clothes.”
“ The one without all the blood looks your size.”
They stripped him, leaving the body clad only in underwear.
“ The wool itches,” Jim said.
“ New Zealand wool doesn’t itch.” Mohi looked at the black sweater. “Comes from Germany, not New Zealand. That explains it.”
Jim finished dressing by putting on the dead man’s work boots, thankful that they fit. It was time something went right. Then he picked up the gun, a thirty-eight police special.
“ This thing is older than God.” Jim jammed it between his belly and the pants, under the sweater.
“ Guns are hard to come by in New Zealand,” Mohi said.
“ Apparently.” Then, “What took you so long?”
“ I got home okay,” Mohi said, “but I passed out in the driveway. Linda dragged me into the house and called an ambulance. I’d lost a lot of blood and when I came to I was delirious. They took me to the hospital, gave me blood and antibiotics. I’ve been drugged up for the last twenty-four hours.” He grimaced. “They got the bullet out, but they kept me on pain killers. It took me a whole day to remember what that guy at the motel said about this place, then I called Linda and snuck out of the hospital. Sorry, I did my best.”
“ You did good enough, we still have time. How’s the shoulder now?”
“ Not bad. I’ll be all right.” But the sweat running down his forehead told Jim that he was in serious pain.
“ Linda’s outside, in the car,” Mohi said. “Follow me.”
“ How did you get in?”
“ Door wasn’t locked.” Mohi led him through the house to the dark night outside. Linda Tuhiwai was waiting in the parked car out front. She got out when she saw them coming.
“ I was getting worried,” she whispered.
“ It’s okay, you don’t have to whisper anymore,” Mohi said.
“ How did you know to translate the boat’s name?” Jim asked Linda as he climbed into the backseat.
“ Mohi told me the man at the motel said they were German.” Linda got back in and started the car. “German bad guys, boat with a German name, it wasn’t hard to put together. After I figured out the Reptil Rache was the boat we were looking for, I went down to the port and did a little asking around while Mohi was in the hospital.”
“ But the boat we’re looking for is fitted out with cheap pine. We saw that boat. It’s first rate,” Jim said.
“ On the outside,” Linda said. “The inside is pretty, but not practical.”
“ How do you know?”
“ I talked to the man who installed the new air-conditioning unit below,” Linda said. “He’s married to a friend of mine. He told me the boat had been completely refitted last year. That’s why she looks so good. A German named Manfred Penn bought it two months ago and gutted the inside. He didn’t like the boat toilets and showers. He wanted the kind he was used to, never mind that they’ll flood as soon as he hits rough seas. The plumber tried to tell him, but he didn’t listen. He also wanted larger staterooms and he didn’t like the look of teak. He wanted light, knotty pine. He thinks it’s prettier. The carpenter tried to tell him you need hard wood on a boat, but he still didn’t listen. After a while people stopped trying to tell him.”
“ That sounds like the boat,” Jim said.
“ There’s more,” Linda said. “The boat sails with the dawn. Nobody seems to know for where.”
“ You learned a lot,” Jim said.
“ She’s a smart woman,” Mohi said.
“ What’s this Manfred Penn look like?”
“ Bald and ugly as my husband’s mother.”
“ Linda!” Mohi chastised.
“ Uglier,” Linda said.
“ We’re here.” Linda parked the car at the end of a pair of long twin piers. The pier on the left had a small oil tanker tied to its left side. There was nothing tied to its right. The pier on the right had a cargo ship moored to its right. Pallets of bagged cement, six feet high, were stacked on the twenty-foot wide pier, four abreast and over thirty deep.
Two forklifts were busy scooping up the pallets and delivering them to a crane that bent down from the cargo ship. On the left side of the right pier was the old Dutch schooner, Reptil Rache. She was a hundred and twenty-five feet long, but sandwiched between the cargo ship and oil tanker, she looked small.
They got out of the car.
“ Keys?” Mohi asked and Linda tossed them to him. He went to the trunk and opened it. “Take one of these.” Mohi handed Jim a fishing rod. “Maori men fish here every night, even some pakehas, white men. We can get close without them suspecting anything.”
Jim followed Donna’s parents out onto the left pier, where they sat a few feet away from three old Maori men who were fishing in the moonlight. They dropped their lines into the water and stared at the boat. The three fishermen didn’t comment on the fact that Jim and Mohi weren’t using bait.
The sails were tied on. There was a rough looking man sitting on the deck, watching the forklifts and the crane do their work. The Reptil Rache was ready to sail and they had posted a guard to keep off unwelcome visitors. It would be impossible to sneak aboard.
“ How come the diving ladder’s still down?” Jim wondered aloud, referring to a stainless steel ladder hanging over the side of the boat and extending into the water.
“ It was delivered today,” a Maori man from the group to their right said. “I guess they wanted to see if it worked.”
“ If we can distract the guard, I could swim over and climb on board.”
“ The water is dirty, polluted and awful cold,” the Maori said. The two others in his party nodded their assent as the three moved over to join them.
“ I think my daughter’s on board.” Mohi explained the situation to them.
The Maoris wanted to storm the boat, but Jim told them if they did, the men onboard might kill the girl. He didn’t tell them they might get hurt themselves. These kind of men wouldn’t think of their own safety.
“ I need a way to keep this old thirty-eight dry,” Jim said.
One of the fishermen went to his lunchbox, took out two sandwiches and removed them from a Ziploc plastic bag. Jim zipped the gun into the bag and nodded his appreciation when the fisherman offered him the sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. He didn’t have to ask. These men were Maori, they knew when a man was hungry.
With his hunger and thirst partially satisfied, Jim was ready to go into the cold water.
“ There’s a ladder at the end of the pier,” Mohi said.
“ Okay.” Jim tucked the gun back into his pants, then took off the sweater and the work boots. “I’m ready.” He turned to Mohi, “If I’m not off by midnight, assume I’m dead and burn the boat.”
Linda gasped.
The old men’s eyes popped open.
“ If Donna’s alive, we’ll be off. If we’re not, it’ll mean I found her dead and it won’t matter what happens to me.”
“ I won’t burn it if she’s not off,” Mohi said.
“ We’ll need a fire in front of both entry ways and under the windows on that doghouse,” Jim said, ignoring Mohi. “If I do find her alive, we can leap through the flames into the sea. If that thing is on board, the fire will hold it back.”
“ I won’t burn it if she’s not off,” Mohi repeated.
“ Start the fire.” Jim looked him in the eyes. “If we get away, I don’t want that thing coming after her ever again. If she’s there and alive that fire might be the only chance we have of getting off.”
“ He’s right, Mohi,” Linda said. “We have to do what he says.”
“ I have gasoline in my trunk,” one of the old men said.
“ Can I count on you?” Jim asked, standing on the ladder.
“ You can,” Mohi and Linda said as one.
“ You can,” the three fishermen echoed.
