International Incident

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Yes, let’s.” Relief flooded his expression.

  “Okay, you gave up your command of The Water Lily to take over as captain of The Viola, correct?”

  “Yes. After the harrowing events on my last cruise, I determined that it was time for a change to a new route.”

  “So you moved from the South China Sea route to a Baltimore to Quebec City round-trip route, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Would you consider that to be a demotion?”

  “I assuredly would not. Aside from the fact that The Viola is a fine ship, an excellent, seaworthy vessel, I voluntarily chose to make the change. Demotions are not voluntary, Mrs. Connelly.” He drew himself up and squared his shoulders.

  “It’s Ms. McCandless-Connelly, actually. Or counselor if that’s easier for you to remember. Let’s talk about the new route. It’s very similar to your former route, right?”

  He looked at her as though she were drooling on the table. “In what way would you equate a cruise with stops in Singapore, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City with a cruise from Baltimore to Canada and back? Lovely as it is, it’s a very different route.”

  “Sure, the weather and the scenery are different. But the heroin’s the same, isn’t it?”

  He froze. “I beg your pardon?”

  The court reporter’s eyes bugged out.

  Sasha breezed along. “Well, your old route was along The Golden Triangle, the sweet spot for heroin distribution from Asia. And your new route is out of Baltimore, one of two terminuses for the United States’ very own Heroin Highway. So, from your perspective as a drug smuggler, they’re the same, right?”

  He half-rose from his seat, noticed the red eye of the camera, and slowly lowered himself back down, patting his jacket pocket as he did so. “Madam, I must warn you—”

  She raised a hand and cut him off. “No, Captain. I need to warn you. You are under oath. And you may not know this, but you’re not the only one giving testimony under oath. Your friends, Mr. Williams and Mr. McGraw have been offered immunity from prosecution by the Royal Thailand Police in exchange for their testimony against Thale and they’ve been offered immunity by the government of the United States in exchange for their testimony about … other matters. I think we both know what those other matters are, Captain.”

  He shook his head and sputtered, “They’re liars. Who would believe them?”

  “Oh, Captain, who would take the word of a washed-up junkie over two U.S. military veterans?” Her voice was soft, almost gentle. “This is your chance to get your side of the story out. It’s likely your only chance before you’re charged with drug smuggling.”

  He lowered his eyes to the table for a moment then looked up at her. “How did you know?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not how this works. I ask the questions; you answer the questions. Did you buy your heroin from Bar Pavot?”

  His face turned a red, mottled color. “I refuse to answer that.”

  “Did you go along with Thale’s plan to let McGraw and Williams climb onto the boat, give them access to my suite, and let them abduct me because they were holding your personal drug use over your head or because you were in too deep in the drug smuggling operation to say no?”

  “I refuse to answer.”

  Sasha paused in her questioning. “In the interest of a clean transcript, you need to say that you’re invoking your Fifth Amendment right not to answer on the ground that you might incriminate yourself. Or you can stop the deposition and try to find an attorney to represent you. I can give you the number for the public defender’s office if you like.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and pressed his lips into a thin line. No response.

  She continued, “That day on the ship, Derek Williams yelled at you and said if you didn’t help them Thale would find another dragon shuttle. Was that a reference to the fact that you were smuggling heroin from Bangkok to Singapore on The Water Lily?”

  He shook his head wordlessly from side to side.

  “Counsel notes for the record that the deponent is shaking his head no but refuses to answer my question. Moving on, how much heroin do you move on The Viola?”

  He exploded out of his chair. “I have had quite enough of this. This is an outrage.”

  Sasha smiled. “How many heroin cigarettes do you have in your jacket pocket, Captain?”

  He glared at her, with his hands fisted at his sides.

  Any day now, Connelly, she thought.

  A moment later, Connelly and Hank barreled through the door.

  45

  Hank came back into the conference room holding a silver cigarette case.

  “Where’s the captain?” Sasha asked. After Hank and Leo had tackled him and given him the Miranda warning, Hank had handcuffed him and hustled him out of the room in a hurry.

  “I had some DEA guys on standby. Just in case. They met me in front of the building and I handed him off. You know, international drug smuggling is more in line with their mission than ours.” He jerked a thumb at Connelly.

  Whatever that mission might be, Sasha thought.

  “What’s with the case?” Connelly asked.

  “It’s evidence, obviously, but they had a dog with them, so they asked me to hang on to it so Champ didn’t go nuts all the way back to the office.” He pried the case open and held it up for Sasha and Connelly to see the innocuous-looking heroin cigarettes nestled inside.

  “So, to answer your question, he had four,” Hank said.

  Connelly leaned against the wall and looked at her. “How did you know?”

  “All the pieces just fit together. The mercenaries did yell at him about a dragon shuttle when they were looking for me. When I started reading up about Baltimore’s heroin problem last night, I saw a quote about ‘chasing the dragon,’ which is slang for smoking heroin. And that got me thinking.”

  “That’s it? A throwaway reference to a dragon shuttle?”

