“We interviewed a great number of local fisherman,” Tony said.
Sloane overrode him. “The idea was to search areas where fishermen lost nets. The seafloor around here is basically an extension of the desert, so I figured anything that could snag a net must be man-made, ergo a shipwreck.”
“Not necessarily,” Juan said.
“We know that now.” Sloane’s voice was laced with defeat. “We flew over a bunch of possibilities with a metal detector and found nothing.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. The currents have had a few million years to expose bedrock projections that could easily catch a net,” Juan said and Sloane nodded. “So you talked to fishermen. Anyone else?”
Her mouth turned downward as she said, “Luka. He acted as a guide but I never much cared for him. And there was the South African chopper pilot. Pieter DeWitt’s his name. But no one knew why we were asking about nets and we never told Piet or Luka what ship we were looking for.”
“Don’t forget Papa Heinrick and his giant metal snakes,” Tony said tartly. He was trying to further embarrass Sloane.
One of Juan’s eyebrows lifted. “Giant snakes?”
“It’s nothing,” Sloane said. “Just a story we heard from a crazy old fisherman.”
There came a gentle knock on the door. Maurice appeared bearing a plastic tray. Juan had to suppress a smile at the repulsed look on the chief steward’s face.
In a word, Maurice was fastidious, a man who shaved twice a day, polished his shoes each morning, and would change a shirt if he found a crease. He was right at home in the opulent confines of the Oregon, but get him on the public parts of the vessel and he had the look of a Muslim walking into a pigsty.
In deference to the ruse they were playing on their guests he’d removed his suit jacket and tie and had actually rolled up the cuffs of his dress shirt. Although Juan had a complete dossier on every member of the Corporation, the one piece of information even he didn’t know was Maurice’s age. Speculation ran anywhere from sixty-five to eighty. Yet he held the tray aloft on an arm as steady as one of the Oregon’s derricks and set dishes and glasses down without spilling a drop.
“Green tea,” he announced, his English accent catching Tony’s attention. “Dim sum, pot stickers, and lo mein noodles with chicken.” He plucked a folded piece of paper from his apron and handed it to Juan. “Mr. Hanley asked me to give you this.”
Juan unfolded the note while Maurice set out plates, napkins, and silverware, none of which matched but as least the linens were clean.
Max had written: She’s lying through her teeth.
Juan looked toward the hidden camera. “That’s obvious.”
“What’s obvious?” Sloane asked after taking an approving sip of tea.
“Hmm? My first officer is reminding me that the longer we’re here the later we’re going to be at our next port of call.”
“And where’s that, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Thank you, Maurice, that will be all.” The steward bowed out and Cabrillo answered Sloane’s question. “Cape Town. We’re carrying lumber from Brazil en route to Japan, but we’re picking up a couple of containers in Cape Town headed for Mumbai.”
“This really is a tramp steamer, isn’t it?” Sloane asked. It was evident in her voice she was impressed. “I didn’t think any still existed.”
“Not many. Containerization has all but taken over, but there are a few of us picking up crumbs.” He gestured around the dingy dining room. “Unfortunately, the crumbs are getting smaller so we don’t have the money to put back into the Oregon. I’m afraid the old girl’s disintegrating around us.”
“Still,” Sloane persisted, “it must be a romantic life.”
The sincerity of how she said it took Juan aback. He had always felt the vagabond existence of a tramp ship roaming from port to port, living almost hand-to-mouth rather than being a cog in the industrial machine that maritime commerce had become was indeed a romantic notion, a way of unhurried life that was virtually gone forever. He smiled and saluted her with his tea. “Yeah, sometimes it is.”
The warmth of her return smile told him they had shared something intimate.
He roused himself to get on with the interview. “Captain Ulenga, do you know anything about metal snakes?”
“No, Cap’ain,” the Namibian said and touched his temple. “Papa Heinrick isn’t right in the head. And when he gets a bottle, well, you don’t want to know him.”
