The Raft (29 page)

“Maggie,” Rachael scolded, patting Tiger
Print on the back. She was genuinely angry, disappointed in
Maggie.

“Oh, don't worry,” Tiger Print pulled herself
away from Rachael's hug, collecting herself. “No, no, I'm okay. You
have Gandalf's key, ah?” Tiger Print said, looking up at Maggie
through bloodshot eyes.

“Yes,” Maggie nodded. “Now, if you can show
us the door that it opens...”

“Yes, yes...” Tiger Print said, climbing to
her feet. She plodded in her bare feet for the aft stairwell,
dabbing at her cheeks with her handkerchief. Maggie limped to
follow. Rachael reached up and took Maggie firmly by the arm.

“Really? Right now? You have to do this now?”
she seethed.

“Trust me,” Maggie said, pulling her arm free
of Rachael's grasp. She limped off, following Tiger Print.

#

At its construction, the
Kalakala
had
sported a below decks bar called the Tap Room, located off the
ferry's engine room. While the Passenger Deck had its lady's
lounge, exclusively for the use of the ship's female passengers,
the Tap Room was the dark, dank, smoky escape for their male
counterparts.

With shower facilities and its titular beer
supply, it had serviced the burly dockyard workers who rode the
ferry between the city's waterfront and the naval dockyards of
Bremerton.

Inevitably, the toxic mix of testosterone and
liquor that the Tap Room attracted turned into more trouble than it
was worth to the owners of the
Kalakala
, the Black Ball
Line. During World War Two, the Tap Room was shut down, closed off
from the rest of the vessel. Its access stairwell was eventually
completely removed.

Though Gandalf's restoration of the
Kalakala
attempted to restore the ferry back to its original
glory, paying attention of every possible detail, the space that
had once been occupied by the below decks bar he designated for a
very different use. Its access stairwell was completely closed off,
hidden underneath a flush hatchway in the floor of the car deck. A
single spiral ladder led down from the hatch, deep into the bilge
of the old ferry. Illuminated by a single bare bulb, the bottom
rung of the ladder faced onto a large, foreboding steel door with a
single huge keyhole and handle.

It was Gandalf's vault, hidden away in the
belly of his restored ferry. He'd converted the whole of the old
Tap Room into one great armored safe. It was where he stored his
gold, the precious metal that backed his Exchange, the rock on
which the currency of the Raft was built.

Sum, his money, had real value. Unlike the
greenbacks printed by the US Government, the Raft would tolerate no
fiat currency. Sum kept the Raft free from the worst excesses of
the mainland: inflation, runway taxation, government waste. Aboard
the Raft, a dollar – or an hour – in your pocket really meant
something. It meant wealth. A store of value. It couldn't be taken
away by a faceless bureaucrat either by edict or through the need
to hide his own reckless indebtedness by debasing the whole of the
money supply. Backed by gold, an hour of Sum was something with
real, objective value. Stored away safe in Gandalf's vault.

A vault to which Maggie now had the key.

Despite the large gathered crowd, Rachael,
Maggie, and Tiger Print were able to make their way towards the
rear of the large car deck without encountering a soul. The
spectators were standing at the bow of the vessel, feverishly
watching the unfolding races and oblivious to anything else. Tiger
Print led Maggie and Rachael directly to the hidden hatch at the
rear of the car deck unobserved.

Maggie had perhaps stepped across the hatch a
thousand times in her years of coming and going aboard the
Kalakala,
yet until Tiger Print looped a finger through its
handle, she was unaware that the hatch was below her feet. It was
hidden in plain sight, masterfully integrated into the car deck.
Just one more square yard of steel.

With great effort, Tiger Print lifted the
hatch, swinging it up on its old hinges. It groaned with the agony
of a door that was seldom opened and closed. Halfway up, the weight
proved too much for Tiger Print. Maggie and Rachael quickly caught
the door, pulling it up and over and back down onto the car deck
with a clang. Tiger Print reached a hand down into the darkness,
snapping on a switch. Down below, a single fluorescent flicked to
life in the depths of the ship.

“Down there,” Tiger Print said, sniffing and
pointing down into the gloom. She wiped her eyes with a
handkerchief and blew her nose.

