China Jewel (21 page)

Cutter drove through River Sunday to the highway and turned north. He raced hard, his hand perpetually on the horn in the slow summer traffic. People recognized Jolly’s truck and pulled to the side, sensing the emergency.

More thoughts rushed through his mind. He felt Jamie’s hand in his. They had gone to see a rosy Papa Noel at Christmas in a store filled with orange blossoms in Buenos Aires. He remembered the jasmine aroma in the hot weather with a smile. The English was mixed with Spanish and Jamie, just five years old, confused the words. Jamie whispered to Santa and the old man winked at him and nodded with a happy chuckle. Afterward Jamie had told them, “I’ve made a deal with Santa.” Cutter remembered how serious the youngster had been. The boy spoke his young words in a mimic of the tone Cutter used himself on his international business calls to the States.

“What’s your deal, Jamie?” Cutter had asked, his wife smiling beside him.

“I said to Santa that I can trade all the new gifts he is going to give me this year. In return he can ask you to stay home and play with me and my old toys.”

Cutter skidded left onto a dirt road. He bounced and spun the vehicle across the ruts toward the one-story Coast Guard station in the distance.

Reaching the structure, he jumped out of the truck and rushed inside.

Chief Steele, a weathered tall man, said, “Here’s a man who wants something we can't give him.” He looked up at Cutter, large and red faced, standing in front of him. He sat back in his starched uniform, put down his pen and shuffled some of his papers.

“I sent him out there. I got to get him,” said Cutter.

“That’s a mighty tall order, Jim. All the emergency cutters are ordered to port. The choppers are grounded. Nothing can happen until the winds die down at sea.”

Cutter held out the map Sparkles had prepared. “Chief, this is a hell of a mess. Can you help me?”

“Last I checked we only got one cutter assigned to that area. Mostly for drug interventions. She was standing by on the race. Hell, Jim, even if my ship was still patrolling out there, that’s a lot of nasty ocean for her to cover.”

Cutter still stared at him.

Steele moved over to the wall. “Let me show you my charts.” He moved to a map display showing the Eastern Pacific Ocean. “The Peregrine being a local boat, we’ve been alert to her movements.” He pointed to a spot on a plastic weather overlay on the bigger map. “Here’s where we figure the Peregrine is.” He stopped and said, “By the way, you might want to have some faith in your Captain Hall. I know him pretty well. He’s been around a few years and paid his dues in getting a boat through a storm.”

Cutter remembered what Bill Johnson had said. Hall was taking money to risk the boat. He didn’t impart that bit of information to Steele.

Instead, he placed the weather chart that Sparkles had prepared on the wall beside the Coast Guard display. He pointed out a mark in the left quadrant of the swirling storm system. “Our spot is a little east of yours,” Cutter said.

The officer jotted figures.

Cutter pointed to Sparkles’ marks on her carefully prepared chart. “You can copy her notes too.”

“Peregrine would be right here then,” the chief said, pointing to a new spot on his own map.

Steele looked up and said, “The weather in that place seems a little better. Of course, the other problem is getting a cutter through the surrounding winds to reach that location.” He held his chin in his hand, thinking.

Cutter persisted. “We can search pretty close to this spot. That’s what I want.”

“Yessir, if she’s still afloat. Of course, we also got to figure out whether she is even afloat. Jim, they wouldn’t risk a plane out there if they knew she was under. No sense to it.”

Cutter looked at him.

The officer said, “You’re going to have to prove to me that you think she’s there. I can’t do that for you.”

Cutter pulled himself up straight. “She’s going to be there.”

Steele asked again, “You sure now? You got no radio contact. She must have lost all her antennas. That’s happened to the other boats too, I understand.”

“You’ve got to do this. I really believe the Peregrine is all right if we can just get out there.”

Steele paused, then said, “All right, I’ll make another call. You got to understand I’m doing this for the town as much as anything else, as much as for your boy. Lot of folks want them all to be safe. Maybe I can convince somebody to try.” He went to his phone. As he spoke he walked to the window again, looking at the sky and the pleasant summer weather.

