“Man overboard!” someone called, and suddenly the Argyle Shore and that seven-figure payday were about the last things on McKenna’s mind.
The voice on the loud-hailer was too garbled to place, but on the monitor McKenna could see bodies in bright orange rain gear rushing to the starboard rail. She hurried to the window and looked out to the passageway, where her dad should have been. There was nothing, no sign of him, just water and spindrift and random, scattered jetsam. McKenna felt it like a punch to the stomach.
She picked up the radio. “Someone get eyes on him! You find him, and don’t let him get away!”
They’d trained for this. Randall Rhodes was a maverick, but he wasn’t reckless. His crew ran emergency drills as a matter of course—ship evacuation, fire suppression, first aid. Everyone on the boat had to prove they were able to climb into their bright red survival suit in less than one minute flat or they didn’t go out on a job. They’d trained for disaster. But training didn’t count for very much with waves the size of apartment buildings and your old man in the water.
McKenna switched on every spotlight the Gale Force could muster. Picked up the radio and called the master of the Argyle Shore, telling him to forget the messenger line and to hold tight. She tried to keep the panic out of her voice as she broadcast Man overboard over the distress channel, knowing it was pointless; there was no one close enough to respond in time.
On the afterdeck, Matt Jonas was throwing a life preserver in the water. That wouldn’t matter a bit, though, if McKenna couldn’t turn the tug around.
The waves kept coming, ship-swallowing monsters. McKenna knew if she timed the turn wrong, those waves would bowl the Gale Force over, rolling her and dooming them all. On the other hand, if she waited too long, the crew would lose sight of the old man, or hypothermia would set in, numbing his faculties and pulling him under.
Shit, shit, shit.
It was her failure to make the turn, McKenna decided later, that had killed her father.
She stood frozen at the wheel, searching for a break in the waves—but, of course, the sea wasn’t going to give it to her that easy. The waves weren’t letting up; there was no safe way to do it. There was no way to turn back without risking the boat.
She’d frozen. Afterward, Matt and Stacey Jonas would try to console her, telling her it had been only a minute, two at the most. But that minute mattered. By the time she’d regained control, swung the boat around—a harrowing, life-before-your-eyes turn—the life preserver Matt had thrown was drifting four or five boat lengths away, disappearing in the trough and only reappearing intermittently. There was no sign of Randall Rhodes anywhere.
“I lost him,” Nelson was shouting, over the hailer. “That last wave, I had him, but I just bloody lost him.”
McKenna urged the boat back, the sea following now, the tug surfing down monster waves and closing in on the life preserver, spotlights chasing the dark away. She still couldn’t see the old man anywhere. The minutes ticked onward, and the storm kept coming, and McKenna stood in the wheelhouse and looked out at the black water, knowing in her heart that her dad was gone.
1
The cargo ship Pacific Lion stretched 650 feet along the pier, her hull rising a hundred feet out of black water. At her stern, on a massive loading ramp, a long line of brand-new Nissan cars waited to be loaded, while amidships, a man smoked near a gangway leading from the pier to a small hatchway in the hull, the cherry end of his cigarette a beacon in the darkness.
Tomio Ishimaru stuck to the shadows as he hurried toward the man. He’d bribed a customs officer to let him access the docks, but at that moment, customs officers were the least of his problems. In his briefcase, he carried bearer bonds worth more than forty-five million euros—nearly fifty million American dollars—property of the Inagawa-kai syndicate of the yakuza, Japanese organized crime.
The bonds were a simple game. The syndicate funneled money from its numerous criminal enterprises into stock certificates for an anonymous corporation based nominally in Switzerland. Basic money-laundering—except, instead of delivering the bonds as he’d been contracted, Tomio Ishimaru had made a play. Now the bonds were his, and that made him—for the moment—a very rich man.
Assuming he could get out of Yokohama alive.
The man with the cigarette stepped out of the shadows as Ishimaru approached. His name was Okura, and, once upon a time, he’d been a teenage friend of Ishimaru. Now he wore the dress uniform of an officer in the Japanese Overseas Lines, and his face had aged considerably since those early years.
Okura took another drag of his cigarette. Regarded Ishimaru with a wry smile. “Ishimaru-san,” he said. “I thought you were going to miss the boat.”
Ishimaru didn’t bother to return the smile. Okura hadn’t any idea how much effort he’d expended to be there. There were bodies in his wake. There were members of the Inagawa-kai close behind. There was no time for idle banter.
“The bonds took more effort to obtain than expected,” he replied. “When can we board the ship?”
Okura looked up and down the dock. The row of Nissans, five thousand of them, was nearly at its end. Soon, the ship would sail.
“Patience,” he told his old classmate. “When I go back inside, I won’t set foot on dry land again for two weeks.”
Ishimaru shifted his weight. Followed Okura’s gaze. “You’re sure you can hide me. Nobody is aware?”
“You’ll be fine,” Okura replied. “This ship is filled with hiding spaces. If you stay silent and keep out of sight, we’ll be okay.”
Ishimaru nodded. Scanned the dock again with nervous, darting eyes. Wondered when Okura had become such a shark, wondered just how much debt his old friend had accrued in the parlors. Wondered how he, Ishimaru, had found himself here.
Finally, Okura flicked his cigarette away. “Iiyo,” he said, stepping back to the gangway. “Welcome aboard.”
IN POINT OF FACT, Tomio Ishimaru’s path to the Pacific Lion had begun months ago, in one of Yokohama’s many dimly lit and smoky jansou—underground mah-jongg parlors operated by the Inagawa-kai. At first, he’d imagined that this path had been accidental. Lately, he wasn’t so sure.
By nature, Ishimaru wasn’t much of a gambler. He was an accountant, a numbers man, and anyone with even a weak grasp of numbers could see that it was near impossible to win money consistently in the parlors. In the first place, the rakes charged by the operators were obscene. It took skill to beat the house, much less one’s opponents. Ishimaru hadn’t the skill, nor the gambler’s desire. He wasn’t sure why he’d come to the jansou at all.
He was a bachelor, was the reason, little more than a hardworking salaryman. He had few friends, but his coworkers, fellow accountants with the Inagawa-kai, and associates of the syndicate drank for free at many of the parlors in the city. Ishimaru went to be social, to get drunk. He went to stare at the pretty hostesses who flitted about the crowded rooms, draping themselves on the arms of the high rollers.
It was in one of these parlors, late at night, that he’d reconnected with Hiroki Okura. And it was there, in the bar, as the hours grew long and the conversation turned from old classmates and memories to the present day, that Ishimaru had carelessly let slip his position with the syndicate—and it was in a similar bar, in a similar parlor some nights later, that Okura had first broached his idea.