Dean Ing - The Rackham Files

- Prologue

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- Prologue

Introduction

by Larry Niven

Once upon a time, my wife Marilyn and I went to England for a World Science Fiction Convention. On

return, the Customs official scanned my passport and said, "Larry Niven the writer? Lucifer's Hammer?"

I said, "Right. You're a science fiction fan?"

"No," he said, and lifted the magazine he was reading. It was a publication for survivalists.

Lucifer's Hammer (written with Jerry Pournelle) was, at that time, being used as a survivalist text.

Several of the surviving characters in that book are of that stamp: determined to make themselves self-

sufficient and ready for anything the universe or the Soviet Union might throw at them.

The survivalists in Lucifer's Hammer weren't just ready for the collapse of civilization. They were eager.

Dr. Forrester was an exception. He was a diabetic. He needed to find a group that would find him worth

saving. Dr. Forrester's preparations were given in nitpicking detail. Dr. Pournelle researched them

thoroughly, and that's what got the attention of the survivalists.

There are more survivalists than you think. Their ideal is self-sufficiency.

I raise the subject because Dean Ing is one of those. From my viewpoint it seems he can do anything

with his hands. He designs and builds cars and planes and other tools, sometimes to leave a clean

environment, sometimes to win races, sometimes—as in the Rackham stories—to weave a plausible

near-future.

I'm not one of these myself: not good with my hands. I sometimes wonder if people like Dean Ing know

how I see them. They're the original model for Motie Engineers (as in A Mote in God's Eye.) A better

model might be Dr. Zarkhov from the Flash Gordon comic strip. He knows enough about anything to

make the tool that fits.

This tool building talent is the most human of traits, but some of us have more of it than others.

Dean Ing wants you to survive, if you're smart enough to read his books.

He's a muscular guy, not spectacularly tall, who weighs no more than he should. In this respect he's quite

different from his character Rackham. But Rackham is another Zarkhov: he can make a tool on the spot.

The difference is that you will understand the tool. You'll be able to make it yourself.

The Rackham stories date from the Cold War. That's okay. The laws of physics and engineering haven't

changed.

My favorite of his novels is Soft Targets. If I tried to describe the premise, you wouldn't believe me. It's

up-to-the-minute relevant. I just can't quite believe it would work.

—Larry Niven

September 2003

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- Prologue

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Framed

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- Chapter 1

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- Chapter 1

INSIDE JOB

One

"The longer I live, the more I realize the less I know for sure." That's what my friend Quentin Kim used

to mutter to me and curvy little Dana Martin in our Public Safety classes at San Jose State. Dana would

frown because she revered conventional wisdom. I'd always chuckle, because I thought Quent was

kidding. But that was years ago, and I was older then.

I mean, I thought I knew it all. "Public Safety" is genteel academic code for cop coursework, and while

Quent had already built himself an enviable rep as a licensed P.I. in the Bay Area, he hadn't been a big-

city cop. I went on to become one, until I got fed up with the cold war between guys on the take and

guys in Internal Affairs, both sides angling for recruits. I tried hard to avoid getting their crap on my size

thirteen brogans while I lost track of Dana, saw Quent infrequently, and served the City of Oakland's

plainclothes detail in the name of public safety.

So much for stepping carefully in such a barnyard. At least I got out with honor after a few years, and I

still had contacts around Oakland on both sides of the law. Make that several sides; and to an

investigator that's worth more than diamonds. It would've taken a better man than Harve Rackham to let

those contacts go to waste, which is why I became the private kind of investigator, aka gumshoe, peeper,

or just plain Rackham, P.I.

Early success can destroy you faster than a palmed ice pick, especially if it comes through luck you

thought was skill. A year into my new career, I talked my way into a seam job—a kidnapping within a

disintegrating family. The kidnapped boy's father, a Sunnyvale software genius, wanted the kid back

badly enough to throw serious money at his problem. After a few days of frustration, I shot my big

mouth off about it to my sister's husband, Ernie.

It was a lucky shot, though. Ernie was with NASA at Moffett Field and by sheer coincidence he knew a

certain Canadian physicist. I'd picked up a rumor that the physicist had been playing footsie with the

boy's vanished mother.

