The Rebellious Tide

by Eddy Boudel Tan

  It was easier to go on remembering Ruby Goh as innocent rather than a woman with the agency to make her own poor decisions.

  It was easier to blame the men in her life for everything that went terribly, tragically wrong.

  He looked at the portrait of Ruby beside his bunk. She knew the truth. That was evident in her cautious eyes and the hint of regret behind her smile. The truth would have been clear to him, too, if he had only known his mother better.

  EIGHTEEN

  Real Smoke

  The young man on guard outside Sebastien’s cabin could feel his eyelids get heavier with every exhale. Straightening his posture in the hard plastic chair, he glanced at the black-banded watch his ex-wife had given him for their first wedding anniversary. The time was 7:21 a.m. His shift had started at midnight.

  The sound of approaching footsteps rang clearly throughout the quiet corridors. He couldn’t see who was coming, but he heard the clink-clink-clink of heel against metal zigzag its way closer to him.

  He anticipated someone turning the corner almost on the exact second it happened, but he didn’t expect the person to look like the woman who stood before him. She was clearly a “cone,” the term of endearment and derision the crew often used for guests. Her red-and-white candy-striped dress hugged her torso before bursting around her waist like an upside-down tulip. She was in her late twenties, with skin that looked pure as milk. Auburn hair fell onto her shoulders in loose ringlets.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said with an apologetic look on her pretty face. “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for the jewellery shop, but I must have taken a wrong turn.”

  “You bet you did,” said the guard with a warm smile. He was grateful for such a sweet distraction. “You’ve really lost your way. You’re in the staff quarters.”

  “Oh my!” The woman put her hand to her mouth with an embarrassed giggle. “Silly me. I have no idea how I ended up here. You’ll help?” Her innocent eyes coaxed him softly.

  “Of course,” he said, brushing the front of his pants with his hands as he stood up. “Let me take you.”

  Ilya hid around the corner, listening to Sophie lure the guard away from his post. The manipulation came naturally to her. He waited until their footsteps and voices diminished down the hall before he crept over to the door. He inserted his key card and held his breath, hoping it hadn’t been deactivated. The green light appeared. With a sigh of relief, he stepped into the dark space.

  Sebastien looked like a corpse in his bunk, arms and legs outstretched and a peaceful expression settled on his face. He still had on the turquoise uniform he had worn the previous night. His hair was a halo of dark curls.

  “Wake up,” Ilya whispered as he shook the body in the bunk.

  Sebastien’s limbs jolted back to life. His eyes shot open, wide and alert. They stared up at Ilya, processing his identity, determining whether he was real or imagined.

  “Ilya, is that you? What’s going on?”

  “I’m breaking you out of here.”

  “How?” Sebastien sat up in his bunk. Memories of what happened the evening before trickled back to him. “Where’s the guard outside?”

  “Sophie dealt with it.” Ilya reached into the duffel bag slung around his shoulder. He pulled out a grey sweatshirt and a golf cap. “Put these on. We don’t have much time.”

  He did as he was told, stuffing his hair beneath the cap. Ilya covered two pillows with a sheet so they could pass as a person in the bunk. “I feel like I’m sneaking out of my parents’ house in a bad teen movie,” Sebastien said.

  “Everything we know comes from the movies.”

  Ilya poked his head into the corridor and waved Sebastien toward him. They walked briskly through the halls. Every member of staff and crew they passed gave them a resolute nod or a subtle salute. The escape was underway.

  They breathed more easily after stepping through the door that led to the network of tunnels and stairways that snaked throughout the ship.

  “Am I hiding out in Sophie’s cabin?”

  “Too risky,” Ilya said. “Nikos knows about Sophie. I have another place in mind.”

  “You really don’t trust Nikos, do you?” It sounded more like a statement than a question.

  Ilya turned to face him in the middle of the stairway. “I trust him like a wolf in a top hat.”

  They climbed higher, stopping only once to catch their breath. Each landing was a solid strip of perforated steel painted white. Corridors branched outward as more stairs led to the sky. Sebastien peered over the edge of the railing to see the stairs wind their way down to the bottom deck several levels below.

