by Swigart, Rob
The honesty in his eyes, like much else about him, was deceptive. Yes, she thought, this was a dangerous man. The thought excited her. She moved toward him. He did not see her reflection, so when she slid her arms around him under his jacket, he started and turned swiftly. She stepped back, frightened for a moment. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
She was naked, and involuntarily shielded herself with her hands for a moment. He said nothing, and she gave an embarrassed little laugh and came to him again, pressing her large breasts against him and sliding her arms around his waist. She began to tug at his shirt, pulling it free in back so she could feel the muscles of his lower back. She could feel him growing hard against her as he reached behind her, seized a handful of her buttock and squeezed. His grip was painful and she pulled away from it, a movement that thrust her loins against his. She could feel he was responding to her.
“I don’t even know your name,” she murmured against his chest as she struggled with his clothing.
He said nothing for a time, then said, “Jean,” in a brief, almost evasive tone.
“Jean,” she repeated clumsily, her French accented atrociously with American. He did not react, but pressed her against him.
At last she got his shirt and jacket off, and leaned back to admire the clean definition of his musculature. He had a tattoo on his arm, a fearsome sea monster of some kind. That was exotic, a little wild.
“How do you stay in such good shape?” she said, running her palms over his chest. She tugged at his belt.
“I work out,” he said shortly, pushing her roughly against the bed. The edge caught her knees, and she toppled back, spreading her legs a little as she fell. He could see she was not a real blond: Her pubic hair was dark, a chestnut color, but very rich. He reached down and seized a handful and pulled roughly.
She cried out with pain and sudden fear, and he smiled. “You would like,” he said softly, “to fuck?” He released her and stepped back.
She nodded, but felt the fear in her own eyes looking out. He pulled his pants down swiftly and stepped out of them. His penis was small and very hard. She stared at it, fascinated, as it approached her. Slowly, so slowly. She licked her lips and touched her breast lightly, almost without knowing she was doing it. She cupped it, curled her fingers around the nipple, small and hard between her thumb and forefinger. The fear faded, swamped by her desire. Her thighs widened, opening her shell-pink vagina to him, its small folds distended and moist. He ignored it, staring at her face.
“Please,” she breathed “Please. It’s been so long.” Her fingers worked at her nipple. She reached with her other hand for her clitoris and rubbed it in small circles. She spread her fingers along the labia and pulled them apart, opening herself more. “Please.” Her voice was so thick now she could scarcely get the word out.
He stopped. He put his hands together, palm to palm, and pressed. The muscles along his biceps and forearms, his pectorals and abdomen, tensed and ridged. For a moment he looked as if he were posing for a photo.
“Your husband does not look like this?” he said.
“No!” She almost shouted it. Her heels curved up, opening her thighs. More quietly she repeated, “No.”
He moved a little closer, flexing his hips and buttocks to thrust his penis slowly toward her. She let go of her clitoris and reached for him as he moved into range.
He struck then with unbelievable speed, lashing out so fast she never saw the blow coming. The room went black. He spoke to her then in urgent, rapid French, words she could not have understood through her shock and fear even if she did know French. She knew only they were intended to hurt.
He grabbed both her hands and pinned them above her head. In spite of herself she raised her loins to him, but he did not enter her. His face, so close to hers she could not focus on it, was distorted with an expression she did not recognize, though instinctively she feared it. He moved lightly onto the bed, holding her hands down. He threw one leg over her and sat astride, pinning her waist to the bed and her hands beside her ears, and watched her cheek swell and darken. He began to hum an old French drinking song under his breath as he moved his loins against her.
“Et le bec, oui, oui, oui,” he sang softly, his breath hot against her breasts. He came suddenly, spasmodically, on her belly. Then dreamily, almost lovingly, he let go of her wrists and laid the large, hard bases of his thumbs on her throat, thumbs up under the corners of her jaw. She could feel then the hard ridges of callus against her neck.
He began to squeeze. He smiled softly as her eyes filled first with fear, then with despair.
