Rembrandt's Ghost Part 5

From where he sat in the open-air beachside snack bar, Briney Hanson could see the oldfashioned cranes loading the Batavia Queen at the old Mariveles docks a little farther along the harbor. With berthing charges being what they were, Manila itself was far too rich for the old Queen's blood and she was lucky to be picking up any cargo at all in Mariveles: banana chips and processed ca.s.sava meal for animal feed, which meant the Queen was going to stink all the way back down to Singapore.

They'd off-load the banana chips there, pick up a load of electronics stuff, and then make a run up to Rangoon with the ca.s.sava meal. The last leg would involve taking the electronics stuff on to Madras, or Chennai as it was now called, for a.s.sembly into everything from car radios to talking teddy bears. After that, it was anyone's guess. But right now Hanson and the Queen were still in Bataan.

He took a swallow from his longneck liter bottle of Red Horse beer and swabbed a piece of "chicharon" pork crackling into the hot sauce on his plate. He forked up a mouthful of crunchy squid heads in rice and washed it all down with another hit of the strong, amber pilsner. Mariveles might have had the most corrupt munic.i.p.al government in the Philippines-and that was saying something-but it had unbelievably good snacks.

Hanson had spent the entire morning with his old friend Dr. Nemesio Zobel-Ayala, the local abortionist, Pratique officer for the docks, brotherin-law of the mayor, and all-round mordida man. Without kicking back to Ayala, you could be quarantined for a month, not allowed to off-load or on-load cargo, and even wind up getting beaten to a pulp if you even tried to step onsh.o.r.e.

Hanson had swallowed his disgust and played the Good Buddy game just like always, sitting with the little weasel in his stifling dockside office above the customs warehouse for hours, watching him drinking shots of Napoleon Quince and listening to endless stories about his conquests in La Zona, the local brothel area where women and girls, most of them native and some no more than ten or twelve years old, plied their age-old profession in little blanket-divided cubicles, serving the seagoing trade and foreign workers from the few remaining factories in Mariveles.

Zobel-Ayala had all the bases covered. Not only was he a pimp to half the girls in La Zona, but he was also the public health officer for Mariveles and made a bit extra on the side by selling off government-supplied antibiotics to the highest bidder.

The doctor had big plans, most of which involved setting himself up in America one day, but Hanson thought it more likely that the slimy son of a b.i.t.c.h would probably wind up floating upside down under one of the Mariveles piers with his throat cut, either by his rivals in the Kuratong Baleleng or the Pentagon, both of which had big money in shabu labs and smuggling all through the islands.

Hanson ate the last of the food on his plate, finished off the Red Horse, and dropped a few crumpled bills onto the counter. He climbed down off the old-fashioned, chrome diner stool, gave a satisfied belch, and headed back along the crushed coral path to the dock road. It was blisteringly hot and he could feel the beer leaching out of him, sweat dripping down the back of his neck from underneath the band of his old captain's cap and down his sides.

Even though he was wearing sungla.s.ses, the light was enough to make Hanson squint, as it glinted off the small broken waves in the harbor and hammered down like a ringing gong from the cloudless sky. Like everywhere else in this part of the world, he knew it could change into black monsoon within a single tick of time, turning the harbor into a witch's cauldron and bouncing the Queen around like a beach ball at her moorings, but for the moment he was trapped inside a furnace with its thermostat on the blink.

The meal at the snack bar and the few minutes by himself had been a nice break after a morning with the sleazy doctor, but making his way past the tumbledown warehouses and the junk-fronted chandlers' shops along the quay brought Hanson back to reality with a hard knock; the oppressive heat, the stink of rot and old rope, of tarred pilings and the dead fish along the bilge-filthy waterfront was the stink of his own future, and he knew it. Endless runs through dangerous seas taking things to one place and other things back again. It was no way for anyone to live. If something didn't change soon...

Hanson could see the jib cranes at the dockside working, swinging over big, two-hundred-pound bags of ca.s.sava meal in rope slings. On deck Elisha Santoro, his first mate, was overseeing Kong and a few hired Filipino day-hands. The day-hands were dressed in bahag loincloths and Eli wore jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. The closest thing to a uniform on the Batavia Queen was the dull strip of gold braid on Hanson's battered cap.

He frowned, staring down along the pier. The banana chips wouldn't arrive until the next day, but there was a pile of wooden crates on the dock next to the Queen and a four-ton Mitsubishi Fighter Mignon truck parked beside them. Bulk banana chips were shipped in jute bags, like the ca.s.sava meal, not wooden crates. Stranger still, Zobel-Ayala hadn't said a word about any new cargo, and he would have been the first to know since every clearance certificate issued on the docks had to go through him.

