“The consortium accepted everything Volkmann and I proposed,” Savich said. “It’s time to expand what we already started.”
The Sikh laughed. “Was there any doubt?”
Savich ignored the sarcasm and slid across a file. “These are our projected needs for the next year. Can you fulfill them?”
Singh perched a pair of reading glasses on his large nose and scanned the list, mumbling the salient figures. “An additional thousand immediately, two hundred a month first two months. Four hundred next two. Six hundred after that.” He looked across at the Russian. “Why the increase?”
“Disease. By then we expect typhoid and cholera to run rampant.”
“Ah.”
Their discussion of specifics over the next several hours was Savich’s way of making certain Singh fully understood the plan he and Volkmann had perfected since learning of the German central bank’s intention to sell off their gold reserves. To his credit, or perhaps discredit, the Sikh had an inherent grasp of criminal enterprise and was even able to contribute a few inspired refinements.
Satisfied that everything on this end was handled, Savich said his good-byes two hours before sunset so as to have ample time to chopper back to Jakarta. There was no way he’d fly in the small helicopter after dark. He planned on staying in the city overnight before commencing the next leg of his journey, a roundabout odyssey of a half dozen flights to get him back to Russia. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
Ten minutes after Savich left his office at the Karamita Breakers Yard, Shere Singh was on the phone to his son, Abhay. Because of the nature of his work, the senior Singh trusted only his sons to know the full scope of his business, which is why he had had six of them. His five daughters were merely a financial drain, one of whom hadn’t yet married, meaning he still had her dowry to consider. She was the youngest and marginally his favorite, so he’d have to top the two million dollars he’d given the horse-faced Mamta.
“Father, we haven’t heard from the Kra IV for two days,” Singh’s eldest said after a brief exchange of pleasantries.
“Who is her captain?”
“On this voyage it was Mohamed Hattu.”
Singh was a reprehensible figure of a man, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t shrewd. He kept a tight rein on his enterprises and made it a point to know all his senior people. Hattu was a pirate of the old school who’d preyed on shipping in the Malacca Strait for twenty years before Singh made him an offer. He was audacious and reckless but also dogmatic about procedure. If he hadn’t checked in for two days, something must have happened. And with that thought, Singh wrote off the Kra IV, her captain, and her crew of forty. “There are others eager to take his place,” Shere Singh told his son. “I will look into a replacement. However, alert your contacts to listen for any mention of a thwarted pirate attack. Whoever fought Mohamed Hattu and lived will want to tell the tale.”
“Yes, Father. I’ve thought of that. So far there have been no such reports.”
“On to other business. Anton Savich just left my office. The plan is in motion. I have his list of requirements. It’s about what I anticipated.”
“On your order we’ve already begun to collect.”
“Yes, good. What about your men? Will they do what is necessary when the time is right?”
“Their loyalty is absolute. Savich and his European bankers will never know what hit them once we strike.”
The confidence in his son’s voice sent a proud thrill through Shere Singh. His boy was so much like him. He was sure that had Abhay not been born with wealth, he would have created his own fortune, clawing his way up like Shere had done in his youth.
“Good, my boy, good. They maneuvered themselves into a vulnerable position without even realizing it.”
“No, Father. You maneuvered them. You turned their fear and greed into action, and now it will consume them all.”
“No, Abhay, we don’t want them destroyed. Remember always, you can continue to eat the fruit from a dying tree but not from one that is dead. Savich, Volkmann, and the others will suffer, but we will leave enough so we can feast on them for a long time to come.”
10
“YOU’RE going to wear a trail into the carpet,” Eddie Seng said from an overstuffed chair in the corner of the hotel room.
Juan Cabrillo remained silent as he paced to the plate glass window overlooking the dazzling lights of Tokyo’s Ginza District. He paused there with his hands clasped behind his back, his broad shoulders rigid with tension. The Oregon was fast approaching the floating drydock named Maus and would be going into action soon. His place was on her bridge, not stuck in a hotel suite waiting for Mark Murphy to come up with something about the vessel’s owners. He felt caged.
A driving rain blurred the view of the city from their thirtieth-floor room. It matched his mood.
Twenty-four hours had passed since stepping off the helicopter sent to fetch Victoria Ballinger. A representative from the Royal Geographic Society was on the windswept pad to meet the rented helo, a bearded man in a tan trench coat. From their body language it was clear to Juan that Tory and the representative had never met before. The man introduced himself as Richard Smith. While he thanked Juan for saving Tory, Cabrillo sensed he was reserved, almost wary. Tory was obviously grateful and gave Juan a kiss on the cheek as an orderly guided her to the private service ambulance Smith had arranged for her.
She had held up her hand just as she was about to be placed into the ambulance, her blue eyes steady on Juan’s. “Last night I remembered something from the rescue,” she’d said.
Uh-oh, thought Cabrillo.
“When I was trapped in my cabin I asked if you were the navy, and you wrote back something about being a private security company. What was that all about?”
Smith was already settled on a jump seat in the back of the ambulance and had to lean out somewhat to hear the answer.