Juan turned his attention back to Sloane. “What was the name of the ship you were looking for?”
It was obvious she was reluctant to give it so he let it pass. “Doesn’t matter. I have no interest in looking for sunken treasure.” He chuckled. “Or giant metal snakes. Is that where you were headed today, the place where this Heinrick fellow saw his snakes?”
Even Sloane realized how ridiculous she had to look in Cabrillo’s eyes because she flushed a little. “It was our last lead. I figured we’d come this far, we might as well see it through. Sounds kinda dumb now.”
“Kinda?” Juan mocked.
Linc knocked on the mess hall’s door frame. “She’s clean, Captain.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lincoln.” He’d asked Linc to search the Pinguin for contraband, like drugs or weapons, just to be safe. “Captain Ulenga, can you tell me anything about the yacht that attacked you?”
“I’ve seen it at Walvis a couple of times. She comes maybe every month for a year or two. I think she’s from South Africa ’cause only the folks down there can afford such a boat.”
“Never talked to her crew or anyone who knew them?”
“No, sir. They come in, fuel up, and go again.”
Juan leaned back in his chair, cocking an elbow over the seat back. He tried to link the facts together and come up with a coherent explanation but nothing really fit. Certain that Sloane had left out crucial elements from her story, he knew he’d never piece the puzzle together and had to decide how much he wanted to pursue this. Rescuing Geoffrey Merrick remained their top priority, and on that front they had enough problems without adding Sloane Macintyre’s. Still, something nagged him.
Tony Reardon suddenly spoke up. “We’ve told you everything we can, Captain Cabrillo. I would really like to get off your ship. We have a long trip back to port.”
“Yes,” Juan muttered distractedly and refocused his attention. “Yes, of course, Mr. Reardon. I don’t understand why you were attacked. It’s possible that there is a lost ship out here loaded with treasure and you got too close to someone’s operation. If they are working without government permission they very well might have resorted to violence.” He gave Tony and Sloane a frank stare. “If that’s the case, I advise you both to leave Namibia as quickly as you can. You’re both in over your heads.”
Reardon nodded at that advice but Sloane looked like she was going to ignore it. Juan let it go. It wasn’t his concern.
“Mr. Lincoln,” he said, “would you please escort our guests back to their boat. If they need fuel please see that it is taken care of.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The group stood as if on cue. Juan leaned across the table to shake hands with Justus Ulenga and Tony Reardon. When he grasped Sloane’s she pulled him forward slightly and said, “May I speak to you in private?”
“Of course.” Cabrillo looked at Linc. “Take them to the Pinguin. I’ll escort Ms. Macintyre myself.”
They took their seats as soon as the group left. Sloane studied him the way a jeweler inspects a diamond that he is about to cut, looking for the tiniest flaw that could ruin the gem. She came to some sort of decision, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the table.
“I think you’re a fraud.”
Juan had to suppress a guffaw. “Excuse me,” he finally stammered.
“You. This ship. Your crew. None of it is what it appears to be.”
Cabrillo fought to keep his expression neutral and the blood from draining from his face. In the years since h
e’d founded the Corporation and started traipsing around the globe on a succession of ships all named Oregon, no one had ever thought they were anything but what they appeared to be. They’d had harbor officials, inspectors of every kind, even a canal pilot on their transits of Panama, and no one had shown the slightest suspicion about the ship or its crew.
She doesn’t know, he thought. She’s fishing. He had to admit to himself that they hadn’t pulled out all the tricks they utilized when they were in port and about to be inspected, but there was no way an untrained person who’d been aboard for all of thirty minutes could see through their carefully laid deception. His heart slowed as he came to this realization.
“Care to explain?” he invited casually.
“The little things, for one. Your helmsman was wearing a Rolex exactly like the one my father had. That’s a two-thousand-dollar watch. A bit too nice if you guys are as poor as you say.”
“It’s a fake,” Juan replied.
