Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 02 - Peeking Duck (16 page)

The spot he pointed to was well away from where the
Alterra
could have possibly been, even if our calculations were extremely incorrect.

I sat back in my chair.  Could it be that the
Trusian
was now the
Alterra
?  It seemed fantastic, but plausible. 

“
We need to find out everything about this ship, the
Alterra
,” Galveston ordered.  “It’s probably almost to Lima, and when it gets there we’ll be ready.”

“
I’ll find out about it,” Maddie told us.  “There has to be a story.”

“
So where is the
Alterra
headed to after Lima?”  I asked.

Alex looked through his pages again. 
“This says Panama City then to Cape Town, South Africa.  It’s scheduled to go through the Panama Canal.”

“Do you think Cape Town is the final port for the
Trusian
?  They couldn’t go through the Panama Canal.  They would be captured in an instant,” Jane interjected.

“
You’re beautiful, and smart,” I told Jane.  “I bet they’re going toward Cape Town, but I doubt the pirates plan to go into that port.  We need to find out where else they could offload.” 

It was a daunting task, and I had no idea how we
would find the answer.  There were thousands of potential alternatives available for the pirates.  Hopefully some other ships would spot the new
Alterra
as it tried to run around the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South America.  There were usually cruise ships and other merchant ships going through that treacherous pass of water. 

This part of the mystery
would have to wait for a time, however.  Maddie and Alex had more pressing gossip that we needed to know, and the information would prove not only interesting, but also dangerous.

-Chapter 31-

The pieces of the puzzle slowly unraveled before our eyes, at least the portions we could understand.  When we were faced with an impasse, a new door opened.  Our luck seemed to be right on track.

I
summarized our findings so we had a clear direction on where our theory was heading.  We had a stolen ship with questionable cargo that had been hijacked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a dead captain who was supposed to be on the ship, and a chief mate who wasn’t supposed to be.  Alex had informed us that the offices of Pacifica Shipping in Singapore were sending messages to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and our friendly escorts in Singapore and here in our own backyard were probably CIA agents.

It was information that was particularly unsettling, and truthfully
, it scared me to death.  To be in the crosshairs of the CIA was not where I would have chosen to be.  But why?  Why would the CIA be involved in this situation, and better yet, was it the CIA who was involved in hijacking the ship?  It seemed implausible, but after so many years of seeing the seedy underbelly of what went on in this world, I wasn’t ruling it out.

Maddie stood quietly, and I knew she
had been waiting to tell us some new information and was ready to burst.

“
Maddie, do you have something to say?”  I asked, as she smiled at the opportunity.

She paused before speaking
, waiting to see if she would be interrupted again.

“
I have more information on the captain and first mate,” she started, excitedly.  “Captain Svenson was rescheduled to command the
Trusian
.  It was a last minute change when the previous captain was detained in Hong Kong, and it was thought that he was relieved of duty—but not true.  No one has been able to locate him.  It’s like he’s just disappeared.  Captain Svenson, however, flew into Hong Kong the night before departure.  I found out that his passport from Stockholm into Tokyo and Hong Kong was stamped for entry without a problem.  The Regentex people never knew he was found dead inside his home in Sweden the day of the hijacking.  Also, the first mate had only been on a few voyages with the company and was supposed to have debarked in Hong Kong.  No one is sure when the change was made for him to remain on the ship.”  Maddie stopped and caught her breath as we stayed glued to our seats.

“
I did a little checking on the correspondence that had occurred between Pacifica and Regentex.  My colleagues and I found where the change was made.  Pacifica made the request directly to Regentex, right before the
Trusian
left Hong Kong.”

“
Pacifica made the request and Regentex obliged?  Do you think we have a little CIA involvement here?” Galveston asked.

“
It sure seems that way,” I answered.  “They wanted one of their men on that ship to make sure the cargo was secured, I bet.”

“
I don’t believe it,” Jane announced.  “Why would this cargo be so important?”

“I may be able to interject about that cargo,” Alex announced.

I noticed Maddie acted surprised and a little nervous at his statement.

“Do tell,” I told him.

“
I managed to decode a few messages about the cargo between the CIA office in Singapore and headquarters at Langley.  The message spoke about Asian artifacts of museum quality.  Jewelry, weapons, vases, pottery, statues, mostly Chinese, some Mongolian, and even items from the Persians and Byzantine era.  Around 130 to 140 priceless items dating from 8000 B.C. to 2nd century A.D.”

“
What? Chinese artifacts?  That’s what they’re shipping?” Galveston questioned.

“
Seems that way.  The message was unusually clear, especially for the CIA.” 

“
So the CIA is taking artifacts out of China without China’s knowledge.  Seems like that could create a horrible political situation,” Jane observed smartly.

“
She is brilliant, isn’t she,” I said with a smile.

“
Oh, will you stop, for God’s sake,” Galveston replied, rolling his eyes.  “We know, you’re in love.”

“
She does have an excellent point,” Alex interrupted.  “It seems awfully daring to try and steal artifacts from China.  The Chinese don’t like that at all.  They are very protective of those things, and it would be a political nightmare.”

“
What if it isn’t what we think, I mean, the CIA isn’t exactly in the business of telling the truth.  Maybe it isn’t artifacts at all,” Galveston surmised.

“
Then what do you think they’re doing?” Maddie asked, scooting to the edge of her seat.

