Wild Storm

by Richard Castle

  No. He was moving. He was in a vessel of some kind. A boat. Definitely a boat. It was a large one, but he could still feel the faint motion of the waves, the rumble of engines far below him.

  He propped himself up on his elbows.

  “There you are,” a pleasant voice sang out.

  It was the redhead from the previous night. She was wearing a blue knit top and white shorts that were just long enough to not cause a scandal when she bent over. Her hair was up in a ponytail. She was still stunning, but there was an officious air to her.

  “Good morning, Mr. Storm,” she said.

  Storm made a grumbling noise that sounded like “wuueeaaaiii,” but it went up in pitch slightly at the end. The woman took it as a question.

  “You’re aboard a boat called the Warrior Princess,” she said. “It is owned by my employer, Ingrid Karlsson. My name is Tilda. I am Ms. Karlsson’s personal assistant. You were brought here by helicopter last night shortly after you blacked out. I apologize for having to do it that way, but Ms. Karlsson is very security conscious. She never ties her boat up at port. She doesn’t like people coming by and gawking at it. She feels it invades her privacy.”

  Storm sat all the way up, rubbed his eyes.

  “I guess I needed saving sooner than I thought,” he said.

  “Oh, this doesn’t count,” she said. “And I’m sorry about how last night had to end. But, for what it’s worth, I had a lovely time. You really are quite a magnificent dancer.”

  She giggled, brought her hand to her mouth. “And an outstanding kisser. Thank you for that.”

  Storm made a noise that was supposed to be “you’re welcome,” but it didn’t quite come out right.

  “The effects of the sedative we used should be wearing off shortly,” she said. “If you like, I can have the ship’s doctor prepare a mild amphetamine for you to help you perk up a little quicker.”

  “No drugs,” he croaked.

  “Very well. Perhaps some breakfast, then?”

  He nodded. Moments later, he heard, “Good morning, Mr. Storm. What can I have the chef prepare for you?”

  Storm’s eyes struggled to focus. When they did, he saw that it was Jacque, from the previous night. Except he no longer looked like an indolent, spoiled cocaine addict. He was neatly attired in white pants and blue polo shirt. White and blue were apparently the staff uniform around here. He was a lot thinner than Storm remembered. No beer gut.

  “You had a chest protector on,” Storm said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, smiling good-naturedly. “Though that was still a mighty good kick. I’m a little sore this morning.”

  “I’m just glad I didn’t go for your face.”

  “Ms. Karlsson’s security staff had studied your tendencies. They said if I brought my hands up and left my midsection exposed, that’s where you would strike. Good thing they were right. Anyhow, what can I get you from the kitchen?”

  “Eggs. Bacon. Toast. Coffee,” Storm said, knowing that combination would restore his vitality more efficiently than any pill or potion from the ship’s doctor.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, disappearing as quickly as he came.

  Tilda showed Storm to the shower—though, sadly, did not join him—then pointed him toward a closet where several clothing choices were laid out for him. Storm went casual, selecting a black cashmere sports coat, a gray polo shirt, and a pair of jeans that fit his thighs and ass like they had been tailored for him. For all he knew, they had been.

  After his breakfast, served to him on china that cost more than the first three cars Storm owned, Tilda led him on a long tour through the Warrior Princess, from the top of its glistening superstructure to the depths of its engine rooms. She let him have the run of the place, skipping only the crew’s quarters—which weren’t all that interesting—and Ingrid Karlsson’s personal quarters, which were very interesting, but which were only open to guests who were invited by Ingrid herself.

  Tilda stopped at her own stateroom, which was just off the main aft deck. He wasn’t sure if it was just part of the tour or if it was a suggestion for later. He hoped it was the latter, but by now he recognized he didn’t have much of a read on Ms. Karlsson’s personal assistant.

  As they continued, Storm got to take in some of its more entertaining features: a cinema with a screen as large as any he had seen at a commercial movie theater; a library that included Scandinavian crime-fiction masters Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, as well as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but not a trace of any hornet’s-nest kicking, fire-playing tattooed girls; a three-level swimming pool complex that included a waterfall, a lagoon, and four hot tubs, from an intimate two-seater to one that looked like it could accommodate a full party; and an indoor health club that included an assortment of weight machines, cardiovascular contraptions, and courts for tennis and racquetball.

  Some of the other recreational facilities included a retractable sea deck off the stern from which snorkelers and/or scuba divers could jump into the water when the ship was anchored; a floating dock that could be deployed for the launching of any one of several pleasure crafts, be they Jet Skis or powerboats appropriate for pulling water-skiers; and upper decks that could be used to entertain guests with skeet shooting, kite flying, or the opportunity to blast biodegradable golf balls into the great blue beyond. The helicopter pad—where, apparently, Storm had landed the night before—was on a deck near the stern, next to a sleek smokestack that was the ship’s tallest feature.

  There was also a variety of dining rooms, both covered and open, to serve all manner of meals to groups both large and small; a ship’s commissary, where all the items were, naturally, free; and an inebriating assortment of bars, wet and dry, from which alcohol and other liquid concoctions could be prepared. More or less, every amenity that might be available to a person staying in a resort or on a cruise ship was accounted for.

