Ghost Ship

by Roger Weston

  As the boat hammered the seas, his thoughts kept returning to what Wan-Si had said about the Taiwanese being afraid of ghosts. He also thought about Richter and why he would have the Queen Mary’s funnels removed if she was about to make a sea voyage to Taiwan.

  His mind raced, replaying Koch’s face over and over again.

  What was Richter up to? No businessman from Taiwan would buy a ship as haunted as the Queen Mary. Charles was planning something, and Jake was sure it wasn’t good.

  Jake felt as if his dad was dying all over again. Years ago, he tried to move beyond his grief over losing his dad, but never really could. The injustice of a good man dying at the hands of a monster like Koch was too much to bear. Because his father’s body had never been found, Jake clung to the illusion that his father was still alive. He knew from years of research that many people who had been presumed lost at sea had miraculously survived. Some had drifted for days in survival suits—others for weeks in life rafts. He told himself that his father could have been picked up by a foreign fishing boat. Maybe he had amnesia from a blow to the head. Maybe he had some other secret reason for not coming back. He could be running a tramp ship now off the coast of China or Russia.

  Jake’s brain replayed its old monologue with the tedious regularity of a metronome. He drove himself to focus on the storm unleashing itself on Puget Sound.

  With Canada visible on the horizon, Jake navigated his fishing boat by the island of Sucia, a green claw of stone and trees with finger islets in her grasp.

  Steaming by her waved-thrashed shores, Jake could see other distant landfalls beyond, and when he crested the swells, stretches of the far-off mainland appeared in the light of the dawn.

  He headed toward Matia Island another rocky outcropping in Puget Sound. It was a mile long and a quarter mile wide, with several bays and bights along rocky shores. The island was on the edge of Georgia Strait and set aside by the government as a bird sanctuary.

  On the lee side of the island, Jake rode the Wolverine into the protected harbor. He tied up at the park service dock cleats and took to walking the beach for hours. Fierce winds tore through old-growth evergreens, sounding like a heavenly gospel choir. Waves rumbled on the beaches, battering logs and dragging them along like toothpicks. As Jake circled the island on foot, the rain drenched his hair and streamed off his face. When he hiked out of the dripping forest into a rocky clearing along the shore, he thought about his visit to California.

  He’d gone down to Long Beach to give a speech and who in hell did he see? Jake picked up a long stick and beat it violently against a driftwood log until it broke. Then he beat the log with the fractured stick. When that snapped, he threw it out into the churning waves as they pushed foam onto the highest reaches of sand. He shouted as loud as he could, raging with anger as if he expected the storm clouds to recede. Again he bellowed into the rain. He picked up another stick and winged it out across the attacking waves. With two hands, he lifted a large rock above his head.

  “Where are you, Dad? I found the bastard who killed you.”

  Crying out, he smashed the stone down, breaking it in half on another rock.

  He sat on a log and soaked up the rain. He would never forget the day that his mom told him of his father’s death. She had cried, and he’d comforted her all night long. They spoke of their love for him. Jake didn’t shed a tear … until he was alone. He had shoe boxes filled with photos, postcards and letters that his father had sent him from all over the world. For weeks after his father’s death, Jake went through the boxes over and over again, item-by-item, desperate to find some message from his father that could help him make sense of it all.

  As he grew older, he always wished that he’d had his father’s ashes so that he could spread them in the ocean. Maybe then he could move on. Once he got the idea of memorializing his father by dropping a wreath into the sea. When he got to the ocean, however, he’d been unable to let it go. If he had done so, that would’ve meant that his father was dead, and he still didn’t know that for sure. When he walked away from the sea that day, he took the wreath with him. To this day, when someone knocked on his door, something deep inside him always believed that it might be his father.

  When his mother started dating a few years later, Jake felt betrayed. Eventually, he accepted her boyfriend. But he never gave up hope that his father was actually alive and well and running a coastal trader between Canton and Kamchatka.

