Power

by Thomas Hollyday

  “Scotty is my cousin. He moved here to join us. His wife died years ago. Since my brother died, he has been my real friend.” She studied him. “You look tired,” she said as they trudged up the soft sand toward the cottage.

  “My wife Elizabeth talked like she was repeating a practice tape. After I left the place, I met some local boys last night on the way home,” he said. A breeze tousled his hair and he brushed it back.

  “Did the boys, I assume young men, add anything to your research on Stephanie?”

  “I got the impression they didn’t want me in River Sunday.”

  “Any reason why?”

  “No. We only had a short conversation.”

  She stopped walking and stared at him. “They stopped you for a short conversation?”

  “Who investigated your brother’s accident?” he asked.

  “I don’t know about the police we have in River Sunday. I drove by the accident site afterwards. I could find no skid marks. My brother was an excellent driver. He didn’t drink, and the roads were dry. The car was practically brand new.”

  They approached the cottage. Scotty was a few yards behind.

  She spoke softly. “His article about the Tinker Institute for his newspaper might have caused trouble. But not enough to kill him.”

  Loggerman said, “Tinker should have been pleased. Seems to me he would want publicity for his cause. Did you see your brother’s notes?”

  “He said it was better if only one of us knew what he was digging up. Anyway, he kept the draft article in his car. When his car was totaled, the papers were lost. The sheriff could not tell me what happened to them.”

  “You think Tinker and his people had something to do with it?”

  She stopped and looked at him. “Ferrars runs the show up there at the compound. He had known my brother was doing research. He came to the house the evening before the accident. I remember him and my brother out on back porch talking. It was very friendly. I suspect Ferrars had something in mind. Maybe my brother refused to destroy his research.”

  “You bide your time?”

  “Yes.” She began walking. “It was very mysterious but I have to live here. So does Scotty and his girls. My brother wrote good articles about interesting things. He was actually interested in the Tinker ideas about free energy. We both gave some money to it our first year in town.”

  She changed the subject with a smile. “Did they still have the dead animals hanging on the trees?”

  He nodded. “A freshly killed raccoon with its tail cut off was still bleeding. Where do they hire those killers?”

  “The same place they get the police here.”

  “It doesn’t fit Cole Tinker’s image. The King of the Working People, they call him in the news.”

  “Cole Tinker does what he is told by Ferrars and your wife.”

  “I met another one, a well-dressed young woman named Spire.”

  “I’ve heard of her. She’s new. She tried to talk me down on my rates for the care of the dogs. I told her what’s for. I still charge the same and they pay.”

  A crowd of tourists was gathering on the street in front of the small cottage.

  As they trudged the last few yards, Doctor Mike sighed. “Rumor is those Tinker students are learning to carry out rough assignments.”

  He answered sardonically, “All in the spirit of energy for the people.”

  “You could say. Let’s face it. The volunteers are committed. Some of them come into town. People talk about one, a pretty girl about nineteen, who loves ice cream. She practically runs into the drug store to get it each time she visits. When anyone talks to her, she gives out a pamphlet about Tinker. Like a robot that needs oil but can’t talk.”

  They had reached the porch. The young girls were tuning their fiddles inside.

  Loggerman asked, “These kids are doing an interview?”

  She nodded. “Scotty’s little girls. They learned in childhood growing up in Nova Scotia. Took right to it.”

  Doctor Mike stepped up on the porch. “This was the old office of the boatyard. It’s been converted to space for Scotty and his children.”

  In the center of the porch two small twin girls, about ten years old, stood with fiddles almost as big as they were. They held the instruments shoulder high, tucked to their necks. Violin cases lay open containing copies of music, some of the pages hand written. The two were tuning the instruments.

  “Since his wife died years ago in Nova Scotia, they are all he has now.”

  One after another people from the crowd were walking up and putting dollar bills and coins into the violin cases.

  “Baltimore television will carry this. Also it will be placed on YouTube to help them get more promotion as a child act.”

  The interviewer greeted Doctor Mike with a smile. She and her cameraman were young television station interns, dressed in cut off jeans and tee shirts in the heat. The woman wore a wide brim straw hat and high top basketball shoes. The other’s shoulder was bent over holding his massive video camera.

  “The twins are absolutely precious,” she said beneath her wide hat. “The YouTube account will get a following.”

  The children were standing across the room with microphones in front of them, fiddles at the ready. Each had a flowing white dress which came up to their necks and down, with their bare feet showing.

  The reporter said, “They dress like the fiddle dancers they love on the Celtic television shows.”

  The music started with a slow rendition. “They write their own music. This is the lament song they composed about their grandfather who was a fisherman.”

  “‘tis this again I must say

  The storm did take my kin away.

  His boat it slid beneath the spray

  Nor returned home to laugh and stay.”

  The girls sang along with the notes, moving back and forth and tipping their fiddles up and down to the music. The applause was loud from the spectators. Some of them were friends from fifth grade in River Sunday.

  They switched to a fast jig and danced across the porch as they sang.

