10

“Let me do the talking,” Jerry said.

“I always do,” Luther told him.

They’d flown up from Sydney this morning, as Jerry had promised Kim’s parents he would, but then had wasted precious time on the wrong assumption that Captain Zhang would be living on his ship. The crew members they’d approached had been no help at all, either not speaking English or pretending not to, but then a smooth young Japanese gentleman in a suit had come by, at the gangplank where Jerry and Luther were frustratingly being held, not permitted even to board the Mallory, and the gentleman had turned out to be with the company that was replacing the ship’s missing lifeboat. He it was who told them that Captain Zhang was staying at a hotel in town, the Tasman Crest—“As am I myself” —during the time the ship was forced to remain in harbor.

The Tasman Crest was a mid-range smallish hotel near City Hall that seemed to cater to Asian businessmen almost exclusively, which was probably why their cabdriver had seemed surprised when they gave it as their destination. The young woman at the desk rang the captain’s room for them without result.

“You could wait for him,” she offered, with a gesture toward a seating area nearby.

“Thank you,” Jerry said, and they went over to sit on broad low chairs with thick pale green cushions and bamboo arms. A fountain was nearby, a gentle plash of water onto polished stones, an unobtrusive white noise which would make any conversation in this place something close to confidential.

Jerry was feeling more and more frustrated. “We don’t know what he looks like, only the sound of his voice. What if he isn’t in his uniform? He could go in and out a dozen times, and we wouldn’t know.”

“She said she called room 423,” Luther said. “And the key is in that slot, along with a message. Possibly two messages. Jerry, don’t turn around, I can see it fine from here. We just have to wait.” And when Jerry didn’t respond to that: “What are we going to do tonight?”

They’d decided to spend tonight in Brisbane, staying at a Sheraton because Planetwatch got a group discount, so now Jerry permitted Luther to distract him with a discussion of how they’d spend their evening. There were good seafood restaurants here, and good jazz clubs, and other clubs that might be of interest. They wouldn’t be bored.

“Ah,” Luther said, and got to his feet.

As did Jerry. Turning, he saw the girl at the counter just handing the key and the message or messages to a man who was indeed not in uniform but in a rather shabby brown suit. The man had a gloomy and defeated air about him.

It was as they crossed the lobby toward the man, who must be Captain Zhang, that Jerry said, “Let me do the talking,” and Luther gave his agreement. Meanwhile, the man had turned away from the desk, moving toward the elevators on the farther side of the lobby, and Jerry had to trot to try to catch up.

Though the girl at the desk solved that problem, calling, “Captain Zhang. You have visitors.”

The captain turned around, still holding his key and messages, looking more frightened than curious, and very wary when he saw two men he didn’t know approaching him.

Jerry stopped in front of him. “Captain Zhang?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Jerry Diedrich from Planetwatch. We talked the other day, by radio.”

Now the captain looked like a frightened rabbit, backing away, eyes slipping to the sides, looking for a hole to hide in. “No no,” he said. “You must talk to the company, Mr. Curtis—”

Jerry pursued him, saying, “When Kim Baldur’s parents came to see you, you didn’t speak English.”

“I could not talk to them,” the captain said. He was almost running backward, unwilling to turn away from them but wanting desperately to escape. “I cannot talk to you. Mr. Curtis has lawyers, you must see them. Please, not me.” He was at the elevators now, and one was just opening, releasing three businessmen with briefcases, deep in discussion. The captain ducked around them into the elevator, and Jerry and Luther went in after him.

The captain stared at them in horror. “You can’t follow me!”

Luther said, “Of course we can,” and leaned forward to press button number 4. “You’re in 423,” he said.

The door closed; they started to rise. The captain tried to be stern, not very effectively. “I have nothing to say to you,” he insisted. “I wrote a report for the authorities, that’s all—”

“You signed a report,” Luther corrected. “Some of Curtis’s lawyers wrote it.”

The elevator door opened, and the captain could be seen to be torn between horrible choices. He didn’t want to stay in here with these two people, but he didn’t want to let them approach any nearer to his room either.

Luther held the door, and spoke in an almost kindly way. “Your floor, sir.”

The captain stepped out, jittering, and they went out with him. But then he refused to go any farther. He stood where he was in the hall, in front of the elevators, sullen but unmovable. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said. He wouldn’t look at them either, but kept frowning at some invisible spot at waist height between them. “I did my report. I was very upset by what happened. I thought I would lose my job. I need my job, I have a family, I have daughters, I thought we were all destroyed. I felt…I felt very bad for that girl, so young and pretty and…it was not my fault. I would never hurt another person, you must believe me. I would never hurt anyone. It’s not my fault.”

Jerry said, “What about her parents? You pretended you couldn’t speak English. What about them?”

“I felt so— I couldn’t talk with those people, such sad people, I have daughters, I have daughters, what could I say to those people? How everybody looked for her and nobody found her, and if they found her she’d only be dead. They know that, I can’t say that. How could I talk to those people? I pretended, because I felt such badness for them.” He shook his head. “And I cannot talk to you. If you follow me to my room, I will call the desk and have them send people to take you away, arrest you. You must leave me alone.”

He turned away, scurrying off down the wide pale corridor. Jerry would have followed, but Luther grabbed his arm, holding him back. Jerry looked at him, surprised, and Luther shook his head, then turned to push the down button for the elevator.

Jerry watched the captain pause at a door some way down the hall. He never looked back. He fumbled with the key in the door, dropped his messages, scooped them up, hurried inside. The door slammed, as the elevator arrived.

As they rode down, Jerry said, “Why did you stop me? If we just kept at him—”

“No,” Luther said. “He’s covering up, he’s hiding something, and it scares him so much he won’t talk. He really won’t talk, Jerry, he’s too scared. So all we know is, there’s something hidden. We’ll have to find out what it is some other way.”

The elevator door opened at lobby level, and as they stepped outside Luther said, “The first question, of course, is how did he know she was pretty?”

Jerry thudded to a stop, as though he’d walked into an invisible wall. He spun around for the elevators, crying, “We have to—”

“No, Jerry,” Luther said, holding him by the arm again. “We’ll find out, but we’ll find out someplace else. And it is possible, of course, that Kim’s parents showed him a photo of her, though unlikely.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Exactly. But we know he pretended not to speak English with them because he was afraid of making exactly that kind of slip. So what we now know for sure, there’s more to the story. Come on, we’ll go back to the hotel and decide what to do next.”

Jerry was dissatisfied, but he let Luther lead him. They took a cab across to their own hotel, with its larger and more impersonal lobby, and as they were crossing it a voice called, “Jerry! Jerry!”

Jerry turned, and saw coming toward him, hurrying toward him, face grimacing with strain, the ghost of Kim Baldur. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted.