It wasn’t much with which to start a long and dangerous journey to find my lost wife and child. I checked my watch. The cargo ship should have departed by now. A constant hum of engine played. But I didn’t want to risk opening the door and being spotted—although with thousands of containers, I thought the odds of being seen were low—until we were at least a day out of America. The ship wouldn’t turn around for a stowaway at that point; they would just arrest me and throw me in whatever small room they could improvise as a brig. They would alert the port authorities when they arrived in Rotterdam. But it was best of all if I wasn’t seen. I could keep my sanity without seeing the sky.
The container was like a womb, I told myself. Maybe when I got out I’d be reborn, ready to kick ass.
I closed my eyes again.
Felt nothing but an utter loneliness that one cannot find easily in today’s world. Nothing to do but sleep and dream about what I had lost. It couldn’t be healthy, to dream so much.
I dozed, and it wasn’t a dream: it was a memory rising to my brain like a bubble.
“What do you want to name him?” Lucy asked me. She stood by the window of our Bloomsbury flat, staring out at the rain. Gray clouds scudded low over the city, and my normal life was ticking five days to zero.
“Him. You’re sure it’s going to be a him.”
“He kicks like you.” She placed her hand on the little swell of stomach.
“I have never kicked you.”
She put a hand on my cheek. “In your sleep. When you have bad dreams. About Danny.”
My brother.
Mention of Danny always brought a silence. Maybe it only lasted a moment, but it marked a cold pause in everyday life. And the inevitable sting. At the back of my eyes, in the bottom of my throat.
I lowered the book I was reading. “Well, how about Edwin, for your dad?” Lucy’s parents had died in a car crash when she was ten, and I had thought she might want to honor her lost father or mother. She had been raised by an aunt after her parents died, gone to college on full scholarship, studied the elegance of databases, and joined the Company fresh out of school, just like me. She spoke fondly of her aunt and little of her parents, almost as if they were characters she’d read about in a novel.
“I appreciate the sentiment, monkey, but Edwin’s too old-fashioned for me.”
“Um, okay.” I stared at her, my mind a blank.
“How about Samuel Junior?” she said.
“I don’t want him named for me. Let him be his own person, entirely.”
Lucy tucked her feet under her. “I’d like to honor a loved one.”
“Well.” I loved my parents, very much, but relations with them were frosty at the moment. “How about we’ll name him for you, Lucy. Call him Lucian. He’ll have to be the toughest kid on the playground.”
“No. My mind’s made up. Daniel, for your brother.”
“You don’t have to do that. You never even knew Danny.”
“I know what he meant to you. It’s an awesome name. Let’s honor him.”
(If I could put a sticky note into my memory, it would read: This was the woman the world wanted me to believe was a traitor.)
“Then let’s put Daniel on the list.” I picked up my book again.
“Daniel. Okay. What if I’m wrong and it’s a girl?”
“Capri, for the island. Capri Capra. She’ll love us forever.”
She laughed. “Sam?”
“Yes?”
She didn’t answer me, and I glanced up at her, still watching the slow slide of rain along the glass. And then she said words she never said in real life: Do you think I could let you die?
I awoke with a start. The dark was nearly complete, and for a moment I forgot I lay nestled in the container’s cocoon.
I lay listening, wondering how long I’d slept. Today had been the first time in a long while I’d slept like a free man—no listeners, no cell, no one watching me or my dreams for evidence of betrayal. I slept again, woke again, slept again. For how long I didn’t know.
But my brain jerked me awake at a sound. An approaching buzz, sounding hard, above the soft steady thrum of the engines. An interrupting roar.
I knew the sound. A helicopter.
Lowering toward the deck.
20
I RISKED CRACKING OPEN THE DOOR. Daylight hit my eyes, the dawn, rosy fresh. I could smell air unsullied by city, saltwater, the tinge of rust. The light stung my eyes; I blinked the pain away. My container stood near the top of a stack—another stack stood next to it. I could barely open the door and squeeze through, and I had to hold on to the side of the adjoining container. I looked down. I was roughly four stories up—if I slipped I would fall into a narrow canyon created by the containers. I pushed the door open as far as I could and pulled myself up to the top of the container wall.
Thin clouds streaked the sky. The helicopter’s whoosh faded as the rotors slowed. I inched along the top of the containers and looked down. At the ship’s stern, a jet helicopter squatted. I saw four men, armed, exiting the helicopter as the rotors slowed. One figure—a woman in a suit—stood at a distance, conferring with a group of men who appeared to be the captain and members of the crew.
The arrivals must be Howell’s people.
Jesus, how? How? Finding people who didn’t want to be found was hard; I’d hit my head against that wall a number of times. Yet no matter how carefully I hid, here came the Company. My heart trip-hammered against my chest and then I thought: six thousand containers, they can’t open and search them all. It would take weeks.
Well, if the Company was seizing the ship, they would have weeks. They could commandeer the vessel, sail it back to New York or to Boston, pay off the disgruntled shippers. They could take as long as they wanted to find me. If they’d found the intruder’s body in the apartment, they’d never give up. Howell would know I’d killed the guy and run, presumably with highly useful information.
The helicopter rose again. It hovered over the stern of the ship, then began to work its way slowly over the deck. I could see two men sitting in the copter’s open door, peering at a laptop. Hanging from each side of the helicopter was an array of lenses, shaped like a rectangle.
The helicopter passed low over the first stack of containers, keeping up its flying speed, but just barely. It wasn’t in a hurry. It was searching.
My heart sank. Infrared scanners tied to thermal imagers. My body temperature would stick out like a flame against the coolness of shipped goods like my Vermont soap and New Jersey hand wipes.
I had to find somewhere else on the ship to hide. Now.
I couldn’t go down. My body heat would stick out like a blister. I had to go up and then find rapid entry into the ship. I’d be spotted, but they were going to find me within minutes anyway. I ducked back down to my container, grabbed my gun and the ammo, and the cash. I put the cash and the ammo in a belt bag and tucked the gun in the back of my pants, then went back out the door. The containers’ surfaces were damp from the ocean breeze, and I tested my grip carefully; a slip would be fatal. I hoisted myself up high. The helicopter was about a hundred meters away. The ship had stopped and dropped anchor; the white noise of the engines had faded.
The helicopter was turned away from me, its nose pointing back to where the suit from the helicopter and the captain (I presumed) stood. I crawled out onto the top of the containers. I was five stories in the air, laying flat on the cool steel of a blue container. I could see that the container stack here stair-stepped down, then rose again. The loader had not done a neat job and it gave me ledges and walls, just like back in Vauxhall.
The helicopter began its turn. I hunkered low and ran. I eased myself over the lip of the first stack and dropped down to the next.