As Hanson came closer, a man climbed out from the pa.s.senger side of the truck cab and stood waiting beside the pile of crates. Hanson saw that all of the crates were stamped with the familiar Slazenger pouncing tiger logo. The man from the truck stepped forward. He was fortyish, flabby, and wore a perfectly cut and blindingly white suit that almost made his pot belly disappear. He had small feet and small hands. The feet were encased in gleaming black patent leather shoes and he wore one too many rings on his pink fingers.

The costume was topped off by a Borsalino Panama as white as the suit. The man wore the formal straw hat with the forced casualness of a bald man, tilted just so, but somehow you knew there was nothing underneath. The eyes were shaded by a slightly feminine-looking pair of leather-covered Fendi Sellerias. There was no facial hair and the faint smell of expensive cologne shimmered in the overheated air. Fat lips smiled. The man had teeth like perfect polished pearls. At five foot five, he should have been almost dainty looking. But he didn't look dainty at all; he looked dangerous.

"Captain Hanson?" he asked. There was a faint, aristocratic Spanish accent.

"Yes?"

"My name is Lazlo Aragas." The smile got wider. "My good friends call me Lazzy."

Hanson nodded. Call this one Lazzy and he'd shove a knitting needle through your eye socket. "Mr. Aragas. What can I do for you?"

"It is what we can do for each other, Captain Hanson."

"Then what can we do for each other, Mr. Aragas?"

"I have a shipment that needs to go to Singapore," he said. "I understand that you are going in that direction."

"A shipment of what?" Hanson asked.

Aragas waved a jeweled hand in the general direction of the crates. "b.a.l.l.s, Captain. I am shipping b.a.l.l.s to Singapore."

"Tennis b.a.l.l.s."

"Quite so. Specifically Wimbledon Ultra Vis."

Three things were wrong with that. One, the Wimbledon b.a.l.l.s were made in the Mariveles factory, but they were shipped out of the superterminal at Pier 15 in Manila. Two, the b.a.l.l.s were shipped in six-dozen-can cardboard boxes plasticstrapped in dozen box cubes and loaded into containers, not wooden crates. And three, there wasn't a chance in the world that Slazenger would ever ship anything at all on the Batavia Queen or any tramp steamer like her.

Hanson nodded. "I see."

"Do you, Captain?"

"I think I do," he answered slowly.

"What exactly do you see?"

"I see some wooden crates with Slazenger p.u.s.s.ycats all over them."

"Full of tennis b.a.l.l.s," said the man in the white suit, smiling.

"If you say so."

"I do." Still smiling.

"Does Dr. Zobel-Ayala know about your tennis b.a.l.l.s?" Hanson asked flatly.

Aragas laughed. He sounded like a particularly vicious dog barking. "Zobel-Ayala tiene el famban barretoso," he said pleasantly. "If he doesn't do as he's told, I'll put my foot to it, or something more painful perhaps."

"So what does all this really have to with me?" Hanson asked carefully. If Aragas was sidestepping El Abortista, he was putting them both into dangerous territory.

"I need a shipper. You are here."

"You and your tennis b.a.l.l.s aren't on my bill of lading."

"This will be a separate shipment. Just between you and me, Captain."

"Zobel-Ayala isn't going to like it."

"He'll do as he's told."

"Maybe so, Mr. Aragas, but I have to come back here. You may get to kick him in his fat juicy a.s.s, but I'm not in the same position ...so to speak."

"It is not your concern, Captain. Your concern is in loading my shipment as quickly as possible." There was ice in the words.

"And how do I explain this shipment to the agent in Singapore?"

"You don't."

"How's that?"

"You will develop engine trouble just off Sentosa. An hour or two at most. A fast boat will take my tennis b.a.l.l.s off your hands." Sentosa Island was a redeveloped fishing village turned high-end resort just outside Singapore Harbor.

"Customs, the Checkpoint Authority?"

"Taken care of." Mordida again. The Philippines had made a fine art out of it over the last four hundred years.

"And what do I get out of all of this trouble?" Hanson asked.

"This," said Aragas. He pulled the inevitable envelope out of his inside jacket pocket. It was about a half inch thick. "Euros, if that is convenient." Once upon a time it had been American dollars, but things were changing. "Twenty-five thousand."

Roughly thirty-three thousand dollars depending on the day rate. It didn't matter. What really mattered was that with the envelope there was no more pretense. You didn't pay somebody that much money for carting around a couple of hundred crates of tennis b.a.l.l.s.

It was a distinctly nasty spot to be in because if Aragas was in a position to sidestep ZobelAyala, that meant he was heavily connected. Turn Aragas down and he'd get somebody's nose out of joint. Or he could take the envelope and go along with Aragas and if things screwed up he could easily land in Changi Prison for the rest of his life-not a pleasant thought at all.

