International Incident Page 14

  Captain van Metier shook his head no. “We’ve handed him over to the local police. He’s in the Laem Chabang jail. He can’t bother you, I assure you. With any luck, you’ll never have to lay eyes on him again.”

  Her lawyer-brain wondered if that could possibly true, but given that she knew less than nothing about Thai criminal procedure, she simply nodded. “That would be nice. I’m ready to have a conversation with the people at the embassy now,” she told him.

  His face tightened. “That’s not typically how this works. I’ll need to go through the proper channels at The Sacred Lotus, and they’ll interface with the ambassador’s people. The diplomatic dancing will take some time. And we’ll need to give them your schedule going forward.”

  He was watching her face closely while he spoke, and she got the distinct impression he was trying to gauge her reaction. Creepy. The skin on her arms felt as if it if were crawling. Oh, stop it, she chided herself. You don’t like the man, and he is an insufferable prig; but, this is his ship and he’s probably in a near-panic over what happened today despite his refusal to admit it.

  She gave him a tired smiled. “That’s fine, too. I’ll be sure to provide my contact information to Julia or Bruce so the authorities can take a statement from me when they’re ready.” They reached the hallway to her room and she stifled a yawn. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

  “Of course. Don’t hesitate to call for me if you should need anything.” He bowed stiffly. She walked away from him as fast as she could, eager to get back to her suite and away from his penetrating stare.

  * * *

  Jan van Metier held his breath as he watched Sasha Connelly try the door to her room without running her key card past the reader—testing it, to ensure that it was locked. It was. She waved her keycard at the small red eye, waited a moment, then opened the door, and walked into the room. Her desire to check the lock was an understandable impulse in light of the attack, but also one that could have gone badly for him. He’d remembered to reactivate her locks after that idiot Derek had let her get the best of him. But until he witnessed her unlocking the door, he hadn’t been entirely sure the reactivation had worked.

  He breathed out slowly. That was one worry to tick off his outsized list of vulnerabilities. There remained plenty of areas of danger, he well knew. He would have to manage the Connelly woman’s interactions with her embassy, for one. For another, he’d have to stay apprised of the Thai authorities’ investigation into the botched abduction. Thale had assured him the man was a professional and would maintain his silence. He had to trust that confidentiality would extend to him, as well as to Thale. His contact at Thale failed to mention that it kept key local law enforcement personnel on its payroll, but he knew that to be the case from personal experience. On balance, he felt that his exposure was limited.

  He was somewhat concerned that, as word spread among the passengers about the tussle between Mrs. Connelly and the gunman, there’d be some alarm about the ship’s safety. But he’d already decided that he’d insinuate that Mrs. Connelly was to blame for what happened to her. If she’d simply reported to the library as instructed, she wouldn’t have been accosted. He imagined that would be enough to quell any concerns.

  Still, he would feel better about everything once they were out of Thai waters. The stress and strain of the situation was making him antsy; he craved the release that came from chasing the dragon. But he knew this was not the time for indulgence. Discipline and rigor would see him through—and once the passengers disembarked in Ho Chi Minh City, he would reward himself with a visit to his favorite Vietnamese heroin purveyor.

  Steady, Jan, he told himself. Keep a steady hand, and you will sail right through this storm.

  32

  Leo had just checked on his prisoners for the zillionth time when Binh came running up the hallway and tugged on Leo’s shirtsleeve. He followed Binh along the corridor to the stern of the ship. Binh pointed. A police speedboat was zipping across the waves toward them, followed by a second vessel. At last, reinforcements were coming.

  He turned to Binh. “It’s okay. They’re going to help us.” He had to trust his tone would convey his message even if his words were meaningless.

  The panic in Binh’s eyes remained. Several crew members ran past them, gesturing toward the boats and shouting at one another. He realized that after the shooting, he’d never addressed the men. People had scattered during the excitement, and his focus had been elsewhere. Now he was going to regret it.