SIX
GAIA FOUNDATION
Vincent Meissner was dead tired and unhappy. The plane had been late. The temperature was all wrong— he had been here twenty minutes and already he missed the cool drizzle of Vancouver. He waited, his maroon nylon garment bag slumped at his feet like a pet hit by a car.
Vincent was overweight. He knew that and struggled with it, with his spreading waist and the time-consuming demands of his job. He mopped the constantly renewed band of sweat that had formed on his forehead and looked up the airport road for the car, which steadfastly failed to arrive.
There was no place to sit down out here by the curb. He could retreat back under the shelter of the roof and get out of the sun, but then he might miss Carrie. Besides, the sunlight slanted in at such a long, horizontal angle that it touched most of the airport lobby’s interior with its reddish glow.
Other passengers flowed around him, purposeful, intent, comfortable with the climate and the lackadaisical attitude of both the visitors and the Hawaiian natives. Vincent was an intense man, and found such a lack of commitment repugnant.
Out of the glare to the southwest the small car appeared like a venomous insect emerging from a chrysalis of light and heat. The brakes shrilled, and the driver leaned across the front seat and said, “Mr. Meissner?” Vincent scraped his knuckles opening the rear door. He threw the bag inside and settled into the front seat with a deep sigh. Finally, he turned to the woman. “Yeah. Gaia Foundation. Carrie?” He did not offer to shake hands.
She nodded, eager to make her impression. She was younger than he expected, mid twenties perhaps, and very tan. A goddamn surfer liberal. He hated this whole affair.
“Let’s go,” he said, looking straight ahead. She stopped smiling and put the car in gear.
Ten minutes later she stopped beside the County Building. “Did you want to go to the hotel first, or see the police?” Her voice had lost its eager warmth.
Vincent did not look at her. “Police,” he said. “I had to leave on short notice. It’s a good thing there was a direct flight. Christ, it’s bedtime at home.” The tone of his voice gave no indication of whining. It was as if he were reciting the stock quotations.
He waited without moving. “It’s over there,” she said, pointing to the two-story building across from the seat of county government. He climbed heavily from the car and went inside.
A uniformed sergeant was on duty. A small nameplate said “Hirogawa.” Hirogawa, if the man behind the desk owned that name, was reading a Newsweek magazine. Vincent waited a moment. From where he was in the magazine, Vincent guessed he was reading the movie reviews. Vincent cleared his throat.
Sergeant Hirogawa lowered the magazine slowly and looked over the top at Vincent. “May I help you?” he asked politely. He had a very faint Japanese accent.
“There was a ship,” Vincent said. Sergeant Hirogawa waited politely, but Vincent said nothing further, as if that statement explained everything.
After a moment Hirogawa said, “Yes?”
“The Ocean Mother,” Vincent said shortly. “Registered out of Vancouver.”
Hirogawa nodded with understanding. “Coast Guard. Nawiliwili Harbor office. They take care of ships.” He started to raise the magazine again.
“There was some kind of trouble,” Vincent persisted. He couldn’t yet say anything about deaths. Not aloud. He still couldn’t
believe it. Jacquie. Jeff, Tracy Ann, Clarence. The others he did not know, but the report said they were all dead.
Hirogawa said nothing, Newsweek halfway elevated. “An accident?” The first hint of uncertainty crept into Vincent’s voice. “Your interest in the matter?” Sergeant Hirogawa asked, putting the magazine down deliberately and dragging a pen and yellow legal pad toward him on the otherwise empty surface of his desk. The magazine slid to the floor.
“Vincent Meissner. I am the director of the Gaia Foundation.” Hirogawa wrote that down, looked up expectantly. “We own the vessel, the Ocean Mother.”
Hirogawa shook his head. “Better talk to the Coast Guard. They’re towing her to the harbor. Some question the ship might have been derelict. I don’t know much about it. Lieutenant Takamura’s handling the investigation.” He laid the pen down very carefully, aligning it with the edge of the pad. He reached down for the magazine again. Vincent cleared his throat. “This, uh, Takamura…? Is he here?” Hirogawa shook his head. “Went out, oh, maybe an hour ago. Day shift went home.” Newsweek rose before his face.
