Dead Sea

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Dagupan Maru herself. We’ve done a super search that MarineTraffic.com would kill for. I’ve emailed you the full details but the headlines are as follows: the ship is registered as heading from Tokyo to Vancouver. That’s 4,088 nautical miles. She should be on a heading of four four point three degrees north-east, getting ready to swing south-east on the Great Circle. Her speed is ten knots. She’s been sailing for ten days. That’s two-hundred-and-forty hours. She should have proceeded . . .’

  ‘Twenty-four hundred nautical miles,’ said Richard. ‘I do mental arithmetic, Jim, even at four a.m.’

  ‘And that distance at that heading should put her at five one point six degrees north, one seven two degrees west,’ continued Jim, unabashed. ‘BUT she’s actually at four five point two degrees north, one six nine point five degrees west. Well off the Great Circle route and far farther south than she ought to be.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ snapped Richard. ‘She’s switched off her locator.’

  ‘She has,’ answered Jim. ‘But the professor’s switched on his laptop and the university can track that.’

  ‘Where’s the bottle?’ asked Richard after a moment.

  ‘Three four north, one six three west. But that’s not necessarily the right question.’

  Richard sat up straight, running his fingers through his hair. Until suddenly and shockingly, a mental picture of Sato the dead pilot appeared in his mind. Sato, killed coming back from Dagupan’s sister ship. ‘Where are the girls?’ he croaked.

  ‘Robin’s last position was Johnston Island, one six point seven degrees north, one six nine point five degrees west.’

  ‘That’s due south of Dagupan. Liberty?’

  ‘Four five point two degrees north, one four four degrees west.’

  ‘That’s due west of her. And they’re all heading in for the bottle in the middle. So the cargo’s not all that important after all,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘The Macassar Ebony?’ said Jim. ‘I wouldn’t say that, but if the owners know anything about timber then they’ll know the price of the cargo is only going to go up and up. They can afford a little side trip if they feel the urge.’

  ‘Or if they have a good enough reason.’ Richard was thinking, A hundred-and-ten-million good reasons. ‘And are they the kind of people who know anything about timber? These Cook and Company people?’

  ‘Ah. Right. Yes. Cook and Company are a shell company. As far as we can ascertain they are owned by Aruba Holdings whoever they are. Hull and cargo. Same owners. Risky of course, but potentially profitable if the gamble comes off. And they do seem like gamblers, these people. It’s all in the email.’

  ‘But you can’t tell me who those owners are? The people who re-registered the flag at Tuvalu?’

  ‘No . . . But I think I know a man who can. Hang on . . .’

  The line hissed for a moment, then Jim was back. And his voice had lost all of that know-it-all bounciness from earlier. ‘That was Willy on the other line reporting in from Tuvalu. It took some doing, but he’s seen the records and there isn’t any doubt. Aruba Holdings is a shell company entirely owned, lock, stock and barrel, by Luzon Logging of Quezon City, Manila. It’s a bit of a nightmare, Richard. Luzon Logging . . .’

  Professor

  Aika Rei was growing more and more certain that she was being watched. The feeling grew stronger as time passed. Reona told her she was overreacting. That it was natural that she should be the centre of attention. She would have attracted the crew’s admiring gaze even had she been fat and middle-aged. But she sensed that her professor was withdrawing from her and she began to feel more and more unprotected.

  It was not that Reona was tiring of her – he was as attentive as ever, especially when it came to matters of the pillow. Indeed, he was becoming ever more experimental and graduating into being an extremely satisfactory lover. At night she would tease him that he was passing through his doctorate in the bed and becoming a professor of passion too. But during the long, increasingly tedious days, he was beginning to be seduced by his original mistress back into his research.

