Dolphin Song

by Lauren St. John

  Inside the dark compartment, Martine and Ben heard only snatches of what was said, but enough to gather that Claudius was more or less being kidnapped. He was still protesting, although not particularly convincingly, when the motor roared to life and the boat cruised out toward the open sea. To Martine, it sounded as if he wanted to go with the men. She was quite sure that that had been his intention all along.

  As the boat picked up speed and hit rolling ocean swells, she and Ben were thrown around bruisingly. There was nothing beneath them but an anchor and a coil of wet, stiff rope, which made an extremely uncomfortable cushion and which they hoped would not be required when they reached their destination. Dirty water swilled around their space. Gas fumes floated in. Disoriented, Martine began to feel seasick. Within minutes it was so bad, she was convinced that she would vomit and the retching sounds would get them caught. But Ben produced the piece of ginger and insisted she eat it. She sucked on the fiery root and the nausea retreated, although it didn’t go away altogether.

  It was difficult to hear anything above the roar of the motor and the pounding of the hull against the waves, and the men didn’t speak much. Martine kept her spirits up by telling herself that every mile might be taking her nearer to Jemmy and Grace and her grandmother and Tendai, but the journey seemed interminable. Plus there was the knowledge that every mile might really be taking her farther away from her loved ones. It was abundantly clear that the men were not friendly fishermen or good-natured islanders. They were up to something. They had as good as admitted that Dugong Island was booby-trapped to keep people away. So what were they hiding? And where did that leave her, Ben, and Claudius—or, for that matter, their friends still stuck on the island?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the slowing of the boat. The engine was switched off. They drifted on the tide until the boat bumped into land. It rocked as the men jumped out. Attempts were made to pull it out of the water, but then the movement stopped and the diver could be heard grumbling.

  “Carlos is complaining that the boat feels very heavy tonight. It must be you,” the skipper said rudely to Claudius. “Get off.”

  Sand scraped loudly beneath the fiberglass hull as the boat was dragged farther up onto the beach. At last, to Martine’s immense relief, it was still.

  “Welcome to Santa Carolina,” announced the skipper, as though Claudius were a carefree vacationer and not a virtual prisoner. “A lot of people call it Paradise Island, but that will not be you, I think.”

  26

  Martine and Ben stayed where they were for as long as they could stand it, which was only about another ten minutes because the stench of gasoline and the claustrophobia drove them out. Fortunately, it was early evening and there was no one around. They hopped onto the sand and stood inhaling the clean, salty smell of the ocean, which was pure heaven after the hell of their journey. A long white beach tailed away, lit by the dim glow of the rising moon. The dhow was moored midway along it. In the distance was the outline of what looked to be a low, sprawling hotel or vacation apartments.

  “Maybe it’s one of those luxury lodges Lucy was going on about!” Martine said hopefully. Her mind was already racing ahead to the moment when a kindly hotel manager would, after learning of their plight, offer them free accommodation for the night and allow them to phone home. She wished and hoped for that so badly that she managed to stifle the shock that had made her breath catch in her throat when the skipper announced their arrival at Santa Carolina, the penal colony Alberto had described to her. She’d just let her imagination carry her away to a lovely luxury room, where she’d wallow neck-deep in a bubble bath before tucking into a dinner of roast chicken, crispy potatoes, and loads of fresh vegetables, smothered in gravy, followed by coffee and maybe a trifle. Afterward, she’d fall into a feather-soft bed and sleep for twenty-four hours.

  “Better not get too excited,” cautioned Ben. “They might not be pirates, but those men didn’t exactly behave like hotel employees.”

  “They could just be using the island as a base for their operations and have nothing to do with the hotel,” Martine said, determined not to let go of her vision. “The hotel owner might be very interested to know that there are child kidnappers living on Paradise.”

  They set off toward the buildings, the sand squeaking under their bare feet. The island was about half the size of Dugong, with gentle undulations rather than steep dunes, so they decided to follow the glittering black sea all the way around and approach the building from the back. That way they could be sure that the sinister men weren’t in sight before showing themselves.

