Pandora's Curse

ABOARD THE SEA EMPRESS

Before Mercer launched into his explanation, Ira suggested that Anatoly Vatutin’s cabin would be a better place to talk. Mercer gave him the MP-5 to tuck under his robes. He took point when they exited the machinery room, the pistol held behind his back with a round in the chamber. They left the guard Vatutin had dispatched behind a large hydro pump. Ira walked the drag slot, moving backward so they couldn’t get jumped. Because it was so late at night, the Sea Empress was running with just a skeleton crew on the bridge and fortunately no one in the engineering spaces. Mercer found an elevator after a few minutes, and they ascended to Vatutin’s deck. Moments later, they piled into the priest’s room.

“So far so good.” Anika smiled with relief.

“Hear out my plan before you have me committed,” Mercer said when they were settled. He ticked his fingers as he counted their options. “We can’t stay here until the ship docks because Rath will organize a room-to-room search once he realizes we’ve escaped. Even with Raeder’s help, we can’t approach the captain because Rath’s people are likely watching him. The Swiss Guards are out because they’ll probably turn us over to ship’s security, i.e., Rath. We could try to find a satellite phone belonging to one of the reporters covering the Convocation, but there are two thousand cabins to check and we’d be stopped long before we found one. And finally we can’t risk a direct confrontation with Rath in case he opens the box.

“Does everyone agree so far?” Mute nods. “Okay, to get Rath off the ship we have to make him think escaping is a better option than remaining on board. To do that we either sink the Sea Empress or create a situation where he feels just threatened enough to want to leave. That’s where we come in.”

“By pretending to be hijackers?”

“It’s going to put the Swiss Guards on full alert and distract some of Rath’s people. Rath will figure out what’s going on but he can’t say anything without compromising himself. It would be easier for him to cut his losses rather than fight us. He’ll let the Swiss Guards and the ship’s regular security detail handle that.”

“Why wouldn’t he just hang around until his goons kill us all?” Marty asked.

“Rath can pretend the solar max has shut down the ship’s communications but when we fire the first shot every reporter with an independent satellite uplink will be calling in the scoop. In hours, the Empress will be swarming with choppers and motor launches from Iceland. Rath would be trapped.”

“Once he’s gone,” Anika interrupted, “we give ourselves up, bring Raeder to the captain, and alert the authorities about Rath’s escaping with the Pandora box.”

“You got it.”

“Once he’s flushed out, why don’t we ambush him when he’s trying to launch his boat?” Erwin’s suggestion had merit, and a fatal flaw.

“He may have fifteen or twenty men with him. If we can’t guarantee a clean kill, he could open the box.” Mercer saw Ira’s skeptical look, and added, “All we need to do is fire off a few rounds, terrorize some passengers, and let panic do the rest. As long as we don’t get caught before Rath leaves, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Except Swiss Guards are not wearing blue-and-gold uniforms and carrying medieval weapons,” Anatoly Vatutin said. “They have combat armor and machine pistols, and they will shoot to kill.”

“This isn’t without risks,” Mercer answered solemnly, looking each person in the eye.

Ira Lasko didn’t hesitate. “Tell me how you want to do this.”

Mercer spent ten minutes outlining his plan and refining it with suggestions from the others. The key was to protect Klaus Raeder until after Rath left the vessel. Mercer estimated that would be about twenty minutes after the first firefight.

Because of his injuries, Erwin would wait with the industrialist in Vatutin’s cabin. Mercer wanted the others to stay with them. Martin Bishop agreed. However, Vatutin categorically refused. He reminded Mercer that he’d been fighting for this for his entire life and wouldn’t back out at the end. And once Anika translated their plan to Hilda, the chef too wanted to help. She had military training, she stated, and could handle a gun. Mercer’s eyes asked Anika her intentions.

She looked at Erwin.

“I can hold out for a while longer,” Puhl said as if reading her mind. “The pain’s worse and my arm’s numb to my fingers, but once Raeder talks to the captain, I’m going to the ship’s doctor.”

Without a professional excuse to remain behind, Anika Klein tried to find a personal one. And couldn’t. The others were risking their lives for something much bigger than they were and she couldn’t let them go alone. “I’m in.”

Moments later, the ersatz terrorists left the cabin.

