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sealieRating: Slash
Word count: ~3,100
Warning: skip nothing springs to mind
Advisory: potty mouth; IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof, you’ve betaed +5MB of fic! Star! Thank you.
Last time on The Co-operative:
Steve pretended to be Dirty Harry with a Smith & Wesson Model 29;
Yes, he's still wearing the suit;
There was lots of running and fighting;
Danny learned what an EPIRB was, and,
The boys (well, Steve) decided to sabotage the boat….
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
Danny had the distinct feeling that their luck was going to run out.
They were lucky that the boat was basically deserted, but they had to bump into someone soon. Steve had already taken out one of the four goons in their dungeon, the guy that had been at the wheel of the catamaran, and maybe even whoever had shot up the wheelhouse.
Three goons, an unknown number of staff, and Wo Fat -- as odds went, Danny still thought that hiding was the way to go, especially if the Navy was picking up their signal and speeding towards them.
Hiding and Steve were, basically, mutually exclusive.
Steve wanted the Champ toolbox.
Trailing in Steve’s wake as he crept forwards wasn’t a good place to be. Danny had spotted an axe in an emergency compartment, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it. Really, he knew that he couldn’t swing an axe at someone. However, on consideration, he was quite copasetic about clubbing anyone who wasn’t Steve with the fire extinguisher that had been beside the axe.
He should have brought the fire extinguisher.
Danny wanted to go to the engine room and fuck up whatever the Hell worked to propel them further away from ‘Oahu and Grace.
“Should have brought the axe,” Steve said, annoyed at himself.
“What?” Danny nervously scanned up and down the corridor. The creep, creep, creeping was worse than watching The Ring or Psycho. The alarm was no longer going off, and the reddish/yellow lights were no longer on. Regular strip lighting illuminated the corridor.
Dropping onto his haunches, Steve flicked up a recessed ring in a carpet tile, twisted and lifted a neatly camouflaged hatch. The revealed space wasn’t a secret passage, but a multitude of cables and tubing marked with cable ties and tape running underneath the flooring. Bottom lip caught between his teeth, Steve fingered the wiring cables.
“I don’t need to get to the engineering room to stop this vessel.” As if by magic the pair of first aid scissors appeared in Steve’s hand.
Surgically, Steve snipped one, two, and a final third, blue plastic-wrapped wire. The lights went off. There was a hiccup, and then the lights came back on. He stood up, and then stamped, with all his firm, toned weight on a wide yellow tube. It dented under the focussed point of his heel. Steve stomped on it again, grimaced, and stomped down hard and fast. It buckled. Oily fluid gushed out.
“Hydraulics.” Steve grinned.
Knowledge and execution was very sexy.
The boat juddered, and made an abrupt lurch to the side. Steve went down -- bang -- to the floor. Danny tried to grab him and missed. He froze, standing over a glowering Steve beneath him.
“Damn it all to Hell.” Rolling immediately to his knees, Steve smacked the side of his fist against the corridor panel. Scowling, he got his feet under him, and breathed, staying in a low crouch.
Coolly, Danny offered Steve a hand. He stared for a long moment, before accepting the help. Danny squeezed Steve’s fingers, and then pulled him upright. And held on as Steve weaved.
“Damn.”
“We could get you a walker?” Danny offered cheekily, as Steve spread his feet, rooted like a tree and stilled.
Steve’s eyes narrowed.
“One of those sexy canes with a sword inside?” Danny offered, twirling an imaginary cane à la Charlie Chaplin.
“I’ve revised the plan. I’m going to hide you in the bilges,” Steve said, but a smile flickered on his lips.
“Bilges? That’s gotta be the dungeons, eh?”
“Too fast, Danno,” Steve said fondly, “and not a structured sentence.”
It really, really, really wasn’t the time for kissing, but Steve’s lips were soft and nibbly. It was sweet and gentle like Steve could be. Danny curled a hand around the back of Steve’s neck and squeezed gently. Steve breathed against Danny’s mouth and rested his forehead against Danny’s -- it was intimate and special.
“Love you,” Steve whispered.
“Love you, too.” Danny lightly stroked Steve’s now stubbly jaw line with his fingertips, and released. “Hiding is still the best idea.”
Steve slumped. “You’re right.”
