Fairhaven Chapter 10

Barge

Read Chapter 9 here

9.00 am, Monday, March 13, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven North, Bagalzette Lock
Global average temperature: 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels

Between the two dykes, one at the northern boundary of the strait between Penang Island and the mainland, and the other at the southern boundary, hundreds of men on barges were hard at work. 

Grace stood at the Bazalgette Lock administration hut. The client was asking again for ways to increase productivity, and Grace was determined to make it happen. A few more piles per day from each barge would make a vast difference to how fast they could reclaim land from the strait and protect it from the rising seas. 

She planned to inspect the pile drivers. With 38 smaller floating barges out in the bay, installing the main piles was taking up precious time. The process would last until the completion of the main dykes in three years, when they would drain the bay.

A sour-faced woman from the administration pool handed Grace the permit book, the slapping sound as it flopped down on the counter reflecting her pointed look. Grace signed it and stowed the walkie-talkie in her bag. The administration team was staffed by former government bureaucrats who preferred to do things according to the book, and didn’t appreciate it when upstarts like Grace wanted to try new methods.

‘How are you getting to the barges?’ asked the administration woman, her curiosity overwhelming her resistance to change.

‘Kayak.’ Grace grinned at the surprise her answer produced.

Travelling under her own arm power, she could choose a random barge, spend as long as needed to get to know the team, and then move on. The crews’ techniques varied, meaning that there was plenty of potential for efficiency gains. Her plan for the day was to see a selection and get some decent photos, before suggesting changes.

She covered her head with a hat, slathered her skin with sunscreen, and pulled down her long sleeves and long leggings. 

It would be an exhausting exercise, and she would have to start soon; it was always easier to paddle when the tide was higher. She was looking forward to her regular lunch with Hans the following day. Given their busy schedules, she seldom saw him either at work or at the flat. His usual reminder, whenever they crossed paths, was a cheerful warning: ‘Watch out for the jellyfish!’

11.50 am, Monday, March 13, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven North Bay

Grace unclipped her kayak from Barge #12, and paddled towards a smaller, purplish piling barge, the furthest of four in the vicinity. It was almost noon, and the sun was beating down. She glanced upward; not a single cloud mitigated the burning heat. After paddling for a long time, she re-clipped the kayak to the purple barge, scrambled aboard, and introduced herself to the crew, who had gathered to watch her as she approached.

Something made her stop short as she did so. For a moment, she tried to figure out what was so awkward. Then it hit her: not one of them had returned her smile. 

As one of the few women working on the barges, she was conspicuous. She found the men either shy, giggling whenever she was around, or else awkward and formal. But they were always happy to have a visitor. This was different. The men replied to her in monosyllables and spoke to each other in low voices.

The setup of the rig itself struck her as peculiar. She moved towards the opposite edge of the barge, trying to understand. Three of the men followed her, while the others went back to their work. She called out to the youngest one, ‘It looks as if you haven’t done any piling at all today. Can you tell me what’s holding you back? Maybe it’s something I can help with.’

He glanced at an older man before responding. ‘No.’

Neither moved or made any effort to engage with her. The younger man gave a surreptitious tug at his neckline; Grace thought she glimpsed him tucking away a small pendant. The sparkle of the gold chain made an eccentric contrast to his ragged jeans and stained football top. The older man, also in worn jeans, had thinning hair and a hard expression. He gave a small nod to the younger man.

Grace pushed ahead. ‘Is the wire broken? Have you hit a stone?’

‘No.’

‘Is the barge leaking?’ She tapped the lid of an enormous, unlabelled crate. ‘What’s this? Part of the equipment?’ As she peered at the lid, the sky, the deck, the men, the crate, and everything else around her turned black.

12.10 pm, Monday, March 13, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven North Bay

She couldn’t tell whether it was minutes later or hours later, when she heard someone crying: a whining, quiet, affectless ‘aah – aah – aah’. She could not tell who was making the maddening noise, since her eyes were closed. She wanted to go back to sleep. 

