In Their Footsteps & Thief of Hearts (42 page)

Richard nodded. “He’s been identified as a George Fraser. English, with a London address. They tried to track down his next of kin, but all they came up with was the name of his employer. He’s a service rep for the Van Weldon Shipping Company.”

At the mention of the company’s name, Jordan saw Clea give an involuntary shudder, as though she’d just been touched by the chill hand of evil. Nervously she rose to her feet and went to the window, where she stood hugging herself, staring out at the afternoon sunlight.

“What about the other gunman?” asked Jordan.

“No sign of him. It seems he managed to slip away.”

“My guardian angel,” murmured Clea. “Why?”

“You tell us,” said Richard.

“I know why someone’s trying to kill me. But not why anyone wants to keep me
alive.
”

“Let’s start with what you do know,” said Jordan. He went to her, placed his hand gently on her shoulder. She felt so small, so insubstantial to his touch. “Why does Victor Van Weldon want you dead?”

“Because I know what happened to the
Max Havelaar.
”

“Why it sank, you mean?”

She nodded. “There was nothing valuable aboard that boat. Those insurance claims were false. And the crew was considered expendable.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because I was there.” She turned and looked at him, her eyes haunted by some vision of horror only she could see.

“I was aboard the
Max Havelaar
the night it went down.”
Eight

“It was my first trip to Naples,” she said. “My first year ever in Europe. I was desperate to escape all those bad memories from prison. So when Tony wrote, inviting me to Brussels, I leapt at the chance.”

“That’s your cousin?” asked Richard.

Clea nodded. “He’s been in a wheelchair since his accident on the autobahn last year. He needed someone he could trust to serve as his business representative.

Someone who’d round up buyers for the antiques he sells.

It’s a completely legitimate business. Tony’s no longer dealing in the black market.”

“And that’s why you were in Naples? On your cousin’s behalf?”

“Yes. And that’s where I met my two Italian sailors.” She looked away again, out the window. “Carlo and Giovanni…”

They were the first mate and navigator aboard a boat docked in the harbor. Both men had liquid brown eyes and ridiculously long lashes and a penchant for innocent
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mischief. Both adored blondes. And although they’d flirted and made eyes at her, Clea had known on some instinctive level that they were absolutely harmless. Besides, Giovanni was a good friend of Tony’s, and in Italy the bond of trust between male friends overrode even the Italian’s finely honed mating instinct. Much as they might be tempted, neither man would dream of crossing the line with Clea.

“We spent seven evenings together, the three of us,” murmured Clea. “Eating in cafés. Splashing in fountains.

They were so sweet to me. So polite.” She gave a soft laugh.

“I thought of them as younger brothers. And when they came up with this wild idea of taking me to Brussels aboard their ship, I never thought to be afraid.”

“You mean as a passenger?” asked Jordan.

“More as an honored stowaway. It was a little escapade we hatched over Campari and pasta. Their ship was sailing in a few days, and they thought, wouldn’t it be fun if I came along? Their captain had no objections, as long as I stayed below and out of sight until they left the harbor. He didn’t want any flack from the ship’s owner. I could come out on deck once we were at sea. And in Brussels they’d sneak me off again.”

“You trusted them?”

“Yes. It sounds crazy now, but I did. They were so…harmless.” Clea smiled at the memory. “Maybe it was all that Campari. Maybe I was just hungry for a bit of adventure. We had it all planned out, you see. The wine we’d bring aboard. The meals I’d whip up for everyone. They told me it was a large boat, and the only cargo was a few crates of artwork bound for an auction house in Brussels.

There’d be plenty of room for a crew of eight. And me.

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“So that night I was brought aboard. While the men got ready to leave, I waited below in the cargo hold. Giovanni brought me hot tea and chocolate biscuits. He was such a nice boy….”

“It was the
Max Havelaar
you boarded?” asked Richard softly.

She swallowed. “Yes. It was the
Max Havelaar.
” She took a deep breath, mustering the strength to continue.