  She hesitated. “Well, the other thing was that Mel said Thale’s a big drug trafficker. It sounded like the Bureau suspected Thale of using its shipping fleet to move the drugs. But … all the nightmares you have about being on that boat, you always talk about the conditions and the men. You never mentioned drugs. And Vũ’s cooperating but he didn’t try to use information about heroin smuggling as a bargaining chip to lessen his charges. Don’t you think he would have?”

  Hank shrugged. “Probably. Guys usually try to deal with everything they’ve got. There’s no reason why he’d hold information back if he had it.”

  “So, it didn’t seem like Thale was using its own fleet, which would be really risky anyway. But they had to be moving the drugs somehow. It just made sense. Especially when van Metier transferred to a Baltimore route—he knew he was going to lose a lucrative side job and possibly end up implicated in the case against Thale. It was time to move on.”

  All the facts had gelled into place. Yes, she’d broken the cardinal rule of depositions and asked a question she didn’t know the answer to. But she figured if it had all gone to hell on her, she could always wrap up with the question about the heroin cigarettes in his pocket. She knew she was right about that part. He’d been so squirrelly about touching his pocket. It was such a giveaway.

  “You’re something else. You know that?” Connelly dipped his head down and spoke close to her ear. “Have I really been talking in my sleep?”

  She cut her eyes over to Hank and then nodded. “Yes.”

  He held her gaze for a long moment.

  Then the court reporter, who’d been busily packing up all her equipment walked over. Sasha broke eye contact with her husband, but this subject wasn’t closed.

  “I assume you want an expedited file?” The court reporter asked, all business—as if what had just happened was a regular occurrence.

  “Yes, please. I’ll take the rough as soon as you can get it to me.”

  The woman nodded. “The camera was running when these two came i
n and took your deponent into custody. Do you want me to edit it out?”

  Sasha thought for a moment then shook her head no. “Leave it in.”

  “Will do.” She shouldered her carrying cases and Hank held the door for her. As she was on her way out, he said, “So tell me, are all depositions that dang boring?”

  The court reporter’s jaw fell open. “Are you serious? That was the most exciting deposition I’ve witnessed in twenty-seven years in this business.”

  Connelly and Hank groaned in unison.

  “It was hard to stay awake watching that,” Connelly confessed.

  “Boy, am I glad I never went to law school,” Hank said with a fake shudder.

  The videographer looked at Sasha and shook her head. “If they only knew.”

  46

  Leo grinned at Sasha over the top of Finn’s head. It was the perfect summer day. The weather wasn’t oppressively hot, and a light breeze played on the air. It was a great day for an afternoon ballgame—even if he’d had to drag her out of the office past a bevy of reporters looking for a quote about ‘Captain Heroin.’ After van Metier’s arrest, the Drug Enforcement Administration had sent teams through The Water Lily and The Viola to comb through storage compartments. According to Hank, they’d found enough trace heroin on The Water Lily to justify charges in both Thailand and Singapore. A cross-border team was hammering out the details. He put van Metier out of his mind and focused on their family day at the ballpark.

  At some point, without his quite noticing, enthusiasm for the sports teams of his adopted hometown had seeped into his bones and established itself. Leo was fairly certain he was a more ardent Steelers and Penguins fan than was his Pittsburgh-born and -bred wife. That said, he couldn’t quite touch her passion for the Pirates. She’d been born within a month of the Pirates 1979 World Series win and seemed to feel a special connection to the team—despite, or maybe because of, the fact that the club hadn’t appeared in a single World Series since.

  She smiled back at him. “What are you thinking?” she asked, keeping one eye on Fiona, who had clambered up onto the granite base of the bigger than life-sized Roberto Clemente statue and was now attempting to scale the sports legend’s leg.

  Their daughter was apparently undaunted by the fact that the leg in question was slick bronze or that she was not exactly sturdy on her feet. Finn watched her try to pull herself up; his expression was a mixture of admiration and worry. It was a familiar mix of emotions to Leo—he often felt it with regard to Sasha.

  “I’m thinking about him,” he said in answer to Sasha’s question. He nodded toward Roberto Clemente.

  “Really?”

  “He never stopped trying to help people. He never forgot where he came from—he used his talents and his money to give back.” He tried to keep his tone lighthearted.

  But she narrowed her eyes and considered him for a long time. He could tell she was thinking about his father, but before he could tell her she was wrong, Fiona managed to make it to Clemente’s knee.

  “Connelly—”

  “Fiona!” He pointed, and Sasha turned to see their eleven-month old pulling herself to the statue’s thigh.

  They both thrust their hands out underneath her in case she toppled backward. Finn started babbling his name for her in a high-pitched baby squeal. “Fee, Fee!”

  Inexplicably, she managed to cling to the metal like a baby monkey. She gave each of her parents a look that showed great displeasure at their lack of faith in her. She cooed back at her brother. Sasha shook her head.

  “She’s your daughter,” Leo informed her.

  Finn picked this moment remind them that he had a few tricks of his own. He toddled off after a pigeon, leaning forward and leading with his top-heavy baby noggin. Leo strode after him and scooped him up under one arm, lessening the indignity with a barrage of tickles.

  Over Finn’s squeals of delight, he said, “We should get moving; the game’s about to start.”

