Pandora's Curse

ABOARD THE SEA EMPRESS

“I guess this ship being here wasn’t such a coincidence, after all.” Erwin Puhl’s voice quavered. He’d never considered that the forces the Brotherhood were fighting could be so prepared.

“This is either Rath’s fallback position,” Mercer agreed, “or he planned to transfer the Pandora boxes here all along. Considering the ship’s distinguished passenger list, I doubt customs is going to pay much attention to what’s in her holds.”

“You’re not surprised, are you?” Marty snapped, more accusation than question.

Mercer matched his anger. “After what we’ve been through, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gunther Rath is already on this tub. He can’t risk sticking by the Njoerd in case we made it to Kulusuk and contacted the authorities.”

“Doesn’t matter who’s surprised,” Ira soothed. “We need to figure out our next move. Erwin, do you know what cabin your friend is in?”

“I don’t know. It was assigned when he boarded.”

“Then we have to go look for him.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Marty’s fury had not abated. “We look like a bunch of refugees.”

“There must be some cabins close by,” Mercer said, grateful for Ira’s role as peacemaker. “We’ll help ourselves to some new clothes.”

After knocking to make sure the cabin nearest the marina was empty, Mercer splintered the lock with one kick. He motioned to his people, and they raced across the corridor and into the small room. It was barely big enough for the three beds, closet, and tiny bathroom. There was no porthole. Mercer went straight to the telephone hanging on the wall near one bed. Next to it was a list of numbers. He dialed the one for a ship-to-shore connection. After a single ring, a recording answered, “Due to the solar-max effect, all ship-to-shore telephone calls have been suspended. If this is an emergency, please come to either of the pursers’ offices located on the entrance deck of each hull. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Mercer fingered the disconnect button. “Outside communications are out. They claim it’s the solar max, but I bet Rath’s already here and has isolated the ship.”

“I would if I were him,” Ira said. “Who were you going to call?”

“I wanted to reach Dick Henna, the head of the FBI. We’ve been friends for years.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s a long story.” Next, Mercer phoned the purser’s office and asked to be connected to Father Anatoly Vatutin’s room. A moment later, a shipboard operator said that no one was answering. “Could you give me his room number? It’s important that I find him.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the tired operator said. “We aren’t allowed to give out cabin numbers. It’s company policy.”

Mercer hung up the phone. “Damn it. They won’t give me Vatutin’s room number either.” He crossed to the closet and opened the door. Hanging inside were three saffron robes of Buddhist monks and rattan sandals. The idea that flashed in Mercer’s head was a desperate one. He called to Anika, who was in the bathroom. “Are there any razors in there?”

“A couple of them.”

Mercer snapped open the longest blade on his pocket knife.

“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“You know any monks with hair, Ira? Besides, what do you care? You’re already bald.”

“What are you doing?” Marty asked.

“We can’t stay here because the monks will eventually return, and as you pointed out we can’t walk around the ship dressed as refugees. So a couple of us are converting to Buddhism. One of the men will have to remain hidden in the boat garage with the women.”

“I’ll stay with them,” Marty volunteered quickly and then added to defuse the tension he’d caused unnecessarily, “At my age, I can’t risk cutting off all my hair. It may not come back.”

“Okay.” Mercer began hacking at his hair with the knife. “If you’re up to this, Erwin, you’re next.”

“I’ll be okay.” He fingered the fringes around his head. “And like Ira, I won’t be losing much.”

Twenty minutes later, Ira, Mercer, and Erwin Puhl had the robes draped over their regular clothes, sleeves hiked to their elbows and pants carefully folded so their bare legs and sandled feet were exposed. Each was freshly shaved and their bald heads gleamed.

“I look like an orange bowling pin,” Mercer told his reflection in the bathroom.

“I think you look handsome,” Anika said. “Like Yul Brynner in The King and I.”

Ira rubbed Mercer’s naked skull. “If I was a phrenologist, I’d say you thrive on danger and alcohol, have impure thoughts about farm animals, and probably wet the bed.”

Mercer chuckled. “Remember, my hair will come back.”

“Touché.”

Back in the little office in the garage, Mercer handed the Schmeisser to Marty, keeping the broom-handle Mauser for himself. “Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. If you get caught, Rath won’t execute you until he has all of us. He’ll lock you up instead and we’ll find you.”

“I understand.” Bishop took the weapon. “Sorry about what I said earlier. It’s just that I, ah, I’m…”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m scared too. Once we link up with Vatutin, we’ll be safe in his cabin until we can figure out what to do next.”