So he was trapped-d.a.m.ned if he did, d.a.m.ned if he didn't. Standing here baking in the hot sun he didn't see any way out. So he stopped looking, at least for the moment. He took the envelope from Aragas, folded it in half, and stuck it into his back pocket.

"Very good," said Aragas as though he were speaking to a dog he was training to roll over and play dead. "It would be appreciated if you could have the crates loaded as quickly as possible. As you know, there is a great deal of petty theft in this area." Anything that wasn't nailed down was considered fair game, but Hanson had an idea: Aragas could leave his crates just where they were for as long as he wanted and the locals would avoid them like the plague.

"Not a problem," said Hanson. He glanced up and saw Elisha Santoro casually leaning on the forward rail and looking down at him. Eli wasn't going to like this at all.

"Good," said Aragas. "I am very pleased that we have reached an accord on this matter. When you load the crates please make them as available as possible for quick unloading. I shall return at seven this evening."

"Return?" asked Hanson, startled.

"Didn't I tell you?" said Aragas. "I will be accompanying the shipment to Singapore." With that, he put two fingers to the brim of his hat, tipped Hanson a brief salute, and climbed back into the truck. The Mitsubishi's engine chugged to life and it lumbered off down the docks and disappeared. Hanson watched it go, feeling the lump of the envelope in his pocket pressing into him like a tumor.

Eli Santoro came down the gangway and onto the pier. He inspected the crates for a moment, then turned to Hanson. "What was that all about? New cargo?" It wasn't really a question; Eli had seen Aragas and he'd seen the envelope. He was young but he was no fool.

"Something like that," said Hanson.

"We in trouble, boss?"

"Maybe." Hanson looked at his first mate. Elisha Santoro, like everyone else on the Batavia Queen, was an outcast. At twenty-eight he was the youngest man on the ship with three years in the U.S. Navy, a First Officer rating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and two more years in the Coast Guard, stationed in Guam. Then an accident with a backyard barbecue at a base picnic left him blind in one eye-enough for his career to come to a crashing halt with the revoking of his mate's ticket and no chance of ever becoming a master on his own. At twenty-five Santoro was adrift, broke, and unemployed, wedded to the sea with all his hopes and dreams in tatters.

Hanson had found him b.u.mming around the islands doing yacht charters out of Hong Kong, and after two bottles of Dragon's Back and a look at the young man's record he'd snapped him up, eye patch or not. That had been almost three years ago and Hanson hadn't regretted the decision once.

"What are we going to do?" Eli asked.

"We're screwed either way." Hanson sighed. "Load up the tennis b.a.l.l.s. Figure it so we can dump the cases quickly if we have to."

"What do you think is in them?"

"I don't want to know and neither do you," the captain warned. "And the man in the ice cream suit is shipping out with us, so be careful."

"We've got another problem."

"What now?" Hanson groaned; as if the day wasn't bad enough already. Eli handed over a piece of yellow paper he pulled out of his T-shirt pocket. A cable flimsy. Like everyone aboard the Queen the young man did double duty; as well as being the Batavia Queen's first officer, first mate, and quartermaster, Eli was also the radio officer. "Message from the company. The Queen's been sold. We'll find out who the new owners are when we get to Singapore."

10.

The Busted Flush made the North Sea crossing to Holland in three and a half days, running up the Channel north of Goodwin Sands in fine weather, then beating north beyond the Broad Fourteens to Den Helder. On the third night, they made their way through the tricky currents of the rushing tidal rip of the Marsdeip, finally making landfall at the locks leading into the inland sea once known as the Zuider Zee and now called the Ijsselmeer. They spent the night resting up in the calm waters on the inland side of the immense dike and on the following morning made a swift, sail-cracking run in the bright sunshine down to the little seaside village of Durgerdam. The town had everything they needed including a fullservice marina and a bus stop for the ride into Amsterdam itself, only a few miles to the south, its low, dusty skyline faint on the horizon.

For Finn, tense and exhausted after the events in London, sailing on the Flush had been a joy. The Flush was a William Garden sixty-foot gaffrigged schooner, powered by a six-cylinder Sealord North Sea diesel and capable of making twelve knots under full sail. Inside she was as cozy as a log cabin in the woods, complete with two comfortable cabins, a small salon, and a well-equipped and well-stored galley. According to Billy, she'd been built as Sitkin in Oregon almost fifty years before, meant for cruising the Alaska coast, and had spent time in Chile and South Africa after that as the San Lourenco. She'd wound up in England taking tourist charters up the coast of Scotland. At that time she was known as Sandpiper. Billy had owned her now for almost eight years.

