Read The Orpheus Deception Online
Authors: David Stone
The Orpheus Deception (23 page)
“Oh please,” said Mandy, flaring but still controlled, purring in a sardonic Knightsbridge drawl. “I expected rather better of the Asiatic mind.”
“You are in possession of a device that could be drug paraphernalia. If we can detect traces of a narcotic substance in this, you’ll be charged with possession. We are not English anymore. The New Singapore does not tolerate these vulgar European depravities, Miss Pownall.”
Mandy’s response would have come as no surprise to anyone who knew her, but it seemed to rattle Minister Dak.
“Bugger the depravities, you poxy old crone. You know bloody well I got this outside your door, from the odious Sergeant Ong. Amateur bloody theatrics. I suppose the whole silly thing at the airport was staged just to set me up for an apology and a gift. My God, woman! You’re Chinese. You ought to be able to do
inscrutable
better than anyone.”
inscrutable
better than anyone.”
Dak, whose face had gone white except for two roseate patches, one on each cheekbone, sat upright in her chair and said, “You cannot address a minister of the government in that manner. You will answer—”
Mandy stood up, every inch the British noble.
“Micah. The door.”
Minister Dak got to her feet as well, struggling for composure.
“No. I must ask you to wait while I consult with my staff.”
“Are we being detained?” asked Mandy.
Dak had herself under control now, and her tone was silk over steel.
“No. Of course not. But if you will indulge me, the matter requires some consideration. I must take some advice.”
“How long?”
“Minutes only. Please wait.”
She rounded the desk in a stiff-legged walk, passing unfazed between them. The doors opened to reveal two uniformed police officers standing outside and then closed again, leaving them alone in the ticking stillness of the room. Dalton stepped across quietly and gently tried the doorknob and then he shook his head. Mandy, her face now quite white, sat down hard in her chair. Dalton made an inclusive gesture taking in the room
—surveillance, mikes, cameras—
to which Mandy responded with a weary nod.
—surveillance, mikes, cameras—
to which Mandy responded with a weary nod.
“Bloody awful Singapore,” she said. “It’s always the same.”
Since speech was impossible, and there was no way out, they both sat quietly in their chairs and radiated righteous indignation to the four walls and the hidden cameras. The palm fan swished through the dead air. The station clock clicked. And clacked. Mandy’s right foot began to tremble and her lips were white. The fact that the drug charge was laughable on the face of it might have meant something in England. Not in the East. What a fool she had been to accept
anything.
The gift might as well have been six seeds of the pomegranate because she was now doomed to the underworld. She glanced at Dalton and saw that he was watching her with a look of growing concern. Her wide eyes grew moist and she swallowed, her ivory throat working.
Changi Prison.
anything.
The gift might as well have been six seeds of the pomegranate because she was now doomed to the underworld. She glanced at Dalton and saw that he was watching her with a look of growing concern. Her wide eyes grew moist and she swallowed, her ivory throat working.
Changi Prison.
“Here,” said Dalton, getting up and crossing to the desk, where he retrieved the unopened copy of the
Straits Times,
“improve yourself.”
Straits Times,
“improve yourself.”
She took it with a hand that had an almost imperceptible tremble.
“Thank you, Micah.”
“Mandy, I have a question.”
She waited, a warning in her eyes.
“Who booked us on that Thai flight?”
“Why?”
“We usually fly British Airways. Why Thai?”
She looked puzzled, considering it.
“That’s right. We do. I never gave it much thought. I suppose Thai was the first flight out of Milan.”
“British Airways flies out of Milan too. We—our firm—have a standing account with British Air.”
“I know. Tony Crane puts the flights on his Amex card and then he bills the company.”
“Why?”
“He gets the air miles and the points. He’s a bit of a miser. His family lost a lot of money after the Great War. He’s a bit tight.”
“Who booked us on Thai, then?”
“The booking came out of Tony’s office. His girl, I guess.”
“So, Tony booked it, then.”
“Or had it booked.”
“Odd?”
She stared up at him for a time.
“Yes. It’s odd. A coincidence?”