The physicist had a Quebecois accent, Ernie recalled, and had spoken longingly about a teaching career.

The man had already given notice at NASA without a forwarding address. He was Catholic. A little

digging told me that might place him at the University of Montreal, a Catholic school which gives

instruction in French. I caught a Boeing 787 and got there before he did, and guess who was waiting

with her five-year-old boy in the Montreal apartment the physicist had leased.

I knew better than to dig very far into the reasons why Mama took Kiddie and left Papa. It was enough

that she'd fled the country illegally. The check I cashed was so much more than enough that I bought a

decaying farmhouse twenty miles and a hundred years from Oakland.

Spending so much time away, I figured I'd need to fence the five acres of peaches and grapes, but the

smithy was what sold me. "The smith, a mighty man was he, with large and sinewy," et cetera. Romantic

bullshit, sure, but as I said, I knew it all then. And I wanted to build an off-road racer, one of the diesel-

electric hybrids that were just becoming popular. I couldn't imagine a better life than peeping around the

Port of Oakland for money, and hiding out on my acreage whenever I had some time off, building my

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- Chapter 1

big lightning-on-wheels toy.

And God knows, I had plenty of time off after that! Didn't the word get out that I was hot stuff? Weren't

more rich guys clamoring for my expensive services? Wasn't I slated for greatness?

In three words: no, no, and no. I didn't even invest in a slick Web site while I still had the money, with

only a line in the yellow pages, so I didn't get many calls. I was grunting beneath my old gasoline-fueled

Toyota pickup one April afternoon, chasing an oil leak because I couldn't afford to have someone else

do it, when my cell phone warbled.

Quentin Kim; I was grinning in an instant. "I thought I was good, but it's humbling when I can't find

something as big as you," he bitched.

I squoze my hundred kilos from under the Toyota. "You mean you're looking for me now? Today?"

"I have driven that country road three times, Harvey. My GP mapper's no help. Where the devil are

you?"

Even his cussing was conservative. When Quent used my full given name, he was a quart low on

patience. I told him to try the road again and I'd flag him down, and he did, and twenty minutes later I

guided his Volvo Electrabout up the lane to my place.

He emerged looking fit, a few grey hairs but the almond eyes still raven-bright, the smile mellow,

unchanged. I ignored the limp; maybe his shoes pinched. From force of habit and ethnic Korean good

manners, Quent avoided staring around him, but I knew he would miss very little as I invited him

through the squinchy old screen door into my authentic 1910 kitchen with its woodstove. He didn't relax

until we continued to the basement, the fluorescents obediently flickering on along the stairs.

"You had me worried for a minute," he said, now with a frankly approving glance at my office. As fin de

siècle as the house was from the foundation up, I'd fixed it all Frank Gehry and Starship Enterprise

below. He perched his butt carefully on the stool at my drafting carrel; ran his hand along the flat

catatonic stare of my Magnascreen. "But you must be doing all right for yourself. Some of this has got to

be expensive stuff, Harve."

"Pure sweat equity, most of it." I shrugged. "I do adhesive bonding, some welding, cabinetry—oh, I was

a whiz in shop, back in high school."

"Don't try to imply that you missed your real calling. I notice you're working under your own license

since a year ago. Can people with budgets still afford you?"

"I won't shit you, Quent, but don't spread this around. Way things are right now, anybody can afford me."

It had been over a year since we'd watched World Cup soccer matches together, and while we caught

each other up on recent events, I brewed tea for him in my six-cup glass rig with its flash boiler.

He didn't make me ask about the limp. "You know how those old alleyway fire-escape ladders get

rickety after sixty years or so," he told me, shifting his leg. "A few months ago I was closing on a bail-

jumper who'd been living on a roof in Alameda, and the ladder came loose on us." Shy smile, to forestall

sympathy. "He hit the bricks. I bounced off a Dumpster." Shrug.

"Bring him in?"

"The paramedics brought us both in, but I got my fee," he said. "I don't have to tell you how an HMO

views our work, and I'm not indigent. Fixing this hip cost me a lot more than I made, and legwork will

never be my forte again, I'm afraid."

