Bon Bon Voyage (7 page)

While I was finishing my entrée and making notes on the spicy surface of the meat, I could hear a woman behind me at another table complaining loudly to the waiter that her wine glass had dishwasher spots on it, which had ruined the flavor of the wine. She demanded not only a new glass, but also a different bottle of wine, although the waiter pointed out that she'd already drunk most of her first bottle. I managed to turn enough to catch a glance at her. It was Mrs. Gross from the Lisbon airport, the lady who had insisted that Luz give up her luggage to the cruise representative. She was wearing a strange brown evening gown that sort of glittered, and I wondered if sequins came in brown. I couldn't really get a good look at her dress without turning completely around. And why did she want a new bottle of wine? Ours was excellent, a bold cabernet, dry with a fine fruity finish.

Luz heard Mrs. Gross, too, and Luz did turn completely around to tell the lady that her advice had led to the loss of Luz's suitcase. “Excellent,” said Mrs. Gross. “You should be able to get a free cruise if you play your cards right.”

As dessert was being served, my mother-in-law refused to dance with Dr. Lee, and Mrs. Barber leaned across her husband to tell me that Vera had sound judgment. “Our poor doctor is as bad a dancer as I've ever come across. A woman as frail as your mother-in-law could end up with broken bones if she danced with him. Thin white women are prone to osteoporosis, you know. They die of broken hips every day.”

I glanced over quickly to see if Vera had heard this grim outlook on her lifespan, but she and the commander were having a rousing argument about whether or not women were up to the rigors of work in shipyards.

“I'm a very good dancer myself,” said Mrs. Barber. “I'll have to take the poor man in hand. That is, unless, being a Southerner, he thinks he's too white to learn anything from an African-American woman.”

“Now Harriet,” said Mr. Barber, putting down his video camera, with which he'd been zooming in on an elaborate piece of strawberry pie with whipped cream and nuts. “You don't know that the man is a bigot. After all, you were the first woman he asked to dance.”

“Humph,” said Mrs. Barber.

What a wonderful pie!
I thought. It had definitely been made with fresh strawberries, very sweet, very flavorful. And the crust was superb! I'd never have thought of adding nuts to strawberry pie, but it worked. And the cream had a slight fruity flavor. Even if I had to glue my purse to my hand in the various ports we visited, the prospect of dinner when we got back to the ship would be worth the stress.

“Of course I'm taking the bottle back to my room,” said a sharp voice behind me. “It's my bottle, and I haven't finished it.” Then I caught sight of a skeletal figure in sparkling brown passing behind me, her wrinkled hand clutching a bottle of red wine. She wore an emerald necklace with matching earrings and bracelet, more emeralds than I'd ever seen on one person, even in one room. Although she wasn't pleasant, she certainly must be rich.

Mix in a bowl 1½ cups sugar, ⅛ cup all-purpose flour, 1
teaspoon ground nutmeg,
and
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Boston Bay Bugle

9

The five of them sprawled on couches and chairs in the officer's lounge, which was otherwise deserted because of the late hour. “You get the pills on board without any problems?” Hartwig asked Hanna Fredriksen.

“Of course.” She nodded. “They're perfect. They look just like the standard seasick pills we hand out, and I've got enough to knock out all the passengers and as many of the crew as we need to put under.”

Patrick O'Brien grinned playfully and asked, “Did I see a wee bit of fanny patting at the cocktail party, me darlin' Hanna?”

Hanna's mouth tightened, and her perfectly tanned Scandinavian brow furrowed with anger. “I am not your darling, Patrick,” she snapped, “and as for Marbella, I'm going to handcuff his balls to the bars in the brig once we've taken over. I'll make him sorry he ever thought he could get away with groping me!”

“Ja,”
said Martin Froder. “Fräulein Sechrest knows better how to handle our captain than you, Hanna. A little squeak, a gasp, a wild look around with blushes,
und der
captain is embarrassed at being exposed
und
keeps his wandering Italian paws to himself.”

“What do we do when the passengers start complaining to Sechrest?” Patrick asked.

Hanna shrugged. “I'll take care of Sandy. You just make sure no one gets a message to the outside.”

“We'll have their cell phones and computers, and I'll have the computer room and the communications room locked up. No one will be talking to the owners or the press. Just us.” Patrick's elfin face wrinkled into a delighted smile that raised his orange eyebrows and his pale forehead right up to the carrot curls atop his head.

“These are the small problems,” said Umar Patek. “What about the helicopter?” His black eyes turned coldly toward Hartwig.

“It's covered,” said Hartwig brusquely. “It will lift off south of Casablanca and pick us up whenever we're ready. I'll be reconnecting with my people to make the final arrangements once we put into port. After that, I give the owners two days to cave to our demands. Then we're out of here.”

“So you think you can trust Muslims in Morocco? They do what you say?” Patek asked.

“You know something about my contacts I don't know?” Hartwig demanded. “Didn't you say you were a Hindu from Malaysia? Do I need to run another check on you, Umar? Just to be sure I can trust you?”

Patek shrugged. “You got the guns on board? More important than pills.”

“We'll be well armed,” snapped Hartwig.

