After awkward introductions, after a general refusal of an offer of coffee from one of the volunteers, after an uncomfortable pause, Jerry blurted out, “I want you to know, I feel horrible.”
They looked at him mildly, as though they didn’t know it was his fault, as though they thought he were just being conventionally sympathetic. Kristin Baldur even managed a polite smile as she said, “It must have been a terrible shock for you. All of you, on the ship.”
“It was,” Captain Cousseran said.
“We’ve been told,” Michael Baldur said, “she was volunteering in some way. I don’t entirely understand it.”
Jerry closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. This was the moment. Opening his eyes, he said, “She did it because she thought I wanted her to.”
Now they looked at him more closely. The father said. “Did you want her to?”
“No!”
Captain Cousseran, in the chair to Jerry’s right, said, “There was no warning. She told no one, asked no questions, merely leaped into the sea.”
Jerry wasn’t about to let himself be let off the hook that easily. Turning to the captain, he said, “But she heard me say there had to be a fail-safe. You know she did. She heard me say it was going to be safe, that’s why she went ahead.”
Captain Cousseran could be stubborn when he wanted. Shaking his head, setting his jaw, he said, “She went without warning, without discussion.”
Michael Baldur said, “My daughter was an impulsive girl, I know that.”
“But she wouldn’t have gone,” Jerry insisted, “if she hadn’t listened to me.”
Kristin Baldur smiled sadly at Jerry, and said, “Kim didn’t really listen to you, Mr. Diedrich. She would always jump first, and think about it afterwards. I don’t think she ever really understood the idea of personal danger. I was always afraid that, some time...”
Michael Baldur reached over to grip his wife’s forearm. Her smile had become fixed, her large eyes brighter.
Captain Cousseran broke through the moment, saying, “My regret is that we were unable to look for her ourselves. There was no question, of course. Still, it should have been our job to look for her and, if possible, find her.”
Michael Baldur said, “That’s something else I don’t entirely understand. Why didn’t you stay to help search?”
“We were trespassing,” Captain Cousseran told him. “We had been ordered away, and we had no choice but to obey. The other ship lowered two launches to study the island after the explosions, and to look for the — for your daughter. Captain Zhang assured me they would search for her, and I’m sure he did.”
“He wasn’t much help, I must say that,” Kristin Baldur commented.
Captain Cousseran, with obvious professional courtesy toward another mariner, said, “I’m sure he and his crew did everything they could.”
“No,” she said, “I mean when we talked to him.”
Jerry said, “When you talked to him?”
Michael Baldur explained, “The Mallory came into Brisbane early this morning. We flew up there to speak with the captain.”
“As much as we could,” his wife said. “He has practically no English at all. We could barely understand a word he said, and I’m not sure he ever grasped what we were trying to say.”
Jerry said, “But—” then left the thought unexpressed, bewildered by it. His memory of Captain Zhang’s voice on the loud-hailer was still all too clear: “I am asked to inform you...”
Why had Captain Zhang pretended not to understand or speak English? Had he been embarrassed in the presence of Kim’s parents, made uncomfortable by their grief? (Though in fact they were being very restrained, all in all.) Had it actually not been Captain Zhang who’d talked to them by radio from the Mallory, but some other crewman, or somebody connected to Richard Curtis? Or did Captain Zhang have something to hide, and that’s why he’d evaded the Baldurs? But what could he have to hide?
Before Jerry could respond, Captain Cousseran did, saying, “I never had trouble with Captain Zhang’s English, on the radio.”
“Well,” Kristin Baldur said, “if you can communicate with him, that’s wonderful. There are questions... well, we just wanted to know, know what happened, what it was like, and... even what the search was like. Captain Cousseran, if you and Captain Zhang can speak together, and understand each other, would you ask him that? How much did they look for Kim? How long did they spend on it? What made them give up when they did?”
Maybe Captain Cousseran had belatedly realized, like Jerry, that there must be something odd going on here, with Captain Zhang suddenly bereft of English. He looked uncomfortable as he said, “I’m not sure how to get in touch with him, I have no idea where Mallory is by now, or where it’s going.”
“It’s in Brisbane,” Michael Baldur said. “It will stay there at least two weeks.”
Captain Cousseran didn’t look happy at that news. He said, “Are you certain? The owner can call for the ship at any—”
“Not now,” Michael Baldur told him. “It lost one of its launches on the way back. Apparently, some crewman did a very poor job when it was hauled back aboard after the search, and in the night it dropped off and was lost.”
Captain Cousseran frowned. “That’s very unlikely,” he said.
“But that’s what happened,” Michael Baldur said. “That’s what we were told in Brisbane. What with one thing and another. Captain, I must say I got the impression that’s a very sloppily run ship. In any event, the harbormaster in Brisbane won’t give the Mallory permission to sail until it has all its lifeboats, and it will be two weeks before they can replace that one and adapt it to the ship.”
Jerry said, “I’ll talk to him.”
They all looked at him in surprise. Michael Baldur said, “Talk to who? Captain Zhang?”
There’s something wrong here, Jerry thought. I have no idea what it is, and I don’t dare even to think it might mean that somehow Kim is still alive, it almost certainly doesn’t mean that at all, but something is definitely wrong. Captain Zhang loses his command of English. The Mallory loses one of its launches. There’s something wrong.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll leave in the morning, go up to Brisbane, talk with Captain Zhang.”
“I wish you the best of luck,” Kristin Baldur told him, as though to say she thought he’d need it.
4
On the drive south out of Brisbane on Pacific Highway, Manville and Kim discussed what they should do. He hadn’t managed yet to get in touch with either of his friends, the one in San Francisco or the one in Houston. The test at Kanowit Island had been on Tuesday, this was Thursday, and he needed to reach one or both of those guys before the weekend, which meant by noon, their times, tomorrow.
The question was, what would he say to them? What position was he in now, and what position was Kim in? Richard Curtis had clearly found himself in an escalating situation beyond what he’d originally intended, but where was he now? He’d gone from the simple hope that the Planetwatch diver wouldn’t survive, so as to free himself from Planetwatch’s — Jerry Diedrich’s — intense surveyal, on to acquiescence in a kind of passive killing of the diver, on to an active scheme to murder her, on to a feeling that Manville had to be murdered as well, because of Curtis’s own indiscretion. But what was his situation now? Had the threat from Curtis receded, or was it still as strong?