Finding additional weapons for the teams was easier than they thought. In the elevator headed up to the main deck, the car stopped a few floors short of their destination and two Swiss Guards stepped in, barely giving Mercer and his band a passing inspection. Both uniformed men carried Beretta Model 12 submachine guns on slings. As soon as the doors swept closed, Mercer clubbed one with the butt of the H&K at the same time Ira laid open the other’s scalp with his machine pistol. A minute later, the Swiss were bound and gagged, and their weapons, including concealed pistols, were distributed.

“You promise we’re not going to kill anyone?” Anika asked when Mercer handed her his H&K in favor for the Model 12. He’d unscrewed the German pistol’s silencer.

“We’ll be shooting for effect,” Mercer reassured. “If it comes to a real firefight, aim for people’s legs.”

“That still goes against the Hippocratic oath.” Despite her protest, Anika tightened her grip on the big handgun. She’d do what was necessary.

“This is where we split into two teams.” Mercer’s voice was harder than he’d intended. “Ira, take Hilda and Father Vatutin and find the biggest group of people you can, maybe in the theater. I saw a bulletin for a midnight showing of The Agony and the Ecstasy. Take them hostage, scare the hell out of them, and get out again. Stay loose and mobile. Don’t remain in one location for any length of time, and make sure when you escape no one follows. We meet back at Father Vatutin’s cabin in thirty minutes to wait for Erwin’s all-clear from the bridge.”

The doors opened before anyone could acknowledge his final instructions, and they scattered without a word. Because the majority of the passengers were men, Mercer and Anika used a ladies’ rest room to give the others time to get into position. They both even managed a nervous pee.

They reemerged from the tiled bathroom after five minutes. Casually Mercer walked across the corridor near the main atrium and yanked the handle for the fire alarm. Nothing happened for a second, and he feared the system remained silent until an actual fire was confirmed. Then the electronic horns began to cry, wailing like a colicky infant drawing breath. They kept their weapons out of view as a few late-night strollers looked around anxiously.

It took about three minutes for an emergency crew to be dispatched to the pull station. When they rounded the corner from a stairwell, Mercer drew his weapon and fired a tight burst over their heads, shredding the acoustical material in the ceiling. A light fixture exploded, and the screams of passengers reached an instant fever pitch.

The battle for the Sea Empress had begun.

Usually when he was inside Greta Schmidt, Gunther Rath delighted in making her bleed. He had to make up for his small size by the punishing savagery of his strokes, making their sex more akin to rape than a display of intimacy. This time, however, he made love with a grateful tenderness unlike anything he’d ever shown before.

Rath had been in the cabin he’d commandeered from the Sea Empress’s second officer when she’d come to him, her expression a mix of smug pride and feverish anticipation. She whispered she had a secret for him but wouldn’t reveal it until they’d made love. Rath wasn’t in the mood for one of her games and would have struck her if she’d been within range of the chair he occupied, a glass of vodka in his hand. Instead, he simply ignored her. Seeing that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted, Greta doled out a little more information.

“In fact, I have six secrets for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Get into bed and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me now or I’ll beat it out of you.” His threat was more habit than menace.

“I went below to check on Raeder and guess who I ran into?” Rath didn’t ask. “Philip Mercer.”

“What?”

“And what’s more, when I had him tied up with Raeder, a break-in was reported on a lower deck near the marina. I went with a couple of the ship’s security people and found the other five survivors.” She loved that her gift lifted his spirits. “They actually did try for Iceland in that antique sub but made it only as far as the Sea Empress.”

From the moment he’d lost the boxes, Rath had been scrambling to minimize the damage. The Libyans were waiting for the Njoerd’s precious cargo, and he had to get the one remaining box to them until a salvage operation could be mounted to raise the rest. He also needed to track down and kill Mercer and the others. It was clear they had been in the cavern and doubtlessly watched Rath empty the chamber through the submerged U-boat’s periscope. If Mercer managed to raise an alarm, Rath could forget any attempt at recovering the sunken boxes.

He laughed. “Mercer’s audacity is going to cost him his life. I wonder if he knew we were going to use the Sea Empress as a refueling stop on our trip to Iceland?”

“How could he? We didn’t know we’d need to come here until the rotor-stat went down. I’m just grateful it was here at all.”

Far from a lucky break, the Empress’s presence in the Denmark Strait had been the result of careful planning and timing. Greta had been the one to suggest it as fallback position months ago when Klaus Raeder was in discussions with the Vatican over the ship’s lease. Needing the cruise liner as a contingency had seemed unlikely, but Greta had insisted that, with so much money on the line, it would be foolish to rely solely on the Njoerd as transport. Raeder had had no idea of Rath’s ulterior motives when he passed along the suggestion to Cardinal Peretti, the pope’s secretary of state. The priest had thought cruising under the northern lights was a wonderful idea and successfully lobbied the other delegates to accept.