“Too late to be not trusting each other,” warned Froder, the engineering officer. “Hanna has pills, Hartwig has guns, we have
der
plan, I sail
der
ship,
und
you get us off, Bruce. Then the money makes us all happy in Zurich,
und
we never see each other again.
Ja?
”

“Aye, the money,” said Patrick softly. “That's the thing.”

10

My mother-in-law and I were having a cup of coffee on our balcony the next morning, I listening enviously to her description of her bath in the tub with waterspouts, when the first problem of the day erupted.

“For God's sake! First they lose my luggage. Now my jeans and shirt are gone. Even my underwear's disappeared,” shouted Luz, who had just stormed out of our bedroom, clad in a
Bountiful Feast
bathrobe, with its embroidered cornucopia on the lapel.

“Calm down,” said Vera. “Have some coffee. That weird little Albanian came by last night after you finished flirting with the doctor and took your clothes away for washing. He'll get them back.”

“Me flirting? What do you call your huddle with the submarine guy?” Luz demanded.

“Short,” said my mother-in-law. “Carolyn was fast asleep before
you
ever came back to the suite. If you did. Maybe you spent the night with Robert E. Lee.”

“Beaufort E. Lee,” Luz corrected. “Beau for short. And how could I be sleeping with Beau if my clothes were here for Herkule to pick up? Anyway, you were on the sofa reading when I got in.”

“I have to warn you, Luz,” Vera continued, paying no attention to the interruption. “Southern men want to put a woman on a pedestal and pour corn syrup all over her. You won't like it.”

“What I don't like is losing my last outfit to this damned cruise line. So fine. I'll go to breakfast in the bathrobe.”

“Now Luz, I'm sure—” Before I could remind her that the captain had promised her a new wardrobe, she cut me off by sitting down and pouring herself a cup of coffee. I could see that she was about to begin another tirade about her clothes, so I said, “Did you know that coffee came from Ethiopia, or maybe it was Abyssinia. It's said that it got to Yemen because the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon and had a son by him, Menelik, who brought the coffee bush from his mother's homeland and planted it in Yemen.”

“Look, Carolyn, I couldn't care less where the coffee came from,” Luz began.

“You haven't let me finish my story. Centuries later a goatherd from an isolated monastery in Yemen complained to a learned monk that the goats were frisking around at night when they were supposed to be asleep. The monk was fascinated and investigated what the goats had been eating, which was these little beans from some scraggly bushes, so he picked the beans and experimented with them, but without much success. Finally he threw them in the fire, where they released a delicious aroma. Because of the odor, he retrieved the roasted beans, ground them, and made a drink from them, but it was too bitter, so he added honey and drank some. As a result he, too, stayed wide awake and felt amazingly alert and intelligent.”

“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me,” said Luz, and poured more coffee.

“I don't see why,” I protested. “Doesn't coffee make you feel alert and intelligent? Anyway, he then noticed that the bushes were planted in rows and traced them back to the Queen of Sheba by reading old writings. Isn't that interesting? Oh, and the Turks say that the first coffee was given to the Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel when Muhammad was all tired out from his religious devotions. Since the Arabs can't drink alcohol, they really like coffee and tea.”

“And I'd like some clean clothes,” snapped Luz.

“And sugar. The Arabs like sugar. They even refined cane sugar on Crete as early at AD 1000. It's said the Crusaders were lured there by the sweet smell, and—”

“Holy crap! If you're planning to tell me the whole history of the Crusades, don't. Pope John Paul apologized for them, so let's just forget it. We Catholics— Hey, you!”

Herkule Pipa had crept into our sitting room with her clothes over his arm, looking terrified when she spotted him.

“I bring s-s-sanitary pantaloons and sh-shirt,” he stammered. “Fresh from machine for sponging of lady's wardrobes. Yes?” He flung them on our sofa and sprinted out the door while Luz shouted after him that she didn't see her underwear.

It was, however, neatly and demurely folded between the shirt and jeans. She went off to put her clothes on, muttering that if they hadn't shown up, she'd have gone to breakfast and to the ship's store in the bathrobe. “What the hell do they sell, anyway? Sailor suits? I'm not wearing some stupid sailor suit with pale purple stripes. They'll just have to keep washing my stuff overnight.”

“Not a morning person?” my mother-in-law murmured, hiding a grin in her coffee cup.

“Her knees probably hurt,” I replied. Waves were slapping against the ship, but not, fortunately, splashing us since we were on an upper deck.

When Luz reappeared with her denim shirt hanging loosely over her jeans, she stuck a flower from the bouquet on the table into her bra. “Got to keep up my Madrid designer image. You going to keep translating for me, Vera?”

“I'd be delighted to,” said my mother-in-law cheerfully. Obviously she liked Luz better than she did me. So much for Jason's idea that his mother and I had bonded in San Francisco. All during breakfast, women kept dropping by our table to get the latest fashion news from my sometime friend, the retired lieutenant, who spoke Spanish exclusively while Vera told them that Luz was displaying how a woman could wear the same clothes for all occasions with the impetus of a little imagination. “The male designers hate her,” said my mother-in-law solemnly. “Just another plot of the patriarchy.”