  “We’re almost there,” Ilya said, urging him on. Sebastien followed as Ilya diverted from the stairs and took a tunnel that ran along the starboard side of the ship. They reached a door with a sign that proclaimed its location.

  LIDO DECK

  SPA OF THE ORACLE

  The doorway was a portal between different worlds. They left the stark white passageway behind them and stepped into a refuge of calm. The spa was softly lit by cloud-shaped lamps that hung from the ceiling. Water cascaded down the length of a curved wall made of slabs of basalt, filling the air with its soothing sound.

  Ilya led him down a peaceful hall protected by a canopy of broad, waxy leaves. Near the end was a door. “We’re here,” he whispered as he guided Sebastien inside.

  The room was circular, and roughly the size of the apartment he once shared with his mother. The walls were punctuated by marble columns equally spaced apart. The centre of the room sank into a round pool, its bottom covered in a mosaic of blue and green tiles. Instead of holding water, it was lined with white cushions and sheets. Directly above the pool was a glass dome that stared up at the morning sky.

  “Welcome to your hideout,” Ilya said with a dramatic sweep of the arms. “This room was used for thalassotherapy treatments, but the filtration system in the pool broke a few days ago. Someone’s coming on board in Cannes to fix it, which means you’ll be safe here for the next week.”

  “That bed is fit for a king.” Sebastien eyed the jumble of linen that filled the bottom of the empty pool.

  “Only the best for you,” Ilya said. A smile spread across his face for the first time that day. Sebastien had missed seeing it.

  “What now?” He walked around the perimeter of the pool and gazed at the domed skylight above. “I’m thankful you broke me out, but what good does it do to hide here?”

  “You won’t just be hiding. We’re going to rescue Athena. We need you.”

  Sebastien took a seat on the floor with his legs dangling over the edge of the pool. “I don’t know, Ilya.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I’m not sure about anything anymore.” He took off the golf cap and ran his fingers through his matted hair. “Everything has escalated so quickly. I thought I knew what I was doing, what our purpose was, but now …” The words trailed off. “I attacked Kostas in front of all those people. It was the same thing a few days ago in Alexis’s bedroom. I just lost control. This has happened before, and it doesn’t end well. I don’t know if I can trust myself.”

  Ilya sat by his side and placed an arm around his shoulders. “Do you know how it felt when I found the man who killed my closest friend? Of course you do. You’ve felt it, too. The burning, blinding anger. It doesn’t just come from nowhere. It’s forced out of us when there’s no other form of justice. I had Misha’s killer in my hands. I could have made him pay. That would have been justice, no? But it wouldn’t have brought Misha back, and it would have destroyed my life. This anger doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It fuels our fight. It can be used for good, but only if we’re smart.”

  “I just don’t know how much fight I have left in me.” Sebastien’s shoulders slouched forward as he leaned into the hollow beneath Ilya’s arm.

  “This isn’t about you. Not anymore. You started something that’s bigger than us. Now people are paying
attention. We’re doing this for Dominic. For Misha. For your mother. And most of all, for Athena. This is what we’ve been fighting for all along. What Athena is facing is evil. We can’t sit back and let it happen.”

  Doubt brewed in the green pools of Sebastien’s eyes. “What if Kostas is telling the truth? That she’s delusional?”

  “He’s full of shit.” Ilya spat the words out like venom. “I looked into that tattoo you saw on the back of her neck. Aphrodite’s flower, right? Six connected little circles. It’s the symbol of a trafficking ring based in Greece. They’re part of a network of gangs, really bad people who traffic anything profitable and illegal. Drugs. Weapons. And yes, humans. They brand their girls with that exact symbol.”

  “I knew it,” Sebastien said, biting his bottom lip. “There are others.”

  “Lots of others. But there are more rumours than facts. These criminals have been around for decades. They’re well-connected. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have tentacles in the government.”

  Sebastien sat upright. “Did you say decades?”