“A knock-off wouldn’t last five minutes in the salt air. I know because I had one when I was a teenager and working on my father’s fishing boat after he retired from the merchant marines.”
Okay, Juan said to himself, she’s not completely untrained when it comes to ships. “Maybe it is real but he got it from a fence who stole it. You’d have to ask him.”
“That’s a possibility,” Sloane said. “But what about your steward? I’ve been working in London for the past five years and recognize English tailoring when I see it. Between his Church’s dress shoes, custom suit pants, and handmade shirt, Maurice was sporting about four thousand dollars’ worth of duds. I doubt he bought them off a fence.”
Juan chuckled, imagining Maurice wearing anything secondhand. “He’s actually richer than Croesus but is—how would the English put it—dotty. He’s the black sheep of an old-money family who has been knocking around the globe since he turned eighteen and got his inheritance. He approached me last year when we were in Mombassa, asked to be our steward, and said we wouldn’t have to pay him. Who was I to turn him down?”
“Right,” Sloane said drawing out the word.
“It’s true, honest.”
“I’ll leave that for now. But what about you and Mr. Lincoln? There aren’t a whole lot of Americans working aboard ships because Asians are willing to do the jobs at a fraction of the wage. If the company who owns this vessel is as tight as you claim, the crew would be Pakistanis or Indonesians.” Juan made to reply but she cut him off. “Let me guess, you work for a pittance, too?”
“My mattress isn’t exactly stuffed with cash, Ms. Macintyre.”
“I bet.” She raked her hand through her hair. “Those are the little things I figured you would explain away. How about this? When I first saw your ship there wasn’t any smoke coming from the funnel.”
Uh-oh, Juan thought, recalling how the engineer had forgotten to turn on the smoke generator until after the Pinguin was in visible range. At the time Juan hadn’t thought it a big deal, but that oversight was coming back to haunt them.
“I first thought that the ship had been abandoned but then I saw you were making headway. A few minutes later, smoke starts pouring from the stack, a good amount of it, in fact. Interestingly, the exact same amount when you were charging toward us at twenty knots as when I was on the bridge and noticed the telegraph was set to all stop. And speaking of your charge, there is no way a vessel this size could turn that fast unless you have isopod directional thrusters, which is a technology developed long after this ship was built. Care to explain that away?”
“I’m just curious why you even care,” Juan hedged.
“Because someone tried to kill me today and I want to know why and I think you can help.”
“I’m sorry, Sloane, but I’m just the captain of a rust bucket not long for the breakers yard. I can’t help you.”
“So you’re not denying what I saw.”
“I don’t know what you saw but there’s nothing special about the Oregon or her crew.”
She stood up and walked unerringly to where the tiny camera had been mounted in the frame of an old picture of an Indian actress who’d been famous fifteen years ago. She pulled the picture from the wall and the camera popped free to dangle by its wire. “Oh, really?”
This time blood did drain from Juan’s face.
“I noticed it when you said ‘that’s obvious’ after getting the note from Maurice. I assume someone is monitoring us right now.” She didn’t wait for Juan to reply. “I’ll make a deal with you, Captain Cabrillo. You stop lying to me and I’ll stop lying to you. I’ll even go first.” She sat back across from him. “Tony and I didn’t hook up through an Internet chat room. We work together in the security division of DeBeers and we really are looking for a sunken ship that might be loaded with about a billion dollars’ worth of diamonds. Do you know anything about diamonds?”
“Only that they’re rare, expensive, and if you give one to a woman you damned well better mean it.”
That made her smile. “Two out of three.”
“Two out of three, huh? I know they’re expensive and I know they’re rare so you must have men casually giving you diamonds all the time. You’re certainly attractive enough.”