“Before you guys go out, I have something for you.” Anika removed a tube of lotion from the sundries rack near the office counter. “Suntan lotion with bronzer. It’ll darken your complexion a bit. Make you look more… I don’t know… Tibetan.”

They smeared their hands, faces, and heads with the darkening cream. All things considered, their disguises weren’t too bad.

“We should be back in a half hour.”

“This ship is enormous. How are you going to find Vatutin so quickly?”

“It’s nearly twelve,” Mercer replied. “Cruise-ship tradition is the midnight buffet. Where else could he be? We’ll even bring back some food.”

In a tight bunch, the three men left the boat garage and started down the carpeted corridor. At a bank of elevators, their costumes were given their first scrutiny by a pair of French-speaking priests. The clerics eyed the makeshift sling Anika had made for Erwin but otherwise ignored the fake monks. Mercer exchanged relieved glances with Ira and Erwin. They rose seven decks in silence, following the priests when they exited. Eavesdropping on their conversation, Mercer understood they were headed for the buffet in the main dining room. He walked slowly, letting the Frenchmen draw out of earshot. “So far so good.”

“What happens when we run into some real Buddhists?”

“Pray they think we’ve taken vows of silence.”

They reached one of the ship’s two cavernous atriums and crossed on a bridge next to a waterfall, glancing down to see a group of rabbis chatting in a piano bar surrounded by a riot of jungle vegetation. Above them, the aurora borealis washed through the skylights and cast wavering slashes of color on every surface it touched. Particularly brilliant flashes brought appropriate gasps from the people loitering at the railings of the multilevel atrium.

The crowds thickened as Mercer and the others approached the dining room in the center part of the Sea Empress. The noise of conversations grew. Most people ignored them, but a pair of sharp-eyed Sikhs stared as they walked into the huge room. Mercer didn’t know if it was cultural animosity or if their disguises didn’t fool the turbaned men. He submissively bowed his head as he shuffled past. And stumbled into a man dressed in black, like a priest.

The man turned and snapped something in angry German.

Falling back into Ira, Mercer couldn’t suppress the recognition. The German was from Geo-Research! He wasn’t wearing a priestly suit. He wore a uniform. The man said something again, jabbing a finger into Mercer’s chest.

“Ungalabu,” Mercer said quickly, casting his eyes down in apology. “Ee ala haboba.”

Rath’s guard continued to glare, but Mercer refused to meet his eyes. A trickle of sweat ran like a finger down his ribs. Sneering, the German turned to his compatriot next to him, said something derogatory, and laughed. He hadn’t recognized Mercer with his orange robes and shorn pate.

Before joining the buffet line, they waited until the guards were a dozen places in front of them. “How do you know Tibetan?” Ira whispered.

“I don’t.” Mercer grinned. “And neither did he. We’ll get a table near them so Erwin can listen to their conversation.”

“I don’t see Vatutin anywhere,” Erwin said after a quick search of the room.

“When we grab a seat, you walk around and look more carefully. If he’s not here we can maybe try out on deck.”

With his stomach straining to get at the magnificent displays of food ringing the room, Mercer placed just a few vegetables and some rice on his plate in keeping with Buddhist practice. Yet when he reached the deli station, he made two foot-long sandwiches and slid them into the pockets of the robe. The chef shot him an odd look, but he had seen a number of dietary taboos broken on this trip.

There were only two people at the ten-place table closest to where the Germans sat: a man and a woman unlike any Mercer had seen outside of a Hollywood stereotype. The man sported a shimmering blue sharkskin suit with a shirt and tie of the same color. His toupee looked like a dead animal perched on his head. The woman had poured herself into a silver dress that showed silicone cleavage to an inch above her nipples. Her big hair was bottle blond and styled into a towering cone. Her makeup would have been comical if it wasn’t so appropriate to her overlifted face. Each individual eyelash seemed as long and thick as a baby’s pinky.

With his eyes, Mercer asked permission to sit.

“Absolutely,” the man slurred. In front of him were three empty glasses and a full one. “I’m Tommy Joe Farquar and this is my wife, Lorna. We’re from the U.S. of A.”

“Gosh,” Lorna squeaked in a voice shrill enough to shatter crystal. “It’s good to have some company. For some reason no one wants to sit with us no more.”

Mercer made a sympathetic gesture and shoveled rice into his mouth to keep from laughing.

Tommy Joe leaned his elbows on the table and, in an earnestness honed during his years of selling used cars, asked, “Have you gentlemen accepted Jesus as your personal savior?”

Another mouthful of food went in before Mercer could swallow the first.

