The Mountains Bow Down Read Free

know it had its own acronym, MOB. Man overboard. And I knew the laws were fairly straightforward. As soon as a passenger was officially missing, the cruise ship must immediately return to its location corresponding to when the person was last seen.
    I asked where that was.
    â€œIn the bar,” Geert said.
    â€œYou know what I’m asking.”
    He was walking down a long narrow corridor of painted steel. It was gunmetal gray with curved cabin doors marked by single digit numbers. Officers’ quarters, I assumed.
    â€œUntil midnight, she was in the bar with the husband,” Geert said, finally. “He stayed. She went back to their cabin.” The mustache twitched. “The husband stumbled back to their cabin around 3:00 AM . Wife not there. He went back to the bar. For a drink.”
    â€œIt was still open—at 3:00 AM ?”
    â€œOpen all night. Nobody’s driving, yah? Husband has another drink, then comes to the concierge.” His white eyebrows were as snowy as the mustache and they lowered with contempt. “Four this morning, we start looking. Look and look. Can’t find her. I call the captain, tell him MOB, then I remember. We got FBI on board.”
    His last sentence dripped with sarcasm. I waited silently as he tapped two codes into two separate security pads. The sign beside the door read Captain’s Bridge, Authorized Personnel Only.
    â€œDoes this mean I can have my gun back?” I asked.
    â€œNo way.” Geert pushed open the door to the bridge. “I don’t trust Americans.”

    Oliver Roberts, the captain, was English. His teeth proved it.
    I extended my hand. “Raleigh Harmon, special agent, FBI.”
    Captain Roberts gave a brisk shake, then clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “Geert told me we had an FBI agent on board. Rather excellent luck, that. The Coast Guard and Civil Air Patrol have been alerted as well.”
    The bridge had floor-to-ceiling windows and as we headed out of Ketchikan, the sun-dappled ocean looked like liquid silver. Up ahead, where mountains sliced into the pool of molten metal, three Coast Guard tugboats chugged down the channel toward our ship in a triangular formation. From ten stories above, they looked like toy boats in an enormous bathtub. Two of the tugs shifted to each side—one starboard, one port—while a third bobbed out of our path, waiting to follow aft.
    â€œThe helicopters should be joining us momentarily,” the captain said.
    â€œYou were able to pinpoint the location where the woman went missing?” I asked.
    Hands still clasped behind his back, the captain strode to a bank of computers split into two sections and watched by four crew members. Between the counters, a white-shirted officer stood and lightly touched the ship’s wheel. I looked at the thing twice. Its diameter was no more than eight inches and seemed much too delicate for guiding a vessel whose length extended nine hundred feet. Under my feet, I felt the engines rumbling.
    â€œTwenty-two knots, Captain,” one of the crewmen called out.
    â€œTell them to keep it there until we clear the channel,” replied the captain. “Then pull back to fifteen.”
    The crewman picked up a black telephone and murmured something as the captain pivoted like a soldier. He pointed to a nautical chart displayed on the largest monitor. Alaska’s rugged coastline glowed like a radiated snake, bulging and shrinking around the deep coves and carved fjords of the Inside Passage. The ocean was represented by a wash of black while our ship was a small red rectangle, blinking south along the bright-yellow coast.
    â€œThe husband claims he last saw her at twenty-four hundred hours,” the captain said.
    â€œMidnight,” Geert said, for my benefit.
    â€œAt that hour, we were in Canada, not the United States.” The captain turned to look at me. He had rheumy English eyes, clouded by