Clive Cussler: Golden Buddha

He paused before climbing the ladder and took a few moments to study the upper works of the ship.

From his long experience and knowledge of ships, he judged her length at 560 feet, with a 75-foot beam. Probably a gross tonnage around 11,000. Five derricks, two behind the funnel and superstructure and three on the forward deck, stood waiting to unload her cargo. He counted six holds with twelve hatches. In her prime, she would have been classed as an express cargo liner. He guessed that she had been built and launched in the early 1960s. The flag on her stern was Iranian. Not a registry Morales had seen very often.

If the Oregon looked shabby from the waterline, she looked downright squalid from her main deck. Rust covered every piece of deck machinery from winches to chains, but the hardware at least appeared to be in usable condition. By comparison, the derricks looked as if they hadn’t been operated in years.

To add further insult, battered drums, tools and what could only be described as junked equipment were scattered around the decks. In all his years as a harbor pilot, Morales had never seen a ship in such filthy condition.

He climbed the ladder steps leading to the bridge, past bulkheads with flaking paint and portholes whose lenses were cracked and yellowed. Then he paused before finally swinging the door open. The interior of the vessel was as bad, if not worse. The wheelhouse was dirty, with the scars of cigarette burns on the counters and on what had once been a polished teak deck. Dead flies littered the windowsills, the smell assaulted his nose. And then there was the captain.

Morales was greeted by a great slob of a man with an immense stomach that sagged over his belt line. The face was scarred, and the nose so badly broken it slanted toward the left cheek. The thick black hair was plastered back with some kind of greasy cream and his beard was scruffy and stringy. The captain was a cacophony of colors. His eyes were red and his teeth yellow-brown, while his arms were covered with blue tattoos. A grimy yachtsman’s cap sat perched on the back of his head and he wore dingy coveralls. The tropical heat and the humidity on the non-air-conditioned bridge made it obvious to Morales that the man had not bathed for at least a month. Any dog worth his salt would have tried to bury the man.

He extended a sweaty hand to Morales and spoke in English. “Glad to see you. I’m Captain Jed Smith.”

“Jesus Morales. Pilot for the Harbor Office of Santiago.” Morales felt uncomfortable. Smith spoke English with an American accent—not what he’d expected on a ship of Iranian registry.

Smith handed him a packet of papers. “Here’s our registration and cargo manifest.”

Morales merely cast a brief glance at the documents. Officials on the docks would study them more closely. His only concern was that the ship had permission to enter the port. He handed back the packet and said, “Shall we proceed?”

Smith waved a hand toward a wooden helm that somehow seemed terribly old-fashioned for a ship built in the sixties. “She’s all yours, Señor Morales. What dock do you want us to moor at?”

“There are no docks available until Thursday. You will have to anchor in the middle of the harbor until then.”

“That’s four days from now. We have a schedule to meet. We can’t sit around for four days waiting to unload our cargo.”

Morales shrugged. “I have no control over the harbormaster. Besides, the docks are full with ships unloading new farm machinery and automobiles, now that the embargo has been lifted. These have priority over your cargo.”

Smith threw up his hands. “All right. I guess it’s not the first time we had to twiddle our thumbs waiting to unload.” He gave a broad, rotten-toothed grin. “I guess me and my crew will just have to come ashore and make friends with your Cuban women.”

The thought made Morales’s skin crawl. Without further conversation, he stepped over to the helm as Smith called the engine room and ordered half speed. The pilot felt the engine’s vibrations through the deck as the tired old ship began to make way again, and he aimed her bow toward the narrow entrance of Santiago Harbor, which was bordered by high bluffs that rose from the sea.

From offshore, the channel that led inside to the bellows-shaped harbor was invisible until a ship was nearly on top of it. Rising two hundred feet atop the cliffs on the right stood the old colonial fortress known as Morro Castle.

Morales noticed that Smith and the members of his mangy crew standing on the bridge seemed interested in the defenses that had been dug into the hillside when Fidel Castro had thought the United States was going to attack Cuba. They studied the gun and missile emplacements through expensive binoculars.

Morales smiled to himself. Let them look all they wanted—most of the defenses were deserted. Only two small fortresses maintained a small company of soldiers to man the missile emplacements in the unlikely event an unwelcome vessel tried to enter the harbor.

Morales threaded his way through the buoys and steered the Oregon deftly around the twists and turns of the channel, which soon opened into the broad, ballshaped harbor surrounded by the city of Santiago. The wheel felt strange to him, though. The odd feeling was barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. Whenever he turned the wheel, there seemed to be a short lag before the rudder responded. He made a quick but very slight turn to starboard before bringing the wheel back to port. It was definitely there, almost like an echo, a two-second delay. He did not sense sluggishness from the steering machinery, but rather a pause. It had to come from another origin. Yet when the response came, it was quick and firm. But why the hesitation?

“Your helm has an off feel to it.”

“Yeah,” Smith grunted. “It’s been that way for a few days. Next port we enter with a shipyard, I’ll have the spindles on the rudder looked at.”

It still made no sense to Morales, but the ship was entering the open part of the bay off the city now, and he pushed the mystery from his mind. He called the harbor officials over the ship’s radio and kept them informed of his progress, and was given orders for the anchorage.

Morales pointed out the buoys to Smith that marked the mooring area and ordered the ship brought to slow speed. He then swung the stern around until the bow was facing the incoming tide before ordering all stop. The Oregon slowed to a halt in an open area between a Canadian container ship and a Libyan oil tanker.

“You may drop your anchor,” he said to Smith, who acknowledged with a nod as he held a loudspeaker in front of his face.

“Let go anchor!” he shouted at his crew. The command was answered a few seconds later by the rattling clatter of the chain links against the hawsehole, followed by a great splash as the anchor plunged into the water. The bow of the ship became hazy from the cloud of dust and rust that burst from the chain locker.

Morales released his grip on the worn spokes of the wheel and turned to Smith. “You will, of course, pay the pilot’s fee when you turn over your documents to the harbor officials.”

“Why wait?” snorted Smith. He reached into a pocket of his coveralls and produced a wad of crinkled American hundred-dollar bills. He counted out fifteen bills, then hesitated, looked into Morales’s shocked expression, and said, “Oh, what the heck, suppose we make it an even two thousand dollars.”

Without the least indecision, Morales took the bills and slipped them into his wallet.

“You are most generous, Captain Smith. I will notify the officials that the pilot’s fee was paid in full.”

Smith signed the required affidavits and logged the mooring. He put a massive arm around the Cuban’s shoulder. “Now about them girls. Where’s a good place in Santiago to meet them?”