“I suspect you haven’t, ’cause of the crazy getups you’re wearing. Now, I know it’s not your fault, so I don’t blame you none. But I think it’s time you reconsidered the path you’ve chosen. It’s never too late to find Christ, our Lord.”

“Tommy Joe knows what he’s talking about,” Lorna cooed. “He’s on television.”

Mercer jumped when he felt pressure against his crotch. Carefully, he reached under the table and grabbed at what he feared was Lorna Farquar’s hand. His fingers sank into something warm and furry, and before he knew what he’d touched, tiny needle teeth sank into his thumb. He pulled his hand away with a gasp and flung the Farquar’s Pekingese onto an adjoining table. The dog had been snuffling into Mercer’s pocket for the sandwiches.

“Pookie, you bad boy. Get back into your bag.” Ignoring the repulsed diners, the dog defiantly lifted its leg against the flowered centerpiece. After emitting a single drop, the Pekingese trotted through plates, jumped to the floor, and curled up in the carpetbag Lorna carried for him. “Good boy.”

The other table cleared.

“Unless you accept Christ into your heart,” Tommy Joe continued drunkenly, “you’ll never find salvation in the hereafter. You’ll be denied His everlasting love in Heaven and be cast into the Pit. I can imagine all the pagan things you’ve done and don’t you worry. I have a special program in my ministry to help all sorts of people find His light, including” — he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper — “homo-sexuals. If Jesus can forgive them, you can believe you’ll be forgiven for praying to cows and false idols and such.”

“Honey, I don’t think they understand you none,” Lorna said into the first silence since Mercer and Ira had sat down. “Do you speak American?”

Mercer shrugged. To keep from laughing out loud, he had to remind himself that Rath’s men were right behind him.

Tommy Joe dropped his public persona. “Godless heathens.”

“I think the younger one’s kinda cute.” Lorna bat-ted her eyes at Mercer.

“You think anything in pants is kinda cute.” Tommy Joe pushed back his overflowing plate and gulped the last of his triple scotch.

“Ha! They’re not wearing pants,” Lorna snapped with a child’s logic and obstinacy.

“Shut up.” Farquar lumbered to his feet. “Let’s go find a bar.”

“I want to talk with these two some more.”

“Lorna, you’d be the one doing all the talking. They can’t understand you.” He stalked off. She considered remaining but gave Mercer and Ira a quick smile and wiggled after her husband.

The ex-Navy man leaned into Mercer’s ear. “Remind me to renounce my U.S. citizenship when we get home.”

Mercer looked around the room and spotted Erwin Puhl weaving his way around tables toward them. His dark expression told Mercer that he hadn’t found Father Vatutin. He sat and mechanically ate his bland food, leaning back far enough to overhear the conversation behind him. Rath’s two men had been eating like wolves and finished a few minutes later. They left their plates and strode away.

“Anything?” Mercer asked when they were gone.

“I think they brought one of the boxes!” Erwin said in a rush.

Mercer’s expression turned frigid. “Are you sure?”

“Not positive, but I think so. They talked about cargo transferred from Rath’s chopper to the boat they used to get here.”

“Goddamn it! Our status just went from fugitive to hostage.”

That single box of meteor fragments meant Rath had complete control of the Sea Empress. He could open it at any time and resign some of the greatest leaders on the planet to an unspeakable death. Mercer closed his eyes, trying to block out the image of the Sea Empress becoming a coffin ship, doomed to forever sail the seas with her decks covered by thousands of radioactive corpses, a modern, horrific Mary Celeste.

His goal to save the survivors was no longer enough. They couldn’t hide out when there was another Pandora box loose. He had to stop Rath himself. If just that single box got off the vessel, the whole world was at risk.

“They also mentioned they had a prisoner with them,” Erwin continued. “Someone who could get them onto the Sea Empress without raising suspicion.”

“Who the hell would Rath need?” Ira asked. “He’s got to be high up in Kohl Industries.”

“Apparently not high enough,” Mercer mused. “No sign of your priest friend?”

“I didn’t see Anatoly anywhere. We should try calling his cabin again from the phone in the corridor.”

Mercer shot to his feet and handed the two sandwiches to Ira. “You two make the call and get back to the boat garage.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the radio room to call Dick Henna. Rath may prevent passengers from calling from their rooms, but I can’t believe communications are really out. No matter what happens to us, we have to get the word out about the box.”

In the corridor, Mercer checked his watch. The half hour he’d promised Anika was gone. He looked around and spotted the two Germans walking across the catwalk spanning the atrium. If Rath needed leverage to get him on the cruise liner, Mercer would need their prisoner to get into the radio room. He began to follow the Germans.