  Sasha pried Fiona off the statue and the family started across the bridge to the ballpark, each adult holding tight to a chubby little hand.

  * * *

  It was the bottom of the sixth with runners on second and third. The twins, having exhausted themselves by climbing up and down the ramps for an inning and a half, had both dozed off. Sasha was trying to decide whether she should risk disturbing Finn, who was asleep on her lap, by flagging down a concession worker for a lemonade or maybe a beer.

  Beside her, Connelly kept his eyes pinned on the batter and said, “I need to ask you for a favor.”

  ‘Favor’ struck her as an odd choice of words. She glanced over at him, but he was still staring straight ahead.

  “Ask away.”

  After a pause, he said, “I want to use the vacation house fund for something else.”

  She waited, but he didn’t appear to be planning to elaborate.

  “The vacation house fund?” she echoed even though she was certain she’d heard him correctly.

  “Yes.”

  The crack of the bat interrupted their conversation. They cheered as the runner crossed the plate.

  Connelly reached around Fiona to record the play. He was just like her dad. A large part of his enjoyment of the game came from keeping score. She waited until he finished making the notation.

  “Do you mind telling me what you’d like to spend the money on?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, yes, actually, it does. If you want to set a mistress up with a place of her own, the answer’s no. If you want to go back to school and get an art history degree or something, the answer is yes.”

  He chuckled. “An art degree? Really?”

  She shrugged. “It was the best I could come up with. Seriously, Connelly, what’s going on?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about Binh. And the others. I want to use the money to help them.”

  She considered mentioning that helping the sea slaves would also enable him to change his family’s legacy. Duc Nguyen was a murderer and a thief. His son could choose a different path. But she knew better than to bring up his father.

  Instead, she said, “You did help them. Vũ’s in prison. Thale is under indictment.” She put a hand on his arm. “Nobody’s sleeping in cages anymore. Binh’s happy in Phu My. And Thiha Bo’s doing great, working in the fish market and going to university.”

  He shook his head. “Only because I wandered onto that boat. Can you even imagine how many Binhs and Thiha Bos—and Minas—are still out on the ocean, trawling for cheap fish to make cat food?”

  She couldn’t imagine. Or, to be honest, she didn’t want to. She knew there must be hundreds, maybe thousands of them. And although she hadn’t mentioned it to him since the day at the deposition, she also knew he was still having nightmares about the boat. She heard him saying the names, speaking in Vietnamese, tortured in his dreams by the memory of what he’d seen.

  She took a deep breath. “I guess it’s like Roberto Clemente said—Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, you’re wasting your time on Earth. It’s something like that, at any rate—I might be paraphrasing.”

  Connelly turned and gaped at her.

  “You’re going to miss the play,” she said.

  He kept staring. Finally he said, “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s not a no.” Finn stirred against her chest, and she smoothed his wavy, baby chick tuff of hair. “It’s a yes with strings.”

  Connelly’s gray eyes narrowed. “What kind of strings?”

  “You have two small children and a wife who really doesn’t want to have to learn how to cook like some sort of adult. You also kind of have a job. You can’t go traipsing off to Southeast Asia to buy out indentured servants’ contracts all the time. Plus, that doesn’t really help the fishermen. Yes, it gets them out of their immediate crisis. But it’s not sustained—or sustainable. I mean, we will eventually run out of money. You need to be smart about how you do this.
”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  She chewed on her lower lip while she thought. “Call the Kurcks.”

  He blinked. “Elli and Oliver?”

  “Sure. She’s a professor of social justice. He’s an investment banker. Between the three of you, you should be able to come up with a plan to fund a multi-pronged program to work with the existing seafarer support centers over there. You really need to address the systemic issues that are driving people onto those boats in the first place.”

  “You’re brilliant.”

  “I know.”

  “And modest, too.” He leaned over and kissed her hard on the lips, careful to cradle Fiona’s head so she wouldn’t collide into Finn’s noggin.

  She kissed him back harder. Then she smiled and leaned against his shoulder. Just then they watched the Pirates’ hottest slugger smash the ball. It sailed over the right field wall. The park erupted. Over the cheers, she said, “You know that wall’s twenty-one feet high?”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. In honor of Clemente. He wore number 21.”

  “You’re just a fount of knowledge, aren’t you?”

  “I try, Connelly. I really try.”

  Author’s Note

  As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this book. Every book I write changes me in some way—sometimes it’s a small thing; sometimes it’s a large thing. This book changed me in a big way. All the books in the Sasha McCandless series involve plots that could happen. International Incident involves a plot that is happening, and that affected me.

  I set this book on an international cruise mainly so that I didn’t have to write umpteen scenes involving infant twins. (It’s true.) When I started to think about the possible crimes and legal issues that could arise on an international cruise, I hit on human trafficking and drug trafficking. Then I started to research in earnest, and what I learned about human trafficking and modern slavery was so dark and unpleasant that I put this book aside for awhile. If you’re interested in reading more (nonfiction) about the issue of sea slavery and conditions on fishing boats, a good starting point is a multi-part series of articles published by The New York Times in 2015 called “The Outlaw Ocean” and a July 2015 article published by The Guardian.