  To a great extent Aika Rei blamed the electrical engineer, Senzo Tago for this. The way in which he set up the laptop as part of the ship’s powerful communications system and then kept returning to check up on it, to refine it and perfect it, allowed Reona access to all the information and research that he kept in his university cloud files as well as permitting constant monitoring of the Cheerio bottle and the two yachts racing towards it. Helpfully, Tago also put a little red dot that tracked Dagupan’s position and progress across the screen as well as one for her objective’s position and one for her competitors’. Then he found a way of adding the ship’s observations about patterns of weather, sea and current to the whole. Reona became so entranced by this ever-changing situation that he completely failed to notice the way the engineer leered at her behind his back.

  And Senzo Tago was by no means alone. During the early days of the voyage, Aika was happy to explore the ship and all the common parts that the crew could frequent. She was excited to do so, in fact, her head full of well-financed plans, schemes and dreams as well as the elevated feeling that an intense and burgeoning love affair can bring. She was not at first put off by their surly suspicion of the lovely young woman and the unworldly professor in their midst. Of her habit of suddenly appearing, with him or without him, as entranced observer of some workaday ship’s routine, in skirts that seemed either tight or short – or both. Of her arrival at the doorway of some section of the engine room, storage facility or work area, in the tightest jeans and a cut-off T-shirt that moulded to her bust. She explored the off-duty areas and discovered there was little indeed for the off-watch crews to do except to sleep and eat, but did not at first begin to assess the effect of the boredom on the men. She was a spectator at their on-deck football and baseball matches without noticing the way they were all watching her.

  At first she did not even notice the way in which they started playing with her, treating her as their toy. She appeared without suspicion at her place for lifeboat drill with First Officer Sakai’s crew in the middle of the night wearing the skimpiest of see-through dressing gowns. She supposed it was simple safety procedure when the same thing happened two nights later. And three nights after that. Without a second thought, she visited the canteen and joined the self-service queue for food at meal times, assuming that the way she was jostled – especially when alone – was just the result of the crew’s eagerness to eat.

  She thought only of changing into her most sensible footwear when invited to inspect the engine room maintenance levels with their mesh-grille flooring, and did not wonder at the sudden interest among the engineers in anything that might be happening one level below her, or immediately beneath the flare of her skirt and everything underneath it that might be revealed to someone looking upwards through a transparent deck.

  She thought nothing of the sudden failure of their private en suite facilities and spent several days relieving herself, washing and showering in a specially isolated section of the crew’s facility before it hit her that none of this was quite as isolated as it seemed.

  The incident that really changed things, that woke her up to some of the risks she and her professor were really running here, was nothing to do with her place as ship’s sex toy at all. It was to do with the cargo.

  It was the tenth day since they had come aboard and Dagupan Maru was ploughing her lonely way through a wide, calm ocean. The sky and the sea were as predictably boring as the routine aboard. There were no clouds, no winds, no waves of any note; no ships. There hadn’t even been any seabirds to watch during the hours since dawn, and it was well past noon now.

  Aika Rei had gown bored with watching Reona crouching over his laptop and the arrival of Senzo Tago with yet another piece of programming had been motive enough to drive her down to the crew’s canteen for an early lunch. Because she ate early, before the change of watch, the place was all but deserted an
d she settled in a corner with a bowl of soba noodles and dashi soup, content to be alone, so she could slurp them noisily like the good Tokyo girl she was. The only other people there was a work gang of four unfamiliar men, hurriedly finishing their thick udon noodles and kamaboko fishcakes liberally sprinkled with shichimi seven-pepper seasoning. Perhaps it was the fact that they were not paying any attention to her at all that piqued her interest. When they rose and scuttled out, she left her half-eaten food and followed them.

  They were heading for a section of the ship she had not yet explored. Her interest quickened further as she followed them down one of the port-side interior companionways into the decks below the front of the bridge house, away from the more familiar engineering sections behind it. She did not know it, but they were hard up against the cofferdam that separated the living and working areas from the cargo holds. And, by the time they slowed, they were four decks down and hard up against the skin of the port-side hull. The lighting was poor down here; there were more than enough shadows for Aika Rei to hide in as the men, still preoccupied with the business that had brought them down here, gathered together around a big bulkhead door.