After a few calls and some arguments with different commanders, he put down his phone. He said, “Best I can do is get out there in about eight hours, latest maybe dawn. I’ve pulled every string I have.”

“Not before?”

“Even this is pushing it. We might lose a cutter or a chopper and its crew if we go too soon. No, we’ll have to give it some time. Go home and take it easy. We’ll find them, you just see.”

Steele paused then smiled. “Look, we’ll do all we can. Besides, according to Jolly, the boat hasn’t got a worry. Have you been watching the news? Jolly got on TV.”

“Jolly did what?” asked Cutter.

“They interviewed Jolly out at Lulu’s. He really came through. I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“What did he say?” Cutter showed the trace of a smile.

“The newsmen didn’t know what they were getting in for when they asked Jolly to walk up to the microphone. He didn’t want to do it but his wife and sister made him. Then Reverend Blue got into it too. You know Reverend Blue?”

Cutter nodded. “He’s the one with the lighted crucifix around his neck. He lights up to red and blue colors when he presses a button in his pocket.”

“Well, his lights were going off, red and blue, blue and red. Finally Jolly says, waving his arms, “All right, I’ll go up there and talk to ‘em. Can’t say as I can do much good.”

The Chief picked up a mug of coffee and sipped, then said, “There was a new reporter from New York with a suit that, damn it, shined I was told. Maybe he was the one that interviewed Stringer, I don’t know. He was a cocksure son of a bitch, Jim, and he tried his stuff out on Jolly.” He reached over to his computer console. “I recorded the interview to show to my crew for laughs.” He hit a button and the video came on. The noise of the bar provided a background to the reporter aggressive questioning and Jolly’s relaxed comments.

“What’s your name, Mister?”

“Eh, Jolly.”

“You’re from River Sunday, is it Mister Jolly?”

“Yessir, that’s right.”

“What do you do around here, Sir?”

“Well, I build boats.”

Steele smiled. “You can figure, Jim, that the crowd knew Jolly was coming up to something and the reporter didn’t have a clue. Here’s when the lady from his New York staff came over and whispered in his ear who Jolly was. You can see him change his attitude.”

“You have constructed boats for decades, Mister Jolly. Your crew built the Peregrine. Can you inform the American people what you think of Mister Stringer’s worries about the Peregrine.”

“I don’t think he has much to say at all.”

“He’s the designer. You don’t think that means anything?”

“Well, first off, he ain’t the designer. That boat was set down over a hunnert years ago by someone, nobody even remembers who it was, who had already forgot a lot more about these clipper boats than Stringer ever knew.”

“The ship wasn’t safe.”

“She was fast. That was the whole purpose of building her. She was designed to go fast. To go fast you have to take risks. Mister Stringer was a damn liar and I don’t mean maybe. He come in River Sunday to help us make up a copy of one of our old clippers. That’s all he did. His job wasn’t to say the boat was good or bad, just make one.”

“The American public thinks he’s right.”

“The American public ain’t from River Sunday. Boat like this sailed for a long time and made a lot of very fast trips without any problem. It ain’t an unsafe boat.”

“So you’re not worried about the Peregrine and its crew?”

“Nossir, I’m not. Boat is as good as its crew. That’s the whole meaning of this trip anyway. It’s the crew and she’s got a good one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Reverend Blue told us last Sunday the truth is in the men on that boat. The Lord helped the men to sail her. We been sending men down to the sea for centuries. Haven’t lost any more than our share. Ship will take it. We been building pungies and schooners. It’s a lot about the men and women sailing them. Boats never been perfect but the sailors and their guts are the same. Preacher say men made the boats but God made the men. He say that’s God’s perfection to get the job done.”

“Bay storms are a big difference from hurricanes.”

“I’d say to you there’s a big difference in studying them from land and sailing them out there in the water. Reefed with tops and foresail, all hatches closed, they’ll be all right.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m damned sure, mister.”

Steele smiled. “Even though he's a short man, he looks about two feet taller than the asshole newsman. You can hear the applause.”

