The Law of the Sea : A Legal Thriller

by Dave Gerard

  “The political situation is conducive to piracy as well. There’s historically been a lack of trust between the powers of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. They don’t always work together to coordinate a robust response. With all of these ingredients, it’s not surprising that you have a lot of piracy here.”

  I blinked a few times. I looked at Ashley, and saw her mouth hanging open. Clearly, she hadn’t expected to hear this level of analysis from Rufus Rockaway, either.

  “Damn, dude,” said Vijay. “You know your stuff.”

  “Thank you,” said Rockaway, flipping his grimy hair in an attempt to capture the signature flair with which he did it on MNN. “Anyway. To pursue the story, I journeyed to Batam.”

  “Where’s Batam?” I said.

  “Batam is a small island, a part of Indonesia. Just opposite Singapore. It is a slum and a notorious haven for pirates and cutthroats and criminals of all types.”

  “Is that where we are now?”

  “No. I was taken from there and smuggled to this place. Doubtless they believed that a journalist of my caliber would attract too much attention there. It would be much too easy for the authorities to find me.”

  “Doubtless. So where are we then?”

  “As best I can tell, we are somewhere in Sumatra, off the Strait of Malacca. This place has just the type of environment I mentioned earlier. It’s a sparsely populated, almost uninhabited jungle. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to track anyone here. A perfect place to hold hostages. Indeed, I daresay there’s virtually no chance that anyone will be able to find us.

  “I’ve been here for about a month. They treat me well. I play dice with them, and they’re pretty generous with their drink, and their women. Not a bad life, really. But MNN has not paid the ransom. Apparently their highest offer was ten thousand dollars, which Ricky Tang refused. He says that a television personality such as myself should command a higher value. I can’t say I disagree.

  “Katie Tyler has taken over my broadcasts on MNN. They let me watch from time to time. But I try not to. It hurts. I’m not sure they even miss me over there.” He shook his head sadly. “I suspect that Katie is not unhappy to have the whole show to herself. She’s not such a great person, to be honest.” I sensed an undercurrent of emotion there, and thought there was more to the story.

  “You’re right about that,” muttered Schnizzel, breaking into the conversation. “I ought to know.”

  “What do you mean?” Rockaway asked.

  “Katie is my ex-wife.”

  We all looked at Schnizzel incredulously. I thought back to his tale of marrying the big-haired blonde from Texas. And the football coach who stole her away. Mentally, I juxtaposed the image I had of Schnizzel’s wife with Katie Tyler. It fit.

  “You’re that Jacob?” Rockaway asked in disbelief. “She’s talked about you.” “I am. Nothing good, I’m sure.”

  “Some good,” Rockway said. “But lots bad. Very bad.” He shook his head and shivered at the remembrance of it.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” I demanded.

  Schnizzel shrugged. “What would have been the point? It still hurts. But I’m not the first guy she’s played. And I won’t be the last. This new guy, Cal, he’s not going to last. I’ll tell you that. Anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one holding up your ransom, Rockaway.”

  “Katie…You think her and Cal won’t work out?” Rockaway said, sounding intrigued.

  “Is that really what you took out of that statement?” Schnizzel said dryly. “But hey. Go for it.”

  “You mean it?” said Rockaway. As if we weren’t being held captive in a pirate’s den thousands of miles away.

  “Knock yourself out. If we ever get out of here alive, that is. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  After that, we all peppered Schnizzel with questions about Katie. He answered readily enough, seeming resigned to the whole thing.

  At length, we switched subjects. We introduced ourselves properly to Rockaway, and told him how we had been captured, although I was cagey on exactly what we were doing in the area. Rockaway was impressed to find out that we were the lawyers on the Flor de la Mar case. He said he was secretly rooting for David Marcum, whom he considered to be the underdog. This made Ashley smile. He was also thrilled to learn that Trevor Thompson was here too, albeit in another room. He said he looked forward to the opportunity to bro out with him later.

