Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

“It’s suicide,” Ishimaru had replied as his former classmate explained the plan. “We’d never make it out of Yokohama, much less the whole country.”

Okura had laughed, poured more sake. “You haven’t been paying attention, Ishimaru-san,” Okura had said, clapping him on the shoulder. “ I can get us out of the country, no problem. You just get us those bonds.”

Okura had persisted. Needled, angled, flattered, cajoled. And Ishimaru? He’d realized, as Okura spoke, that he was sick of his boring, unglamorous life. He was sick of working to death on behalf of the syndicate, trading his youth and seeing no real reward; sick of returning to his tiny apartment alone every night.

Okura had kept speaking. Ishimaru had listened. And, eventually, he’d agreed to join with the sailor, to steal the yakuza bonds and stow away to America.

THE LION SAILED AT MIDNIGHT . From a storage locker at the rear of the ship’s accommodations deck, Ishimaru sipped tea and peered out through a porthole as the crew cast off lines and a fleet of tugs moved the ship from the pier. He could feel the Lion ’s massive engines rumble beneath him. Watched the lights of the harbor swing past.

Before he left Ishimaru to his new, cramped confines, Okura had assured him that he was safe. “No one should disturb you here, but just in case, keep the door locked,” the ship’s officer had said. “I’ll bring you food when I’m able.”

“Bring me a book, too,” Ishimaru replied. “Two weeks in this cave and I’ll surely go crazy.”

“For ten percent of your cut, I’ll see what I can do,” Okura replied, and Ishimaru couldn’t be sure he was joking. Then an alarm sounded, and Okura left him, making his retreat to the bow to supervise the big ship’s departure.

Alone now, Ishimaru was in his hiding place, stowed away in secret, watching the lights of the harbor slowly recede in the distance, and feeling the tension in his muscles dissipate.

Though his body relaxed, his mind wasn’t able to. The adrenaline rush—the urgent, electric thrill of his flight to the docks—had subsided. All that remained was a mounting fatigue, and the inescapable truth of what he had done. The memory of the warm pistol in his hands, the shocked looks of his colleagues—his friends—as he’d turned on them, betrayed them, murdered them in cold blood.

He’d made it on board the Lion . He was now a rich man. But as Ishimaru stretched out in his locker and tried to relax, he thought of the money, and of the three friends he’d killed for it, and he couldn’t quite chase the feeling that he’d just sold his soul.

Second officer Hiroki Okura checked the Pacific Lion ’s coordinates on the ship’s GPS instruments. Then he crossed the bridge to the intraship telephone and placed a call to the captain’s quarters.

It was nearly midnight, and the ship was approaching the American territorial limit, two hundred miles from the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. It had been an uneventful voyage so far, with reasonable weather; they were making good time. Lately, however, the North Pacific had developed some bite. The Lion was plowing through a steady fifteen-foot swell, twenty-knot winds. Hardly dangerous stuff for a ship of this size, but lumpy enough to be noticeable.

Nobody had yet discovered Tomio Ishimaru. The yakuza accountant remained safe, secreted away in his unused storage locker, the stolen bonds secure in his briefcase.

Fifty million dollars. Okura had been able to think of little else since the Lion began her voyage.

The telephone rang twice, and the captain answered. “Yes?”

“Second Officer Okura, sir,” Okura said. “We are approaching the American two-hundred-mile limit. I request your clearance to dump the ballast water.”

The captain grunted. “Seems a little rough, doesn’t it?” he replied. “Might be safer to jog into these seas for a while, wait for the swell to die down.”

“As you wish,” Okura replied. “Though we risk missing our window at the Port of Seattle if we wait too long.”

The captain was silent a moment, and Okura could almost read his thoughts. Unlike most cargo ships, whose payloads rested close to the waterline, the Pacific Lion was a car carrier, a large, bricklike vessel with a high center of gravity. Consequently, the Lion carried seawater as ballast to retain stability, but American law required the ship to change out the ballast water before entering U.S. territorial waters, to prevent the spread of invasive marine species.

It was a delicate procedure, involving the release of the ship’s old ballast simultaneous with the intake of new seawater, and Okura knew the captain would prefer to wait for the calmest seas possible. But Okura also knew that the captain had a schedule to maintain, and that the shipping company gave close scrutiny to any unforeseen delays. Captain Ise risked his yearly bonus if he dawdled too long; no ship’s master wanted a reputation as a laggard.

Okura had a schedule, too. He had a buyer in Seattle lined up for the bonds, but time was of the essence. Sooner or later, the syndicate in Yokohama would trace Tomio Ishimaru to the docks, to the Lion . And the syndicate’s reach extended across the Pacific Ocean; the yakuza had friends on the American shore. Okura wished to liquidate the bonds quickly, before the syndicate could catch up. From there, he’d have enough money at his disposal to disappear completely.

Finally, the captain came back on the line. “At your discretion, Mr. Okura. Proceed with the ballast changeover as you see fit.”

“Very good.”

Okura ended the connection and made another call, this time to the engine room. “This is the bridge,” he told the engineer who answered. “Please stand by for ballast changeover.”

A pause. “Are you certain? It feels rough out there.”

“Captain’s orders,” Okura said. “Would you like me to tell him the engine room wishes to delay?”

“That won’t be necessary” came the reply. “Five minutes and we’ll be ready.”

As he waited, Okura’s mind drifted to Ishimaru. The accountant still believed this was all a coincidence; that Okura had found him in that parlor by chance. In fact, Okura’s debts to the parlors had been precarious even then. He’d seen Ishimaru, known his old classmate had taken a job with the syndicate. Gradually, he’d worked out a plan.

All that remained was to off-load the bonds. And to take care of Ishimaru, of course. The accountant had played his role, and could now be discarded. Sometime soon, in the days ahead, he would suffer a tragic accident by falling overboard far from land. He would disappear into the ocean, and never be heard from again.

And the entirety of the syndicate’s fifty million dollars would belong to Hiroki Okura.

The phone rang. The engine room calling back. “Ready to begin,” the engineer reported.

Okura shook Ishimaru from his mind. Surveyed the bridge, verified with the helmsman that the ship was in position. “Very good. Clear to open the starboard ballast tanks.”

“Opening starboard tanks,” the engineer replied. Okura put down the phone and crossed to the front of the bridge. Stared out over the bow at the black ocean beyond as slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ship began to list to the portside.

This was normal. The water rushing out of the starboard tanks would create an imbalance that the engineers would rectify by refilling the tanks with new, American seawater. Okura had personally overseen the procedure more than fifteen times since he’d come aboard the Pacific Lion .