Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  “Aye, sir,” the man said and took off at a run.

  “Tommy,” Hawke said, looking at his security chief who was now hoisting the Zodiac aboard. “Well done. If someone told me you could outrun a Harpoon missile in a rubber boat, I’d have suggested they seek psychiatric treatment.”

  “Thanks, Skipper. Six hundred horsepower works wonders sometimes. Sorry about our surprise guest here. Mr. Jones, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Thanks, Tom. Stoke is always a good idea. So, who the hell do you think took a shot at us?”

  “Military, sir. Had to be, a weapon like that.”

  “Right. Let’s hope the terrorists don’t have sea-launched guided weapons systems quite yet. But whose military, Sergeant?”

  “That is an extremely interesting question, Skipper.”

  Ten minutes later, Hawke was in his quarters. He’d stripped off his clothes, taken a steaming hot shower, and stretched himself out on his bed. He picked up the secure line to the CIA director, his old Desert Storm buddy and former ambassador to the Court of St. James, the Honorable Patrick Brickhouse Kelly. Brick was a tall, soft-spoken Virginian who cloaked his fierce intellect behind a veil of old-fashioned southern style and manners.

  “Hi, Brick,” Hawke said. “Lovely night for international incidents.”

  “So I hear. Casualties?”

  “No good guys. You can delete the Shanghai Star from your current edition of Lloyd’s International Ship Registry, however.”

  “Out of commission?”

  “Out of commission at the bottom of Cannes harbor.”

  “You had to sink her?”

  “It happened.”

  “Brock?”

  “We got him off first, luckily enough,” Hawke chuckled. “He’s down in our sickbay. A bit worse for wear, I’m afraid.”

  “How bad is he?”

  “Nothing life-threatening. The Chinese are good at torture. I’m sure they were saving all the really good stuff for some hellhole prison in Shanghai. He’d clearly been drugged, however.”

  “Sweet Jesus. Okay. I’m going to call Jenna and his kids right now, tell them he’s okay. Is he mobile, can he get around all right? I’m ordering a chopper airborne to medevac him.”

  “What the bloody hell is going on, Brick? After Stokely and I got Brock off that Chinese junker, somebody gave chase and fired a surface missile at us. At our bloody Zodiac. Right outside the bloody harbor.”

  There was a silence as Brick Kelly absorbed the import of what Hawke had just told him. He said, “You were fired upon. Okay. But a surface-to-surface missile? Are you absolutely positive about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “We evaded. Lucky for us, it was heat-seeking and our outboards don’t put out that much. Blackhawke counterlaunched. Sank the attacking vessel before she could launch another one.”

  “You sank two boats inside Cannes harbor.”

  “One inside, one outside. Affirmative.”

  “Christ.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I brought up that international incident idea.”

  “You know the identity or nationality of the attacking vessel?”

  “I do not.”

  “Educated guess. I’d say it was the French navy.”

  “The French? What the hell is going on, Brick?”

  “The Napoleonic Wars with a new Bonaparte at the helm. I’ll tell you all about it when you get to London.”

  “Me? I thought you wanted Brock.”

  “Both of you.”

  “London isn’t in my travel plans. I’ve got a date tomorrow evening.”

  “Rain check. You’re acquainted, aren’t you, with Big John?”

  “The USS Kennedy? Yeah, I landed my seaplane on her once. Bit of difficulty. I don’t think they like me much aboard that carrier. Certainly the air boss would not number me among his favorite sons.”

  “That’s what happens when the Royal Navy tries to land a single-engine seaplane on a U.S. Navy carrier deck, Hawkeye. You are a legend on that boat. At any rate, she’s the closest thing we’ve got to you in the Med. I’m going to put a helo down on Blackhawke’s aft pad. Big John is sending a Sea King to retrieve you two. She should be in the air in an hour. Once you’re aboard the Kennedy, I’m putting you on the first thing smoking to London.”

  “Lucky me. I hate the Riviera in June.”

  “I’ll have a medevac navy Gulfstream warming up her engines on Big John’s flight deck. Once you leave the Kennedy, you’ll be in London in four hours. Get some sleep now. We’ll debrief Brock here in D.C. at Walter Reed. Before and after his brain scan. Is he talking much? What kind of stuff is he saying?”