The guards turned along one of the hanging promenades, passing darkened storefronts that read like a one-block section of Rodeo Drive — Gucci, Movado, Armani, Chanel, Godiva. Mercer stayed well back, partially to find cover in the thinning crowds, partially because he couldn’t match their pace wearing ill-fitting sandals. The Mauser was tucked into his waistband, and he cleared away a fold in his robe so he could reach it easier.

The two Germans wound through a couple of corridors and stopped at an elevator. When the car arrived, they stepped inside. Mercer ran down the hall when the doors closed. Above the elevator was a digital counter indicating the floor the car was on. He watched it descend to one deck below where the marina was located.

He charged through the staircase fire door behind him. Pounding down two steps at a time, his feet hurting with every impact, Mercer paused after descending three flights when he thought he heard a door open above him. He captured his breath in his mouth but could hear nothing over the blood thumping in his ears. He continued downward.

One flight above his destination a STAFF ONLY door blocked his path. He stopped to listen again and then swung open the unlocked door. Gone were the rich carpets, subtle lighting, and wood paneling. This was the crew’s area of the vessel. It was as utilitarian as a battleship and painted the same institutional gray.

He paused for a minute, his head held at an angle to see if anyone had followed him. The pistol grip became sweaty. Nothing. Dressed like a passenger, he knew he couldn’t spend any length of time in the bowels of the ship without catching the attention of a crew member. Still, he needed to find Rath’s prisoner.

Edging down a companionway so long he couldn’t see the other end, he kept his back pressed against one wall. There were countless doors lining the corridor and every thirty feet or so another hall ran off at a right angle. The ship was a maze. The linoleum was so new he could see individual scuff marks and amid the subtle abrasions of waiters’ loafers he recognized the heavy black smears left by rubber-soled combat boots. Rath’s men.

He followed the trail like a bloodhound, twisting through the labyrinth while a subconscious part of his brain mapped his route of retreat. A door opened just as Mercer passed, and without breaking stride, he threw himself into the handsome, twenty-something man who had come out wearing a purple robe. They crashed into the bunk beds on the far wall of the cabin, the young man yelping in pain. Mercer closed the door with his foot.

“Don’t hurt me please!” the blond boy said. He was English, delicate as a girl. A waiter, Mercer guessed.

“I won’t.” Mercer kept menace in his voice. “What size shoes do you wear?’

The boy’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Shoes? What size shoes?”

“Twelve.”

“Got any sneakers?” Mercer hoped the American and English sizes were the same, or at least close. The boy nodded. “Give them to me.”

Mercer let the waiter back to his feet and stripped off his monk’s robe. The boy blubbered when he saw the handle of the Mauser. “Give me the shoes and keep your mouth shut, and I’ll leave you alone.”

The young Englishman opened a closet and rummaged through the detritus at the bottom for his sneakers. “Here, here you are. You won’t hurt me?”

“I promise. Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.” Mercer used a tie from the closet to bind the waiter’s hands to the metal bed frame. The ball of socks he found was still warm and damp from the day’s use. Mercer jammed the socks in the youth’s mouth.

Gagging at first, the young waiter calmed enough to start drawing even breaths. Mercer put on the shoes, pleased that they fit. “When your roommate unties you and you go to the security office, you might want to come up with a better story than a deranged terrorist stealing shoes.”

The boy mumbled into his gag and Mercer laughed. “Don’t worry, kid. Believe it or not, your sneakers might save everyone on this ship.”

Back in the hallway, Mercer took up the trail again. The scuff marks led him to a watertight door much thicker than any he’d seen in the below decks area. It was marked ENGINEERING STAFF ONLY. The floor thrummed with the force of the ship’s mighty power plants. He decided that he’d come as far as he should. Fumbling around down here was wasting time he didn’t have. He’d take his chances getting into the communications room without Rath’s prisoner. He had the Mauser and the element of surprise.

Backtracking, he passed the waiter’s cabin again. He couldn’t hear anything from within. Satisfied, Mercer rounded a series of corners, brushing past a few off-duty crewmen who shot him queer looks but said nothing. As he turned one more corner, he had just enough time to recognize a mass of blond hair before his crotch exploded in agony. Mercer dropped to his knees and through tear-streaked eyes saw a knee coming at his face. He could do nothing. His world had gone black by the time his head hit the deck.

Fighting the urge to retch, Mercer came awake in slow increments. His lower body felt distant, like the pain belonged to someone else. But as he became more aware, he knew the agony was his alone. The pulsing waves radiated from his genitals and settled in his lower belly like molten lead. To distract himself, he concentrated on the sharper pain in his face. Experimentally he traced his tongue across his teeth and was relieved they were all there. He tasted blood. Opening his eyes sent bolts of electricity to his battered nose. He spat.