“If you don't mind,” Maggie said, gesturing
for Tiger Print to lead her down into the darkness.

“What?” Tiger Print said dizzily. “Oh,
alright,” and Tiger Print stepped forward, carefully hooking her
toes onto the ladder and descending.

“Maggie.” Rachael gave Maggie a stern glance
as Tiger Print vanished below them. Maggie didn't return the
disgusted stare, she simply waited until the ladder was clear and
started down the rungs herself.

Irritated, Rachael followed.

There was barely enough room at the base of
the ladder for all three women. Tiger Print and Maggie squeezed
into the cramped antechamber, their bare feet standing on the very
hull of the
Kalakala
itself, the frigid waters of the Puget
Sound only an inch below. As Rachael came down the ladder, she
paused a few rungs from the bottom. There wouldn't be enough space
for her and the others before the giant steel door.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, still above
Maggie and Tiger Print's heads. “I'm climbing back up.”

“No, just wait there for a second,” Maggie
replied. “Let me open the vault.”

“What? Why? Why did you make all of us climb
down here?”

“To answer one last question,” Maggie said
cryptically.

“What? What question?”

“The only question that's really mattered all
along,” Maggie said, fishing the key out of her jeans. “Why was
Meerkat killed?”

“And the answer is in the vault?” Tiger Print
asked in surprise.

“It is,” Maggie said with all gravity.

In the gloom, she put the wide, flat key into
the oversized keyhole. It slid into place and Maggie wiggled the
key. It turned clockwise to the sound of a great many gears and
levers moving inside the door.

Unlocked, the door shuddered noticeably
inward.

Maggie put her shoulder into it, pushing on
the door with all her might. From her perch up on the ladder,
Rachael could only see the dark floor of the vault as the door
swung open. Following it, Maggie vanished into the blackness
inside. Tiger Print hesitantly watched as Maggie stumbled forward
into the room. She seemed curious, she was no longer crying.
Slowly, she stepped forward, also disappearing into the blackness
of the vault.

Rachael found herself alone, still clinging
to the ladder.

Hurriedly, she climbed down, turning to the
vault and seeing nothing in its darkness. Maggie and Tiger Print
had stepped into its depths, but Rachael couldn't make out their
silhouettes. Rachael moved forward, reaching out before her
blindly. She could see nothing in the darkness, and felt around for
anything before her.

There was nothing. Where had Maggie and Tiger
Print gone? There must be a light, Rachael reasoned, instinctively
turning to her left. She groped forward until her hands came in
contact with the wall of the vault. Weren't light switches always
to the left of a door? Rachael asked herself. She'd never really
given it much thought, but now in the pitch black she wished she
had. She felt around, running her fingers over the cold steel walls
of the vault. She found something that could be an old-style twist
light switch. She grabbed it firmly between her thumb and
forefinger and gave it a hard twist to the right.

Three banks of long, white fluorescent tubes
flicked up against the ceiling of the vault. From total darkness to
glaring brightness, the vault was suddenly bathed in a torrent of
light.

Rachael raised an arm to shield her eyes, but
not before catching a glimpse of the blurs of Maggie and Tiger
Print standing in the center of the vault. Grunts of pain filled
the echoing room and everyone tried to adjust to the flickering
fluorescents.

As her eyes adjusted to the glare, Rachael
began to comprehend what she saw. Or rather, comprehend what she
didn't see. The vault, lined on three walls by heavy-grade
shelving, was almost totally empty. Nothing glittered in the
bright, stark light that was blinding Rachael. No gold. Blinking,
Rachael strained to examine the room. Nothing, just a
moderate-sized lockbox at one end of the room.

“Where's the...” Rachael began, but had
already answered her own question. “There's no gold.”

“No,” Maggie said, her hands coming away from
her face. “No, no gold.”

“You knew, didn't you?” Rachael asked.

“I suspected,” Maggie answered.

“Then why bring us all the way down here?”
Rachael looked between Maggie and Tiger Print. “Did you know?”
Rachael asked Tiger.

Tiger Print's eyes were again full of tears.
“Oh yes,” she replied meekly. “All Gandalf's talk of a secret room
full of gold, it was all so much hot air. All our money, you see,
he sunk into this ship. The restoration, that was what Gandalf
really cared about. The Exchange... well, that just happened. And
it so quickly got out of hand. The first time there was fear of a
run of the Exchange, Gandalf was able to quash it by implying the
existence of this gold room.

