The Consignment (16 page)

CHAPTER 20

“If Trevanian stole the bill of lading,” said Rita, “where’s Rossiter?” She sat in the passenger seat of my car, trying to make sense of my story. My lack of ready answers wasn’t doing much to help her in the task. After leaving Rossiter’s apartment I’d gone straight down to the doorman, who’d confirmed that a guy answering Trevanian’s description had gone up to Rossiter’s apartment sometime in the previous hour. At my request, the doorman checked the security monitor for the basement garage. The space for Rossiter’s Lotus was empty.

“I don’t know that he stole the bill of lading,” I said. “I’m just telling you how it looked.”

“What’s the alternate view?”

“Maybe he and Rossiter came to some agreement.”

“Then they smashed the porcelain just for kicks?” She glanced across and saw I wasn’t in the mood for wisecracks. “Okay,” she conceded. “So it looks like Trevanian stole it. I guess you must have noticed when he stole it. Right when you were tied up, talking with Lagundi.”

“They’ve parted company.”

“That’s what they’re telling you.”

But I’d already considered the possibility that Trevanian and Lagundi had double-teamed me. Considered, and dismissed it. Lagundi’s break with Trevanian was real. Now I told Rita to try Channon again, and she dialed on her cell phone.

“Not there,” she said, holding the phone to her ear. She suggested leaving something on his voice mail, but I shook my head. Explaining how the deal had collapsed around our ears, and how we were on our way to the docks to make sure Trevanian hadn’t gotten hold of the Haplon weapons—that wasn’t a message to be sent over the insecure ether. Rita hung up.

If Trevanian had the bearer bill of lading, he had control of the Haplon containers aboard the
Sebastopol,
and if he had control of them, he could move them. Worse, with the compliance of the Ukrainian captain and crew, he could remove the materiel from the containers in which I’d planted the beacons, and after that we’d be chasing the weapons blind. I needed to speak with the ship’s captain. If he was formally notified that proper payment for the goods hadn’t been made, and that consequently legal ownership of the goods, despite Trevanian’s possession of the bill of lading, remained vested in Haplon Systems, the onus would then be on the captain to unload the containers at our command. Frankly, I wasn’t confident a fine point of U.S. commercial law was going to make much of an impression on the man.

We left the car in the dock parking lot and hurried over to the gates. The guard took his eyes off his portable TV just long enough to register the Customs badge Rita flashed at him. He pushed the sign-in book in our direction. Rita started asking after Trevanian, giving a description, but I cut her off.

“Leave it,” I said, touching her elbow as I looked across the dock to the
Sebastopol
. “He’s here.”

She followed my gaze to the ship. We were eighty yards away, but the two men walking along the ship’s deck were instantly recognizable. Trevanian in his tan slacks and blue blazer, and the bearded mate. They passed by the bridge, descended to the next deck, and walked along to the hold, where they stopped and looked down.

I hustled Rita around into the shadow behind the gatehouse while the guard returned his attention to the TV. After a moment, Trevanian and the mate walked along the deck a short way, then the mate gripped some railings and climbed down out of sight. Trevanian followed him down, now the ship’s decks were empty. I started out for the ship, Rita caught up with me.

“Wait up,” she said. She gestured along the dock toward the Customs post. “I’ll get some of our officers to come aboard with us.”

“Later maybe. Not yet.”

“You tell me what you’re doing, Ned, or I’ll go get them myself.”

“Trevanian doesn’t know Lagundi’s made us another offer,” I said, still walking.

“I’m listening.”

“Rossiter hasn’t heard what she’s offering either.”

“Ah-ha.”

“If we can get this back to where it was two hours ago, maybe Rossiter might be inclined to forget whatever happened at his apartment this morning and accept Lagundi’s final offer.”

“This deal isn’t salvageable. You don’t even know where Rossiter is.” She looked at me, almost jogging to keep up. “Where’s Rossiter?”

