Susy Robison

Chapter 1
Anchors Away - December 23, 1951

From the railing on the deck of their ocean liner, the R.M.S. Strathmore, fifteen-year-old Halley Pederson and her father searched for her aunt’s white hat in the throng on the pier below. All around them the boisterous crowd of fellow passengers were shouting “Goodbye” and flinging streamers at the well-wishers on the shore, amid gales of laughter.

“There she is.” Dr. Karl Pederson pointed out his sister and threw a streamer at her. Halley pushed her unmanageable red hair out of her face and looked where he was pointing. She wanted to appear happy about this part of their voyage to India and tried to smile.

“Bon Voyage!” Her aunt tossed one back at them, shouting up into the din. They joined the horde in earnest, hurling and hollering. Halley held on to the ends of her streamers and watched each one uncurl, spiraling down toward her aunt, blending into a weaving of hundreds of thin paper strips that interlocked in the middle. Like a glorious, multicolored abstract tapestry, it linked them to the shore.

She tossed her last one and waved just as the ship began to move. A catch in her throat stifled her last goodbye. She blinked back a tear and felt the slow pull of the ship tug on the paper fabric, shredding it across the middle. It wafted up into the breeze like a cape. Halley grabbed the brim of her hat and waved it slowly until her aunt merged into the dots of color on the pier. She looked at the fog hovering over the wake of the ship behind them and shivered. The shoreline of England melted into the morning mist just as a sudden spritz of rain sent them scurrying away from the deck and down the stairs. Oh darn, she thought, now my hair will be even frizzier.

“I’m going to check out the game room,” her dad said and wandered away.

Halley thought this ship looked larger than the one they’d taken from New York City to England and decided to go exploring. After a few bends in the corridor, she came to a stairway going up marked “Private.” How could they have a private anything with so many people? She peeked into the beauty salon as she passed. Uniformed beauticians bustled around several ladies who were getting their hair washed. A few others sat under hair dryers. Silly, she thought. We’ve barely left England and they’re already getting their hair done. She continued through the perfumed wave of steam billowing out of the doorway.

Just past the gift shop was the game room. Dad was leaning on a post near the billiard table, watching another man play; a puff of pipe smoke drifted toward her. She recognized the smell, warm vanilla. Several ladies were at a table nearby playing cards. A cigarette dangled between the fingers of one and she coughed discreetly. The lady seated across from her clinched a cigarette holder between her lips, freeing both hands. She pulled a card from the ones fanned out between the fingers of her other hand, held it for a moment, then slowly set it on the table. A jazzy record hummed in the background. The tune followed Halley down the corridor.

Around the next bend were stairs marked “Upper Deck.” Up she went. At the landing, she paused at the door to the deck and peered at the gloomy mist through the door’s window. She decided to take the hallway on her left instead. It looked like it might continue back over the one below.

This hallway smelled different, more exotic. Large doors marched down the corridor on both sides. A fashionably dressed woman came out of one, escorted by a tan teenager with straight, black hair. He was about Halley’s age, but a little shorter. Halley walked by, looking at the floor. After a few more strides, she came to a staircase from below and realized it must be the one she saw downstairs marked “Private.” She continued on.

A man slammed a door several yards ahead and grumbled, “I could kill her,” as he stormed past her. A trail of men’s cologne followed him down the stairs. Still hovering in front of that suite was a cloud of incense that circled around Halley like a trap. She stopped. From behind the door, she could hear a woman and several men arguing in Spanish. Thanks to all her Spanish classes at Chapman School in New York City, she understood what they were saying.

The woman’s low, guttural snarl bristled up Halley’s neck. “I don’t trust him.” A fist thumped on a table, and a wind chime of glass jingled. “He’s an idiot, a baboon.”

The sinister voice moved closer to the door, and Halley froze.

The voice turned away from the door with a swish of fabric and more clinking glass. “Remind me why we brought him, anyway,” the woman demanded. Halley could almost taste the venom.

A man’s shaky, high-pitched voice responded, “You’ll need him when you get to Bombay.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” the woman shrieked. “We never have room for mistakes.”

Another man spoke, slowly and deliberately. “Madam, I vouched for him and know he’s the best in the business. You will see.”

A door opened farther down the corridor. Halley jumped. She moved back toward the stairway she’d passed and scurried down it, bursting into the passageway below, almost bumping into a large family.

She leaned against the wall, shaking. Who were those awful people? What was she doing there? She wished she’d never heard them. She felt like she was going to throw up and closed her eyes.