Rembrandt's Ghost Part 12

The problem was that off Jampongong was a large fringe of reef that swept in shoals a dozen miles out to sea. Insh.o.r.e, however, between the island and Kinalubatan Point on the mainland was a channel three-quarters of a mile wide and a pa.s.sage through the center with at least eight fathoms, or forty-eight feet, below the keel of the Pedang Emas. On either side of that middle pa.s.sage were rocks and shoals that stood like razor fangs just below the surface, completely hidden from view on a day like this by the sun dazzle on the water and capable of ripping the little ship's belly out like the knife that gutted the late dentist and his even later partner. Take the channel and he'd save half a day getting back to Kambong Sugut; don't take the channel and he risked putting himself far out to sea in uncertain weather, losing a half day in the process.

"Najis," he said in Malay, swearing. The diesel thudded beneath his feet and the wheel felt slippery with sweat under his thick hand. The island was getting closer with every pa.s.sing minute. He glanced out to port at the thick green line of the mangroves overhanging the water on the mainland. He took another swig of the cool brew that the little knife-scarred wh.o.r.e had fetched, then put the silver-handled gla.s.s down on the narrow "dashboard" shelf that ran along beneath the windscreen of the wheelhouse.

"Puki mak dia," he muttered, cursing again. He swung the wheel with both hands, turning the ship toward the sh.o.r.e and the channel that lay between it and the island.

Half an hour later, his prodigious belly full of Cam Dao's succulent saute'ed squid chased with a big bottle of Halida beer, Lo Chang was confidently swinging Pedang Emas around the lee side of the high volcanic island, keeping an eye out for any distinct variations in the color of the water that would signal shoals or shallows. He also made sure that the island's main landmarks, the high northern bluffs and the jutting shape of Bankoka Hill, were well away on his right; the currents at the foot of the clifflike bluffs that ran directly down into the water could spin his little ship like a top and smash him against the rough stone walls in an instant.

Even from a mile off he could hear the pounding of the sea against the rock and he shivered slightly. The thought of being crushed against the cliffs was one thing, but being thrown into the sea was something else. Lo Chang, for all his balloonlike size, could not swim a stroke. He'd tossed enough men into the ocean to know exactly the sort of predators that lurked just below the water in great abundance. Better to put a bullet in his brain than drown in the sea.

The little inlet that ran back into the center of the island appeared to starboard, and if he hadn't been watching so carefully he would have missed the prize within. A good-sized schooner stood at anchor just off the pebbled foresh.o.r.e that marked the entrance to a narrow river. Lo Chang picked up the dentist's pretty blue and yellow Pro Mariner binoculars and took a look.

He focused the gla.s.ses and the boat came into view. Neatly anch.o.r.ed. Thirty-eight, maybe forty feet. Dark hull, bright white superstructure. A woman was sunbathing on the foredeck, topless, her big b.r.e.a.s.t.s lolling, her arms spread out against the c.o.c.kpit to catch the sun, a big floppy sun hat shielding her eyes. She was dark-haired, tanned, and reasonably young.

Barely hesitating, Lo Chang reached out and eased back the throttles, the sound of the engines dropping. He swung the wheel, guiding the Pedang Emas into the inlet. He'd stopped here for fresh water in the past and knew there would be more than enough sea beneath his keel, even at low tide.

He swung the binoculars around, checking the beach and the jungle behind it, looking for anyone else. Nothing. Just the white sand, the lush jungle, and the shaded entrance to the river. He smiled, his heavy lips spreading apart to reveal a gleaming mouthful of gold teeth. In addition to the woman there might be one or two more aboard the boat. Easy to deal with. He pulled up the tail of the saillike white shirt covering his belly and took out the old Nagant revolver he'd preferred since his days in Vietnam. Its seven-round cylinder would be more than enough for the job at hand.

He throttled back to dead slow and coasted forward through the flat calm, coming up on the sailboat almost silently. The girl on the c.o.c.kpit cover was obviously asleep. She hadn't moved since he'd first spotted her. Lo Chang's smile broadened; there would probably be a supply of liquor on board and some money as well. Maybe even more cocaine. He'd grown a taste for it since the dentist. There might even be a weapon, perhaps a shotgun. Most small boats carried them in the pirate-infested waters in the area.

