Graham Brown - Ghost Ship

The e-mail read rather matter-of-factly.

Can neither confirm nor deny the presence of Sienna Westgate in Mashhad or surrounding area.

Mashhad was a city in northern Iran, suspected of being the headquarters of a new technical group working for the Iranian military. No one was certain just what they were up to, but the Iranians were believed to be desperately upgrading their cybersecurity and attack force. Embittered that the U.S. had somehow gotten a virus known as Stuxnet into their nuclear-processing facilities and caused a thousand high-priced centrifuges to spin out of control until they exploded, the Iranians were not only looking to protect themselves, they were planning to hit back.

Part of that effort seemed to involve foreigners who’d been spotted shuffling in and out of Mashhad, sometimes under guard.

Kurt read the rest of the e-mail.

On good authority, I’ve been informed that three Western persons, two male, one female, were in Mashhad for some time. They were present for at least nineteen and possibly as many as thirty days. It’s unclear if these individuals were captives or paid experts. Description of the female matches Mrs. Westgate in size and approximate age but not hair color. No photographs are available. Subject did not appear to be injured or to favor either hand in daily activities.

She was seen arriving and leaving the suspected defense building in northern Mashhad under light security. No coercion was evident. No mistreatment detected.

All three individuals were spotted departing via small aircraft twenty one days ago. No information has been uncovered to accurately suggest the destination of that aircraft or the current whereabouts or welfare of the persons on board.

Kurt closed the file.

Why did it matter what he saw in the dreams? Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, he’d become convinced that Sienna was alive. And if she was alive, he could think of only one reason she’d be doing work for the Iranians: her children, Tanner and Elise. Someone had to be holding them hostage and using them as leverage against her.

He knew it was a stretch of logic, supposition piled upon supposition. Considering the facts, it was irrational and unreasonable, and yet he felt it with every fiber of his being. Only the dreams made him doubt.

If the empty salon and the abandoned yacht were the true memories, then he had reason to believe, to hope, and to trust his instincts.

But if he had witnessed Sienna and her daughter drown—and was trying subconsciously to rewrite his memories and replace what he knew with what he wanted reality to be — then he was balancing on the very edge of madness, one misstep from tumbling into the abyss.

The woman on horseback moved slowly, materializing like an apparition through the shimmer of the midday heat. Young and fit, in her late twenties, she held the reins of a spotted Appaloosa with quiet confidence as it trotted slowly along the sand at the edge of a muddy river.

She wore black from head to toe, stylish riding boots, and a caballero’s wide-brimmed hat to keep her pale skin from the sun.

She guided the horse effortlessly, passing through a narrow section, keeping her eyes on the water’s edge in case any crocodiles were lurking. As the gorge widened out, she came upon a group of zebus — Brahman cattle with sharp V-shaped horns and distinctively humped shoulders.

The cattle were part of her family’s abundant wealth, a symbol of both power and plenty, though little care was given to them these days. Mostly they wandered unchecked, grazing on the vegetation that had grown during Madagascar’s wet season.

She put the cattle behind her and rounded a bend in the river. It brought her to an area of natural carnage. Weeks of rain had brought on heavy flooding, the worst this part of the island had ever seen.

As the streams funneled together, the rushing torrents had grown strong enough to scour out huge sections of the banks, undercutting the land and tearing it away in parking-lot-sized chunks. Fallen trees had been swept downriver like toothpicks; those that remained lay in a tangle, their roots upturned.

Farther on, she came to a section of shoreline that had once been a peninsula sticking out into a large bend in the river. It was now an island, cut off from the land and surrounded on all sides by the arms of the rushing river.

She checked the horse with a slight movement of the reins and paused. The Mozambique Channel spread out ahead of her, its shimmering waters stretching to the horizon. Three hundred miles beyond lay the eastern shore of Africa.

She’d come to this spot often over the years. It was her favorite place on the island, though for reasons others would find odd. Alone in this desolate place, she felt something different: a certain kind of sadness that she hid from the world. It seemed to belong to her like nothing else she possessed. It was part of her, an emotion she didn’t want to lose.

Unfortunately, things were changing. Events were unfolding beyond her control, and that melancholy feeling was being torn away piece by piece, like the small island eroding in the center of the raging channel.

As she watched, a section of red clay the size of a house sloughed into the water from the front of the island. It slid down at an angle, like an iceberg calving from a glacier, and began to dissolve as it contacted the churning river.

In its place she noticed something odd. Not more clay but dark, blackened metal. Flat and smooth like a wall made of iron. The churning water rushed past, relentlessly scouring the mud from it and slowly revealing more and more. A seam appeared and then another. She saw that the wall was actually great plates of riveted steel.

A chill settled on her spine, a sick feeling rising in her stomach. Fear and curiosity mixed in a cocktail of emotions. She felt drawn to what she saw and afraid of it at the same time.

An urge to cross the river and investigate came over her as if something or someone was calling to her, as if she were being asked to come to the aid of ghosts trapped beyond that metal wall.

She eased the horse to the river’s edge but the animal bucked and resisted. The current was far too strong, the footing too treacherous. One step into it and she and the horse would be carried away as easily as the large trees.

The horse raised its head and neighed. Somehow, the act brought the woman to her senses. She backed off and looked toward the small island once more.

She didn’t know what lay beneath the reddish soil. And suddenly she didn’t want to know. She only wanted to leave, to get out of there, before the truth was revealed.

She turned the horse sharply, pulling its head around, and kicking her heels into its sides.

“Come on,” she said. “Yah!”

With a willing surge, the horse took off, galloping away, heading back inland, back to the plantation, the palacelike mansion and the life she knew.

More storm clouds were gathering above the hills in the distance. Another flood would be coming. She guessed accurately that whatever lay buried under that island would be gone before morning.

Sebastian Brèvard waited in the main hall of his opulent plantation house. Six feet tall, trim and muscular at forty-two years of age, with smooth olive skin and dark hair that revealed his ancestral origins in the South of France, Brèvard was a handsome man in the prime of his life. His hair was thick and dark as mahogany, his eyes were lightly colored, almost hazel, and he sported a thin beard that ran along his jawline, trimmed daily by a personal barber. He carried himself with an air of confidence — some would say arrogance — that came from a privileged upbringing as master of the house.