‘Dahlia Blanca is your little pied-à-terre in Puerto Banderas and where we’ll be staying, I take it?’
‘Some pied,’ he answered, leading her forward once more through the smoked-glass doors and past the reflection of the Bell’s little snub nose. ‘Some terre. Wait till you see it.’
But Robin found herself too distracted to answer. And in truth, her breath had been taken away. For as he finished speaking she found herself standing beside a column of pure, clear crystal perhaps two metres in diameter. It reached from above her head down through the deck at her feet into a seemingly bottomless well, the shaft of which was banded with darkness and varicoloured light. Its glassy facade was wrapped in fans of silver which seemed to cling in dazzling cobwebs to its exterior, catching the light and shimmering like the surface of the sea. It was only when she saw something moving upwards out of the banded depths in the middle of it that she realized it was hollow. And that it was the lift to the lower decks.
SEVEN
The Port Authority Building at 301 East Ocean Boulevard was almost as choked as the docks. Which was hardly a surprise, thought Richard, but at least a visit there would let him know how soon the docks would be clear so Sulu Queen could unload, reload and return to her tight schedule. There were a lot of people impatient to ship stuff in and out through the gridlock at the dockside, and the men and women who worked in this building were the first port of call for those who wished matters to be expedited pretty bloody quickly. Not least among these was Heritage Mariner, given Richard’s gathering worry that an ARkStorm might be approaching like a monstrous, mythical tiger prowling along the wake of the Sulu Queen.
Richard and Captain Sin came to a standstill at the back of a crowd that seemed to be intent on invading Suite 1400. The squat Sin could see nothing except for the backs of the crowd in front, and was too full of his own importance to rise on to his tiptoes like a child. So he just stood and fumed with yet more frustration. Richard, well aware of the Oriental concept of face, was careful not to remark on this. He was easily able to look over the tops of the heads packed along the hall between himself and the suite’s closed door. And he was not alone in being able to do so. On the way over here in a miraculously mobile taxi, they had not only avoided the worst of the traffic jams but had also come past West Broadway, one block up, and picked up Antoine Prudhomme from Southey-Bell, a legal-trained executive from the local shipping agents Heritage Mariner shared with Greenbaum International, who was there to explain — and apply as necessary — any legal implications concerning the hold-up, particularly in regard of a lawsuit against the port authority if Richard wished to proceed in that direction.
Antoine was Richard’s equal in height but he lacked the Englishman’s deep-chested solidity. Somewhere in his maternal great-grandmother’s French Creole genes lay a far more willowy figure, passed on to him several generations down the line. Every time Richard met Antoine he was put in mind of the paintings of Modigliani and El Greco with their brightly coloured but strangely elongated figures. But the effect was at least partly illusory — Antoine had played basketball at college, city and state level. Only a catastrophically broken ankle had stopped him turning professional — and left him with a slight but permanent limp. So he settled on a good degree from Loyola Law, LA, and a career with Southey-Bell instead.
Now the two tall men stood shoulder to shoulder in a kind of entente cordiale, looking over the crowd. ‘I don’t know what I can do,’ Antoine was declaring. ‘Get on to our paralegals and sue the port authority, I guess.’ He pulled a hand back over his fashionably short, prematurely grey, tightly curled hair. He gave a peculiarly Gallic shrug.
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ said Richard, unapologetically English in his hesitation to get combative attorneys involved at the drop of a hat. ‘You’re enough of a litigator to be going on with, Antoine. Why don’t we see if there’s anything we can do to help before we reach for more law.’
The big double doors into the suite opened as he spoke and a harassed-looking man called, ‘Come on in, folks. Come in and sit down. There should be room. We’ll deal with each and all of you just as quickly as we can, though I can’t promise we’ll get anything moving in the immediate time frame.’ He waved them all in, his arms stick-like as they protruded from the short sleeves of his immaculately laundered white shirt. His tie was also short and failed to reach his belt buckle, despite being loosened so he could unbutton his collar.
The crowd surged forward again as the official stood back. Richard, Antoine and Sin went with them. Richard forgot all about calling Robin as he tried to work out which group they should join — if there was anyone else here on a mission similar to theirs. Sin was the only man in a naval outfit, so it was no use looking for other officers or shiphandlers judging by their uniforms. Most of the rest of the vociferous crowd were in jeans and T-shirts or lightweight business suits. Men off the vessels, and their owners’ corporate lawyers, Richard calculated. Sailors and sharks. But there were several other heavy-set men in Day-Glo protective clothing whose faces were little short of murderous — longshoremen, Richard guessed. And, finally, several more purposeful-looking men and women who filled their army-issue camouflage-patterned outfits to bursting.
Richard assumed the squad in new-issue alternate ACUs were National Guard or regular army advisors sent to help them. Help was what he needed but also what he had to offer, so the men in camos seemed the best place to begin. Especially as, unlike the longshoremen, they looked calm and controlled. He started searching for someone wearing officer pips. His eye soon fell on a compact, decisive, dark-skinned individual whose ID flash showed his name to be Guerrero and whose gold, leaf-shaped badges revealed he was a major. It only took a moment for Richard to shoulder his way through the crowd with Antoine and Sin close behind, so that when the muscular guardsmen sat down, the three Heritage Mariner men were sitting right beside them.
‘Good afternoon, Major Guerrero,’ said Richard easily, leaning forward and sideways as they settled into their chairs. ‘I’m Richard Mariner of Heritage Mariner Shipping.’ He reached across in the introduction and shook hands with the major, whose youthful, dark chocolate eyes regarded him calculatingly from behind black lashes that would have flattered a model in a make-up advert, and from beneath raised eyebrows. ‘These are my colleagues, Captain Sin and Antoine Prudhomme.’
‘Jose Guerrero. Major, California National Guard, Sacramento Division.’ The handshake was firm and dry. The nod to the other two curt but courteous.
‘Good to meet you, Major. My ship Sulu Queen is half laden and stuck in her berth, unable to discharge or load up — not that we have any idea where her next cargo actually is at the moment.’ Richard continued companionably, ‘What’s your problem?’
‘Comparable to yours, sir,’ answered the major easily, with only a trace of a Mexican accent. His voice was almost as deep as Richard’s, its tone calm and thoughtful. ‘I have a consignment of containers on the dockside. Emergency supplies, everything from field hospitals to chemical latrines — freighted down from Mather, Sacramento on the orders of the governor himself, with me and my people riding shotgun. They’ve been taken off the freight cars and just dumped on the dockside while I try and work out where they’ll be most useful if the people at NOAA are correct with their weather predictions.’