“She was an old boat. Everything was rusted. Everything seemed to creak. I thought it odd that a vessel that large would carry as its only cargo a few crates of artwork.

“I saw a manifest sheet hanging on one of the crates in the hold. I looked it over. And that’s when I realized there was a fortune’s worth of antique art in those crates.”

“Was the owner listed?”

“Yes. It was the Van Weldon company. They were the shipping agent, as well.”

“What did you do then?”

“I was curious, of course. I wanted to take a peek, but all the crates were nailed shut. I looked around for a bit, and finally found a knothole in one of the boards. It was big enough to shine a penlight through. What I saw inside didn’t make sense.”

“What was there?”

“Stones. The bottom of the crate was lined with stones.” She turned from the window. The two men were staring at her in bewilderment. No wonder. She, too, had been just as bewildered.

“Did you speak to the crew about this?” asked Richard.

“I waited until we’d left the dock. Then I found Giovanni. I asked him if he realized they were carrying crates of rocks. He only laughed. Said I must be seeing
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things. He’d been told the crates were valuable. He’d seen them loaded aboard himself.”

“Who loaded them?”

“The Van Weldon company. They came in a truck directly from their warehouse.”

“What did you do then?”

“I insisted we speak to Vicenzo. The captain. He laughed at me, too. Why would a company ship rocks, he kept asking me. And he had other concerns at the time. The southern coast of Sardinia was coming up, and he had to keep a watch out for other ships. He told me he’d check the cargo later.

“It wasn’t until we’d passed Sardinia that I was able to drag them below decks to look. They finally pried open one of the crates. There was a layer of wood shavings on top.

Typical packing material. I told them to keep digging.

They went through the shavings, then through a layer of newspapers. They kept going deeper and deeper, expecting to find the artwork that was on the manifest. All they found were stones.”

“The captain must have believed you then?”

“Of course. He had no choice. He decided to radio Naples, to find out what was going on. So we climbed up the steps to the bridge. Just as we got there, the engine room exploded.”

Richard and Jordan said nothing. They only watched her in grim silence as she told them about the last moments of the
Max Havelaar.

In the panic that followed the explosion, as Giovanni radioed his last SOS, as the crew—what remained of the crew—scrambled to lower the lifeboat, the rocks in the cargo hold were forgotten. Survival was all that mattered.

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The flames were spreading rapidly; the
Max Havelaar
would be a floating inferno.

They lowered the lifeboat onto the swells. There was no time to climb down the ladder; with the flames licking at their backs, they leapt into the dark Mediterranean.

“The water was so cold,” she said. “When I surfaced, I could see the
Havelaar
was all in flames. The lifeboat was drifting about a dozen yards away. Carlo and the second mate had already managed to crawl in, and they were leaning over the gunwale, trying to haul aboard Vicenzo.

Giovanni was still in the water, struggling just to keep his head up.

“I’ve always been a strong swimmer. I can stay afloat for hours if I have to. So I yelled to the men that they should get the others to climb aboard first. And I treaded water….” She’d felt strangely calm, she remembered.

Almost detached from the crisis. Perhaps it was the rhythmic motion of her limbs stroking the liquid darkness.

Perhaps it was the sense of dreamlike unreality. She hadn’t been afraid. Not yet.

“I knew the Spanish coast was only two miles or so to the north. By morning we could’ve paddled the lifeboat to land. Finally, all the men were hauled aboard. I was the only one left in the water. I swam over to the lifeboat and had just reached up for a hand when we all heard the sound of an engine.”

“Another boat?” asked Jordan.

“Yes. A speedboat of some kind. Suddenly the men all were shouting, waving like crazy. The lifeboat was rocking back and forth. I was behind the gunwale and couldn’t see the other boat as it came toward us. They had a searchlight.

And I heard a voice calling to us in English. Some sort of
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accent—I’m not sure what kind. He identified their boat as the
Cosima.

“Giovanni reached down to help me climb aboard. He’d just grabbed my hand when…” She paused. “When the
Cosima
began to fire on us.”