I folded my arms and attended to the beep of my tea rig. "You're telling me you were bounty hunting," I

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- Chapter 1

said. It wasn't exactly an accusation, but most P.I.s won't work for bail bondsmen. It's pretty demanding

work, though the money can be good when you negotiate a fifteen percent fee and then bring in some

scuffler who's worth fifty large.

While we sipped tea, we swapped sob stories, maintaining a light touch because nobody had forced

either of us into the peeper business. You hear a lot about P.I.s being churlish to each other. Mostly a

myth, beyond some healthy competition. "I suppose I couldn't resist the challenge," said Quent. "You

know me, always trying to expand my education. As a bounty hunter you learn a lot, pretty quickly."

"Like, don't trust old fire escapes," I said.

"Like that," he agreed. "But it also brings you to the attention of a different class of client. It might

surprise even you that some Fed agencies will subcontract an investigation, given special circumstances."

It surprised me less when he said that the present circumstances required someone who spoke Hangul,

the Korean language, and knew the dockside world around Oakland. Someone the Federal Bureau of

Investigation could trust.

"Those guys," I said, "frost my cojones. It's been my experience that they'll let metro cops take most of

the chances and zero percent of the credit."

"Credit is what you buy groceries with, Harve," he said. "What do we care, so long as the Feds will hire

us again?"

"Whoa. What's that word again? Us, as in you and me?"

"If you'll take it. I need an extra set of feet—hips, if you insist—and it doesn't hurt that you carry the air

of plainclothes cop with you. And with your size, you can handle yourself, which is something I might

need."

He mentioned a fee, including a daily rate, and I managed not to whistle. "I need to know more. This

gonna be something like a bodyguard detail, Quent? I don't speak Hangul, beyond a few phrases you

taught me."

"That's only part of it. Most people we'll interview speak plain American; record checks, for example.

The case involves a marine engineer missing from the tramp motorship Ras Ormara, which is tied up for

round-the-clock refitting at a Richmond wharf. He's Korean. Coast Guard and FBI would both like to

find him, without their being identified."

There's an old cop saying about Richmond, California: it's vampire turf. Safe enough in daylight, but

watch your neck at night. "I suppose you've already tried Missing Persons."

Quent served me a "give me a break" look. "I don't have to tell you the metro force budget is petty cash,

Harve. They're overloaded with domestic cases. The Feds know it, which is where we come in—if you

want in."

"Got me over a barrel. You want the truth, I'm practically wearing the goddamn barrel. Any idea how

long the case will last?"

Quent knew I was really asking how many days' pay it might involve. "It evaporates the day the Ras

Ormara leaves port; perhaps a week. That doesn't give us as much time as I'd like, but every case sets its

own pace."

That was another old Quentism, and I'd come to learn it was true. This would be a hot pace, so no

wonder gimpy Quentin Kim was offering to share the workload. Instead of doping out his selfish

motives, I should be thanking him, so I did. I added, "You don't know it, but you're offering me a bundle

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- Chapter 1

of chrome-moly racer frame tubing and a few rolls of cyclone fence. An offer I can't refuse, but I'd like

to get a dossier on this Korean engineer right away."

"I can do better than that," said Quent, "and it'll come with a free supper tonight, courtesy of the Feds."

"They're buying? Now, that is impressive as hell."

"I have not begun to impress," Quent said, again with the shy smile. "Coast Guard Lieutenant Reuben

Medler is fairly impressive, but the FBI liaison will strain your belief system."

"Never happen," I said. "They still look like IBM salesmen."

"Not this one. Trust me." Now Quent was grinning.

"You're wrong," I insisted.

"What do you think happened to the third of our classroom musketeers, Harve, and why do you think

this case was dropped in my lap? The Feebie is Dana Martin," he said.

I kept my jaw from sagging with some effort. "You were right," I said.

Until the fight started, I assumed Quent had chosen Original Joe's in San Jose because we—Dana

included—had downed many an abalone supreme there in earlier times. If some of the clientele were

reputedly Connected with a capital C, that only kept folks polite. Quent and I met there and copped a

booth, though our old habit had been to take seats at the counter where we could watch chefs with wrists

of steel handle forty-centimeter skillets over three-alarm gas burners. I was halfway through a bottle of

Anchor Steam when a well-built specimen in a crewneck sweater, trim Dockers, and tasseled loafers

ushered his date in. He carried himself as if hiding a small flagpole in the back of his sweater. I looked

away, denying my envy. How is it some guys never put on an ounce while guys like me outgrow our

belts?