  Frustrated, Leo set off to look for Thiha Bo. He found him manning the instrument panel, ensuring that the boat didn’t drift off course.

  “The police are coming,” Thiha Bo remarked.

  “Right, and the men have spotted the boats. We never talked to them about what to expect. I’m afraid they’re going to panic.”

  “Yes,” Thiha Bo agreed. “The men will be scared. Most of us don’t have the proper paperwork. Some of us may have legal problems back home.”

  The man’s voice was steady, but something about his words made Leo search his face. “Do you have legal problems?”

  He swallowed. “I owe a debt I cannot pay.” He lowered his eyes to the floor.

  Leo exhaled. “I’ll explain the situation to the authorities, but I need you to help me calm everyone down. I’m afraid someone’s going to do something really stupid.”

  “Such as dive overboard despite not knowing how to swim?” Thiha Bo asked, pointing to a thin Cambodian who was poised on the prow, prepared to do exactly that.

  Leo raced out and pulled him back onto the deck while the Burmese man hurriedly made the rounds from group to group assuring them in several languages that they were safe. The haunted looks the crew members gave him made clear they didn’t fully believe Thiha Bo’s claims. They just needed to have a little faith, Leo told himself. As soon as Mel and the police boarded, their trust would pay off.

  The lead boat pulled up close and two police officers fashioned a two-by-four into a temporary ramp leading up to the deck of the fishing boat. They gave Mel a boost and allowed her to board first, followed by a tall, stooped man who was clearly a Westerner—he had to be Ron.

  “Mel,” Leo called, waving so she’d see him.

  She walked straight toward him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and whispered, “I’m sorry about how this is going to go down. Just trust me. It’ll work out.”

  He was still processing her words, which sounded eerily like the ones he’d spoken to the crew, when she turned and shouted to Ron, “I’ll secure the prisoner.”

  The prisoner? It took Leo a moment to realize she was talking about him, but at about the time the metal handcuffs clinked shut around his wrists, it all fell into place. He studied her, but her face was a blank mask.

  She’d asked him to trust her. It didn’t seem as though there were another choice, so he cleared his throat and said, “There’s a handgun in my right front pocket. It’s locked and loaded.”

  Her eyes sparked. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice before she slid her hand into his pocket and retrieved the gun. “Take a seat.” She pushed down on his shoulder gently and he lowered himself to a wooden chest that was pushed up against the starboard wall.

  He sat and watched in dismay as the Thai police streamed onto the boat and swarmed the men, cuffing them to several long lengths of chain. An officer paraded a line of men past him, and he saw tears shining in Binh’s eyes. He looked away.

  * * *

  Binh tried to focus on staying calm. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, clearing his mind of all the chatter that threatened to break him. He was bound at the wrists, but this time not by a piece of fishing rope. Gleaming metal bracelets connected by a loop to a long chain hung from his hands. Uniformed officers shouted in rapid-fire Thai. Although he didn’t recognize all the words they yelled, he knew they were demanding papers, proof that the crew had migrated properly and were working legally on the boat. He also knew that no one in
the line of shackled men had such documents.

  Just breathe.

  When the officers reached him, he raised his eyes and met their stares but could not find any words. They moved on. The man in front of him, a Thai national, responded to their questions with an answer that repeatedly invoked Captain Vũ’s name.

  It hardly mattered though. No matter what happened now to Captain Vũ or the white man in the second cage, Mina’s killer, this was the end of the road for Binh. He had no money to bribe the police. He would go to prison and shame his family. He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  33

  Leo sat on the rickety rattan chair that Mel had produced from the bowels of the ship and stared unyieldingly at Ron, the lead legal attaché to the United States Embassy in Bangkok. Ron stared back. Mel cleared her throat uneasily, her eyes darting around the empty captain’s quarters. The cages had been removed, Vũ and the American taken somewhere—where, Leo didn’t have a clue. Ron hadn’t said a word, but Leo damned sure wasn’t going to break the silence.

  In the end, Mel spoke first. “Leo, you have to understand. There are optics involved.”