“Who are you?” The question came from beyond Mercer’s gray vision.

“An idiot.” Mercer’s voice was pinched by clotted blood in his nose. He braced himself for what was about to come and sharply exhaled twin jets of red mist. After a surreal moment where his head felt like it had shattered, he peered around the spiky pinwheels of pain. It took him a minute to realize where he was — a crawl space below some kind of engineering room tangled with piping — and who had spoken — the blond man he’d first spotted talking to Gunther Rath in the Pandora cavern.

“I promised myself when I saw you again I’d kill you.” Mercer pulled his hands against the plastic strip ties binding his wrists over an insulated pipe above him. The man was similarly shackled. “You’re Rath’s boss, aren’t you?”

“Klaus Raeder.” They were both on their knees under a steel catwalk. Even if they could stand, there was barely enough room. Lamps in the room above them made the floor under the grated catwalk look like bricks of light mortared with shadow. The ties were threaded over a pipe suspended from the metal grid. Mercer pulled until the plastic ripped his flesh.

“I’ve tried that,” Raeder said. “You won’t be able to do it.” He paused. “I recognize you now from your Surveyor’s Society picture. You’re Philip Mercer.”

Mercer was unwilling to give Raeder the satisfaction of being right. He’d already guessed that Rath had somehow double-crossed his superior to steal the last Pandora box. “Why did he lock you up?”

“He needed me to get aboard the Sea Empress. We came on the boat stored on the Njoerd. The captain wouldn’t have given him permission if I wasn’t forced to order him to.”

“And when you got to the ship, you were put in here in case Rath needed you again?” Raeder nodded. “What’s Rath’s plan with the last box?”

“I was going to dump them in the sea,” Raeder boasted. “No one was supposed to know about it and no one was supposed to get hurt.”

“You think I care about your intentions?” Mercer couldn’t believe the German’s self-righteousness and lack of shame. “Your hopes don’t amount to shit and never have, considering how easily Rath managed to hijack your plans. Someday I’d like to know how you thought you could sweep something like the Pandora Project under the rug. For now I have to worry about stopping Rath.”

“It was an economic decision.” Raeder feebly clung to his original justification. “I was trying to save my shareholders from paying hundreds of millions of dollars for something none of us are responsible for.”

“Your company profited from the thousand dead slaves in that cavern and you’re telling me you’re not responsible?” Mercer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Hate to tell you this, Raeder, but you are. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Just because you didn’t pull any triggers doesn’t mean you can duck the culpability of the company you represent.”

“I thought I could get away with it.” Raeder’s voice was nearly drowned by the sound of pumps and other machinery. The air was stifling hot.

“No one can walk away from their past.” Mercer began looking around for something sharp to cut his bonds. “And that includes a company like Kohl. Now your company is going to lose a lot more than the money it rightly owed and you are going to pay with your life.”

“Do you think you’re immune? Your life is as forfeit as mine. No one can stop Rath. He controls the box — and me — which means he controls everything. He’s invincible.”

There were no tools within reach, but Mercer’s tone was still defiant. “You sound like you want him to win.”

“No. I just know he will. It’s hopeless.”

“Because he beat you?” Mercer scoffed. “Arrogance and gullibility are a dangerous mix. And Rath will be stopped. There are five other people from the U-boat with me, and we have a contact on the ship. They’ll get the alarm out.”

“Sorry to tell you this, but when they brought you down here, Greta Schmidt was talking with another of Rath’s people about a report of stolen clothing near the ship’s marina. I suspect that was your doing. She was on her way there to investigate.”

A door above them crashed open and Mercer heard a babble of voices he recognized: a snarling curse from Ira, Hilda’s quiet sobs, and Anika’s attempts to comfort her. Greta Schmidt’s clear laughter sounded, and again Mercer strained at his bonds. The effort left him panting. A guard lifted a section of the catwalk directly above him and let it fall back on its hinges. His partner kept Mercer and Klaus Raeder covered with a submachine gun as he came down the steps to the low crawl space.

“How are your balls?” Greta smirked from the catwalk above.

“Sweaty. Want a taste?”

In a fury, she slammed her boot onto his exposed hands and would have broken Mercer’s wrists if he hadn’t laid them flat together. Gritting his teeth against the pain did little. “When Gunther is finished on the bridge, you are going to be the first to die.”

