Jon Breen: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 114, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 697 & 698, September/October 1999

It was the mate. Callie could hear Eisler’s surprised roar when he found the interloper in his cabin. Then there was some shouting in German, and then in English, and then a cry of pain from Kevin. Aw, jeez.

She slipped quietly out of the captain’s cabin and was just starting up the hatchway when a Teutonic voice cried out, “Halt!” She turned to see a man standing between the two cabins — big, blond, hard-faced. They locked eyes for a microsecond... and then Callie scrambled up to the next deck.

She turned left because most people automatically turn right and ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She could hear Eisler thundering up the hatchway steps and yelling. Worse, she could hear the sound of running feet directly over her head. She took the next hatchway below she came to, jumping down the last five steps.

And almost lost her balance when a woo-woo klaxon went off, scaring her even more; Eisler had sounded the alarm. Callie ran again, listening to the sounds of her pursuers. She was being forced aft, toward the cargo holds. The Sofia was a container ship; there’d be no hiding in an open hold here. But it was dark where she was; that would help her. Callie’s flashlight showed her an open hatchway. She stepped through...

... and almost keeled over from the stench. Urine, smoke, garlic, sweat — the place was thick with it. Callie stepped back out again, almost stumbling in her haste. The klaxon suddenly shut off — and Callie heard the sound of voices. She flashed her light around and spotted a footlocker. Inside were two coils of rope; she tossed them behind something that looked like an overgrown water heater and climbed inside the locker. It wasn’t quite big enough; the lid wouldn’t go all the way shut. But it would have to do.

Callie listened to the mutter of voices coming closer.

Through the slit left open by the lid of the locker, she could see lights bobbing in the darkness. Four men, as well as she could make out, each of them carrying a large lanternlike flashlight. They headed straight for the hatchway that led to the bad smells. Callie concentrated on ignoring the cramp in her left calf and persuading herself she didn’t really need to scratch those hundred places on her body that had suddenly started itching. Why were those men taking so long? She wasn’t in there, she was out here.

Finally they came back out. They passed the footlocker without a glance and disappeared into the darkness. They weren’t searching every little nook and cranny? They just wanted to know if she’d found the Place of Disgusting Odors?

Very curious, that was. Callie eased out of the footlocker and spent a minute massaging her calf. Then she went back to the open hatchway and took a deep breath.

Inside, what her flashlight showed her were bunk beds. Row after row of them, stacked eight high, going as far back as she could see. Callie covered her mouth and nose with her hand and stepped cautiously between two rows of the bunks; they were placed so close together that someone with wide shoulders would have to move sideways. There was other evidence of recent human habitation, aside from the terrible reek. A torn shirt left on one of the bunks, a forgotten book, a few empty food cans.

People. The ship’s real cargo was people. The Sofia was smuggling illegal aliens into Port Wolfe.

So that’s why she and Kevin had run into no armed guards above; the crew had already unloaded their cargo. In longboats, in the dead of night? The beam of her flashlight caught a thick, upright steel post. Ah, that’s what they’d done. They’d knocked out the bulkheads between container sections and substituted steel supports, turning the whole area into one cavernous dormitory. How many other mobs of displaced people had the Sofia turned loose in Port Wolfe? And how desperate those people must be to go through this to get here.

She’d seen enough... and smelled enough. She left the human-cargo area and made her way forward, pausing to listen every few minutes. No portholes this far belowdecks, and most portholes were too small to climb through anyway. She was going to have to go back up.

It took her a nerve-wracking thirty minutes to reach the main deck. She stopped to listen every few seconds, hesitating to advance when no ready place of concealment presented itself. But eventually she worked her way to the spot on deck where they’d climbed Captain Jack’s ladder. Her hands were shaking so much she almost dropped the flashlight. Three short, one long. What if Captain Jack had been scared off by the klaxon?

No! There it was, an answering flash of light. He was on his way.

Then all the Sofia’s deck lights came on.

Callie immediately crouched down, her heart pounding and her back pushed hard against one of the davits supporting a lifeboat. Voices came from the foredeck. Staying low, she risked a look. Two men were unfastening the covers over the lifeboats to see if she was hiding inside one.

Hurry, Captain Jack!

The Mary Sue throttled down as she bumped the freighter’s hull. No silent drifting in this time. Captain Jack knew something was up; he had to have heard the klaxon. And no time for the ladder. But if she dropped that far down to the deck of the tug, she’d break every bone in her body.

Captain Jack came out of the pilot house. Callie tossed him her backpack with its nonwaterproof contents, held her nose, and jumped.

The slap of the water shocked her into momentary paralysis, but then she was fighting her way back upward. She could make out the white bottom of the Mary Sue and headed toward that. The second she broke the surface, Captain Jack’s big hand grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly aboard. He left her panting on the foredeck as he stepped back into the pilot house and opened the throttle. There was shouting from the Sofia, followed by the crack of two rifle shots. Terrified, Callie hugged the deck as the Mary Sue slipped away into the darkness.

Kevin Craig. They won’t kill him. They’ll keep him alive to find out about me.

Callie dragged herself to the pilot house. The Mary Sue was running without lights, Captain Jack squinting into the darkness ahead. If he wondered about Kevin, he gave no sign. Without moving his head, he pointed to a locker in the corner. Callie took out a blanket and wrapped herself up, shivering more from fear than from wet and cold.

Think. Help for Kevin first. That nincompoop. She ought to call the agency’s night man, Gene something, Gene Maxwell. The agency would know how to keep Kevin from looking an utter fool in tonight’s muck-up.

That decided her. She’d call the agency last.

Which meant the police, for whom Callie had no great love. And did the Immigration and Naturalization Service know this wholesale people-smuggling was going on? Personally, she didn’t give a hoot how many illegals were in Port Wolfe; but if she could hand the INS a prize like the Sofia, they might put in a good word for her with the police. She’d broken a law or two herself this night.

“Captain Jack,” she said, “take me to the harbor patrol station.”

“No.” Nothing else, just no.

“Then put me ashore within walking distance.”

The boat veered a little as he changed course. Soon they were in the heavily trafficked area of the harbor, and Captain Jack turned on the running lights. He let her off at a repair dock south of the harbor patrol. And before she could say a word, the Mary Sue was gone.

Callie ran all the way to the station, her wet sneakers squishing uncomfortably. There was more than a little turmoil inside her; for the first time in her life, she was going to the police for help.

The harbor patrol didn’t believe her at first; she’d expected that. Only when the officer in charge called Gene Maxwell and confirmed that Callie did indeed work for the Bass Agency, did they move into action. Callie had told them that a Bass detective was being held aboard the Sofia and his life was in danger, that the Sofia was being used to smuggle in illegal immigrants, and that the ship’s mate had in his possession a new computer-chip prototype stolen from Memotek. Details later.