  “Yes. If we have a chance at saving Athena, then we have no choice but to try. Imagine the scandal that would be. This utopian playground for the wealthy hiding such an evil secret. We probably couldn’t take them all down, but exposing Kostas and the Glacier would be the first domino to fall. It could help expose the rest of these fuckers and the institutions that protect them.”

  Sebastien felt lightheaded, but he nodded in agreement. “You’re right. But how do we do it?”

  Ilya flashed him his devilish grin. “It’s my turn to have a plan.”

  While Sebastien and Ilya made their escape upward to the Spa of the Oracle, Diya wandered through the depths of Hades. Everything felt dimmer and narrower down in the labyrinthine crew corridors of C Deck. She waded through a fog of cigarette smoke toward her destination.

  The Filipino Mafia were a friendly, noisy bunch, not at all intimidating, unless they were crossed. They spent much of their off-duty time arranging secret gambling parties, selling haircuts, breakdancing in the halls, and running a black market that peddled everything from burner phones and bootlegged films to drugs of all flavours.

  “Diya, my lucky lady!” A plump woman with an affable face greeted her with open arms and a kiss on the cheek. It was Rosa, the housekeeper who had helped them deliver the revenge cake to Giorgos the evening Elena and Contessa had disembarked. She once told Sebastien he had friends in the crew, and she had meant it.

  “I’m so happy to see you, Rosa. This place is a maze. I have no idea where I’m going.”

  Rosa took Diya by the hand and led her through the winding passageways. Crew members loitered throughout the halls, swapping stories over cigarettes and laughing at each other’s jokes. Some were dressed in grey uniforms, taking a break between shifts, while others wore soccer shorts and T-shirts. Rosa shouted greetings at all of them as she passed.

  “We see your friends down here many times these days,” she said to Diya. “Those handsome boys, so nice.”

  They reached a door with a poster of a beautiful woman wearing a beaded red gown and a sparkling tiara shaped like peacock feathers. Rosa knocked and shouted a few words in Tagalog. A wiry man with a short goatee appeared seconds later, music blaring behind him. He wore a loose black tracksuit. His fingers were covered in orange dust as he picked at a foil bag filled with triangular chips.

  After a snappy exchange with Rosa, the man turned to Diya. “Hello, baby girl.”

  “I’m not your baby,” she said with a scowl. “And I haven’t been a girl for years.”

  The man put up his palms in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. How may I be of service, mademoiselle?”

  “I’m looking for smoke,” Diya said, “and I don’t mean cigarettes. I’m talking about real smoke, and lots of it. Enough to cover half of Adriatic Deck.”

  The man looked at the fiery woman from her little black shoes to the bundle of curls on her head. He smiled deviously and licked the orange dust from his fingertips. “I have just what you need.”

  A gentle madness often settled over the Glacier during a full day at sea. Multiple activities would be scheduled every hour to keep the guests entertained: art auctions in the Agora, dance lessons in the Odeon, ice-carving competitions on Lido Deck, wellness seminars in the spa. Despite the manic distractions, everyone on board would float through the day in a state of malaise, not entirely sure what to do with themselves as they drifted in the middle of the sea.

  It was no different that evening as the Glacier charged toward the island of Sicily. Adriatic Deck was packed with guests looking for something to do in the hour between dinner and the evening’s show in the Odeon.

  Nikos Antonopolous looked important in his crisp white uniform as he stood on the balcony looking over the crowded Agora lobby below. His dark hair was combed neatly to the side, and there was no sign of stubble along his angular jaw.

  He noticed deck commander Giorgos standing beside an ornate marble pillar by the grand staircase. The man’s hands were tucked into his pockets. There was no sign of sentience on his face. It was a closed door. The officers had never witnessed such emotion in Giorgos as the evening that Elena and Contessa disembarked in Cyprus. The loss of these two women had shaken the usually dignified man in devastating ways. Now, though, there was only emptiness.

  Nikos frowned. He felt sorry for the broken man, but he was also disgusted by the sight of him.