Lo Chang liked the idea of being part of an infestation. When he imagined himself in such a way he usually saw himself as a powerful snake, a constrictor perhaps, one who used brute strength to kill its prey rather than stinging venom. He hefted the World War Twoavintage pistol in his hand. Venom, on the other hand, had its place. He leaned forward and blew into the voice pipe.

"Cam Dao!" he called. "Di voi toi!" Within a few seconds, the young woman appeared on the narrow bridge, coming up from the galley directly below. "Take the wheel," he said in Vietnamese. "Bring her in slowly."

"Co," said the woman with a nod, her expression blank. She knew exactly what her master intended to do, but nothing she could say or do would stop him. The fate of the half-naked woman on the sailboat was sealed. The Vietnamese woman stepped forward and took the wheel. Lo Chang went out on deck and lumbered forward to the bow. Lo Chang kept the pistol half hidden behind his back. As the ship slid forward he tried to put on a dredged up the small learned over the years.

pleasant expression and amount of English he'd "h.e.l.lo, you!" he called out. They were a hundred yards off now. Too late for the sailboat to start whatever auxiliary engine it carried in an attempt to escape. Not that it would have done any good. The monster diesels installed by the Germans all those years ago still gave the old ship an easy eighteen knots, enough to run down any sailboat afloat.

"h.e.l.lo, you!" he called again. The woman hadn't moved an inch. If there was anyone else on board they were asleep. Fifty yards. Still the woman hadn't moved. Lo Chang squinted. The large pillowy b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bright red. Sunburned. She'd been sunbathing too long, it seemed. Being something of an expert when it came to nipples and their sensitivity, Lo Chang was sure she would be in great pain. Why didn't she go below?

Twenty-five yards now and still no movement. He took a small apprehensive step back from the gunwale. The woman should have moved by now. He could almost see it, coming up on her elbows, pushing back the big hat, maybe with sungla.s.ses underneath. The sudden look of surprise. The fear.

Cam Dao swung the wheel, bringing the ship broadside to the sailboat. The bow wave reached out and smacked against the side of the other vessel. The sailboat began to rock quite violently. The big b.r.e.a.s.t.s flopped back and forth like balloons filled with water, her legs slapping together and tangling with each other.

Ten yards away and Lo Chang's apprehension turned to full-blown anxiety. The woman didn't just have her arms spread across the c.o.c.kpit-they were nailed there. There was no blood because the nails had been struck into the flesh earlier, shortly after she'd attacked Fu Sheng with a carving knife from the galley. He'd struck her across the face with the b.u.t.t of his weapon, but she'd turned to the side at the last second and the blow had struck her temple instead of her face as he intended. It hadn't taken her very long to die, but even dead she had her uses. She could still be a decoy for a fat pig like Lo Chang.

Too late Lo Chang realized that the boat and the woman were a trap. He moved heavily back toward the bridge. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement in the overhanging bushes shading the mouth of the little river. He took the Nagant out from under his shirt, but he knew now it was far too late for that kind of thing. The bushes weren't bushes at all, but camouflaging brush piled up on the bow of some sort of old-fashioned, sharp-prowed torpedo boat almost as big as Pedang Emas. The boat came nosing out of the river mouth, powerful engines burbling. He could see the bell-shaped muzzle of a heavy machine gun mounted forward and a Malay in a vague jungle uniform standing behind it, grinning. The Pedang Emas was less than three hundred feet away from the hidden torpedo boat. At that range they could chew him to ribbons and sink him without even reloading the big-box magazine.

Lo Chang felt his stomach gurgle with fear and he belched, tasting Cam Dao's squid in his mouth again along with the sour tang of bile. He had a sudden, terrible suspicion that the tables were about to be turned and that soon he would be lunch for the squid rather than the other way around. He turned and saw the woman crucified on the deck. He found himself thinking about the dentist and his fate.

