Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“Is all this really necessary?” Calista asked.

“We need a smoke screen for our true plans,” he said. “A little carnage will do nicely.”

Calista nodded and walked to the front of the control room, where the floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the Olympic-sized swimming pool. A pool where she’d learned to dive. Where she and the others had trained for the mission to attack the Ethernet.

Thinking about that moment, her mind wandered to Kurt Austin. Since encountering him there, she’d hacked into the medical files NUMA was keeping on him and learned of his relationship with Sienna.

She wondered what would possess a man to risk life and limb for a woman he could never have. A woman whose rescue would only result in him losing her again, as he delivered her back to another man’s arms.

Either Sienna was the type of woman who inspired such love or she was fortunate enough to have encountered a man whose sense of duty was more important than his own selfpreservation. In either case, Calista found herself jealous. She had never known such a man and probably never would. “Get Laurent up here,” Sebastian said, breaking her train of thought. “We need to make sure all his men are brought back to the compound and ready to fight. Even the ones we’ve simply hired for local jobs.”

“Expecting company?”

“Not right away,” Sebastian said, “but soon enough. When they do come, we must be certain that they bleed. They must find it as difficult as possible to overcome our defenses or they won’t truly believe they’ve won.”

She understood. It was all part of the game.

Durban, South Africa

Gamay arrived in Durban and found herself something of a local attraction. The discovery of the Waratah was being kept secret until the ship was brought safely into South African waters. But the rumor had begun to spread. And hearing that a member of the NUMA team had been flown in with samples of something that she needed examined, she was met with an excited response.

Several experts flew in on their own dime and convened with her at the University of Durban-Westville campus. They quickly set up shop, examining the samples of the insects, dead rodents, and various seeds and plants discovered on the Waratah.

While they worked, Gamay took the opportunity to visit the library and found a microfilm machine, where she could peruse the old newspapers printed at the time of the Waratah’s disappearance.

“Are you sure you don’t want to use a computer?” one of the librarians asked. “All of this is online.”

“Thank you but no,” Gamay said. “I’ve had quite enough of computers for a while.”

Left alone, she read article after article. It was an education into a different time. She’d grown so used to today’s world, where plane crashes and mishaps of any kind were covered live and the information distributed and verified almost instantly, that it was odd reading about the disappearance. Initially, the ship was just thought to be overd

ue, a common occurrence. Even days and weeks later, there were articles suggesting that the Waratah might yet arrive or that the search vessels would encounter her and tow her in. Estimates of how long her food supplies would hold out were offered as reason not to panic.

But then hope faded and the reality set in. Speculation and rumor began to run rampant. The storm of July 27th was considered the likely culprit. The statements of a man named Claude Sawyer became a focal point. He was the sole passenger bound for Cape Town who decided to disembark the ship in Durban. He sent a telegram to his wife that read, in part, “Thought Waratah top-heavy. Landed Durban.”

Mr. Sawyer also claimed to have had a dream shortly before the ship reached Durban in which a knight crying the ship’s name came charging through the waves with a sword raised high. After getting off in Durban, he claimed to have had another dream in which the Waratah was swamped by a massive wave, capsized, and vanished from sight.

A different theory was espoused by Captain Firth of the steamer Marere. He believed the Waratah too big and strong to be taken by a rogue wave and thought it more likely that she’d lost a propeller or rudder and was adrift in the current, being slowly hauled past the Cape of Good Hope and out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Firth was certain the Waratah would be found, much like a similar vessel, the SS Waikato, which broke a propeller shaft on the way to Auckland and drifted for six full weeks before eventually being discovered. Some speculated she would drift all the way to South America.

As Gamay read the newspapers over, she found her attention turning to other stories of the day: news of the storm, political arguments, and ads for products, including one that touted smoking as a cure for the common cold.

Most striking, she read a long dispatch about the Durban police battling a group of criminals known as the Klaar River Gang. After an explosion and a conflagration that burned up a fortune in paper currency, it was finally determined that the notes were actually near-perfect forgeries. While most of the Klaar River Gang had indeed perished, Robert Swan, chief inspector of the Durban police, feared the leaders had escaped and would resurface.

“May you live in interesting times,” Gamay whispered to herself.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from behind her. “Are you Gamay Trout?”

She turned to see a man wearing a navy blue suit and an open-necked, button-down white shirt. He offered his hand. “My name is Jacob Fredricks. I’ve heard a rumor that you might have discovered the SS Waratah. Is that true?”

Gamay hesitated.

“I worked with NUMA on an expedition looking for the ship years ago,” the man explained. “Unfortunately, we came up empty.”

She recalled the name. And though she wasn’t sure if this man was who he said he was, she doubted there was much danger to her or the ship anymore. As the truth was obviously leaking out from several sources, she decided to tell him what she knew.

They spent the next two hours discussing the ship’s vanishing and the time Fredricks thought he’d found it, only to learn he’d discovered a World War Two cargo ship torpedoed by the Germans.