Shifters (8 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: Shifters
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Am I here by chance?
I’m standing on a pier, looking out. I cannot distinguish where the sea ends and the night begins. Ice cold salt water drips off my hot skin. Boats bob in their slips, in total silence.
I like the silence. It makes me feel blessedly alone and so aware in this vast and awesome night. The big bright moon is looking at me. I can feel its vibrant light on my face, my breasts. I’m caressing myself in the light. I feel like the gleam on the edge of a razor.
I feel so beautiful now!
But I sense something else—I can feel it like a joyous promise in my heart. I know it’s something good, even though bad things follow me wherever I go. I know now, my face staring up into the moon, my breasts cupped in my hands, that I’m not here by chance.
I’m never anywhere by chance.
Then comes a third sensation.
Hunger.
SIX
Sustenance
(i)
Fisherman’s Terminal, the gaudily lit ornament of Puget Sound, made Jason think of palm trees, hurricane lamps, large thick drinks and Anna wearing nothing but red ribbons. Silly thought those ribbons, but so were palm trees in November. For that matter so was the possibility of seeing Anna in the buff. He had his chance and took it, just before they turned in that evening. Say, “good night,” a gentle kiss dragged out, maybe run your tongue past her lips. He thought the chance was good, but she pulled away before he got a taste of her lips. Anna kept Jason at arm’s length for a moment, then retreated to her cabin.
All shipping ground to a halt as police boats and helicopters circled the area north of the marine terminal. The area was secured, and no one was offering explanations. Yachts circled the barges that floated idly and waited. Tugmasters kept their vessels at idle throttle to keep their charges stationary. The bitter cold morning pulled sea smoke from the factories on Harbor Island to shroud the tugs in a mist that gave them the majesty of distant mountains.
A ghostly moon was sinking behind Seattle. The Sea of Tranquility was still visible to the naked eye as the sun cleared the Cascade Mountains. Jason braced the morning chill in a knit sweater and Levis jeans. As a rule he hated early mornings. He also hated paying taxes and waking up for the 2 a.m. watch change during deliveries. Jason took all this in great stride. Most of it was, after all, part of the job. The concept of being a professional marine captain seemed luxurious to most people. On paper it looked good: $100/day plus expenses. Reality was often a different creature. Leaking hatches, contaminated water, faulty electrical, and twelve hours a day worth of watches could make it a tough way to earn a buck. In truth, he was always glad to finally reach port with someone else’s vessel.
Coffee would be nice,
 he thought. The newly varnished teak wood door, to the main cabin, nudged him in the back.
“Coffee,” Anna announced or possibly asked as she handed him a mug. Things like that were hard to distinguish through her German accent. She had a warm, inviting smile. Though after last night, Jason was pretty sure that the invitation ended with coffee.
Jason nodded at the gangway, “Heavy bastard.”
They both were watching the crews reassemble the passageways. “Ja was es das?”
The question knocked Jason for a loop. Lethe had hired Anna to be Jason’s crew, which suited Jason fine. After all, it was one less detail to work out. Jason assumed that she was to become a permanent crew on the boat after he departed. “You don’t know either?”
“Nien.”
He was starting to get aggravated by it all. Lethe openly offered Jason a two-hundred-dollar-a-day fee for the delivery—along with provisioning cash and transportation to the Emerald City, both of which were standard. Two-hundred-a-day plus expenses made him wonder what he was in for. The doubled fee sent alarms off in his head, but…well, he needed money.
And then there was the guy himself, this… Lethe.
“Weird trip, and a weirder client,” Jason muttered aloud to the fog. “Not to mention a mystery cargo, and a frigid crew that can’t speak English.”
“Swine.” Anna retorted and stalked off to the galley. His eyes followed her. She filled her jeans well, not lacking in the sweater either.
Jason, next, caught the eyes of the laborer, who was resetting the teak doors to the aft salon. The man had been watching them, or possibly only her. He smiled a toothy grin and went back to work. Below deck, other locals of the boat yard were reassembling hand rails and more doors which led aft. An hour and a half before they had to disassemble everything to accommodate the passage of one 7 X 3 metal box through the
Betruger’s
 companionway.
Yeah, that’s some mystery cargo, all right,
 Jason thought.
With four double staterooms with baths, this yacht, the
Betruger,
could double as a small hotel. The main salon and dining room were all art deco. Salmon-colored wall-to-wall carpeting, which ran to the ceiling, was trimmed out in black and gold tiffany molding. The word “exquisite” kept popping into Jason’s mind. He asked himself if this guy was a swish or something. The
Betruger’s
galley rivaled most restaurant kitchens in his home town. Even the engine room was carpeted. Her heart was driven by twin 343TA Cat diesels which could propel her at a speed of 10 knots for about 3,000 miles. To help make life comfortable aboard the 97-foot yacht, there were three generators on line which powered everything from the reading light in the head to the windless, which raised both 150-pound anchors. The bridge was fully enclosed with all the essentials; fore and aft thrusters, three VHF and a pair of single side band radios, two Furuno radars, a Furuno sonar unit, LORAN and SAT-NAV. Her lines were the pride of the Burger design team. For a million-five-plus, before amenities, she could be anyone’s pride.