  After we told him our story, Rockaway frowned. “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “The entire tale. It doesn’t add up.”

  “Why not?”

  Rockaway shifted around in his corner and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve learned a little bit about the lanun. Prior to, and during, my stay here. I can tell you that the circumstances of your capture are quite unusual.

  “Most people think of pirates as boarding ships and taking people hostage, like they did with you. But in reality, that type of attack is rare. The lanun usually stick to simple robbery. They’ll board a boat that’s tied down for the night and steal everything on it. They call it a “shopping trip.” Sort of like stopping at the old Walgreens, but without paying. Sometimes they’ll rob the ship’s crew too, but there’s rarely any violence involved. It’s small-time stuff.

  “More rarely, the lanun will pirate oil tankers that sail through the Strait. They board these ships on their fast pancung boats, tie up the crew, and siphon off the oil into a waiting vessel. Then they mix the stolen oil with legally purchased stuff, and sell it off with no one the wiser. They can make good money that way.

  “Hostage incidents are the rarest of all. They are high risk for the lanun, who can be captured or even killed. They also draw a lot of attention, including from powerful foreign actors. When hostage incidents do happen, as often as not, they’re carried out with someone on the inside. A crewmember might give information about a ship to the lanun, for instance. In return, they get a piece of the action.

  “Which brings us to you,” Rockaway said finally. “The details of your capture don’t add up.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “For one, you said that the leader of this attack was carrying an automatic rifle, and that several of the lanun had guns.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s unusual. Most of the lanun don’t have firearms. Just knives and parangs, a type of primitive machete that they carry.” I nodded remembering the weapons that they had.

  “Another thing is where you were taken,” Rockaway continued. “Most pirate attacks happen to the south, near Singapore, or to the northeast, off the coast of Malaysia. They don’t happen as much near this part of the Strait.”

  Ashley and I glanced at each other. We hadn’t told Rockaway exactly where we had been. But I suspected that piracy would be even more unlikely near the Nicobar Islands.

  “Finally,” said Rockaway, “the oddest thing about the attack are the odds themselves. Piracy gets a lot of media attention. Witness myself. Hello. But in reality, there are only a couple of dozen pirate attacks each year, out of a hundred thousand ships that pass through the Strait. Even if you assume that many more attacks go unreported, it’s still a rounding error.”

  My brow creased in thought as I considered all of this. “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying is this: what are the chances that you, an American lawyer on the Flor de la Mar case, happen to be captured in a random pirate attack, using an assault rifle, in an area where attacks are known to be rare, and where only about one in a thousand ships gets attacked by lanun to begin with?”

  We all sat back and thought about that.

  “Remember what I said earlier?” said Rockaway. “A lot of the big pirate attacks here have someone on the inside.”

  Just then, our conversation was interrupted as the door kicked
open with a bang. Ricky Tang stood in the doorway, a cigarette hanging from his gap-toothed grin. “Time to play,” he said.

  Ricky Tang led us out into the main room. Thompson and Diamond were already there. Rockaway seemed to know all of the lanun, and they greeted him with hearty hellos and backslaps. Someone brought him a beer, which he cracked open and chugged. There was a crude stage in the center of the room, and one of the lanun was up there singing bad karaoke. Scantily clad young women were now scattered around the place, sitting on the men’s laps. It reminded me of a low-rent strip club. The smell of drugs and tobacco assaulted my nostrils.

  Our arrival drew applause from the crowd. “Happy happy in the coffee shop, neh?” one old man said to me with a wink and a nudge.

  “Why do they keep calling this a coffee shop?” I whispered to Rockaway.

  “Coffee shop is slang for a den of gambling, drugs, and prostitution,” Rockaway explained. “You find them in poor, lawless places like Batam. I guess they set up one here, wherever we are, to give them something to do.”

  “Better than Starbucks, at least,” I muttered. “And ‘happy happy’?”

