The car’s telephone had a Bakelite handset and rotary dial. Perlmutter detested cell phones and never carried one. His thick finger barely fit in the telephone dial’s little holes, but he managed.
“Hello,” a woman answered.
St. Julian had called her direct line, thus avoiding an army of assistants.
“Hi, Christie, it’s St. Julian Perlmutter.”
“St. Julian!” Christie Valero cried. “It’s been ages. How have you been?”
Perlmutter rubbed his bulging stomach. “You know me. I’m wasting away to nothing.”
“I sure that’s the case.” She laughed. “Have you made my mother’s Coquilles St.-Jacques since you cajoled her secret recipe out of me?”
Apart from his vast knowledge of ships and shipping, Perlmutter was a legendary gourmand and bon vivant.
“It’s now part of my regular repertoire,” he assured her. “Whenever you’d like, give me a call and I’ll make it for you.”
“I’ll take you up on that. You know I can’t follow cooking instructions more sophisticated than ‘Pierce outer wrapper to vent and place on microwave-safe dish.’ So is this a social call or is there something on your mind? I’m a little swamped here. The conference is still months away, but the dragon lady is running us ragged.”
“That is no way to refer to her,” he admonished mildly.
“Are you kidding? Fiona loves it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“So what’s up?”
“I’ve just now come across something rather interesting and I thought you might like first crack at it.” He relayed what he’d read in Charles Stewart’s letter to his former shipmate.
When he finished, Christie Valero had just one question. “How soon can you be in my office?”
“Hugo,” St. Julian said when he replaced the telephone on its cradle, “change of plans. We’re going to Foggy Bottom. Our Undersecretary of State for Mideast Affairs would like to have a chat.”
TWO
OFF THE COAST OF SOMALIA FOUR MONTHS LATER
THE INDIAN OCEAN WAS A SHIMMERING JEWEL, PERFECTLY clear and blue. But on its surface was a flaw in the shape of a five-hundred-and-sixty-foot freighter. The ship was barely making headway, though her single stack belched copious amounts of noxious black smoke. It was clear the vessel was plying the sea-lanes far beyond her intended life span.
She was so low in the water that she had been forced on a circuitous route from Mumbai to avoid any storms because seas much above four feet would wash across her deck. Her port side would ship water in smaller swells because she had a slight list to that side. The hull was painted a scabrous green, with patches of other colors where the crew had run out of the primary shade. Tongues of scaly rust ran from her scuppers, and large metal plates had been welded to her sides to shore up structural deficiencies.
The tramp freighter’s superstructure was just aft of amidships, giving her three cargo holds on her foredeck and two aft. The three cranes towering over the decks were heavily rusted and their cables frayed. The decks themselves were littered with leaky barrels, broken machinery, and clutter. Where pieces of her railing had rusted away, the crew had hung lengths of chain.
To the men studying her from a nearby fishing boat, the freighter didn’t appear promising, but they were in no position to ignore the opportunity she presented.
The Somali captain was a wiry, hatchet-faced man missing a tooth in the center of his mouth. The other teeth around the gap were badly rotted, and his gums were black with decay. He conferred with the three other men on the crowded bridge before plucking a hand mic from the two-way transceiver and thumbing the button. “Ahoy, nearby freighter.” His English was heavily accented but passable.
A moment later a voice burst over the tinny speaker. “Is this the fishing boat off my port beam?”
“Yes. We are in need of doctor,” the captain said. “Four of my men are very sick. Do you have?”
“One of our crew was a Navy medic. What are their symptoms?”
“I do not know this word sim-toms.”
“How are they sick?” the radio operator on the freighter asked.
“They throw up bad for days. Bad food, I think.”
“Okay. I think we can handle that. Come abeam of us just ahead of the superstructure. We will slow as much as we can, but we won’t be able to stop completely. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes. I understand. You no stop. Is okay.” He shot a wolfish grin at his comrades, saying in his native tongue, “They believe me. They’re not going to stop, probably because the engines wouldn’t refire, but that isn’t a problem. Abdi, take the helm. Put us alongside near the superstructure and match their speed.”
“Yes, Hakeem.”
“Let’s get on deck,” the captain said to the other two.
They met up with four men who had been in the cabin below the wheelhouse. These men had ragged blankets draped over their thin shoulders and moved as if crippled with cramps.
The freighter dwarfed the sixty-foot fishing boat, though with her so low in the water the ship’s rail wasn’t that far above their own. Crewmen had hung truck tires for fenders and retracted a section of railing near the superstructure to make it easier to transfer the stricken men aboard. Hakeem counted four of them. One, a short Asian man, wore a uniform shirt with black epaulettes. Another was a large African or Caribbean islander, and the other two he wasn’t sure.
“Are you the captain?” Hakeem called to the officer.
“Yes. Captain Kwan.”
“Thank you for doing this. My men are very sick, but we must stay at sea to catch fish.”
“It is my duty,” Kwan said rather haughtily. “Your boat will have to stay close by while we treat your men. We’re headed to the Suez Canal and can’t detour to take them ashore.”
“That is not a problem,” Hakeem said with an oily smile as he handed up a line. The African crewman secured it to a rail stanchion.
“Okay, let’s have them,” Kwan said.
Hakeem helped one of his men step onto their boat’s railing. The gap between the two vessels was less than a foot, and in these calm seas there was little chance of his slipping. The two of them stepped up and across to the freighter’s deck and moved aside for two more at their heels.
It was when the fourth jumped nimbly onto his ship that Captain Kwan became wary.
As he opened his mouth to question the seriousness of their condition, the four men with the blankets let them drop away. Concealed underneath were AK-47s with the wooden butts crudely cut off. Aziz and Malik, the two other crewmen from the fishing boat, grabbed matching weapons from a wooden chest and rushed aboard.
“Pirates!” Kwan yelled, and had the muzzle of one weapon rammed into his stomach.
He dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen. Hakeem pulled an automatic pistol from behind his back while the other armed men hustled the freighter’s crew away from the rail and out of sight of anyone who may have been on the bridge wing high overhead.
The Somali leader dragged the captain to his feet, pressing the barrel of his pistol into Kwan’s neck. “Do as you are told and no one will be hurt.”
There was a momentary spark of defiance behind Kwan’s eyes, something he couldn’t suppress, but it was fleeting, and the pirate hadn’t noticed. He nodded awkwardly.
“You will take us to the radio room,” Hakeem continued. “You will make an announcement to your crew that they are to go to the mess hall. Everyone must be there. If we find anyone walking around the ship, he will be killed.”
While he was talking, his men were cuffing the stunned crew with plastic zip ties. They used three on the muscle-bound black man, just in case.