So the ship was going somewhere. Doubtless, the owners saw little merit in keeping the vessel in the tiny town of Dutch Harbor any longer. And given that the crew of the tug was American, Sato surmised that they were headed for civilization, mainland Alaska at the very least, the Lower 48 in the best case.
This was good news. This would alleviate the need for Sato and his men to conjure a way out of Dutch Harbor with the bonds. They’d brought provisions aboard with them; they could survive for two weeks, if absolutely necessary. And when the ship docked in America, they would find their way off of it, disappear into the crowd. Find sympathetic friends to facilitate their passage back to Japan.
The ship’s movement was a blessing. Far more troubling to Sato was the issue of the stolen bonds themselves. They were not where the sailor had claimed. Sato and his colleagues had searched the infirmary top to bottom and found nothing but discarded bedding and empty food containers—evidence of Hiroki Okura—but no sign of the briefcase.
Compounding the matter was the issue of the two Americans who’d made camp on the accommodations deck. To Sato’s amusement, they hadn’t claimed any of the many staterooms aboard the ship; rather, they’d spread sleeping bags in the officers’ lounge and claimed it as their bedroom. He’d had one of his colleagues, Fuchida, spy on them at night while they were sleeping.
A man and a woman, middle-aged, Fuchida had reported. They looked romantically involved, perhaps married. They did not look armed.
They would wish that they were. If Sato and his colleagues couldn’t find the bonds on this vessel, they would have to resort to more aggressive tactics.
And that was bad news for the man and woman who’d camped up above.
91
Two days out of Dutch Harbor, the satellite phone in the Gale Force’s wheelhouse startled McKenna out of the blissful rhythm of another morning at sea. She’d been tending to the autopilot, satellite radio blasting some classic Stones, looking out through the forward windows at a flat calm sea and enjoying every minute of the slow, monotonous journey south.
She’d all but pushed Court Harrington from her mind, forgotten about the cocky North Carolinian who’d almost—almost—bewitched her into losing her sense again, back there in Dutch Harbor.
And then the satellite phone rang, and it was Harrington on the other end. And he sounded, well, sheepish.
“Hey, uh, skipper,” he began tentatively. “How’s it going?”
“Going fine, Harrington,” she replied. “Seas are flat calm and we’re plowing along. You’d have been bored out of your mind by the first night out.”
Harrington laughed, but it was something more nervous than funny. “Yeah, I bet.”
“Where are you? You make it down to a hospital, or what?”
“I’m in Seattle,” he replied. “Found a good physiotherapist, and she’s working me hard. Sounds like I’m going to be here for a little bit.” He paused. “But listen, skipper . . .”
McKenna frowned. “Uh-huh?”
“This is awkward,” he said. “There’s no easy way to say this, but, uh—” Sigh. “I left something on the tug. In my stateroom.”
“Oh,” McKenna said. “That’s no problem. Give me a forwarding address, and I’ll have it sent your way as soon as we hit the docks. Unless it’s dirty underwear or your personal stash of porn, in which case you’re SOL.”
“It’s not porn. It’s not underwear, either. It’s not—” Another nervous laugh. “Actually, it’s not even mine.”
He let that one hang there, long enough that McKenna should have asked him to elaborate, but she didn’t bother. Figured if he was going to spill something rotten on her, she wasn’t going to beg for it.
And then he did. Told her a whole sordid story, the ghost on the Lion and how it led to the ambush, Harrington saving McKenna’s life in the nick of time.
McKenna knew all this. This was old news. But Harrington had more to tell.
“I started wondering why this guy stuck around so long,” Harrington said. “Turns out he was after this briefcase. Stainless-steel, like in a James Bond movie or something. It was hidden in a cabinet in the infirmary.”
A briefcase. McKenna felt the first stirrings of nausea. “You never mentioned anything about a briefcase before, Court.”
“I wasn’t—” Pause. “I knew we’d have to give it up if I made a big deal out of it. You know, with the guy trying to kill you and all.”
“So you kept it.”
“We’re a salvage operation. Everything on that boat belongs to us, rightfully, by law, right?”
“Court.” McKenna rubbed her eyes. “We made thirty million dollars–plus on that job. If someone wants to kill me for a briefcase, heck, they can have it.”
“I was just curious, is all. Wouldn’t you be?”
“So you left the briefcase in your stateroom, is that it?” McKenna replied, dodging the question. “And what do you want me to do with it? What was inside, after all that?”
“I don’t know,” Harrington said. “I was waiting until things calmed down, and I was going to show it to you and we could open it, but then . . . you know.”
You tried to kiss me and I got cold feet and put you on the next plane out of my sight. I know.
“McKenna— Captain Rhodes?”
“I’m here, Court,” McKenna said. “I’m just trying to process this.”
“I just thought you should know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Yeah, well.” She corrected the autopilot. Shook her mind clear. “Nothing to do about it now. Let me have a look at the briefcase and I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.” Then after a beat: “Tell the gang I say hi, okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Will do.” And she ended the call.