“I am?” Danny stepped back in mock shock. “Of course, I am. But--”
“Can you put the cover back, please?” Steve asked.
Momentarily perplexed by the polite request, Danny crouched and put the panel back in place. Oh, he realised, Steve didn’t want to bend over.
“You okay?”
“Come on.” Steve caught Danny’s hand, and pulled him upright and down the corridor.
At the corner was one of the ubiquitous emergency stations: fire extinguishers, eye wash station, exit indicator, and there was also a “cutaway” complicated map of the catamaran that, judging from the vile green-yellow background, promised to glow in the dark. Danny knew that the catamaran was enormous, but the map brought it home. It was a warren, thankfully, because that fact had helped them so far.
Steve’s finger went unerringly to the principal stateroom right at the front of the boat, with curving windows that promised amazing views. The stateroom was almost as wide as the breadth of the deck.
“Wo Fat’s?” Danny said unnecessarily.
A voice close by grumbled, frustrated. Danny didn’t recognise the language. Spinning around, he honed in on the sound. Behind them: more than one person, possibly? Doors were banging as two or more people looked into rooms, unerringly moving closer and closer.
“Danny?” Steve whispered loudly.
Danny spun back, finger to his lips, and then with the same finger stabbed in the opposite direction. He pushed Steve ahead of him, urging speed. Steve grabbed his hand, and towed just as fast.
Steve definitely had a goal in mind. How long could they play hide and seek? Up another set of stairs they ran. A pause here, and glance at another doorway, a chanced sprint across a corridor, and they entered an open plan dining room with a central oval table and ornate chairs. Danny guessed they were smack in the middle of the catamaran. Steve pulled Danny straight across the room to a closed door.
“The stateroom?” Danny realised. “Wo Fat’s stateroom.”
Steve released Danny’s hand and, the empty Magnum primed, opened the door to slip in -- leaving Danny at the threshold.
“I don’t believe this.” Danny looked around the dining room.
“Clear.” Steve popped back through the door, grabbed Danny and yanked him into Wo Fat’s opulent suite. Pain jerked up Danny’s sore arm.
“What?” Rubbing at his bicep, Danny put all his objections into one frustrated word.
“Wo Fat’s out there looking for us.” Steve grinned toothily as he closed the door behind Danny. “Perfect hiding place.”
“You sneaky shit,” Danny said, impressed.
Steve waggled his eyebrows.
“Champ box.” Danny pointed at the red tool-chest sitting prominently on a low coffee table before what looked like a wood stove. The silk-wrapped ancestral tablet lay beside the toolbox.
Steve looked at it, to Danny, and then to the door, indecision wrought in the teeth clamped on his bottom lip.
“Stay by the door, Danny, listen for anyone coming back.” Unexpectedly, Steve didn’t go to the toolbox, but moved to pace across the living room. He checked the door on the far side of the room, poking his head through the doorway, but not entering. “Bedroom.”
He looked upwards, scrutinising the ceiling.
“What are you looking for?” Danny asked.
Steve glanced at him quizzically, clearly not catching the question. He skirted the edge of the windows curving across the breadth of the living area.
“Ahah.” He crouched, fingering a panel. It clicked and swung open. A heavy duty metal door with a handle was revealed. Setting hands to the lever, he opened the door with a grunt. “Emergency exit. Lock your door. You hear anything, you tell me. Straight out through this exit. ”
“Okay.” Danny turned the flimsy latch on the door that he was guarding. It was tempting to stay by the door with his ear glued to the mock wood panelling, but Danny also wanted to know what was in the Champ box.
Kneeling by the coffee table, Steve set the gun aside and flicked the catches on the red box. The dual clicks were loud. Lifting the lid, he pawed through the contents, and picked up the narrow black ledger book. The leather cover was a little cracked. Decades in a box on a windswept peninsula had not been the perfect storage container. Gingerly, Steve opened the book. The distinctive columns of writing proclaimed that this was the book that Doris McGarrett had photographed.
“Can you hold this?” Steve handed it over, as Danny crouched beside him. “Hide it?”
Danny turned it over in his hands, dubiously. Old book smell tickled his nose. He flipped through the pages, but there was nothing that was legible to him. Chin had translated one of the pages in Doris’ photographs as a family tree. Pages and pages of writing -- the book was almost filled.
“Danny?” Steve asked.
“Yeah?”