The guards led Mercer’s party into the cramped space and tied them to other lengths of pipe, far enough apart so they could not help one another escape. Hilda was in tears, and despite the bravado he was trying to show in front of the women, Marty Bishop’s cheeks were also wet. Erwin was nearly catatonic. Only Ira and Anika had embers of the fire that had carried them so far. Anika even managed to throw Mercer a smile just before her plastic cuffs were wrenched tight. Her body rippled with pain.

Ira waited until Greta finished speaking with one of the guards before he said, “Mercer, don’t worry. We made the call to your FBI buddy Henna on the sat-phone. By now he’s alerted our Navy as well as Iceland’s.”

“So the solar max abated enough for us to use it.” Mercer smiled. “About damn time. I was tired of playing staked goat until you could use it.”

Greta looked from one man to the other, dismayed that she couldn’t detect fear in their voices. “You have no satellite phone,” she said at last.

Ira gave her the withering look he’d used on a generation of naval cadets. “I tossed it just before you captured us. Why do you think we didn’t put up a fight? We’ve won already — only you don’t know it.”

“This is not true.” There was doubt in her eyes.

“You go right ahead and believe that, you sick bitch,” Anika Klein blazed. “The truth should be here in about an hour aboard a dozen American helicopters.”

Greta crossed over to where Anika was tied to a heat exchanger. “And I will tear out your ovaries long before they get here.”

She considered slapping Anika’s face, thought better of it, and climbed the seven steps back to the catwalk. A guard closed the hatch grate, and the outer door slammed with a metallic bang.

From his position, Mercer couldn’t see where Ira Lasko had been secured, but he thought it was someplace behind him and around a piece of equipment. “You were trying to tell me that you found Erwin’s friend and he had a sat-phone, right?”

“Ah, no. That was all bullshit. We called his cabin again, but he wasn’t there. Greta found us about five seconds after Erwin and I got back from the dining room. Seems we robbed the only Buddhist monks who actually care about their property. They had gone to the ship’s security office and Rath was alerted. Greta and a couple of his boys ferreted us out. Considering their firepower, we figured surrender was a better idea than suicide.”

“We thought you were still free,” Anika added.

“I went to find Rath’s prisoner. That’s him over in the corner. Klaus Raeder’s his name. He’s the head of Kohl.”

“Hi, hope you burn in hell,” Ira called as a greeting.

Perhaps he’d survived one narrow escape too many or perhaps because with all of them together and under Rath’s control they were as good as dead — either way, Mercer finally lost control. This was as far as he could go. There were no other options. There was no hope.

He began to laugh. The deep anomalous sound crashed against the steel confines of the machinery room, lashed everyone and echoed back, hammering. It was manic, frightening. When he caught his breath again, silence hung as heavy as steam.

“I figured out the paradox to the mythological story of Pandora,” he said, in control of his voice if nothing more.

“What paradox?” Anika asked. “She opened a box that Zeus gave to Epimetheus and accidentally released all the ills on the world. But when everything like greed and envy and disease had escaped, she found that hope was still in the box. It’s a beautiful story that means despite everything that may happen to you, hope always remains.”

“That’s the lesson people get from it,” Mercer agreed bitterly. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why hope was in the box to begin with? Why was it in there with disease and hate and lust? Because hope’s as destructive as any of those, maybe worse. It was never meant to be a gift from the gods. It was punishment. Hope gives you strength when you have a chance. When the situation’s impossible, it becomes a torture.”

The pain in his voice stunned everyone, especially Anika. “Are you really that cynical?”

Mercer didn’t answer. Despite his words, he pulled against his shackles with every fiber of his being, his eyes closed so tightly they felt crushed into his skull. He bellowed in rage and frustration and… hopelessness. And with a metallic snap the thick plastic cuffs parted and his hands were free.

For a moment he stared at the cleanly severed ends dangling from his wrists. It wasn’t humanly possible to break these cuffs yet the evidence was right in front of him. How? A miracle? The divine intervention of the gods telling him he’d missed the point of the Pandora myth?

Klaus Raeder was the only person who could see what Mercer had done and he gaped. “How did you do that?”

Mercer looked upward in an age-old glance of reverence to a higher power. That’s how he spotted a spectral figure standing on the grating above him with a fire ax in his hands. He was dressed in black with silver hair and a beard that approached his waist. Understanding dawned immediately. “Father Vatutin?”

“Da.” Vatutin lifted the hatch and moved down the steps. The others began to cheer when they heard what was happening.

Mercer massaged his wrists. “I’m not complaining, but how did you know?”

