18mm Blues (46 page)

From the seventy-three oysters came fifty-seven blue pearls. So, not just a remarkable color but a phenomenal yield. Twenty-seven of the fifty-seven were huge beauties, approximately eighteen millimeter in size. Eleven were just as beautiful though not as large, around fourteen millimeters. The remaining ten were various lesser sizes. What's more, all but twelve were spherical enough to qualify as rounds.

Grady had them spread out on a linen hand towel on the galley table. He and Julia and William sat at the table in an appreciating daze, poking at the pearls, rolling them to cause them to throw blue iridescence, picking up this one, then that one, trying to decide which was best, which was the favorite.

Grady had at one time or another seen extraordinary lots of Colombian emeralds, and exceptional lots of D-flawless diamonds, but he knew that nothing that his eyes had ever set upon were as precious as these pearls.

They weren't his. They belonged to Julia and William, he thought. He told them that.

“Three-way split,” Julia said.

William agreed.

Grady didn't even consider refusing. He dropped the blue pearl from the oyster he'd found in with the others, making fifty-eight. He got three glasses from the cupboard and poured some of the '85 La Tache. They toasted their wealthy selves, toasted the overlooked island, the generous lagoon, the prolific oysters and even the obligingly dispositioned snakes.

They were well into the second bottle, feeling heady and happy, looking at the world through wine-colored pupils, when Julia said rather thick tongued, “Tomorrow I'll dive for more.”

“No,” Grady told her, “no more.”

“There's a whole bed full more in the lagoon.”

“Yeah, and maybe tomorrow'll be a down day for the snakes.”

Julia shrugged resignedly.

Grady opened another bottle and toasted Harold.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

An hour before the next dawn's light, Grady got up for the head and decided he might as well stay up. He had too much of a hangover to bother with shaving, just brushed away his wine mouth, promised a more thorough brushing later and went up on deck.

There was a moderate breeze coming from the northeast. Moderate this early it would get stiffer later, Grady thought. He was anxious to be under way, to get back to where his and Julia's and William's new riches could be transformed into various other pleasant realities. It was, he decided, a normal attitude, not really such a venal one.

He turned on the global satellite receiver for a readout. Turned the receiver off and on again, double-checking the position. He repeated the position to himself several times, aloud several times. He'd never forget it. He thought it best not to write it down, one less concern if he didn't write it down.

Wait until dawn? No, no reason to. He pulled up anchor and hoisted the mainsail and within a few minutes was well clear of the island. He wouldn't need to rely on the engine today, not as long as the breeze kept up. He unfurled the headsail and set all the others. Christ, what a great boat, Grady thought as he adjusted to be on course, he'd get one just like it, keep it in a marina over in Tiburon where Harold would have to see it all the time. Better boat than Harold's. Julia had sure been right about this trip when on the plane coming over she'd predicted he was going to do well. He again wished that he'd been more of a believer. Maybe she'd make him one, she could. He'd been right too, though, right about her. Some woman. He deserved her, he told himself. Some woman. Would he ever be able to accept that she'd taken it on her own to go into the lagoon after those pearls? He tried to imagine what her thought processes had been at the time. She was more courageous than foolhardy, he believed. It was better to have a woman with such courage, self-sufficient, able to put all her potential to use. It was, he had to admit, also somewhat intimidating.

Julia came on deck then, with mugs of fresh-brewed coffee. “I really needed this and so, you benefit,” she said, handing him his mug, handle first.

The mug was so hot it burned his knuckles and he nearly dropped it. And, yet, she'd carried it all the way up from the galley without so much as an ouch. He took a slurp and asked, “Do you still think we ought to get married?”

“Have I ever thought so?”

“Haven't you?”

“Not that you know. What an oblique, cowardly way to put the question.”

“Was, wasn't it?”

“I suppose if we ever did get married that's how you'd ask for sex.” She mimicked him, “Do you still feel like having sex tonight? Gawd.”

“Would asking be necessary?”

“I should hope not. Maybe way down the road, but as things are now, maybe not even way down.”

