Ss Indigo

Willy Mitchell

Description

A GROUP OF STRANGERS INVITED TO JOIN LUXURY STEAMSHIP SS INDIGO FOR A CARIBBEAN CRUISE, THEY ALL HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON.

It is 2003 and Igor Bromovich has just been hired to captain the luxury steamship, SS Indigo, for an upcoming private cruise around the Caribbean. He is thrilled to be returning to work, and to a place he belongs. Assisted by a small crew of three, including Californian Zach Carter, he shelves the doubts that have been creeping into his thoughts and readies the ship for the five-hundred-mile sail to Grand Cayman.

Sir James Parsons is a leading investor and businessman who is prepared to carry out his swan song, a homage to the father who never voiced his approval for any of Parsons’ accomplishments. He is joined by an eclectic group of strangers to board the ship and the mystery cruise, all having received mysterious invitations to board the Indigo at St. Georges Caye, Belize, to hear about a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity.

The passengers arrive to embark on a journey of intrigue and discovery without realizing that they all have one thing in common. Now just one question remains: When the ship docks in Grand Cayman, how many of the passengers will be left?

In this gripping mystery on the sea, a reclusive and secretive billionaire invites a small group of strangers to cruise the Caribbean on a luxury steamship where they soon discover that nothing is as it seems, and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Sujets

• Detective
• Mystery
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663228956
• Langue: English

Extrait

SS INDIGO

TWELVE’S COMPANY





WILLY MITCHELL








SSINDIGO
TWELVE’S COMPANY

Copyright © 2022 Willy Mitchell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.





iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-2896-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-2897-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-2895-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022916537



iUniverse rev. date: 11/10/2022



CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Prologue
Part 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Part 2
15

Further Notes
SS Indigo
About The Author











To my wife, my daughter, and my son.
This book is for you, with all my love and continued
reading for years and generations to come.

To my beloved Uncle Billy Mitchell, ever encouraging,
ever supportive, illuminating the lives of all those who had
the honor to meet you – you will be forever in my thoughts.

Bravely & Truly, Boldly & Rightly.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SS Indigo is dedicated to all those people in my life who have taught me so much along my journey so far. There are those who have taught me the good and the right, Bravely & Truly, Boldly & Rightly, and then there are those who have shown me contrasting values and behav iors.
I always hoped that the former would prevail, but that was when I was young and naive and believed that there was more good in the world than bad. I realize now that the balance between good and evil is a much finer one than I had ever imagined and is almost always fueled by the quest for power and money—by greed.
I would like to thank all those who have been positive influencers in my life, helping me steer through challenges, always trying to do the right thing.
Of course, and as always, this book is dedicated to my wife, my daughter, and my son. Also, to my mother, my sister, and my father, God bless his soul.
To all my family and friends. Thank you.
To my best friend, Gary, and to Hans, Charles, and Jay. A big thank-you to my new octogenarian friend, Jim, and the amazing teacher, creative writing coach, and mentor Alta Wehmeyer.
The list is long. Thank you to all I have mentioned and all who I have missed.

www.willymitchell .com



AUTHOR’S NOTE
From an early age, I enjoyed reading. It wasn’t until I was in my preteens and got beyond the Secret Seven and the Famous Five that I journeyed through to Roald Dahl and his wonderful imaginative adventures; J. R. R. Tolkien and his complete fantasy worlds, people, and languages; and Wilbur Smith and his accounts of empires, hardships, and adventures in Af rica.
My reading, just like my music, has been an eclectic mix and a journey of discovery.
Ten or so years ago, when I first contemplated writing, I thought of the unsung hero and a collection of short stories. I didn’t want to get stuck in a singular genre or create a long-running series, but I treasured the opportunity to wrap true stories around fiction and bring those tales to life.
Both Operation Argus and its sequel, Bikini Bravo , address maskirovka and how the art of deception is more prevalent than you think in the murky world of politics and organized crime, rarely mentioned in the same sentence.
Cold Courage tells the epic tale of bravery, grit, determination, and survival in the face of adversity during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914.
Northern Echo features two boys growing up in the North of England during the punk rock era, and then Gipsy Moth follows aviatrix heroines during the golden age of aviation.
With this, my sixth book, SS Indigo , I wanted to explore the world of mystery—an eclectic group of characters, from all walks of life, united by one common thing. A luxury steamship in my favorite part of the world collects its passengers and embarks on a journey of mystery and discovery as it sets sail across the Caribbean.
I hope that you enjoy the story of SS Indigo: Twelve’s Company as it unfolds in the following pages.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”