“But that too so quickly got away from him.
Soon it was what everyone associated with Sum, the reason they
believed in it. They trusted it because the gold backed it. So
Gandalf had to keep on lying, he had to keep up the pretense. You
see, as long as everyone trusted in Sum, believed that this room
was filled with gold, then there was no need for any of it. If word
had escaped, however, that this vault was really empty this whole
time...”

“Then there'd have been a run on the Exchange
and Gandalf would have had to open up the vault and prove the
gold's non-existence.”

“Yes,” Tiger Print said softly, her small
voice echoing off the empty vault. “Ironic, really.” And she again
began to cry.

“And
this
,” Rachael asked, stepping
forward and peering around the vault in wonder, “was why Meerkat
was killed?”

“Yes,” Maggie replied, stepping up to the
lock box.

“She knew? She knew there was no gold? She
knew Gandalf's secret, and he killed her because of it?”

Maggie flipped open the lid of the lockbox
and looked down into its bottom. She reached in and came back with
a bundle of greenbacks. They were old and well used, wrapped in a
rubber band. She flipped through the stack of hundreds and showed
it to Rachael.

“Gandalf must have brought her down here to
give her the blackmail money that she gave to Horus. This was the
sum total of Gandalf's wealth. Greenbacks. What money he had was in
dryfoot currency, not gold. Here, in his vault.” Maggie tossed the
bundle of notes back into the lockbox.

Rachael's mind raced. She was desperately
attempting to piece it together – put together the whole picture as
Maggie had so obviously already done. But it was all bouncing
around in her head: Meerkat, Horus, the Senator, Galahad. Her teeth
hurt and the positive effects of her breakfast were starting to
wear off. She, frankly, had just about had enough for one day.

“Then Gandalf was paying Meerkat to smear the
Senator? Using her and Horus to implicate Hadian in a sex
scandal?”

“As you heard me tell the Kid. Gandalf's
fingerprints are all over it. But this empty vault explains so much
more than what I told Galahad...”

“Like?” Rachael prodded.

“Like Meerkat's double identity: Joanna
Church and Rebbecca Oldrich. Why the SPD was unable to spot that
fake ID in Meerkat's pocket.”

Maggie looked up at the flickering bulbs
above her, blinking, then directly at Rachael.

“Because it wasn't a fake ID. It was a real
one. A real, government issued ID.”

It hit Rachael. “Witness Protection.”

“Exactly. Rebbecca Oldrich was gone, replaced
by Joanna Church. Rebbecca's past life, the warrants in Arizona,
had been wiped clean. Meerkat was leaving the Raft not because she
was pregnant or to escape Horus, but because she'd made a deal with
the authorities. Meerkat was putting on her boots to claim a new
life.”

“But informing on Horus doesn't get you
Witness Protection,” Rachael said, watching Maggie's face
intently.

“No, it most certainly does not. Horus is –
was a small fish. Someone the police could have scooped up at any
time. No, in rehab it wasn't the local authorities concerned about
drugs that had approached Meerkat. It had been the Feds. The Kid.
And it wasn't Horus that interested him, but Gandalf. Gandalf and
his Exchange. Any information that could undermine the Exchange
could undermine the whole Raft. In trade, Meerkat would get her old
life erased. A new identity. A new beginning.”

“Galahad,” Rachael hissed in shock. “He knew
all along.”

“That's why he reacted so aggressively. The
blockade. It wasn't the Seattle Police implicated in Meerkat's
death, but the FBI. They were climbing all over Horus's boat that
night, not looking for him, but for Meerkat. She was late for her
rendezvous with the Feds. When she washed up dead in the morning...
they had to try to keep a lid on the whole incident. If that meant
sinking the Raft in the process, so be it.”

“But he didn't see the Senator getting pulled
into the mess?”

“No, Gandalf's plan almost worked. All the
pieces were in place. All he needed to happen was for Horus to get
arrested. For him to open his big mouth on the record. Then the
situation would have exploded in the FBI's face. Dead informant,
Senator implicated in torrid sex scandal. If only I hadn't gone
ashore. If only I haven't intervened.”