  “Sandy beaches and sun lit water

  Summer weather and lazy days

  Scotty dressed in Sunday trim

  I’ll come back and I’ll love him

  Sandy beaches

  Sunlit water

  Sunday dresses

  I’ll love him”

  The music shifted to an even faster rhythm.

  “Boots and blossoms

  Boots and blossoms

  Boots and blossoms

  I’ll get mine and you’ll get none”

  When the concert ended, Loggerman walked back to his hotel. He wanted to call an old friend who might be able to help his daughter. Robert Eddison was stationed at the State Department headquarters, only a few miles away in Washington, DC. Eddison had been with the Embassy in Lagos and they had become good friends.

  “Eddison here.” It was Eddison’s easy going voice.

  “It’s Loggerman.”

  “Goddamn, man. Where are you? Are you in the city?”

  “No, I’m in Maryland in a town called River Sunday on the other side of the Bay.”

  “I never thought of you as a tourist. “

  “I’m not. My freighter River Niger is in Baltimore loading cargo for Port Harcourt. I came down to visit my daughter.”

  “So you’re still working for Joe Henry’s Silicon Valley, Nigeria style. How is your daughter? Is she in college? She must be twenty or so.”

  “Tell you what I called you about.”

  “She needs a quick update on her passport? I can send you to the right person.”

  “She’s living at a place run by a man named Tinker.”

  “Cole Tinker?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s she doing?” Eddison’s voice had become tougher, more abrupt.

  “I received a message before I sailed. It’s from a veterinarian who knows her and was worried.”

>   “Have you seen your daughter?”

  “I went up to this Tinker compound and talked to my former wife who works for him. She said Stephanie is on assignment and I can’t see her. I’m worried about her, Eddison.”

  “Man, you always call with the big ones. Wait a minute.” He was silent as he clicked on his computer. “Here we go. Not any staffers over there by the name of Loggerman.”

  “So you know about this place?”

  He did not answer. After a few more clicks, he said, “We list a chief honcho over there with the first name Elizabeth. She’s way up in the Tinker command. Is she your ex?”

  “Yes.”

  “She and you don’t talk about the kid?”

  “You got that right.”

  “Like Stephanie is in trouble working for these people?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to know if she’s safe. Elizabeth said she was being given a rifle.”

  The telephone sounded like Eddison was putting his hand over the phone. He came back on.

  Loggerman added, “Somehow these people found out about my ship loading oil pipe. They are all over the pier in front of the River Niger while we are loading freight.

  “I can’t talk to you about this over the phone, Loggerman. I’d rather see you face to face.”

  Loggerman said, “I’ll drive over to see you. I can be at the State Department in Washington in two hours.”

  Eddison hesitated, then said, “I tell you what. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get out of Washington. Why don’t I come over to River Sunday and we’ll have a few drinks and catch up?”

  “Good. I’ll be back from Baltimore later this afternoon.”

  They agreed to meet at the hotel.

  Loggerman hung up and went out on the terrace of his hotel room. He studied the historic Chesapeake buildings. The streets below appeared calm, like any small town. Yet he knew the town hid violence. How much this secret Tinker world would affect him and his crew on the freighter he did not understand. Stephanie was another crisis. Was she still the sweet little girl, now woman, from a decade ago in Africa or was she dead?

  Chapter Five

  He arrived at the port section of Baltimore about one in the afternoon. As he drove up to the gate to his pier, protesters crowded around his car. Most were young, both male and female, some homeless in rags and some dressed in jeans and tee shirts. A few had the familiar green circle pinned on their clothes. Two men were dressed in black trousers and shirts.

  He moved the car carefully as they yelled at him, playing the game of chicken he had done so often in Africa during crowd disturbances. The marchers dared him to hit them but stepped away at the last minute. He had his windows closed against the twisted faces, greasy hands, and ferocious mouths. One set of hand prints oozed grease down his window.

  Two police on horseback moved among the group, trying to restrain the worst offenders. Still, the crowd surged around his car, rocking it slightly as he waited for the pier guards to open the chain link fence.

  Several signs were thrust against the windshield glass. The green paint on the cardboard rectangles repeated the message in large and small fonts and letters:

  Energy is for the people

  Free fuel is a natural right.

  He looked through the faces screaming at him to see if Stephanie was present but she was not. To his far right and separated from the rest of the group, television cameras aimed at three young women, one of them completely undressed and the others in small bikinis. They perched on the roof of a green utility van pointing to their cardboard message:

  “We can’t be naked if we can’t heat our homes.”

  Stoney stood at a security gatehouse on the other side of the gate. The fence barriers slid sidewise on old buried steel tracks. The tracks were old, probably dating back to the Second World War in the days of the Liberty and Victory cousins of his ship.

  Loggerman drove slowly forward through the gate, the crowd always pressing. Pier workers came forward to assist the police in holding back the protestors. Some fights started but the longshoremen and women were muscular. They scared more than hit the mob members. His car rocked a few more times but the crowd fell back.