Greta pulled her shirt over her head, her breasts still red from earlier rough treatment. “Is my surprise worth a lay?”

“That and much more,” Rath said, launching himself from his chair and sweeping her into his arms. He laid her on the bed. “From triumph to disaster back to triumph, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

His lips never left hers the whole time they were joined.

Rath was in a self-satisfied sleep when the call came from young Bern Hoffmann, who’d been detailed to relieve the guard they’d posted at the auxiliary pump room door. The prisoners had escaped! Rath slammed down the phone and tossed Greta aside.

“What is it?” She wiped sleep from her eyes, her body sticky with dried sweat from their lovemaking.

Rath was already in his pants. “Mercer escaped.”

She came more awake. “He couldn’t have. We’ve accounted for everyone on the DC-3, those killed in the crash, and the body we found after the pitaraq storm. There’s no one left to help him.”

“The guard they knocked out recalls a priest approaching him before he was struck.” Rath wanted to shower her scent from his skin but didn’t have time. “Somehow, Mercer has a contact on the ship we didn’t know about, maybe another member of the Brotherhood of Satan’s Fist. I should have killed Mercer’s group when you told me you’d captured them.”

“He can’t go anywhere.” Greta legged into her panties. “The marina garage doors are rigged to an alarm on the bridge, and he can’t launch a lifeboat for the same reason. There’s no sign of the U-boat, so they’re trapped. Mercer can’t go to the ship’s security people because Raeder must have told him they are loyal to you and the Swiss Guards would lock them up as stowaways.”

“I know the options he won’t choose,” Rath snapped. “I don’t know the one he will. He’s unpredictable.”

At that exact moment the fire alarm went off. Rath actually smiled. “You clever son of a bitch.”

“What’s clever about pulling the alarm? It’s a pathetic attempt to distract us so Mercer can escape.”

“But it alerts everyone on the ship to danger, and it won’t end with that single alarm.” Before Rath finished dressing and checking his personal weapons, the phone rang again. “What is it?”

“Herr Rath, it’s Dieter. I’m in the security office. We’re getting reports of gunfire in the port-side atrium.”

“Against our people?”

“No,” the rally driver said. “Someone shot at the damage-control team checking the fire pull station that just went active.”

“Mercer’s trying to make the Swiss Guards think the Convocation’s delegates aren’t safe.”

“It’s working. The captain of the Guards is screaming for an immediate SOS to bring reinforcements from the Italian warship shadowing the Empress.”

Rath made his decisions quickly. “Have everyone meet at the launch. We’ll let the Swiss Guards fight Mercer and leave the ship during the confusion.”

“Why leave?” she persisted. “We control the ship.”

“Not after Raeder contacts the captain and he turns to the Swiss Guards. We don’t have enough people to fight them.”

“But we’ll never be able to get the rest of the boxes!”

“Calm down. We can charter a helicopter in Iceland and return to the Njoerd. She has the right gear to mount a quick salvage job. We won’t recover all of them, but we’ll get enough to satisfy the Libyans.” Rath turned his attention back to the phone. “Dieter, I have an idea to buy us a little insurance. Have some men meet me on A deck.”

“I’ll join you myself.”

Rath turned to Greta, who had been dressing. “Once we get away from the ship, no one will touch us.”

“And if they try to follow?”

“Good point.” Rath used his walkie-talkie to contact the men converging on the marina and ordered them to disable all the large boats stored there. “That’ll buy us enough time to reach Reykjavik and take off again for the Njoerd.”

“What’s this insurance you mentioned?”

“We’re taking a few guests with us.”

They raced into the atrium from the corridor where the damage crew was cowering. Mercer unleashed another barrage into the skylight above, dodging a rain of glass shards. “We are the Action Front for Liberation,” he roared at the few men on the bridge with them. He menaced them with his gun and they dropped to the carpet. “End tyranny now!”

Leading Anika across the bridge, he dashed through a fire door and collided with a pair of Rath’s men coming up the echoing stairwell. Mercer’s momentum knocked one down the half flight of steps, and the other was a fraction too slow recovering from the unexpected collision. Mercer smashed him in the forehead with the side of the Model 12 and spun to target the guard on the landing. Recognition flared. It was Bern Hoffmann, the young German Mercer had saved from carbon-monoxide poisoning in Camp Decade.

