by Peter Tonkin
Richard forced speculation about Sin’s face to the back of his mind, and thoughts about the food aboard his ship as well. For Sin’s words struck a chord. ‘So the passage over was rough?’ he asked with a frown. He knew better than most what it must have cost to confiscate a Cantonese chef’s deep-fat fryer. And forbidding him to fry in his wok was almost unheard of.
Captain Sin shook his head in a curt negative. ‘It was not as I expected – feared, rather. Or as the weather predictors threatened. It was …’ He leaned closer. ‘Like the Legend of Dschou Tschu, where the young man Dschou Tschu goes into the forest and the great grey ghost tiger stalks him. The tiger who is so powerful that his roaring becomes a terrible storm. A tai fun. It was as though we were little Dschou Tschu and the storm tiger was stalking us all the way over from the Fragrant Harbour …’
Richard’s lips twitched towards a smile of familiarity at the old Chinese name for Hong Kong, but then his lean face folded into a frown. Captain Sin was not a man given to sudden flights of fancy or extravagantly imaginative ideas. That, indeed, was part of his strength as a good, solid, utterly reliable commander. But the image of a storm tiger stalking Sulu Queen as she came east across the Pacific chimed all too vividly with what Dr Jones of NOAA had said about the impending ARkStorm, and with his own unsettled feelings every time he looked away westwards across the Pacific. He had a sudden, disorientatingly vivid mental image of Sin’s mythic beast, a monster, miles high, made of granite-coloured cloud banded with anthracite-black stripes, its rain-grey foreclaws brushing the ocean’s restless surface, its jaws a thousand miles wide and its eyes the yellow of lightning bolts, prowling out of the western Pacific and eastwards towards California, dragging a tail of destruction behind it that was longer than the jet stream. A sense of renewed urgency stabbed through him. Something deeper even than the wish of a businessman with possibly millions of dollars riding on getting Sulu Queen back on schedule. Suddenly he wanted his ship, his wife, his friends and himself well away from California – and as soon as humanly possible.
SIX
‘My God,’ breathed Robin. ‘She’s just so beautiful!’ And, right at the back of her mind, was a wicked little thought that, compared to her current quarters aboard Queen Mary, this was very much more like the steely, stark twenty-first-century ambience of the Hyatt or the Westin up in LA that she hankered after in spite of Richard and his boyish enthusiasm for the bygone age that Queen Mary represented.
The neat little Bell settled on Maxima’s helipad like a dragonfly, its tail pointing out over the edge of the third upper deck, snub-nose pointing at the smoked glass doors into the rear bridge deck and the ladder up on to the flying bridge that bisected them. Everything aboard seemed to be white paint and blond wood, from the golf balls of the navigation equipment she wore like a crown at her highest point to the sections that folded out and down to water level. Robin loosened her safety belt and slid the door open, pulling off her headset as she did so. The noise of the motors died, leaving only the slowing thrum of the idling rotors. A breeze brought to her nostrils not the smell of avgas or dock water she had expected, but something like the aroma of a Rolls Royce car salesroom. She climbed out, stooping automatically and running a thoughtless hand through her hair as the downdraught undid what little coiffeur she had bothered with after her shower this morning. Equally automatically, she crossed to the rear of this deck to pause beneath the Bell’s tail rotor and look down.
Immediately below her the second deck stepped out towards the stern, the pale wood of its flooring lost under a confusion of deck chairs and tables. Then the main deck stepped out and back sternwards again, at its centre a swimming pool whose forward edge was lost underneath the overhang of the gallery above it. And, beyond that, the whole of the yacht’s aft section had been folded out, providing a platform a foot or so above sea level from which swimmers could enter the ocean or sailors could climb aboard the motor boats and jet skis clustered there. Though there were, in fact, no bathers. And the men beside the boats and skis seemed to be crewmembers running checks and maintenance. Even from the outside, the extravagance was astonishing. In any other context it would have been offensive to see this much money squandered on a rich man’s toy.
But Nic was old money, thought Robin with unusual indulgence. His forbears had rubbed shoulders with the Astors, the Livingstons, the Roosevelts, the Dudleys and the Winthrops: Uncle Tom Getty and all. His father’s summer home was in Hyannis Port, next along from the Kennedy compound. It was in the waters of Nantucket Sound that the old man had taught his granddaughter Liberty to sail, a skill which she in turn had taken to Olympic standard. Now she and her all-female crew were getting ready to give Katapult8 a really tough shakedown run south towards Mexico tomorrow. With Maxima in close pursuit, if she could keep up.
Nic had used the fortunes of Greenbaum International to enormously good effect. It was he who funded initiatives like Self-help International, giving men and women in an astonishing range of countries the chance, the skills and the tools to work their way out of poverty. He was behind the MicroBank projects that loaned tens and hundreds of dollars at no interest to women all over the world who were fighting to start their own micro-businesses and earn enough to raise and educate their families. Not just money either – schooling where it was needed, too, not to mention peer-to-peer tutoring and business advice. Everywhere from Mauritania and Manila to the Maldives and Mexico, women who had lost their husbands to war, drugs, AIDs, the lure of big cities, restless feet or roving eyes were supported in their attempts to work and trade themselves out of poverty, and to teach their own sons and daughters through their experience and their example to follow in their footsteps.
