Billionaire on Board (6 page)

"That's not true!"

"Yes, it is. Now, just stay calm and don't do anything, no matter how much your little pouch of glory calls out for it, help is on its way. As soon as Nicky comes home from his practice we'll drive to Hamburg and tomorrow at the wedding I'll be there to hold your hand. I could stay at your place over night if you want me to."

A little voice inside my head was whispering corrupting things to me. 

"I'll be fine, you really don't have to, there's nothing to worry about. I can always call Tina if something goes wrong."

"Okay, good." 

"I'm going into the tunnel now, the reception always sucks here. I keep you posted!"

"Okay! Good luck! Have fun!!!"

I hung up. 

As the tube went down into the dark tunnel I looked at myself in the window. 

Milk and honey? I resembled a wanton nymph just out of bed with the river god. 

I had hardly slept. My head had been full of Ryan Corvera-Fabergé, my mind had repeated the day's events over and over in its own infinity loop. When I had finally dozed off I had dreamed about making love to him in ways not even French porn directors would have been able to imagine. I do not know how many times I had got myself off, hoping to somehow flush him out of my system.

Coming out of the tunnel at the 'Landungsbrücken' stop is always beautiful. 

The tube rushes right out onto a bridge from where you can see across the 19
^th
century departure hall and the river towards the shipyard's huge docks, hosting whatever needed to be repaired or repainted, from bulky container vessels to high-tech drilling ships, from majestic cruise ships to petrol tankers. Sometimes even a mega-yacht would grace us with its presence.

The yachts were usually kept in floating hangars, shielded from the eyes of eager tourists and protected from wind and rain until they were completely closed up and covered in protective layers of paint and anti-fouling varnishes. But on that day, much to my delight, I saw a white chimney peep out from behind dock 11, where they berthed the ships when they were about to depart.

There was a slim burgundy circle running around it and it glowed, fresh and happy in the morning sun.

Myrtle! 

My heart gave a little jump. 

I really could not wait to see her.

I really could not wait to see her owner either, although I was terrified of seeing him at the same time.

My heart was beating all the way up into my throat. 

What if he had not come? 

The tube stopped and the doors opened. 

I stumbled down the stairs towards the pedestrian bridge leading to the piers.

There was no Maybach standing about anywhere, but I would not be able see Pier 6 until I had rounded the clock-tower. 

I wound myself through the groups of families, school-children and handholding couples profiting from the bridge day  until I finally saw the Heidi. Her captain, Adolf (one of the many unlucky Germans born between 1933 and 1945), stuck his head out of his cubicle and happily smoked his pipe. 

"Hello, Pussycat!" he called and waved. My mother's company had a long standing cooperation with his fleet of tourist barges and I had known Adolf for eighteen years.

"Hallo Adi, are the guests on board?" 

We had been booked by a women's choir from Nebraska who had come to sing in the baptist church of Hamburg.

"Yes! And so is your boyfriend!"

Do you sometimes want to hug a stranger and cry helplessly in their arms? 

But what could I do? There was no way around it anymore.

Ryan was lounging against the doorframe leading up to Adolf's cubicle, in blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a pair of converse shoes and Ray Ban sunglasses. Had it not been for the forty-five middle-aged women excitedly beaming at me from the aft-deck benches, I would have crossed over to Heidi's port-side rail and would have jumped head first into the river.

Instead, I waved back at them calling out "Hello! Good Morning! Are you ready?" and grabbed the wireless microphone from its usual box on the safety-vest container.

"Hello, darling," a voice murmured into my ear and I swirled around. Before I could say anything Ryan had wound his arm around my waist. He pulled me against himself and he kissed me right on the mouth.

The women's choir was hooting and clapping.

"What was that?" I whispered.

He smiled. "How do you think I greet my girlfriend in the morning?"

I coughed and turned on the microphone.

"Yes. Good morning again. My name's Jude and this is my crazy boyfriend."

More Applause. 