“Have you found something?”
“Just thoughts,” Danny said. The ledger was a little too big to stash in a pocket of his trousers. The book could have probably fit in the breast pocket of his jacket at a push -- the jacket that was somewhere abandoned on the top deck. He settled for tucking it under his shirt, against the small of his back, secured by his belt.
“Oh.” Steve sighed, and held up two blue passports. “Dad and Mary’s false passports.”
“Did you think that your mom didn’t have passports for your Dad and Mary?” Danny asked, puzzled at his relief.
“I wondered.” Steve shrugged, a little abashed. “And it does mean that there probably isn’t a third box stashed somewhere.”
Steve turned his attention back to the contents. Removing the stolen can of deodorant from his jacket pocket, he pocketed an old-fashioned cassette recorder and a floppy disc. An old cigar tin rattled as he picked it up. He stuffed it in another pocket.
“Why don’t we just take the whole box?”
“What?” Steve asked.
“Steal the box.” Danny mimed picking up the box by its handle.
Steve lifted the top tier of the toolbox aside, putting it on the coffee table. Danny leaned over to better see. There was a potbellied clay statuette taking up most of the base. A folded cloth cushioned it from the sides of the box. A silvery, square rectangle about five inches long caught Danny’s eye.
“Whoa, heavy,” Danny said as he picked it up. The smooth metal block had significant heft. The mass was what made the toolbox unwieldy.
Intrigued, Steve held out his hand. He nodded as Danny deposited it on his palm. His hold dipped, until he compensated for the weight.
“Huh? You know--” Steve turned it over, and it caught the light of the setting sun, “--I think that this is platinum.”
“Or silver?” Danny offered.
“Nah, twenty years in the toolbox, it would have tarnished.” Steve shook his head. Two handed, he angled one face towards Danny. “Credit Suiss. Yes, definitely platinum.”
There was a stamp on the underside of the ingot: Credit Suiss; 1kg, and an engraved diamond with Pt embossed in the centre.
“Pt means platinum?” Danny hedged.
“Yes, the chemical symbol. And platinum is a noble metal; non-reactive.”
“Chemistry?”
“You said chemistry?” Steve cocked his head to the side.
“Yeah, I did. Why have a lump of platinum? Is it worth a lot?”
“My Masters was in Chemistry.”
“Science nerd.” Danny grinned. “How much is it worth?”
“Worth?” Steve shrugged, and passed it back. “It’s a rare metal. Stick it in your pocket.”
It weighed a good two pounds; Danny didn’t think that his pockets could cope without tearing.
“Why are you weighing me down? I’m not your pack horse. I’m injured, you know. Shot arm. Remember?”
Steve took the block back, hefting the weight like a black jack. He rocked back on his heels, and contemplated the open box, lips pursed. The thoughts were almost tangible -- heavy thoughts, heavy thinking, Danny noted, giving Steve a moment to put them in order.
Danny glanced to the cabin door and its flimsy lock. He didn’t think that it would survive a single kick. Quietly, he moved to the emergency panel under the windows. Steve had known that there was one in the room. Perhaps, emergency doors were standard in vessels? On the other side of the curved window, there was a lip, which clearly an escaping passenger was supposed to traverse. Pushing his head against the window, Danny peered along the line of glass, to the blade of the right-hand catamaran wing, where there was a recessed ladder.
“Danny.”
Danny turned.
“My mother assassinated Wo Yongfu and took the ancestral tablet, because it was with him when he died?”
“Yes.” Danny nodded backing up the words from across the breath of the cabin. “He was taking it to be repaired.”
“So where did all this stuff come from?”
“You said it yourself; it’s her bug-out stash. She probably built it up over years.”
“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. “Wo Yongfu knew mom, and mom knew Wo Yongfu -- if Wo Fat’s telling the truth. I suspect he is; it fits the facts. The ledger is the thing that he’s really after? You know, he wanted the tablet, but he needs the ledger.”
“Remember I told you that Chin thought that it was an account book? The record he translated was in 1988 -- or thereabouts. White figured that it was about Wo Yongfu’s Swiss Bank accounts? So Wo Yongfu always had it in his pocket -- your mom took it, when you know, she --” Danny left ‘killed him’ unsaid. “Wo Fat said that he was after a bankbook back at the House?”
“What?” Steve shook his head, frustrated.