In Jason’s case the
Betruger
 happened to be the pride of a man named Lethe, and like the yacht, Lethe was full of amenities; elegant, stylish, respectable, and on a first-name basis with the word money. Jason met the owner of the vessel at one of the posh restaurants which overlooked Fisherman’s Wharf (Their money was paid upfront. Again another alarm.) Lethe drew the attention of the waitress just by sitting down.
Lethe was tall, about a head larger than Jason, slim and graceful. He wore his clothes in the way a king might wear a crown, an accentuation of his own power but not its source. His face was wan yet healthily so somehow, and his hair was a wave of salt and pepper. It made it impossible to calculate the man’s real age; late forties, early fifties, Jason could only guess. He could even be in his sixties.
“Did the
Betruger
 pass your personal inspection, Captain?” asked Lethe. His eyes gleamed like polished onyx and his voice betrayed a proper English accent. It was properly spoken, like one would hear from someone who was taught the language.
“It’s quite a yacht, Mr.…”
“Just Lethe. It is the only name I go by.”
“Is the
Betruger
 a corporate vessel?” asked Jason.
“Why do you ask?” he replied, but those eyes burned their way past all Jason’s thoughts to the secret recesses of his mind.
“It’s just that some marinas apply discounts to corporate vessels. Also some have kitchens that’ll provide catering.”
“No, the
Betruger
 is my private yacht.”
“Most of the vessels that size usually have some big money to back them unless they’re doing charters,” Jason fished a little more.
Lethe smiled, a long finger unconsciously tapping the table by his napkin. “Ah, let me speculate, if you will. I’ve offered you the job of transporting my yacht up the coast, and entrusted you with making arrangements for transporting its cargo to my estate in North Bend, and you’re curious as to why I won’t be on the yacht myself, why I choose, instead, to meet you at the destination-point, hmm? Curious? And about the fact that I’m paying twice your fee, plus abundant expenses?”
“Well,” Jason began. “I, uh—”
“And more curious still are you, about the ‘strange cargo,’ yes?”
“Well, Mr., er—excuse me, Lethe,” Jason fumbled. “You have to admit, the cargo is kind of strange. I mean, sure, lots of owners prefer to pay someone more experienced to transport their yachts long distances, and sometimes they prefer not to go along for the ride—fine. But this cargo of yours, this crate—it’s so big that you’re actually having contractors take apart the companionway just to get the thing on board. Why not just truck it up to Seattle?”
Lethe sipped from his glass of Montrachet. Jason had peeked at the wine list—$270 a bottle! “Let’s just say that it suits me far more to transport the crate by water. Hiring a truck seems… mundane.” Then Lethe smiled. “But, seriously, Jason. Do I look like a drug smuggler?”
“Hey, sir, really,” Jason jabbered too quickly. “I wasn’t for a minute suspecting—”
“Please, Jason.” Lethe seemed utterly amused, pausing to sniff at his wine every so often. “It’s your job to be suspicious, and it is that level of thoroughness that I expect. If you want to know what’s in the crate, why don’t you ask?”
“Okay, uh,” Jason said. “What’s, uh, what’s in the crate?”
“A twelfth century footstand.”
“A
what?
”
“An entablatured footstand. Think of it as a medieval coffee table; it’s solid oak, weighs close to three hundred pounds.”
“What, some kind of antique?”
“Perforce. This footstand was the actual gold carrier in which a ransom of 150,000 marks was paid to Emperor Henry VI of France, for the safe return of England’s King, Richard I, in the year 1192. It’s quite dull to look at, I’m afraid, but of course the entails of its history make it very valuable.”
A…footstand,
 Jason thought dumbly. “So you’re an antique collector, is that it?”
Lethe made an odd smile. “A collector, yes.”
“And I guess this footstand is worth a lot of money.”
“Oh, yes. Actually, it’s worth about as much as the yacht.”
Jason nearly spat out his Killian’s Red.
A million-five for a fuckin’
footstand!
 You gotta be out of your mind!
“Because,” Lethe continued, sipping more wine, “the footstand also happens to contain the original ransom agreement, which is signed by both kings. It happens to be the only surviving document, in fact, that bears Richard’s signature.”
I guess that’ll do it,
 Jason thought. Collectors, what a weird bunch. If Jason had a million-five to blow, he’d pass on the footstand.
“Ah,” Lethe announced as a sultry waitress wended to the table. “Here come the snails. Have some, Jason.”
Jason took one glance at the things on the plate, and that was all she wrote. “No thanks. I’m trying to cut down.”
“Anna?”
Jason’s silent accomplice made a face and shook her head, but she didn’t hesitate to let Lethe pour her more wine. It was then that Jason noticed that most of the women in the restaurant kept stealing glances in their direction. Their waitress seemed to appear at Lethe’s shoulder about every five minutes, as if she seemed eager to serve on bent knee for him. When he commanded her it was by her name. Her face glowed every time he spoke. Lethe was getting her hot and bothered. Jason expected her to pull off her panties at any minute, and beg Lethe to take her on the table.
Jason leaned close. With a conspirator’s tone he commented, “I think she likes you.”
Lethe dismissed the attention as something that he was used to. “It is, after all, her job.”
Jason gravitated to the man. He also noticed that Anna seemed more reticent than before. It was clear that she was not comfortable around her new employer. Jason didn’t really care—money was money. And this was
good
 money.

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