* * *
• • •
HARRINGTON TOOK THE PHONE from his ear. Stood for a minute outside the front doors of the hospital, looking up at the sky. It was a pleasant, sunny day, warm and summery, the sky a cloudless blue, but Harrington barely noticed.
She’s going to kill me, he thought, tucking the phone into his pocket and starting toward the hospital entrance. That woman is going to straight-up kill me.
He disappeared inside the front doors, intent on finding his therapist for another day’s labor. The doctor was pretty cute, kind of a hardass, and she seemed to find Harrington’s salvage stories exciting. It wasn’t the worst situation in the world, but Harrington wasn’t focused on the doctor right now.
He found the elevator, pressed the call button, and waited, tapping his foot and mentally kicking his ass—completely unaware of the nondescript Chrysler rental idling out in the parking lot, or the driver inside, who’d been watching him close ever since he’d left Dutch Harbor.
92
Daishin Sato found an access hatch in the hull of the Pacific Lion, midway between the accommodations deck and the waterline. He unlocked the bulkhead door and swung the hatch open, revealing an endless expanse of azure sea and blue sky, a gentle rolling swell, the hush of the water as the Lion plowed through it.
Sato took a moment, admired the view. Breathed the fresh air. He and his colleagues had been imprisoned belowdecks for three days, confined mostly to darkness and the stale air of the holds. He’d ventured up to the weather deck once, when the cargo hold started to seem suffocating, but it had been nighttime, the ship’s minders asleep in the lounge, the air outside cold.
It was a beautiful day. It had been an uneventful voyage, so far, for better or for worse. Sato wasn’t seasick; that was a positive. Perhaps the only positive, at this point.
He produced his satellite phone. Entered the number he knew by heart, and waited to be connected.
The connection took time, longer than a cellular phone, and Sato held the phone to his ear, and watched the waves roll by. Then a cli
ck, and the connection was made. “Hai.”
“The product is not here,” Sato told the man on the other end of the line. “We’ve looked exhaustively.”
There was a pause. The connection clicked and coughed. Sato waited.
“Very well,” the man said at last. “We will have to escalate the matter.”
“I’ll wait for instruction,” Sato replied.
The other man didn’t bother to answer. He killed the call, leaving Sato alone again with the vast, open ocean, and the sky equally limitless. Sato indulged the view for another minute or two.
Then he closed the hatch and locked it, and set out to return to his colleagues.
* * *
• • •
THREE THOUSAND MILES away from the Pacific Lion, Katsuo Nakadate replaced the handset on his phone.
He turned in his chair, away from his desk and his computer, to stare out through vast picture windows at the city of Yokohama and the ocean beyond. He thought, with a long moment, about what he was going to do.
The syndicate’s interests remained in jeopardy. The bonds remained unrecovered. Nakadate would use any means to recover them, but still, he had hoped to confine any violence to the accountant Ishimaru, and perhaps to his accomplice on the freighter.
He didn’t relish the prospect of initiating conflict with civilians. He had hoped that Sato and his colleagues would have located the bonds on the freighter, that his most pressing concern would be bringing his men home.
But the bonds had disappeared. And that meant someone—an American—knew of their whereabouts.
Nakadate swiveled in his chair again, back to his phone. Picked up his handset and instructed his secretary to make another call.
He waited briefly. Then the call was placed, and Masao Tanaka answered on the first ring.
“Your colleagues have had no luck,” Nakadate told him. “It’s your turn to act.”
93
Four days into the tow.
McKenna made fresh coffee in the galley, and then climbed the stairs back to the wheelhouse. Nelson Ridley had the controls this morning. The engineer heard her coming, glanced back to greet her, and let his eyes fall meaningfully on the chart table by the stairs, the stainless-steel briefcase that sat upon it.
“You ever going to look inside that thing, skipper?” he asked McKenna. “It’s kind of giving me the heebie-jeebies here.”
McKenna handed Ridley a cup of coffee, took a sip of her own. Surveyed the wheelhouse, looked out through the windows. It was a nice enough day on the water: not much sun to speak of, but no wind, either, and nothing more than a low, westerly swell, as far as the seas were concerned. The Pacific Lion followed the Gale Force as she had for days now, and McKenna found it almost hard to believe that the well-behaved freighter dawdling behind the tug was the same beast of a ship that had nearly killed Court Harrington.
Of course, there was a reason that saving the Lion was worth thirty million dollars, and towing her to port only paid a fraction.
Ridley took the coffee, but he wasn’t about to let the subject drop. “I mean, be honest. Aren’t you at all curious?”
McKenna looked back at the briefcase, felt her body tense involuntary, constricting around her lungs just enough to be uncomfortable. She’d found the briefcase just where Harrington had described it, stashed under his bunk with a whole family of dust bunnies, had brought it up to the wheelhouse and looked at it for a while, long enough to make her feel uneasy. Then she’d set the thing down on the table, tried to forget about it. Tried to focus on the tow.
“Of course I’m curious,” she told Ridley. “But it’s locked, Nelson.”
Ridley raised an eyebrow. “We’re the roughest, toughest salvage tug on the North Pacific,” he said. “We raise ships from the dead. You don’t think we can open a briefcase?”