“We think that the ledger is important,” Danny said clearly -- detail would wait for later.
“Or the ceramic pot, or the old-school floppy disc.” Steve nodded at the open toolbox. “Wo Fat doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” Danny glanced abstractly up at the crystal-dripping light fixture on the ceiling, “but the ledger is in your mom’s photographs. It was never a star in Orion.”
“Repeat?” Steve ordered, a dint of focused concentration between his eyebrows.
“We’ve so gotta learn sign language,” Danny grumbled moving closer to Steve.
“What?”
“The bankbook--” Danny mimed opening a book and then taking a snapshot with an imaginary camera, “--was photographed.”
“Yes,” Steve said sibilantly, “you’re right.”
“Told you: I’m always right.”
Steve let that ride.
“Look, let’s take the box with us,” Danny said, and started gathering up the contents that Steve had set over the coffee table -- packet of Top Trumps and a stack of business cards bound together with a grubby elastic band. He pointed at the space by the idol. “Put the platinum brick back. You can hardly lug it around in your pocket.”
The block chimed melodically as Steve obeyed orders.
“Can we barricade the door?” Danny wondered suddenly.
“What?” But Steve glanced to the door. “Most heavy furniture is going to be secured. You don’t want a wardrobe or a bookcase falling over in heavy weather.”
The hairs were rising on the back of Danny’s neck. He did not want to stay in Wo Fat’s stateroom.
“Oh, we’re idiots!” Realisation was like a smack on the back of Danny’s head.
Steve startled, jerking back from the coffee table.
“What? The door?” He was poised, eyes darting warily from door, to windows, to Danny.
“The helicopter. There’s a helicopter on the roof behind the wheelhouse. Why aren’t we in the helicopter flying back to dry land? You can fly it, can’t you?”
Steve chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Steve?” Danny drawled, because Steve had evidently thought about using the helicopter and dismissed the plan. “Steven? You wanted to stay on the boat, didn’t you? That’s why we didn’t go straight to the helicopter when we escaped from the cabin.”
Danny batted Steve with the back of his hand -- Bad Steve. He glowered at Steve, but Steve regarded him, a bright flush on his cheekbones. The contrast of the flush with his pale skin was stark.
“We’d been on this vessel about two hours before we got out of the cabin,” Steve reported staccato. “A mega-catamaran has an average cruising speed of seventy five miles per hour, plus planing conditions have been excellent. I suspect that the vessel has been pushing the envelope. Therefore, we’ve travelled circa a hundred fifty to two hundred miles.”
Science Steve.
“The helicopter is a Bell 47-G and has a range of two hundred miles, assuming that it’s fully serviced and fuelled. The helicopter does not have pontoons if we had to ditch.”
“So it was too risky?”
“I didn’t like the odds.” Steve glanced away. “And I haven’t flown anything since… you know.”
Since I got my ears blown out, Danny translated.
“My vertigo meds are going to wear off. I took them at breakfast.”
Oh.
That was hours ago. He had already fallen down. Danny guessed that today was the first time that Steve had been on a boat since he was hurt. Luckily, the weather was perfect.
“Shit,” Danny said succinctly.
“Shit,” Steve echoed.
“We’re on a boat--” Danny thought hard, “--maybe there will be travel sickness meds in a first aid kit?”
“Excuse me?”
“Meds.” Danny pointed at Wo Fat’s bedroom, and followed his finger.
The room was opulent, all matching masculine neutral colours and coordination. Only one pillow was dinted on the double bed, which pointed to no companion. There was a door that led to a compact en suite. Danny rifled through the mirrored cabinet above the sink, tossing toothpaste, brush, shaving foam, and deodorant onto the top of the unit. He didn’t recognise the brands, but the catamaran was ocean-faring, so they could have been picked up anywhere. A single, small plastic bottle contained dual coloured capsules, but Danny didn’t recognise the script on the bottle. There were a couple of boxes. The contents of the boxes were blister packs of tablets, but they could have been anything. Danny would have given his left nut for Dramamine.
If Steve started getting sick, they were going to be in trouble.
~*~
Tbc
Part one hundred and eleven
Word count: ~3,100
Warning: skip nothing springs to mind
Advisory: potty mouth; IT’S A WIP.
Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.
Comments: British English spelling
Spoilers: none, it’s an AU.