"A present to myself after all those years at school," he'd told her. "Perhaps I should have named her the Graduate." According to him they were the best of friends, and from the way Billy handled her as he guided her Nantucket green hull into the sheltered little bay Finn could easily see that his affection for the slightly tubby-looking boat was more like love.

They'd already gone through immigration at Den Helder, and the formalities of berthing at the marina involved no more than registering at the office with the harbormaster and paying the minimum three-day berthing fee. With that done they walked along the dike road that appeared to be the only street in town. Once upon a time it had been a fishing village with small trawlers lined up along the clay and earth dike, but the fishing fleet had disappeared long ago with the creation of the huge dams that had changed the Zuider Zee's water from salt to fresh. Now the boats along the Durgerdammerdjik were mostly pleasure craft and the charming fishermen's modest homes were either summer homes or bed-and-breakfasts.

"I'm a little wobbly," said Finn as they walked in the bright morning air. After less than four days she'd developed proper sea legs and heading along the dike was making her feel a little dizzy, the horizon bobbing up and down ahead of her.

"Not a bit seasick, though." Billy grinned. "Make a sailor out of you yet."

Finn smiled. Physically she felt wonderful; her skin was softly bronzed and her long hair smelled like salt air. For the first time in months she was enjoying the simple act of breathing. Living in London was worse than New York; it felt as though you were smoking a dozen cigars every day and sometimes she could even feel the particulate pollution on her teeth. She breathed in deeply. The little town smelled like new-mown hay and the sea. The inland sails of a real Dutch windmill whirled slowly in the fields behind the houses. She suddenly felt ravenously hungry.

"I'm starved," she said.

They found a small hotel called the Oude Taveerne halfway along the dike. The plain white clapboard structure stood out from the rest, much larger than the little houses flanking it. There was a patio on one side and a few tables with Heineken umbrellas out front on the pattern brick sidewalk. On the water side of the dike it appeared to have its own dock with a few picnic tables on the gra.s.s at the near end. The Oude Taveerne looked as though it might have been some commercial enterprise in the past, a chandlery, or perhaps a wealthy merchant's place of business as well as his home. The only building larger was the seventeenth-century town hall down the way with its domed tower.

"I smell pancakes," said Billy.

"Sausages," said Finn.

"Both," said Billy.

They went inside.

It was knickknack heaven. Things hung from the dark beams of the low ceilings, objects were hung on the walls, mugs, paintings, photographs, half models of boats, ships in bottles, shelves full of preserves, children's drawings, examples of needlepoint behind gla.s.s, a set of ceramic thimbles . . . it was endless.

The tables were crammed neatly together, each one with its own taffeta tablecloth, each tablecloth set with place mats and bright red folded linen napkins. Sun shone brightly through the windows on a dozen different patterns of wallpaper, all of it busy and ornate. An old mural of fishing boats took up half the far wall.

A couple of locals were sitting at a long, empty table reading newspapers they'd taken from a large basket between them, but other than that the dining room was empty. A plump, apple-cheeked woman in a printed ap.r.o.n introduced herself as Velden in perfectly good English, offered them menus, and then took their orders. She informed them that the Oude Taveerne had stood there since 1760 and had originally been called the Prins te Paard, which, she explained, meant the Prince on Horseback.

A few minutes later, she returned with the food arranged on a huge platter, which she balanced easily on one beefy arm. Something called uitsmijter for Finn, which turned out to be fried ham and eggs with mustard cheese, and gevulde pannekoek for Billy, which turned out to be two huge pancakes put together like cake layers with fried sausage as a filling. The calories and cholesterol in each meal would have given any selfrespecting cardiologist a heart attack. In other words, both meals were just what the doctor ordered.

"Good Lord," said Billy, sitting back in his chair with a sigh. "Bless me, for I have sinned." He grinned. "Take me two years on a treadmill to work that off."

"Better than the alternative," said Finn. She took a sip of the excellent coffee Velden had provided. "We're lucky to be alive at this point."

"I'd almost forgotten," said Billy, his expression darkening.

Finn nodded. "Me too. That's when you get careless."

"I suppose you're right," said Billy. "Those people we ran into aren't just going to go away." He shook his head. "I know we talked this whole subject to death during the crossing, but I still don't know what they expected to accomplish."

"Murder springs to mind," Finn answered. "Somebody wants us out of the way."

"Why?"

"Unless there's something in your past you haven't told me about it must have to do with the painting."

Billy snorted. "I admit it. I've led a double life all these years. Secretly I'm an Estonian spy operating undercover as an impecunious English lord with a silly pedigree that dates back to Boadecia, queen of the b.l.o.o.d.y Iceni."

"Then it's the painting."

"But we didn't even have it with us." Billy shrugged.