  “Not much. He’s in and out most of the time.”

  “Someone should scribble down everything he says, everything he’s said since you first found him. That would be very helpful, Alex. We’re going to be looking for inconsistencies.”

  “Why?”

  “The Red Chinese are big into autosuggestion and cranial implants these days. Our HRT guys bring back schizos all the time. You don’t know who’s talking, your guy or the microchip embedded in his cerebrum. Hard to keep track of who’s still on your side once they’ve met the Chinaman.”

  “Yeah. Manchurian Candidate stuff. No such thing as science fiction anymore. All right, Brick. See you in London. Come out to Hawkesmoor for a day or two. We’ll do some shooting.”

  “I’ll do that. Listen, Hawkeye, your new pal Brock is a very big deal to us. You’ll know just how big when I see you.”

  Before going to bed, Hawke met Stoke topside for a late drink at the small aft bar. They stood on the upper deck under a dense net of stars. It was the first good night in over a week. The mistral had departed, the ill wind disappearing as quickly as it had arrived.

  “Thanks again, Stoke,” Hawke said, raising his brandy.

  “De nada,” Stoke said.

  “One does not expect to get one’s arse shot at by the French navy.”

  “No. One’s arse definitely does not. Not after Normandy and all that other conveniently forgotten history we got going back. You know, Omaha Beach, Ste.-Mère-Église, distant, foggy memories like that. Makes me nuts, boss. You really think that’s who it was fired at us? A French navy boat?”

  “That’s what Brick thinks. He’s pretty good at this stuff.”

  “France ain’t exactly my idea of a perfect ally, but shooting at us is taking the game to a whole new level.”

  Hawke nodded in agreement, sipping his brandy, watching a shooting star blaze and die overhead. He said, “Sky look strange to you, Stoke?”

  “Nope. Same old, same old.”

  “Really? Look at the constellation Orion. See how it’s tilted? See that? Like our planet’s shifted a few degrees on its axis. Christ. I’m beginning to think it has.”

  “You okay?”

  “No, I don’t think I am, quite.”

  “You want me to stick around with you, buddy? When you go meet with the director in London? I got nothing on my dance card but a trip to Miami to see the next Mrs. Stokely Jones, Jr.”

  “The lovely Fancha from Cape Verde.”

  “Girl got a legitimate shot at the title, boss.”

  Hawke nodded. “I think we all ought to stay in close touch. You, me, Sutherland, Ambrose. Something tells me we are embarking on a long and dangerous journey, Stoke. Here. Your first assignment.”

  “Every dangerous journey begins with a single step,” Stoke said, looking at the small envelope.

  “An invitation to a dinner party tomorrow night. Aboard a very fancy yacht moored off the Hotel du Cap. I’d like you to go. See what you can find out about a Chinese movie star named Jet. She lives aboard. Ever hear of her?”

  “Nope. Don’t see many Chinese movies.”

  “She’s very cozy with some character named von Draxis. German chap who owns Valkyrie. Some kind of industrialist. Shipbuilder. Owns a lot of newspapers and television statio
ns in Eastern Europe as well. I read an SIS document about him some years ago. A Saddam stooge in those days, getting oil vouchers for political favors. I think he’s dirty. She may be, too.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I was with her just before I boarded the Star. She may have tipped them—I don’t know. They seemed to be expecting me. Anyway, I’d like you to check it out. Have a good look round. See what you can get by being your sociable self.”

  “You mean you want me to go over to that fancy yacht and just sort of ‘blend in.’”

  “Right, Stoke, just blend in,” Hawke said. “Disappear into the crowd. Lose yourself…”

  After a beat, the two of them eyed each other and burst out laughing. The only place on earth Stokely Jones might be able to blend in would be the Olympic wrestlers’ locker room.

  Stoke was well over six-foot-six and weighed nearly two-sixty, not an ounce of it fat. He’d started life in the projects and on the streets selling product and muscle. A wise old judge gave him the navy as an alternative to Riker’s Island. He did his SEAL training at Coronado and ended up as a river rat in the Mekong Delta in ’68. Coming home, the New York Jets signed him as a walk-on running back. He got hurt in his first game and spent an unhappy year on the injured reserve bench. Then he joined the New York City Police Department.