Bit by bit, she realised that it was her own voice. Her first coherent thought was not to bother anyone; no one liked a girl who pushed her problems on other people. She had to take care of it by herself; she mustn’t let her mother know. She wanted to stop the crying, but couldn’t. Something was forcing the desperate bleats from her, try though she would to quell them. 

Then the pain began.

It built up like a stuck pressure release valve on the right-hand side of her head, in the back, and washed over her entire body. Her face quivered; her arms and legs straightened with a spasm. She gasped for breath, and felt the ‘AAH – AAH – AAH,’ deafening in her mind but too quiet in reality, explode through her sinuses. 

She could do nothing for several minutes but experience the pain. She tried to form a coherent thought, to test her mouth and throat. An eternity passed.

She managed a tentative croak at last. ‘There was a crate?’

No one answered, and the pain did not abate; it was building with screaming intensity. She thought of opening her eyes. With an enormous effort of will, she managed to crack her eyelids apart by a sliver. A harsh band of dusty light shone through a hair-thin chink in the boards above her head. 

Yes, there was a crate. It was now her prison.

Overwhelmed, she turned her head to the right – in time to avoid vomiting on herself. Outside, a shout went up, followed by the unmistakable sound of her kayak scraping along the deck of the barge. Yes. She had a kayak. She was on a barge.

Grace still could not make a sound any louder than her pitiful cries. The putrid stink of her own vomit and sweat and the unrelenting pain in her head conspired to keep her immobile. Grimacing, she was beginning to remember the sequence of events, but still could not put together anything that had happened before she got into the crate. Had someone injured her? She thought of opening the lid of the crate, but couldn’t lift her hand above her body, let alone pry open a lid. Would there be a padlock? Nails? Her thoughts were muddied. At last, with another enormous effort, she turned herself to her left side, away from the filth, and put her palm under her cheek: the most primitive cushion against a hard surface. As she did so, her fingers, instinctively reaching around to touch the other side of her head, came away sticky. 

Despite the screaming, throbbing agony that emanated from her skull and flowed through her entire body, she fell into a stupor that passed for sleep.

Much later, through the haze of her torpor, she heard shouts again, and the rattle of a lock. When the lid of the crate opened (it was hinged, she realised), she could just make out a sprinkling of stars overhead. Without warning, a bucket of muddy, brackish water inundated the small space, making her gasp, and then cough, setting off howling at the back of her head once again. A voice she did not recognise cried out, and another bucket of brackish water followed the first. Then, two sets of muscled arms grabbed her own, dragging her out onto the deck, where she collapsed.

Before her, three men were arguing in a language she did not know. As she continued to gasp and cough, one of them hoisted her to her feet with long, gorilla-like arms, while another, with thinning hair, pulled a length of duct tape from a roll, tore it off with his teeth, and stuck it over her mouth. The duct tape man hissed a question at the one with the gorilla arms, who answered with a low, angry voice. She got the impression that they were arguing about her. Grace found herself able to stand, but did not know how long her legs would hold up. Fighting the pain and nausea, she peered at the third man, who was standing to the side, and the word ‘pendant’ came into her mind, although she could not explain why. Duct Tape twisted away for a moment, said something to Gorilla Arms, and returned with a rough sack, which he lifted over her head. She wanted to shake her head in protest, with the increasing rage she was feeling, but the thought of moving her aching skull was too much to endure. The sack went on and a big zip tie was threaded through the cloth and tightened around her neck, while her wrists were secured with more zip ties. 

Moments later, she was in the crate again.