In the moment of hesitation before Hoffmann reached for his holstered pistol, Mercer jumped the eight steps to the landing, dropping so his foot broke the young man’s wrist. Hoffmann cried out, but was silenced by a well-executed pistol-whip to the jaw. Mercer removed the pistol from Hoffmann’s limp hand and recovered a matching weapon from the unconscious man at the head of the stairs.

“Anika, let’s go. They’ll be fine.”

Her face was a mask of shock and revulsion. Mercer’s quick savagery had stunned her. “I can’t. I just…”

“Then give me your gun and hide yourself. We don’t have time to argue.”

She snapped out of her panic and came down the steps. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the broken figure of Bern Hoffmann. “I’m sorry,” she said. Mercer didn’t know if she was speaking to him or the unconscious man.

“Come on.” He took her by the hand, and they continued their descent. The sound of the fire alarm was diminished in the stairwell but came back when they emerged a few decks down. They were near one of the spas. Through a glass wall Mercer could see an elaborate gymnasium and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. A fire pull station was across the hallway and he yanked the handle. The other team would be doing the same at any pull station they happened across. The alarm panel on the bridge should be lighting up like a Christmas tree.

Through a set of double doors, Mercer and Anika came upon a number of Convocation delegates milling in a hallway, muttering unanswerable questions to each other about the situation. He kept his weapons from view as they walked down the corridor. He stopped when they reached the far end. There were a number of escape routes in view. He fired the remainder of the thirty-round magazine into the floor. The companionway emptied except for the cordite stench and smoking brass.

He fitted another clip and racked the slide. They ran for an outside door and emerged on a wooden-floor promenade deck. The cold tang of the sea caressed their skin. In the distance hulked the dark silhouettes of lifeboats on their davits. A number of ship’s officers were checking them in case this turned out to be a catastrophic fire rather than a false alarm. They hadn’t heard the gunfire.

Running in the opposite direction, Mercer and Anika made their way toward a flight of stairs leading to one of the vessel’s many outdoor cafes. Mercer took the H&K from Anika and refitted the silencer. Two quick shots destroyed the lock on the sliding glass doors and they were back in the ship.

The hallway beyond the café’s entrance was deserted. Moving carefully because they were exposed, they passed a number of shops and another bar that overlooked an outdoor pool. Across the smooth water they could see a towering funnel lit with floodlights. Neither saw the two figures crossing the pool area en route to an entry door until the door was heaved open.

The figures, dressed in black and carrying MP-5s with probing laser sights, swept the corridor to their right and turned to look behind them. Mercer and Anika stood just ten yards away. He pushed her down and dove across the hallway as the laser cut the air above him. Mercer rolled onto his knee and fired, a tongue of flame shooting from the Model 12. The fusillade caught the security personnel across the chests, tossing one back onto the patio and standing the other against a wall, his body jerking like a puppet.

“You said you weren’t going to kill anyone!” Anika shrieked.

“They were Rath’s men,” Mercer shouted above her screams. “They were carrying German machine pistols, not the Italian ones the Swiss Guards have.”

She edged closer and recognized the corpse in the hall from the Geo-Research station in Greenland. She couldn’t believe the speed of Mercer’s reaction.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Mercer added and led her away.

He pulled another fire alarm as they entered a long corridor lined with cabins. As before, a few passengers were in the hallway but not many because rumors of a terrorist attack were already spreading. Mercer glanced at his watch, assuming that the twenty-minute time line had passed. He was stunned to find less than half that had elapsed. Like all combat, time had telescoped into a weird distortion where seconds took hours and hours could vanish in a blink.

They reached the double doors at the end of the hall just as Swiss Guards poured onto the companionway. Mercer fired a snap burst from his submachine gun, praying he didn’t hit anyone. Pounding the doors against their stops, Mercer pushed Anika ahead of him, taking up a defensive crouch when he found cover behind a large planter overflowing like a jungle. A few seconds later, a pair of Swiss Guards came racing after them. He used the H&K pistol he’d taken from Hoffmann and placed rounds in each of the Guards’ thighs, far enough from the femoral artery so they wouldn’t bleed out.

“Let’s go.” He’d bought a few more seconds.

They burst into an empty ballroom. The ornate chamber echoed as they ran toward the glowing EXIT signs on the opposite wall. At the far side, Anika collapsed onto a sofa, her chest heaving to get enough air into her body. Mercer too was winded, but they couldn’t rest here.

