast, oh-sixoh." They stayed up all night in the cockpit, two pairs of eyes to watch for ships. The north wind started veering to the east. In the darkness of four in the morning, the boat appeared to be between the glow of Sata Misaki far off the port quarter and the red-flashing Kisika Saki ahead of the starboard bow—indicating they were in the middle of the Osumi Strait. The wind had swung into the teeth of course 060°.

The closest they could sail was 075, which would take them increasingly offshore as the Japanese archipelago angled toward the northeast. Sarah was distraught, Stone—high on tea, chocolate bars, and the coming dawn—philosophical: he brandished the chart, saying, "Don't worry, what we lose tacking offshore we'll get back with a boot from the Kuroshio Current."

Kisika Saki dimmed behind them to a faint glow like embers cloaked in ash, while ahead, a slowly lightening sky revealed the Philippine Sea.

It was deep, an arm of the Pacific. The water was dark, the waves widespread and orderly. The monsoon was

blowing a gale, steady and backing north, more to angles the Swan liked. Stone was able to nudge her closer to east northeast.

At noon, he brought Sarah macaroni and cheese and steered while she ate it.

"You know, he could sell the gas in China before he goes to Tokyo."

"Possibly." Sarah yawned. "He seems to use the Dallas Belle as his private yacht."

"Get some sleep. Nobody out here but us chickens. I'll wake you for Ronnie." He had caught three hours himself.

At three-thirty he went below to wake her and turn on the single-sideband radio. At five of four, he started the generator and engaged the autopilot. At four on the dot—sixteen hundred—Ronnie came in loud and clear.

"Ronnie calling Veronica. Ronnie calling Veronica."

"We hear you, darling. How are you?"

"How are you, Mummy?"

"Fine. How are you?"

"How's Daddy?"

Stone leaned into the mike. "Doing fine, sweetheart. How are you?"

"Fine."

They waited. But "fine" was all they got.

"Are you eating properly?"

"Great food, Mum. I ate so much duck I'm going to squawk. . . . How are you?"

"What the hell is she trying to tell us?" whispered Stone.

"We're having a wonderful sail, dear. Brilliant wind. Clear as glass all afternoon." Stone reached for the microphone. "Are we still going to see you for Christmas?"

"Oh, yes, Daddy."

"Does Santa Claus promise? . . . I said, does Santa Claus promise?"

"Yes. He said he does!"

"I wonder if we could talk to him for a second." Another silence. Then, "Santa Claus said he only talks to kids."

"Son of a bitch." Stone handed Sarah the mike and

stepped up on the companionway and looked out the hatch. "When are you leaving?" he heard Sarah ask. "We're leaving today."

Odd, Stone thought. If they were leaving today, a twenty-two-knot ship would be in Tokyo a full twenty-four hours ahead of the Swan.

"Santa says we have to say good-bye. Good-bye, Mummy. Good-bye, Daddy."

"Wait! Ask Santa if we're still on for the same time, same place."

"Santa says yes."

"Are we going to talk again on the radio?"

"Santa says no."

Sarah sat a moment, listening to the radio hiss and mechanically rubbing the teak nav table with her fingers. "Oh, Michael." Stone laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"What's she trying to tell us? She ate duck? She'd throw up the first mouthful." They tried to reconstruct their conversations, looking for more code words. Santa, obviously Jack Powell. He hadn't allowed her to say much. Only that the Dallas Belle was about to sail.

"She said, ate so much duck I'm going to squawk.' " "Ducks quack."

"Squawk. She said squawk."

"Remember when she was little?"

" Walkie-squawkie.' The radio! She has my handheld—She meant she has a radio."

"But we'd have to be within twenty, twenty-five miles to pick up VHF."

"She knows that— Did you notice how she kept saying 'cruising'?"

"No—yeah, last time—the first call . . . What the hell does that crazy old man want? He didn't sail the Dallas Belle to Shanghai just to drink with the generals. They were working some kind of refit in that yard."

Sarah shivered. She felt as if her mind had trembled.

Stone said, "We're so worried about Ronnie, we've

never really concentrated on what the hell does he want?"

Sarah shivered again. She knew, suddenly, and certainly. "Mr. Jack wants what you wanted when you lost Katherine."

"I wanted monsters erased from the planet."