PROLOGUE
I’d been anticipating this trip for a long time. I had the sense it was going to be important. We’d been in business for a couple of years now, and I figured this could possibly be the big break we’d been looking for. Lithuania joining the European Union meant an influx of qualified and soon-to-be-legal workers for a much-needed gap in the UK hospitality market. It’s not as though business was bad, not at all, but this was the potential of finding a seam during the gold rush.
Most of the weekend, I’d been hanging out with Kipper and Jimmy at the Drovers, drinking beer and playing pool and poker. It was Sunday afternoon, and I was in the middle of a game of Brag. Amanda, my adopted admin, had popped into our office upstairs and brought down a fax that had arrived, and I folded my ace high to meet her. She had always been my favorite, ever since I’d taken her on—a young girl, a groom, no qualifications, but sweet and full of enthusiasm. Three years on, she’d grown, and she was very grateful for my investment in her.
In her riding outfit, she handed me the fax with her usual sweet smile. “I thought you should see this.”
I went over to the snug and sat down to read it. For fifteen minutes, I pondered, reread it, and reread it again before carefully folding it up and placing it in my back pocket as though it were a winning betting slip from the Grand National.
I walked over to the bar where the stuffed Gentleman Fox that Diesel and Mick had once held ransom sat and ordered myself a glass of Liddesdale. It was only four in the afternoon, but why not? I’d been right—this trip was going to be a game changer.
Twenty-four hours later, I landed at Schiphol, left the terminal, and caught a cab right next to where the big red AMSTERDAM letters are and headed into the city. I asked the driver to drop me off in the main square. It was full of the usual stag parties, football fans—full of beer and likely stronger substances, singing their way into an evening of debauchery, no doubt.
Last time I’d been there, I’d found a locals’ post just down an alley a couple of blocks away, so that’s where I headed. It was quiet in Amsterdam, and apart from the tourists, it didn’t get busy for locals until much later into the night, often into the early hours and sunrise.
With little giving it away that it was a bar at all—dark wood door, black facade, no sign—the No Name Bar was just as I remembered, and I walked inside.
Amsterdam is a truly international city, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear the barman’s Northern Californian accent as he greeted me with what was obviously his standard question: “What can I get you, my friend?”
I paused for a second and looked him up and down. “I’ll take a Lagunitas?”
He looked at me, paused, and then smiled knowingly. “Not in Amsterdam, my friend. Wrong country. Where are you from?”
He was clearly impressed that I had spotted his accent after having heard barely a sentence, but what he didn’t realize was that this somehow had become my thing. Spoofing accents from my home country was kind of easy—the grate of Glaswegian, the pronunciation of Edinburgh, the poetry of Ayrshire. Across the sea, Dubliners were easy to establish against Belfasters. South of the border, it was even easier—from the hardly audible Newcastle drawl, across to the “Manchestor,” “Liverpooool,” and then Birmingham, Coventry, Londoners. But some of the accents, like those of specific Australian territories and US states, were harder to define.
For some, it was not just their accents that gave them away but also their dress and demeanor. The boxer-like swagger of a Scouser versus the bold confidence of a Cockney. The over-the-top glitz of the nouveau riche Russians versus the more utilitarian style of former Soviets. The straight-to-the-point New Yorker versus the bright-smiled Angeleno. The surfer-dude types of Northern California.
The bartender’s name tag told me I was speaking to Zach. As I mentioned, his accent gave him away, but his looks also fit the stereotype of a typical Northern Californian—although I suspected that he’d seen more than Sonoma County in his life. After all, he was five thousand miles away in Holland.
“Glasgow,” I said. “What about you?”
“That’s no Glasgow accent,” he said and smiled.
“Yep. I’ve been around a bit.”
He looked at me and nodded knowingly.
I already knew I liked Zach—it was another one of those things ; I could immed