  It was only when the little group of crewmen began to loosen the two big handles holding this closed that they began to look around nervously – and Aika realized that she might be caught up in something problematic here. But she stayed, because, after ten days, the fear was preferable to the boredom. And she saw herself as a decisive and adventurous woman. It took a lot to frighten her off, as her presence aboard in the first place attested.

  And that was why, when they eased the big door open and stepped in one after the other, leaving the door slightly ajar, that Aika Rei decided to follow them. She found herself in a narrow passage on the floor of what looked like a huge warehouse. There were light fittings on the walls and on the deckhead far, far above, giving some kind of illumination to the place, but their dimness and simple distance simply emphasized the enormity of the hold. As far as she was concerned, she was in the largest space she had ever come across in her life. And yet she felt constricted, almost claustrophobic. Because it was packed. Instead of air, almost every cubic centimetre of the place was packed with wood so dark that it looked black to her. There was a smell of smoke and it seemed to her at first that the black wood must be charred and burned. But no – when she reached out a hesitant hand to touch a plank of the stuff, it was as cool and smooth, as polished and soapy as jade. And the sawdust smell beneath the burning was rich and sweet, almost like perfume in her nostrils. She glanced back and was relieved to see that there were handles on the inside of the door as well as on the outside. Then she began to creep forward, only to freeze.

  ‘. . . millions . . .’ came a whisper, apparently from between the ebony planks themselves. ‘It’s worth millions . . .’

  ‘. . . says it’s worth more than jade, ounce for ounce . . .’

  ‘. . . more than gold . . .’

  ‘But it’s in beams and planks!’ came a voice closer at hand. Louder, more sceptical, less awed.

  The more practical one, thought Aika Rei: there’s always one . . . She edged further into the massive, wood-filled space, straining to hear them more clearly.

  ‘Look at it!’ the sceptical voice continued. ‘Scumbag Tago looked it up on that stupid professor’s computer while he was out at dinner with the slut he’s shagging. It used to be a fucking palace, for fuck’s sake. Of course it’s in planks and timbers, trunks and logs. There’s nothing here for you to steal, Izumi. Even if it is worth as much as jade. Or gold. Feel it – it’s as heavy as gold too. To get something out of here, smuggle it past that bastard Sakai and off the ship in Vancouver, you’d need something as small as your dick! And everything in here is almost as big as mine . . .’

  ‘Yours only gets that big, Nagase,’ sneered one of the others, ‘when you’re getting an eyeful of the hot slut!’

  ‘At least it gets that big, Ido, old friend. Especially when I peep through the spyhole in her shower . . .’

  Realization hit Aika Rei with almost physical force. She was the person they were referring to in such shocking terms! She stopped breathing, as though punched in the stomach. It was her shower they were spying on. Her shower! She was so shocked and angry that she was actually about to give them a piece of her mind, as though they had been dirty-minded students in one of her lectures, but just at that moment the bulkhead door behind her slammed wide.

  ‘Come out!’ bellowed a massive voice. ‘Izumi, Nagase, the rest of you! We know you’re in there!’

  ‘Shit!’ hissed Izumi. ‘It’s fucking Sakai. He’s going to fucking kill us.’

  ‘Better take it like a man, then, Izumi,’ answered Nagase. ‘Unless you want to bend over and take it like a woman! Here I am, First Officer Sakai. General purpose seaman Nagase coming out as ordered!’

  There was the narrowest of spaces for Aika Rei to squeeze into. It was deep and blessedly dark. She made herself invisible. Willed herself silent. Imagined herself undiscoverable. The largest of the four men swaggered past. His footsteps echoed confidently enough until they were stopped abruptly by the ringing, almost bell-like sound of a metal bar being slammed across his skull. There was a softer crumpling sound as he slumped unconscious to the deck. ‘One down, three to go,’ bellowed First Officer Sakai. ‘Don’t make me come in and get you!’

  The next two tried to run out as a pair but they didn’t get any further than Nagase. They too went down with that telltale crumpling sound as the cracked-bell tones were still ringing in the air. ‘Come on, Izumi! Don’t keep us waiting!’