Vincent waited, patiently, he thought. The sergeant said nothing further. Finally, he turned and walked briskly to the door.
“Oh…” Vincent turned. Sergeant Hirogawa had lowered his magazine. “They’re all meeting at the harbor. Around eight. Tonight.”
Vincent nodded. “Thanks.”
The sun gilded the skimpy clouds hovering near the top of the crater with a peculiar greenish light Vincent found repellant, like the early signs of disease. He climbed in the car. “Hotel,” he said, not looking at the young woman.
She stopped in front of a three-story stucco building. The sign indicated this was the Prince Kuhio Hotel. “It’s where the Hawaiians stay,” she said apologetically. “Not a tourist place.”
“It’ll do,” he said shortly, climbing out. He got his bag and went inside, leaving the girl to figure out what to do next. She parked the car and followed him into the hotel.
The lobby was deserted. She called his room from the house phone. “You should eat something,” she suggested.
“Why?” Vincent asked. He’d eaten on the flight over — they had direct flights to Kauai from Vancouver now. The airline chicken sat in his stomach and complained.
Carrie shrugged, a gesture Vincent on the other end of the phone could not see. She almost hung up when he said, “You go eat something. We will go to the harbor at eight. There’s a meeting. You know where the Coast Guard is?”
“I can find it.” She hung up and went next door to a tiny coffee shop. At seven forty-five she was back in the lobby, waiting. She did not call Vincent again, but he appeared a few minutes later. His pale hair was damply brushed back over his ears, framing his heavy face. Somehow the damp hair gave his features a coarse texture.
They were coming down the hill off Rice Street toward the sheltered harbor at Nawiliwili when he said, “Stop.”
She pulled over and looked at him.
“They’re all…”
“I heard they were all dead,” she said finally. “That’s what I heard, but I don’t know. I tried calling the hospital, but they wouldn’t give out any information.”
Vincent gestured for her to shut off the engine. The hood clicked as it cooled. From time to time a car passed, rocking her small car with its passage. “Damn,” he said at last. “What happened?” But he was not asking her. How could she know? She was just a volunteer.
“They got fabulous coverage,” she said after a moment. “It was even in the local papers. They sailed right up to the reef at Moruroa. Television footage, even, from very far away. They were brave people.”
“Stupid,” Vincent muttered. “They weren’t supposed to do that. They were supposed to stay outside the legal limit. Like all the others.”
She said nothing. The darkness began to gather along the cut on the opposite side of the road. Beyond that cut was the new resort hotel, $400 million worth of bad taste. Vincent knew about that, too. He’d studied this island in the plane’s in-flight magazine.
What the hell was Ocean Mother doing in Kauai? She had been en route back from Tahiti to Vancouver. Hawaii was as far off course as any place short of Asia even if it was the only land between Tahiti and the continental United States. He said it aloud. He could not be sure why. Perhaps he thought she would have an answer, perhaps it pushed away the growing shadows.
She shrugged. She was still miffed— after all, she was putting herself out to do this, pick the fat slob up at the airport, take him to his chintzy hotel, chauffeur him around the island at night. “I don’t know,” she said, voice carefully neutral after all. Then she turned and smiled at him. “Maybe they needed a vacation? Or maybe the ship was running low on fuel. It’s a long trip from down there to Vancouver.”
“She had extra tanks,” Vincent said thoughtfully. “There was no word of trouble on board. Hell, she has all the latest navigation equipment, Satnav, that sort of thing. We’re a professional organization, Carrie. A professional, militant…” He stopped. He had her attention and some of the old rhetorical flare crept into his voice. She waited for him to go on, for the end.
But he said nothing. His eyes grew hooded, distant, lost in shadows, and suddenly he was a fat old fool again, a major pain in the ass.
“Perhaps the meeting…?” she suggested, turning the key.
