The Orpheus Deception (45 page)

Authors: David Stone

BOOK: The Orpheus Deception

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“You want me to come in with you?” asked Dalton.

Fyke shook his head, as he extricated himself from the wheel and hobbled across the boardwalk toward the door. Halfway there, he turned his injured knee and went down like a shot bull. He looked up from the pavement at Dalton, wearing the expression of a strong man coming to painful terms with new limitations. Dalton gave him a hand and pulled him to his feet, watching the pain in Fyke’s eyes and seeing his own future there.

“Maybe you should come along, Mikey.”

“Yeah. Just until you get your legs back.”

The shop was hotter than the street, floored in peeling linoleum that might once have been gray, smelling of sweat and cleaning fluid and moldy wood. It was a wide, low-roofed space, with a pressed-tin ceiling and wooden walls. A rickety counter up front separated the entrance from a larger factory space in the rear, where brown-eyed girls in jeans and T-shirts worked at the presses. Along the rear wall, a row of huge, rust-streaked machines churned and rocked, filling the place with the smell of overheated cotton and soap-scented steam. None of the women working the pressing boards looked up as Dalton and Fyke came in, but somebody must have hit a button somewhere because, in a moment, a small, wiry man with a face like a cracked walnut brushed aside a rack of hanging shirts and shuffled toward them, his rubber flip-flops flapping, his damp shirt unbuttoned, showing a torso marked by bony ribs and burn scars and a sunken belly. His black eyes showed nothing, as he reached the counter and stood there, a skeletal dwarf who seemed to be made of old bamboo and dried leather. He stared up at Fyke with a frowning scowl, quite devoid of welcome.

“Missa
Fyke,” he said, after a moment. “You come back.”

“Nguyen Ki. This is my friend, Mr. Dalton.”

Ki’s eyes slipped sideways, took Dalton in without a change in his disapproving scowl, and then slid back to Fyke.

“You still with the Americans,
Missa
Fyke?”

“Not anymore. Freelance.”

Ki’s expression grew even stonier.

“You go ’way, long time gone. All the people different now. What you want me to do for you now,
Missa
Fyke?”

“Can we have a talk somewhere private, Nguyen?”

“You want maybe bottle Jim Beam,
Missa
Fyke?”

“No. No Jim Beam. A cuppa, maybe.”

Ki stood there with his callused hands flat on the worn teak boards of the countertop, looking Fyke up and down in a way that the Ray Fyke that Dalton used to know would never have tolerated. But, then, the Fyke that Dalton had known would never have let a bottle of Jim Beam get in between him and his mission. Nguyen Ki had seen the shades of the coming dead in the streets of Kuta and he had tried to stop that, and Fyke had failed him abjectly. But there must have been something in the way that Fyke stood there and looked him straight back that burned through his sorrow and resentment. His face creased a little, and he showed his yellow fangs.

“Okay—you follow me to back. Mary,” he called, and a young girl in a checkered shirt, her hair in a bandanna, looked up from a pile of white shirts. “You take counter, okay?”

“Yes, Grandfather,” she said, smiling at Dalton and Fyke, as Nguyen Ki led them down a cluttered laneway between heaps of clothing and stacks of bedsheets toward an open space in the back where he had a kind of office, a spare-looking room with a sagging plywood desk piled high with paperwork behind which sat a battered steel file cabinet. He set a kettle on a small gas burner and shoved a pile of old newspapers off a set of plastic chairs stacked in a corner. He set them out in front of the desk, and busied himself with the tea for a moment, while Fyke looked around the room like a man who has traveled back in time to a place in his past he had been trying hard to forget. Seen in the dim light pouring in through a shuttered window, Fyke looked suddenly ancient, his broad red face marked with lines and fissures. Ki brought the cups over—three delicate bowls in blue porcelain with gold rims—and they sat there for a time, allowing the formality of the ceremony to be honored for a while, as was the Vietnamese custom.

