David Dun: Overfall

He returned to the stove and stirred the spaghetti sauce. Without a word she walked back into the stateroom and closed the door.

So it’s going to be like that, he said to himself. Maybe she really can’t even pretend to be like the rest of us.

Anna Wade had been aboard a few yachts, some lavish, some ordinary. Sam’s seemed compact but cozy and tasteful. In the forward stateroom there was a walk-around queen-size pedestal bed and a small vanity next to a door to the forward head. Additionally there was a desk. The woodwork was lustrous and warm, a little reddish in tone, and looked very custom-similar to handmade furniture that she had specially ordered for her Manhattan apartment. Obviously expensive. The fixtures were also unusual. From what little she had seen of yachts in this size range, they usually had flimsy doors and elf-sized handles that rattled in their holes. Everything on this boat was substantial and solid, nearly as large as the fixtures in an expensive house. Sam cared about his things.

She couldn’t tell if she was making headway with him or not. For a second she had thought he might be about to give in. As a last resort she would try a few minutes of the silent treatment-just sitting with the door closed while he wondered.

The way the boat was stocked-the books, the stuff in the drawers-it was owned, not chartered. There were scented candles, and she couldn’t put that together with the man who had yanked her from the sea. So Sam was a man of some means. Definitely not a reporter, and no garden-variety businessman either. Despite his firm insistence on secrecy, she felt for the moment that he was trustworthy even if stubborn. Something told her he’d had a hand in nabbing Peter Malkey’s thieving accountant. Perhaps he was some sort of high-powered investigator.

The shelves held books about Native American mythology; one compared New Age mysticism with Native American spiritual beliefs. An interesting woven-cloth bookmark protruded from a volume entitled Tilok Life, and another from On the Trail of the Tiloks by Jessie Mayfield Wintripp. There were some spy novels along with some traditionally male biographies. Even more interesting, he had a copy of The Mind. In trying to learn about her brother, she had read the book and others like it. Although not per se about paranoia, it was a stunning discussion of human consciousness and self-determination, a look at how mind might be derived from matter.

The desk was sizable, even out of proportion, and obviously served as his workplace when he didn’t have guests. On the desktop she found a map with many notations apparently having to do with Native American tribes-the Salish, Kwaikutl, and Nuuchahnulth. Historic villages were marked in black, whereas currently existing villages seemed to be marked in blue. Sliding open the drawers, she found more maps of larger scale with notations about various sites. Perhaps the man was an archeologist. No, that didn’t seem right.

In one drawer she found a collection of cosmetic items including shampoos, hand lotion, skin cream, lipsticks. Some of the liquid materials were in a large Ziploc plastic bag. Although the plastic case had remained nearly dry, she had been careful to rinse Jason’s plastic computer CD in fresh water to remove all traces of salt, but if she went in the ocean again she wanted better protection. Feeling only slightly larcenous, she emptied the contents of the Ziploc bag, inserted Jason’s CD, and carefully sealed the bag. If she did nothing else, she had to preserve that CD. The Ziploc then went into the waterproof bag in her fanny pack.

In the corner of the large drawer was an album full of pictures of Sam with a young man. The way they stood she could tell they were close. It was probably his younger brother-Sam seemed too young for such a son. In one of the plastic sleeves, on the back side of a photo of the young man dressed in cap and gown, presumably at graduation, was a folded-up piece of personal stationery. Feeling a little guilty, she pulled it out. It was a letter. It was only four lines.

My only son. You came from me. You will go on with me, then without me. Carry me with you in your heart as I will always carry you in mine. Do not neglect a good beer and a sunset.

Dad

So Sam was the young man’s father. Odd to have a letter that you’d sent to someone else.

Several pictures toward the back there was one of Sam with an older gentleman, obviously a Native American, wearing a heavy wool shirt, blue jeans and what looked like lace-up hide boots, and a green medicine bag around his neck. Behind that picture was a letter, very brief but written in a foreign language and bearing a signature that was obviously a foreign name.

For some reason she was sure the book belonged to Sam’s mother. Perhaps the mother had found Sam’s letter in her grandson’s possessions and kept it. But why would she have left it on the boat? Anna felt a great curiosity and a little sadness. Seeing the letter had put confusion in her mind. There was a softness in the simple words that she had not seen in Sam.

Anna stopped snooping and sighed. She had tried reasoning with Sam. For just another moment she would sit and soak up the warmth and wait to see if he came knocking. If he remained steadfast she would act.

According to her watch it had been five minutes, and ignoring him was working no better than talking with him. She stood up and stretched, utterly determined.

Mr. Macho would follow, she was sure.

And what choice did she have? It had to have been Roberto that Sam had seen above her on the cliff. If it was Roberto who walked away (and not her brother, caught up in some absentminded daze, enthralled with the elegance of the universe), Anna was in great danger. All her life she’d depended on her instincts, and right now her instincts were screaming.

She popped open the front hatch over the front berth and crawled out on deck. It was black dark and the wind screamed in the rigging. The cold pierced her clothing, as the sound of it pierced her soul. Suddenly she decided that swimming in this hellish scene was too much. What had seemed doable in the comfort of the cabin now seemed impossible. Her eyes cast about. Three feet away in the dim light emanating from the wheelhouse she saw something against the lifelines. She ran her hand over it. A tiny rubber boat The lying sneak.

DuShane Chellis was in fair condition for a fifty-two-year-old man, handsome with a decent physique, and he planned to stay that way. He kept his salt-and-pepper gray hair impeccably groomed, swept back with natural waves but close-cropped without sideburns. He was dark-complected and rough-skinned, and as with most fit middle-aged men, his face was unrounded by fat, more distinguished than pleasant. With his serious dark eyes and the flat line of his mouth he appeared to be a man who counted his conquests, a predator, which in fact was in keeping with his character.

DuShane Chellis had become a fabulously successful corporate takeover artist. He made most of his money on the third company that he raided, a small company enjoying newfound but unheralded success in the medical applications of certain mapping software. Chellis got control of the board of directors, ousted the founder, and went on to assemble a medical supply conglomerate that adopted the name of his first company, Grace Technologies. A small but not insignificant and growing portion of Chellis’s great success came from his conversion of the takeover target’s medical software into a variety of military applications. For that endeavor he had joined forces with Samir Aziz. It was Samir who handled the dirty part of the business.

Chellis walked down the immaculate halls of the Grace Technologies Kuching Laboratory with great anticipation. Around him, the building, which sat at the base of a densely forested mountain in central Borneo, bustled with activity. Most of the corporation’s clinical tests involving animals took place here-a political expediency, since Malaysia had few animal rights activists and even fewer animal rights laws. In addition, Kuching was no mecca for probing journalists or government investigators.