The killer question, one she’d asked me several times since I’d picked her up, and just like those earlier times, I didn’t answer her. After discovering that the bill of lading was missing, I’d made a thorough search of Rossiter’s apartment, fearing, I admit, the worst. But the closets contained nothing except clothes, and under the beds there were only shoes and puffballs of lint. I looked in every corner of the apartment where it was possible to cram a corpse, and I found nothing. That didn’t necessarily mean Rossiter was still alive, but it gave me plausible grounds for hope. Rita’s harping on the question of Rossiter’s whereabouts was an unwelcome reminder that hope was all I really had.

I climbed the gangway, Rita followed reluctantly. Stepping onto the deck, we paused. Rita looked up to the bridge. “There must be someone around,” she said, and I signaled for her to be quiet.

Then I led her along to the hold where we’d seen Trevanian and the mate disappear. I grabbed a stanchion, leaned over, and looked down. In the hold, more goods had been loaded. An open central space remained, but now there were half a dozen containers on the port side counterbalancing those from Haplon. There was no sign of anyone down there. Rita peered over the edge.

“I wouldn’t trust this bucket to get me to Staten Island,” she remarked. “Maybe it’ll just sink, save us all a year in court.”

I pointed into the hold. “What’s that?”

“Where?”

“Between the second and third container. On the floor.”

She located it. “A bin liner? Or a bag or something?”

A bag or something. I chewed my lip. Then I went around to the metal ladder on the far side of the hold. Rita trailed after me. It was like a fireman’s ladder, designed to be played out in retractable sections, with a winch on deck to haul it up and down. It must have been raised the day we’d trekked through the living quarters to the hold. Raised, or maybe more likely on the
Sebastopol,
temporarily out of order. But now that it was down, it must have been used by Trevanian and the mate. I grabbed the uprights, swung myself around, and started to clamber down the rungs into the hold.

“That counts as trespass,” said Rita.

Reminding her that I was with an officer of U.S. Customs, I continued my descent. When I stepped off the last rung, the deep humming vibration of the ship’s engines rose through my feet. Preparing myself for the worst, I crossed to the portside containers, to the gap between the second and third container in line. It doesn’t matter how many body bags you’ve seen, when the zip falls open and a lifeless human being flops out, it’s always the first time. I walked between the containers, stopped and looked down. It wasn’t Rossiter. It wasn’t anybody, it was just a sleeping bag. When I crouched and pulled it aside I found a workman’s tool bag underneath. Wrenches, a hammer and a flashlight, pliers, and a jumble of other stuff. I stood up and tilted back my head and breathed.

“What is it?”

Swinging around, I found Rita standing behind me, craning around me to see what was lying at my feet. “Nothing,” I told her, coming out from between the containers. “A sleeping bag.”

“What did you think it was?”

I shook my head, but she grabbed my arm.

“I thought it might be a body,” I admitted, then removing her hand, I walked aft.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You thought it was Rossiter?”

I went toward the door through which Trevanian and the mate must have exited, but as I passed by the newly stowed containers, I noticed they had the same special Customs seals as the Haplon containers. I paused, curious, and read one of the tags.

“You never said you thought he’d been killed,” Rita said angrily, coming after me.

I looked from the tag to the containers on the starboard side. The Haplon containers. I cocked my head.

“Are you listening to me?” she said. “If you’d told me that’s what you thought, I wouldn’t have left my goddamn office. I would have gotten hold of Channon and called this whole thing off. That’s why you didn’t tell me, isn’t it?”

I tapped the container tag beside me. “Look at this.”

“Am I talking to myself here?”

I drew her over and made her look. When she saw the tag and the seal, she did what I’d done. She glanced across the hold at the Haplon containers. “They’ve moved them?”

I took the tag in my hand. It identified the container as being part of the Haplon consignment, according to the tag, a consignment bound for Nigeria. I pushed the tag along the tie-wire and showed Rita where the wire had been cut and clumsily rejoined. Then we inspected the Customs seal. A similarly careless job had been carried out there too, the lead seal had been broken and reglued, the split was visible to the naked eye.

Rita’s mouth opened in surprise.