  He snorted. Of all the governmental buzzwords that gave him hives, optics was the worst of the entire rotten bunch. All it meant was that the speaker was advocating deception for the sake of appearance.

  She pressed on, undaunted by his reaction. “It’s true. This is a delicate balancing act. There are political considerations here.”

  “Such as?”

  Ron spoke up. “Such as, you’re an American national who just shot another American national on a fishing boat you’re not supposed to be on.”

  “He killed a girl!”

  “Allegedly.”

  Leo gritted his teeth. “If the jackboots out there would ask the men they’re rounding up, at least two of them can corroborate it.”

  Mel put a hand up. “Hang on. You can relax about the crew.”

  “You want me to relax about the crew you’ve got handcuffed and who are being interrogated as to whether their papers are in order?”

  “Yes. They’re not going to be detained. Once they’re identified, there’s a representative from a seafarer’s welfare organization out of Sriracha Harbour waiting in the speedboat to take them to the mariner’s center.” She huffed out an angry breath. “But, hey, go ahead and underestimate us.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was; he should have trusted the legal attaché’s office more than he had. “What’s going to happen to them at this center?”

  “It depends on where they’re from, what kind of physical condition they’re in, and what they want to do next,” Ron said. “These folks at the NGOs are pros at navigating the social services and helping the mariners, okay? They’ll get them set up with medical care, housing, that sort of thing. They’re in good hands. They’ll be better off than they were on this blasted boat—that much is for sure.”

  The tension drained out of Leo’s body. “And what about me?”

  Mel looked pointedly at Ron. Ron coughed into his fist.

  “Ron?” Leo insisted.

  “You’re going to have to spend a night in the lockup.”

  “I’m going to Thai prison?” Leo hoped a clarification would prove him wrong.

  “A holding cell, to be precise about it. Only for one night. Your … er … unofficial status is causing a bit of a problem. Homeland Security isn’t letting us claim you as a contractor or an agent or anything else. You’re strictly a civilian as far as the Royal Thailand Police are concerned. A civilian who shot a professional armed security guard retained by a Thai company. You see how it looks?”

  He did see how it looked. But, prison? His throat felt dusty. “If that’s the case, how can you be so sure it’s just going to be an overnight?”

  Mel and Ron exchanged another glance. “Officially, the Department of Justice isn’t going to get involved. But Hank knows someone who knows someone. Money’s going to exchange hands. It’s just taking some time to get all the transfers ironed out. And the police need to be able to say they arrested you, otherwise it’ll look bad.”

  Leo shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. And, yet, it was.

  “No good deed goes unpunished, huh?” Mel said gently.

  “Something like that.” His voice sounded gruff to his own ears. “Can I call Sasha?”

  Yet another look passed between the legats before Ron answered, “I’m sorry, son. That one phone call thing isn’t really the way it works here. And we have to hand you over now.”

  “I’ll get in touch with Sasha,” Mel promised.

  * * *

  “He’s in prison?” Sasha repeated the words, bewildered. For a moment, she actually couldn’t parse out the meaning of the phrase.

  “Yes,” Mel confirmed.

  Sasha stared at the phone in her hand as if it must be malfunctioning, then she shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Conn—Leo is in prison?”

  Julia took an uncertain step forward, as if she regretted having gotten a call through to the embassy, after all, and wanted to wrest the phone out of Sasha’s hands. Bruce placed a hand on the hostess’s arm to stop her. Sasha ignored them both and focused her full attention on the phone in her hand. Maybe if she concentrated just a tiny bit harder, Mel’s words would start to make sense.

  “Yes. He’s going to be okay. He’s in isolation and we have a guard who’s … friendly … assigned to him. In the morning, as soon as his paperwork is processed, Ron will personally bring him to the ship. Okay?”

  No, it wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay, she wanted to snap. But she bit down on her lip instead. She knew this wasn’t Mel’s fault. Lashing out at her lone ally in the country would be a mistake.

