Ghost Ship

THIRTY-SIX

Sebastian Brèvard sat on the veranda of his sprawling baroque palace, overlooking the Olympic-sized swimming pool where he swam most mornings, as a servant delivered his breakfast of crepes and fresh fruit.

After deeming the meal acceptable, Sebastian waved the servant away, only to have Laurent appear seconds later.

“I assume you have news,” Sebastian said.

“Calista reports the infiltration plan is under way,” Laurent said. “Egan is with her.”

As planned, Sebastian thought. “Make sure the extraction team is ready to pull her out as soon as she signals us.”

“Already done.”

“What about the others?”

“Preparing to eliminate Acosta.”

“Excellent,” Sebastian said, grinning. “I only regret that I won’t be there to see his fat face when they dump him into the sea.”

“Yes, it would have been nice to take him ourselves,” Laurent said.

“Make sure there is no evidence,” he said. “It will serve us well if the rest of the world thinks he’s still alive.”

“I’ve already given that order,” Laurent said.

Sebastian took a sip of fresh papaya juice and gazed out over the shimmering pool to the sprawling hedge maze that covered ten acres on a lower level of the property. His grandfather had built the house and the surrounding walls. Sebastian’s father had brought in the flowering plants and built the maze. A reminder, he often had said, that those who don’t know the path are liable to get lost.

Brèvard knew the path he must take.

Much as his great-grandfather had done, Sebastian intended to complete the job of a lifetime and disappear. In some ways, he hated to leave the family home, but it was the only path that led to a future.

To keep the treasure he planned to take, the world would have to be fooled into thinking nothing had been stolen in the first place. To survive, if they ever figured it out, required a second trick: misdirection. He would convince the world that they’d killed him and ended the threat. And, for good measure, he’d point the finger at someone else if they needed a scapegoat to hang.

In that role, he would cast his unstable little sister and her ex-lover Acosta. They would play it perfectly.

He considered her fate for a moment, wondered if he should feel some sense of guilt, and then dismissed the idea as if it were absurd. Much like the family home, she would soon outlive her usefulness.

Dismissing Laurent, Sebastian opened a laptop beside him and tapped a few keys. Calista had set it up to monitor activity of the NUMA crew to their south, the ones investigating the wreck of the Ethernet. According to the latest report, they were in the same vicinity, now getting assistance from a South African tug and setting up a salvage effort on a derelict they’d discovered.

Curious, he tapped a few keys and was able to retrieve from the NUMA database several photos of the ship. To his surprise, it was covered in foliage and tawny-colored soil. He scrolled down until he found a designation. The discovery all but sent him into shock. The salvage claim listed the derelict’s name as the SS Waratah.

He put down the slice of orange he was chewing on and wiped his mouth with a napkin, scanning the NUMA file for more information on the ship. Her dimensions matched. The photos taken in several parts of the ship depicted old equipment and fittings. A picture of serving trays with the Blue Anchor logo in the middle were unmistakable. And an off-colored image of the ship’s bell with the name and the ship’s launch date engraved on it left no doubt.

“Damn,” he said, tossing the napkin down.

Brèvard felt his throat constricting. It was as if unseen hands were reaching out from beyond the grave to choke him and to pay him back for his family’s treachery a hundred years before.

As he scanned the remaining details on the file, he recalled his father telling him the story, a story passed down from one patriarch to the next through four generations. It was a lesson about pain and danger. A tale of escaping death and passing it on to others so the Brèvard family might be preserved.

He knew of his family’s escape from South Africa with the wolves of the Durban police on their heels. He remembered hearing over and over again how it was only ruthlessness that had saved the family, how shortly after the hijacking the crew tried valiantly to take the ship back. How they’d been thwarted because his great-grandfather had expected it and had taken hostages whom he was willing to kill.

In the aftermath of the uprising, the passengers and most of the crew were put off the ship in the lifeboats, leaving only two double-enders for launches and twenty crewmen behind to run the ship itself — a far more manageable number.

As fate would have it, a storm had come up the next day, a storm so powerful the Waratah was almost capsized, just as the newspapers thought she had been. It seemed impossible that any of the lifeboats survived that gale, and, as it turned out, not one ever made it to shore.

The Waratah, on the other hand, was driven north, where, aided by the storm surge, she traveled up the narrow river farther than anyone could have expected. She ran aground in a meander that couldn’t be seen from the coast in an unpopulated section of the country. It was there that the last members of the crew were killed.

Over the years, the ship seemed to burrow itself into the silt, sinking lower and lower, and soon being enveloped and completely covered.

Sebastian’s father had shown him the hill beneath which the ship sat, and, years later, he’d seen part of the ship itself after a woman the Brèvard family was holding had inadvertently discovered the ship and tried to escape, along with two of her children, using one of the ship’s remaining dilapidated boats.

To everyone’s surprise, the wooden launch actually stayed afloat long enough to reach the African coast, but the woman and her children had died from exposure long before they reached safety.

Sebastian had always considered it poetic. They were, in some ways, the last victims of a doomed ship. But the superstitious part of him now wondered if this ancient ship could somehow be in the process of evening the score.

“How is this possible?” Sebastian whispered to no one.

He could only conclude that the torrential rains of the month prior had somehow unearthed the ship and pushed her out into the channel, and from there the current had taken her south, right into the path of the NUMA team. But how had she remained afloat? How had she not broken apart and sunk to the watery grave long rumored to be her home after a hundred years of rotting away?

Whatever the reason, it seemed karma, the random nature of the universe, had dealt him a terrible card at the very moment he was getting ready to play his hand. He didn’t know what evidence of his great-grandfather’s actions might remain on the Waratah, but it was possible that clues left on that ship would reveal the family’s treachery or even lead the world to his door before he was ready to entertain them.

He called for Laurent and waited. He had to speak carefully. No one else knew the secret of the lost ship. Not even the other family members.

“What do you need, brother?” Laurent asked upon returning to the veranda.

“Gather up your pilots and get the helicopters ready,” he said. “It’s time to attack our friends at NUMA once again before they become too complacent.”

“You want us to attack them from the air?” Laurent asked. “I thought you and Calista had already sabotaged them with the computers.”

“We did,” Brèvard said. “But instead of being towed into port, they’ve remained on station and even found themselves a derelict to salvage. They’re proving more resourceful and persistent than I care to allow. I need them distracted further. At this moment, with their salvage operation under way, they seem to have made themselves vulnerable.”

“We have a few torpedoes in the armory,” Laurent said. “Acosta was going to sell them to the Somalis before he betrayed us.”

“Perfect,” Brèvard said. “Arm the helicopters with those torpedoes. I want that derelict sent to the bottom. And while you’re at it, make a few strafing runs over the other ships in their little fleet.”

“You want us to attack the derelict?” Laurent said, sounding confused.

Sebastian stared. He could understand why the order sounded odd. “Don’t question me,” he growled, “just do as I order. Trust me, I have my reasons.”

Laurent held up his hands in an act of contrition. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I understood.”

“How soon can you launch?” Sebastian asked.

“Within a few hours.”

“Excellent,” Sebastian said.

As Laurent disappeared, Brèvard turned back to his breakfast but found he’d lost his appetite. The last thing he needed was to be exposed before he was ready to move.