Dead Sea

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Ten,’ answered Richard grimly. ‘She was a Transpac fifty-two out of Seattle, heading round the world. Planning to stop off in Manila for more supplies.’

  ‘That’s a big vessel to run over – even in the middle of the night, and even if your command is the better part of four hundred metres long and your bridge is a solid thousand feet back from the bows. Did any of the kids survive?’

  ‘One,’ confirmed Richard. ‘That’s how the authorities identified the vessel and were able to bring the case against him in the end. He didn’t stop and search for survivors. He just sailed straight on.’

  Nic shook his head. ‘And he didn’t report anything. Didn’t lower a boat and try and help. Didn’t even notice he had run down something the size of a Transpac fifty-two . . .’

  ‘His first officer took the rap,’ said Richard, scanning Jim’s information. ‘Though he got away with eighteen months’ hard time and kept his papers. Sloppy bridge watch in the middle of the night. Radio equipment faulty. Collision Alarm radar playing up. And apparently no one aboard even noticed the impact. It was a complete mess.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that the first officer was really only another aspect of the way this guy Yamamoto was running his command . . .’

  ‘Looks that way. But the worrying thing is—’ Richard stopped. Thought for a moment. Started over again. ‘One of the worrying things is that the yacht he ran down was twice the size of either Flint or Katapult. And even though Dagupan Maru isn’t as big as his last command, she’s more than big enough to repeat the exercise if he feels so inclined.’

  ‘And why would he?’ demanded Nic. ‘Why would he feel so inclined?’

  ‘Independently of the fact that he also seems to be going for the bottle, you mean?’ demanded Richard cynically.

  ‘Yeah,’ spat Nic. ‘Independently of that.’

  ‘The gossip around the trial was that the Transpac simply got in Yamamoto’s way while he was trying to meet a tight schedule. Demanding owners, not willing to cut anyone any slack – and Yamamoto keen to be their number one commander, so they say.’

  ‘You mean he did it on purpose? It wasn’t just sloppy seamanship?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a “get there no matter who gets hurts” kind of a chap, according to Jim’s note here. He just ran them over when they got in his way. Not criminal negligence. Malice aforethought. Murder.’

  ‘How on earth did he walk away from that?’ Nic shook his head in simple bewilderment.

  ‘No one could prove it,’ shrugged Richard. ‘The Transpac was pushing its luck sailing across the main shipping routes into Manila harbour anyway. And Yamamoto met his employers’ schedule to the minute, so the grateful company arranged for his defence when it came up before the Maritime Court in Quezon City.’

  Light dawned on Nic’s face. ‘And those employers were . . .’

  ‘Luzon Logging.’ Richard nodded. ‘But wait.’ He rode over Nic’s bark of cynical laughter. ‘It gets better . . .’ Richard scrolled down further. ‘The name of the first officer who took the rap and did the eighteen months hard time in Manila City Jail was . . .’

  ‘Sakai Inazo,’ breathed Nic. ‘And he’s aboard the Dagupan Maru with his old commander.’

  ‘Not only that,’ added Richard, ‘but someone paid his hundred-dollar regular squeeze for what they call a “condominium” in the prison – a relatively private area with a real bed and some access to regular sanitation and proper food. Though even so, the man must have been pretty tough in the first place to survive, let alone be healthy enough to go straight back aboard so soon after he came out again.’

  ‘Do tell . . .’ Nic paused for a heartbeat. ‘What do you think’s going on here, Richard?’

  ‘Look at the cargo, Nic. Most of a palace made of priceless wood that’s only just out of legal review by the skin of its teeth; one step ahead of a judicial restraining order, a couple of sea miles in front of the customs people by the look of it.’ He looked across at his friend and business partner.

  ‘Hard men on a desperate voyage,’ murmured Nic. ‘Little short of pirates.’

  ‘And would you look at the rest of the crew,’ emphasized Richard. ‘They all have some kind of criminal record. This guy Senzo Tago, their electrical engineer, has done time for peddling child pornography on the Net . . .’

