Cold Vengeance

CHAPTER 68

Aboard the Vergeltung

ESTERHAZY WAITED IN THE ENGINE ROOM with Falkoner. The twin diesels, now running at cruising speed, were loud in the confined space.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes had passed since Pendergast came on board. The air of tension was gradually increasing. He didn’t like this — didn’t like it at all. Falkoner had lied to him.

He’d taken exquisite care in reeling Pendergast in. Constance had done precisely what he’d expected, escaping her loose bonds, writing a note and tossing it out the window of the safe house to his plant in the next garden. And since Pendergast was now on board, he had clearly swallowed the bait so carefully dangled—“vengeance,” which of course in German translated to Vergeltung. It had been a balancing act, giving Pendergast just enough information to locate the boat but not enough to suspect a trap.

But now Falkoner was insisting on taking Pendergast alive. Esterhazy felt a twinge of nausea: he knew that one reason Falkoner wanted this was because he enjoyed torture. The man was sick — and his arrogance and sadism could still mess everything up.

Esterhazy felt the old sense of fear and of paranoia increase. He checked his handgun, racked the slide. If Falkoner didn’t follow through at the first opportunity, he’d have to do it himself. Finish what he’d started on the Scottish moors. And do it before Pendergast — intentionally or otherwise — did in fact reveal the secret Esterhazy had kept from the Covenant for the past decade. Christ, if only Pendergast hadn’t examined that old gun; if only he had let sleeping dogs lie. The man had no idea, no idea, of the madness he’d unleashed. Maybe he should have let Pendergast into the awful secret years ago, when he first married his sister.

Too late now.

Falkoner’s radio crackled. “It’s Vic,” came the voice. “I don’t know how, but we seem to have lost him. He’s not behind the tender anymore.”

“Verdammter Mist!” Falkoner said angrily. “How the hell could you lose him?”

“I don’t know. He was hiding where we couldn’t see him. We waited awhile and nothing happened, so I left Berger on watch in the main cabin and went to the sky deck to look from a better angle — and he was gone. I don’t know how — we would’ve seen him no matter which way he went.”

“He must still be down there somewhere,” said Falkoner. “All the doors are locked. Send Berger onto the aft deck; cover him from your position on the flybridge.”

Esterhazy spoke into his own radio headset. “A locked door is no impediment to Pendergast.”

“He couldn’t have gotten past the main cabin door without us seeing him,” said Viktor.

“Flush him out,” Falkoner repeated. “Captain, what’s our position?”

“We’re just coming into New York Harbor.”

“Maintain cruising speed. Head for open ocean.”

Viktor crouched on the flybridge of the Vergeltung, three stories above the surface of the water. The boat had just passed the site of the fast-rising One World Trade Center and was rounding the southern tip of Manhattan, the Battery on their left, lit up by a cluster of spotlights. The buildings of the financial district rose like clusters of glowing spikes, casting an ambient light across the water, bathing the boat in an indirect radiance.

Below him, the aft deck of the Vergeltung was softly illuminated in the glow of the city. Two outboard tenders — small motorboats used for coming and going when the yacht was at anchor — lay side by side on the port stern deck, each in its launching cradle, covered with canvas. There was no way for Pendergast to have gone forward without crossing the open deck. And they had been watching that deck like a hawk. He must still be back in the stern area.

Through the night-vision goggles, he saw Berger emerge from the main cabin, gun at the ready. Viktor lowered the goggles and raised his own weapon to cover him.

Berger paused a moment in the shadows, readying himself, then skipped alongside in the cover of the first tender and crouched behind its bow.

Viktor waited, his Beretta pointed, ready to unload at the slightest movement, the briefest exposure. He was ex-military and didn’t care much for Falkoner’s order to take the man alive; if this fellow showed his head, he’d take him down anyway. He wasn’t going to risk the others for a live catch.

Slowly, Berger worked his way alongside the boat toward the stern.

Viktor’s radio crackled, Berger speaking to him through his headset. “No sign of him behind the tenders.”

“Make double sure. And be careful: he might have slipped back behind the stern transom, waiting to jump anyone coming out.”

Keeping his weapon trained on the scene, Viktor watched as Berger crept from the first tender to the second.

“Not here,” came the whispered voice.

“Then he did slip back behind the stern,” Viktor said.

Viktor watched as Berger advanced to the stern rail, keeping to a low crouch. Then the man tensed and sprang up to full height, training his weapon on the twin swim platforms behind.

A moment later he dropped back down. “Nothing.”

Viktor thought hard. This was crazy. “Inside. He might be hiding inside one of the boats, under the tarp.”

Viktor shifted his gunsights to the tenders as Berger grasped the stern ladder of the first, swung it down, stepped onto it, and raised himself up. He leaned against the propeller shaft in order to lift the edge of the tarp and peer underneath.

Over the radio, Viktor heard a faint click, then an electronic beep.

Oh, Jesus, he knew that sound! “Berger—!”

A sudden earsplitting roar erupted from the tender’s outboard; Berger screamed and there was a shower of dark spray as his body was kicked sideways by the whirling propeller, his side ripped wide open.

After an instant of horrified shock, Viktor raked the tender with multiple bursts from his Beretta, sweeping back and forth until the magazine was empty, the rounds shredding the canvas and punching through the boat, riddling anyone who might have been hiding within. After a moment, flames erupted in the stern area of the tender. Berger’s body lay where it had fallen, unmoving, a puddle of black spreading out from beneath it.

With trembling hands Viktor ejected the empty mag and rammed another home.

“What’s going on!” came Falkoner’s furious voice over his headset. “What are you doing?”

“He killed Berger!” shouted Viktor. “He—”

“Stop firing! We’re on a boat, idiot! You’ll start a fire!”

Viktor stared at the flames licking up the canvas from the tender. There was a muffled thump and a shudder as more flames burst upward from the ruptured gas tank. “Shit, we’ve already got a fire.”

“Where?”

“On the tender.”

“Launch it. Get it off the yacht. Now!”

“Right.” Viktor scrambled down to the main deck and raced to the tender. The man Pendergast was nowhere in sight — no doubt he was lying dead in the belly of the tender. He unclipped the stays fore and aft, threw open the stern transom, and hit the windlass switch. As the gears on the windlass hummed, the twelve-foot tender lurched back, sliding on launching rails; Viktor seized the bow and gave it an additional shove to keep it moving. When the burning stern of the tender hit the fast-moving wake, the water grabbed it and yanked the little boat off the deck, the chains snapping; Viktor was thrown off balance but managed to grab the stern rail, recovering quickly. The burning tender fell astern, spinning in the water, already sinking. It had taken the fire with it and most likely the dead body of the target. Viktor was vastly relieved.

Until he felt a stiff shove from behind, his headset yanked off simultaneously, and he went tumbling into the water after the burning tender.