Her smile turned into a little laugh. “Ah, no. They are expensive and you should mean it, but diamonds aren’t rare. They’re not as common as semiprecious stones but they’re not as scarce as you’re led to believe. The price is kept artificially inflated because one company controls about ninety-five percent of the market. They control all the mines so they can set any price they wish. Every time a new diamond field is discovered they are there to buy it up and eliminate any chance of competition. It’s a cartel so tight it makes OPEC look like amateurs. It’s so controlling that several executives would be arrested for antitrust violations if they ever set foot in the United States.
“They dribble out stones from their vaults at a very selective pace in order to keep prices at a constant. If inventories dwindle they increase production and when there is an excess of stones they hoard them in their London vaults. Bearing all this in mind, what do you think would happen if a billion dollars in diamonds were ever to be dumped in the marketplace?”
“Prices would drop.”
“And we lose our monopoly and the whole system comes crashing down. All those women out there would realize the rocks on their fingers aren’t forever after all. It would also ripple through the world’s economy, destabilizing gold prices and currencies.”
That was something Juan knew a little about since it was only a couple months ago that he and the crew thwarted an attempt to flood the world’s gold market. “I see your point,” he said.
“If such a treasure-laden ship existed, there are two ways our office would prevent this from happening. Number one is wait to see if someone else finds the diamonds and simply buy them all outright. Obviously this would be expensive, so we would want to take the second route.”
“Check to see if the rumor of a sunken treasure is true and find it for yourselves.”
Sloane touched the tip of her nose. “Bingo. I was the person who first pieced together the story behind the treasure so I was given the lead on this trip. Tony’s ostensibly my assistant but he’s absolutely worthless. This is a big deal for me and my career. If I could find the stones I would probably be named VP.”
“Where did the diamonds come from?” Juan asked, interested in what she had to say despite himself.
“Fascinating story there. They were originally mined in Kimberley by members of a tribe called the Herero. The Herero king knew there was a battle coming with the German occupiers of his homeland and thought if he had the diamonds he could use them to buy English protection. For a decade or so his men worked in Kimberley and snuck stones back to Hereroland when their contracts ended. From what I was able to learn, workers would cut themselves in the arm or leg a couple of months before starting their contracts. When they arrived at Kimberley charts of their bodies were ma
de noting all the old scars they had. Once they were in the workers’ compound a tribesman who had been there for a while and had already pilfered a suitable stone from the pit would reopen the wound and slip it inside. When it came time to leave a year later, the guards at the workers compound would check the chart made when the Herero first showed up. They would often surgically reopen fresh scars to check for hidden stones, a popular smuggling system after the more obvious down-the-throat technique, which was literally voided with laxatives. But the old scar was on their chart and wouldn’t be checked.”
“Damned clever,” Juan remarked.
“According to what I was able to discover they had sacks and sacks of only the largest and clearest stones when the tribe was robbed.”
“Robbed?”
“By five Englishmen, one just a teen whose parents were missionaries in Hereroland. I was able to put the story together from the father’s journal because after the robbery he went to track his son. His journal reads like a torturer’s checklist of things he wanted to do once he caught the boy.
“I won’t bore you with the details, but the teenager, Peter Smythe, hooked up with an adventurer of the old school named H. A. Ryder as well as three other men. As part of their plan they cabled Cape Town to have a steamship, the HMS Rove, wait for them off the coast of what was then called German South West Africa. They planned to cross the Kalahari and Namib deserts on horseback and meet up with the ship.”
“And I take it the Rove was never heard from again?”
“She left Cape Town right after receiving the telegram from Ryder and was later reported lost at sea.”
“Say all this is true and not another myth like King Solomon’s mines. What makes you think it would be in this area?”
“I drew a straight line west from where the diamonds were stolen to the coast. They were crossing perhaps the worst stretch of desert on the planet and would have taken the most direct route. That puts the rendezvous with the Rove about seventy miles north of Walvis Bay.”
Juan found another hole in her logic. “Who’s to say the Rove sank after steaming back to Cape Town for a week, or what if the men never made it and the stones are someplace in the middle of the desert?”
Skeleton Coast Page 14