Vincent waved his hand for her to drive on. As she shifted into gear, she noticed for the first time the medical bracelet he wore, the thin red caduceus on silver. She wondered briefly what it was for. Heart? Diabetes? Hemophilia?
The harbor opened up before them, a narrow inlet with steep hills on the other side. A cruise ship was docked.
She drove past it to the Coast Guard station. There were four cars parked beside the building: an ancient white VW van, two white government vehicles, and a police car. Vincent frowned as he heaved himself out of the tiny car. This was going to be difficult.
The first stars appeared overhead, small white spots against the velvety lavender. A dank smell arose from the harbor water— the exhalations of disease, not the salty tang of the changing tide.
“Where’s this road go?” he asked as she locked the car.
Carrie looked up. “There are some fish ponds up there, real old. They’re supposed to be from before the Hawaiians came here from Tahiti or wherever, made by these mysterious little people called menehune.”
“Great. Little people.”
The door opened, throwing a yellow trapezoid of light onto the gravel, and Cobb Takamura appeared, adding the distorted shape of his shadow to the light.
“Mr. Meissner?” he said.
Vincent paused a moment beside the car, then stepped forward aggressively. “Yes. I just got in. What the hell is going on?”
Cobb smiled, an expression almost lost in the shade except for the hint of his teeth that showed. “A very good question, Mr. Meissner. Sergeant Hirogawa told me you might be coming.”
The meeting went badly from the start. Vincent saw he had gotten off on the wrong track, but was unable to change course. Commander Shafton was a militaristic popinjay with a chip on his shoulder, and the Japanese policeman was as bland as the airline food. The biologist had said nothing, merely looked out from beneath shaggy graying eyebrows at him, as if he were a microscope slide. The other Coast Guard officer looked bored and made no pretense otherwise. The conversation kept slipping away.
He did learn the ship had been full of dead bodies, and that one of the bodies had come back to life: Tracy Ann was not dead. But then, it could not be said that she was alive, exactly. She had respiration. She had a heartbeat, after a fashion. That was all.
“Your vessel entered United States waters,” Commander Shafton said, for at least the third time. “Without permission, without notification, without passing through customs. The Coast Guard is responsible for patrolling and protecting these waters. Your ship is a derelict, and we don’t know where it’s been.”
Vincent did not answer. If the fool did not know why Ocean Mother was in Tahiti and what she had done there, Vincent Meissner was not about to enlighten him. It had made international headlines; this bozo must have his head buried in a dark place. “No need to go over this ground again, Commander,” Vincent said with an air of such feigned understanding that his impatience waved its hand for recognition in the background. “Tell me, where is the ship now?”
Commander Shafton flicked an imaginary foreign particle from the immaculate crease in his white trousers and looked thoughtful. “The ship is under tow. There was a problem with her engines we couldn’t diagnose down the coast. She will be here soon. I thought you knew this.”
Vincent moved his bulk forward and pushed his heavy jaw at Shafton. The others in the room, Lieutenant Commander Whipple, the policeman, and the biologist, said nothing. They appeared like the audience at a tennis match, looking from one to the other. “It was my understanding Ocean Mother was already here in this harbor,” Vincent said in a heavily even tone. “Sergeant Hirogawa at the police station told me it was due to arrive before this meeting began.”
“Yes, yes. The tow is taking a bit longer than anticipated.” Shafton glanced over at Carrie, who seemed left out of the conversation. “Would you like some tea?” he asked her.
She smiled and shook her head.
“Look, this is getting us nowhere. I’m here to take back possession of our vessel. We’ll file the necessary paperwork and be on our way.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Shafton said softly.
“And why not?”
“I’m afraid we’ve had to impound her.”
Vincent was out of his chair in a surprisingly fluid movement and had his hand wrapped around Shafton’s collar and tie, pulling the smaller man part way out of his own seat. “You what?” he thundered.
“Uh·oh,” Cobb Takamura said softly. “Mr. Meissner, please sit down. This will gain you nothing.”