She’d all but pushed Court Harrington from her mind, forgotten about the cocky North Carolinian who’d almost—almost—bewitched her into losing her sense again, back there in Dutch Harbor.
And then the satellite phone rang, and it was Harrington on the other end. And he sounded, well, sheepish.
“Hey, uh, skipper,” he began tentatively. “How’s it going?”
“Going fine, Harrington,” she replied. “Seas are flat calm and we’re plowing along. You’d have been bored out of your mind by the first night out.”
Harrington laughed, but it was something more nervous than funny. “Yeah, I bet.”
“Where are you? You make it down to a hospital, or what?”
“I’m in Seattle,” he replied. “Found a good physiotherapist, and she’s working me hard. Sounds like I’m going to be here for a little bit.” He paused. “But listen, skipper…”
McKenna frowned. “Uh-huh?”
“This is awkward,” he said. “There’s no easy way to say this, but, uh—” Sigh. “I left something on the tug. In my stateroom.”
“Oh,” McKenna said. “That’s no problem. Give me a forwarding address, and I’ll have it sent your way as soon as we hit the docks. Unless it’s dirty underwear or your personal stash of porn, in which case you’re SOL.”
“It’s not porn. It’s not underwear, either. It’s not—” Another nervous laugh. “Actually, it’s not even mine.”
He let that one hang there, long enough that McKenna should have asked him to elaborate, but she didn’t bother. Figured if he was going to spill something rotten on her, she wasn’t going to beg for it.
And then he did. Told her a whole sordid story, the ghost on the Lion and how it led to the ambush, Harrington saving McKenna’s life in the nick of time.
McKenna knew all this. This was old news. But Harrington had more to tell.
“I started wondering why this guy stuck around so long,” Harrington said. “Turns out he was after this briefcase. Stainless-steel, like in a James Bond movie or something. It was hidden in a cabinet in the infirmary.”
A briefcase. McKenna felt the first stirrings of nausea. “You never mentioned anything about a briefcase before, Court.”
“I wasn’t—” Pause. “I knew we’d have to give it up if I made a big deal out of it. You know, with the guy trying to kill you and all.”
“So you kept it.”
“We’re a salvage operation. Everything on that boat belongs to us, rightfully, by law, right?”
“Court.” McKenna rubbed her eyes. “We made thirty million dollars–plus on that job. If someone wants to kill me for a briefcase, heck, they can have it.”
“I was just curious, is all. Wouldn’t you be?”
“So you left the briefcase in your stateroom, is that it?” McKenna replied, dodging the question. “And what do you want me to do with it? What was inside, after all that?”
“I don’t know,” Harrington said. “I was waiting until things calmed down, and I was going to show it to you and we could open it, but then… you know.”
You tried to kiss me and I got cold feet and put you on the next plane out of my sight. I know.
“McKenna— Captain Rhodes?”
“I’m here, Court,” McKenna said. “I’m just trying to process this.”
“I just thought you should know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Yeah, well.” She corrected the autopilot. Shook her mind clear. “Nothing to do about it now. Let me have a look at the briefcase and I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.” Then after a beat: “Tell the gang I say hi, okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Will do.” And she ended the call.
HARRINGTON TOOK THE PHONE from his ear. Stood for a minute outside the front doors of the hospital, looking up at the sky. It was a pleasant, sunny day, warm and summery, the sky a cloudless blue, but Harrington barely noticed.
She’s going to kill me, he thought, tucking the phone into his pocket and starting toward the hospital entrance. That woman is going to straight-up kill me.
He disappeared inside the front doors, intent on finding his therapist for another day’s labor. The doctor was pretty cute, kind of a hardass, and she seemed to find Harrington’s salvage stories exciting. It wasn’t the worst situation in the world, but Harrington wasn’t focused on the doctor right now.
He found the elevator, pressed the call button, and waited, tapping his foot and mentally kicking his ass—completely unaware of the nondescript Chrysler rental idling out in the parking lot, or the driver inside, who’d been watching him close ever since he’d left Dutch Harbor.
92
Daishin Sato found an access hatch in the hull of the Pacific Lion, midway between the accommodations deck and the waterline. He unlocked the bulkhead door and swung the hatch open, revealing an endless expanse of azure sea and blue sky, a gentle rolling swell, the hush of the water as the Lion plowed through it.
Sato took a moment, admired the view. Breathed the fresh air. He and his colleagues had been imprisoned belowdecks for three days, confined mostly to darkness and the stale air of the holds. He’d ventured up to the weather deck once, when the cargo hold started to seem suffocating, but it had been nighttime, the ship’s minders asleep in the lounge, the air outside cold.
It was a beautiful day. It had been an uneventful voyage, so far, for better or for worse. Sato wasn’t seasick; that was a positive. Perhaps the only positive, at this point.
He produced his satellite phone. Entered the number he knew by heart, and waited to be connected.
The connection took time, longer than a cellular phone, and Sato held the phone to his ear, and watched the waves roll by. Then a click, and the connection was made. “Hai.”
“The product is not here,” Sato told the man on the other end of the line. “We’ve looked exhaustively.”
There was a pause. The connection clicked and coughed. Sato waited.
“Very well,” the man said at last. “We will have to escalate the matter.”
“I’ll wait for instruction,” Sato replied.
The other man didn’t bother to answer. He killed the call, leaving Sato alone again with the vast, open ocean, and the sky equally limitless. Sato indulged the view for another minute or two.
Then he closed the hatch and locked it, and set out to return to his colleagues.
THREE THOUSAND MILES away from the Pacific Lion, Katsuo Nakadate replaced the handset on his phone.
He turned in his chair, away from his desk and his computer, to stare out through vast picture windows at the city of Yokohama and the ocean beyond. He thought, with a long moment, about what he was going to do.
The syndicate’s interests remained in jeopardy. The bonds remained unrecovered. Nakadate would use any means to recover them, but still, he had hoped to confine any violence to the accountant Ishimaru, and perhaps to his accomplice on the freighter.
He didn’t relish the prospect of initiating conflict with civilians. He had hoped that Sato and his colleagues would have located the bonds on the freighter, that his most pressing concern would be bringing his men home.