  ‘Heaven knows what that involved if he was doing it from the child sex capital of the world,’ growled Nic. ‘What do they reckon? One-hundred-thousand child prostitutes in and around the Ermita district of Manila alone . . .’

  ‘That was his address.’ Richard read it off the screen. ‘Four forty, Santa Lucia, Ermita, Manila. Down by the docks, aptly enough. According to this, his defence was that he was just running an online dating agency on the side from his ship’s duties. Online dating for seven- to ten-year-old girls according to the charges, Jim says’ – he sat up, stretched, reached for his coffee and added – ‘it’s probably apropos of nothing, but you know there’s also a flourishing trade in girls of all ages from Manila to Japan. All of it one-way. Most of it by sea . . .’

  ‘Did Luzon Logging defend him as well?’ grunted Nic.

  ‘They did,’ Richard confirmed. ‘And they defended this man Nagase against a charge of pimping – with grievous bodily harm. This chap Izumi for murder. He’s only just been released. And as for this fellow Ido . . .’

  ‘Enough already,’ said Nic. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Dagupan Maru must be one of Luzon Logging’s special go anywhere do anything ships. The kind that were smuggling protected hardwoods out of the supposedly protected forests of Indonesia during the end of the last century and the beginning of this. Destroying irreplaceable habitats and slaughtering endangered wildlife. Now they’re moving priceless timber out of the reach of Japanese courts. And using men who are expert in dealing with Phillipine prostitution rackets at one end – and no doubt the Japanese Yakuza at the other end – to do it. What sort of cargo do you think Captain Yamamoto and his merry crew are used to dealing with?’

  ‘OK. If I accept that they smuggle anything, including child prostitutes, what then?’

  ‘Then I’d say they are clearly the last men on God’s green earth that you want to be racing for Reona Tanaka’s bottle – against your daughter . . .’

  ‘Or against your wife . . .’ countered Nic grimly.

  ‘Not to mention six other women they are likely to catch up with in the middle of the least-visited corner of the emptiest ocean in the world . . .’

  Nic was silent for a moment, eyes narrow, mind clearly racing as he sipped his coffee – apparently without tasting a drop. ‘So, how do we warn them?’ Nic asked at last.

  ‘Radio, email, whatever will get through,’ said Richard. ‘But they are passing out of an area of weak signal into an area of almost no signal at all. And besides, speaking for Robin at least, if her blood’s up she’ll go for that bottle no matter who might be standing in her way.’

  ‘Yeah. Liberty’s the same,’ admitted Nic. ‘Once she gets the bit between her teeth, there’s no stopping her.’ He took another sip of coffee. ‘So how do we get out there to watch their backs and keep them safe?’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said Richard. ‘There’s nothing there to get out to.’

  ‘Nothing?’ echoed Nic. ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

  ‘Look at it like this,’ said Richard. He downsized Jim Bourne’s email to the toolbar and clicked up his Google Earth account. ‘If Dagupan Maru had followed the normal course between Tokyo and Vancouver, it would have taken her up on a great circle route into the Bering Sea through this strait here between the Aleutian Islands off Alaska, see?’ The screen went blue. The Aleutian Islands appeared, like a string of pearls between Alaska and the eastern end of Russia. The point of Richard’s cursor automatically gave the LatLong reading wherever it pointed. He held it over the island he was indicating. Five two point seven; one seven four, it read.

  ‘Yeah . . .’ said Nic uncer
tainly.

  ‘That airbase there on Shemya Island?’ Richard insisted.

  ‘Eareckson. I see it . . .’ Nic nodded.

  ‘You know what the next inhabited town south of there on latitude one seven four is?’ asked Richard.

  ‘No idea,’ admitted Nic.

  ‘Auckland.’

  ‘Auckland, New Zealand?’

  ‘Yup.’ Richard nodded forcefully. ‘Then Wellington. Then Antarctica. In fact, Antarctica is the only major land mass south of Eareckson. Because North Island is only that – an island. The only land south of Anchorage, Alaska is Hawaii. Hawaii is the only heavily populated area in the North Pacific Ocean. Otherwise it’s islands and atolls – Wake, Midway, Johnston, Howland.

