From the novel: April Affairs
All things considered, it wasn’t such a big deal. Life often brings you close to darkness — take the neighbor next door committing murder, or the person upstairs starting a fire. Boarding a ghost ship was simply drawing a little nearer to that darkness; being shoulder to shoulder with it, perhaps.
Wei Lai drove; Tapio sat in the passenger seat giving directions. Enormous oil tankers were moored near the harbor — some even connected to railway lines — and the car, an unremarkable toy, threaded through the shadows cast by the vessels.
They stopped at last beside one of the cargo ships.
It was a refrigerated vessel. Compared to the hulking giants around it, it was a little on the small side — lights kept to a minimum and dim, only the anchor lights at the bow and stern giving off a relatively bright white glow.
Tapio got out first, clicked on a powerful flashlight, swept it in a wide circle against the ship’s hull and bridge, then turned the flashlight on, off, on, off, on, off — three times.
After a moment, footsteps sounded on the deck, and a stocky man emerged from the darkness. Behind him, further back, several silhouettes moved with a watchful, guarded air.
The car was to be left here; as for how Tapio would return it to Milu, that was no longer his concern. Wei Lai picked up Cen Jin’s backpack for her; she didn’t simply hand everything over, and took the bag of food supplies from him in turn.
Fair enough — it wasn’t heavy.
The oil terminal at night: the water surface thick as black crude oil, shimmering with a faint glitter. The refrigerated ship rode at a normal waterline; painted on its hull above was the word “EAGLE” — presumably the ship’s name.
From somewhere further off, the figures seemed to be taunting one another, an uncomfortable sound of coarse laughter drifting over.
As they drew closer, the man’s features came into view: middle-aged, close-cropped hair, black jacket, sleeves rolled to the elbow, revealing thickly muscled arms layered all over with a chaotic jumble of tattoos.
Tapio sidled up and murmured a few words to him. The man’s English was heavily accented, and his manner just as hard — he led with several sentences beginning with “No.” Tapio kept nodding throughout.
After a moment, the man turned and headed up the gangway. Tapio quickly waved Wei Lai and the others over: “Come on, come on, follow him.”
The group walked in a loose, staggered line, their footsteps hollow, as if drumming against the deck. Someone leaned out from the bridge and shouted something at the man; the man laughed and called back a couple of lines.
The pace was quick, the language unfamiliar — likely one of the smaller Eastern European tongues. Wei Lai couldn’t understand it. Cen Jin, for her part, was doing something with the paper bag, making rustling sounds.
They reached the hatch. The man hauled it open with a clang. Behind it, a ladder descended steeply; the hold below was strangely quiet, the lighting unnervingly bright — looking down from the deck, it was like peering into a white underground pit.
The man looked at Wei Lai; his accented, hardened tone returned.
— “No wandering around.”
— “No sticking your nose in other people’s business.”
— “Whatever sounds or movement there may be, stay in your cabin and do not come out.”
···
These terms were unreasonable — if a fire broke out, or the ship started sinking, were they supposed to sit meekly in their cabin and wait for death? But this man’s face didn’t look like it welcomed jokes, so Wei Lai swallowed his wry quip and prepared to nod…
Beside him, a sudden, piercing shriek of agony rang out — hysterical, bloodcurdling.
An icy thread shot from his wrist straight up to his elbow; half his arm went numb. A terrible thought crashed into Wei Lai’s mind.
This was Cen Jin — standing just a short distance away!
Tapio stood there blankly, unable to make out what had happened. The tattooed man seemed about to rush forward, then caught himself. Wei Lai couldn’t catch Cen Jin in time — she collapsed heavily to the ground.
Everything happened in an instant. From the shadows, several men came charging out; the tattooed man bellowed at them: “No! No!”
Wei Lai caught a glimpse — each of them was carrying a long-barreled submachine gun.
Armed escorts? But there was no time to think about that now. He dropped to his knees beside Cen Jin, pinning down her convulsing body, and shouted at Tapio: “Lights!”
The light flooded in, unsteady, swinging. Cen Jin’s eyes had rolled back; her mouth was flecked with bloody foam; half her face and neck were smeared with blood. Her arms jerked and spasmed as if struck by an electric current. Wei Lai reached out to press on her chest to check her heartbeat, when her throat suddenly produced a long drawn-out sound — like someone gasping for air — her hands clawed at nothing, her body lurched straight upward, her spine arching clear off the ground, as if she had gone into sudden cardiac arrest.
No wounds to the head or neck — not a sniper shot. Poisoning? When would she have been poisoned? He had been with her the entire time, and yet he had not noticed!
Noise erupted all around. Crew members kept pressing in from every direction. Wei Lai heard their exchanges with the tattooed man — the same sharp, incomprehensible language again. He snapped his head up and looked at the man; the man understood at once and shouted: “Not us! It wasn’t us!”
Tapio kept offering suggestions: “Call an ambulance? No — we can’t bring people onto the ship. Take her to a hospital.”
Wei Lai scooped Cen Jin up and strode off the ship in long strides. Tapio grabbed the luggage he had left behind and jogged along after him in a hurry. A handful of crew members still stood there murmuring in bewildered discussion; one reached down curiously, about to wipe a drop of blood from the deck — the tattooed man, lightning-quick, kicked him flat on his back and roared: “Idiot! What if it’s toxic? What if it’s contagious?”
——
Back into the car, Cen Jin laid out across the back seat. Wei Lai wrenched the wheel and shot away at full speed.
His palms were sweating; his back was rigid, so taut it felt pulled straight to the scalp. Countless questions raced through his mind simultaneously.
— Hospital. Where’s the hospital? Turku isn’t large; there should be a sign at a high point — he should be able to find it.
— He was certain there had been no mistakes since picking Cen Jin up from the villa. If she had been poisoned, it must have happened before she came into his care.
— Was it poisoning? Her color was normal — no discoloration. But one couldn’t be sure; in this high-tech age, perhaps there were newer methods of harm.
— This was going to be extremely difficult to explain. The journey hadn’t even properly begun, and already the person was…
Abruptly, a hand seized the outside of his thigh, and a low voice said: “Don’t stop. Drive out of the city.”
What the —!
Wei Lai’s heart gave a violent lurch; the car swerved into an S-curve, the tires screaming against the asphalt.
Fortunately his body had already responded — he quickly regained control of the vehicle. His chest heaved hard. He looked up at the rearview mirror inside the car.
In the mirror, Cen Jin was sitting up. The blood was most vivid at the corner of her mouth — like a vampire who had just bitten into something living. She pulled out a tissue and wiped her face, saying: “Keep driving. I remember there’s a phone box along the road. I need to make a call.”
Wei Lai didn’t respond. It wasn’t a good time to ask anything. After a pause, he reached over to the passenger seat, grabbed a bottle of water, and tossed it to her. Cen Jin caught it, unscrewed the cap, wadded a tissue into a stopper at the mouth to dip it, and used the dampened tissue to wipe her face.
They drove on a while longer. He spotted a red-topped, glass-paneled phone box in a grove by the roadside — the lower half frosted glass, repurposed as an outdoor toilet. Phone boxes in the Nordic countries tended to be quite practical, designed with the less well-off in mind, offering a few extra functions. Wei Lai had even seen one fitted with a rinse tap and water hose.
The moment the car stopped, Cen Jin opened the door and climbed out.