Then I did a double take. The guy had to be Lieutenant Medler because the small, tanned, sharp-eyed

confection in mid-heels and severely tailored suit was Dana Martin, no longer an overconfident kid. I

think I said "wow" silently as we stood up.

After the introductions Medler let us babble about how long it had been. For me, the measure of elapsed

time was that little Miz Martin had developed a sense of reserve. Then while we decided what we

wanted to eat, Medler explained why shoreline poachers had taken abalone off the Original Joe menu.

Mindful of who was picking up the tab, I ordered the latest fad entree: Nebraska longhorn T-bone, lean

as ostrich and just as spendy. Dana's lip pursed but she kept it buttoned, cordial, impersonal. I decided

she'd bought into her career and its image. Damn, but I hated that . . .

Over the salads, Medler gave his story without editorializing, deferential to us, more so to Dana, in a soft

baritone all the more masculine for discarding machismo. "The Ras Ormara is a C-1 motorship under

Liberian registry," he said, "chartered by the Sonmiani Tramp Service of Karachi, Pakistan." He recited

carefully, as if speaking for a recorder. Which he was, though I didn't say so. What the hell, people

forget things.

"Some of these multinational vessels just beg for close inspection, the current foreign political situation

being what it is," Medler went on. He didn't need to mention the nuke found by a French airport security

team the previous month, on an Arab prince's Learjet at Charles De Gaulle terminal. "We did a walk-

through. The vessel was out of Lima with a cargo of balsa logs and nontoxic plant extract slurry, bound

for Richmond. Crew was the usual polyglot bunch, in this case chiefly Pakis and Koreans. They stay

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aboard in port unless they have the right papers."

At this point Medler abruptly began talking about how abalone poachers work, a second before the

waitress arrived to serve our entrees. Quent nodded appreciatively and I toasted Medler's coolth with my

beer.

Once we'd attacked our meals he resumed. Maybe the editorial came with the main course. "You know

about Asian working-class people and eye contact—with apologies, Mr. Kim. But one young Korean in

the crew was boring holes in my corneas. I decided to interview three men, one at a time, on the fo'c'sle

deck. At random, naturally."

"Random as loaded dice." I winked.

"With their skipper right there? Affirmative, and I started with the ship's medic. When I escorted this

young third engineer, Park Soon, on deck the poor guy was shaking. His English wasn't that fluent, and

he didn't say much, even to direct questions, but he did say we had to talk ashore. 'Must talk,' was the

phrase. He had his papers to go ashore.

"I gave him a time and place later that day, a coffeehouse in Berkeley every taxi driver knows. I thought

he was going to cry with relief, but he went back to the Ras Ormara's bridge with his jaw set like he was

marching toward a firing squad. I went belowdecks.

"A lot of tramps look pretty trampy, but it actually just means it's not a regularly scheduled vessel. This

one was spitshine spotless, and I found no reason to doubt the manifest or squawk about conditions in

the holds.

"Fast forward to roughly sixteen hundred hours. Park shows at the coffeehouse, jumpy as Kermit, but

now he's full of dire warnings. He doesn't know exactly what's wrong about the Ras Ormara, but he

knows he's aboard only for window dressing. The reason he shipped on at Lima was, Park had met the

previous third engineer in Lima at a dockside bar, some Chinese who spoke enough English to say he

was afraid to go back aboard. Park was on the beach, as they say, and he wangled the job for himself."

Quent stopped shoveling spicy sausage in, and asked, "The Chinese was afraid? Of what?"

"According to Park, the man's exact English words were 'Death ship.' Park thought he had

misunderstood at first and put the Chinese engineer's fear down to superstition. But a day or so en route

here, he began to get spooked."