  ‘Fuck you, Sakai! I’m not going to let you crack my skull open so easily!’

  ‘You can’t stop it, Izumi. You know that. You’ve broken the rules. You suffer the consequences. You’re only drawing it out, making it worse for yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t! I didn’t break any rules. I wasn’t going to steal anything!’

  ‘That’s only because there’s nothing in here small enough to steal and you know it! What did you think? A palace was going to be made out of neat little nickable sections just right for you to try and smuggle ashore? You’d better thank your lucky gods that it’s not. Have you any idea what would have happened to you if this had gone any further? You know nobody crosses the company. Nobody pisses off the professor. Our professor – not that sad little git with his sorry slut in the owner’s suite. And let me tell you this, Seaman Izumi, while you still have ears to hear with, our professor’s coming aboard! Did you know that? The man himself! And you do not want to be in anybody’s bad books when the professor comes aboard. That’s why Nagase here did the wise thing. His dick’s not as big as a roof beam but at least he’ll still have one when this is all over. Which is more than you’ll have if the professor hears anything about this, and you know it!’

  Still the coward Izumi hesitated, and Sakai added those last, few, fatal words: ‘Come on, for fuck’s sake, Izumi. You know the professor only wants to play with the two in the owner’s suite after he gets the lottery ticket. Well, with the slut, at any rate. Don’t make him waste his time on you . . .’

  Izumi capitulated. The cracked bell sound was preceded by a whimper and followed by the soft crumpling sound. The door slammed shut. Aika Rei threw up her soba noodles and dashi broth all over the deck at her feet.

  During the time it took her to stumble to the bulkhead door and release the inner handles, she began to see her whole existence in an entirely new light. But, try as she might, she could not begin to see any kind of a way out of this suddenly terrifying situation either for herself or for her poor Reona.

  Her professor was not in their suite when she finally made it back. A couple of hours earlier she would have assumed he had gone to lunch without her. Now she was at once terrified they might have murdered him already. She went into their bathroom and used a dry towel to rub the sickness off her shoes. The main door opened and she ran out, almost weeping with relief to find Tago there. Her revu
lsion was so great that she spat, ‘You know they all call you Scumbag Tago?’

  He looked at her like a surly child. Then he sneered. ‘You should hear some of the things they call you!’

  ‘I have, you little shit! Now get out! And tell whichever sick fuck turned the water off in here so you could spy on me showering downstairs to turn it back on again. I’d rot before I washed down there again. I’d go to the toilet out of the window, you sick scum!’

  He went, apparently more than a little shaken by the venom and profanity of her outburst. Alone – really terribly alone, now – she collapsed on the chair she put her coat on the first time she had walked in here as innocently as a child, and really began to wonder what was actually going to become of herself and her beloved professor Reona Tanaka.

  But if Reona was her professor, she thought, then who was this other professor? The professor that even the fearsome First Officer Sakai seemed to be terrified of. Why was he threatening to come aboard the Dagupan Maru? And what on earth did this other professor want with her?

  Aika Rei was still stuck at this point when Reona reappeared the better part of an hour later. He didn’t notice her expression, for he was bursting with news.

  ‘Good news,’ he said as he came in. ‘I bumped into First Officer Sakai and he says the bathroom’s been fixed. We’re back to our own private en suite!’

  ‘Reona,’ she began, a little weakly.

  ‘Oh, and we’re to have a visitor!’ he interrupted her, too full of boyish enthusiasm to be stopped. ‘Apparently the CEO of the company wants to come aboard himself; be there in person when we catch up with the Cheerio.’

  ‘Darling,’ she tried again.

  But he overrode her again. ‘And he’s not just the chairman of the shipping section; he’s the guy who runs the whole thing. Luzon Logging – the lot. He sounds really important, incredibly powerful – maybe even more powerful that Mr Greenbaum and Captain Mariner. Professor Satang S. Sittart’s his name and Sakai says he can hardly wait to meet us!’