The blasting sound of the air horn had stopped. By this time, Dimitri had uncovered enough of the window to see the ocean for the first time in days. He had only a small field of vision, but from his room’s vantage point on the ship’s superstructure, he could see a wide expanse of ocean.
In the distance, Dimitri made out the shape of another ship that seemed to be heading at an angle to the Trusian, eventually crossing at its bow, but more than a mile away. As it continued closer, his heart fluttered in anticipation that another ship would finally know of the Trusian’s location. Other ships were surely on the lookout for the Trusian, and this ship would pass close enough to see their name.
The ship was a tanker, probably natural gas or some other industrial liquid, and it continued to get closer. Eventually he saw it go out of his field of view, but he was sure the crew had to have gotten the name of his vessel as it passed. It would only be a matter of time before a navy ship approached them, he thought. In his wildest dreams, he never thought that the pirates had changed the name of the ship.
Once he saw that the ship was completely out of view, he stuck the opaque adhesive back on the areas he had scraped off. Dimitri felt good for the time being. His leg relaxed, and he sat heavily on the bed. “Only a matter of time,” he kept telling himself.
On the bridge of the ship another operation was taking place, however. Captain Marquette was orchestrating maneuvers of his men across the deck of the ship. The sounding of the air horn was an indication to the men to take up strategic positions concealed behind the massive containers. They weren’t hiding but arming themselves for a potential conflict with the passing ship.
“Have there been any radio communications from them?” Marquette asked Balboa, his supposed first mate.
“No, sir. The antennae array is not picking up any outgoing communication,” Balboa said as he held an earphone to one ear.
Previously that night, the mercenaries had installed an antennae array on the top of the superstructure that could intercept radio communications from passing ships. It was nondescript and only looked like a dozen thin poles sticking up from the top of the superstructure. It was extra insurance in case a ship decided to question the identity of the Alterra. Marquette wouldn’t hesitate in taking down another ship that decided to inquire about their authenticity.
The men watched as the ship passed a few miles ahead of them, across the bow. Balboa waited anxiously, listening closely for any outgoing radio or satellite phone communication. It was a process they would engage in often as they passed through the busy shipping lanes of the South Pacific.
The passing ship finally faded from view over the horizon, and Marquette gave the order to blow the all clear whistle. Their first test had gone well, but the pirates had a long voyage ahead until they reached their ultimate destination.
Marquette turned to Balboa. “Call in our progress using the code,” he ordered.
“Jes, sir,” Balboa said compliantly.
Balboa dialed out on the nearby satellite phone. “Santa Maria enroute, waypoint eleven reached. Proceeding to waypoint twelve, and on course. One contact encountered.”
Balboa put the phone down immediately and nodded to Marquette.
“Order the men to give our captives food and water. We need them healthy,” Marquette told Balboa who left the bridge to deliver the order.
The crew they had captured had to be in good health when the ship reached its final port of call. The imprisoned crew didn‘t know it, but they were meant to finish the work the pirates had started.
-Chapter 19-
We had adjourned after our first, rather productive, day of sleuthing. We never made it out of the office, but our team had completed some of the preliminary work. We had a starting point to move forward with minimal information.
I was excited by what lay ahead. Nothing seemed to be too dangerous. Most of the work could be done behind the scenes without having to travel all over God‘s green earth. We would need to do some legwork, but it might only entail a few trips up the road to L.A., and another few trips to Alex’s house where he worked his magic with his computer systems.
Galveston, Jane, Alex, and I went home feeling confident about our budding investigation.
The next morning, at least for me, began with excitement in the air. I was ready to get moving. We had an early morning meeting planned with Maddie at our office where she was to give us more of the nitty-gritty information she had been able to glean from the previous day’s activities. She had already expressed an inclination to be involved in every aspect of the operation. We didn’t commonly allow such a thing, but she was persistent, and there was a lot of money at stake. I reluctantly agreed to her request, figuring she wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer.
I arrived at our office at 8:30 in the morning. Jane had already opened up the business and readied my office for the meeting. Alex, Galveston, and Maddie would join us by 9:00 A.M. I wrote out as many questions as I could for Maddie before she arrived; questions she could answer to help our investigation along. I sipped on my coffee nervously as the time approached nine.
Alex was first to arrive, and surprisingly, brought a flurry of information he found the night before. He usually needed to be prodded to go above and beyond, so I surmised that this was a job with which he felt challenged.
“Roger,” Jane announced over our antiquated intercom, “Maddie is here.”
“Send her back,” I said rather officially, even though Jane was just outside my door. I still wanted Maddie to believe we knew what we were doing.
“Maddie, thanks for coming,” I said to her, shaking her hand.
“You’re welcome. Thank you for taking this case on and for letting me be involved,” she responded. She turned to Alex. “Hi, Alex, how are you?”
Alex looked uncomfortable, and I again felt there was something between them I wasn‘t being told. “Good, Maddie. Thank you.”
“Are we ready to get started?” Maddie asked as she sat down in one of our rickety, wooden office chairs.