A gust of wind blew across the deck of the sailboat and the big floppy hat came off the barebreasted woman's face and was whisked over the gunwale and into the water. Her whole head was crushed on one side, her right eye like a white blotch in a lump of ruined, overcooked meat. The people on the torpedo boat had done that. He knew they could do, would do even worse to him and he knew why, because now he remembered the sailboat and where he'd seen it before, although the hull had been red, not blue as it was now, and he remembered the girl too and her blond boyfriend, the one with the scar who thought bringing her to a brothel was a good joke.

Most of all he remembered the old man on the raft and the gold wafers wrapped in yellowed pages from the old military edition of YomiuriHochi from sometime during the war. The gold wafers that were still in the strongbox in his cabin.

They would question him and when they were done they'd drop what remained of him over the side. The torpedo boat was almost alongside now, rumbling between him and the sailboat. He was looking right down at the dead woman. He could hear the buzzing of flies.

Lo Chang tilted his head back and closed his eyes. His mind wandered for a moment, searching, and then he remembered sitting in the small park beside Hoan Kiem Lake on a clear, bright day, close to Tortoise Tower. He was combing Quyen's waist-length hair, using the brush with one hand and his other hand to smooth it as he brushed, letting it fall through his fingers like jetblack, shining mercury, but really, secretly caressing it, feeling her curved neck through the thick fall of it, bent to his brushing suffering agonies of young pa.s.sion, knowing that it would never be more than a precocious fat boy brushing the hair of a pretty girl.

Later his friend Trung told him that she didn't really like him at all, but only liked what effect she had on him. It didn't matter. He breathed in and smelled the faint scent of the dao phai, the pale peach flower of his birthplace that grew everywhere around the Tortoise Tower. The smell of the girl, Quyen. So long ago. But n.o.body lives forever. At least he wouldn't drown. Lo Chang opened his eyes and saw the man standing in the bow of the boat, the two-foot-long bolo machete in his hand.

He felt the weight of Quyen's hair in his hand again and he brought the Nagant up to his temple and pulled the trigger quickly, never hesitating for a second.

18.

In the simplest terms a typhoon is a violent tropical storm with cyclonic, or circulating, winds that usually have their origins in the western Pacific or the Indian Ocean. Above the equator these winds circulate in a counterclockwise direction, and below the equator they turn clockwise. Basically typhoons are caused by a coincidental conjunction of several basic factors, including substantially higher than normal water temperature, an upper layer of moist air, and inwardly spiraling winds caused by an area of low pressure.

As these areas begin to revolve, usually in pairs, they quickly cool the water beneath them, both by simply blocking out the sun and by drawing the heat upward to the colder ma.s.ses of air in the form of evaporation. The result of all this is a rotating heat engine that begins to feed on itself, moving across the surface of the ocean, seeking and expending more and more energy, which, expressed in human scientific terms, means that a tropical cyclone can release heat energy at the rate of fifty to two hundred trillion joules per day.

For comparison, this rate of energy release is equivalent to exploding a ten-megaton nuclear bomb every twenty minutes, or two hundred times the worldwide electrical-generating capacity per day. This is no Perfect Storm, no majestic sweep of enormous rolling waves and perfectly digitized little ships upon a perfectly digitized ocean; this is h.e.l.l on earth, where shattered water hammers against itself, battering to pieces everything that happens to cross its erratic and ever changing course, its "eye" or center as wide as two hundred miles across with an "eyewall" where winds can move up to two hundred miles an hour. Within the eye a lenslike uplift in the ocean itself can be created, sometimes rising in a huge dome up to forty feet high, the waters beneath it spiraling faster and faster, the giant unseen vortex as deep as three hundred feet, sometimes scouring the seabed itself. It is this "lens" or "storm surge" as it is called that holds the potential for the typhoon's greatest cruelty.

Moving toward land the storm surge follows the upward slope of the seabed, growing higher and higher and traveling at over a hundred miles an hour, scouring the land and destroying, inundating and drowning everything within its wrathful path with catastrophic effect that can utterly destroy entire coastal plains and sometimes whole countries. Thousands and sometimes tens of thousands can die within a single day.