Betas: Springwoof, you’ve betaed +5MB of fic! Star! Thank you.
Last time on The Co-operative:
Steve pretended to be Dirty Harry with a Smith & Wesson Model 29;
Yes, he's still wearing the suit;
There was lots of running and fighting;
Danny learned what an EPIRB was, and,
The boys (well, Steve) decided to sabotage the boat….
The first part is here,
The Co-operative.
By Sealie
Danny had the distinct feeling that their luck was going to run out.
They were lucky that the boat was basically deserted, but they had to bump into someone soon. Steve had already taken out one of the four goons in their dungeon, the guy that had been at the wheel of the catamaran, and maybe even whoever had shot up the wheelhouse.
Three goons, an unknown number of staff, and Wo Fat -- as odds went, Danny still thought that hiding was the way to go, especially if the Navy was picking up their signal and speeding towards them.
Hiding and Steve were, basically, mutually exclusive.
Steve wanted the Champ toolbox.
Trailing in Steve’s wake as he crept forwards wasn’t a good place to be. Danny had spotted an axe in an emergency compartment, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it. Really, he knew that he couldn’t swing an axe at someone. However, on consideration, he was quite copasetic about clubbing anyone who wasn’t Steve with the fire extinguisher that had been beside the axe.
He should have brought the fire extinguisher.
Danny wanted to go to the engine room and fuck up whatever the Hell worked to propel them further away from ‘Oahu and Grace.
“Should have brought the axe,” Steve said, annoyed at himself.
“What?” Danny nervously scanned up and down the corridor. The creep, creep, creeping was worse than watching The Ring or Psycho. The alarm was no longer going off, and the reddish/yellow lights were no longer on. Regular strip lighting illuminated the corridor.
Dropping onto his haunches, Steve flicked up a recessed ring in a carpet tile, twisted and lifted a neatly camouflaged hatch. The revealed space wasn’t a secret passage, but a multitude of cables and tubing marked with cable ties and tape running underneath the flooring. Bottom lip caught between his teeth, Steve fingered the wiring cables.
“I don’t need to get to the engineering room to stop this vessel.” As if by magic the pair of first aid scissors appeared in Steve’s hand.
Surgically, Steve snipped one, two, and a final third, blue plastic-wrapped wire. The lights went off. There was a hiccup, and then the lights came back on. He stood up, and then stamped, with all his firm, toned weight on a wide yellow tube. It dented under the focussed point of his heel. Steve stomped on it again, grimaced, and stomped down hard and fast. It buckled. Oily fluid gushed out.
“Hydraulics.” Steve grinned.
Knowledge and execution was very sexy.
The boat juddered, and made an abrupt lurch to the side. Steve went down -- bang -- to the floor. Danny tried to grab him and missed. He froze, standing over a glowering Steve beneath him.
“Damn it all to Hell.” Rolling immediately to his knees, Steve smacked the side of his fist against the corridor panel. Scowling, he got his feet under him, and breathed, staying in a low crouch.
Coolly, Danny offered Steve a hand. He stared for a long moment, before accepting the help. Danny squeezed Steve’s fingers, and then pulled him upright. And held on as Steve weaved.
“Damn.”
“We could get you a walker?” Danny offered cheekily, as Steve spread his feet, rooted like a tree and stilled.
Steve’s eyes narrowed.
“One of those sexy canes with a sword inside?” Danny offered, twirling an imaginary cane à la Charlie Chaplin.
“I’ve revised the plan. I’m going to hide you in the bilges,” Steve said, but a smile flickered on his lips.
“Bilges? That’s gotta be the dungeons, eh?”
“Too fast, Danno,” Steve said fondly, “and not a structured sentence.”
It really, really, really wasn’t the time for kissing, but Steve’s lips were soft and nibbly. It was sweet and gentle like Steve could be. Danny curled a hand around the back of Steve’s neck and squeezed gently. Steve breathed against Danny’s mouth and rested his forehead against Danny’s -- it was intimate and special.
“Love you,” Steve whispered.
“Love you, too.” Danny lightly stroked Steve’s now stubbly jaw line with his fingertips, and released. “Hiding is still the best idea.”
Steve slumped. “You’re right.”
“I am?” Danny stepped back in mock shock. “Of course, I am. But--”
“Can you put the cover back, please?” Steve asked.