1.00 pm, Tuesday, March 14, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Hing Fat Noodles

Hans felt frustrated. His entire morning had been spent quelling an unnecessary dispute between two department heads. He was looking forward to lunch with Grace, where he could let off steam and maybe hear how she was managing her latest plot twists. She was ten minutes late, which was unusual. He tapped out a brief message to ask when she was expecting to arrive, and smiled to himself. Seeing Grace evolve from tentative diarist to confident writer charmed him. Maybe it would be her second career. She was getting more insistent all the time that if she could only get her stories about averting disasters in front of the public, that might help real people avert real disasters. In any case, talking through her stories would be a pleasant distraction. 

The server once again came over to ask whether he was ready to order. Hans glanced at his phone; Grace was now twenty minutes late. He shook his head at the server and decided to call Grace. No answer; the call went through to voicemail. From force of habit, he hung up without leaving a message, but thought better of it. He called again, and this time left a short voice note asking if everything was okay.

Ten minutes and four messages later, he called Zygmunt.

‘Zygmunt. It’s Hans.’

‘I know that. Your name shows up on my phone when it rings. What’s happening? It usually takes a big emergency for one of you young people to make a phone call.’

‘Do you have any idea where Grace is?’

‘Hmph! I feel as if I should be the one asking you that question. And before you say anything, yes, we’ve all known about you two for ages. But the answer to your specific question is no, I haven’t seen her today. She’s due for a meeting with me and the client at four.’

‘We were supposed to meet for lunch, but she hasn’t shown up yet. And I can’t get hold of her.’

‘That’s not like her.’

‘I’m going to go down to the administration hut and find out when she checked back in.’ Hans put down his phone, brooded for a moment, and then stood, apologising to the server. ‘Sorry, my friend can’t come.’ He scanned the server’s code and added a little money as an apology.

At the admin hut, the same woman was still minding the shop. She glanced at Hans, and gave an annoyed, ‘What?’ as he entered. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’

‘Did Grace check back in yesterday evening?’ 

‘Who?’

‘Grace Chan. You know her. Everyone knows her.’

‘Let me check.’ The woman took a moment to glare at him, before looking down to shuffle through the pile of permit books. ‘There’s a record of Grace Chan picking up a waterproof walkie-talkie at 9.15am yesterday morning. Yes, I remember her.’

‘But did she come back?’

‘No. There’s no record of a return. But it’s not reliable. Maybe she didn’t sign the book when she came back. Or she landed somewhere else, and still has the walkie-talkie and hasn’t had a chance to check it in.’

‘Do you have another one of those walkie-talkies?’

Grumbling, she dug out a walkie-talkie from a lower shelf. ‘Here. Hey, not so fast! Sign first.’

Why couldn’t anyone else understand that something was wrong? His pen poked through the flimsy paper as he signed the book. He turned on the walkie-talkie, and made the same request on all four of the live channels. A few minutes later, a response cracked through. 

‘Barge #12 here. We had Grace Chan onboard yesterday morning for a couple of hours. She left a little before noon.’

‘Do you know where she was going?’

‘She said she was checking out one of the other barges. There are three in this sector, including our own.’

‘Thank you.’ He gave back the walkie-talkie, and signed his name in the book with a pointed flourish. He addressed the doyenne of the admin hut. ‘Listen, we need to find out what happened. I’d like you to call all the site offices and equipment huts.’

‘All of them?’ She sniffed. 

He scribbled in the margin of the logbook. ‘Here’s my number. Let me know if you find anything.’ 

The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Your number ends with 123 123?’

‘Yes. You can imagine all the spam calls I get. Now please, call. This may be an emergency.’

The woman at last was starting to feel Hans’s anxiety, and picked up her own phone from under the counter. Hans thanked her with a word, and headed towards the main Site Office. On the way, he dialled 999.

1.45 pm, Tuesday, March 14, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven North Bay

Grace could tell by the angle of the sliver of sunshine that noon had passed again. She could now almost control her body, although her head and limbs still felt wooden and the scrapes across her belly were burning where she had been dragged out of the crate. She managed to remove the bag by tearing the cheap cloth, but the long zip tie remained around her neck like a collar. She searched her pockets in vain for her phone and camera. The men gave her nothing more than a little drinking water in a plastic bottle. It was just as well. She would not have been able to eat anything; every tiny motion of her jaw magnified the searing, throbbing pain at the back of her head.