  Each room was decorated with a grandeur that staggered even Storm, no stranger to wealth or those who possessed it. Stylistically, each had its own design aesthetic, which varied widely, almost as if the boat’s owner wanted to be able to pick the era that fit her mood. Victorian could give way to modern, which in turn could give way to cubism. Influences ranged from west to east, north to south, with Russian Imperial being followed by feng shui being followed by African folk art.

  If there was a common theme, it was simply opulence. Everywhere he went Storm caught glimpses of rare antiquities, the finest furnishings or priceless artwork. Any one of the pieces might have been the jewel of another person’s collection. Here, they were commonplace. At times, Storm could scarcely believe that everything he was seeing was floating on a ship that could go anywhere it wanted across seventy-five percent of the Earth’s surface.

  But, no, they were definitely on a boat. At one point they passed another ship, calling out to it with three loud blasts of what sounded like a more mellow version of a trumpet.

  “What is that supposed to be? A trombone?”

  Tilda laughed. “You’re close. That’s actually meant to mimic the sound of a French horn. Ms. Karlsson loves the sound of a French horn and one of the touches she insisted on when commissioning this ship was that it signaled other ships with something that sounded like a French horn. She really did think of all the details.”

  The tour ended in the ship’s bridge, which was, to a gearhead like Storm, the most impressive part. It was less a wheelhouse in the traditional sense and more of a command center, decked out with walls full of computers and digital screens. The Warrior Princess’s gadgetry was every bit as advanced as anything Storm had seen on a warship, in some cases even more advanced than the U.S. Navy vessels Storm had been aboard. Ingrid Karlsson obviously didn’t have to worry about any sequesters.

  The ship’s defenses were particularly impressive. Like Xena herself, this Warrior Princess was equipped for a fight. There was the human security f
orce, which consisted of barrel-chested men—Storm had seen three or four—wearing the blue-and-white uniforms that Karlsson favored. Storm was actually surprised there weren’t more of them, but only until he was shown the electronic security, which was far more formidable.

  Storm listened as the first mate ran through some of its features. Radar, of course. Sonar, both passive and active. Lidar for anything any of those systems missed. Surface-to-air missiles that could knock out anything that tried to approach from the air. Torpedoes that could handle anything coming from the water, either on top of it or below it. And they were all linked to an automated advanced detection system that was at the ready 24-7, whether humans were monitoring it closely or not.

  “We’ve had to tinker with some of the settings,” said the first mate. “We’ve had some issues with schools of tuna tripping it, but we’ve kept it at a pretty sensitive level. Truth is, anything much larger than a dolphin tries to come at this ship and it’ll have a warhead heading toward it. There was one time when we nearly blasted a whale out of the water.”

  “And that would not have made me happy,” said an authoritative voice. “Even with the amount of money I give to Greenpeace, I never would have heard the end of it.”

  Storm turned to see a middle-aged woman, nearly six feet tall and well kept, with black hair cut in straight bangs across her forehead and lively gray-blue eyes.

  It was the warrior princess herself.

  THERE WERE PROPER INTRODUCTIONS, followed by a lively recounting of the previous evening’s activities.

  “I must apologize, again, for the method of extraction,” Karlsson said when they were through. “In addition to my usual concerns about privacy, I felt the CIA’s involvement required some extra care. If we had met at Slip F-18 as planned, we would have been practically begging for someone to tail us. Unleashing Tilda on you was the only way I could think of to prevent that.”

  “That’s okay,” Storm said, winking at Tilda. “There were benefits.”

  Storm and Karlsson left Tilda and the other crew members, retiring to a salon just off her private quarters.

  As with other rooms in the ship, this one was decorated in its own style—in this case, Queen Anne. Storm recognized a classic example of portraiture of that era. The largest was of a man with a doughy face in knight’s armor. He had a towering pouf of center-parted curly hair. It was a wig that would have made a Jersey girl proud.

  Storm selected a high-backed walnut chair with swooping cabriole legs and sat.

  “That’s from the early eighteenth century,” Karlsson told him. “It is believed that Queen Anne herself sat in that chair when she celebrated passage of the Acts of Union with Parliament. Are you familiar with the Acts of Union?”

  Storm bit his lip rather than make a joke about the acts of union he personally preferred. “Not really,” he said instead.

  “They were two acts, passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland, that ended hundreds of years of bloody fighting between the English and the Scots with the stroke of a pen rather than the flash of a sword. What’s interesting is that, unlike most treaties, both sides came away claiming to be the victor. But I would argue that’s what happens when you erase national borders, which are human constructs that never should have been drawn in the first place. Everybody wins. That chair is a symbol of my hope for humanity.”

  “Should I stand instead?”

  “No, no,” she laughed. “I know my tastes are a bit eclectic, but it is done thoughtfully. I don’t want to be a slave to one design style any more than I’d want to be a slave to one government. I don’t want people to come here and say, ‘Oh, a Swedish lady lives here’ or even, ‘Oh, here’s a Swedish lady who’s pretending to be Hindu.’ I want the whole world represented on this ship. I want people to find something that’s familiar and comfortable in one place, and then something that broadens their horizons or challenges their perspective in another.”