  “For a hotel, there don’t seem to be too many lights on,” Ben commented as they peered between the wind-twisted trunks of some pine trees some thirty minutes later.

  “It is winter in Mozambique,” Martine pointed out. “Perhaps there are very few guests at this time of the year, or perhaps they’re all at dinner.”

  They waited a little while longer before venturing out into the open. It was only then, gazing up at the double-storyblock of rooms and the forbidding façade of the hotel itself, its vast, curving terrace suspended over the ocean, they saw that that’s all it was: a façade. A ruined shell. Not only was it unoccupied, it looked as if it had been that way for at least thirty years. The civil war or something else—mismanagement perhaps—had driven away the tourists.

  Martine didn’t know whether to cry or fly into a rage born of total despair. For eleven days she and the others had been trying to escape their island prison, only to end up here, on another island prison. She could still hear Alberto saying, “Over the years, Santa Carolina has been a playground for wealthy tourists. They call it Paradise, but oh, Miss Martine, if only they knew what that paradise had seen: hundreds of hungry, suffering prisoners, tormented beyond what any man could endure, then taken to Death Island to be swallowed by the sea.”

  Martine had recounted this story to Ben on the walk from the boat to the hotel grounds. But although he had been braced for the unexpected, and hadn’t allowed himself to be carried away with fantasies of feather beds or roast chicken dinners, shock was written all over his face.

  “Is this what grown-ups mean when they say ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire’?” Martine asked.

  Ben recovered sufficiently to speak. “We’re still better off than we were,” he said. “If there are people here—even if they do turn out to be criminals—there must also be food and some way of contacting the outside world. But no matter what, we need to be off this island by sunrise. I’m pretty sure I could sail the dhow. We’ll try to rescue Claudius but if we can’t we’ll have to leave him and go for help. We’ll be no use to him, the dolphins, or anyone else if we get caught.”

  Martine agreed wholeheartedly, particularly with the part about them leaving Paradise before sunrise, so they resumed their search of the hotel grounds with more urgency. The rooms they saw were all empty, their cracked walls and exposed electricity wires oddly clean, as if they were soon to be put back to use. Most eerie of all was the old ballroom, a sad shadow of its past glory. A weather-beaten, out-of-tune piano still stood in one corner, and Martine could almost hear the tinkle of keys and see the sequin-gowned dancers who must have glided across the floor beneath a brilliant chandelier. Out on the terrace, a gaping chunk of floor was missing and the sea slurped and sucked at the crumbling foundations below.

  The next block of rooms was also disused, but close to the beach where they’d come in, they could see lights shining among the palms. The two areas were separated by a walkway that ran almost the width of the island. A flagless pole was in the center of it, and it was lined with weed-filled concrete flower beds in which roses or island flowers must once have bloomed. Martine and Ben were about to dart across the unkempt expanse when a lone guard appeared. He was swinging his nightstick and singing an African song in a low, sad voice. When the light fell on his face, it was young and handsome. He strolled the length of the walkway and disappeared through the palms
onto the beach.

  “Now!” said Ben, and they sprinted for a flat-roofed building in the center of the grounds. For the first time in ten days, they were close to human habitation. The windows of the rooms glowed yellow, and there was laundry hanging on the line. Smoke and the smell of cooking came from the rear.

  They followed the sound of voices to a side window, across which a cloth had been pinned instead of curtains. The window was slightly open and the cloth hung crookedly, leaving a gap in one corner. Martine and Ben stood on tiptoe so they could see the occupants of what must have once been a dining room or restaurant. Four men were gathered around a wooden table laid with dishes of steaming food. A grainy television flickered in the background. Three of the men were eating and watching the skipper, who was up out of his seat and seemed to be tormenting a fifth person by shoving a plate of shrimp and rice at him and then withdrawing it and eating a forkful himself. He stepped back and Martine had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

  Claudius was roped to a chair!

