Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

He waited for her on deck. She was dressed today in a gray sweatsuit she’d worn once before for jogging around the deck. “What is it?” Rand asked as she joined him, her face showing a certain urgency.

“I want to show you something in my cabin.”

He followed her in silence as she unlocked the door and entered. She went to the bunk and lifted the blanket and sheets from the mattress. There was a large brownish spot that he recognized at once as dried blood. “When did you find this?”

“When I awakened this morning. The sheet had pulled out and I saw it right away. I think Multan was killed in here.”

“It certainly looks like it,” Rand agreed. “Is anything missing from your cabin?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. I’d better go through everything.” She started to do that, but paused after a moment and sank to the bed, burying her face in her hands. “To think that I slept on it!”

“You are in trouble, aren’t you?” Rand asked, putting a hand on her shoulder as an uncle might. “Your father was right.”

“This ship — I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Rodriguez says we’ll be through the Suez tonight. Tomorrow it should be smooth sailing in the Mediterranean.”

It was a day when they all seemed to avoid one another, and Rand noticed that even Claquer had forsaken his bird watching to remain close to his cabin. Everyone was nervous, and when fishermen approached the ship in midaftemoon they were waved away.

Rand took the opportunity to slip below deck. Pretending he wanted to visit the engine room, he went instead to the cargo hold toward the bow. If he was expecting to find heavy burlap bales of morphine base or some other narcotic, he was disappointed. The sturdy wooden crates were obviously built for heavy machinery, and oil-drilling equipment seemed as likely as anything. Odd, though, that he’d never heard of Afghanistan as an oil-producing nation. Returning to the main deck, he asked Captain Rodriguez about this.

“You said you were carrying oil-drilling equipment from Afghanistan, but they have no oil.”

“Naturally not,” the captain answered logically. “That is why they have no need of the equipment. They are selling it to Turkey, which does have oil.”

Rand went back to his cabin and rested, thinking again about the trouble that involved Sishane Kemal.

They cleared the canal just at dawn. Rand and his two fellow passengers stood at the railing watching the Egyptian landscape give way at last to the broad reaches of the Mediterranean. The air felt a bit cooler here, and everyone seemed to revive. Perhaps their spirits were better only because they were nearing their destination ahead of schedule. The captain explained it over breakfast.

“We should dock at Bodrum around midnight, twelve hours ahead of schedule. If the tides are right we can dock at once and unload our cargo at dawn. Meanwhile, I will deal with the authorities regarding the unfortunate Multan. I expect they’ll want to question everyone, but we should be on our way without undue delay.”

Once out into the blustery sea, the voyage turned rough. Sishane was too ill to eat lunch and by dinnertime Pierre Claquer was looking pale too. Rand asked the first mate if the rough seas would continue.

“They should calm down after dark,” Sallis told him. “This is nothing.”

He was right in his prediction. As darkness descended, the winds abated. But something else took their place. Gazing off at the horizon, Rand thought he saw a warship about the size of a destroyer moving in on them. But he couldn’t be sure, and when the darkness was complete he saw no navigation lights.

At around ten o’clock Rand was standing on the fantail with Sishane. The calming seas had settled her stomach and she’d come out on deck for a few breaths of night air. “I feel better,” she admitted. “I’ve never been a good sailor.”

“And yet you wouldn’t fly or take the train back. How did you get to India and those other places to begin with?”

“I flew,” she admitted rather sheepishly, “but I didn’t like it. When I met Gunther Sallis and he mentioned the ship, I remembered my father recommending it to someone once.”

“Where did you meet Sallis?”

“At a research laboratory near Bombay. Indian scientists are among the best in the world in some fields.”

“This had to do with your population studies?”

She nodded. “Methods of birth control—”

She was interrupted by a sudden commotion from the ship’s bridge. Almost at once there were two explosions in the water about a mile ahead of them, lighting up the sea for a fiery instant. “What in hell was that?” Rand wanted to know.

Rodriguez came out of the pilot house and called down to them. “Stay calm! A Turkish destroyer has fired warning shots across our bow. We’re being boarded.”

“In the middle of the night?” Sishane asked. “What is this?”

The ship’s searchlights were turned on, and at once they saw a pair of rubber boats approaching off the starboard side, a half-dozen black-clad men in each. One of the crewmen, Fandul, saw them too, and appeared on deck with a rifle. As he raised it to his shoulder, Rand moved to stop him. But Pierre Claquer was faster.

He had appeared from somewhere holding a heavy Luger pistol. He yanked the rifle out of Fandul’s hands and threw it to the deck. “Put up your hands!” he ordered. “This vessel is in the hands of the Turkish Navy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

The joint force of Turkish and American investigators swarmed aboard, fanning out immediately to search the ship. Captain Rodriguez climbed down from the bridge and offered a mild protest. “You could have waited until we docked,” he grumbled.

The man who seemed in charge, an American named McNeil, answered simply, “You might have dumped your cargo. It happened with a ship last month.”

“We carry only oil-drilling equipment.”

McNeil turned to the erstwhile bird watcher. “What did you discover, Claquer?”

“Not much. One of their crew got his throat cut two days ago. The captain hasn’t reported it yet.”

“It happened in international waters,” the captain insisted. “I was waiting until our first port.”

McNeil, a slender man with graying hair, seemed more interested in his mission. “We’ll want to search the compartment where your anchor chains are stored. Found two tons of morphine base in one awhile ago.”

“Search all you want. You’ll find nothing.”

Rand followed the American when he moved away from the group to converse with Claquer. “Since when do Americans have authority to act in Turkish waters?” he asked.

McNeil studied him before responding. “The Drug Enforcement Administration has been working with the Turkish police for more than a year, trying to shut down the two major routes of the narcotics smugglers, across eastern Turkey and here in the Mediterranean. There have been some big seizures. A ship like this carries far more than a caravan of camels.” Almost as an afterthought he asked, “Might I ask what you’re doing on board, sir?”

Rand introduced himself. “I’m retired from British Intelligence.”

McNeil’s eyes took on a new interest. “I doubt if you people ever retire.”

Rand smiled slightly. “That’s what my wife says all the time.”

“I’ll want to speak with you later.”

He moved off with Claquer and Rand watched them take Sishane into one of the cabins for questioning. Rand could see it was going to be a long night, and he was right. It was nearly four in the morning before the search of the ship was completed. No drugs had been found.

Captain Rodriguez stood on the deck and lit a cigar. “I told you I was clean. You picked the wrong ship this time.”