I bowed. 

This was my turf and as long as the microphone was on, I was in performance mode. Things only got critical when the audience was gone. I believe actors feel the same way too.

"Our captain's name is Adolf and he has a moustache, but don't worry, he's completely domesticated and he won't come down from his command bridge at all. In fact, I'm going to join him up there now to make sure he knows where he's going."

I turned off the microphone and hurled myself into the tiny cubicle where I could sit next to Adolf on a bar stool.

"Your boy knows a lot about ships."

"Ah…" I mumbled. "What did he tell you?"

"He owns an old barge and he loves working on it. He asked me some questions about Heidi and the other ladies, how we maintain them, you know, technical stuff."

"Adolf," I sighed, "I don't see why you don't do the tours in English yourself if you're able to discuss such matters with him."

"Ah, no. You do it so much better. Anyway, I'm happy when I can shut up for a while."

As if he ever did. 

Adolf and Heidi made it to ten harbour cruises a day in the high season and even when I was there to do a foreign language tour, he would prattle on and on, telling me all the old jokes over and over again. He had retired from life at sea twenty years ago, when he got belatedly married and fathered a daughter, his pride and joy. Before, he had been a real captain to vast bulk carrier ships crossing the Atlantic and he was also a walking marine encyclopaedia.

I was breathing deeply to get my heart rate down to a bearable limit. 

"Anything interesting in today?"

"We have a few big container ships over at the Eurogate terminal, an aircraft carrier by Dock 17 and oh, finally, finally we can see the old lady. She left her hangar."

"Who?"

"The Myrtle! You'll see. A luxury yacht from 1951, incredible!"

"Ah. I see."

I glanced around and saw Ryan sitting among the elderly choirgirls, merrily chatting up a chubby blonde Nebraskan and her emaciated friend. He looked up, saw me and winked.

So much for my heart rate.

Heidi moved away from the quay and off we went, first towards the old warehouses, then on to the futuristic concert hall, a three-hundred feet high crystal body resting on top of a massive brick storehouse. 

It was the city's unfinished symphony, almost done, throwing mind blowing reflections onto the water,  but still missing half the roof. 

I made all the usual jokes about the cost explosion and the delay. At the same time Adolf kept reporting his daughter's progress at university to me. She wanted to take a term in Korea.

We crossed into a sidearm and underneath the impressive suspended bridge called Köhlbrandbrücke, towards the container terminals where ships with a length of over a thousand feet and a capacity of up to sixteen-thousand containers were loaded and unloaded. 

We could also see the elegant residences and villas at the opposite bank, with the L'Oiseau D'Or figuring prominently among them.

 Adolf gave me the exact details on every barge, tugboat, crane or lorry we encountered. I knew a lot of it myself by experience, but he was an infinite source of new information. He proudly showed me how he now researched the ships and their movements directly on his tablet computer which he could connect by satellite to locate any registered ship with a precision of 3 inches, no matter where in the world it currently was. 

Actually I wished he was spending more time looking forward at the river traffic than at his silly tablet's screen.

Whenever I glanced back, I saw Ryan busily taking photographs with his phone or pointing out something to the ladies. He obviously had a good time. So, I thought cynically, his weekend's entertainment package was still to his satisfaction. Well. Maybe I would get a good tip.

I explained the fish market and the former Danish border houses until we turned into another sidearm, leading up to the shipyards.

And there she was. 

Myrtle.

We were still half a mile away and she did not look as big as I knew her to be. But when we got closer, I saw a van parked next to her and I perceived her true proportions. 

Of course, nowadays, there are mega-yachts three times as big as her. Some sheiks and some russian oligarchs seem to make it their personal game to own the biggest yacht on the planet and anyway, I see a lot of yachts in my profession, I had even been on one or two, so I was detached enough when talking about the how long, how big and how much, but Myrtle was something else. Myrtle was somehow alive.