“I see a Buddhist monk near dining room when I go in for supper.” Vatutin’s English was terrible. “I see him check expensive Swiss watch that no monk can own. I look more closely. Not monk but man made to look like monk. I follow. You knocked out by blond woman and brought here. I hide. Then more people brought here and I see Erwin. I wait until guard posted at door turns away and use blunt edge of ax.”

Mercer got to his feet and shook the Orthodox priest’s hand. “You have no idea what I was thinking when the cuffs broke.”

Vatutin touched the heavy cross resting on his chest. “I know what you think.”

The two began to release the others. Anika smiled when Mercer reached her. “I told you that there’s always hope.”

“Thanks for the reminder.” Mercer was chagrined.

Vatutin and Erwin Puhl embraced for a long time after the priest learned Igor Bulgarin was dead.

“I’m gonna start calling you Pessimism Man from now on,” Ira Lasko said to Mercer when he was freed. “That thing about hope being in the box was a good point. Just promise me it’s your last death-row revelation.”

“I promise.” Mercer took the weapons Vatutin had liberated from the guard: a silenced H&K P9S automatic pistol and a compact MP-5 submachine gun also fitted with a long silencer. “Now it’s time to put an end to this nightmare.”

“Any ideas?” Marty asked.

“That all depends on Herr Raeder.” Mercer looked down at him since they had yet to cut his bonds. “How about it? You willing to help?”

“I told you earlier that I wanted to destroy the boxes. It is Rath who wants to sell them.”

“Does he have a buyer?”

“Libya.”

Shit! “And when this is over you’re going to make full restitution?”

“Yes.”

Mercer had a hard time believing such a quick answer. “Because you got caught?”

“Because I was wrong,” Raeder countered. “Think what you like of me, Dr. Mercer, but I am not a monster. I am a businessman. A capitalist. Being an American, you should understand. My personal beliefs had nothing to do with my decision to conceal Kohl’s past. And no matter how much my company pays, I don’t believe full restitution can ever be paid to the victims of the Holocaust.”

“I don’t trust you but I also don’t have a choice,” Mercer hissed. An ax stroke severed Raeder’s plastic cuffs. “What are the security arrangements on this ship?”

“The pope’s Swiss Guards are in charge of the Convocation’s delegates and the Sea Empress has personnel of her own. About twenty, I think. I recognized several of them as part of Gunther Rath’s special-projects department. They’re his people, like those at the Greenland base. They won’t listen to me.”

“Who did you speak to when Rath needed permission to board?”

“The captain,” Raeder answered at once. “He wouldn’t let Rath approach the ship until he heard I was on the boat from the Njoerd. He doesn’t know that I am Rath’s prisoner. No one does.”

“So he’ll listen to you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Once we reach the captain, will Rath make a stand or try to run?” Mercer said, thinking aloud.

“Neither option’s too good,” Ira said. “The world’s religious leaders are on this ship. If Rath opens that box the repercussions are going to be bloody. Every fanatic in the planet would use their deaths as an excuse for holy war.”

“But who will die if we let him run with the box and can’t catch him again?”

“We’ll get him.” Ira Lasko considered leaving it at that, but he continued, his voice tinged with guilt. He edged Mercer away from the others for privacy. “Get me to a working phone and I guarantee that Rath won’t make it fifty miles from the Sea Empress.”

The confidence in Ira’s statement made everything suddenly clear to Mercer. The fury was like an explosion ten times more powerful than Greta Schmidt’s knee to the crotch. “You’re working with the goddamned CIA, aren’t you?”

Ira nodded. “I’m sorry, Mercer,” he said, meaning it.

“That fucker Charlie Bryce set me up.”

“You were my backup in case something went really wrong.”

“I can’t believe this!” And then Mercer thought it through and he could believe it. Who better to back up an agent on a scientific expedition than a scientist? His name wasn’t unknown in various government circles, including the CIA. It all made perfect sense in a compartmentalized, need-to-know sort of way. “You were after the boxes for our military.”

“Failing that, I was to make sure no one else got them. Personally, I was more than happy to see them sunk when the rotor-stat went down. Listen, I am really sorry about this. I would have told you if I could, but I was briefed personally by Director Barnes himself.”

“Christ,” Mercer spat. He’d met Paul Barnes a few times before and thought the CIA director was an ass. He tried to run his hands through his hair, and his fingers met naked skin. This only fueled his anger. “How the hell did the government know about the boxes and why didn’t you go after them years ago?”

“We didn’t know where the cavern was other than Greenland. That information came from documents brought to the States in the 1940s by German rocket scientists stationed at Peenemunde with Werner Von Braun. They’d been working on a Nazi plan to load V-2s with meteorite fragments and irradiate London. The scientists only knew that the meteor would be coming directly from Greenland’s east coast aboard a submarine.”