  “Yeah. I like this part,” Stoke said. “Spy stuff. Hey, boss, I never got to tell you about Ambrose.”

  “What about him?”

  “Somebody trying to kill him.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Nope. But he’s taking it personally.”

  Hawke laughed. “I would, too.”

  “I mean he’s on the case himself.”

  “He’s got the right man for the job.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Hong Kong

  THE VERY BEST PART OF HIS DAY WAS NIGHT. THE SMELLS OF the harbor coming through the small window to his left included salt brine, dead plankton, marine fuel, the flotsam and jetsam of centuries, rotting sea organisms, human waste, and much, much more. He closed his black eyes and inhaled, sucking these particulate fumes into the very cellars of his lungs. After a seeming eternity, the small black eyes embedded in the twin hollows above his razor-thin nose reopened.

  He took a deep breath, creating a wet sucking noise through the narrow vertical slits that constituted his nose. He opened the wide horizontal gash of his mouth. And, through that hole like an open grave, he exhaled. What did they say? In with the good air, out with the bad.

  His name was Hu Xu. He was nearly sixty years old and a death artist by trade. He called himself the “diener,” pronounced DEE-ner, the old German name for autopsy attendant. It can also mean “responsible manservant” or even “slave,” but he was neither of those. It was a private joke. As a young man, living with his parents in America, he had for some years been an autopsy assistant in Tempe, Arizona.

  Traditonally, any man (or, rarely, woman) who works in this capacity is called by the German word. To be the diener means pushing the gurneys around and hosing down the table. It means unzipping the body bags. It means sawing open bodies and learning their secrets, the tales of the dead. Hu Xu loved those secrets. It was in his blood.

  In Tempe, when the sheriff and his men had discovered his secrets and were chasing him, they called him simply “the Chinaman.” A Chinaman on the run in Arizona has a hard time hiding. Here, in his homeland, he was invisible once more.

  Standing now before a pedestal containing a tin basin full of hot soapy water, Hu Xu stared deeply into the steam-misted mirror and regarded the perfect beauty reflected there. Just the sight of his own wondrous face brought shudders of pleasure rippling up his short and slightly deformed spine.

  Yesssss, he hissed through his small, evenly spaced, and very sharp teeth.

  I am the beautiful diener.

  Indeed, in his natural state, as now, he was a wonder to behold. His body, from the neck down, was decorated in a brilliant tableau of interwoven and intricate tattoos. On his chest, descending beneath the black Tao cross, a two-headed Chinese dragon etched in shades of yellow, crimson, and emerald green. The dragon on his belly spouted twin licks of orange fire that divided to encircle Hu Xu’s small and malformed penis. Despite, or perhaps because of, the warped shape of the organ, his sexual appetites were varied and enormous. His sense of touch was inhumanly acute. As were all the others, taste, hearing, vision.

  He grinned, baring his teeth, and murmured his approval at the rewarding sight. Perfect white dentures hid his own stubby points. As to hair, there was a wispy black goatee at the chin and a fringe of stringy black locks at the base of his skull. Normally, he plaited the sparse tresses adorning his tonsure with seven sterling silver skulls that clinked softly whenever he moved his head.

  Now, he shaved off the goatee and stretched a latex skullcap over his hair and the tresses disappeared.

  Tonight, the perfectly sculpted skulls were in a small silk pouch secreted upon his person. The tinny sound of tinkling skulls: the last sound countless victims heard before they stepped off. Hu Xu smiled, flipping at will through vivid memories of past glories engraved in his diener’s memory bank; no, stop, back up, there, that one.

  He passed his hand over his bony skull, slick with perspiration, licking his thin dry lips. He must hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late for his appointment with General Moon, and he’d much to do before he could leave his barge.

  A red leather bag sat on a small wooden table by his dresser. It contained the protean secrets of Hu’s unusual life. He reached inside.