“I’m quite sure we can,” McKenna said. “It’s just—”
She trailed off, unsure how to tell Ridley how that damn case gave her the creeps, too, how she could close her eyes and hear the gunshots that had almost killed her and Harrington, see the look in the gunman’s eyes as he’d prepared to pull the trigger.
“I know,” Ridley said. “It’s weird, all right. But the kid’s got a valid argument. It’s lawfully our property.” He gave her a devilish grin. “What if there’s a million bucks in there, skipper? Wouldn’t you want to know?”
“I’ve already made my millions for this trip.” She forced a smile, gestured to the controls. “Let me take over here, would you? Grab a sandwich or something.”
Ridley paused, like he was debating pressing the issue. Finally, he shrugged. “You worried I’m going to crash your big boat?”
“I’m just saying, I’ve seen you drive that motorcycle of yours. Go on back to the engine room where you can’t wreck anything.”
“You’d be surprised.” Ridley retreated, casting one more meaningful glance at the briefcase before disappearing down the stairs and out of sight.
McKenna listened to her engineer fumbling around in the galley. Checked the autopilot, the GPS, replotted her course, anything to keep from thinking about that case.
The tug was making good time anyway, made it halfway across the Gulf of Alaska already. Another couple days, they’d home in on Cape St. James, the southern tip of the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the British Columbia coast. They’d skirt down the western side of Vancouver Island to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, cut in and down to Puget Sound in Seattle, and home, easy as pie. If the weather held, they might make it in early.
But the briefcase still gnawed at her. Throw it overboard, she thought. Forget about it. Hand it off to the authorities when you get to Seattle. Wash your hands of the whole ordeal.
Yeah, she thought. Maybe.
But even that wouldn’t guarantee safety. What if whoever owned the case came looking for it?
What would your dad do, girl?
Riptide Rhodes? McKenna couldn’t be sure, but she had a damn solid suspicion her dad wouldn’t be turning the case in to any authorities, not until he’d figured out what was inside.
It’s lawfully ours. Rules of the sea.
Her dad would have been curious. Hell, McKenna was curious. Just not enough to do anything about it, not yet.
She replotted the Gale Force’s route on the GPS screen—again—the vast expanse of ocean, not another soul around for hundreds of miles. Sooner or later, though, the tug would reach landfall, and McKenna wondered what—or who—would be waiting for them when they arrived.
It was a worrying question, and McKenna had days and days to mull it over. She settled into an uneasy discontent, and it hung over her head and didn’t go away.
94
Court Harrington had just returned to his suite at Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel—hey, he was a millionaire now—when there came a knock at the door.
Harrington sighed. He was tired, and he was hungry. It had been a long day of physical therapy, feeling weak and helpless as the cute doctor put him through a succession of strengthening exercises. A steak sounded pretty damn good right about now. So did alcohol, for that matter. He’d earned it.
Three knocks, quick and solid. Someone meant business. Harrington crossed the suite to the door and peered through the peephole. Saw a man standing in the hall, young, a black suit.
“Yeah?” he called through the door.
The man seemed to fix his eyes on Harrington’s own, even through the tiny looking glass. “Hotel security, Mr. Harrington,” he said in an accented voice. “There is a matter we need to discuss with you.”
“Security?” Harrington frowned. “What are they saying I did?”
“It’s nothing so serious,” the man replied. “Please, there are some questions about your account with us. If you’ll allow me to verify them with you, I can leave you in peace.”
Damn it. Harri
ngton sighed again, felt his stomach rumble in protest as he slid the security chain loose and unlocked the door. Swung it open to reveal the slender security man, smaller than Harrington had first imagined. He gave Harrington a wide smile.
“My name is Tanaka,” he said. He gestured into Harrington’s suite. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
This was weird. But the guy was small, and Harrington figured if the joker tried anything, he could take him.
“You said you had questions about my account?” he asked, turning to walk into the suite’s spacious living area as the door swung closed behind Tanaka. “Listen—maybe you should show me some ID, first.”
He turned back, pleased with himself, figured he’d put the guy on the defensive, see how he liked it.
Felt significantly less clever when he caught sight of the gun.
* * *
• • •
THE GUN had been easy for Masao Tanaka to obtain.
The Inagawa-kai was yakuza, after all, and the yakuza had friends in Seattle. One discreet phone call to one of those friends, one late-night meeting in one empty parking garage, and Tanaka found himself the proud owner of a Beretta 92FS 9mm pistol, with a Gemtech GM-9 suppressor thrown in for good measure. An easy transaction, to be sure, but a worthwhile one, judging by the expression on Court Harrington’s face.
Tanaka backed the American farther into his suite. Gestured to a plush chair in the corner. “Please,” he said. “Sit.”
Harrington sat. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the pistol.
“Very good.” Tanaka smiled at the American again, still friendly, harmless. “I’m not planning to hurt you,” he said. “I don’t want to have to alter my plans. Do you know why I’m here?”
Harrington nodded. Tried to speak, wet his lips, tried again. “I guess it’s the same reason that other guy drew down on me and my skipper. Y’all really want that briefcase back, huh? What do you have in there, gold bars?”
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