Momentarily perplexed by the polite request, Danny crouched and put the panel back in place. Oh, he realised, Steve didn’t want to bend over.
“You okay?”
“Come on.” Steve caught Danny’s hand, and pulled him upright and down the corridor.
At the corner was one of the ubiquitous emergency stations: fire extinguishers, eye wash station, exit indicator, and there was also a “cutaway” complicated map of the catamaran that, judging from the vile green-yellow background, promised to glow in the dark. Danny knew that the catamaran was enormous, but the map brought it home. It was a warren, thankfully, because that fact had helped them so far.
Steve’s finger went unerringly to the principal stateroom right at the front of the boat, with curving windows that promised amazing views. The stateroom was almost as wide as the breadth of the deck.
“Wo Fat’s?” Danny said unnecessarily.
A voice close by grumbled, frustrated. Danny didn’t recognise the language. Spinning around, he honed in on the sound. Behind them: more than one person, possibly? Doors were banging as two or more people looked into rooms, unerringly moving closer and closer.
“Danny?” Steve whispered loudly.
Danny spun back, finger to his lips, and then with the same finger stabbed in the opposite direction. He pushed Steve ahead of him, urging speed. Steve grabbed his hand, and towed just as fast.
Steve definitely had a goal in mind. How long could they play hide and seek? Up another set of stairs they ran. A pause here, and glance at another doorway, a chanced sprint across a corridor, and they entered an open plan dining room with a central oval table and ornate chairs. Danny guessed they were smack in the middle of the catamaran. Steve pulled Danny straight across the room to a closed door.
“The stateroom?” Danny realised. “Wo Fat’s stateroom.”
Steve released Danny’s hand and, the empty Magnum primed, opened the door to slip in -- leaving Danny at the threshold.
“I don’t believe this.” Danny looked around the dining room.
“Clear.” Steve popped back through the door, grabbed Danny and yanked him into Wo Fat’s opulent suite. Pain jerked up Danny’s sore arm.
“What?” Rubbing at his bicep, Danny put all his objections into one frustrated word.
“Wo Fat’s out there looking for us.” Steve grinned toothily as he closed the door behind Danny. “Perfect hiding place.”
“You sneaky shit,” Danny said, impressed.
Steve waggled his eyebrows.
“Champ box.” Danny pointed at the red tool-chest sitting prominently on a low coffee table before what looked like a wood stove. The silk-wrapped ancestral tablet lay beside the toolbox.
Steve looked at it, to Danny, and then to the door, indecision wrought in the teeth clamped on his bottom lip.
“Stay by the door, Danny, listen for anyone coming back.” Unexpectedly, Steve didn’t go to the toolbox, but moved to pace across the living room. He checked the door on the far side of the room, poking his head through the doorway, but not entering. “Bedroom.”
He looked upwards, scrutinising the ceiling.
“What are you looking for?” Danny asked.
Steve glanced at him quizzically, clearly not catching the question. He skirted the edge of the windows curving across the breadth of the living area.
“Ahah.” He crouched, fingering a panel. It clicked and swung open. A heavy duty metal door with a handle was revealed. Setting hands to the lever, he opened the door with a grunt. “Emergency exit. Lock your door. You hear anything, you tell me. Straight out through this exit. ”
“Okay.” Danny turned the flimsy latch on the door that he was guarding. It was tempting to stay by the door with his ear glued to the mock wood panelling, but Danny also wanted to know what was in the Champ box.
Kneeling by the coffee table, Steve set the gun aside and flicked the catches on the red box. The dual clicks were loud. Lifting the lid, he pawed through the contents, and picked up the narrow black ledger book. The leather cover was a little cracked. Decades in a box on a windswept peninsula had not been the perfect storage container. Gingerly, Steve opened the book. The distinctive columns of writing proclaimed that this was the book that Doris McGarrett had photographed.
“Can you hold this?” Steve handed it over, as Danny crouched beside him. “Hide it?”
Danny turned it over in his hands, dubiously. Old book smell tickled his nose. He flipped through the pages, but there was nothing that was legible to him. Chin had translated one of the pages in Doris’ photographs as a family tree. Pages and pages of writing -- the book was almost filled.
“Danny?” Steve asked.
“Yeah?”
“Have you found something?”