"Every culture has its superstitions," Quent said. "And crew members must pass them on. I'm told an old

ship can carry enough legends to sink it." When Medler frowned, Quent said, "Remember Joseph

Conrad's story, 'The Brute'? The Apse Family was a death ship. Well, it was just a story," he said, seeing

Dana's look of abused patience.

Medler again: "A classic. Who hasn't read it?" Dana gave a knowing nod. Pissed me off; I hadn't read it.

"But I doubt anyone aboard told sea stories to Park. He implied they all seemed to be appreciating some

vast, unspoken serious joke. No one would talk to him at all except for his duties. And he didn't have a

lot to do because the ship was a dream, he said. She had been converted somewhere to cargo from a

small fast transport, so the crew accommodations were nifty. She displaces maybe two thousand tons,

twenty-four knots. Fast," he said again. "Originally she must've been someone's decommissioned D.

E.—destroyer escort. Not at all like a lot of those rustbuckets in tramp service."

Quent toyed with his food. "It's fairly common, isn't it, for several conversions to be made over the life

of a ship?"

"Exigencies of trade." Medler nodded. "Hard to say where it was done, but Pakistan has a shipbreaking

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industry and rerolling mills in Karachi." He shook his head and grinned. "I think they could cobble you

up a new ship from the stuff they salvage. We've refused to allow some old buckets into the bay; they're

rusted out so far, you step in the wrong place on deck and your foot will go right through. But not the

Ras Ormara; I'd serve on her myself, if her bottom's anything like her topside."

"I thought you did an, uh, inspection," said Dana.

"Walk-through. We didn't do it as thoroughly as we might if we'd found anything abovedecks. She's so

clean I understand why Park became nervous. Barring the military—one of our cutters, for

instance—you just don't find that kind of sterile environment in maritime service. Not even a converted

D.E."

"No," Dana insisted, and made a delicate twirl with her fork. "I meant afterward."

Medler blinked. "If you want to talk about it, go ahead. I can't. You know that."

Dana, whom I'd once thought of as a teen mascot, patted his forearm like a den mother. I didn't know

which of them I wanted more to kick under the table. "I go way back with these two, Reuben, and

they're under contract with confidentiality. But this may not be the place."

I was already under contract? Well, only if I were working under Quent's license, and if he'd told her so.

Still, I was getting fed up with how little I knew. "For God's sake," I said, "just the short form, okay?"

"For twenty years we've had ways to search sea floors for aircraft flight recorders," Dana told me. "Don't

you think the Coast Guard might have similar gadgets to look at a hull?"

"For what?"

"Whatever," Medler replied, uneasy about it. "I ordered it after the Park interview. When you know how

Hughes built the CIA's Glomar Explorer, you know a ship can have a lot of purposes that aren't obvious

at the waterline. Figure it out for yourself," he urged.

That spook ship Hughes's people built had been designed to be flooded and to float vertically, sticking

up from the water like a fisherman's bobbin. Even the tabloids had exploited it. I thought about secret

hatches for underwater demolition teams, torpedo tubes—"Got it," I said. "Any and every unfriendly use

I can dream up. Can I ask what they found?"

"Not a blessed thing," said Reuben Medler. "If it weren't for D—Agent Martin here, I'd be writing

reports on why I insisted."

"He insisted because the Bureau did," Dana put in. "We've had some vague tips about a major event,

planned by nice folks with the same traditions as those who, uh, bugged Tel Aviv."

The Tel Aviv Bug had been anthrax. If the woman who'd smuggled it into Israel hadn't somehow

flunked basic hygiene and collapsed with a skinful of the damned bacilli, it would've caused more deaths

than it did. "So you found nothing, but you want a follow-up with this Park guy. He's probably catting

around and will show up with a hangover when the ship's ready to sail," I said. "I thought crew members

had to keep in touch with the charter service."

"They do," said Dana. "And with a full complement of two dozen, only a few of the crew went ashore.

But Park has vanished. Sonmiani claims they'll have still another third engineer when the slurry tanks

are cleaned and the new cargo's pumped aboard."

"And we'd prefer they didn't sail before we have another long talk with Park," Medler said. "I'm told the

FBI has equipment like an unobtrusive lie detector."

"Voice-stress analyzer," Dana corrected. "Old hardware, new twists. But chiefly, we're on edge because

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