  “It’s breathtaking,” Storm said. “Every bit of it.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “To tell you the truth, Brigitte had a very heavy influence on this room. She picked out several of the pieces. She loved the Michael Dahl portrait behind you.”

  Storm turned around and again appraised the painting of the guy with the Jersey-girl hair.

  “That’s Prince George of Denmark. He was Queen Anne’s husband. Brigitte picked out that painting because of the kind of spouse Prince George was. He was always supportive of his wife in public, even when they disagreed privately. And unlike most men of that era, who would have tried to assert their dominance over their wives in some or all aspects, Prince George was quite content to let Queen Anne be the powerful woman that she was. You could say Queen Anne had the world’s first truly modern mate, a person who was not fixated on gender roles.”

  Ingrid’s voice trailed away. Storm could tell she was lost in a memory.

  “You cared for her a lot, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Oh my, I…yes, of course. Brigitte and I were lovers, as you may have heard. She was…I won’t say she made me realize I was a lesbian, because that’s not true. I had figured out fairly early on I was not interested in a sexual relationship with a man. No offense.”

  “None taken. I’m not interested in a sexual relationship with a man, either.”

  Karlsson smiled and continued: “But even though I knew men weren’t for me in the way that women were, I wasn’t sure if I could ever really have a true relationship with a woman. Most of the women I was attracted to physically were not attractive to me in other ways. I wasn’t really sure I could be a true-life partner with any of them. This sounds conceited, but I didn’t think any of them could be my equal. I certainly wasn’t ready to share equally with them, to give and take and compromise the way you have to if you are to succeed in a relationship. Then I met Brigitte and everything changed. She was what I had been looking for even before I knew I had been looking for it.”

  Her gaze again went distant. Then she returned her attention to the room and said, “Please don’t share any of this with the press. These are not things I want to read in the tabloids.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Thank you. Brigitte and I talked frequently about living more openly, because we’re proud of who we are. It’s not like we were ashamed of anything. Our families certainly knew the nature of our relationship, as did our close friends. But we just didn’t feel like it was anyone else’s business. No one talks about the sexuality of the CEO of UPS or FedEx. Why should mine be an issue?”

  “I understand,” Storm said.

  “Anyhow, we were not married in the legal sense, because neither of us wanted to recognize the hegemony of a nation-state, nor did we want the complications of a religious union. I’m not sure either of us could have decided which religion we actually practice”—she interrupted herself with a laugh—“but we were married in the emotional sense. There was never going to be another woman for me, or for her. And I don’t think it ever occurred to me we wouldn’t live to a ripe old age together. Then the plane crash…”

  Storm shifted in his seat, which creaked with the ancientness of wood that had held many bodies before his. He could tell he had lost Ingrid to her thoughts again, so he brought her back by saying, “Which is, of course, why I’m here. Jedediah Jones tells me you’ve developed some information about who’s behind this?”

  “Yes. It turns out fifty million dollars buys a lot of cooperation from people who otherwise wouldn’t be very helpful to anyone. These terrorists claim to be undyingly loyal to their causes and their ideals, but it’s amazing how fast their fealty fades when you dangle enough money in front of them. Have you ever heard of the Medina Society?”

  “The Medina Society. A violent splinter cell of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Storm said, as if reciting from a textbook. “Named after the city in Saudi Arabia where the Prophet Muhammad f
led after being forced from Mecca in the year six-twenty-two. This journey, known as the hijra, is considered the beginning of the Islamic era. The siege of Medina was the first major military victory for Muhammad and his followers, who eventually conquered all of Arabia. Medina is also where Muhammad is buried, which makes it a holy place to followers of Islam, second only to Mecca in its importance. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter portions of the city.

  “Let’s see here, what else…Much like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Medina Society promotes the Koran and the Hadith as being the only proper basis for a properly pious society. Also, like the Muslim Brotherhood, it rejects most forms of Westernization, modernization, or secularization. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which has tried to gain power lawfully by putting up slates of candidates for election, the Medina Society attempts to accomplish its goals through force, fear, and intimidation. Among its objectives are the total elimination of the Israeli state, the reversion of Palestine to Muslim control, the banishment of non-Muslims from government, the reinstatement of Islamic theocracy…How am I doing so far?”

  “Pretty good. You left out that they also favor the return of women to traditional roles, the widespread use of clitoridectomy to staunch female sexuality, and the legalization of honor killings.”

  “So, basically, they’re a bunch of guys who make the Taliban look like moderates,” Storm concluded.

  “Very good. Jones has prepared you well.”

  “Nah, I just read the newspaper. Anyhow, what makes you think they’re behind this?”

  “Because as I said, fifty million dollars buys a lot of information. And it also buys offers of assistance. I’ve yet to infiltrate the Medina Society itself, but I’ve now had several groups contact the people I’ve put on the ground in the Middle East. I’ve now heard from three separate sources that the Medina Society is behind this. And…are you ready to suspend your disbelief for a moment, Derrick?”

  Storm said, “Consider my disbelief disengaged.”