Гарри Гаррисон - The QE2 Is Missing

As soon as the customs officer had passed Chvosta’s passport back, Aurelia pushed hers across the counter. The bored Mexican official flipped through the pages, found the stamp that had been put in at the airport the day before, then banged his own stamp next to it and slid the passport back. Aurelia went through and stood beside Chvosta while they waited for De Groot to join them.

Hendrik De Groot was a cool, apparently indifferent man who maintained an air of calm at all times. He had trained himself to be stolid and unmoving in public, an image that fitted his work, and saved all of his emotions for private display. The customs officer frowned and muttered over the Dutch passport, but could find nothing wrong. De Groot apparently ignored him. The passport was duly stamped and passed back and De Groot took it without as much as a nod or a smile.

De Groot put the passport away in his attache case and locked it, calmly and efficiently as with any other task. He was better when he worked, whatever he did, for he put all of his attention to it. Growing up in one of the oldest diamond-cutting firms in Amsterdam meant that he rarely thought of anything except diamonds. Though he was young, not yet thirty, he had the eye of an expert and knew cut, quality and value almost by reflex. He travelled a lot since he was an independent valuer who exacted high fees, but never asked his clients’ business or discussed it later with anyone. His price bought quality, accuracy — and silence.

“Welcome aboard,” the steward said as they stepped off the gangway onto the deck. He examined their tickets and directed them to the nearby lift. Chvosta and Aurelia were both on the first deck, in First Class, with single-bedded outside cabins. While De Groot also had a single cabin, the accounting officials of Global Traders had seen no reason to waste money on his accommodation, so he had an inside room on the fifth deck, deep within the ship. He had made no protest when he had checked the cabin on the deck plan. His fee would more than make up for any discomfort.

From where he stood on the dockside, the Tupamaro leader Josep could see the passengers boarding. His eyes had moved unseeingly over the fat man puffing and sweating in the heat, stopped for a moment by reflex on the magnificent behind of the girl next to him, then moved on. They were unknown to him.

“Are you the one Chuchu sent?” a voice asked from behind him. He turned to see a dark figure in the shadows, a sweating longshoreman with a baling hook over his shoulder. Josep nodded and moved over to join the man.

“Yes, I’m the one who contacted him. Are all of the arrangements made?”

“Just about. Getting your men into my gang was easy. I go to the shape-up, pick whoever I want. There are no questions asked here. But the bags, that’s different, that’s hard…. “

“No, the bags are easy. They are stacked around the corner. Just see that they are picked up and loaded aboard with the rest of the luggage.”

“Please senor, you don’t understand. The other bags have cleared customs, they’ve been checked. Yours are just there where the truck put them during the night. I don’t know what’s in them — I don’t care — but if I’m caught. That means smuggling, jail…. “

“Just don’t get caught. I was told you were the best foreman on the docks. That you could get away with anything. You’re getting paid good money. All you asked, plus a bonus. And something else. You live in Colonia del Flores, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you have that nice little house with Bougainvillaea all around it. It was pointed out to me. You have a wife and two daughters there. They are alive and healthy. Now.”

“You son of a whore — what are you saying!”

The longshoreman moved forward angrily, the shining hook ready in his hand, swinging. Josep did not move — but his words cut like razors.

“You’re a stupid fool. I am not alone in this. Touch me — or don’t get those bags aboard — and they’ll all be found in bed tomorrow with their throats cut from ear to ear. And you will be sitting there, tied into a chair with your eyelids sewn open so you will have watched it happen. Do you believe me, yes? Yes? Yes?”

With each repetition of the word yes, Josep’s hand lashed out to slap the muscular longshoreman’s face. Not light slaps, but hard ones that rocked the man’s head from side to side and drove him back. But the cruel hook was never raised and the humiliation was taken, swallowed, understood.

“I believe, yes, I do,” he said hoarsely, rubbing away the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. “Everything will be done, just as you ask.”

“Now you show your intelligence. Go do it.”

The man stumbled away, humiliated and defeated; Josep nodded with satisfaction. The point had been made. The job would be done just as he wanted it. He strolled along the dockside to see if the rest of the operation was going as planned.

Perfectly. Not too many people were boarding the ship here, so things were proceeding at a pace very much in keeping with the tropical climate. Most of the passengers had gone ashore for the day so there was really no rush to finish in a hurry, since they would not sail until the following day. Tourists, even world cruise tourists, always enjoyed an evening out in the nightspots and fleshpots of Acapulco. The powers that ordered the arrivals and departures of the QE2 were only too happy to oblige their cash customers.

One of the cargo booms had been swung out from the foredeck of the QE2, high above, and the line now hung down from the block at the end of the boom to dangle, hook swaying, over the cargo net spread out on the cracked concrete below. Some suitcases and trunks had been placed in the center of the net, and while Josep watched, a longshoreman pushed out a handtruck with more suitcases on it. He talked to the policeman who watched the operation with bored disinterest. When he had finished, the two men walked back into the shade of the building together.

From the next bay, a forklift emerged with a number of large suitcases before it on a pallet. It took only a moment to drop the pallet down onto the wharfside. Two other longshoremen appeared and leisurely added these to the pile already in the net while the forklift blatted its exhaust and drove away. The longshoremen strolled after it and, when the policeman returned, nothing had apparently changed. He looked up at the ship, then continued slowly down the length of the wharf. One of the longshoremen reappeared and picked up each corner of the net in turn and slipped the rings of each over the dangling hook. When the job was done he waved to a man on the deck above. The man waved in return and signalled to someone out of sight.

The line tightened and the corners of the cargo net lifted clear, hesitated for an instant, then continued upward. The net, and its contents, swung up high, twisting slowly, then over the ship and out of sight. Josep nodded approval and walked the length of the ship to the stern where fresh food was being loaded aboard.

Everything was progressing smoothly here as well. A continuous stream of longshoremen was moving between the ship and the dockside warehouse. They sweated heavily in the humid, cloying heat, carrying aboard stalks of bananas, boxes, sacks and crates of fresh fruit and vegetables. It was heavy, exhausting work, and Josep smiled wryly as one of the men stopped close by and mopped at his streaming face with a large and filthy handkerchief. The man was looking in Josep’s direction, but he made no sign that might indicate to an onlooker that they had known each other for many years. Josep was looking at the QE2, not at the longshoreman, as he took out a cigarette and lit it. He took only a single puff before he dropped it to the ground and crushed it with his heel. The longshoreman turned away and went into the shed. When he came out again he was carrying a basket of guavas balanced on one shoulder. He joined the line of men going up the gangplank into the ship.