They talked a while longer but, try as she might, Dana could not think of the Leon Lestage trial as being anything other than torment. She said goodbye to Lee, headed for the Skytrain, and went home to Chris and Bam-Bam.
36
For forty hours the Allegro Star clung like a barnacle to the hull of the massive MOL Honor. The captain of the supercontainer ship didn’t notice the imperceptible change in resistance and speed resulting from the unauthorized passenger. Jimmy had been careful to precisely center the Allegro Star onto the hull of the larger ship so that its computer-controlled steering of the MOL Honor would be unaffected. Only submarine camera systems could reveal the presence of the Allegro Star, and while the Port of Vancouver was heavily policed by the Canadian Coast Guard and the Vancouver harbor patrol, security had not yet reached this level of sophistication. At some future point it would, but Yousseff would then simply modify or transform his system to continue to stay one step ahead of interdiction—a combination of art and science that he had excelled at for more than four decades.
The MOL Honor entered the busy Juan de Fuca Strait and coasted to a halt at Brotchie Ledge, a shallow section of water south of Victoria, BC, and north of Port Angeles, Washington. At that point, two pilots from the Pacific Pilotage Authority and two immigration officers boarded the ship. The pilots threaded the massive ship through the San Juan and Gulf Island archipelago, where some of the passages were less than a mile wide and the ocean surface was cluttered with pleasure boats and sailing ships, all of whom seemed to blithely ignore the 18,000-container-load leviathan that appeared in their midst.
On a grey Vancouver day, where the air and water came together in a damp fog, the MOL Honor entered the mouth of Vancouver Harbor, and, at low tide, just managed to fit beneath the Lions Gate Bridge. The ship’s schedule had been set when she left Tokyo Harbor nine days earlier and she was piloted past a fleet of waiting ships in English Bay and taken directly to the Centerm terminal of the Vancouver Port Authority. Leon Lestage, three decades earlier, had elevated his game from drug wholesaler to importer/ exporter at this very terminal.
“So now what?” asked Zak as the MOL Honor dropped anchor at the enormous terminal.
“We’re here,” replied Jimmy. “The city of Vancouver.”
“Sure, but we’re stuck underwater, attached to the hull of a container ship. We need to be on land.”
“I know,” Jimmy replied. “The next part is going to require a little more effort on your part. It’ll be dark in a few hours. Then we’ll detach. I’ll bring the Allegro Star to the surface, you guys get off, and I’m going to skedaddle the hell out of here.”
“Get off how?” asked Zak.
“I can’t take you to shore, Zak,” Jimmy replied. “I’m going to raise us up so that we crest the water’s surface by a foot or two. I’m going to surface for no more than thirty seconds. The three of you get off, and I’m taking her back down.”
“How far from shore will we be?”
“About a quarter mile. Maybe a bit more. I can’t take you in any closer.” “I’ve got an artificial forearm,” Zak said. “I can barely swim.” “I’ll help you to shore, Zak,” Richard said.
“Damn,” complained Zak. “Getting to shore here is going to be just as bad as getting off in Karachi.”
“Well, if you like, we can go through immigration,” Richard said wryly. “The lack of passports will be the least of our worries. We’ll be whisked off to the States the instant their computer systems identify us. Apparently we were part of a rogue operation, Zak, and Kumar here is one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. None of what we know will see the light of day. In fact, we’ll likely end up in the Denver Supermax and Kumar here will end up at Gitmo, where they will squeeze every last drop of information out of him before he’s carved up for crab food. It’s only 400 yards. How hard can it be?”
Zak reluctantly nodded his head, and they waited tensely until midnight. Jimmy noiselessly detached the Allegro Star and brought her to a point midway between Canada Place, a cruise ship terminal, and the Centerm container terminal.
Just before they surfaced, Jimmy opened a small cupboard door beneath the forward video screens. “You may need this. Money solves most any problem.” He handed all three of them thick wads of fifties and hundreds of Canadian and American money.
“Do you guys just keep stacks of money lying around everywhere?” Richard asked.
Jimmy chuckled. “Cash is Yousseff’s biggest problem. When you run an operation like he does, you generally have a few million lying around in various currencies. In fact, this is how he built Karachi Dry Dock and Engineering. He paid everyone in cash, and used an incredible amount of money for research and development. It actually pissed him off when KDDE became successful in its own right, because large successful companies do not pay a workforce of a thousand people in cash. So he built other businesses, starting them all the same way. He probably earns more money from legit businesses now than he does from the drug trade. He is the shrewdest, smartest guy I have ever met. I mean, look at the Allegro Star. Dummies don’t build craft like this.”
At midnight the Allegro Star surfaced and the three of them bid Jimmy farewell and slid into the murky water. It was worse than any of them anticipated. The water was bitterly cold, brackish, and full of the by-products of the heavily industrialized harbor. Zak made it on