  “Smile!”

  The bright voice rang across the atrium. A camera flashed, blinding the family of four standing in front of a canvas backdrop of the Amalfi Coast. The new photographer stationed there had been relocated from his usual post outside the dining hall. He was nothing like Sebastien. His short blond hair was almost white, and he didn’t look old enough to drive a vehicle, let alone travel across the sea unsupervised.

  Nikos’s frown deepened. His chest felt hollow as he pictured Sebastien locked in a cabin three decks below. It was hard to fight the urge to run there and wrap himself around Sebastien’s body, to inhale the earthy scent of his skin.

  “Come back in an hour,” said the too-young boy with the too-blond hair. “It’ll be ready for purchase in the portrait gallery.”

  The radio attached to Nikos’s belt hummed alive. He held the transceiver to his mouth. “What’s going on?”

  “Code orange in the casino,” said the agitated voice on the radio. “We need you here, sir.”

  The boyish photographer eyed the handsome officer as he marched around the balcony. Nikos quickened his pace when he approached the casino, sensing something peculiar in the air. The colours and scents around him had been altered in some vague way. Shouts and cries overpowered the ding-ding-ding sounds of the slot machines. He could see why as soon as he stepped inside.

  The entire room was choked in smoke. It fumed from several points throughout the casino in plumes of saturated colours — red, blue, green, purple, orange — that created a thick grey fog.

  Nikos covered his mouth with the lapel of his jacket as he squinted to see through the haze. The entire casino had erupted into chaos as people took advantage of the sudden anonymity. Hands reached across the gaming tables to snatch up piles of chips. The green-suited dealers had frantic looks on their faces as they guarded their tables, swatting at hands that grabbed at them and shouting at people to back down. Several guests in evening wear crawled on the carpeted floor to scavenge for chips that had fallen in the fray.

  Nikos was knocked to the ground as a heavyset man in a tuxedo ran into his shoulder. “Gamóto!” he cursed, pulling himself to his knees.

  Looking up, he saw a dense tangle of dark hair walking away through the smoke. He knew who must have been behind this as soon as he had stepped inside. “Sebastien, stop right there!” he shouted, running up to the dark-haired man before gripping him by the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Nikos stammered to the unfamiliar face staring at him with bewildered eyes. “I thought you were someone else.”
>
  Nikos didn’t feel the nimble little hand slip into the pocket of his pants. Diya’s fingers wrapped around the ring of plastic cards exactly where Sebastien had told her she would find it. She walked away from the confused security commander and flipped through the cards. At the bottom of the stack was a rectangle of black plastic — the new skeleton key. Her movements were quick as she removed it from the silver ring and tucked it into her pocket. She replaced it with the identical key card that Sebastien had stolen several days earlier, the one that was now deactivated.

  Nikos was shouting in Greek to two security guards when Diya circled the casino and made her way back to him. She slipped the ring of keys into his pocket as easily as she had plucked them. The entire operation took thirty seconds and was no more difficult than dealing a hand of blackjack.

  The smoke grenades supplied by the Filipino Mafia were the perfect decoy. The coloured plumes subsided, but the haze remained heavy over the gaming tables and slot machines. Diya could still hear Nikos delivering commands in his overtly masculine voice as she strolled out of the casino toward the elevators.

  Ilya, Sebastien, and Sophie were huddled together around the empty pool of the thalassotherapy room when Diya walked in. “This thing really does work,” she said, holding up the black skeleton key with a triumphant smile.

  Cheers resounded throughout the round room. “You’re a legend,” Sebastien said, wrapping his arms around her petite shoulders. He was already dressed in his grey cabin-service uniform with his wild hair gathered beneath the bellboy cap.

  “What’s it like downstairs?” Ilya asked, slapping his palm against hers.

  “Madness,” Diya said. “I’d wager the casino has already lost tens of thousands of euros. Even the rich can be complete animals if given the chance.”

  “They’ll feel the pain now that we’ve hit ’em where it hurts,” Sebastien said. “In the accounting department.”