Power and Empire

She had to be the second-luckiest woman on the planet. Her husband, Tony, had remained relatively faithful over the course of their twenty-eight years of marriage, neither of her boys was in jail, and she had rich friends. Karla was remarkably fit for fifty-two, with manicured nails and stylishly dyed red hair. A cosmopolitan ponytail kept her hair off her shoulders in the heat and humidity. Round Hollywood-starlet glasses and a liberal coating of SPF 30 protected her from the intensity of the Southeast Asia sun. Her olive-green swimsuit swooped high on her hips and low on her bust. It made her feel half naked at first, but she wore it anyway, because Tony liked it.

Things had gotten a little stale in the boudoir department over the past several years. She’d hoped the bodacious swimsuit might give a yank to Tony’s old starter rope, but she needn’t have worried. Maybe it was the roll of the waves or just the idea of sailing the open ocean, but Karla wasn’t going to second-guess it. Usually not even the type to kiss her in public, Tony didn’t seem to care about the thin walls on the Whites’ forty-two-foot sailboat. Judy had been winking at her every morning at breakfast from the time they’d left Darwin. Kenneth never said anything, preferring to fuss with his boat and take sightings with his sextant at odd hours of the day. Everyone else on the boat might consider this a vacation. To Kenneth White, sailing was serious business.

The Downses had known Kenneth and Judy since they’d started White’s Energy Exploration in the Houston, Texas, suburb of Katy two decades before. They leased a small strip-mall office, and Judy answered the phones while Kenneth spent his time at the drill sites. They’d sold their little company the year before for a tidy sum The Katy Times described as “the mid-millions” and sailed off to explore the world.

Unfortunately for Karla, drilling-rig-parts salesmen didn’t get rich like oil company owners. But the Whites were generous to a fault and kept up the friendship no matter how wealthy they got. They’d even invited Karla and Tony along on a three-week sail from Darwin to Singapore on their new Texas-built Valiant yacht.

Karla had never been much of a traveler, but the Spice Islands were nothing short of jaw-dropping. They’d sailed for days across open water, passing in the shadow of huge container ships or seeing nothing at all but horizon for days. They’d stopped in places with mythical names such as Saumlaki, Banda, and Ambon, and met dozens of fascinating and wonderful people. There had been a few glares and some poverty, but yachts like Lucky Strike brought tourist dollars, so the unsightly portions of the area were mostly hidden from the view of travelers, allowing Karla to pretend that this was the paradise of the guidebooks.

Kenneth and Judy were excellent hosts and take-your-time sailors, loving the journey even more than the destination. Green pinnacles rose in a thousand tiny islands from an emerald sea. People smiled broad smiles and fed them dishes Karla had never conceived, much less tasted, from rich curries to the gluelike papeda, made from the starch of a sago palm and meant to be slurped from the bowl. The crew of the little sailboat had eaten their weight in delicious grilled fish, all of it either offered at feasts onshore or purchased from passing skiffs from which people called out “Hey, mister!” even when one of the women happened to be at the wheel.

Karla closed her eyes and took in a breath of the moist air. No, “lucky” didn’t even begin to describe her condition. She could not imagine returning to her old life in Houston.

Judy poked her head out of the hatch from below, where she’d been working on dinner. Karla had volunteered to help, but the Valiant had a one-butt galley, meant for bracing in the open ocean, and was not suited for two women cooking together.

“Spaghetti’s on,” Judy said. She was pixie of a thing, with dark hair that, as far as Karla knew, had never seen a drop of dye. She wore a yellow wraparound sundress and a smile just as bright. The wind-vane autopilot kept the boat on the correct heading, so Karla was alone in the cockpit. “Mind yelling at the boys?” Judy asked before ducking back below.

Karla sat up on her elbows and craned her neck without moving the rest of her body. The pace of the past week had endowed all her movements with a delicious laziness.

Both Kenneth and Tony stood up front, staring over the right side of the boat. Kenneth would have called it starboard, but Karla had an awful time keeping all the sailing terms straight in her head. At first she thought Kenneth was shooting another sight with his sextant, but a closer look revealed both men were looking through binoculars. Tony had a way of rolling his foot sideways when he was focused on anything important. The way he held it now caused Karla to sit up a little straighter.