Briney Hanson knew they were in trouble less than two hours after turning the corner at the top of Borneo's Sabah Peninsula and heading through the Malawali Strait. The barometer continued to drop and the steady chop of the sea heading up the coast had become a long oily swell moving under them like the undulations of some enormous, sluggishly moving sea monster. There was no wind, a deadly oppressive heat, and a heavy, dark line on the horizon that seemed to s.n.a.t.c.h what few clouds there were and breathe them into its maw.

"Trouble?" Billy Pilgrim asked, standing beside Hanson on the bridge with Eli at the wheel. Even within the bridge the sound of the rising wind was a sharp, electrical whistling as the rushing air thrummed over the ship's wire rigging.

"Yes," said Hanson. "North-northeast," he called out to Santoro. The young man nodded and turned the wheel. A few seconds later the helm answered and the Batavia Queen turned heavily across the swell and moved away from the distant coast, putting them farther out to sea. The seas broke harder against her bows and she began to heave and plunge in long steady rolls.

"Isn't this dangerous, putting farther out to sea like this?"

"Yes," said Hanson again. "But if we're running into heavy weather, I'd rather have some distance between me and the reefs. The way we're standing doesn't give us much room to maneuver." Hanson's original intention had been to slip down the coast ahead of the typhoon and put into some safe anchorage to ride it out, maybe even making it to Kampong Sugut and the wide mouth of the river there, but that was impossible now. Both the radar and his own eyes were showing him the typhoon almost dead ahead and moving too quickly to avoid. The best thing to do was meet it head-on as far out to sea as he could get. A typhoon over the ocean was bad, but a typhoon sweeping toward the land was a monster.

Down below in the galley, Finn was helping Toshi shut down the stoves and make cold sandwiches for the upcoming festivities while the rest of the crew hurried around lashing down anything loose on deck or below. To them it was a familiar story. They'd weathered plenty of storms with the Queen before. As the day wore on, the swells grew broader and deeper, the crests tipped with long trails of dead-white spume that spun off the tops of the waves like froth from the jaws of some terrible rabid creature-not far from the truth in this case.

Over time the water had turned from deep green to pewter and finally to black, unfathomable with nothing of life to be seen. Porpoises and flying fish sought their pleasures elsewhere and the seabirds had fled from the storm long before it even made its presence known.

By late afternoon they were giving a wide berth to the roaring surf around the reefs of Pulau Tigaba and the sky overhead was dark as breaking dusk. Finn managed to make her way up the swaying companionway to the wheelhouse with mugs and a big thermos of steaming coffee, getting thoroughly soaked along the way even though she was tightly bundled into an old oilskin Toshi gave her.

"That's the last of anything hot for a while. Toshi says it's too dangerous to even keep the pilot lights going on the stove."

"He's right." Hanson nodded, taking a mug from her and sipping. "In weather like this the last thing you need is a fire to add to your problems."

"At least it's not raining," said Billy. He stared out at the heaving sea and the darkening sky.

"Give it time," said Eli, struggling with the wheel.

Hanson stepped to one side and looked down at the radar plot.

"That doesn't look healthy at all," he said quietly, bending over the scope.

"What are those little lines coming out of the center of the white thing?" Finn asked.

"The rain your friend was asking about," said Hanson. "Lots of it."

"And the hole in the center?"

"The eye," Hanson explained. "Very small, very tight, and very dangerous."

"I thought the eye of a hurricane was supposed to be an area of calm," said Billy, hanging on to the compa.s.s platform as the Queen began its long, slow climb up the face of the next oncoming wave.

"It is, relatively," explained Hanson. "But the 'eyewall,' the perimeter of the eye, has the fastest and most destructive winds of all. Going through the eyewall can tear a ship this size apart. Best to avoid it altogether."

"How do we do that?" Finn asked. "That thing looks pretty big."

"About two hundred kilometers from side to side. A hundred twenty-five miles. Still a baby."

"Can't we go around it?"

"Maybe," said Hanson. "But it's like that old story about the lady and the tiger. Which way, port or starboard?"

"Does it make a difference?"

"We're below the equator, so the winds are rotating clockwise. In this case, that means east to west, relative to our position."

