Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“That I know.”

“We’ve got the pumps going. Are they working? Can you tell?”

“Yeah, and they sure beat doing the work by hand.”

“Wei tells me that if we keep the ship headed into the waves and everything else sealed up, we should be all right.”

David looked at Wei. He was small—maybe five feet three inches—wiry and toothless. “If that’s what he says, then we’ll do it.”

“Great. Get everyone below decks and—as they say in the movies—batten down the hatches.”

It seemed like an easy enough job, but it turned out to be one of the most challenging of the day. Many of the immigrants—including Zhao, who had gone back to his old spot and was sitting with a tarpaulin around his shoulders—refused to leave the deck.

“Come on, Zhao,” David insisted, shouting over the storm. Strong winds from the west pelted him with rain. “I need your help. We’ve got to get everyone down below.”

“I stay out here the whole trip.”

“You’re going to die out here is what’s going to happen.” He motioned to the sea. Towering waves caused the ship to pitch violently. Every so often the Peony’s propellers could be heard as they rose up out of the water. “You’re going to wash overboard.”

“I make it this far. I make it to end.”

David squatted. “I need you, Zhao. I need you to help me with the others. If you help me with them now, I promise to help you later.”

The Chinese man considered. “How do I know if a white ghost tells the truth?”

David extended his hand for a formal handshake. “I always tell the truth.”

By four in the morning, the worst of the storm had passed over the China Peony. Campbell had called to shore to say they were going to make it and to get off their asses and get a ship out here to tow them in, please. Here and there, men dozed. Others clustered in groups, smoking cigarettes, speaking in low voices. Gardner, still sick, was resting in the captain’s cabin. Campbell had fallen asleep at a long table in the crew’s galley, his head resting in the crook of his left elbow. His right arm swung at his side in rhythm with the ship’s movements.

David lay on the top bunk in a cabin that must have been shared by four crewmen. He’d stripped off what was left of his clothes and had draped them over the end of the bunk to dry. Below him, two men gently snored. The helicopter pilot occupied the upper bunk across from him, but he’d turned to the wall. David stared at the ceiling, where a handful of postcards had been taped. Whoever had bunked here had been at sea a long time. One postcard showed a sweet-faced Chinese maiden posing before a colorful bouquet of carnations. Others showed Hong Kong Harbor, a neonlit Tokyo street, the Golden Gate Bridge. David wondered wearily where that sailor was tonight. Had he washed into the sea when the crew had abandoned ship? Or was he in Chinatown, singing at a karaoke bar?

David closed his eyes and listened to the reassuring pulse of the engines. He could honestly say he’d never had a day like this before in his life.

In that stage between sleep and wakefulness, something started to edge in on David’s consciousness. What was it they had been trying to hide from him down in the hold? He opened his eyes. He whispered, “Jim, you awake?” The pilot didn’t move. David hopped down, slipped on his damp clothes, then quietly pulled open the heavy door and went out into the deserted hallway. He turned left and headed down a flight of stairs.

He paused to look at the immigrants. No one noticed him. He continued down another flight and down again. By now the stairs were little more than steep metal ladders. The air was humid and rotten, the hallway dimly lit. David closed his eyes and tried to think back, visualizing where he had been earlier in the day. There was a place where the men kept blocking his way. That was where he wanted to go. He passed the holds where they all had worked so hard. He turned a corner and found himself in a huge, deserted room with a ten-foot-high iron tank sitting against the wall. He had been there before, only to be led off in another direction time and time again.

He walked over to the tank and knocked on the side. It sounded hollow, but what did that mean? If the day had proven anything to David, it was that he didn’t know anything about the sea or ships. The door was painted a drab green. Rust stains seeped from hinges and bolts. He tried the round crank. It moved easily in his hands. He turned once, twice, pulling hand over hand….

A force pushed him back, and he fell to the floor. Water splashed over him for a moment, then spread out into a shallow puddle. An odor of decay filled the air. Next to David lay a mound of putrefying flesh. The body—human—was grossly swollen. The eyes and tongue protruded. The lips had pulled back, revealing black teeth. The skin—what was left of it—was covered in greenish black algae. The distinctive band of a Rolex glinted in the decomposing meat of the wrist.

David pushed away, sliding across the slippery surface of the floor. As he looked down, he saw on his chest something that looked like a glove. He tried to bat it away, but it stuck to his shirt. Then he realized what it was. The skin and fingernails of the dead man—woman?—had come loose and slipped off. Panicking now, David forced himself to look at the body again. The flesh from both the hands and feet had come off—like gloves, like socks.

That was enough to send David reeling to his feet. He staggered out of the hold and scrambled up the narrow staircases, paying no attention now to how much noise he made. Finally, he pushed through a last door and was on the deck. The rain was coming down hard and the ship still pitched relentlessly. David grabbed hold of the railing and threw up repeatedly.

But even as he was sick, even as one part of his mind recoiled at what he had seen, even as he wished that he could scrub from his body the horrible slime of that chamber, another part of his mind was already working. How was he going to find out who that person was? Shivering, his head hanging over the railing, his body soaking wet, David began to plot. Order an autopsy. Have Campbell call the FBI—better yet, the State Department—to make inquiries about missing persons in China. Arrange for extra interviewers at Terminal Island. Because two things were certain: That watch did not belong to an ordinary immigrant, and the mass of illegals on board knew about the body.

3

JANUARY 21–22

Terminal Island

The next ten hours were a nightmarish blur. David could vaguely remember stumbling back to the galley and waking Jack Campbell. He could remember how smoothly the FBI agent responded, calming David down, getting him to explain what had happened, then going down again to that horrible place. He could remember Campbell sealing off the hold, leaving the body half floating in muck. David recalled the helicopter pilot bringing in a bottle of liquor dredged out of a first-aid kit and the feel of the harsh brown liquid as it slid down his throat. David desperately wanted to change clothes and sluice his body with seawater, but Campbell wouldn’t allow it, claiming t

hat evidence might be destroyed.

And then they waited. David could remember sitting out on the deck and watching as a cold, gray dawn rolled across the sky. Rain still lashed the deck, but the ocean had tamed to undulating swells. Finally Jim loped out to his helicopter and called to shore. David could remember Jim saying that the Coast Guard would be there in a few hours to tow them back to the harbor and that he was ready to fly back himself. Campbell had wanted David to go, but he’d refused. After Jim and Noel Gardner left, Campbell and David began interviewing the immigrants.