I crossed the hold to check the real Haplon containers. They had new tags on them, and their Customs seals had been removed. According to the new tags, the real Haplon containers held refrigerators, video recorders, and air conditioners, and they were bound for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rita came over.

“They’ve switched the seals and tags,” I said.

It was clear now why Trevanian had been so keen to get his hands on the bill of lading. He needed to prevent Rossiter from unloading the Haplon-tagged containers and discovering the carelessly premature switch. If the Customs guys dockside ever got to see the clumsy handiwork, the entire ship’s crew would have been detained, the
Sebastopol
wouldn’t have been sailing anywhere for months.

“Can you believe these guys?” Rita said, amazed. “They didn’t even wait till they were at sea. How dumb is that?”

I held a tag between my thumb and forefinger and stared at it. The Democratic Republic of the Congo. After the analysis at her lab, I’d told Fiona that the rough diamond was just a piece of African currency, that it had probably passed through many hands and several countries before appearing in Greenbaum’s office on West Forty-seventh. I’d told her that the Haplon weapons could conceivably be bound for anywhere between the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo. I’d known that was wrong. Now here the evidence was on the tag, irrefutable. The Democratic Republic of the Congo. The weapons were destined for the same place Brad had chosen to launch his professional career.

I gestured toward the portside containers, at the switched tags and seals. “Is there enough here to nail Trevanian?”

“Maybe. Unless he pleads ignorance and blames the crew.”

Turning from the containers, I headed for the closed door.

“You’re not going to confront him,” said Rita, alarmed. “Promise me.”

I grabbed the wheel handle and pulled, but it was stiff and wouldn’t turn, so I leaned more weight on it. Then there was a sudden metallic clanking noise back in the hold, and I froze. When I looked at Rita she was standing stock-still. Releasing the wheel, I gestured for her not to speak. All we heard for a moment was the deep thrumming of the engines, then the clanking suddenly sounded again. Rita’s brow furrowed. Someone else in the hold? Beckoning her back, I stepped cautiously toward the open space in the hold’s center. I looked to port, taking in the shadows between the containers and along the narrow aisles between the loaded pallets. There was no shortage of places to hide. I stood still. I couldn’t see any movement. Then I heard that noise again, and I swiveled and looked across the hold. The retractable ladder down which we’d climbed was rising. It was already out of reach. My eyes shot up. There was no one up there I could see.

“Hey!” Stepping into the open center-hold, I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted up, “Hey, you got U.S. Customs down here. Hold the ladder!”

The winch-motor drowned out my voice, the ladder went up and up. Rita came over, we both hollered till finally the ladder retracted completely, sliding over the edge of the hold. The winch-motor cut out. I cupped my hands to my mouth and tried again.

“Hey! Up on deck!”

“Hey!” shouted Rita.

High above, white clouds drifted beneath a brilliant blue sky, a picture framed by the dark steel square of the hold. Our cries drifted up and were lost. It was silent up there. I returned to the bulkhead door. I grabbed the wheel handle with both hands and hauled hard. The damn thing didn’t budge, not even a quarter inch.

Another whining noise came from a motor up on deck. At first I thought it was the ladder being lowered, that someone had seen or heard us, but then Rita said, “Holy shit,” and I leaned back and looked up.

The sky was shrinking. A clear shadow-line moved steadily across the hold opening as the hold cover was rolled noisily into place. I put my shoulder to the door and yanked at the handle. “Holler!” I shouted at Rita.

She hollered. But the hold cover moved on regardless, grinding across the dwindling patch of sky, and the darkness in the hold gathered fast. I let go of the door and started searching for the electrics, for an alarm or a light. All I could see were pipes, so after a few moments I gave up the search.

“Rita! Over here!” I ran to the container nearest the bulkhead door. The light was almost gone now, and I stood with my back to the container and looked around the hold, fixing the scene in my mind. Containers to port and starboard. Crates and pallets aft. Aisles leading off the four corners of open space. Rita knocked into me, she stopped hollering. We tipped back our heads as the last piece of sky shrank to a sliver way above us. Then it suddenly disappeared.