“
What if it’s something else?  Political prisoners, papers, I don’t know.  Something they can’t just fly out of there or put on a computer disc.” 

Maddie was clearly uncomfortable about this new line of thinking.  I was finally beginning to
realize we didn’t know what cargo Maddie had in her company’s shipping containers either.  I pushed the thought back as just being overly suspicious, but it continued to gnaw at me.  What exactly, if anything, was she hiding.

“
I think we better not meet here anymore.  The CIA will find our location quick enough,” Galveston said quietly as he pulled me aside.

“
I agree.  It would be better if we left town.  We have to find out where that ship is going and get there,” I responded with a whisper.

We had a multitude of interesting questions and theories, but the answer still lay aboard the
Trusian
.  We had to find that ship, and it was time to use some creative thinking on how to do it.

-Chapter 32-

Dimitri’s hour of thinking was up, and his heart pounded as he saw his two captors.  He had no choice but to tell them the truth.  The crew had no idea what was going on, and their lives were too important to put at risk, he thought.  The same man who had previously brutalized his injured leg strolled in and gave Dimitri a sullen look.

“
Do jou have my answer?”  he asked forcefully.

Dimitri had no choice and put his head in his hands. 
“Yes.  I will show you.”

“
Good,” the man answered without a smile.  “Let us go now.”

The armed guard walked over to Dimitri and grabbed him under one arm.  The leg was still very tender, but Dimitri got to his feet and pushed the guard away.

“I’ll do it under my own power,” Dimitri announced.

The men le
d him into a small, narrow hallway, down the stairs, and out the port side of the ship onto the massive deck.  The guard raised his gun and pointed at Dimitri’s back, before the trio began to move down the stacks of immense containers towering in the air. 

The
first mate crossed between the stacks in the middle of the ship and stopped in front of a rusted container.  The pirates stood motionless behind him as Dimitri lifted a metal plate from the door.  Underneath the plate was a keypad, and he began to punch in a long line of numbers until he heard the sound of a metallic click.  Dimitri lifted the large metal handle of the door and swung it open, revealing a bunch of boxes stacked to the top of the container.

“
Zhat better not be it,” the lead pirate growled.  “No games.”

“
No,” Dimitri answered sullenly.  “The door is behind there,” he said as he pointed beyond the boxes.

The guards began to pull the boxes out
, and behind the first stack was a metal wall and another door.  The pirates looked at each other before the lead pirate grabbed his gun and raised it up.

The leader pushed the door open slowly with his foot and felt a rush of cool air blow past him as a faint glow of light illuminated from inside the container.

Dimitri lowered his head and knew he had saved his crew for the interim, but had failed in his mission.  The pirates pulled Dimitri in front of them and pushed him toward the door.

The leader keyed a radio. 
“Ve have zhe package,” he announced.  “Make zhe call.”

The pirate looked at Dimitri. 
“Jue have saved jour crew, now get us vhat we vant.”

Dimitri moved f
arther beyond the door and disappeared from their view.

-Chapter 33-

The hours passed by as we brainstormed ideas on how to find the
Trusian
and where it may be planning to offload cargo.

Alex had heard of a company that was in the business of looking for lost cargo, usually barges that broke free from their moorings, containers that fell off ships, or vessels that were
adrift at sea.  The problem was the vessels they located were usually not moving.

This company used the latest satellite pictures, wind, weather, and currents to locate the vessels.  We figured we could do the same.  Alex began searching for the latest satellite pictures over the areas where we suspected the
Trusian
was located.  By estimating the time it took for the ships on the satellite images to move from one location to another, we could deduce which ships should be in the pictures and which should not.  That was what we hoped, at least.

The whole process proved to be tedious at best and mind-numbingly boring at worst.  There was just too much
ocean to cover.  My eyes were beginning to see nothing but blue ocean.  We searched through day old satellite images, and the pictures were not military grade so the resolution was poor.  When we would find a ship, Jane would cross reference it with the latest information on any ships travelling through the area.

We were getting nowhere fast.  It was just too much for five people to touch when they didn
‘t have any experience in looking for such things.  We had to think of a better way.

Maddie decided to give a small company called Oceanic Surveyor a shot at locating the vessel, since they were familiar with such things.  It was an excellent decision, and Maddie was
authorized to offer them a sizable sum of money.  We were able to instruct them to look at a larger area, without them knowing that they were looking for the
Trusian
.  This allowed us to have a number of leads from Oceanic by the next morning,

The night
‘s sleep had proved useful and gave us a renewed sense of invigoration in our search.  We all met at a local coffee shop to look over the images Oceanic had produced.  Oceanic believed they had found the vessel we were looking for.  It was just beginning to round the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost area of South America.  It wasn’t a hundred percent, but it was a container ship, and no one was scheduled to be in the area.  The problem was the data was over a day old, because the satellites only went over that particular expanse of ocean once a day.

When we got to the next set of pictures, it became clear that this had to be our boat.  It was a container ship of the proper dimensions and going in the general direction we had expected.  It was running in a
northeast direction now, and not on a course for Cape Town, South Africa.

Galveston
and I were giddy with excitement.  Had we found the needle in a haystack?  Could this really be the ship we had been looking for?  But its ultimate destination was completely unknown, and that’s what we had to figure out.