“An article I read said that a sexual fit is the strongest possible foundation for a marriage.”

“Is that what we have, a sexual fit?” she smirked. “What's that mean, mine's tight enough, yours is big enough?”

“You're a mess.”

“Want me another way?”

An emphatic uh-uh from Grady. After another slurp he asked, “Seriously, you see any reason we shouldn't get married?” He was fairly sure she'd say no quickly, but she gave it some thought. “Money, maybe,” she said.

“Money's good for a marriage,” Grady contended.

“Not always, possibly not most of the time. Maybe married people who have to dig in together and kick the crap out of not having stand a better shot in the long run.”

“We should throw our pearls overboard?”

“Do what you want with yours,” she said, “I'm for marriage with money from the word go.”

Some woman, Grady thought, liking his future.

The ketch was making good time, running at a reach with all sails set, averaging fourteen knots. At that rate, Grady figured, they'd be out of Burmese waters by midafternoon and pulling into Bang Wan Bay before dark.

At eleven William spotted the helicopter gunship. On the horizon, low over the water. The helicopter came right at the ketch, passed directly over it, clearing the top of the main mast by only about ten feet. A noisy, yellowish-brown chopper with the scarlet and royal blue flag of Burma painted unmissably on its underside. It executed a banking turn and made another close pass over the ketch for a stem-to-stern look. It climbed sharply then and leveled off and kept going, its interest apparently satisfied. Soon it was in the distance, as small to the sight as it had been when William first spotted it. What a relief!

Grady kept the binoculars on the chopper. Watched it bank to the north. Followed it and saw it continuing around to be coming at the ketch again, this time from starboard.

At a range of seven hundred feet it launched one of its 2.75-inch rockets. An accurate warning that hit and exploded about fifty feet off the bow of the ketch.

No desirable choice for the ketch. Either stop or be sunk. Grady and William reluctantly furled the headsail and brought down the rest. Grady swung the ketch around ninety degrees so it was headed into the wind.

The chopper circled twice, then hovered off starboard. It had widespread pontoons, unusually fat, oversized ones, which the pilot managed to set down with only slight difficulty on the water's unruly surface. The engine was cut, the single-blade rotor slowed and came to a stop in line with the chopper's body. Drift carried the chopper alongside the ketch. Before Grady and William could put out fenders one of the chopper's pontoons collided against the hull, but only with enough impact to cause a smudge.

The door of the chopper slid open. Two barefoot Burmese soldiers stepped out onto the nearest pontoon and climbed aboard the ketch. Typical Burmese, slightly built, grimly set expressions on their dark, burnished faces. They were armed with automatic rifles. One held his rifle cocked and at the ready on Grady, William and Julia, while the other secured a line to hold the chopper positioned.

A Burmese army captain stepped out onto the pontoon and came aboard. He was in lightweight dress uniform: shirt, tie, two rows of service ribbons and a .45 caliber sidearm in a highly polished brown leather holster. The incongruous thing about him was his black, wing-tipped shoes. He ran his disdainful look up and down Grady. Then William, then Julia. He didn't move his head, just his eyes.

Lethal-looking little fucker, Grady thought. Not the sort to tolerate much, would shoot them and toss them over the side if the situation got the least bit complicated. Or maybe not shoot, just toss.

The captain gibbered a few sentences in Burmese before abruptly shifting to English. He demanded identification. Passports were shown. He demanded the boat's papers. The papers were shown. He didn't express even a hint of satisfaction, snapped an order to his two men and they began searching the boat.

They searched methodically but carelessly, pulling things out of every locker and storage area, strewing clothes and equipment and supplies about. One of the first places they looked was in the main cabin, in the drawer of the cabinet next to the bed. The blue pearls had been kept there in one of Julia's white athletic socks. The sock was there now but not the pearls.

No pearls.

The captain climbed down onto the pontoon and reported that to someone, evidently a superior, who was remaining out of sight inside the chopper.

Grady thought this might be all there'd be to it. The captain would climb back into the chopper, would signal his men to do the same. The chopper would take off and good riddance.

