Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

But not entirely. Curtis would not give up, he wasn’t the kind of man to accept defeat gracefully; or at all. He had two enemies now between himself and whatever this money-making scheme was, and one of them was Jerry Diedrich and the other was George Manville. He could get at Diedrich through Kim Baldur, but he would get at Manville much more directly.

Why would they be arriving in Brisbane so much later than originally planned? It seemed to Manville that Zhang had been hiding something when he’d told them that, and what could it be but an attack from Curtis? But where, and when? Sometime before they reached Brisbane, and apparently Curtis needed the extra time to get it ready.

In the meanwhile, though Manville felt he and Kim Baldur were both for the moment safe, he still took precautions. He moved himself into cabin 6, across the hall from her, and, while he was there, bolted shut the bulkhead doors at both ends of the passage.

The girl mostly slept, and whenever she awoke she was starving. She moved on from soup to stew and bread, then some red wine, and improved by the hour.

Manville ate his own meals with Zhang, in the crew’s mess, on the same level as cabins 6 and 7 but farther aft. Zhang was still hangdog, but pleasant, and they talked about neutral things: engineering, coastal shipping, the Mallory .

With Kim Baldur, he had only one real conversation, and that was about Jerry Diedrich. He stood in the doorway and watched her eat a bowl of stew, and said, “Do you know why Diedrich has it in so much for Richard Curtis?”

She looked at him in surprise, and said, “He’s a major polluter. Planetwatch is after all those people.”

“I’m sorry, Kim,” he said, “but that isn’t exactly true. Curtis is in construction, he’s no saint when it comes to environmental laws, but he’s no worse than any of the others, and better than a lot of them. It’s Jerry Diedrich who has a personal vendetta against Curtis.”

“Well, he despises Curtis,” she said, “because he’s a threat to the environment. But it isn’t personal .”

“You all showed up at Kanowit because of Diedrich,” Manville pointed out. “That day, I’m sure there were a lot of threats to the environment, here and there around the globe, but what we were doing at Kanowit wasn’t one of them.”

“The risk to the coral—”

He shook his head. “There was none. We didn’t even want to endanger the seawall, much less the coral, because Curtis and his partners have a use for that island. They don’t want to destroy it.”

“The chance you took—”

“I’m an engineer, Kim. Forgive me, but I know the risks better than Jerry Diedrich, and when he showed up at that island it wasn’t because the reef was going to be destroyed, because it wasn’t. It was because Jerry Diedrich has a personal vendetta against Richard Curtis and wanted to harass him.”

“That isn’t true,” she said, and he could see from her face that she was angry, closing down against him.

“Okay,” he said, because it was obvious she had no idea why Diedrich had it in for Richard Curtis. “How’s the stew?”

She took a second to decide if she wanted to hold onto her anger, then abruptly smiled and said, “It’s great.”

“Good.”

“And I do want to thank you.”

He laughed, and said, “Don’t thank me yet, wait’ll I do something.”

That conversation was in late morning of the day after she’d regained consciousness. That evening, Manville had dinner with Zhang, and said, “Captain, originally, we’d have been coming into Brisbane just about now.”

Zhang looked worried and defensive. “Yes. That’s true.”

“Curtis told you to slow down, to give him time to set something up to deal with Ms. Baldur and me.”

Zhang looked down at the food on his plate, and didn’t respond.

“Captain, I know you felt relieved when Curtis told you not to try to... hurt Ms. Baldur. But if you do nothing and say nothing, you’ll be hurting her. At least let us know what’s supposed to happen.”

Zhang looked very deeply troubled. He chewed a mouthful of food, slowly, and at last swallowed it, and drank water, and said, “Mr. Manville, I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I don’t want my family to suffer either.”

“I can understand that.”

Zhang sighed. He couldn’t meet Manville’s eye. He said, “Someone, some people, will board us tonight, around one, when we go past the end of Moreton Island. I was told I should be alone on the bridge, everyone else should be asleep, I should pay no attention to whatever happens.”

“Some sort of ship will come alongside? Grapple on?”

“That’s what I understand.”

Manville leaned back. “So when you dock at Brisbane, I won’t be on the ship anymore, and Ms. Baldur will have died of her experience in the sea off Kanowit.”

“I don’t know,” Zhang said miserably. “I’m not supposed to know anything, and I don’t know anything.”

“Captain,” Manville said, “what are we going to do? To protect you, and your family, and to protect Ms. Baldur, and to protect me. What are we going to do?”

Slowly, Zhang shook his head. “I can’t think,” he said. “If there was something— As you say, to protect us all. But I can’t think what.”

“Let’s put our heads together,” Manville said.

A hand touched her shoulder, and a voice softly said her name. Kim frowned, not wanting to be awake, because to be awake was to be in pain, but in thinking that thought she knew it was too late, she was already awake, and not going back.

She opened her eyes and saw the dim room, the door propped open and the corridor light giving shape to George Manville, on one knee beside the bunk, still holding her shoulder, leaning toward her, something hushed but urgent in his manner. She felt afraid, and didn’t know why, and said, “What?”

“Kim, listen,” he said, his voice still low, but with that tremor of urgency in it. “Some people are coming to the ship later tonight, to do us harm. We have to keep away from them.”

“Curtis?” she asked, and wondered why he’d want to do her harm. Or do George Manville harm.

“People of his,” Manville said. “Kim, if you’re dead, he can use that as a lever to pry Jerry Diedrich off his back. It’s that important to him, I don’t know exactly why, and he was hoping you’d die all by yourself, here on the ship. Since you won’t, he’s sending people.”

She stared at him, not wanting to believe, but believing. “To kill me?”

“Captain Zhang and I talked over what to do,” Manville told her. “We’re releasing one of the launches, to try to convince them we already got away.”

“Well, why don’t we?” Feeling the urgency, she moved to sit up, and the stiff pain jolted through her, and she caught her breath with a sudden gasp.

“That’s why,” he told her. “You’re mending, but you’re still very battered. Eight hours in a small launch, on the open sea, would be too much for you.”

“ You could get away. Then he wouldn’t dare do anything to me, because you could tell.”

He shook his head. “Who would I tell? Who would I tell, and be believed against Richard Curtis?”

They’ve thought this through, she realized, Manville and Captain Zhang. Stop struggling, stop arguing, just do it, whatever it is they want. You’re not going to have better ideas than theirs. “All right,” she said.

“We’ll scuttle the launch,” he said, “so these other people won’t come upon it accidentally in the water. Then we’ll put you in one of the other launches, cover you with blankets, and hope they believe we already left the ship.”