  ‘I’ve heard of Wake and Midway . . .’ Nic frowned.

  ‘Only because they’re inhabited – mostly by United States forces personnel. You haven’t heard of the others because nobody lives on them. Robin’s heading for French Frigate Shoals as her next way station; it’s the only land left on her route before she hits Vancouver – but there’s no one actually living there. It’s a deserted runway for emergency landings for flights between Honolulu and Midway.’ Richard paused and looked over at his frowning friend. ‘French Frigate Shoals will be the nearest land to where the bottle is due to end up,’ he said forcefully. ‘And French Frigate Shoals are the better part of a thousand miles south-west of where the bottle’s due to be when they all reach it. You see the problem? There is literally nothing there.’

  ‘OK,’ countered Nic. ‘So how do we put something there?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ admitted Richard. ‘But it’s only the first question of several if we’re going down this road.’

  ‘Fine,’ snapped Nic, pulling himself erect once more and beginning to prowl round the room once more. ‘So the first question is: how do we put something there? What’s the next question?’

  ‘The next question is,’ answered Richard thoughtfully, ‘how do we get ourselves out to whatever we do manage to put there?’

  Out

  Professor Satang S. Sittart left the Luzon Logging building in Quezon City, Manila, in a chauffeured Bentley Arnage at eight on the dot and took the ten a.m. PAL Airbus a380 from Ninoy Aquino International Airport to Narita International, Tokyo, two mornings later. Like his enemies, Richard Mariner and Nicholas Greenbaum, he had access to private jets but, like them, he took commercial flights when they were convenient.

  One of the many benefits of Sittart’s position and influence was that he hardly needed to bother with customs and immigration when he did go commercial. Two-hour check-in times and so forth were not for the likes of him. He stepped straight out of the tan leather luxury of the Arnage into the almost equal graciousness of the first-class departure lounge, therefore. And here, suited by Manila’s leading tailor in black silk, shod by its leading custom cobbler in black Oxford shoes and carrying only the black kid-skin travelling case containing his laptop, he fitted right in and took his ease until an obsequious attendant informed him in a whisper that his flight was called.

  One of the few benefits derived from the damage to his ears was that the professor no longer experienced any discomfort from changes in pressure, so he was happy to relax in his first-class accommodation as soon as his flight was airborne and allow the lissom air hostesses to fill his sparkling glass and his much darker fantasies equally efficiently and fully. Particularly as she had been unwise enough to grimace very slightly when she first saw the box-like hearing aids he wore clamped astride the polished ivory dome of his skull, though she had taken his laptop and put it in an overhead compartment with a modest smile.

  But he soon shrugged off his darker musings, for he had more immediate matters to occupy his mind. And, oddly enough, they were almost identical to the preoccupations filling the minds of Richard Mariner and Nic Greenbaum. Except that the North Pacific Ocean, graveyard or not, was Professor Sittart’s ocean. He had assets in place. And he knew exactly how and when he could reach them. Though he was still prone to lapsing into the deepest of brown studies as he finalized the details of exactly what he planned to do when he reached his final destination. The final destination, indeed, of several other people too. Or so he planned.

  After a while he called the stewardess and asked her to reach down his laptop from the overhead compartment. The sight of her cafe au lait skin glimpsed as her blouse buttons strained apart was the last distraction he allowed himself before he placed the laptop on the table in front of him and began to scroll through its capacious memory.

  A car was waiting for him as he exited Narita International Airport at four fifteen local time. He reset the all but priceless Patek Philippe on his wrist to one hour ahead of Manila time and then he sat silently in the back during the eighty-minute drive into the heart of the city. The laptop went on to a fold-down table, and the car, unlike the a380, allowed Internet access. He accessed his office files and read his most recent emails as he purred along the Kanto Highway like a tiger beginning its hunt. He did not look up from his work until the highway swung into the heart of the city and began a southward curve round Tokyo Bay.

