Coincidence - Alan May [63]
“All right, “he said. “First thing to do is call your bosun back—Mr. MacDonald, is it?”
“Ross MacDonald, yes, but nobody ever calls him anything but Mac.”
“Get Mac on the line.”
Kathleen placed the call, then handed him the phone.
Mac gave him the full story as well as their current coordinates.
“Have you any idea of where the Coincidence came from?” Sergeant Oliver asked.
“Aye, the navigational charts are plotted from Costa Rica—Puntarenas. From there they went to Buenaventura, Colombia. They were headed for Easter Island, same as us. And Coincidence is not the boat’s real name, either. It’s an alias. The original name was the Two Wise.”
As soon as he said the name, he realized it sounded like “Two Eyes” so he spelled it out.
Mac had made good use of the time he’d spent waiting for Kathleen to call back that morning. He was able to give the sergeant a full description of the boat—a Real Ship 65—including the details of the sloppy paint-and-vinyl camouflage, and then he read off the serial number from the registration plate.
“Well done,” Sergeant Oliver said. “It’s a lucky break for everyone that you’re on that boat. But you’ve no way now of contacting anyone onboard the Inspiration?”
No way at all, Mac told him. He’d come across a set of walkietalkies aboard the Coincidence, but he hadn’t figured out how to get one of the pair over to the other boat.
“Right. Don’t do anything that might jeopardize your cover,” the Sergeant said.
They asked Mac to call every four hours if possible.
The next step was to try to track down the owner of the stolen boat. Kathleen set up the sergeant and Detective Newton in the spacious side office the Blue Water staff used for meetings and curriculum planning. That would be their center of operations for the time being. It had a large desk to spread out on as well as a computer with a high-speed Internet connection. Kathleen made a fresh pot of coffee for them and went back to her own office to compose a message to leave for Edward Flynn at his hotel in Johannesburg.
Sergeant Oliver gave Detective Newton the task of going on the Internet to try to locate Real Ships, Inc., to determine where and to whom the vessel they knew as the Coincidence had been sold. The sergeant meanwhile would consult his superiors at RCMP headquarters.
Within two minutes, Newton had come up with the Web site for the sales office of Ships International in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He dialed the number listed on the site, and was quickly connected to the sales manager, a Mr. Sam Greason.
“I have information on every Real Ship ever manufactured,” Mr. Greason said. “The Coincidence, you say? Odd, I don’t recognize that name. But if you’ve got the serial number I can tell you anything you need to know.”
Newton gave him the number and resigned himself to listening to cloying on-hold music for a minute or two. He held the phone to his ear with his left shoulder while he stirred sugar into his coffee. One packet, two packets, three. Some cream—pah, nothing but skim milk here.
“Detective?”
Greason was back on the line, a different tone to his voice now. He was practically barking in Newton’s ear.
“May I ask why you are inquiring about this boat?”
“We are investigating a, uh—an incident taking place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at this time; we have reason to believe the Coincidence is involved. What can you tell me about it?”
“It was reported stolen about three weeks ago. Vanished without a trace. It was docked in Puntarenas, down in Costa Rica. The cleaning staff did a routine maintenance on it one day, and next day it was gone. The local authorities investigated but came up empty. Whoever stole it must have changed the name, too. The real name of that vessel is the Two Wise.”
It sounded just like “Two Eyes,” but Sergeant Oliver already knew the correct spelling.
Rob Montgomery could hardly believe his ears. What were the chances, after all, that out of a clear blue October sky a guy he’d worked with over a year ago—a Canadian Mountie, at that—would call him up and hand him