  “That’s a celebration, often thrown after a successful piracy attempt. Traditionally, it involves hookers and crystal meth.”

  “So that’s what that smell is,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Rockaway nodded.

  The lanun all seemed thrilled with our attendance. They left our hands bound in front of us, but offered us seats, and cold beers and cigarettes were passed around. I guess a bunch of American hostages was good news for them. We could mean a big payday.

  Ashley and I looked at each other as they handed us the goods. She accepted a cigarette, and I shrugged and popped open a Bintang beer. I clinked bottles with Ricky Tang, which drew a rousing cheer. They also offered me crystal meth, which I politely declined. Rockaway took a hit, though. When I looked at him, he shrugged. “When in Rome,” he said, lighting up again. Jared Diamond smoked some too.

  Thereafter unfolded one of the most bizarre experiences I had ever had in my life. The lanun turned up the music and took turns singing karaoke on stage. They seemed to love old American songs. One guy drew applause for an awful rendition of “I Love Rock ‘n Roll”, and then another did “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. One of the prostitutes sat on my lap, high on crystal meth and giggling.

  At length, the lanun managed to get Rufus Rockaway on stage, and to everyone’s surprise, he belted out a lusty performance of the Korean K-Pop phenomenon “Gangnam Style,” complete with a drugged-out breakdance. This was too much, and we all cheered and collapsed in gales of laughter along with the pirates. The whole situation was so absurd I wasn’t even sure whether it was real. But there was nothing to do but go along with it.

  The evening continued in this fashion for some hours. At one point, I even had a heart-to-heart with Ricky Tang. He sat next to me, a beer in his hand and a prostitute in his lap. He pointed drunkenly at the Singapore skyline, lit in flickering green neon above the bar.

  “You know the difference, Singapore and Batam?” he said, slurring his words. I told him that I didn’t. He grinned crookedly at me. A bent cigarette stuck out from between his yellowed teeth. He leaned close, and his breath smelled terrible.

  “Singapore,” he said. “Big business. Big money. No crime. Batam, no business, no money, all crime. You know why?” I shook my head mutely.

  “You know how far away, Singapore and Batam?” I said that I did not.

  “This far,” he said, putting his fingers an inch apart in front of my face. “Forty kilometers. That it. Why so different? You know why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Difference is you,” he said, poking me hard in the chest.

  I was confused. “What?”

  “Difference is you,” he repeated. “Lawyer. Law and order. What you have in Singapore. What you have in United States. Without law, everything—” he waved around to indicate the coffee shop, the islands, the world— “shit. Nothing. Law and order.” I nodded at him uncertainly. I thought about that a lot later on. I wasn’t expecting to hear a defense of the Western legal system in an Indonesian drug den. But there it was.

  After some hours of this bizarre celebration, the main door to the coffee shop opened, and a man walked in. I recognized him as the leader of the lanun who had captured us. He was carrying his rifle, and towered over the other scrawny men.

  A hush swept over the room as he walked in. The man singing karaoke, drugged out and belting “Party in the U.S.A.” with feverish abandon, was dragged off the stage and silenced. The leader issued some brusque instructions, and most of the lanun cleared out of the room, grumbling. A few remained.

  The leader approached Vijay, and said something in Malay. Vijay answered him readily, but I could tell it wasn’t satisfactory. The two of them went back and forth as the leader continued to question Vijay in increasingly harsh tones. I didn’t know what was being said, but I could tell that the leader was not getting the answers that he wanted. He shouted at Vijay, and then all of a sudden, his hand snaked back and hit Vijay across the face, sending him sprawling to the floor. Vijay lay there, stunned.

  Trevor Thompson, Jared Diamond, and I all rose to our feet, shouting for him to stop. The leader barked a command at Ricky Tang and the other lanun, who drew handguns and machetes and bared them at us. I sensed a certain reluctance from them. Ricky Tang said something that might have been backtalk. But maybe that was all in my head. The leader shouted angrily at him, and he obeyed, his face grimly set.