  Sittart favoured the Grand Hotel in Shinagawa and had taken a suite on its top floor facing east from which he could look over the bustling docks. The doorway from the corridor opened into a reception room with coffee table and soft chairs, a flat-screen TV that doubled as a mirror and a writing desk with Wi-Fi access. The silent air smelt faintly of lotus blossom and a vase of flowers stood on an occasional table by the window. A bathroom opened off one side and a bedroom off the other. A third door led through to an intimate little dining room whose corner windows allowed diners to overlook both the docks to the east and the lights of Takanawa District with the Sengaku-ji Temple beyond them to the north. The east-facing windows stood along one wall of the central reception room and then continued along the bedroom wall on the far side of the huge bed. Sittart walked straight to the reception room window and stood there, framed against the stormy sky, like a Rajah considering his domain.

  The sun was setting away behind him and its rays pierced the ragged overcast strongly enough to send the hotel’s long shadow creeping relentlessly out over the water and the myriad vessels working or waiting upon it. Sittart felt that was a pleasing symbol of his own spreading power and influence. He came as close as he ever came to smiling. He continued to stand, lost in thought, as the bellboy unpacked his case and put its contents in wardrobes, drawers and cupboards.

  When the boy was finished, he looked across at the back of the hotel’s latest guest, framed against the darkening sky with the strange boxes on either side of his head giving him an almost alien look. The bell boy decided against trying for his usual ten dollars. Certainly, the elegance of the luggage and the perfection of the tailoring – let alone the glimpse of the top-of-the-range Patek Philippe – would normally have promised ten dollars and maybe more. But there was something about the strange, silent guest that seemed to forbid even the fleeting intimacy of a tip.

  Oddly for such a powerful man, Sittart added nothing to the pristine perfection of the accommodation. No character or personality. Once his personal effects were packed away, the room seemed almost to be empty again except for the slim laptop sitting in its kid-skin case on the coffee table. And, when the black-suited Sittart stepped into a shadow behind a massive silk curtain and apparently disappeared into the darkness there, the room seemed for an instant to be completely untenanted. Except that, the moment the door whispered closed behind the departing bellboy, his cell phone began to ring.

  Sittart stepped back out into the middle of the room as he pulled the phone out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen before he pressed ‘connect’ and held the instrument close to his face, watching the display. The phone was cutting edge and top of the range, but Sittart used few of its more advanced functions. He had chosen it because it had a powerful internal speaker which was always set to maximum volume. The voice he heard matched the id
entification portrait he was watching. Both belonged to Nanaka Oda, one of the Tokyo port officials he kept on a secret retainer from one of Luzon Logging’s many slush funds.

  ‘Yes?’ His Japanese was harsh – his natural tone in any language held something of a snarl.

  ‘There are several matters which we need to discuss.’ Her voice was steady. Unusually so. Most people talking to the professor tended to sound a little nervous.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Not on the phone. We need to meet.’

  ‘You know where I am. Come here.’

  She did not hesitate, which was, again, unusual, especially in a woman, the professor noted. ‘My shift has just finished. Shall I come now?’

  ‘At once.’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  He broke connection and continued to stare at the woman’s ID photograph for a moment longer. Then he looked around the room with something of a start, as though he was seeing it for the first time. Which, in a way, he was. His mind, which had been distant since he had glanced at the coffee-coloured curve of the air hostess’s breast, seemed to become aware of immediate sensations once again. And he realized that he was hungry.

  Automatically, he glanced at the courtesy folder beside his laptop. Then he looked across to the old-fashioned telephone handset. He crossed to it and looked down, frowning. It was not the hands-free speaker phone he had ordered. He hated using old-fashioned handsets because he had to press the receiver to his boxlike hearing aid. He scrutinized the phone more closely, trying to work out how a hands-free function might be engaged. This consideration brought the subject of his almost dreamlike concentration back to mind again, but he dismissed all further thoughts of Robin and Richard Mariner for the time being. Nanaka Oda would be here soon. He would make her order food. Perhaps even allow her to share it with him while they talked. The idea appealed to him. She seemed to have some interesting potential. He picked up the red leather folder and opened it at the room service menu. After a moment of more silent consideration, he put it down again and crossed to the bathroom.