"Okay, I'm with you." All of a sudden, she wasn't. The Queen reached the top of the crest and made a grotesque twisting motion, throwing Finn halfway across the wheelhouse and into Billy, who managed to grab her before she tumbled to the deck. He helped her upright as the Queen slid wretchedly across the crest and roared down into the trough like a freight train. Finn's stomach dropped as though she were on a high-speed elevator and suddenly the sky was gone, the windscreen filled from horizon to horizon with the brick-wall ma.s.s of the next wave.

"You all right?" Hanson asked.

"Fine," said Finn, glad she hadn't eaten much for lunch. "Where were we?"

"Port or starboard, left or right," said the captain, keeping a careful eye on Eli, who was struggling with the wheel as he tried to keep the old freighter sailing directly into the wind. "Think of a football player putting his shoulder forward to block an opponent. That's the starboard side, the right. The other shoulder, the trailing edge, has lower wind speeds and less rain. That's to the left, the portside."

Finn shrugged. "Sounds like a no-brainer." They reached the top of another wave and this time she grabbed the chart table for support as they went hurtling down into the trough again. She swallowed hard and regained her footing. "We should steer to port."

"Except that wind changes direction all the time," put in Billy, lurching against the bulkhead behind him. The Queen groaned and heaved, crashing through the crest of the next wave, a huge fountain of spray bursting over her bow.

"He's right," said Hanson grimly. "Typhoons don't follow a regular path. They have a life of their own."

"In other words it's a c.r.a.p shoot," said Eli Santoro, gripping the wheel.

"Not quite," said Hanson. "That's why we're trying for sea room-give us a lot of open water to maneuver, just in case. We'll keep an eye on the storm for another couple of hours, then decide."

The Batavia Queen battered its way into the night, the world contracting to an endless series of twisting, lurching roller-coaster rides up the boiling, spume-topped face of one wave and down the smooth, ugly back of the next. The speed of the wind increased, the rigging snapping and whirring with a never-ending shriek that made any conversation almost impossible.

Even with everything battened down and the hatches and companionways sealed, water seemed to get into everything. Finn's cabin in the stern section of the lower deck was awash, the toilet backed up from the heaving acc.u.mulation of water in the bilges. Every seam, weld, pipe, and ventilator dripped steadily.

As the barometer dropped, so did the temperature, and even wrapped in one of Run-Run McSeveney's ancient, moth-eaten Shetland sweaters and her oilskins Finn was shivering with cold. Worst of all was the repeated hammering shudder as the hull smashed down off each crest, a toothrattling, bludgeoning jar as though a giant fist were trying to pound the old ship apart and send them all to the bottom of the sea.

Finn spent most of her time in the wardroom, simply sitting gloomily, living each plunge and climb like a frightened airplane pa.s.senger experiencing every ghastly buck and thump of turbulence. She willed the ancient hull plates to stay together, almost seeing the groaning, creaking underbelly of the ship as it rose barnacle-encrusted out of the water before crashing down again.

Toshi tried to tempt her with a soggy sandwich from the galley, but the egg salad she'd chopped, whipped, and a.s.sembled in daylight set her stomach churning and heaving in the darkness. She was hungry, waterlogged, and more than a little frightened, and all she really wanted was for it to end, one way or the other. Long after midnight she made her way up the twisting, lurching companionways to the bridge again, looking for company in her misery.

Hanson had relieved Eli Santoro at the wheel, and the only other person on the bridge was Billy. If anything the rain-streaked view out the windscreen was worse than the last time. The winds were blowing with so much force that the lashing downpour was smeared into a single shimmering sheet across the gla.s.s and the top-mounted heavyduty wipers had no effect at all. The thunder of the waves crashing into the Queen's bow and flanks was like the sounding of some gigantic bell.

"We can't steer this way for much longer!" Hanson screamed, turning slightly as Finn came onto the bridge. "The waves are too big and too close together! We'll founder or break our back unless we turn!"

"You're going to put her beam on?" Billy said, horrified, his jaw dropping.

"No choice!" Hanson responded. "We can't keep on driving into it! Grab something!" He spun the wheel around to the left as hard as he could.

"What does beam on mean?" Finn yelled, startled at the suddenness of his movement.