“Almost,” I said looking at the clock. “We’re still waiting on Mr. Galveston. It seems he is running a little late.”
I pushed back the annoyance in my voice. He had seemed to turn a corner, and I had intentionally told him to be here at eight so he would be on time. But here it was passing nine in the morning and still no Galveston.
“Would you like some water or coffee, Maddie?” I asked, trying to kill some more time.
“No, thank you, had a big cup this morning. Too much of that caffeine and I can’t concentrate.”
“I know what you mean,” I started, thinking I had better go into small talk mode to allow time for Galveston to show up.
Just as I was about to go into a long oration about what foods I couldn‘t eat in the morning, I noticed the front door open, and in strolled Galveston.
I did a double take as I examined the figure who slowly made his way to my office, a small smile plastered on his face. I expected to see Galveston in faded blue jeans and ratty shirt, but instead I saw a man who could pass as an overpriced lawyer.
Galveston reached the door and stopped. “My apologies,” he announced proudly. “I was just finishing some of the preliminaries on the case. Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Jenkins.”
Maddie looked at him, turned, and then looked again, surprised at the different man that appeared before her. Instead of his usual hobo attire, he was dressed in a finely pressed Italian suit and leather shoes that even made Alex salivate over the quality. His hair was slicked back and parted to one side, and in one hand I saw something I had never seen Galveston carry—a leather briefcase. In the other hand I saw he was carrying the morning edition of the Wall Street Journal.
I had to roll my eyes at the sight. Never in the four years I‘d known this man had he ever opened up a page of the publication, nor carried anything more engaging than a sandwich.
He was well shaven, and I noticed he had a nice new haircut. Galvest
on sat down gently next to Maddie in the first available seat, placed his briefcase on his lap, and pulled out a stack of manila file folders. He carefully pulled out a silver pen, closed the case and placed it next to his chair.
“Are we all prepared?” he asked us, as Alex and I sat with our mouths agape. Even Jane had turned from her desk in awe at the sight of him.
“Are you serious?” I asked him in a low, muffled tone.
“Why, whatever do you mean, Roger?” Galveston responded inquisitively.
“Is this a joke with the fancy clothes and a briefcase?” I inquired.
Galveston threw back his head and gave a chortle. “Ha, Ha. Roger you kidder. Now what do you say we get down to business, shall we?” He looked over at Maddie and gave her a strange wink. “We like to kid around sometimes. It lightens the mood when we’re engaged in a tough case.” Galveston reached out like he was about to touch her shoulder but seemed to think better of it.
“Oh my, what a jack-ass,” Alex said under his breath.
“Now Alex, that’s not professional,” Galveston said with a half-smile and raised eyebrows. It reminded me of some sleazy salesman that was about to sell us a boat that had a hole in it.
“Oh, whatever,” I said, “Let’s just get on to the work at hand.” Galveston was about to say something else, but I raised my finger before any stinky words came out of his mouth. “Thanks again for coming, Maddie,” I said. “Like I told you over the phone, we want to gather as much information as possible from you before we dive into this thing. We all decided it would be better in person.”
Maddie nodded in agreement after prying her eyes away from Galveston fiddling with his silver pen. “I’m, I’m glad to be here. Anything I can do to help.”
“Excellent,” I responded. “This is what we have so far.” I pushed a folder towards her. “Maybe you can fill in the gaps.”
“I’ll do my best,” she answered back.
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Galveston said softly, nodding his head, and this time, did touch her shoulder.
Maddie gave him an uncomfortable look.
“What the hell was he doing?” I thought to myself. He had gone from one creepy extreme to another. I knew he had a little infatuation, but this was becoming ridiculous.
I decided to let it go for now, but I was going to need to talk to him about his behavior—again.
Maddie opened the folder and looked through the rudimentary information we had gathered so far. She seemed to be impressed with the quick work and nodded her head in satisfaction.
“This looks like a good start,” she said as she continued to scan the papers. Maddie closed the folder, pulled out a notebook, and opened to the first page. “I did a little digging, as you requested, Roger, and found out some additional information from Regentex. It was all they could give me.”
Galveston moved to the edge of his seat and gave Maddie another smile, and a ghoulish wink. She seemed to recoil at the gesture.
“Maddie, please don’t mind him, we have ordered a lobotomy to correct his problems.” Alex laughed out loud at my comment and Galveston gave me the look of death. “Please, go on.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, with reservation. “I was told that the Trusian docked in the port of Hong Kong as scheduled four days ago. They had an offloading and loading time of two days. About twelve hours after it docked, a request was made from a shipper in Singapore called Asian Pacifica Shipping to load a group of containers with expensive car parts in a specific position on the ship that could be accessible by the crew. This is where Asian Pacifica made a deal with Regentex. It was made clear that these containers must remain secure, and the crew wouldn’t have knowledge about the contents,” Maddie flipped the page in her notebook and continued. “The request was approved and these containers were loaded.”