“Okay,” said Ki. “You not look good. What happen?”

“I’ve been in Changi Prison.”

Ki shook his head, as he looked Fyke up and down.

“Very bad prison. How long?”

“About a month.”

“Long time. Look like shit. Why you in Changi Prison?”

“They said I lost my ship.”

Nguyen Ki’s face tightened, and his eyes flicked across to Dalton, rested briefly there with a glitter, and then went back to Fyke.

“What kind ship you lost?”

“A tanker named the
Mingo Dubai.
Five-hundred-foot. About fifteen years old. What they call a gypsy tanker. A hull for rent. We made runs from Aden and Chittagong to Burma, through Malacca to Jakarta, all the way to Port Moresby. And then back. About a month ago, we were boarded by pirates at the southern end of the Strait—”

Ki made a face, showing his teeth in a skeptical leer.

“Hah! How pirates board big ship like that?”

“They had friends on board. Serbians.”

Ki sipped at his tea, glancing from Fyke to Dalton.

“Once, you with our American friends. Then, after bombing, not. So, after disgrace, you run away to sea, like Tuan Jim?”

Fyke had to grin, although the words bit deep.

“Yes. Like Tuan Jim. Hiding my shame. And then they took my boat and they killed all my friends. And everybody thinks I’m a liar, that I got drunk and sank the boat.”

“Yes,” said Nguyen Ki, his eyes half closed and his gaze downward at the steam rising off his tea. “And are you liar who sink his boat?”

“No. I’m not. Those bastards took my boat and killed my men.”

Ki sipped at his tea again and set it back down. In the silence, they heard the whine of tuk-tuks and jitneys going up and down the alley and the hiss and thump of the presses working. Ki sat back and looked at Fyke for a long time. The old man had that quality they called
gravitas.
It was a little like being in court and waiting for a judge to come to a decision.

“Okay,” he said, glancing again at Dalton. “I think you no liar. Boat not sunk. Pirates take it. You want to find out who took it?”

“Yes. And I need your help.”

Ki’s eyes dropped again, and then he came back up.

“You go ’way long time,
Missa
Fyke. Many of the old names, old numbers, not around anymore. I not work for anybody long time.”

“People still talk to you, Nguyen. You still listen.”

Nguyen smiled.

“Yes. People still talk. This ship, she a pretty big boat, yes?”

“Yes. Five hundred feet.”

“If the Malays take it, they cannot go to China to sell it anymore. China want her own ships, also want much trade, so no more pirates. The China people only steal boat themselves, or turn pirates in to Singapore. So, Malay and Dyak pirates not taking big ships in long time. Singapore Navy patrol the Strait. Even in Sulawesi waters. Indonesian Navy and KIPAM patrol all way from Jakarta to Papua New Guinea now. And the Americans all over too. Very dangerous. Still take small boats and sometimes make toll from big tankers and freighters. So, not the same as before.”

He paused, refilled their cups.

“This boat, maybe five hundred feet long. Have white tower at back end? Then, long, low forward, with big hatches all along top? Red on top?”

“Yes,” said Fyke, leaning forward in his chair, spilling his tea. Ki nodded, as if Fyke had confirmed something for him, but all that Dalton could see was that Fyke had just described almost every tanker working the seven seas all the world over. Nguyen Ki went inward for a time.

“Okay. You know Bontang?”

Fyke thought about the question.

“Yes. I do. Small fishing town on the eastern coast of Borneo. Maybe two thousand people.”

“More now. Big tin mine open up thirty miles north, got conveyor run ten mile, all the way to sea, to fill ore ships. So lots of people live in Bontang until tin runs out. Many young boys from Kuta and Denpasar went up to Bontang for the mine work. Ten days on and ten days off. Lots of money to spend. But after Kuta, Bontang pretty sleepy, eh? Kuta, lots of girls, but Bontang only have hootch girls— number one
Gee-Eye,
all time
boom-boom—”

Here he broke into a cackle, his eyes shut tight and his teeth bared, as he enjoyed his own joke. Fyke and Dalton let him enjoy it. After a moment, he settled down again.