“You’re doing great,” he panted. “Just a little while longer.”

They checked the antechamber beyond the ballroom and began walking more normally, their weapons hidden from the two Muslim clerics arguing in Arabic despite the wailing fire alarms.

They moved through several more passages, firing indiscriminately at walls and ceilings, spreading fear wherever they went. At one point Mercer found a stack of the ship’s newspaper awaiting delivery to the cabins. He stuffed handfuls of them into a ventilation grate and set them on fire. Considering the size of the vessel, it would take many minutes for the smoke to be detected, but he hoped by then it would have diffused all over the ship. More confusion. More panic. They dodged in and out of two more firefights with roaming Guards, each time escaping to a lower deck and blending with frightened passengers until they were safe.

By now Mercer was thoroughly lost, but he guessed that all passages on the each half of the catamaran eventually led to one of the atriums. As they walked down a hall, keeping watch for pursuing Guards, Mercer spotted a sign indicating the atrium was just ahead. He broke into a jog, with Anika beside him. She’d emptied all her clips but continued to carry the silenced H&K.

They entered the atrium one level below the dining room where Mercer had met the televangelist and his wife. The cavernous space was deserted. Hunched to minimize his size, he led Anika to one of the bridges to get to the center of the ship so they could then lose themselves in the starboard hull, an area they hadn’t been to yet.

A piece of the bridge’s brass railing exploded the same time Mercer heard the whip crack of a pistol shot. He pushed Anika to the carpet and covered her with his body. It felt like the shot had come from across the mall-like atrium and one level up. He chanced a look and saw a dozen Swiss Guards lining the upper railings. Some of them were headed to the escalators. The Guards would reach the ends of Mercer’s bridge long before he and Anika could escape.

“Drop your gun,” Mercer whispered to her, visually checking distances in the opposite direction of the group of Guards.

“Why?”

“I’m saving your life,” Mercer said. “Do it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You don’t want to know.” Mercer’s grim tone sounded like a final good-bye.

As soon as Anika laid the pistol on the floor, he grabbed her by her collar and hauled her to her feet. Making sure the Model 12 was on safe, he put her in a hammerlock and jammed the weapon into the side of her head. Her scream was no act.

“One step closer and I kill her.” Mercer’s shouted warning stopped the approaching men dead. He kept twisting in place so no one could get an accurate shot. Because Anika was so short, using her as a shield was a lot harder than he’d envisioned. “All of you drop your guns and back up.”

A few guards pulled their aim high, but none of them relinquished their grips. The men coming down the escalator took up firing stances. Had any of them had laser sights like Rath’s troops, they would have taken a shot. Still, Mercer’s weaving form danced in and out of the crosshairs of eight different shooters.

“Let her go,” a Guard officer shouted in rough English. “We will not fire.”

“Drop your weapons.” While Mercer wanted them to think he was unstable, the anxiety straining his voice was very real. This situation went far beyond anything he’d ever experienced. One twitchy finger and he and Anika would be shredded. “I’ll kill her, I swear to God.”

Come on, keep me talking, keep up the dialogue. I need a minute more. The way he was holding Anika allowed him to see his watch. His twenty-minute deadline was up in forty-five seconds. After that, he didn’t care what happened. Ira and Erwin were more than capable of alerting the CIA about Gunther Rath.

“You don’t want to do this,” the Guard captain called down in a soothing voice. “We can talk about it.”

“No!” Mercer shrieked, allowing his voice to become hysterical. He wanted the Swiss edgy and nervous. It would throw off their aim. “Lorna Farquar’s dog bit me, and I will hold this woman until she apologizes.”

The absurdity of Mercer’s demand had the desired effect. For a fraction of a second the Guards’ concentration wavered. He whispered, “See you later,” in Anika’s ear, pushed her to the floor once again, and threw himself backward, blindly vaulting over the railing behind him.

The rush of the free fall left his heart in his throat and the sound of Anika’s cry fading like a distant whistle. Mercer wouldn’t know if his leap had been accurate until he hit. He could only see the waterfall looming over him if he tipped his head back. The falls seemed to have come to a standstill as he plummeted at the same speed as the water. The drop was twenty feet and took more than a second — more than enough time for the quicker of the Guards to react. Automatic weapons opened up like chainsaws. Spray from rounds hitting the falls landed on Mercer and then he himself landed. Flat on his back. In the pool at the base of the falls.