CHAPTER 21

It was totally dark. The ship’s engines throbbed through the steel vault. “Fucking hell,” said Rita.

I took out my cell phone, switched it on. The soft luminescent glow lit up, and I dialed, miskeying the numbers twice before I got it right.

“Channon?” asked Rita, hearing me dial.

“Stevedores.” I’d been calling them daily the past week, arranging the shipment, I had their number by heart. And unlike Channon, the stevedores were dockside, they were sitting in an office not two hundred yards from where we were standing. But when I put the phone to my ear all I got was an electronic message. No service in my area. When I got Rita to try her phone, the result was the same. Entombed in a steel hull and calling from a hold beneath the waterline, we were cut off as effectively as if we’d been dropped down a mine shaft.

“Sit down,” I said.

“What?”

Reaching, I touched her jacket and tugged it lightly. “Put your back against the container. Don’t go moving around.”

“Move around? I can’t even see my goddamn hands.”

Once she was seated on the hold floor, I rested my own back against the container and tried to remember the hold, picture it as I’d seen it in the fading light.

“Ned?”

“Right here.”

“You think it was an accident, or what? Jesus, I screamed loud enough, didn’t I? They must have heard me.”

“The motor’s controls might be back on the bridge.”

“Someone must have seen us come down here.”

“Don’t move,” I said, then I held my arms out in front of me and walked gingerly across the hold, lifting my feet high, placing them down carefully. The pitch dark added yards to the distance. I started moving my arms wider, groping, then I finally touched the first portside container.

“Ned?”

“Hang on.”

“Shall I scream?”

“No one’ll hear you.”

“There must be air coming in somewhere.”

Feeling my way along the first container, I reached the edge, then took a step and stretched out and touched the second container. I let go of the first, shuffled across, and groped my way along the door of the second container in line. When I reached that one, I turned down the aisle separating it from the third container. Probing with my feet, I shuffled forward another couple of yards until I felt something, then I stopped and crouched down and felt with my hands. The tool bag was open. Something sharp pricked my palm, and I swore. I tried again, cautiously, and I made out the hammer, then the pliers.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” said Rita warily, hearing me jostle the tools.

“Ah-ha.”

“What are you doing?”

My hand touched the flashlight. I picked it up, pressed the button, and there was light. I grabbed the tool bag and retraced my steps across the hold.

“Ned?” When the beam swept over her, Rita twisted aside, raising a hand to shield her eyes. She scrambled to her feet. “Can we get out?”

“I don’t know.”

I led her to the bulkhead door and put down the tool bag. Then I shone the light on the door. There were no fancy locks or catches, just the one big wheel handle dead center. Handing Rita the flashlight, I grabbed the wheel, braced my legs, and heaved. The damn thing wouldn’t move.

“Shine the light in the tool bag.”

“Is the door jammed?” she asked me.

“It’s either jammed or locked. Let’s pray it’s just jammed.”

“If it’s locked, can’t you break it?”

“It’s solid steel. It weighs a goddamn ton.” I reached into the tool bag and grabbed a crowbar. It was clawed at one end, about two feet long, and I stuck it between the spokes of the wheel handle, hooking the claw over a steel lug that was welded to the door. “Stand back.”

She stood back. I hauled on the bar. I hauled so hard, I just about gave myself a hernia, then something gave way and the bar flew out of my hands.

“Is that it?” said Rita, moving in with the flash. I pulled on the wheel. It didn’t move. Then I ran my hand over the door where she shone the light, feeling for the steel lug, but it was gone. “Did that do it?” she said. “Did it turn?”

I shook my head. I’d levered so hard, the weld had broken and the lug had come clean away.

“Try again,” she urged.

“It’s not jammed. It’s locked.”

“Shit.”

I found the crowbar and handed it to her. “Bang this against the door. Don’t hit the wheel, just the door. Maybe someone in the crew’s quarters might hear.” I took the flashlight.