Dalton said nothing. Mandy studied his face for a while, frowning slightly, her expression inward, and then looked at the station clock.
“How long, do you think?”
She was looking up at him and the fear in her face cut into Dalton. He returned the look, willing her to understand him:
You must not break.
“She said minutes.
Lovely
woman, isn’t she?”
Lovely
woman, isn’t she?”
Mandy rolled her eyes, said nothing, opening the paper with an angry rustle. She crossed her legs and settled back into the chair. Dalton began to wander around the room, as if admiring the décor, very aware of the microsurette in his forearm, thinking about the infamous SID interrogation protocols and how quickly things can go to hell in the spy business. He turned as he heard Mandy’s sharp intake of breath.
She was looking up at him, shocked, white-faced.
“What?”
She handed him the paper, discreetly touching his lips with the tip of her finger, and then pointing to an item in the International section:
SHOOTINGS IN FLORENCE
Three people were killed and two more injured in a shooting at the University of Florence today when an apparent kidnapping attempt was resisted by armed bodyguards. The gunfire took place in the crowded atrium of the Uffizi library. Officials say several shots were exchanged between a single gunman and police officers at the scene. The man was shot several times and taken into custody. He is reported to be in critical condition at the Civic Hospital. Three victims died at the scene and one victim is undergoing emergency surgery. Her condition is listed as grave. Officials are not releasing the names of the victims pending notification of next of kin. The shooter was later identified by local carabinieri as Slawa Radko Borins, a native of Kosovo. Reasons for the shooting are unknown at this time.
REUTERS INTERNATIONAL
Dalton, who got it the first time, read the item three times, controlling any visible reaction, trying to squeeze from the item details that were simply not there. Then he pulled out his cell phone and was not surprised to see the NO SERVICE icon. The room was shielded, of course. He put the phone away and glanced at the landline sitting on the desk. No. Any call was impossible. It would raise questions that could not be reasonably explained. His face, however, was a death mask, a rock face, a killing face, the same one he had shown to Mandy back in that private room in Florian’s, a vertiginous glimpse into the
other
Dalton, the one only a very few unlucky people had ever seen. Mandy watched him in horror for a moment and then recovered.
other
Dalton, the one only a very few unlucky people had ever seen. Mandy watched him in horror for a moment and then recovered.
“Too bad, isn’t it?” she said, in a reasonably normal voice. “Imagine. In Florence.”
“Yes,” said Dalton, folding the paper neatly, his hands shaking only a little, setting it back down by Dak’s laptop, his throat tight, and a cold fire spreading through his belly.
“Yes it is. In Florence. A damn shame.”
16
The Celebes Sea
The gleaming new tanker lay on her spring lines, near but not tightly tethered to the repair docks, rocking steadily in the tidal estuary, her shining navy blue hull set off by two scarlet bands just above the waterline. The bridge, glittering white and glowing in the dappled sidelong light of an afternoon sun that streamed through the dense jungle around her, had a brand-new flag flying from the mast. It rippled in the sea wind, and the sound of it flowing and snapping came down to the pilothouse door, where Vigo Majiic stood, watching Emil Tarc wandering through the mechanical perfection of the new control systems; a million dollars’ worth of brand-new radar, satellite communications rig, GPS-connected autopilot, state-of-the-art steering electronics, a polished stainless steel wheel with chromed spokes, new glass all around, and a deck of glowing teak boards. The bridge smelled of fresh paint, ozone, and a trace of Russian cigarette smoke. Beyond the tinted glass of the bridge, the tanker’s deck stretched out before them, a five-hundred-foot-long reach of matte-graysteel marked by the black rectangles of the tanker’s fifteen holding tanks, each capable of carrying sixty thousand pounds of liquid cargo. At the bow, where the Hindu cook had been slaughtered, there was only a spotless curve of new steel plating and a white-painted rail, beyond which the housings for the bow anchors—also glimmering white—rose and fell gently as the boat lay at the wharf, just under the leading edge of the camouflage canopy. All the scaffolding had been taken down, all the machinery of repair off-loaded onto the dry dock, and no sign now remained of the ruin that the ship had once been. She had been reborn into a new life on the sea.