“Just thoughts,” Danny said. The ledger was a little too big to stash in a pocket of his trousers. The book could have probably fit in the breast pocket of his jacket at a push -- the jacket that was somewhere abandoned on the top deck. He settled for tucking it under his shirt, against the small of his back, secured by his belt.
“Oh.” Steve sighed, and held up two blue passports. “Dad and Mary’s false passports.”
“Did you think that your mom didn’t have passports for your Dad and Mary?” Danny asked, puzzled at his relief.
“I wondered.” Steve shrugged, a little abashed. “And it does mean that there probably isn’t a third box stashed somewhere.”
Steve turned his attention back to the contents. Removing the stolen can of deodorant from his jacket pocket, he pocketed an old-fashioned cassette recorder and a floppy disc. An old cigar tin rattled as he picked it up. He stuffed it in another pocket.
“Why don’t we just take the whole box?”
“What?” Steve asked.
“Steal the box.” Danny mimed picking up the box by its handle.
Steve lifted the top tier of the toolbox aside, putting it on the coffee table. Danny leaned over to better see. There was a potbellied clay statuette taking up most of the base. A folded cloth cushioned it from the sides of the box. A silvery, square rectangle about five inches long caught Danny’s eye.
“Whoa, heavy,” Danny said as he picked it up. The smooth metal block had significant heft. The mass was what made the toolbox unwieldy.
Intrigued, Steve held out his hand. He nodded as Danny deposited it on his palm. His hold dipped, until he compensated for the weight.
“Huh? You know--” Steve turned it over, and it caught the light of the setting sun, “--I think that this is platinum.”
“Or silver?” Danny offered.
“Nah, twenty years in the toolbox, it would have tarnished.” Steve shook his head. Two handed, he angled one face towards Danny. “Credit Suiss. Yes, definitely platinum.”
There was a stamp on the underside of the ingot: Credit Suiss; 1kg, and an engraved diamond with Pt embossed in the centre.
“Pt means platinum?” Danny hedged.
“Yes, the chemical symbol. And platinum is a noble metal; non-reactive.”
“Chemistry?”
“You said chemistry?” Steve cocked his head to the side.
“Yeah, I did. Why have a lump of platinum? Is it worth a lot?”
“My Masters was in Chemistry.”
“Science nerd.” Danny grinned. “How much is it worth?”
“Worth?” Steve shrugged, and passed it back. “It’s a rare metal. Stick it in your pocket.”
It weighed a good two pounds; Danny didn’t think that his pockets could cope without tearing.
“Why are you weighing me down? I’m not your pack horse. I’m injured, you know. Shot arm. Remember?”
Steve took the block back, hefting the weight like a black jack. He rocked back on his heels, and contemplated the open box, lips pursed. The thoughts were almost tangible -- heavy thoughts, heavy thinking, Danny noted, giving Steve a moment to put them in order.
Danny glanced to the cabin door and its flimsy lock. He didn’t think that it would survive a single kick. Quietly, he moved to the emergency panel under the windows. Steve had known that there was one in the room. Perhaps, emergency doors were standard in vessels? On the other side of the curved window, there was a lip, which clearly an escaping passenger was supposed to traverse. Pushing his head against the window, Danny peered along the line of glass, to the blade of the right-hand catamaran wing, where there was a recessed ladder.
“Danny.”
Danny turned.
“My mother assassinated Wo Yongfu and took the ancestral tablet, because it was with him when he died?”
“Yes.” Danny nodded backing up the words from across the breath of the cabin. “He was taking it to be repaired.”
“So where did all this stuff come from?”
“You said it yourself; it’s her bug-out stash. She probably built it up over years.”
“Yeah,” Steve said slowly. “Wo Yongfu knew mom, and mom knew Wo Yongfu -- if Wo Fat’s telling the truth. I suspect he is; it fits the facts. The ledger is the thing that he’s really after? You know, he wanted the tablet, but he needs the ledger.”
“Remember I told you that Chin thought that it was an account book? The record he translated was in 1988 -- or thereabouts. White figured that it was about Wo Yongfu’s Swiss Bank accounts? So Wo Yongfu always had it in his pocket -- your mom took it, when you know, she --” Danny left ‘killed him’ unsaid. “Wo Fat said that he was after a bankbook back at the House?”
“What?” Steve shook his head, frustrated.
