Page 4 of Steinbeck
Jack looked at his phone.
“I got a ping from our King’s Inn website contact form.It has a booking request for a woman named Firebird.Except the dates are all wrong.It’s for December 14, 2005.”He turned the phone around.“Twelve, fourteen, two-zero-five.It’s missing a year digit.”
“Or not.”Steinbeck took the phone.“Maybe it’s European dating.Fourteen, twelve, two-zero-five.Which would be one, four, one, two, two, zero five.Seven digits.”He studied the screen.“The IMO number on the ship is seven digits.”
“The IMO?”Jack said.
“International Maritime Organization.They have a global shipping information system that keeps a record of all the locations of ships at sea by their number.”
“And you know this?—”
“SEALs don’t just bang down doors,” Stein said.He opened a new tab and did a search.“Found it.It’s a container ship.Registered to...bam, Portugal.”He held up a fist, his gaze still on the screen.
Jack bumped it.
“It’s a Panamax.Big ship—about nine hundred feet long, a hundred plus feet wide.Draft maybe forty feet.”He leaned back, made a wry face.“She’s about 190 feet tall above the water.”
“Hard to board a ship like that at sea, in case you’re thinking like a SEAL.”
Stein nodded.“She’s still at sea, port of call, Lisbon.”He didn’t want to think of where they’d kept Phoenix for the past month.“ETA, three days from now.”He ran a hand over his mouth.“If this messageisfrom Phoenix, then...”
“Then you’re all done sanding, bro.”
* * *
Her prison even came with a view.And if Emberly looked long and hard enough, maybe she could even make out her apartment on the hills above the Tagus River, in the Santa Catarina neighborhood of Lisbon.Students would be basking in the grass of the nearby Miradouro park with the Adamastor, the epic literary sea-monster statue, maybe watching as her container ship churned into port.
Over a month off the grid—Nimue would be crazy with worry.
Please let her plan work.
Sunny blue skies, a cloudless day, the distant Serra da Arrábida a sleeping hunchback in the far southern horizon.Across the gray-blue of the water, the city of Lisbon climbed up the hillside, with ocher and whitewashed buildings, red clay roofs, streetcars motoring up the cobbled streets, the sidewalks lined with slick and shiny black basalt.Ahead of her, the 25 de Abril Bridge spanned the river, golden sun turning the metal to blood red, now glistening on the water.That same sunset splashed over the rebuilt limestone Tower of Belém at the seashore, a reminder of the explorers who left the shores, along with the resilience of a rebuilt city.
Maybe that’s why she’d picked Lisbon and her tucked-away two-room flat.She loved to sit on the balcony that caught the salty winds off the sea, winds that stirred into the city air the scent of lush stone pine, fragrant eucalyptus, and even hints of the cork oak that had once overrun the city.
So close, and yet so far.
Staring out the window of her bare crew-quarters cell, Emberly nearly groaned for a taste of a fried bifana or a beefy prego.Maybe a plate of crispy-rice paella with shrimp, mussels, and crab—and now she was just torturing herself.
Most likely, her captors would shove her onto a plane headed for some remote Siberian gulag.With a stopover in Moscow just so they could have another go-round of interrogation.
She’d have the same nothing to say this time around.She didn’t have the jump drive that contained the Axiom program, and in the bonus round, no, she didn’t know where the shipment of obsidite had ended up.
Didn’t know anything except that the thugs who’d taken her belonged to the Petrov Bratva.A piece of information she tucked away to tell her boss.
If she ever escaped.
Stay calm.Think.
Emberly sat back on the twin bed and drew up her bare feet—she should have scored better shoes back before...
Well, before her foolish heart had decided to defect from her brains and stick around to help a guy who’d abandoned her.
“I’ll be right behind you!I promise!”
Aw.Herstupid words.
She touched her forehead to her knees even as the boat’s horn sounded, alerting the harbor of their arrival.She couldn’t blame Steinbeck for abandoning her—he had his own life, his sister’s life, even Declan’s life to protect.
