by Joanne Pence
“Don’t be snippy.”
She took off her robe and tossed it across a chair. The nightgown looked as thin and beautiful at dawn as it had last night. He remembered how it felt in his hands, how she felt in his hands. He wondered if Julio had caught a glimpse of it.
He stepped closer to her. “Don’t you know better than to traipse around like that?” he shouted.
She folded her arms. “You are clearly in no mood to listen to a word I have to say.”
“I am listening. But so far, I haven’t heard anything worth listening to!”
“You are unbelievable!” she cried, flinging out her arms in fury. “And I didn’t traipse anywhere. I was seasick.”
He clenched his fists, imagining the steward’s scrawny neck in them. “Well, Julio seemed to have taken care of your problem.”
“He did.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “Very nicely, thank you.”
What did she mean by that? “You could have woken me up. I would have helped you.”
“Excuse me. I’m going to bed. I need some sleep.”
He watched her flounce away.
“Wait a minute. What are those bruises on your arm?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I guess Julio likes to play rough.”
She slammed the bedroom door shut.
18
Eduardo Catalán enjoyed watching the terrified expressions on the faces of the clerks in the harbor master’s office when Colonel Hector Ortega himself marched up to the front desk. He had put his military jacket on over his wrinkled white shirt, the same one he had worn the day before. Now, standing before one of the clerks, his thick brows arrogantly lifted, he demanded to know when the Valhalla would arrive.
“The…the what?” were the most coherent words the unfortunate young woman could stammer.
“Valhalla! A freighter. A Norwegian freighter. It is coming from the United States. Do you not know about it?”
The woman’s cheeks went from white to red. “We…we have many ships arriving here, señor, and many freighters, and—”
“I know that!” he roared. “I do not care about your many ships. I care about one ship. One!”
“Yes, señor—”
“Colonel!”
“I mean, Colonel.” On the verge of tears, she picked up her schedule and ran to the back of the office for help.
“You see, my colonel,” Catalán said, “why you must allow me to handle such annoyances for you. The people who are supposed to serve these days…they are so abysmal.”
“I need to know right away, Eduardo,” the colonel said as he turned his back to the clerks bustling about searching for the answer to his question, “exactly where she is.”
“Colonel Ortega,” the clerk called softly.
The colonel spun around. “You have the information.” His words were a command, not a question.
She nodded timidly. “The Valhalla left Long Beach two days ago. It hasn’t reached Cabo San Lucas yet. It’s scheduled to be there two days, then head to Mazatlán after that.”
“Long Beach? It was not scheduled to stop in Long Beach!” he bellowed.
“I am sorry, Colonel. That is my information.” She backed up.
He spun around, his eyes bulging as he spat out his words to Eduardo. “Why does she not take a plane like everyone else in the world? Do something, amigo, to get that ship here sooner. I do not like to wait.” Then he stormed from the building.
The American turned away from the rack of brochures he’d hovered over the entire time Colonel Ortega had been talking to the clerk. Ortega rarely moved from his mountain retreat. To see him in the city meant that something was happening. Something big.
And George Gresham knew he was the one to find out what it was all about.
Gresham took off the blue denim cap with fish lures on it—his tourist disguise—and ran his thick, square fingers through his blond crew cut, trying to ignore the ever-enlarging bald spot on the crown. As a field operative, he’d always kept his hair short. Now he kept it short thinking people might not realize that some of it was actually missing.
But he had no time for misplaced vanity. He had to keep an eye on Ortega. He was beside himself with joy that this little jaunt had paid off. It showed his instincts were as sharp as ever.
The Valhalla. Not only would the colonel be waiting for it, but George would be there, too. Especially to find out who the mysterious “she” was that Ortega talked about.
He couldn’t wait to tell the others.
19
Angie went up to the bridge to watch the Valhalla sail into the small, colorful harbor of Cabo San Lucas. The other passengers already lined the rail.
When she had awakened in late morning, with a dull headache from her miserable sleep and aches all over her body from the way she’d fallen in the galley, Paavo was gone. She didn’t know where. She was so steamed at him for assuming the worst that right now she couldn’t say she cared.
The captain stepped out of the pilot house and called the passengers together. He looked considerably better this morning than he had the night before, actually sober for once. Johansen was nowhere to be seen.
“Quiet, please,” he cried. “May I have your attention?”
The tiny band of passengers huddled together waiting for him to speak couldn’t have been any more quiet if they’d been dead.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted. “I have bad news for you. The dockworkers at Cabo San Lucas have gone on strike. The strike is expected to last for a number of days. They have threatened me—I mean, our crew—with violence if we attempt to load or unload the containers ourselves. Therefore, we are not stopping until we reach Mazatlán. We’ll try this port again on our return trip. I apologize for any inconvenience.”
“Gracious,” Nellie cried. “Do you think it’s safe, Marvin?”
“Might turn ugly,” Ruby said. “Might come on board. We could be captured. Raped.”
“Oh, Lord!” Nellie pressed her hands to her chest.
“Not to worry,” Marvy Marv muttered.
“What?” Harold asked, putting his hands to his ears.
