Coincidence - Alan May [62]
She thought now that she could detect a Scottish accent.
Yes, it was Mac on the Inspiration. But wait, no—not on the Inspiration. What on earth was he talking about? As the gist of his story became clear, Kathleen felt her legs go weak. She sat down abruptly. Surely this couldn’t be happening. Mac was known for relishing a good laugh, but she could tell from his voice this was no joke. There was no way he’d think this was funny, not as much as he cared about the kids.
The kids.
She felt cold, as if her body temperature was plummeting with the shock. She tried to comprehend what Mac was telling her. The Inspiration had been taken over by six armed men. Mac was alone, on the hijackers’ stolen boat, being towed behind the Inspiration. No one but Dave Cameron and Captain Marzynski knew he was there. He had found twenty bundles of white powder—most likely cocaine—wrapped in plastic on the sundeck of the boat he was on, the Coincidence. He reckoned them to be about fifty pounds each, a thousand pounds, all told. A fortune on the street. The hijackers had practically no alternative but to get rid of all witnesses.
The captain would be checking in with her at nine o’clock as usual, but he would have a gun to his head. She must act as if everything was perfectly normal, give no hint that she knew anything was amiss. Mac would get off the line for now; he was on the satellite phone. But in the meantime she should notify Edward Flynn and the authorities and anyone else she could think of.
“Edward’s on his way to South Africa,” Kathleen said. “I have no way of reaching him until he gets to Johannesburg.”
“It’s all right, lass,” Mac said. He could hear the panic in her voice. He felt much the same way himself, but did his best to sound soothing. “Just leave a message for him to get back to ye as soon as he arrives. And call the police now.”
He gave her the number for the satellite phone and told her to call him back as soon as she could. With that he rang off.
Kathleen sat staring out the window. The sky was a glorious clear blue: it was a early autumn morning. How could her world be upside down when everything else was so ordinary?
She jumped when the telephone rang. She tried to imagine, as she listened to the captain reeling off the ship’s coordinates, what the scene onboard the Inspiration must look like—armed thugs with their guns pointed at him as he gave his morning report—but her imagination failed her. Nothing in his voice gave the slightest indication that anything was wrong.
He made no mention of the medical emergency of the day before but did report some minor difficulties with the electronic equipment. Both the satellite phone and the GPS, he said, had been acting up for the past twelve hours. They were still trying to isolate the problem. Could be the antennae. Nothing serious, he was sure, but she shouldn’t be alarmed if she didn’t hear from him right on schedule tomorrow.
Feeling numb, she called the Montréal police, although what they would be able to do about a boatload of hostages on the other side of the world she couldn’t imagine. Her anxiety grew by the minute as she repeated her outlandish-sounding account half a dozen times to rung after rung of bureaucracy. The idea flitted through her mind that they must be single-handedly trying to eliminate unemployment in the province by hiring battalions of people whose only responsibility was to listen to your story, tell you they couldn’t help, and transfer your call to the next new hire.
“What’s your address there?” this one was asking. “Okay, sit tight; I’m on my way,” he said. “And I’m getting in touch with the RCMP.”
Finally! Someone was going to help her—Detective Newton, he’d said he was, of the drug squad.
Fifteen minutes later, two men appeared at the BWA office: Detective Ralph Newton along with Sergeant Jim Oliver of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Montréal had no jurisdiction in a case like this, so Sergeant Oliver would be taking the lead. Kathleen recited the facts as she knew them one more time. The sergeant interrupted now and then