He went deep and slapped against the concrete bottom of the four-foot-deep faux lagoon. The water crashed back over him, swirling with bubbles from the air forced from his lungs. He lay at the bottom of the pool, his entire body aching until he opened his eyes and saw streaks of silver slashing the water. The Guards were firing down at him.

With no breath to hold, Mercer swam under the falls and emerged in a hollowed space that housed the pumps needed to create the aquatic effect. Beyond was an access hatch so workers didn’t have to wade through the pool to service the machinery. Soaked and struggling to refill his lungs, Mercer kicked open the hatch and emerged in a utility corridor.

It wouldn’t take long for the Swiss Guards to figure out where he went. Anika, he felt, would be treated well by the Swiss. They knew her as a hostage, not an accomplice. It would be hours before they discovered she wasn’t part of the Convocation, and by then Mercer hoped to have the whole situation wrapped up.

Once he got his bearings, he descended several decks, explaining to a few crew members he passed that he’d been doused fighting a kitchen fire. It took about five minutes to navigate to his destination, and once he was there, he found the door locked. Nonessential crew must have been ordered to their cabins until the nature of the emergency could be determined, he realized.

He knocked and a second later the English youth who’d already lost a pair of sneakers opened the door. “Hi.” Mercer grinned. “Remember me?” He showed the submachine gun, and with wordless resignation, the boy let him into the room. His roommate stared wide-eyed from his bunk. Mercer didn’t bother tying them this time. He just “borrowed” another pair of shoes, jeans, a Manchester United sweatshirt, and a long-billed Benetton cap that slid on his bald head.

As he closed the door he heard the Englishman say to his roommate, “I told you I wasn’t playing kinky games with that guy from housekeeping.”

Mercer tossed his weapons into a laundry cart. With a spare key card to Vatutin’s room, he could only pass as a panicked passenger if he wasn’t armed to the teeth. If everything had gone according to plan, Gunther Rath should be on his high-speed motor launch with Greta Schmidt and the Pandora box while Erwin and Klaus Raeder were speaking with the Sea Empress’s captain about stopping him. In all, Mercer felt pretty damned pleased with himself, even if he walked like he had a massive sunburn on his back. Every square inch of skin stung, and he knew he’d be black-and-blue for weeks.

He took an elevator back to the passenger area and a minute later fitted the magnetic card into the lock and fell into Vatutin’s room. The Orthodox priest and Hilda Brandt were already back from their excursion. The large woman looked stricken when she saw that he was alone. “Wo ist Anika?”

Mercer lowered himself into a chair and closed his eyes, letting the fear and tension wash out of his body. “She’s fine. The Swiss who have her think I took her hostage. They don’t know she was with us.”

Hilda looked to Vatutin and the Russian translated the answer as best he could. “Sehr gut,” she said.

“You guys have any trouble?”

“Nyet,” Vatutin said. “We separate from Mr. Lasko after theater, then come back here five minutes ago.”

There was a knock on the door, shave and a haircut but only one bit. It was Ira’s signal and Mercer reached behind him to flick open the handle. “Goddamn, that was fun,” Ira said, crashing onto the bunk. “But if I were the pope, I’d reconsider my security arrangements. Those Swiss Guards never got close.”

A few minutes later, the fire alarm cut off at the same time Vatutin’s phone rang. Hilda picked it up and handed it to Mercer. “I can tell by the silence,” he answered, “that you’ve succeeded.”

“Yes and no,” Erwin Puhl said from the captain’s stateroom. He sounded sick.

“What happened?” Mercer sat forward in his chair, suddenly tense again.

“Raeder explained to the captain what was going on, how we aren’t really terrorists and that Gunther Rath was the true threat. The captain said that, fifteen minutes ago, the ship’s computer reported the marina doors had been opened. He dispatched two officers to see what was happening, and they reported back that Rath’s boat was gone. We’ve tried to raise Rath in the cabin he commandeered, but no one’s answering.”

“What’s the problem? Sounds to me like everything went exactly as planned. Ira can now call Director Barnes at the CIA and have Rath intercepted. We won, Erwin. Relax.”

“We didn’t win, Mercer. Remember when you tried to reach your FBI friend and were told communications were out because of the solar max?”

“Yeah, we figured it was Rath blocking outgoing signals.”

“It wasn’t. The solar max has killed all radios and satellite phones on the ship. Ira can’t call anybody. Nobody can. We’re cut off.”