Maddie paused, making sure we were all listening. “The day before the departure of the Trusian, Regentex made a change in the crew. They had been informed that the captain had been arrested in Hong Kong the night before for drunk and disorderly behavior. The day of departure had to be moved back one day to get another captain in place to take command of the ship. Captain Olgary Svenson was the closest available crewmember to take over. He was then in Japan and flew to Hong Kong from Tokyo that night.”
I interrupted Maddie at that point. “Was he the only available captain to take over the ship?”
“I asked the same question. It just so happened he was on leave, vacationing in Tokyo. There weren’t other captains available on hand, and he was the closest. He arrived on schedule to the port of Hong Kong and took over command.”
“So what about this Asian Pacifica Shipping?” Alex inquired.
“Funny you should ask about that, Alex,” Maddie said, smiling at him which caused Galveston to go into some sort of convulsion. Maddie regarded Galveston with wide eyes and continued. “We have tried to contact them, but strangely have been unable to get anyone to discuss the case. We keep talking to low-level representatives who say someone will contact us. I did get a letter from the Director of Operations at Regentex, Thomas Saller.” Maddie pushed a paper toward me. “It’s from Asian Pacifica, and it says they will be contacting Regentex to follow-up on the recovery effort due to the secure nature of the containers aboard. They requested to not be contacted in any way.”
“That is weird,” I told her. “Why in the world would a company be so hands off?”
“Maybe they don’t want to be in the press,” Galveston answered sanely. “Or, more likely, their containers weren’t really carrying car parts. It is very strange.”
“That should be our starting point then, this Asian Pacifica Shipping. They were in Singapore, correct?” I asked Maddie.
“That’s right,” she answered. “They are a small company. I did a search on them on our shipping database, and they don’t even come up.”
“Interesting,” I thought.
“Why would you want to start with them?” Maddie asked us as a group, with a strange air of curiosity.
“I’ll field this one, Roger,” Galveston announced proudly. “You see Maddie, when there is something that just doesn’t fit, regardless of what it is, we should examine it first,” he said this almost condescendingly but meant it to be confident. “We could go off and try to find this ship in the huge ocean, but that would be literally impossible. Instead we need to trace it back to who is behind this. If ordinary pirates have taken this vessel, they would have already contacted the company in some way for ransom. If we can find out who’s behind it first, then we can find out where it’s going.”
“That makes sense,” Maddie said, with a look of surprise that Galveston could say something intelligent.
“The question is—what if they’ve already made it to a port?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate.
“Then we search for them on land, but first we find Asian Pacifica. Hopefully that will lead us to the ship and the cargo,” Galveston answered quickly. “There is more here than meets the eye, and whoever is behind it has a lot of funding. Nobody just steals a multi-million dollar ship in the Pacific if they don’t have some big money or big statement to make.”
“We’re all agreed that we start with this shipping company first and go from there?” I asked the group.
“Agreed,” Galveston said, “Singapore it is.”
“Huh?” I yelped, giving everyone a jump.
“Singapore. We go to Singapore,” he reiterated.
“That’s not what I meant,” I shot back. “I think we should do some computer work here and find out everything we can before we go traipsing off to Singapore.”
“Then you would be wrong,” Galveston said forcefully. “We go to the source. You should know by now that we go to where the problem is. Alex can feed us the information about them while we’re on our way. We have to find out more about those containers. I think that is our starting point.”
“But,” I tried to protest. I didn’t want to go to Singapore,
but I saw the glint in Galveston’s eye. He was back, and this is what he wanted. Come hell or high water, we were starting in Singapore.
-Chapter 20-
I hated the thought of traveling half way across the earth to look into something that could lead to nowhere. Alex smiled at me devilishly, realizing he wouldn’t have to go. I was all for adventure, but sitting on a plane for sixteen hours each way was not my idea of fun.
“You’re going to have a lot of work to do here, Alex,” I said to him seriously, turning his smile into a frown. “We’re going to bother you constantly.”
“I can still do it from the comfort of my pool,” he retorted.
I only managed a “humph” in response.
“When are we leaving?” I asked Galveston despairingly, anticipating his patent response.
“Immediately,” came his reply, as expected.
“You guys are really going to Singapore?” Maddie asked.
“You bet,” Galveston responded. “It’s our best lead and smells fishy. My gut is telling me this Asian Pacifica has a connection with the pirates, if there are pirates.”
“What do you mean?” Maddie asked again, now clearly interested in what Galveston had to say.
“We don’t really know it was hijacked. It could be the crew is in collusion to steal the vessel, or it could have exploded away from where the authorities are looking—any number of things.”
Maddie shuffled her papers and looked thoughtful for a moment. She had to know how Asian Pacifica may have played into the disappearance of the Trusian. “I think I should go too,” she announced.
Galveston‘s look of seriousness immediately turned to glee.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I told her. “We can handle it alone.” Galveston flashed me a look of disdain.
“No, I should be along to protect my company’s interests,” Maddie said abruptly. She couldn’t take “no” for an answer and braced for a fight.
“I agree,” Galveston started. “That is a fantastic idea. The more the merrier.” A huge smile spread across his face as he nodded to me.
Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 02 - Peeking Duck Page 9