“So, Kuta boys take company chopper to Diapati. Three hundred miles to Diapati. Lots of
boom-boom
in Diapati. Pretty girls. Clubs. Time back, one boy mother, Niddya Chinangah, she bring in her boy’s clothes from three months of mine work. She tells me story. Her boy, Ali Chinangah, take chopper from Bontang to Diapati. Ten boys, all in chopper. Big yellow chopper. They crossing the strait between Borneo and Sulawesi, sun go down so very dark, and pilot say look down there. Down below is a big tanker. Can’t see too much in dark, but big white tower like a T-shirt on a hanger”—Nguyen stretched his arms out to indicate the wings of the wheelhouse deck— “and long front deck with lots of big hatches. Big ship.”

“Why did the chopper pilot care about it?” asked Dalton. “They must see ten a week in that channel.”

“No. Not that many. And all other ship have lights on.”

Fyke was listening so hard he was getting a headache.

“This ship was running
dark?”
he said.

“Yes. Running dark. No lights. Nobody on deck.”

“And this was . . . how long ago?”

“Three, four weeks.”

“Three weeks ago. Thirty knots an hour. Two thousand nautical miles, give or take a few, from the Kepulauan Lingga Light to the Sulawesi channel. They could do that in four, maybe five days. Dammit, Mikey, the timing is right. Nguyen, was there any flag at the staff?”

Ki shook his head.

“No. No flag.”

“What direction was it headed?”

Ki shrugged.

“North. Maybe northeast.”

“Going
around
Sulawesi,” said Fyke, to himself. “Why?”

Ki was shaking his head, impatience flickering across his face.

“No, no.
Lissen.
This not story Niddya want to tell. Like you say, all day boats like that come through Sulawesi channel. This different. Her boy says pilot come around again, maybe see if boat is in trouble, and somebody run out onto deck and shoots at them.”

“Shoots at them!” said Fyke. “With what?”

Ki didn’t know.

“Just a sparkle-twinkle-crackle from a little chatter gun, all dark against big deck. Never hit nothing, but the pilot he goes up high and gets out of there.”

“Did he call it in?” asked Dalton.

Ki shrugged that off, grinning.

“Call in to who? No business. Maybe people on boat think chopper is pirates. Everybody trust nobody in open water there. People can be fisherman one day and pirate next. So, maybe ship captain frightened too.”

“No honest ship’s captain would let his ship run dark,” said Fyke. “He was
sneaking
through that channel. But where the
fook
was he going?”

“Diapati’s a port,” said Dalton.

Fyke shook his head.

“Mikey, my lad, you can’t take a ship that’s supposed to be sunk in the Malacca Strait and just steam her all-happy-go-lucky into Diapati with her name painted out. If that was the
Mingo Dubai,
they were headed for someplace where they could change her looks, paint her up brand-new. Get new registry papers. Alter her superstructure enough to disguise her. They’d need a dry dock big enough to hold her. And it couldn’t be someplace on the sea-lanes either. Nor any port where there’s the rule of law, or a Coast Guard, or a Navy. It would have to be . . . Christ, I have no
fooking
idea. There’s no place like that in Southeast Asia anymore.”

“Who would?” said Dalton.

Fyke stared at him.

“Who would
what?”

“Who
would
have a
fooking
idea?”

“Fooking
? Do I actually
talk
like that?”

“Only when you’re speaking. Come on, Ray. This is your turf.”

“Nguyen, how much of our old network is still intact?”

Ki shook his head sadly, made a very Proustian
ou sont les neiges d’antan
face, raised his hands to Buddha.

“Only a few here, in Kuta. Diapati, nobody, since Cao Ki died—”

“Cao Ki died? He was only forty. An athlete.”

“Big mako shark. Right off shore. Ten feet out. Children watch.”