She no longer was the
Mingo Dubai.
Mingo Dubai.
The papers had been prepared long ago, and the legend created, that would see her safely through the ten thousand miles of crowded shipping lanes and heavily patrolled waters that lay in front of her now. On her huge white stack, a logo had been painted—a massive blue circle containing a large golden star—and it caught the sunlight and flashed out like fire as it moved with the hull. The crew, a carefully chosen group of Bulgarians under the control of a disgraced Bulgarian Marine officer known only as Jakki, had choppered in from Sulawesi two days before. They had seen to the engine room and the operational equipment. Supplies were on board, and she had been ballasted and fueled, enough for the next part of her journey, which would bring her across the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal, to Port Said on the Mediterranean, where the cargo that would define her true purpose was already waiting. The gun locker now held fifteen brand-new M249 SAWs, along with crates of 7.62 rounds. Her turbines were idling, and the deep vibration of her engines moved through the hull like a heartbeat that Vigo Majiic could feel through the soles of his boots, feel in the wooden frame of the pilothouse door. Tarc, coming to a halt in the middle of the bridge house, looked at Majiic, a sardonic smile twisting his face:
“See, Vigo . . . it is ready.”
Majiic nodded and turned to gesture at what lay behind them, a few hundred feet down the estuary, out under the bright sun, cloud shadows playing across the open water.
“Yes. And so is Bittagar.”
Tarc came to the door and looked down the river. A huge timber boom had been dragged across the open narrows, secured by massive chains. Behind the boom, and stretching right across the harbor, lay a huge ragtag flotilla of praus, cutters, barges, towkangs, bumboats, and Zodiacs, each one filled with heavily armed men. On a central barge, in the middle of the channel, Bittagar’s man Gango and several of his personal followers were standing around a large angular object covered with a ragged tarpaulin.
Bittagar himself was sitting in an old wicker peacock chair in the bow of the barge, wrapped in a plaid sheet, wearing a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, holding an old Royal Navy cutlass in his withered hands. Even from this distance, Tarc could make out Bittagar’s gap-toothed leer. Gango lifted a radio handset to his mouth and thumbed the button. A handset crackled in Majiic’s tunic pocket. He picked it out and handed it to Tarc.
“You surrender boat,” Gango was saying, his voice a thin crackle, his Bugis-accented English almost indecipherable. “We give you safe passage.”
“Honest?” said Tarc. There was a silence while Gango worked out the reply.
“Yes. Honest. We not hurt the boat. Only take for the struggle.”
Tarc flicked the handset off.
“Vigo, take the wheel. Have the deckhands stand by the spring lines with boarding axes. Tell the engineer to get us ready.”
“What are you going to do, Emil? Run them down?”
Tarc didn’t reply directly. He lifted the radio.
“Gango, you cannot take the boat without damaging it. Then where will you be? Back at the beginning.”
“You no go either way. You dead. We have boat. We build again.”
“And do what with it? You don’t know how to sail her.”
“We have buyer,” said Gango, his voice becoming plaintive, a wheedling tone entering, like a trader in a bazaar, buttery and persuasive. “Pay much more than you. Is business only. No make die for only business. Come on
buayo.
No be
lai dat.
No be
kiasu.
No be
kenna ketok
we no greedy take always more better more better take.
Kiasu
no be
lai dat.”
buayo.
No be
lai dat.
No be
kiasu.
No be
kenna ketok
we no greedy take always more better more better take.
Kiasu
no be
lai dat.”
“What’s under the tarp, Gango?”
Gango, a tiny figure in the distance, shouted something to the men around the tarp. With a kind of matador’s flourish, the men slid the tarp off the thing on the deck. It was an antiaircraft gun, World War II vintage, Japanese, two gleaming ten-foot barrels on a circular track.
The man behind the weapon worked away at two heavy wheels, and the gun swiveled on the carriage, leveling slowly until both long barrels were aimed directly at the bridge. Even from two hundred yards, it was possible to see the black holes of the muzzles. Bittagar’s yellowed fangs showed in the hard light, and he raised the cutlass, the blade glinting.
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