Juan paused, looking from her over to him, then back to Tory. “I lied.”
“Excuse me?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
Cabrillo smiled. “I said I lied. Had I told you I was the master of a rust-bucket freighter who happened to have fish-finding sonar and a few crewmen with scuba gear, would you have trusted me to get you out?”
Tory didn’t speak for several long seconds, her gaze penetrating and doubting. She arched an eyebrow. “A fish finder?”
“The cook uses it when we’re in port to catch dinner once in a while.”
“Then why was it on in the middle of the ocean?” Smith asked, his tone edged with accusation.
Juan kept his smile in place, playing the role. “Just dumb luck, I guess. It went off when we passed over the Avalon. The watch stander happened to notice the dimensions of the target, realized we’d either discovered the biggest whale in history, or something wasn’t right. I was called to the bridge and decided to turn about. The Avalon hadn’t moved, so we discounted our monster whale theory. That’s when I threw on my tanks and had a look.”
“I see.” Smith nodded. He wasn’t entirely convinced, which made Juan even more certain that neither Tory nor the stiff Englishman were members of the Royal Geographic Society. His first thought was that they were Royal Navy and the Avalon was a spy ship, most likely in these waters monitoring North Korea or Russia’s Pacific Fleet out of Vladivostok. But if that were the case, it meant the pirates were capable of approaching a modern combat vessel loaded with sophisticated electronics, take out the crew in a lightning raid, and escape undetected. Cabrillo just couldn’t bring himself to believe that. Ex–Royal Navy then, perhaps using a ship belonging to the Society, but still out here on a mission of some kind.
“Then you must also thank the cook for me,” Tory said, nodding to the orderly to settle her in the ambulance.
Juan, Eddie, and the two former SEALs Eddie had selected were left on their own to arrange transportation. Rather than deal with hiring a car or finding a train station, they’d chartered the same helicopter that
brought them from the Oregon to fly them to Tokyo, where Max Hanley had reserved a four-bedroom suite under one of the Corporation’s front companies. And that is where they waited. The SEALs spent most of the time in the hotel’s extensive fitness center, while Cabrillo paced the room, willing his cell phone to ring. Eddie took up guard duty, making sure his boss didn’t damage the room out of frustration or boredom.
“They can bill me for a new rug,” Juan finally said without turning from the window.
“What about the ulcer you’re giving yourself? I don’t think Doc Huxley packed you any antacids.”
Cabrillo regarded Eddie. “That’s the pickled octopus I ate, not the stress.”
“Riiight.” Eddie returned to his English-language paper.
Cabrillo continued to stare out into the storm, his mind a million miles away. That wasn’t entirely true. His mind was six hundred miles away, at his seat in the Oregon’s operations center. This wasn’t the first time his ship had gone into battle without him, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust his crew. He just felt a personal need to be part of the action as they went after the snakeheads.
God, he thought, how old was I when I saw it? He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. They were coming back from an aunt’s house in San Diego. His dad was driving, of course, and Mom was in the other front seat: He remembered her shouting a warning to his dad about the traffic jam several seconds after he’d applied the brake. She’d immediately turned to check on him in the backseat. The quick deceleration hadn’t even locked his seat belt, but she acted as though he had almost been launched through the windshield.
And for what seemed like forever, traffic inched along the highway. He remembered that for a while they were next to a car with a Saint Bernard in the backseat. It was the first time he’d seen one, and he’d been captivated by its size. To this day he still vowed that when he finally retired he’d own one of those huge dogs.
“Have you picked a name?” Eddie asked softly.
“Gus,” Juan answered automatically before realizing that he’d been telling the story out loud rather than in his head. He lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
“So what happened?” Seng prompted.
Juan knew he couldn’t leave it there. His unconscious mind was telling him that this story had to come out. “We finally approached the accident site. A car must have swerved and caused an eighteen-wheeler to jackknife. The trailer had detached and lay on its side, the rear doors facing the road. Only one police car had made it to the scene. The cop had already locked the truck’s driver into his cruiser.
“One of the trailer’s rear doors had popped open when it tipped, and the patrolman was helping the other victims of the crash. I have no idea how many, maybe a hundred Mexican workers had been in the trailer when it went over. Some were only slightly injured and helped the officer with the others. A few were better off and could walk from the wreckage. Others they had to drag. There were already two areas set aside. In one, women tended to the wounded. In the other, the bodies had been lined up in a straight row. My mother was very protective and told me not to look, but she said it softly as she stared at the carnage, unable to tear her eyes away. We passed the accident and soon were back up to speed.
“No one spoke for a few minutes. My mom was crying softly. I sat there not quite understanding what I’d seen, but I knew that people weren’t supposed to be in the back of a semi. I remember my father’s words when Mom finally stopped sobbing. ‘Juan,’ he said, ‘no matter what anyone tells you, there is evil in this world. And all it takes for it to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ ”
Juan’s voice lost its soft tone as his mind returned to the present. “When I was old enough, we talked about that day again. My parents explained how smugglers snuck people up from Mexico and how some never survived the journey. They told me the truck driver pleaded guilty to thirty-six counts of vehicular homicide and that he’d been killed in prison by a Latino gang.”