Billy opened his mouth but before he could answer Finn was thrown halfway across the small bridge house and fell into a heap as the ship made a long slaloming turn down the side of an enormous wave that seemed to entirely fill the night sky. The great wave directly in front of them loomed like a curled fist, acres of blinding spray flying off the dark knuckles of furious water.

The Batavia Queen threw herself up the side of the new wave like a surfer trying to make it to deeper water. She began to turn along the crest, then fell back on herself as she pivoted across it. Before Finn could even begin to get to her feet the crest broke across the Queen's deck, slamming the bridge doors open and filling the chamber with a rush of icy water. It was flushed away almost instantly, leaving Finn coughing and choking on the deck, spitting out harsh-tasting salt water.

Somehow Hanson had managed to hang on to the wheel and he took the Queen fully around, stern to the driving force of the wind, as they began to run away with the roaring storm, hard on her heels, but almost bearable now. The ship was flotsam on the surface of the boiling sea now, no longer fighting the direction of the raging typhoon.

"Beam on means to turn sideways. It's a little tricky sometimes!" Hanson called out, still struggling with the wheel as he finally answered her question.

Laughing wearily and still gasping for air, Finn dragged herself upright with Billy's help. "Now you tell me!"

They drove forward, letting the howling winds push them on, no longer fighting the incredible grinding power of the ma.s.sive cyclone. The storm moved forward at a steadily increasing speed, gaining on the battered old ship and inevitably overtaking and swallowing it, the eyewall and the eye rushing up behind them like a surging hungry throat.

The Batavia Queen slid on through the darkness that was engulfing her in a whirling inferno of sound. The great swell of the waves carried her up, then sucked her down, rolling over her bows and crushing against her sides. Finn huddled on the bridge, watching as the sky began to lighten, soaking wet, her mind numb, wondering how on earth she'd managed in such a brief period of time to go from the boring, relatively civilized environment of a London auction house to the fury of a Pacific typhoon.

She thought about Columbus and home and growing up and wondered if danger hadn't haunted her every step ever since she'd left Ohio. Most of all she wondered if she was going to die out here, swallowed up by an unforgiving and cruel sea.

There was a terrible sound like a shotgun going off and Finn screamed, the sound swallowed up by the roar of smashed against the wind. A following wave the side of the ship, carrying away the splintered remains of the old launch on its davits just behind the bridge the way a fist crushes a matchbox.

By six, with dawn coming up fast, they were almost against the eyewall and there was no longer any sense to the sea. Waves crashed against each other, breaking and roaring and sending fountains of whirling spray into the sheeted curtains of rain that surrounded them. The windscreen of the bridge gave them no visibility at all; they were sailing blindly through the terrible storm.

The dawn finally broke, wild and furious, sky and sea meeting in a single rolling, terrible line. Waves rolled down on the Queen, and a strange, wet mist came in rags and sheets, spray and sky mixing into a wind-driven fog that roared around them at a hundred miles an hour. The radio antenna and the cables on the winches and windla.s.ses had parted long ago like the snapped strings of a guitar. Once, staring out across the undulating sea, Finn was almost sure that she saw another ship with them, riding through the madness of the wild ocean, but before she could say anything to Hanson or to Billy, it had disappeared into the tearing fog.

Then, suddenly, the rain stopped and the silence was almost worse than the storm. They were being tossed across the waves of a frothing horror, but directly overhead were blue sky and sun.

"The eye!"

Finn stared. All around them now was the black towering ma.s.s of the eyewall. All of a sudden the doorway behind them crashed open and Eli Santoro staggered onto the bridge, his dark hair plastered across his forehead.

"What?" Hanson bellowed, struggling with the wheel.

"I've been down below in the nav room! Bottom's coming up fast!"

"How fast?"

"We're at eighty fathoms."

"Continuous soundings," Hanson ordered. "Let me know if it gets much shallower."

"Aye, aye!" Santoro turned and left the bridge.

"What was all that about?" Billy asked.

"We're supposed to be in the middle of the Sulu Sea. Limitless bottom. Eighty fathoms is crazy! A shoal or an island in the middle of nowhere."

"There's nothing on the charts?" Billy asked.

"Charts!" Hanson bellowed. "What charts? I don't have the faintest idea where we are!"