“Reverend says we all make mistakes. There’s mistakes at being human and mistakes taking chances to go ahead. You got to for something worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile?”

“Let me ask you something. A century ago we were challenged by the British in a sailing race that came to be known as the America’s Cup. Do you know that the American team copied our Chesapeake ships like the Peregrine in order to win that first race? So you see, sailing these old boats is worthwhile.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Maybe to a lot of people who want reality in this world. Reality is hard work and risk.”

The telephone rang at Steele’s desk. He stopped his computer.

“Sparkles is on the phone,” Steele said, handing the receiver to Cutter.

“Mister Cutter, we picked up an offshore transmission of a Peruvian Navy ship still working the storm zone. Their radar has found a contact.”

Doc Jerry came on, “The Peregrine’s been found. She’s all right. Sails in storm set and making way heading south from the winds. Her communications started again too and we now have her on the chart.”

When Cutter told Steele, the Chief said, “See, what’d I tell you about Captain Hall, Jim?”

Cutter smiled for the first time and slapped Steele on the back. “Whatever you told me, it’s all right.”

The only person he wanted to talk to was Katy. She was on her way to River Sunday from Baltimore. She congratulated him on the good news.

“I think I had a little more faith in your son’s ability than you did,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I did worry too much.”

“Fathers are allowed.”

Neither spoke for a few moments.

Then Katy asked, “If the crisis is over with the boat, can you get away to help us at Staten Island? I need some of your know how on this wreck site.”

“You got it.”

“By the way, that Honda was following me for a while tonight. It was the same one, the car with the bent rear fender. Could not see the driver. Eventually it went away.”

Cutter said, his voice trembling from exhaustion and now fear for her safety, “I’ve let all the people I love get into danger. You and Jamie might be killed by this thing before it is over.”

“I can take it.”

“I can’t save you guys. It’s what happened to me in Africa with Rosa and Jamie all over again.”

“We’ll be all right.” Her voice was calm but he was very worried. He did not know what Strand would do next to harm his people.

“At least I can let the State Police know about this Honda. Maybe they can figure out who it is.”

Hours later, Cutter was awakened from an exhausted sleep by the pounding on his hotel door. Immediately he thought of Jamie.

Doc Jerry called, “You got to come over right away.”

He looked at his watch. It was two in the morning. He quickly dressed and rushed down the huge stairway into the lobby of the Chesapeake Hotel. Outside the hotel, the streets of River Sunday were quiet. The night air smelled like the harbor, a tinge of fish and rot and seaweed. He ran to the Peregrine operations office located a few blocks away. When he entered, Doc Jerry came spilling into the front room, excited, several printouts in his right hand.

He shouted, “The Louis 14 has been found. The Peregrine discovered her by nearly running into the hulk, submerged under the ocean surface by about a foot. French and Peruvian cutters have been searching the area for bodies. All crew drowned, including Captain Etranger.

Cutter read the notes. “Let’s get ready for a press release of some kind. Get all you can from our people out there at the scene.”

“We have staff on the Navy carrier that is approaching the location.”

Among the printouts was a first report on the British Willow. She broke some of her bow timber and seawater had filled part of the hull. She was half-sunk on the sandbar a few miles out from the Peruvian coast. All its crew were safe.

Finally, Cutter found a note on the America, Strand’s boat. She had lost some rigging. All had been replaced and she was fully underway back on course towards China.

The others were coming into the office. Chairs scraped as the team sat down at their stations and turned on their computers. Cutter slapped the papers against his desk. He was aware only two clipper brigs were left in the race. The race had come to Strand International versus Johnson Company, the America versus the Peregrine.

Sparkles had turned on the television to get the news. Cutter stood watching as the first videos came across the screen. A woman reporter was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, a yellow parka pulled over her shoulders. As a pair of helicopters idled their big rotors behind her, she talked into her mike, her face excited. The helicopter blew her hair behind her. Cutter could see storm rain spitting in the bright lights of the large ship.