The Assistant, a Sea Story

I'd made arrangements with Fred to call me back. I needed a few minutes to think. It didn't work. I was still confused. What was the communication problem? Why the secrecy? Why did he not want us to be overheard? In less than twenty minutes my phone rang.

"John, this is Fred. We are Okay. I shifted my phone from the ship's system to my cell-phone. Got this one in Hong Kong, it has more capability than Air Force One."

"Okay Fred, give it to me slowly and one item at a time so I can get this clear. I'm really confused. I feel I missed something." I said speaking very slowly into the satellite phone. I didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. He might be drunk or something, maybe having a bad hair day. One never knows what is going on out there on those ships.

There was a long silence and then Captain Campell responded, "While in Hong Kong some guys from the U.S. Treasury Department delivered a box, actually a suitcase, full of money confiscated from some laundering scheme, or something. They had a letter from Carl Olsen okaying me to accept it as is. I am to hand it over to the fed's in San Francisco. I called Carl. He said it was authorized by San Francisco. All I had to do was keep it in my room. Not to worry as it was sealed. No one would know about it. Fred paused as if he wanted me to say something.

So I said "Okay, I got that, go on."

"I asked one of the Treasury guys how much was in the box. He said may be two million in 20, 50 and 100 dollar bills. He wasn't sure, said they wanted it in San Francisco to check the bills for prints, and other identification. It sounded reasonable to me."

"Okay. I got that. I think I understand. Now what the hell is this about someone wanting the money?" I asked.

"This morning I got up about six, went up to the bridge for some coffee and check the navigation. I came down from the bridge just before eight o'clock and found an envelope addressed to "Captain" on my desk. Inside was a note telling me that they wanted the money and if I didn't give it to them they would have my family killed. That I shouldn't speak to or call anyone ashore as they had ways of knowing. And, when I was ready to give up the money I should put my cap on the file cabinet in my office and they would get back with further instructions."

"I got all that, by the way I am recording all this. Have you heard from them anymore?"

"Nothing since the note. It took me a while to figure some way to get in touch with you guys without them knowing. I figure they’d know how we communicate so I waited till we sent our noon status and engineering data report and tucked it in the middle of the e-mail. They would need to have some real sophisticated stuff to catch that. I knew you read all Tom's mail, specially on Fridays."

"Okay. Okay. I think I'm clear on the money and the threat." I answered.

I had no idea what to say next. A senior management ploy when someone presents an unexpected problem is to answer with a career challenging response like: "What do you intend to do about it?" Or some other pass-the-buck no-brainer. I figured that Fred didn't need any career challenges just then.

Time to get serious. "Listen Captain, what I would like you to do is see if you can FAX me that note. And try not to get too many fingerprints on the original or the envelope. We might need it later."

"Roger, John, soon as I read it I figured it might be needed so I handled it carefully. What about Nikki and the girls? What can you do about protecting them?"

Good question. What the hell could I do about that?