“The charges won’t stick!” John Luft screamed at Garth as he and his wife were handcuffed. “They can’t prove anything! You’re going to be sorry! I swear I’ll get you!”
“Boo,” Garth said.
Spy at Sea
by Edward D. Hoch
© 1993 by Edward D. Hoch
One of the things we can always depend on in a story from veteran Edward D. Hoch is careful research. Whether his tale concerns the history of the Old West or conditions on a freighter bound for Istanbul, he’s sure to have come up with interesting facts that we won’t soon forget...
“She sails at midnight on the Happy Moon,” the man in the striped robe told Rand. “It’s a small coastal freighter bound for Istanbul.”
They were seated in a dingy sailors’ café along the waterfront in Karachi, Pakistan, a city Rand had never dreamed of visiting even in his nightmares. He had come there on a mission for an old friend, a Turkish diplomat who had once done him a great favor. A few days earlier, the diplomat had phoned him at home in England and said simply, “My daughter is in trouble, somehow involving drugs.” Rand had known it was time to pay back his debt.
Even the slim guidebook he read on the plane could hardly prepare Rand for Karachi, a sprawling metropolitan area where finance and commerce mingled with an illegal trade in everything from women and drugs to weapons of war. More than five million people moved through its crowded streets, many of them Muslim refugees fleeing oppression and violence in India. Rand had not found Sishane Kemal, the young woman he sought, but after a day of tracking down leads he’d ended up at the sailors’ café, across the table from a man of indeterminate nationality known as Grantor.
“They say you know everyone in the city,” Rand told him, slipping a few British pound notes across the table.
“The Happy Moon,” the slender man in the robe repeated. “I do not know Sishane Kemal, but the ship carries a few passengers. Her name is on the list. Here along the waterfront we keep track of such things. I’ll give you the dock number.”
“What cargo does the Happy Moon carry?” Rand wanted to know.
Grantor shrugged. “Heavy equipment for oil drilling. Who knows what else? Russian weapons abandoned in Afghanistan?”
“Drugs?”
“They say with the new European free trade the borders are quite open. Heroin is already pouring in through Turkey.”
Rand nodded. “And the Happy Moon is bound for Istanbul.”
The bartender came over to see if they wanted another bottle of the cheap Malaysian beer they’d been drinking. “I have to be going,” Rand said, standing up. He offered Grantor a few more bills. “This is for the beer. I appreciate your help.”
The man nodded, closing his long fingers over the money. It was not until Rand had pushed his way out of the crowded café into the afternoon heat that he remembered Grantor had forgotten to give him the dock number. He went back inside and made for the dim comer where the man in the striped robe still sat over his beer.
“What’s the dock number?” he asked, and when the man didn’t respond Rand placed a hand on his shoulder.
It wasn’t until the head lolled to one side that he saw the blood and the deep gash where Grantor’s throat had been only minutes earlier.
The captain of the Happy Moon was a dark-skinned man named Rodriguez whose weathered face bore testimony to many years’ exposure to burning sun and wind-swept salt air. He stood at the bottom of the ship’s gangplank, hands on either railing as if barring the way to Rand and anyone else with the temerity to venture aboard. “We’re a small coastal freighter,” he said. “Don’t have much room for passengers.”
It was past sundown, only a few hours before sailing, and Rand had finally located the ship at an auxiliary dock down beyond the main loading area. The Happy Moon was a 200-foot freighter whose rusty hull shouted neglect. Captain Rodriguez seemed truly surprised that Rand or anyone else would want to sail with him on such a vessel.
“I want to go to Istanbul,” Rand explained.
“You can fly there in a few hours. You’ll be days aboard this tub.”
“I like the sea air, and I don’t need to be there for a week. Tell me, how much is a one-way passage?”
The captain sighed and told him the facts. “We’re a Panamanian-registered ship with a crew of nine. There are four spare cabins for passengers and two are presently occupied. You’ll find there are no frills on this vessel. You’ll take your meals with the crew and pretty much shift for yourself.” He mentioned a sum in British pounds for one-way passage. It seemed high but Rand wasn’t in a position to dicker.
“I’ll take it.”
“Cash. I don’t take credit cards.”
“I’ll cash some traveler’s checks and get my bag. I’ll be back in a half-hour.”
“We’ll sail at midnight,” Rodriguez reminded him. “High tide. I don’t wait for stragglers.”
Rand returned in plenty of time and handed over his money to the captain. A young Pakistani crewman who spoke little English showed him to his cabin. Earlier in the evening, when he first arrived at dockside, Rand had observed a young woman boarding the ship. From what Grantor had told him, and what subsequently happened to the man, Rand was convinced he was telling the truth about Sishane Kemal’s whereabouts. Her motives for the voyage were another matter, but Rand wasn’t concerned with that at the moment. He was on the ship with her, and perhaps during the days of the cruise to Istanbul he’d gain her confidence enough to learn what trouble she was involved in. Certainly her father back in Istanbul hadn’t known.
He went out to the railing at midnight to watch the ship cast off its lines and move slowly away from the dock. There was no sign of Sishane Kemal or the other passenger. Presently, when the ship was in the open channel to the Arabian Sea, Rand went topside and found Captain Rodriguez relaxing with a foul-smelling cigar, talking with another of the crew members.
“Mr. Rand, this is my first mate, Gunther Sallis.”
The man was thin and pale, though his handshake was vigorous. “Pleased to have you aboard,” he said with an accent that might have been German. “It is a clear, starry night.”
Indeed the sky above them seemed clustered with stars, more than he’d ever remembered seeing back in England where the city lights often washed out the beauty of the heavens. “Are the seas calm this time of year?” Rand asked.
The cigar tip glowed as Rodriguez took a puff. “The rainy season comes later in the summer. Right now all is tranquil.”
Gunther Sallis excused himself and returned to the wheelhouse. “Your crew is a mixture of nationalities,” Rand observed.
“Gunther and I are the only Europeans. The other seven are all Pakistani or Afghan. Afghanistan is a landlocked country and virtually all of its trade passes through Karachi. Its people are drawn here to the sea.”
“When the sea is calm it must be a pleasant voyage.”
The captain shrugged. “There are always problems. The Gulf War was very close. We were stopped and boarded by the Americans many times. Now that the war is over I must think about getting a new first mate. Gunther has told me he is sick. He has the early stages of AIDS, and will not be with me on many more trips.”