  Jake stared at the turbulent foaming water. After a while, he sat on a pile of driftwood, and closed his eyes as the thick ocean spray, rain, and wind broke against him. Monstrous swells rolled in and crashed on the beach, coming apart as they flattened into a mass of liquid confusion. Jake sat for more than an hour until something in his spirit told him that he had to act. He didn’t want to get involved but he had to.

  Without concrete evidence, nobody was going to crack down on Charles Richter and his sociopathic associate Tom Koch. If Jake’s suspicions were correct, and Richter planned to scuttle the Queen Mary to collect insurance, then his skeleton crew, which could number well over a hundred, might end up dead just like Jake’s father. Jake wasn’t about to sit back and shut up like a good accessory to murder. He would take action. What he needed was evidence to convince the Coast Guard to get off their can before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 13

  Twenty Years Earlier

  Jake did his homework in a four-wheel drive truck while his mom’s boyfriend took him to a remote cabin in the Cascade Mountains. They went up there almost every weekend for four years. Occasionally his mother would come, but usually not. Over time, Jake had come to accept that Stuart was a decent man and worthy of respect. The man was a former black ops commando, who made it his mission to help Jake become a man.

  At 3 a.m., they sat by the woodstove. Jake had just been goaded out of bed and was still half asleep.

  “Are you ready to get started?”

  “Yes,” Jake said.

  Stuart put a cast-iron skillet on the woodstove and cracked four eggs in the pan. In another skillet he laid a slab of bacon.

  “Get going then.”

  The smell had awakened Jake’s senses. “What about breakfast?”

  “It’s for me. Get off your ass and get outside.”

  “What?”

  “You’re soft and pathetic. Go run up Loggerhead.”

  “That’s five miles straight up.”

  “Keep your mouth shut and get outside. Wait for me there.”

  Jake opened the screen door and went outside. As he stood on the wood porch shaking in the bitter cold, he watched Stuart eating breakfast. Twenty minutes later, Stuart came out.

  “Remember, this is just between us. Don’t tell anyone what we do up here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You want to learn how to be a real man? A man like your dad?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Then I don’t need any bleeding hearts claiming that you’re being treated harshly. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Let’s go then,” he said.

  Jake was a runner and thought himself in decent shape, but the run up Loggerhead showed just how weak and pathetic he truly was.

  Over a four-year period, Jake endured grueling physical training, and learned a few key things about himself in the process. Of even more importance, however, were the strategic and tactical lessons drilled into him alongside the punishing physical regimen. Back then he had welcomed the brutal routine because he didn’t know how else to become a man. He felt lost without his dad. Not only that, Stuart had known Jake’s father, and it gave him an opportunity to ask him questions about his dad. Stuart called Jake’s father a great man and said he was an inspiration to him. It was Jake’s father who had inspired Stuart to join the Navy and eventually become a SEAL. Stuart said he owed it to Jake’s dad to teach Jake about duty and about discipline. Since then Jake had often reflected on how people influenced one another and h
ow those influences started chain reactions that could go on forever.

  CHAPTER 14

  Seattle, Washington

  The Present

  Jake stood in the living room of his houseboat in front of a painting of a 19th century tall ship called the Macquarie.

  He turned to Ashley and paused for a moment. Then he said, “I’m going down there.”

  Ashley’s eyes widened as she sunk back into the couch and crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”

  “Long Beach,” Jake grabbed a chair and sat down across from her. “I’m going back on the Queen Mary to get the insurance documents. If I can produce a bloated insurance policy, the Coast Guard will pay attention.”

  “How do you plan on getting on the ship? You told me yourself that she’s heavily guarded.”

  Jake leaned forward in the chair. “I’ll figure out a way. I’m not going to let Koch sink another ship and kill more people.”

  “Are you kidding me, Jake? This is not funny.”

  “Look, Ash. I have to get some evidence so the Coast Guard will act.”

