Bacchante

A raging hurricane. A tiny fishing village in a distant land. A London nightclub dancer stumbles into the local clinic with the famous fire-fighter who carried her to New Zealand. The wife of an American shipping tycoon is on board his new luxury yacht as it battles the storm to reach the village. The young wife of a wine-maker struggles through mud, wind and rain to call for help, as her husband has been mortally hurt.All three women are in labor.All three women give birth to baby girls. The clinic is destroyed by the storm, so no records survive. No one knows which baby belongs to which mother.Twenty-one years later, the American billionaire kidnaps all three young women, along with the men who were there when they were born, and takes them to sea on his yacht. Convinced that his wife claimed the wrong baby, he is determined to find which girl is really his daughter.But the mega-yacht is old, and breaks down easily. As the strange voyage progresses through tropical Polynesia to New Zealand, crisis after crisis overtakes them. They are being stalked by something malign. Storms arrive and the engines give out. Reefs and shoalsthreaten.There's not just a question of identity at stake, but of survival, too.

Harold Pcderson's discovery ships are in trouble. Specializing in exploring remote estuaries and photographing endangered wildlife in South East Asia and the western Pacific, his fleet ventures into waters that are rife with pirates.When Jerry Giacomo is hired by Pederson to make his ships look bullet-proof, he finds that the situation is even more precarious than expected. The Jihadist breakaway group Abu Sayyaf is operating in the South China Sea, and their brutality is notorious, with filmed beheadings as well as outrageous ransom demands. Storm Swept, with all the Bacchantes on board, is requisitioned by the British navy, to take part in an exercise up a remote river in Borneo, where the pirates have their lair.At the same time, Helen Pederson is trapped in a remote village in Mexico, being blackmailed by her first husband. When she mnages to confide her dilemma to Jerry and Skye, the Bacchantes are forced to face yet another great challenge. The paternity of the girls has been brought into question yet again.And the answer could be even more dangerous than the battle with the pirates.