But on the other hand, it was also Greenbaum International that gave tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands annually to projects designed to combat a range of diseases, including AIDs, tuberculosis and the creeping danger of malaria as global warming spread the climate that deadly Anopheles mosquitoes could live in wider and wider, higher and higher. Year after year, Greenbaum International won the International Ethical Industry Award – the Nobel Prize for businesses.
It had been Nic – and Richard – who had funded the project where Liberty and Robin exercised their love of sailing as they raced in opposite directions across the Pacific, in specially designed yachts, to bring the world’s attention to the dangers of the rotting rubbish floating in the Sargasso Sea at the heart of the Northern Ocean. A dead sea of rubbish and plastic the size of Texas and growing. There was hardly a cause or an initiative designed to protect nature and support those fighting to live well within it anywhere in the world that was not getting support, guidance or expertise from Greenbaum International.
So if Nic wanted a new toy, he was welcome to it in Robin’s book. Even a toy that must have cost a good deal more than Sulu Queen herself. There had been something like this at the last International Boat Show Robin had visited, priced at a cool fifty million pounds. ‘A little extravagant, eh?’ asked Nic quietly, appearing like a genie at her shoulder. ‘What do you Brits say? Over the top? Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Something like that,’ she allowed grudgingly.
‘It kept half of the shipwrights in Istanbul employed for the better part of a year,’ he exaggerated cheerfully. ‘Not to mention designers and interior decorators from all over the world.’
‘Money well spent, then.’ She shrugged.
‘Money well invested …’ he teased. ‘A bit like the old Cunard Line keeping John Brown shipyards on the Clyde busy during the great depression of the nineteen thirties with your current accommodation.’
‘Your magnanimity knows no bounds,’ she riposted – and then felt that she had gone too far, for the phrase came out more tartly than she had meant.
But he didn’t seem to notice. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he continued. ‘When we go below I’ll show you my pictures of Dahlia Blanca. Get you ready for the other part of this little jaunt.’
‘Dahlia Blanca?’
‘Named for the national flower of Mexico. Kept half of the builders in Jalisco busy for the better part of a year. Architects from Guadalajara to Mexico City, interior designers, painters, carpenters, tilers, rug-weavers, antique dealers, artists, landscape gardeners, plumbers, electricians, pool installers, cooks, house staff, grounds staff, security staff … Not to mention the guys who’ve built the marina and secure accommodation waiting for this little lady down there. And, of course, land agents, estate agents, local government agents, central government agents and lawyers from Chihuahua to Cancun. Heaven alone knows how many Mexican families will make it through to the next Dia de Muertos because of Dahlia Blanca and Maxima.’
‘Dahlia Blanca is your little pied-à-terre in Puerto Banderas and where we’ll be staying, I take it?’
‘Some pied,’ he answered, leading her forward once more through the smoked-glass doors and past the reflection of the Bell’s little snub nose. ‘Some terre. Wait till you see it.’
But Robin found herself too distracted to answer. And in truth, her breath had been taken away. For as he finished speaking she found herself standing beside a column of pure, clear crystal perhaps two metres in diameter. It reached from above her head down through the deck at her feet into a seemingly bottomless well, the shaft of which was banded with darkness and varicoloured light. Its glassy facade was wrapped in fans of silver which seemed to cling in dazzling cobwebs to its exterior, catching the light and shimmering like the surface of the sea. It was only when she saw something moving upwards out of the banded depths in the middle of it that she realized it was hollow. And that it was the lift to the lower decks.
SEVEN
The Port Authority Building at 301 East Ocean Boulevard was almost as choked as the docks. Which was hardly a surprise, thought Richard, but at least a visit there would let him know how soon the docks would be clear so Sulu Queen could unload, reload and return to her tight schedule. There were a lot of people impatient to ship stuff in and out through the gridlock at the dockside, and the men and women who worked in this building were the first port of call for those who wished matters to be expedited pretty bloody quickly. Not least among these was Heritage Mariner, given Richard’s gathering worry that an ARkStorm might be approaching like a monstrous, mythical tiger prowling along the wake of the Sulu Queen.
Richard and Captain Sin came to a standstill at the back of a crowd that seemed to be intent on invading Suite 1400. The squat Sin could see nothing except for the backs of the crowd in front, and was too full of his own importance to rise on to his tiptoes like a child. So he just stood and fumed with yet more frustration. Richard, well aware of the Oriental concept of face, was careful not to remark on this. He was easily able to look over the tops of the heads packed along the hall between himself and the suite’s closed door. And he was not alone in being able to do so. On the way over here in a miraculously mobile taxi, they had not only avoided the worst of the traffic jams but had also come past West Broadway, one block up, and picked up Antoine Prudhomme from Southey-Bell, a legal-trained executive from the local shipping agents Heritage Mariner shared with Greenbaum International, who was there to explain – and apply as necessary – any legal implications concerning the hold-up, particularly in regard of a lawsuit against the port authority if Richard wished to proceed in that direction.