  “They are restless today,” Stoney shouted over the crowd chants. Loggerman opened his door lock and Stoney slipped inside the little car.

  “I must say I liked watching those naked girls. Go,” he motioned.

  As Loggerman sped out on the pier, his tires threw up thick dust from years of freight handling. The gate wobbled closed behind them barely holding back the protesters.

  Stoney filled him in. “We’re making progress. The imported palm oil is unloaded and ready to be picked up. Several manufacturers have been here for the electronic assemblies. We’re loading the first two holds today. The deck cargo of trucks will go on deck storage after the pipe is stored below. Your man Ringo is a very good load master and he keeps the ship leveled and balanced for sea.”

  “No pipe here yet?”

  “I got a report this morning from the longshoremen who volunteered to go after it. They have been checking routes on incoming highways.”

  “Good idea.”

  “The free energy people have replaced the drivers our manufacturers hired. They hijacked the trucks and we have located them in West Virginia.”

  He went on. “I think the Tinker purpose is holding up the shipments until the freighter has to return to Africa. Then they will return the freight. The rigs have the pipe strapped on flat bed trailers.”

  “So what is the plan?”

  “We’ll wait for the right time to take them back.”

  “Keep me posted,” Loggerman said as he studied the deck cranes working from his ship, River Niger. Some of them were original equipment installed during World War Two. He grinned, “Our old freighter stands tall.”

  “We did a lot of work on her for Joe Henry. She was a Victory design built in Baltimore in 1943. Had a sharper hull than the Liberty models and could get more speed to outrun the German submarines. Some of the old workers were still around the city. They were proud to advise and to help us rebuild her.”

  “She seems like new.”

  “We of course did some work on her 1943-era steel hull plates, cleaning, replacing and painting. Topsides needed the most work. The superstructure was, as you can expect after all those coats of paint and some crews not caring, pretty rusty. We had to replace some rooms and walls. Then all the controls had to be modernized.”

  “What about the engine?”

  “Well, she’s got about six thousand horse and gets seventeen knots. These steam turbine engines are pretty durable. The boilers burn oil for the steam. We had plenty of spare parts. Those engines were designed to be repaired quickly in wartime. We updated the boilers. Plenty of men know how to run those steam systems. We did not go diesel and kept the steam. Hell, some of these ships were used in the Vietnam War.”

  He winked, “Did Joe Henry ever tell you how he got her?”

  “I heard it was quite a story.”

  They were at the trucks. Loggerman could see the protester paint had been cleaned off the doors.

  Stoney caught Loggerman’s interest. “Yes, the green and white was easy to remove.”

  Loggerman grinned. “Those circles would have been a good target for the gangs along West African highways.”

  Captain Jimmy joined them. He looked at the protestors. “You know, Joe Henry hired me because I had experience with terrorists. In those days we had to shoot them.”

  The captain spoke with a little dissatisfaction in his voice. “Back home, they are holding up the development of my country. You know we fight at New City because the fanatics try to kill us. We can’t negotiate. So who talks to these mobs in Baltimore?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “These young people seek free energy for the poor. I guess they want us to drill for it but not make any money. The African worker remains poor with no energy in his house so the American poor ge
t free energy.”

  “They been growing in numbers.”

  “We’re the only ship in the harbor loading oil gear, I guess.”

  “Have you talked to Joe Henry today?” asked the captain.

  “Just had him on the phone. He said he had never heard of this kind of treatment before. He’s going to do the next shipment out of Texas.”

  “I got a feeling Texas ports are as bad.”

  Captain Jimmie said, “You want some help with the protestors? My boys on the ship are just itching to bust in a few faces. Most of them were with me in militia fights. They don’t like the people messing around at the gate. If I didn’t hold them back, we’d have a good old fight for sure.”

  “Then they would get their news coverage. As long as they stay outside the pier, I guess we can live with it.”

  “Just remember, you need any help with your daughter, I’m there. I can send Ringo.”

  “Ringo could take down three of them at once,” said Loggerman as they spoke of the captain’s tough first mate.

  “He laughs when he smashes faces. By the way, I got my sources telling me on the river race at home. We ain’t going to lose this year, Loggerman, now I got the Bertram.”

  Loggerman nodded. Every year on the Fourth of July in Warri a river race occurred among the various American oil company teams. In the beginning the contestants drove rubber boats with outboards and specially mixed nitro methane fuel. Last year a new crew at the bend of the river imported a modified ski boat and wiped out all the competition with its eight cylinder full race engine.

  “We’ll win this year,” said Jimmy. “His propeller gets hung up on the river weed.”

  Loggerman slapped Jimmy on the back and laughed. “You just better pray one of those hotshot drilling crews doesn’t bring over a fast hot rod boat from Houston.”

  “Yessir, “Jimmy scuffed the deck, “Like them protesters better pray they don’t try to come out and mess with my Bertram.”

  The Bertram was moored alongside the pier in the harbor water.

  “You boys want a ride?” asked Captain Jimmy.