“What will you do?” Angie asked Ruby. “Weren’t you and Harold planning to leave the ship at Cabo?”
“Were. But we changed our minds. Can’t find good bridge partners too often. We’re staying with the Neblers. Tierra del Fuego or bust, that’s our motto.”
Angie was speechless. Borrowing the binoculars Marvy Marv wore around his neck, she studied the harbor. For a place with a dockworkers’ strike going on, it looked surprisingly busy, and the piers bustled with longshoremen handling cargo.
Yet the Valhalla wasn’t allowed to dock. It didn’t make sense.
“Miss Amalfi?”
Angie was lying on a chaise longue by the pool with a light sunscreen on her face and sun-tan oil slicked over every inch of skin not covered by the skimpy teal-blue DKNY bikini. She opened her eyes at the sound of the silky voice calling her name. Mike Jones stood at her feet, a smile digging his dimple deeper than ever. “Good afternoon,” she said.
He grabbed hold of a chair under an umbrella-covered table, spun the chair around backward, and sat down straddling it. “I wanted to ask a favor of you,” he said.
“Sure. What can I do for you?”
“Since you know a lot about cooking,” Jones began. “I was wondering if you could you guide me in the preparation of a really nice meal for tonight’s dinner. I know the passengers are all upset about not being able to land, so I thought a good meal might make it up to them a bit—if you see what I mean.”
“That’s a very thoughtful suggestion,” she admitted, wondering why she felt so amazed that it had come from Jones. “Tomorrow we’ll arrive in Mazatlán, and everyone can disembark there, so you’re quite right—getting through this evening will be the problem. If we give the passengers good food and some wine with the meal, they’ll most likely feel a whole lot better about themselves and each other.”
“A sous-chef, of sorts.”
“Whatever.” He gave her a perplexed grin.
“I’ll come by in about an hour, and we’ll see what’s available in your larder,” Angie said.
He stood. “I appreciate it, Miss Amalfi. By the way…great swimsuit.”
The emergency alert sent every free doctor and nurse in the intensive care unit running to help.
Wearing a resident’s white coat with a stethoscope strung around his neck, a spiral-bound reference book jammed into his pocket, a satchel in one hand, a clipboard in the other, and a tired, glazed expression on his grimly determined face, a long-legged man continued resolutely down the hospital corridor.
Staring at him, a nurse frowned with confusion and hurried after him. He stopped at Sven Ingerson’s room and lifted the medical chart from the rack on the door, then wearily glanced up at her.
“I need to check in on Mr., uh—” He scanned the page on the chart as he put it on his clipboard. “Ingerson.”
“You do?”
“Did you need to see this patient now, nurse?”
“I don’t believe so,” she replied, wide-eyed and worried-looking.
As he glanced from the chart to her, his brow furrowed deeper. He put his hand on the door, ready to push it open and enter.
She took a step toward the room.
He froze. “Are you new here?” he asked sternly.
“Yes,” she said hesitantly, easing back. “This is my first day in this unit.”
He nodded briskly. The young nurse stood, alert but anxious as he opened the door a crack and peered at Ingerson.
The patient appeared to be asleep, masses of tubes stuck into his arms and nose.
He scanned the chart again. “Hmm.”
“What is it, doctor?” the nurse asked.
“Shouldn’t he be awake by now?”
“But…as you see in the chart, the botulism was too far advanced by the time we saw him. He’s not expected to last the night. All we can do is keep him comfortable.”
“Yes.” He took off his stethoscope and lightly rapped it against his hand while staring at her. He ran a finger up and down the long, flexible cord. His gaze jumped from it, to her thin neck.
“There’s an emergency under way,” he said abruptly. “Don’t you think you should check on the other patients while their nurses are busy trying to save a life? I don’t need my hand held.”
The young nurse blushed fiercely. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…excuse me, doctor.” She hurried down the hall.
As soon as she was gone, he entered the room, shutting the door behind him. “Sven,” he called, his hand on the patient’s chest. “Sven, wake up! The Hydra sent me. The Hydra. Even if you’re asleep, you’ve got to know what that means.” He waited. “Come on, Sven! I can’t give her no for an answer, and you know it.”
He lifted Ingerson’s eyelids. “Yo, Sven!” He shone a light into the glazed eyes, but Sven seemed to be somewhere over the rainbow.
He turned around and started to go through Ingerson’s belongings—the clothes he’d been wearing and his papers—but quickly gave up and simply stuffed them all into his satchel. He walked over to Sven again. “Wake up, goddammit. She’s going to fry us both. I might as well crawl into the bed next to you right now, ’cause that’s where I’ll end up if you don’t tell me where in the hell you put the microfilm, or whatever it is. She won’t tell me what’s on it, the bitch. What does she think, that I’ll steal it from her or something? Goddammit, Sven.” He grabbed Sven by the shoulders and started shaking him. “Wake the hell up!”
“Doctor?”
He looked up. The young nurse was standing in the doorway staring at him, her mouth gaping.
He withdrew his hands and stepped back. “It’s the latest technique, nurse,” he said. “The brain, you see, actually does hear and understand what’s going on, even if the patient appears to be in a deep sleep or coma. So, you just demand that he wake up. Sometimes it works.”