“Of course the sub never arrived and the Germans shelved the Pandora Project.”

“Right,” Ira said. “After the war, our Air Force learned about it from the Operation Paperclip scientists we were using for our early rocket program. They considered the Pandora radiation as a potential American weapon and established Camp Decade, in part, as a base to search for the cavern. After a few years of searching — too far south it turns out — the brass gave up, stating that the whole thing had been a pipe dream of Hitler’s and wasn’t true.”

Mercer recalled his conversation with Elisebet Rosmunder and how she’d asked if he knew why the U.S. government wanted to build an under-ice city like Camp Decade. Now he knew the answer. He let the anger wash out of him so he could concentrate on what Ira was saying.

“Shoot ahead sixty years, and all of a sudden, Kohl Industries is buying Geo-Research and planning to establish an Arctic research base close to where the cavern was supposed to be. The old documents hinted that Kohl was involved with the Pandora Project in some capacity, though there was nothing definitive, nothing we could use in a courtroom. Unwilling to take the chance that they knew something we didn’t, the CIA scrambled to have their base moved to our old site to throw them off.”

“That whole thing with the Danish government that Charlie Bryce told me the Surveyor’s Society engineered?”

“Was actually a CIA operation to get me to Greenland,” Ira said. “I was brought in to keep an eye on Geo-Research in case the cavern turned out to be real and they tried to find it. There’s a military strike team waiting in Iceland in case we needed them to stop Kohl.”

“So you weren’t a chief in the Navy?”

“My naval experience was why I was sent.”

“Of course!” Mercer exclaimed. “They knew a submarine was involved and wanted a man who had the proper background. That’s how you’re such an expert on the type VII U-boat.”

“Before leaving for Greenland, I spent two weeks at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry going over the U-505 they have on display. As to being a chief, well, I used to work on subs, but then switched to intelligence work. I retired as deputy chief of Naval Intelligence. My rank was admiral.”

“And the bit about owning a truck stop in Connecticut?”

“My father’s place. I grew up working there. My brother runs it now. In reality, I live about twenty miles from your brownstone and work in the White House for the president’s national security advisor.”

A piece of the puzzle was still missing. “I assume you had Marty’s military friend called away for active duty, but what the hell did you need me for?”

“Jim Kneeland, yes,” Ira answered. “We felt the fewer people at Camp Decade the better. We would have excluded Marty too if we could have come up with a better cover story to get me close to Geo-Research. Bringing you in was Director Barnes’s idea. While I have a background in subs and intelligence, he wanted someone who knew science but not one of the pencil necks from Langley’s technical-support division. When he showed me your dossier and I read that article about you in Time magazine, I knew you’d be perfect.”

“So I have you to thank?”

“No need to show your gratitude with a gift or anything. A card will be fine.”

They drifted back toward the others. “When we get out of this, you’re going to get a pounding,” Mercer said but already his anger toward Ira was abating. Paul Barnes, on the other hand, was going to pay. “Well, Agent Lasko, what do you propose?”

Ira turned deadly serious. “We have Rath contained on the Sea Empress, but we can’t risk him nuking these people.”

Mercer agreed. The Universal Convocation had to be protected at all costs. The men and women on this ship represented the hopes and dreams of billions of people. “We have to flush him out so we can take him at sea.”

“How? All Rath has to do is threaten to open the box and everyone on the ship is his hostage.”

Mercer shook his head. “He knows that he can’t win a hostage situation. No one ever does.”

“So what do you suggest? We’d be in for one hell of a mess if we alert the Swiss Guards. They’d probably make the situation worse in their zeal to protect the pope.”

“You’re right about the Guards not being an option, which means we’re on our own. Remember that Raeder said the ship’s security men are in Rath’s pocket. We have to get him to escape from the Sea Empress the way he came.”

“His boat is with the larger launches next to the marina I think you were hiding in,” Klaus Raeder offered.

“And Greta said Rath’s on the bridge,” Anika added.

Mercer had gone quiet, his eyes out of focus. Suddenly his features sharpened and he grinned wickedly. “I can think of only one way to get Rath to leave the ship without him feeling directly threatened. Actually, I can think of another way, but I doubt the seven of us could get the ship to start sinking.”

Anika and Ira exchanged startled looks and regarded Mercer as if he’d lost his mind. “Thank God you’re not thinking that,” she said. “So what is your idea?”

“Simple. We hijack the Sea Empress ourselves.”