“We think that the ledger is important,” Danny said clearly -- detail would wait for later.
“Or the ceramic pot, or the old-school floppy disc.” Steve nodded at the open toolbox. “Wo Fat doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” Danny glanced abstractly up at the crystal-dripping light fixture on the ceiling, “but the ledger is in your mom’s photographs. It was never a star in Orion.”
“Repeat?” Steve ordered, a dint of focused concentration between his eyebrows.
“We’ve so gotta learn sign language,” Danny grumbled moving closer to Steve.
“What?”
“The bankbook--” Danny mimed opening a book and then taking a snapshot with an imaginary camera, “--was photographed.”
“Yes,” Steve said sibilantly, “you’re right.”
“Told you: I’m always right.”
Steve let that ride.
“Look, let’s take the box with us,” Danny said, and started gathering up the contents that Steve had set over the coffee table -- packet of Top Trumps and a stack of business cards bound together with a grubby elastic band. He pointed at the space by the idol. “Put the platinum brick back. You can hardly lug it around in your pocket.”
The block chimed melodically as Steve obeyed orders.
“Can we barricade the door?” Danny wondered suddenly.
“What?” But Steve glanced to the door. “Most heavy furniture is going to be secured. You don’t want a wardrobe or a bookcase falling over in heavy weather.”
The hairs were rising on the back of Danny’s neck. He did not want to stay in Wo Fat’s stateroom.
“Oh, we’re idiots!” Realisation was like a smack on the back of Danny’s head.
Steve startled, jerking back from the coffee table.
“What? The door?” He was poised, eyes darting warily from door, to windows, to Danny.
“The helicopter. There’s a helicopter on the roof behind the wheelhouse. Why aren’t we in the helicopter flying back to dry land? You can fly it, can’t you?”
Steve chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Steve?” Danny drawled, because Steve had evidently thought about using the helicopter and dismissed the plan. “Steven? You wanted to stay on the boat, didn’t you? That’s why we didn’t go straight to the helicopter when we escaped from the cabin.”
Danny batted Steve with the back of his hand -- Bad Steve. He glowered at Steve, but Steve regarded him, a bright flush on his cheekbones. The contrast of the flush with his pale skin was stark.
“We’d been on this vessel about two hours before we got out of the cabin,” Steve reported staccato. “A mega-catamaran has an average cruising speed of seventy five miles per hour, plus planing conditions have been excellent. I suspect that the vessel has been pushing the envelope. Therefore, we’ve travelled circa a hundred fifty to two hundred miles.”
Science Steve.
“The helicopter is a Bell 47-G and has a range of two hundred miles, assuming that it’s fully serviced and fuelled. The helicopter does not have pontoons if we had to ditch.”
“So it was too risky?”
“I didn’t like the odds.” Steve glanced away. “And I haven’t flown anything since… you know.”
Since I got my ears blown out, Danny translated.
“My vertigo meds are going to wear off. I took them at breakfast.”
Oh.
That was hours ago. He had already fallen down. Danny guessed that today was the first time that Steve had been on a boat since he was hurt. Luckily, the weather was perfect.
“Shit,” Danny said succinctly.
“Shit,” Steve echoed.
“We’re on a boat--” Danny thought hard, “--maybe there will be travel sickness meds in a first aid kit?”
“Excuse me?”
“Meds.” Danny pointed at Wo Fat’s bedroom, and followed his finger.
The room was opulent, all matching masculine neutral colours and coordination. Only one pillow was dinted on the double bed, which pointed to no companion. There was a door that led to a compact en suite. Danny rifled through the mirrored cabinet above the sink, tossing toothpaste, brush, shaving foam, and deodorant onto the top of the unit. He didn’t recognise the brands, but the catamaran was ocean-faring, so they could have been picked up anywhere. A single, small plastic bottle contained dual coloured capsules, but Danny didn’t recognise the script on the bottle. There were a couple of boxes. The contents of the boxes were blister packs of tablets, but they could have been anything. Danny would have given his left nut for Dramamine.
If Steve started getting sick, they were going to be in trouble.
~*~
Tbc
Part one hundred and eleven
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Date: 2015-03-08 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-08 09:55 am (UTC)Don't worry it's almost over.
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Date: 2015-03-08 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-13 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-14 10:10 am (UTC)