Antoine was Richard’s equal in height but he lacked the Englishman’s deep-chested solidity. Somewhere in his maternal great-grandmother’s French Creole genes lay a far more willowy figure, passed on to him several generations down the line. Every time Richard met Antoine he was put in mind of the paintings of Modigliani and El Greco with their brightly coloured but strangely elongated figures. But the effect was at least partly illusory – Antoine had played basketball at college, city and state level. Only a catastrophically broken ankle had stopped him turning professional – and left him with a slight but permanent limp. So he settled on a good degree from Loyola Law, LA, and a career with Southey-Bell instead.
Now the two tall men stood shoulder to shoulder in a kind of entente cordiale, looking over the crowd. ‘I don’t know what I can do,’ Antoine was declaring. ‘Get on to our paralegals and sue the port authority, I guess.’ He pulled a hand back over his fashionably short, prematurely grey, tightly curled hair. He gave a peculiarly Gallic shrug.
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ said Richard, unapologetically English in his hesitation to get combative attorneys involved at the drop of a hat. ‘You’re enough of a litigator to be going on with, Antoine. Why don’t we see if there’s anything we can do to help before we reach for more law.’
The big double doors into the suite opened as he spoke and a harassed-looking man called, ‘Come on in, folks. Come in and sit down. There should be room. We’ll deal with each and all of you just as quickly as we can, though I can’t promise we’ll get anything moving in the immediate time frame.’ He waved them all in, his arms stick-like as they protruded from the short sleeves of his immaculately laundered white shirt. His tie was also short and failed to reach his belt buckle, despite being loosened so he could unbutton his collar.
The crowd surged forward again as the official stood back. Richard, Antoine and Sin went with them. Richard forgot all about calling Robin as he tried to work out which group they should join – if there was anyone else here on a mission similar to theirs. Sin was the only man in a naval outfit, so it was no use looking for other officers or shiphandlers judging by their uniforms. Most of the rest of the vociferous crowd were in jeans and T-shirts or lightweight business suits. Men off the vessels, and their owners’ corporate lawyers, Richard calculated. Sailors and sharks. But there were several other heavy-set men in Day-Glo protective clothing whose faces were little short of murderous – longshoremen, Richard guessed. And, finally, several more purposeful-looking men and women who filled their army-issue camouflage-patterned outfits to bursting.
Richard assumed the squad in new-issue alternate ACUs were National Guard or regular army advisors sent to help them. Help was what he needed but also what he had to offer, so the men in camos seemed the best place to begin. Especially as, unlike the longshoremen, they looked calm and controlled. He started searching for someone wearing officer pips. His eye soon fell on a compact, decisive, dark-skinned individual whose ID flash showed his name to be Guerrero and whose gold, leaf-shaped badges revealed he was a major. It only took a moment for Richard to shoulder his way through the crowd with Antoine and Sin close behind, so that when the muscular guardsmen sat down, the three Heritage Mariner men were sitting right beside them.
‘Good afternoon, Major Guerrero,’ said Richard easily, leaning forward and sideways as they settled into their chairs. ‘I’m Richard Mariner of Heritage Mariner Shipping.’ He reached across in the introduction and shook hands with the major, whose youthful, dark chocolate eyes regarded him calculatingly from behind black lashes that would have flattered a model in a make-up advert, and from beneath raised eyebrows. ‘These are my colleagues, Captain Sin and Antoine Prudhomme.’
‘Jose Guerrero. Major, California National Guard, Sacramento Division.’ The handshake was firm and dry. The nod to the other two curt but courteous.
‘Good to meet you, Major. My ship Sulu Queen is half laden and stuck in her berth, unable to discharge or load up – not that we have any idea where her next cargo actually is at the moment.’ Richard continued companionably, ‘What’s your problem?’
‘Comparable to yours, sir,’ answered the major easily, with only a trace of a Mexican accent. His voice was almost as deep as Richard’s, its tone calm and thoughtful. ‘I have a consignment of containers on the dockside. Emergency supplies, everything from field hospitals to chemical latrines – freighted down from Mather, Sacramento on the orders of the governor himself, with me and my people riding shotgun. They’ve been taken off the freight cars and just dumped on the dockside while I try and work out where they’ll be most useful if the peop
le at NOAA are correct with their weather predictions.’
‘Back in Sacramento, from the sound of things,’ said Richard.
‘That’s as may be, sir. But my orders are to make them available to the authorities here in LA, and at the moment I can’t even move them west out to Fort MacArthur or east back inland to the National Guard HQ at Los Alamitos. They’re stuck on the docks now. Holding everything else up, as far as I can ascertain.’
