Harconan hesitated, then crossed to the bunk. Sitting on its edge, he slipped his arm around her. “I rather wish you would, Amanda. I wish that, for the next few days, you might consider yourself a guest of the Bugis people rather than a prisoner.”
“I believe Saddam Hussein once used the same line.” Keeping her eyes averted, Amanda could only hope she was not overplaying her role in either direction. With her strategy set, she must not seem to give ground too readily; yet on the other, she must appear to be vulnerable to a seduction over to Harconan’s side.
She felt Harconan squeeze her shoulders. “Amanda, please, there are events taking place here that go far beyond piracy and the loss of your satellite. Things are going to change in this part of the world. For the sake of your nation and mine, I ask you only for an open mind.”
Amanda counted to three and hesitantly looked back into Harconan’s face. “Well, it never hurts to listen.”
“It doesn’t. Now, finish getting dressed, and hurry; there is something you’ll want to see. This morning you’ll breakfast in the stronghold of the sea king.”
With a final smile and a kiss on her forehead, be departed.
A bolt was still thrown on the other side of the cabin door, and Amanda sensed the presence of a guard in the passageway.
So far, Amanda mused as she pulled on her slacks, her act was holding her audience. Or at least to the extent that Harconan was willing to maintain his own facade.
Or could it be more than a facade?
As in her old cabin, a small salt-clouded mirror was bolted to one bulk head. Amanda looked into it, still mildly startled at the dark-haired visage that looked back. She studied the high-cheekboned face with its start of horizon crows’-feet at the corner of the eyes. She acknowledged being reasonably good-looking and she’d been exceptionally fortunate in having some very attractive and dynamic men in her life, but she couldn’t see how this visage could ever be a valid justification for the launching of a thousand ships. She couldn’t see it, but then, there was no accounting for taste.
This was a duty quite different from any other she’d ever been called on to perform before. She had an instinctive dislike for both lying and for using a personal relationship in this way, even with a foe like Harconan. Stark feminine and military practicality pushed that aside, however.
Harconan had chosen the tune, but she would interpret the dance in her own way. If it required that she lie in his arms and accept his frankly delicious passion, so be it. If, for the moment, all she could do was to serve as a distraction, drawing Harconan’s time and focus away from his confrontation with the task force, so be it. She would fight with whatever was in the shot locker.
One factor that helped keep the taste of betrayal out of her mouth was Makara’s apparent assumption that she, Captain Amanda Lee Garrett, USN, could be seduced away from her life’s worth of duty to her nation and the Navy.
She arched an eyebrow in the mirror. Sorry, darling, it’s very nice. But every man I’ve ever met has one.
She found a rubber band suitable for binding her hair back. She did appreciate this offering of western-style clothing, though. But did he mean that deck security was no longer so critical?
She slipped her feet into the sandals and knocked on the louvered cabin door. Her old friend with the Sterling machine pistol pulled the bolt and fell back.
It was a dazzlingly bright morning, with the rising sun streaking across the oil-smooth surface of the sea. The bow wave boiled under the upswept stem of the pinisi, the spray kicking wide. The coaster was driving hard, its powerful diesel hammering at what must be close to full power. As Amanda came on deck, she couldn’t help but look aft for any sign of possible pursuit. There was none, the sea and sky being devoid of any other traffic.
The pinisi was standing in toward a low green coast that extended out to the horizon mists to the eastward. Well inland, a cloud-capped mountain range, massive even by Indonesian standards, reared into the sky, and Amanda caught a hint of earth, corruption, and growing things on the wind.
New Guinea. It had to be.
Shading her eyes with her hand, Amanda could make out no sign of human habitation along the shore. There was, however, a narrow cape extruding from the bulk of the coastline. The coaster seemed to be steering for the tip of this headland.
Patiently her guard stood back on the deck, the Sterling casually aimed at the small of her back. Amanda continued up the exterior ladder to the schooner’s wheelhouse.
Harconan was present, along with the Bugis skipper manning the wheel. Some of the other bronze-skinned crewmen were working on deck, rolling the tarpaulins off the deck cargo and preparing to clear the forward deck hatches.
“A beautiful morning,” Harconan commented.
“It’s going to be a hot one, though.”
“They all are here. You’ll get acclimated.”
Amanda casually made her way to the port side of the wheelhouse. Looking forward, she checked to see if last night’s deliberate oil stain stood out against the accidental deck scarring.
And that was another problem. From the look of things, they were getting ready to work cargo. Would they pass off one empty oil drum as a routine shipping loss, or might somebody figure it to be something else?
She shot a glance at Harconan. Makara was not stupid, but then, what she had tried with the oil was so totally off the wall that it should never occur to him.
Unfortunately, it might not occur to anyone in the task force either.
“We seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere,” she commented, probing.
“Quite so. We have an appointment to not keep with one of your ocean surveillance satellites.”
Amanda’s brow knit. “You have an orbital traffic schedule for our recon sats?”
Harconan lifted his hands and gave a boyish grin. “What can I say: I have friends in high places. One of your Keyhole spy satellites will be coming over our horizon in perhaps another forty-five minutes. Best we’re out of sight by then.”
“That’ll be a trick.”
“One of many I possess. Watch and be amazed, my beautiful Amanda. I’m proud of this.”
The tip of the cape grew steadily closer. Amanda could make out towering black lava cliffs with the distinctive columnar pattern of water cooled basalt and obsidian, the facings at least three times the height of the schooner’s masts. Another mast height of verdant jungle growth topped the cliffs, while waves broke to white foam at their feet.
As the range continued to close, Amanda could make out the moss streaks on the stone and the giant ferns overhanging the cliff edge. She frowned as she also made out the swirl of the sea around jagged lava outcroppings at the cliff base. They were working in fast and close, and this pinisi didn’t seem to run to accessories such as a fathometer.
“Pardon me for asking you your business, Makara, but how much water do we have under us?”
He chuckled. “Enough for a supertanker. There’s an almost sheer dropoff around the cape to a five-hundred-foot bottom.”
She shook her head, her mariner’s instincts kicking in. “It would be hell to be caught off of this thing in a bad easterly. No holding ground for anchors. If you didn’t have the power to haul off shore, you’d be finished.”
“Not if you know the secret, Amanda. Watch.”
The pinisi skipper was paying off, cutting across the tip of the head land. As he did so, the stone cliffs seemed to move, to gape silently open. It was a startling effect until one realized it was an optical illusion.