  “Just slow down and take a minute to analyze the situation.” She was desperate to say anything that might change his mind. “If you jump too rashly you could land in a fire pit.”

  Jake dismissed her concerns. “I’ve got to do this for my dad. I can’t just let it go.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m taking the Wolverine down there. Wan-Si is going to help me, but I still have one problem.”

  “And what would that be?”

  He smiled at her. “I need someone to hit the library to dig up everything they can about Charles Richter.”

  “I guess that would be me. The glamorous life of the assistant calls.”

  After she left, Jake walked over and stood in front of the painting of the Macquarie. He reviewed his plans while he gazed at the worn canvas. Buildings had many potential entrances—doors, windows, fire escapes, basements. But the Queen Mary was a massive wall of steel. Other than the gangway, there were few other practical ways onboard, and Richter knew it.

  Looking at the tall ship in the painting reminded him that in the old days you could easily board a ship by coming alongside in another ship, throwing up a grappling hook and then climbing or leaping across. That seemed effortless compared to boarding a leviathan like the Queen Mary.

  If only he could come and go like one of the ship’s famous ghosts. Then he recalled the low stern on the Queen Mary. An idea began to form in his head. It was risky, but Richter’s security team would never expect it. He made a call to a local sign maker and to a metalworker he knew at Ballard Hardware. Then he went to his gun chest and withdrew a 9mm.

  CHAPTER 15

  December 28

  8 a.m.

  Ashley began her morning as she always did; beachcombing at Alki beach. Across the bay, downtown Seattle loomed gray and tall. Today she was headed to Jake’s office on the shore of Lake Washington to do more research on Charles Richter and prepare next term’s syllabi. It was going to be a long day. She didn’t mind helping Jake, but she worried about him going back down to Long Beach. Richter and his “team” gave her the creeps.

  An hour later at Jake’s desk, she began an internet search. She tapped in a couple of keywords along with Richter’s name and found several headlines about the man including one announcing that he was sponsoring a parade in Long Beach on January 30th. He was called a promotional genius who could leverage his obsessions into profits. He had even managed to fill his two Long Beach hotels for the event.

  Ashley felt she was wasting her time, but Jake had insisted she cast a wide net. She continued her search and landed photos of Richter with his winning horses at race-tracks in the U.S. and Chile.

  Ashley made a note about Richter being a promotional guru who was known for staging big publicity events and turning them into income streams and profit centers. She also noted that his hotels and casinos had the lowest vacancy rates in the industry.

  The speculation on Richter purchasing the Queen Mary ran wild. Some claimed he was a fool to invest so much in making her seaworthy again; others said he would make a fortune on the deal. One speculated that the Taiwanese would pay a premium for the famed ship. Richter would double his money on the sale and probably retain part ownership of the Queen Mary while one of his subsidiaries would land a contract to run the offshore casino. When this commentator ran the numbers, the multi-million dollar investment in restoring and refitting the Queen Mary suddenly appeared almost negligible when weighed against the upside profits that Richter was sure to haul in. Ashley also learned that Charles had recently bought another ship, a state-of-the art cargo ship. She started to feel the way she had when Jake was hired to speak in Long Beach. The inconsistency of Richter’s actions bothered her. Why would a hotel magnate buy a cargo ship? The Queen Mary, a retired cruise ship used as a floating hotel, she could understand, but a cargo ship didn’t make sense.

  CHAPTER 16

  Long Beach, California

  December 29

  2 a.m.

  Having helped Jake pilot the Wolverine down from Seattle, Wan-Si was comfortable with how she handled. At 2 a.m., with Wan-Si now at the wheel, the ragtag fishing boat sliced through the darkness of the Port of Long Beach. Using the massive size of the Queen Mary for cover from the eyes of the security force on the other side, he approached slowly in the darkness. He swept the fishing boat up along the side of the Queen Mary like a sea anemone.