She looked incredibly friendly with her tubby white body and the two red stripes along her hull, one burgundy and one cherry red. 

Her windows were an assortment of square eyes, watching our progress. It actually looked as if the boat was smiling!

I turned around to see what Ryan was up to. 

He was standing now, arms crossed, and leaned against the rail. His face was impassive and totally calm, but his eyes never left Myrtle. 

I had seen him look like that before, last night at the hotel lobby. When he had been looking at me.

"Ah, yes…" Adolf beamed. "There she is. Come on, I tell you all about her and you can translate directly."

"Okay," I croaked and brought the microphone up.

"The Myrtle, originally named Lady Blanche, was built in 1951 by Zanetti yachts in Genoa and went under a Greek flag."

I translated.

"She has a length of 69.3 metres and a beam of 12.5 metres, a draft of 4.50. - Make that 225 feet in length, 40 feet in width and a draft of almost 14 feet."

I repeated it in English and saw Ryan nod appreciatively. 

Adolf had got it right.

"She has last been officially sailing under the name Aisha in 1972, when she was owned by the Lebanese arms dealer Hani Al-Sharif."

This time Ryan looked up to us, an incredulous smile on his shockingly, shockingly handsome face. 

I really wished I could shake myself but I was being watched.

"She was completely refitted, making her now a nice holiday home for eight guests and a crew of twenty."

Ryan nodded some more. 

"Her refit with a miniature submarine, six jet skis, four tender boats, two speed boats, a carport for two cars, armed defence systems and eco-friendly technology has come at a cost of eighty million euros, or to you one-hundred-twenty million dollars."

Now Ryan was waving his head from side to side, pulling a face. 

I shrugged visibly in order to explain I was only translating what Adolf had told me.

He lifted his thumb upwards. 

So it had cost more than that. 

My stomach reared.

"The owner is a British entrepreneur who remains anonymous and she's registered in St. John's and therefore now sailing under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda."

I did not translate it.

I still had to get back at my imaginary boyfriend for his pseudo-romantic declaration of love at the L'Oiseau D'Or. 

"Today Myrtle is owned by a Saudi-Arabian sheik who has bought her exclusively for his harem, consisting of Czech, Brazilian, Italian and Russian supermodels."

"What are you talking about?" Adolf asked puffing his pipe.

"Nothing."

"So she belongs to that handsome boyfriend of yours, eh?"

I blushed and nodded.

He laughed.

"Well done, little Jude. A girl as clever and as pretty as you— you deserve a billionaire."

I felt terrible about lying to him and I nearly told him the truth, but then Ryan stuck his head in.

"Is my game up?" he asked.

"Yes." Adolf declared. "I hope you'll invite me to a cruise with her when the two of you are married."

"Uh, yes," Ryan mumbled. "Of course."

"Well, Mister," Adolf said, "You have to sit down now and hold on tight because we're coming back to the quay and sometimes that's a bumpy affair with a small ship like my Heidi."

"Aye, aye, Sir…" 

Six

"You should be an actress, well done, love!" 

One of the Nebraskans pressed a five dollar bill into my hand. 

"And your man… ooh, makes me wanna be young again."

I tried a smile.

"Was she the last one?" 

My man, who as we all know was nothing of the sort, came up behind me.

"Yes."

"How's the booty?"

"Thirty-two euros and twelve dollars."

"Not bad, you can buy me a calf's foot smoothie at the abattoir. I've been thinking of nothing else."

"Really."

"Well, almost."

He turned me around, smiled deviously and wanted to kiss me again.

"Wait! What are you doing?" I breathed.

"Practising," he whispered. "You know, I've been thinking about it last night, we need to practise or it won't look authentic tomorrow."

"Aha… I—" 

One of his hands came up behind me and settled at the nape of my neck so I could not pull away. 

An army of butterflies took flight in my body. 

He kissed me very softly at first, his lips only brushing mine. Then the tip of his tongue was there and gently nudged against my upper lip, teasing me to join in.