Although the sides and top of the crate blocked out most light, she could hear the same three men arguing with each other. Throughout the afternoon, she heard the constant, high whine of drones, and the chatter of the seaplane, three times. Then nothing. 

When darkness had fallen again, the men opened the lid, tugged the bag over her head again, and took her to the edge of the barge; when she finished, they put another water bottle in her hand and lifted her into the crate.

It was odd to feel such gratitude for a simple thing like water.

5.00 pm, Tuesday, March 14, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven Main Site Office

Hans was giving Zygmunt the latest update. ‘They found someone who saw her around 10am, meaning that she set off later than she expected. We know she was on Barge #12 around 10:30 or 11am, and left not too long after noon. We still don’t know where she went next. Scott is at home, so he checked her room; he says it doesn’t look like anyone slept there last night.’

‘Where is barge 12?’

‘Northern half, mainland side.’ 

Something made Zygmunt frown as he fiddled with his stapler, inserting a bit of plastic coated wire into the front. ‘What did the Coast Guard say?’ 

‘They’re called the Maritime Enforcement Agency, remember? They said they’d contacted every ship passing through the strait to keep an eye out, but no one has seen anything yet. There’s a steady southward current – if she’s afloat, she could be far away by now.’

‘What about the aerial search?’

‘No kayak. No hat. No life jacket. I asked them to look into the fishermen, because we know they have been against this project from the start. And the press agrees with me; they’re not just treating it as a missing person’s case. They’ve been running a new story every hour on her disappearance, tying it all back to the fishermen’s protests last year. The local media think it will jeopardise the project. And in the meantime it’s also become international news.’

‘How on earth did that happen?’ Zygmunt wondered.

‘Grace’s friend Nant in the UK posted about it on her Orac channel, and a member of one of those popular Thai boy bands shared it. That was all it took.’

Zygmunt shook his head in disbelief. ‘You really can’t tell what’s going to go viral. Makes you wonder who’s controlling it all. So what do you think? Is it the fishermen?’

‘I don’t know what to think. The cops said it was my imagination running wild.’

Zygmunt nodded. ‘Sometimes imagination is what solves problems, though.’ He set down both the stapler and the wire, now neatly stripped, two centimetres from the top. 

7.00 am, Wednesday, March 15, 2028
Penang, Malaysia – Fairhaven North Bay

Not long after high tide, when the sun was rising above the dark water, a black speedboat bearing the white, capital letters MARITIM MALAYSIA pulled up alongside the small, purple barge and hailed the workers with an electric megaphone. A short, stocky petty officer, in a clean blue uniform, held up a photo for the bargemen to see.

‘We’re looking for this woman. Have you seen her?’ The speedboat’s motor continued running as its sailors waited, tired and bored. One stared with envy at the cigarette in the hand of the youngest bargeman.

The men on the barge conferred among each other before answering. An older man with a balding head nodded toward the speedboat. He spoke in accented Bahasa. ‘Yesterday morning.’

‘What time?’

‘She come here 10 o’clock. Then she go. We don’t know where.’

‘If you see her, let us know.’ The blue-uniformed officer shouted a radio frequency and added a mobile phone number for good measure. At first, no one made a move to write either down. Then, at a sharp glance from the balding man, one of the other bargemen took out a phone and entered the numbers. The speedboat’s engine roared, and it was out of sight within a minute.

Inside the crate, Grace heard their conversation, and thumped her foot against the wooden walls. She realised the men must have removed her boots; stockinged feet were ineffective in generating anything louder than a muffled thud, too quiet to be noticed over a running speedboat. She wondered what had happened to her hat.

After the noise of its engine receded, the men lifted the lid of the crate, and brought another batch of zip ties, this time to bind Grace’s ankles together.