  The leader left Vijay on the floor and then stalked over to me. He stood in front of me and said something I couldn’t understand. Ricky Tang translated haltingly.

  “He ask what you are doing here,” Tang said.

  “We’re tourists,” I told him. “Here on vacation. We were planning to visit Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.” This was the cover story we had agreed on earlier in the adjoining room, in case anyone should ask. I hoped Vijay had stuck to it.

  Ricky Tang translated this back. But I felt that the leader wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on me. I got the feeling that he understood everything I said. He hissed something back to Ricky Tang in Malay. Tang looked troubled.

  “He says you are lying,” Tang said. “He not stupid. He see your identification cards. You are lawyers from America. You here for big ship that everyone after.” The leader said something else, sharply. “You lie to him, it go very bad for you,” Ricky Tang said nervously. He didn’t seem to like what was going on.

  I shrugged and spread my hands, as if to say, I don’t know what to tell you, but as I opened my mouth to speak, the leader stepped toward me. His arm blurred and suddenly his fist smashed straight into my jaw.

  I toppled to the floor, stunned. I could feel blood coming out of my mouth. I pressed a hand to it. There was no pain. It just felt numb. I dimly heard Ashley screaming something in the background. There was a ringing in my ears.

  Slowly, I picked myself up from the floor and put my hand up, trying to call for calm. The leader said something in Malay again and Ricky Tang translated. He had to say it again before I grasped it. “He say he know the kind of equipment you have on the boat. Deep-sea equipment. He know what you have found. We know it. He ask, how you find it.” Tang looked outright frightened now.

  I spat out some blood and I decided it was pointless to hide who we were. They knew that already. “Yes, we’re American lawyers,” I said. “We’re here on a case. But I’m afraid I can’t reveal any more than that. Attorney-client privilege, you understand.”

  Even as the words came out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe what I had just said, or what I was doing. What possessed me to stand on the attorney-client privilege in an Indonesian drug den with a gun pointed at my head I didn’t know. It didn’t make any sense. None.

  The leader grabbed me by the collar,
dragging me fully to my feet. Then he slammed me bodily against the wall. The breath whooshed out of me. I took short, shallow breaths as I tried to get my wind back. He yelled something. “How did you find it?” Ricky Tang repeated.

  “As I said,” I repeated thickly, the blood running hot out of my mouth, “I’m afraid that’s privileged.”

  The leader relaxed his grip on me, and then I saw him smile for the first time. It was a scary sight. His eyes were full of malevolence, and his voice was cruel. Then he spoke to me himself, in accented but perfectly intelligible English. “There is no attorney-client privilege here,” he said.

  Then he turned to Ricky Tang and the others and barked some commands. There was some back-and-forth, as if Tang wasn’t happy with the instructions, but eventually they relented and did what they were told.

  Two of the lanun grabbed me and slammed me into a chair, holding me in place. A third brought over a scarred wooden table and placed it in front of me. Then a fourth man grabbed my arm and bent it out before me on the table. I struggled feebly but to no effect.

  The leader stepped back and unsheathed a wickedly sharp parang from his belt. He tested the edge with his finger. I saw blood well out of a small cut. Then he advanced toward me as the others held me down.

  “Hey. Hey!” I screamed at them. “What the hell are you doing? We’re hostages. American lawyers. You hurt me, you’re going to be fucked.” I continued to struggle and fight but they were holding me down, and I couldn’t do anything. I felt more helpless than I ever had in my life.

  Dimly I realized that Vijay and Ashley and Schnizzel were all screaming at the top of their lungs. Rockaway was yelling something at Ricky Tang in bad Malay, trying to intercede. The leader barked something else to Tang.

  “Hold still and you lose the finger,” Tang translated, his face pale. “Otherwise, you lose the hand. Up to you.” I struggled madly to free myself. But there were four of them holding me down and I couldn’t move.