“Like this?” She whacked the door. There was a solid thud, a sound that immediately died beneath the deep hum of the engines. She looked at me despairingly.

“Keep trying,” I told her, then I went to take a look around the hold. The containers were the largest items of cargo, but both fore and aft there were pallets loaded with cartons and sacks of grain, stacked deep. I made a circuit of the hold looking for another exit, a door or a hatch, but there wasn’t one. At last I clambered up on some grain sacks, and from there I hauled myself onto a container. I shone the flashlight upward. I was still some twenty feet from the hold cover. Even if I could get myself up there, I’d be no nearer to getting us out. I took out my cell phone and tried again. No signal.

From over by the door, I heard a dull and hopeless thudding. Rita, still swinging the crowbar. I got myself off the container and rejoined her.

“Any luck?” she said.

I gave her the flashlight and took the iron bar and beat on the door for all I was worth.

“Someone’ll miss us,” Rita decided.

We were sitting with our backs against the steel door, the crowbar lying on the hold’s floor between us. We’d been taking it in turns, ten minutes from me, five minutes from Rita, but after half an hour we had to face up to it. Our position was hopeless. We were wasting our time. We’d switched off the flash to conserve the battery, so the darkness around us now was solid again.

“Who’ll miss us?” I said.

“Heaps of people.” She paused. “Everyone at your office.”

“They’ll assume I’m with Rossiter.”

“Channon?”

“I’m not due to report to him till this evening.”

“When he misses your call, he’ll call me. When he finds I’ve been gone all day, he’ll know something’s not right.”

“Unless he’s telepathic, Rita, he won’t know where the hell we are.”

“He’s bound to check the docks here. When he sees our names in the book at the gate, he’ll know we never left.” A brief glimmer of hope. But when I remarked that I hadn’t seen her sign us in, Rita said, “I didn’t. You did.” I didn’t respond. “Oh fuck,” she said.

I laughed grimly.

“If it comes to it,” she asked, “couldn’t we bust open a container and blast through the door with a mortar?”

“They’re not armor piercing. Fire anything in here, and the only thing we’ll get is burst eardrums. That’s if we live through the hail of shrapnel.”

“Well, I’m out of ideas.”

“Quiet,” I told her, cocking my head. Then I placed both my hands on the steel-plate floor.

The next second it was unmistakable, the ship’s engines were cranking up. The background hum rose, the vibration strengthened through the floor, the sound and vibration reached a new pitch, then leveled off. I grabbed the iron bar, stood up, and hammered on the door again.

Rita called out to me, “Why’d they do that with the engines?”

I whacked the door once more, then staggered as the floor seemed to move, I just managed to stay on my feet. Behind me Rita moaned, I dropped the bar and got the flashlight out of my pocket. When I shone it around, I found her sprawled on the floor, I went over and helped her up.

“I’m all right.” She rubbed her leg. “I’m okay.” She dusted herself off, then rubbed her elbow too. “What the hell happened?”

She wasn’t hurt badly, just frightened and bruised. I went back and picked up the bar and swung it at the door with everything I had now, my hands and my arms jarring painfully with each dull strike. It wasn’t going to do us much good, but I had to hit something or I was going to burst, I was furious. With Trevanian. And with me.

After five or six strikes I dropped the bar and reached down and grabbed the wheel handle and pulled, a cry rose from deep in my chest, it was like the cry of some caged animal. It was no damn good. Finally I let go of the handle and turned and slumped back against the door. My chest heaved. The muscles of my arms were locked tight. Somewhere above the sound of the blood in my ears, the ship’s engines sang, while the vibrations rose through the floor and into my feet, numbing them. My whole body trembled. We were moving. We were slipping away from the dock, nosing our way out into the Hudson, and soon we’d be cruising along the New Jersey shoreline.

“Ned,” said Rita. She gripped my arm. “Ned?”

She knew it too, we were moving. Trapped, we were headed for the Atlantic. Entombed in the ship’s hold with the Haplon materiel, we were on our way to Africa.