"Besides," Ginger added, "Mr. DuPont told us to be extra nice to the clients." Smiling, she waved at the two Vietnamese officials, watching the scene from the well deck aft. "And… that's what we're doing."
"Sure! I think they're enjoying the view."
"I don't hear Mr. Nguyen or Mr. Phuong complaining, do you?"
He glanced back at the two Vietnamese nervously. It was tough to read their impassive faces.
"Do you remember what happened on Tuvalu last month?" he asked. "The police were very upset… and you two were just topless then. The People's Democratic Republic of Vietnam is still Communist, I don't care how free market they've become, and some of them are pretty conservative. I don't want you to offend them."
"Sounds to me like you're the conservative, Mr. Schiffer," Ginger said. "Why are you so uptight?"
"I am not uptight! It's a matter of morality. Of common decency!"
"George, what's your problem?"
He spun, startled. His boss had padded forward on bare feet, and he'd not heard his approach.
"Uh… Mr. DuPont, sir. I was just suggesting that the girls might want to put on swimsuits. You know, so they don't give offense to the natives."
Matthew DuPont's expression was also unreadable, masked behind his expensive aviator's-style sunglasses. "The girls' bikinis make them look more naked than plain, bare skin. As for Mr. Nguyen and Mr. Phuong, they are not natives, so you can drop the patronizing bullshit. Ginger and Katie are doing what we pay them to do. I suggest you do the same and not interfere with their job."
"Sir, the police chief on Tuvalu was most upset…. "
DuPont sighed. "George, two hundred years ago, the natives on those islands were happy and uninhibited. A woman's bare breasts were milk glands for feeding children, nothing more, and they certainly weren't objects of shame. Then your missionaries showed up and taught them how to be ashamed of their bodies. Yes, they get a bit upset nowadays at tourists to the islands who shuck their clothes and go natural. I don't blame them a bit.
"But out here we're fifty miles from the nearest land, and the only prude with a stick up his ass on this boat is you."
"Sir! I don't have — I'm not uptight!"
"Then stop acting like it. Your religious right is showing."
"That's not fair!"
"No? You're Baptist, aren't you?"
"No, sir." He'd been raised in an independent Bible church, though, in fact, he hadn't been to church in years. His ideas of right and wrong, however, were firmly entrenched in fundamentalist Christian doctrine. "This isn't a religious issue," he insisted. "It's just common decency!"
"George, there is no such thing as absolute morality. Those native people, two hundred years ago, thought nothing about women going around with their bare boobs showing. No big deal. Kissing, though, that was another story. They thought rubbing mouths together was about the dirtiest, most disgusting thing a couple could do. That was their morality… at least until the missionaries got through with them."
DuPont was wearing rather tight swim trunks. The bulge at his crotch proved that he was more than casually interested in the women's current state of attire. Schiffer suspected that his boss had been having relations with both women the whole way across from Hawaii, but he had been doing his best not to think about it. DuPont, after all, was married, and a senior vice president of Global Oil to boot. Even in this libidinous day and age, scandal could play havoc with stock market numbers.
The state of DuPont's swimwear was making Schiffer increasingly conscious of the swelling discomfort in his own suit. Ginger stretched out on the deck, arms high above her head, her movements luxuriously catlike… then absently reached down and rubbed the gold-furred delta between her legs.
Jesus! He tried thinking about icebergs. "That doesn't prove there isn't such a thing as right and wrong, sir…. "
"George, you're giving me a pain. Get out of here. Go below and help them fix lunch, will you?"
He glanced at the two women again. Maybe going below was a good idea. Their nakedness was… distracting, and the iceberg ploy wasn't working.
"Hey, Mr. Schiffer," Katie said. She rolled over and deliberately took Ginger in her arms. "Maybe we should kiss instead, huh?" They started kissing full on the mouth, hands restlessly sliding everywhere, and Schiffer turned and fled.
He heard their laughter at his back, raw and taunting.
Ul Haq pressed his face against the periscope's eyepiece, studying the target.
"What is it?" Khalili demanded. "What do you see?"
Ul Haq ignored him for a long moment. The ex-Taliban officer would not have approved of what he was watching.
Though the range was just over one hundred yards, the periscope optics magnified the image enough that ul Haq could see the deck of the two-masted sailing yacht clearly. Several men stood aft, in the well deck, while two more stood forward, just in front of the mainmast. On the deck were two women, either naked or wearing extremely skimpy bathing attire.
As a good Pakistani Muslim, ul Haq believed that women should cover up in order to avoid tempting males. The Taliban, though, was notorious for its mistreatment of women. When they'd ruled Afghanistan a few years before, gangs of Taliban thugs had stoned, raped, or mutilated women, sometimes for crimes as slight as exposing their faces, or for failing to brick over the bedroom windows in their homes. Ul Haq had never approved of such an extreme interpretation of religious law. Pakistan — especially in the cities, tended to be more tolerant of uncovered women, especially with the influx of foreign films and foreign tourists.
Besides, he'd seen something of the world. Twice he'd visited England, and he'd even been to the United States, attending a year-long exchange student program in college. He knew that other peoples' ways were not necessarily his ways. That didn't lessen the extent of their sin against God, of course, but he did understand that other cultures viewed skin — specifically female skin — differently than did the clerics of fundamentalist Islam. Those women displaying themselves in front of those men simply didn't know what they were doing.
He was glad that only he could see what the periscope saw, however. The scene would surely have enflamed the crew, and Noor Khalili would have become insufferable.
"In Allah's name, have we found the target?" Khalili demanded.
"Yes," ul Haq said, continuing to peer through the scope. "At least… we have a large sailboat… twenty meters, at least. I cannot see the name or registry, but it appears to match the information your colleagues provided. It flies an American flag."
"The American yacht!" Khalili's fist cracked against his open palm. "Then we should take them!
Now!"
Ul Haq turned from the periscope eyepiece. "My friend, you should learn the first order of the submarine sailor. It is patience. We have the target in sight. We stalk him. We make certain of our prey's identity. And, when the time is right, we attack… not before."
"And I remind you of our mission." Khalili glanced aft, at the taciturn Chinese officer standing by the chart table. "We were forced to strike at the Vietnamese base to satisfy the Chinese, but now we are free to hit the Americans. If the sonar contact is, indeed, the sailing yacht Sea Breeze, we have both targets in our sights at once — Vietnamese and Americans! We should surface and take her passengers on board!"