  “Does he need a lawyer?” she asked. Finding a lawyer to represent her husband was something she could control, something she could do instead of sitting like a lump in a too-big, too-empty cruise ship suite while her husband cooled his heels in a jail cell.

  “Not really. What he needs is the intervention of a good friend, and that’s in the works. I promise.”

  Sasha deflated. “Okay. So I just, what, sit tight?”

  “Yes, exactly. But now we need to talk about something else. The hostess from the cruise, the one who called the Embassy, said you were attacked.”

  “Oh, right.” The entire episode with the guy in the wetsuit had faded from her mind, supplanted by the news that Connelly was in prison for commandeering a fishing boat and shooting some security guard.

  “What happened?”

  “I was sitting on the balcony outside a friend’s room—a woman who hadn’t gone ashore. We had a clear view of my suite, and we saw two men, Americans, dressed in black go storming into my room with guns in their hands.”

  “Two men?”

  “Yeah. Not long after they came back out, Captain van Metier confronted them. They argued for a minute, but then he made an announcement telling the men to report to one location and the women to another.”

  “Did he say The Water Lily had been hijacked?”

  Sasha tried to remember. “No. He said that it wasn’t a safety exercise, but that he needed to do a headcount, urgently. I’m sure he was trying to avoid setting off a panic.”

  “Makes sense. Go on.”

  “My friend headed to the library, but I knew the men were looking for me, so I didn’t go. Instead, I went down to the deck with the engine room and the mechanicals and stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the men were both wearing wetsuits, so I figured they’d boarded from the starboard side. I wanted to see how they got on the boat.”

  “Wetsuits? Black wetsuits?”

  “Well, yeah, they were black. Aren’t most of them? Anyway, I looked over the edge and saw two black and red personal watercraft vehicles. I couldn’t figure out how they’d scaled the hull, but later I saw one of them leaving. He had suction cups that he used.”

  “Why’d he leave?”

&n
bsp; “They got a call. He said … Oh, my gosh, he said he had to quell a rebellion on Captain Vũ’s boat. That’s … that’s where Connelly was?”

  “Right. So, Austin Williams was on The Water Lily attempting to kidnap you when he was called away to Vũ’s fishing boat, where your husband shot him.”

  Sasha couldn’t seem to form words. “That’s crazy,” she finally managed.

  “And his partner? Where’s he now? He works with a guy named Derek McGraw.”

  “Well if Mr. McGraw is the guy who stayed behind, we had a … um … fight. He got the worst of it. He ended up in the brig, where he was held until the Laem Chabang police took him into custody.”

  “He’s in the jail, right now?”

  “As far as I know. Didn’t van Metier give you a statement?”

  “It was bare bones.” Mel’s tone suggested she wasn’t too happy about it, either.

  “This whole thing is giving me a headache. I don’t like coincidences,” Sasha said.

  “Oh, there’s no coincidence. McGraw and Williams are the men you saw murdering Mina this morning.”

  “Mel, I’m sorry. I’m crashing hard. I can’t think straight. Can we talk tomorrow?” Sasha ended the call. She was drained and ready to collapse onto her bed.

  Bruce and Julia whispered to one another for a moment and then stood, side by side, in the doorway to the sitting room eyeing her nervously.

  “What?” she finally said.

  Bruce began, “Ms. McCandless-Connelly—”

  “You saved my life. I think we’re on a first-name basis at this point.”

  “Sasha, then. Julia and I recommend that you not mention Mr. Connelly’s current situation to anyone on the ship.”

  Her husband’s imprisonment wasn’t exactly the sort of news she’d want to spread far and wide anyway, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why?”

  “Captain van Metier is a bit of a stickler,” Julia explained. “The legal attaché I spoke to, Ms. Anders, made it very clear that Mr. Connelly’s incarceration is the result of a regrettable error that will be cleared up in short order. But, all the same, knowing the captain, he’ll be very upset to hear that one of his passengers ended up on the wrong side of the law.”