However, the captain intently heeded what he was told by his superior. He came back aboard and reprimanded the two soldiers for not having searched thoroughly enough. They jumped to it, began going through everything again. A frantic, disorganized search during which they looked into some storage spaces and lockers as many as a half dozen times within a few minutes.

They gave special attention to the galley with all its cupboards and little bins, canisters, pots and cartons of foodstuff. The empty wine bottles in the trash receptacle would have been overlooked had not one of the soldiers brushed against a protruding neck. Causing the chinking sound of glass against glass and also a few telltale clicks.

The soldiers peered down the throats of the dark green bottles, held them up to the light, saw around the labels what was in two of them. They took those two to the captain.

The captain partially inverted one of the bottles.

Several of the blue pearls it contained rolled out and dropped into his palm, along with a dribble of La Tache.

Julia looked to Grady. He had his eyes closed to avoid witnessing the awful moment. Good thing, Julia thought, otherwise no telling what he'd do. Probably he'd go berserk and get himself riddled. She herself was close to that point. She'd almost pulled it off, though. Pearls in the empty wine bottles. When it became obvious that the ketch was going to be boarded she'd hidden the pearls there. Now the bottom line was the old L-L-L, all that swimming and risk yesterday, Love's Labor Lost. Oh well. She tried to prime up some optimism by telling herself this was a huge, expensive setback, but it didn't necessarily augur an unhappy ending. She also thought the wish that these Burmese miserables would be made to take a flying leap and a long, pink-yellow-green swim in that lagoon.

The captain commended the soldiers with a brief smile and one nod. Wine bottles in hand, he legged over the lifeline and got onto the pontoon. He had the bottles extended, handing them over to his yet unseen superior within the chopper when a swell caused the chopper to pitch.

One of the bottles was bobbled.

The superior grabbed for it, got it.

However, in so doing, his hands came into view. Just his hands. They were by no means the hands of a Burmese. Too pale to be that, and too large. Huge, coarse-looking hands. The sort of hands that would mark a Caucasian peasant.

Grady believed he recognized those hands.

So did William.

Grady's involuntary reflex was an aggressive step forward.

The soldiers alerted the aim of their rifles. Another step by Grady and they'd be firing.

William's shoulders slumped, his arms hung limp at his sides. He appeared to be giving up the situation. It was too much for him to bear. Spiritless, he lowered himself to his haunches. That lower position gave him what he'd hoped he'd get from his feigning. A different perspective of the inside of the chopper. The inside man was still keeping himself out of sight, however the glare from the sea was making the window opaque on the far side of the chopper's cabin, and from the angle William had of it the man's face was being reflected.

It was undoubtedly him.

Lesage. Bertin.

That meant the chopper wasn't really Burmese, just decorated to appear so. The captain and the soldiers also weren't what they were made out to be. They might be Burmese but they were hired, playing a role, probably Burmese army deserters. There were any number of those who'd jumped over the border. The real thing, though, were the weapons. There was no doubting those automatic rifles nor the threat that they'd be used.

The make-believe captain and soldiers got into the chopper. It drifted clear. Its door was slid shut, its rotor started. As it lifted and did a swooping side-slip away, the ketch and those aboard it were struck by a blast of insolent turbulence.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Is that the lot?” Kumura asked.

“That's it,” Lesage replied.

“You're not holding back a few or quite a few?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Possibly to strike a second, harder bargain after we've concluded this one.”

“I wouldn't do that to a partner,” Lesage said, wishing he'd thought of it. “Especially not to a partner who's also a close friend.”

“Forgive me, Daniel. It's just that I know what a sharp deal-maker you are.” Kumura hoped his flattery wasn't too thick. Evidently it wasn't. Lesage just soaked it up.

They were in the office-study on the ground floor of Kumura's house. On the surface of the desk between them lay the blue pearls. Kumura was trying his best to modulate his intense interest in the pearls, however each time he sat back and ignored them they soon enough drew him to them and had him on the edge of his chair and hunched. Meanwhile, Lesage was slouched in his chair as though for him the pearls, though blue and rare, held absolutely no fascination.