  “You’re lying,” the skipper was accusing him. “You are an island spy. Who sent you?”

  “Look, I would love to tell you I was a spy if it meant you’d give me some food,” said Claudius, his eyes following the shrimp longingly, “but I’m just an ordinary kid from Cape Town. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  The plate swept under his nose again and Claudius’s eyes closed momentarily with the effort of resisting it. He swallowed.

  Out in the cold night, Martine swallowed in sympathy.

  “Was it Nico from Benguerra?” demanded the skipper. “He is always trying to keep people from the mainland from coming in and making money from the islands. Those island grandfathers do not understand business. Their heads are in the past. We have a boy working for us, Fernando, from Bazaruto Island. He is just eighteen, but he understands that a person must take opportunities when they come, and stop worrying so much about preserving animals and plants. He is a young man with ambition. He has some things to learn about the world, but he—”

  Behind him, Carlos let out a strangled squawk. He sprang out of his chair, gave the television two hard thumps, and turned up the volume. Distorted sound blared into the room. The picture cleared slightly and the words “Sea Kestrel Mystery—eleventh day,” appeared beneath a photo of Claudius. He was younger, plumper, and paler, and he was wearing his old joker’s smile, but it was unmistakably him.

  “Ah! Ah!” was the skipper’s incredulous response, as he looked from the TV to Claudius and back again. The other men reacted the same way.

  “Good evening,” intoned the newsreader. “Eleven nights ago, seven Cape Town schoolchildren fell overboard during a cyclone off the Mozambique coast and have been missing, presumed drowned, ever since. Presumed drowned, that is, by almost everyone except property magnate Ed Rapier, father of Claudius . . .”

  Martine watched Claudius turn white.

  “The search has been concentrated on the southern coastline around Inhambane, where, marine experts say, currents would have carried the children in the unlikely event they survived the sharks and freezing water temperatures, and Mr. Rapier has personally sponsored one of the largest air and sea rescues ever undertaken in these waters. Despite that, not a trace of the seven has been found. Yet Mr. Rapier, one of South Africa’s most successful businessmen, has refused to accept defeat.”

  A broad-shouldered man with a gray-streaked, lion’s mane of hair appeared on the screen. He was standing beside a rescue helicopter on a windy beach.

  “I don’t believe my boy is dead,” he told the camera. “I will never believe it until I see his body. He is too full of life, too smart, and too used to having his own way! He is a survivor. If I have to sift every grain of sand on every beach in Mozambique, I’ll find him. I will never give up— and I’m sure my feelings are shared by the families of the other missing children. On their behalf, I am prepared to offer a million dollars for information leading to the safe return of my son and any of his classmates.”

  A contact number appeared on the bottom of the screen.

  “Liar!” roared the skipper, and he struck Claudius across the face. A palm print appeared on the boy’s cheek. “You think you can talk rubbish to us and get away with it? Who else is on Dugong Island? If your friends cause trouble with the test tomorrow, I will feed you to the sharks.”

  Claudius lifted his chin a fraction. There was a wobble in his voice and his fingers gripped the arms of the chair very tightly, but there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there for days, and he said determinedly, “I was alone on the island. Completely alone. I think I must have been the only survivor. I remember getting into an empty lifeboat, but everything after that is a blur. When I woke up I was on Dugong Island. ’Course I didn’t know it was called Dugong.”

  This latest untruth caused the skipper to lose his temper. He slammed down the plate and lifted his arm as if to strike Claudius. A babble of furious African voices shattered the evening quiet.

  The dialect they spoke was not dissimilar to Zulu, so Ben translated in a low voice. “They are very angry with him,” he reported. “They say he is not thinking clearly. What is he doing hitting a tourist? Here they have a chance to earn a million dollars in reward money for handing over a boy who is very annoying and only going to cause trouble for them, and he is more worried about being loyal to their boss. They say he has been blinded by their boss’s power. Can’t he see that they are being cheated over the money from the tests? Why else does he think their boss drives a Mercedes when their own cars and bicycles are held together with string?”