He grabbed his clipboard and headed out the door. “And then sometimes it doesn’t.”
20
About an hour later, Angie changed to a simple yellow cotton dress and walked into the galley. Mike Jones and his assistant, Andrew Brown, were in a corner talking, Brown perched on a counter and Jones sitting in a chair. They smiled in greeting when they saw her, Brown quickly hopping off the counter and retreating to the back of the kitchen with his habitual timidity.
“Please make yourself at home, Miss Amalfi,” Jones said, approaching her. “I leave it to you to look around and decide what you’d like to cook. We’ve got a pretty good selection of spices and foods to choose from.”
“I will, thanks,” Angie said.
“Can I take your things?” Jones asked as he led her to the food storage room.
All she had was her tote bag. “It’s no problem,” she said, putting it down just inside the door. She immediately began checking canned goods on shelves, refrigerated items, and those in an enormous freezer compartment. After last night’s storm, she could understand why everything was so snugly packed and braced. If her kitchen at home had been thrown around the way this galley and storage area was, everything she owned would be in the middle of the floor in a thousand pieces.
She checked the meat and fish, telling herself it didn’t matter that Paavo hadn’t joined her out by the pool. It was clear he wasn’t at all interested in how she would be spending the rest of the afternoon.
Had he joined her now, the only thing he could have done was peel garlic, anyway. He was great at it once she’d showed him the trick of slightly mashing the clove with the handle of the chopping knife to help separate the skin from the meat. He stirred well, too. But he’d be checking his watch every few minutes and wondering when she’d be finished. Good cooking was not something to be accomplished with a stopwatch.
All in all, she decided, she’d be better off without him underfoot. Besides, she was still trying to stay angry at him. Her and Julio? Honestly!
“Did the storm last night bother either of you very much?” she asked Jones and Brown, who stood by, mutely watching her.
“It was all I could do not to fall out of bed,” Jones replied. “I was sick as a dog.”
“It scared me,” said the soft-spoken Brown, hovering behind her.
“How did you do?” Jones asked her.
Angie decided not to tell them about the wall bed incident. “It kept me awake,” was all she offered.
She found some fish fillets. “Oh, Mike, are these fillets Pacific petrale sole, by any chance? Or are they plain old flounder?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.
What kind of cook didn’t know the type of fish in his own kitchen? These boys needed her help even more than she’d thought.
She went to the larder and began loading her arms with onion, garlic, and spices. “Let me help you with that,” Jones said, running to her assistance. Brown shyly hung back, doing only what Jones asked him to.
Together, making several trips, they carried the vegetables, vermicelli, vinegar, butter, and potatoes, as Angie directed, into the work area of the galley. She noticed Jones pick up her tote bag and begin to walk toward the door with it.
“Where are you going with that?” she asked.
He spun around. “1 was just going to…put it on the counter so that it doesn’t get stepped on.”
“You can leave it on the floor by the wall over there. It won’t get hurt. I need all the counter space possible.”
“Whatever you say.” He flashed her one of his deep-dimpled smiles.
Ignoring him for the moment. Angie planned her meal. She’d start with soupe au pistou, a Provençal vegetable soup with carrots, leeks, green beans, zucchini, tomato, and vermicelli, flavored by the pistou, which was made by crushing basil and garlic with
a mortar and pestle, then adding Parmesan cheese and olive oil. Next she’d serve a spinach salad with a vinaigrette dressing. The main course would be poached fish fillets in white wine with mushrooms, served with parsley potatoes. For dessert, she decided on a simple chocolate pot de crême. Due to the ship’s limited provisions, the ingredients of this meal wouldn’t be remarkable, but what she did with them would be.
They needed to prepare the soup first, then the pot de crême and the potatoes, and last of all, just before time to serve, she would poach the fish. All afternoon, with Jones’s assistance and Brown acting as silent backup in the pantry, chopping and dicing, she worked on the meal. Despite the time it took, she looked forward to seeing the expressions on the passengers’ faces when they discovered what it was like to have a meal by a real cook.
She suspected more than one of them thought she was just blowing smoke when she’d talked about being a restaurant reviewer and knowing a bit about gourmet cooking.
There were times when she loved showing off.
She was turning the flame under the potatoes to a low boil when she heard a thud and saw Mike Jones stumble. “Oops, just kicked your tote,” he said. “We’ve really got to do something about it.” He picked it up and handed it to Brown, who’d just emerged from the pantry. “I don’t want anything to get crushed. You have sunglasses in it, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but—”
Just then Paavo entered the room.
“Here to help, are you?” she asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“I’d like to talk to you before dinner, if you’ve got a minute,” Paavo said.
“Excuse me.” Brown started to move toward the door.
“Wait.” Angie walked over to him and took her tote bag. “Everything’s under control here,” she said to the two men. “We can all take a ten-minute break. When we get back, though, we’ll be very busy. It’ll be time to serve the soup, the salad, put the fish on to poach, and season the potatoes. Got it?” Jones nodded. “See you in ten.”