“On the
lifeboat?
” asked Jordan, appalled.

“At first I didn’t understand what was happening. I could hear the men crying out. And my hand slid away from Giovanni’s. I saw that he was crumpled against the gunwale, staring down at me. I didn’t understand that the sound was gunfire. Until a body fell into the water. It was Vicenzo’s,” she whispered, and looked away.

“How did you escape?” asked Jordan, gently.

Clea took an unsteady breath. “I dove,” she said softly. “I swam underwater as far as my lungs would carry me. As fast as I could stroke away from that searchlight. I came up for air, then dove again and kept swimming. I thought I heard bullets hitting the water around me, but
Cosima
didn’t chase after me. I just kept swimming and swimming. All night. Until I reached the coast of Spain.”

She stood for a moment with bowed head. Neither man spoke. Neither man broke the silence.

“They killed them all,” she whispered. “Giovanni. The captain. Six helpless men in a lifeboat. They never knew there was a witness.”

Jordan and Richard stood watching her. They were both too shocked by her story to say a word. She didn’t know if they believed any of it; all she knew was that it felt good to finally tell it, to share the burden of horror.

“I reached the coast around dawn,” she continued. “I was cold. Exhausted. But mostly I was desperate to reach 398

Tess Gerritsen

the police.” She shook her head. “That was my mistake, of course. Going to the police.”

“Why?” asked Jordan gently.

“I ended up in some village police station, trying to explain what had happened. They made me wait in a back room while they checked the story. It turns out they called the Van Weldon company, to confirm their boat was missing. It made sense, I suppose. I can’t blame the police for checking. So I waited three hours in that room for some representative from Van Weldon to arrive. Finally he did. I heard his voice through the door. I recognized it.” She trembled at the memory. “It was the voice from the
Cosima.
”

“You mean the killers were working for Van Weldon?” said Jordan.

Clea nodded. “I was climbing out that window so fast I must have left scorch marks. I’ve been running ever since.

I found out later that
Cosima
’s registered owner is the Van Weldon Shipping Company. They sabotaged the
Havelaar.

They murdered its crew.”

“And then claimed it as a giant loss,” said Richard.

“Artwork and all.”

“Only there
wasn’t
any artwork aboard,” said Clea. “It was a dummy shipment, meant to go down on a boat they didn’t need anymore. The real art’s being stored somewhere. I’m sure it will be sold, piece by piece, on the black market. A double profit, counting the insurance.”

“Who carried the policy?”

“Lloyd’s of London.”

“Have you contacted them?”

“Yes. They were skeptical of my story. Kept asking me what I wanted out of this, whether I had a grudge against
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the Van Weldon company. Then they learned about my prison record. After that, they didn’t believe anything I said.” Sighing, she went to the bed and sat down. “I told my cousin Tony to drop out of sight—he’s the obvious person they’d use to track me down. He’s in a wheelchair.

Vulnerable. He’s hiding out somewhere in Brussels. I can’t really expect much help from him. So I’m floundering around on my own.”

A long silence passed. When at last she found the courage to look up, she saw that Jordan was frowning at the wall, and that Richard Wolf was obviously not convinced of her story.

“You don’t believe me, do you, Mr. Wolf?” she said.

“I’ll reserve judgment for later. When I’ve had a chance to check the facts.” He turned to Jordan. “Can we talk outside?”

Jordan nodded and followed Richard out of the room.

From the window Clea watched the two men standing in the garden below. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could read their body language—the nods, the grim set of Jordan’s face. After a few moments Richard climbed in his car and drove away. Jordan reentered the building.

Clea stood waiting for him. She was afraid to face him, afraid to confront his skepticism. Why should he believe her? She was an ex-con. In the past month she had told so many lies she could scarcely keep them all straight. It was too much to ask that he would take her word for it this time.

The door opened and Jordan entered, his expression unreadable. He studied her for a moment, as though not certain just what to do with her. Then he let out a deep breath.

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