  The skipper seemed startled by this mutiny. He made a few feeble objections but quickly came to the conclusion they were right. They were being cheated. What possible harm could it do if they returned the boy and claimed the reward money for themselves? Was it not their due after all the months they’d spent caretaking Dugong Island, and bored half to death on Paradise Island? And nobody but the four of them need know anything about it.

  He smiled his gap-toothed smile. The other three smiled back. Then he untied Claudius, made a big fuss of dusting him down and straightening his clothes, and shouted to some unseen person to bring him a Coke and a hot plate of shrimp and rice. “My friend, forgive us this small misunderstanding,” he said in English. “We are paranoid because of some problems with the islanders. Eat now and be happy. Tomorrow we will take you home to your father.”

  27

  The men left the room then, locking the door behind them. “For your own safety,” the skipper told Claudius with a hyena grin. He had given him a blanket and virtually ordered him to use a torn sofa with protruding springs as a bed. After they’d gone, Martine and Ben had to wait an age for the cook to finish in the kitchen. It was only after he too had departed, a flick of a switch plunging the building into darkness, that they returned to the window. There were burglar bars across it, so they hissed to Claudius through the opening.

  Claudius almost had a heart attack, but soon recovered and rushed over to the window. “Thank goodness you guys are here. Whatever happens, don’t let anyone catch you. That skipper is nuts. Somehow you’ve got to try to stop them. I’m not sure what’s going on, but they keep talking about a test tomorrow at noon. I haven’t been able to find out what’s being tested, or who is doing the testing, but it might have something to do with the dolphins.”

  “What about you?” Ben whispered. “Don’t you want us to try to get you out first?”

  “Are you kidding?” Claudius said. “What, and run around chasing lunatics when I could just rest on this broken sofa, eat shrimp dinners, and wait to be returned to my family? No thanks. If somebody brought me a cheeseburger, I’d be in paradise. Oh, I forgot, I am in Paradise! Just go. You don’t have much time.”

  “Okay,” Ben said uncertainly. “You were great, by the way.”

  “Awesome,” agreed Martine.

  Claudius smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, Cl
audius . . .” she added.

  “Yeah?”

  “The kidnapping story beats the yacht story hands down.”

  Their first lucky break was finding that the door through which the skipper and his cronies had exited was unlocked. Their second was discovering that it led to a dark kitchen. Judging by the number of insects or mice that could be heard scuttling for cover when they walked in, it wasn’t a particularly clean one, but they were too hungry to care. Inside the fridge were two big plastic bowls containing cold rice and spicy beans. Aside from a jar of pickled onions, there wasn’t much else. The island menu seemed to be a combination of fish caught daily and meat from the freezer humming in the corner.

  Martine and Ben fell upon the cold rice and beans and devoured the lot with gusto. It wasn’t the roast chicken dinner Martine had been dreaming of, but it was edible and made a pleasant change from the fishy fare on Dugong Island. They finished off the meal with a tin of guavas that had been left out on the bench.

  “What do you think we should do now?” Martine asked, wiping guava syrup from her mouth. A grease-smeared clock on the oven showed that it was almost ten p.m.

  “Look for evidence and a phone,” Ben said. “If they’re working on a project or dealing with tests, they must have some kind of office.”

  They tucked the bowls, utensils, and guava tin in a cupboard where they couldn’t easily be found, and padded silently through the other rooms. Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and here and there the moonlight offered some illumination. They found a lopsided Ping-Pong table in one room and, in the other, ceiling-high stacks of cardboard boxes with “Marlin Communications” written crudely on the side in black ink. A stack of copper piping was propped against the door frame.

  Ben opened one of the boxes. It was filled with nuts and bolts, wire and fuse boxes. He opened three more, each duller than the last.