  Delicately extracting another rubber prosthesis and any number of jars and tubes of foundation cream, greasepaint, and powder, Hu Xu began to make himself disappear. He liked to sing while he worked, something he had learned as a child in Arizona from the Seven Dwarfs in the movie Snow White. A song popped into his head and he gave voice to it, beautifully, as it happened. One of his many skills was an uncanny gift for pitch-perfect vocal impersonations. And so the soulful voice of Eric Clapton began to waft through the floating house.

  She puts on her makeup

  And brushes her long black hair…

  Twenty minutes later, the wizened assassin had ceased to exist. In his place was a diminutive woman from the upper echelons of Shanghai society. Her name was Madame Li, and she had all the papers to prove it. Elderly and stooped, wearing a black raw silk dress with pearl buttons, Hu Xu leaned forward and studied himself carefully in the mirror. His cheeks were lightly rouged, his eyelashes long and thick with beautifully applied mascara. An artful application of lipstick fleshed out his lips, and his wig of hennaed black hair swept back into a tight chignon held in place by a tortoiseshell pin.

  Off to Paris, dearies!

  An old Louis Vuitton bag hung from his shoulder. Inside, a forged passport and fifty thousand Euros in cash. The old ship’s chronometer in the next room tolled. Eight bells. It was time to go. General Moon was expecting him at half past the hour. But first, he must bid fond adieu to the desolate creature waiting so patiently in the dark and fetid spaces beneath his feet.

  He pulled open the concealed hatch in the barge’s galley and paused to savor the lovely stink that erupted into his nostrils. Below, a sewer of fear awaited him. His studio. He stepped carefully (he was wearing modest heels) onto the wooden ladder and began his descent. Halfway down, he heard a muffled cry of hope from poor Marge. Grandmother’s coming, Margie! He had expected this confusion on her part and it delighted him no end. Did Marge really believe this elegant septuagenarian was coming to the rescue? The answer was yes!

  The bilges of Hu Xu’s floating residence, an aging two-story barge indistinguishable from thousands like it in Hong Kong’s crowded Victoria Harbor, were the death artist’s sanctuary and workplace. In the bowels of his barge he would complete his masterpieces in solitude, working through the night, his subjects lit only by guttering candles as he molded and reshaped their forms and limbs with his scalpels, bread kn
ives, pruning clippers, and, noisy old thing, a vibrating bone saw.

  It was dark down here, he saw. All but two of the large candles had expired. Still, it was lovely by candlelight. The walls were lined with large and small jars of formalin holding organs, bits of tissue, and carefully excised body parts. There was a central drain in the floor leading to a holding tank below. The tank emptied into a macerator, the same kind used on larger fishing boats to grind fish guts into thin gruel before the bloody soup was finally pumped overboard into the harbor.

  In the center of his busy autopsy suite sat a brand new table. It was the very latest thing in morgue decor. It had two tiers. The top slab, where Margie was now, was simply a perforated metal sheet. The perforations allowed flowing water and bodily fluids to seep through to the lower tier. This level was also metal and served as a catch basin. A pump ensured a continuous flow of water over the lower tier, keeping it clean.

  This one’s name was Marge Goodwin. Stupid-sounding name, he felt, even for an unattractive and overweight American. She was the wife of a corrupt corporate executive near the top echelons at the Bank of China. General Moon had demanded one million dollars for the dear wife’s safe return. The deadline had expired. No word from the disobedient banker. It was assumed he had gone to the police. Pointless, since the new chief, like many others in the new Hong Kong, was in Moon’s pocket.

  Alas, Moon had decreed death for Marge Goodwin.

  The general, through his aide, Major Tang, had forwarded this late-breaking information to his most prized assassin earlier in the evening. It arrived via an encoded message. It was usually a simple transposition code, based on the fact that it was the third day of the week and that the date was the fifteenth of the sixth month. It was also, as always, hand-delivered by an anonymous fisherman on an anonymous sampan.

  There were thousands of such nondescript men and women living on sampans in the harbor, large numbers of them on the general’s secret payroll in one capacity or another. In a recent move to solidify his position in Hong Kong, Moon had decided to equip this army of coolies with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Concealed, but, still, they were a formidable secret militia.