Eddie said, “And when that cargo container was opened on deck and you saw those Chinese—?”
“I was back on that hot interstate and felt just as powerless. That is, until I remembered my father’s words.”
“What did he do for work, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“An accountant, actually, but he had fought in Korea and believed there was nothing more evil on earth than Communism.”
“If he had as much influence on you as I think he did, you doubly want these guys—smugglers and Communists.”
“If it turns out that China’s behind it, damn right.” Cabrillo gave Eddie an appraising look. “I don’t need to tell you about that. You were in their backyard for years.”
Eddie nodded gravely. “I’ve seen firsthand evidence of entire villages being wiped off the map because someone spoke out against a local party official. The cities may be opening up to the West, but the countryside is ruled as ruthlessly as ever. It’s the only way the central government can control a billion people. Keep them on edge, near starvation, and grateful for whatever handouts they get.”
“Something tells me,” Cabrillo said, “that this isn’t a Chinese operation.”
“It’d make sense to me if it were,” Seng countered. “They have a population crisis, and I’m not talking about overcrowding, though that is a problem. No, what China faces today and over the next twenty years or so is something far worse.”
“Worse than trying to feed a quarter of the world’s population?” Juan asked skeptically.
“In fact it’s a direct result of the one-child policy enacted in 1979. Today China’s birthrate is 1.8 children per woman. The rate’s even lower in the cities. For a sustainable population, a country needs a fertility rate of at least 2.1. Falling birthrates in the U.S. and Europe are mostly offset by immigration, so we’re okay. But China is going to see their population ratios age dramatically in the next decades. There won’t be enough workers to man the factories nor enough people to care for the elderly. Add to that the cultural bias against girls, select-sex abortion, and infanticide, and right now China has one hundred and eighteen boys under the age of ten for every one hundred girls.”
“So what’s that going to do?”
“Unless a significant segment of the male population is gay or chooses celibacy, there are going to be about two hundred million men with no chance of having families of their own by 2025.”
Cabrillo followed through to the logical conclusion of Eddie’s lecture. “So you think they’re shipping excess men overseas now?”
“It’s a theory.”
“A plausible one,” the chairman agreed. “And something I hadn’t considered—the wholesale export of people.”
“About a million Chinese immigrate illegally a year,” Eddie told him, “with the tacit approval of local governments, I might add. It’s not much of a stretch for the leaders in Beijing to actually start their own program to get rid of what’s already being called the ‘army of bachelors.’ ” Eddie’s voice turned bitter. “Despite the propaganda spin over the last few years, China remains a brutal dictatorship. They invariably take the hard approach to any problem. They want to build a dam, they move thirty million people out of the way, show Western reporters the new towns they’re building, but ultimately dump the population on collective farms.”
Juan let Eddie Seng’s accusation hang in the air for a few seconds. He was well aware of how much Eddie hated the Beijing government. “But there were only a few dozen people on the Kra,” he finally said.
“But what’s on that ship Tory Ballinger saw?”
“You mean who?”
“Exactly.”
Juan’s encrypted cell phone chimed. “Cabrillo.”
“Juan, it’s Max.”
“What’s up?” He tried to sound nonchalant, but there was an edge to his voice.
“We’re about twenty miles behind the Maus. We’ve already talked to them, establishing procedure for passing a drydock under tow. In about ten minut
es we’re going to launch an unmanned aerial drone with a low-light camera to take a peek into her open hold. I do have a boarding party standing by if we need to send over some Mark-one eyeballs.”
“Sounds good. What’s the weather? It’s raining here.”
“Fine. No moon at all. Seas are only a couple of feet, and the wind’s light. Listen, the reason I called is we have some information for you.”
About time, Cabrillo thought but kept it to himself. “Murph tracked down who owns the Maus?”
“No, he’s still working on it. Julia came up with something during her autopsies of the Chinese folks we plucked from the container. I’m passing her off to you.”
“Thanks. E-mail the feeds from the UAV to my phone. I’d like to take a look at the Maus during the flyover.”
“You got it. Here’s the doc.”
“Chairman, how’s Tokyo?”
“It’s all warm sushi and cold geishas.”
“I bet. I think I found something about our immigrants. They’re all from the same village, a place called Lantan in Fujian Province. Most of them are part of the same extended family.”
“Did you do a DNA test?”
“No, I read the parts of a diary that hadn’t been destroyed when the container went into the drink. A lot of the journal was illegible, but I scanned everything into the computer and let the translator take a crack at it. The guy who wrote it’s last name was Xang. With him were two brothers, a bunch of cousins, and distant blood relatives. They had been promised work in Japan by a snakehead who called himself Yan Luo. Each of them had to pay this Yan Luo about five hundred dollars before leaving the village and would have to pay back about fifteen thousand once they reached a textile mill outside Tokyo.”
“Does he talk about the Kra? Was that the boat taking them to Japan?”
“He doesn’t say, or that part of the journal was too damaged to read.”