  From the roof of the raised wheelhouse, Jake heaved his newly-fabricated and specially-designed grappling hook over the rail of the ship’s stern, set the hook, and stepped off the roof of the Wolverine’s raised wheelhouse.

  Jake swung clear as his boat slipped away. High above the waters of Long Beach Harbor, he dangled on the end of the rope. He only had to climb fifteen feet up to pull himself onto the Queen Mary, but it wasn’t easy. Toward the top, his arms and shoulders burned. Once he made it onboard, he crouched down and scanned the waters below. The Wolverine had slid back out into the harbor and was leaving the area. Wan-Si had performed magnificently. Jake spotted another small boat in the harbor, but it was a long way off. He sighed with relief. After collapsing his custom-made grappling hook with a double tug, he coiled the rope and looped it over his head and under his arm.

  Crossing the deck of the great ocean liner, Jake pushed open a door. He entered a wood-paneled hallway that seemed to go on forever. Thick brass handrails lined the wide passageway. Jake passed the old smoking room and library before he reached the double doors of the executive office.

  He entered and headed to the desk. He was looking for the insurance documents he had seen earlier. If they showed an inflated value of the vessel, it might be the only evidence he would need to get the Coast Guard interested in an investigation. As he approached the desktop, he saw the insurance policy, and he stuffed it into his waterproof bag. He was about to leave when he noticed a set of poster-sized blueprints on the next desk. Looking closer, Jake realized that they were blueprints of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Every maritime historian knew that the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was the worst shipwreck of all time. A sticky note with the date, January 30th, handwritten on it in pencil, had been stuck to the image of the boat. Jake paused for a minute, trying to contemplate the meaning of what he saw.

  He brushed it off. Back to the first desk, he shuffled through other papers. He paged through the ship’s manifest. Nothing unusual. He rummaged around for a few more minutes. Seeing nothing unusual he dashed for the door. Glancing down the hallway, he saw no one. He jogged down the passageway, his feet padding quietly on the carpet. Breaking into a run, he sprinted the length of the long aisle. Then he saw two armed security guards heading his way.

  A shot rang out. A wasp stung his arm, and Jake grunted with primal fear. Without slowing, he broke down the door to a first-class cabin and flattened himself against the interior wall like a burned pancake on a hot galley griddle.

&n
bsp; He reached over and squeezed his arm muscle, judging that the bullet had only caused a shallow flesh wound. Pulling his 9mm from his pocket, Jake leaned back out into the hall and fired a few shots, forcing the guards to take cover in doorways. He then grabbed the wind and sprinted down the passageway. He closed the gap to the stairwell, half expecting the next sting to be a fatal one. It came just as he took the corner, and splintered wood fragments whipped the side of his face.

  At the rail outside, he gasped with disbelief. A harbor patrol boat stood sentry in the waters below, and his own boat was fleeing the area, leaving Jake stranded. Up ahead, he saw a shadow and ducked into a nook, lifting the coiled rope off his shoulder.

  As his pursuer moved past the pool of shadows, Jake stepped out. He looped the rope of his grappling hook around the thug’s neck and jerked him backwards. The man’s head broke through the glass of a fire-extinguisher box. The thug dropped to the floor under the full force of general anesthesia. Jake slung his rope over his shoulder and reached into the now-open emergency box. He wrapped his fingers around an ax handle, then climbed into the nearest lifeboat and stayed low.

  Listening to the voices, he knew he was in big trouble. Two of the security guards were searching the lifeboats, one at a time. In only a couple of minutes, the inevitable would occur....

  Jake saw five fingers grasp the rail of the boat he was hiding in. Lifting the ax up a few inches, he took one gentle swing at the hand, and his now three-fingered attacker fell backwards with a scream. With lightening speed, Jake swung an oar that batted the other security man on the side of the head even as the shooter squeezed off a wild burst from his automatic weapon, a burst that nearly blew Jake’s head apart. Pursuer number two collapsed with a concussion.