The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Twenty

“What are they doing now?” I said, watching the crew aloft, scampering from sail to sail. We seemed, for some reason, to have our nose pointed at a looming cliff, and for some even stranger reason we were not going that way at all. We were slowly moving sideways down the little river to its mouth.

“The action is called backing and filling,” Michel said in his flawless, accent-free English. He wasn’t exactly my kind of guy, but he’d have to do for company. Sonia — Vicki, dammit, I’d have to remember that — hadn’t turned up in three days. “Look,” he went on. “We filled the topsails to go this way. Notice the direction the wind is going? Well, once we’d held her in the fairway past the headland there, we backed the mainyard to stop her and make her drift broadside downstream. Now the motive power is the tide.”

“Don’t you have auxiliaries?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but Monsieur Komaroff has a bit of tummy today and doesn’t like the feel of the diesels under him. Fortunately, the crew make short work of this sort of thing. And heavens, Harry, you’re in no hurry to go anywhere, are you? I mean, we’ve no place to be, dear boy. If it weren’t for the lovely party Alex is planning up in the Islands tomorrow night, it’d be a crushing bore. But I do adore those rough Greeks. So... what is the word...”

“Funky?” I said. I dug one of my tailormades out of its case — this time I’d brought some along without the “N.C.” in gold on the filters — and lit it, sending a blue trail of smoke in the breeze.

“Yes. Funky. Look, now we back all to make her take a stern board. In the middle of the channel we will point the yards into the wind and let the tide carry us again. As we approach the mouth of the river we will first fill the fore topsail, then fill all, and once we’ve trimmed them by the wind, making sail...”

“Clear as mud,” I said.

“...we’ll stand to sea under all sail on the starboard tack. Oh, Harry. You really should make some attempt to get into the spirit of things aboard the Vulcan. Otherwise you’ll find it such a bore here.”

“Sailboat talk is pretty weird,” I said. “How do we manage to go that way when the wind is going this way? Even with the sails all turned around...”

“There is a maneuver, Harry, for everything the wind can do... except, of course, when the wind dies altogether. If that should happen right now — if we were becalmed — we would have to seek new orders from Komaroff. We would either have to anchor and await a change in the wind or use the auxiliaries. Look: the wind is coming in from offshore. We set the sails, so; now the boat is what we call sailing on the wind.”

“How does that differ from before the wind or with the wind?”

“Easy. Let me show you...” But one of the boys in white came up — that spankingly clean, gold-piped livery everyone but us professional help (plus some hangers-on like Michel) wore aboard the Vulcan — and handed me a folded note on a silver salver. I looked at Michel, not opening it. He pursed his lips, made a thy-will-be-done gesture with his palms together, and moved away, a cynical little smile curling up the sides of his mouth. I said “Thanks” and the servant moved away too, leaving me standing by the windward rail, one foot irreverently resting on one of the antique brass cannons that decorated the bark.

“Well,” I said. And then I thought about that a moment Israel and Syria. Four days from now. How could I get through to Sonia as quickly as possible?

And Alexandra Komarova? I hadn’t even met her yet. I’d seen her coming and going, always at a distance. The one peep I’d had at what the help tended to call the “Forbidden City” — the great saloon of the ship and the posh suites that radiated out from it, aft — had given me a clear picture of the incredible wealth of Alexandra’s surroundings; the saloon was a regular museum of weaponry and the armorer’s craft, and the fittings were all antique brass and fruitwood paneling. Now I’d be getting a close look at her own digs. And how close a look to the old man’s? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen him at all so far, and I wasn’t sure which cabin was his, but I intended to case the area tonight if any opportunity presented itself at all.

I folded the note and stuck it in a pocket. Then I headed below to my own cabin to dress. That imperious summons of hers didn’t leave me much time.

I was just putting the knot in my tie — I still tie my own; pre-knotted ties always look so sleazy — when there was a rap on my door. Small. Quiet. Timid.

“Yes?” I said.

The knock came again I opened the cabin door — elegant cherry paneling, I noticed — and Sonia, in a messy painter’s smock, slipped inside without a word.　

“Nick,” she said with a harried-looking smile. “I’ve been wanting to fall into your arms for days, and the first time I find you alone, you’re dressing for dinner and I’m wearing this.”

I tipped her chin up and kissed her delicately, keeping my splendor clear of all that fresh oil paint. “Just the person I wanted to see. I think I’ve got a lead, for Leon. A big one.” I pulled out the note and showed it to her. She looked — and gasped audibly, one hand to her mouth.

“My God,” she said in a small voice, looking at the wall, eyes out of focus. “Four days? That’s not much time.”

“That’s what I figured. That means the arms delivery has been made, I think. And it probably means...”

“It means somebody’s going to make some very quick use of them, blitzkrieg style. And the last-minute plans... I’ll bet they’re going to be discussed ashore tomorrow night. But... but Nick. That means...”

“That Alexandra’s part of whatever it is? Maybe. It’s her party. Her idea to go ashore. And in the course of a big village whingding, it’d be easy for her to get together with her friends, and...”

“Nick. I don’t know what to think. Alexandra? She’s a bitch, all right. But this...”

“I haven’t met her yet. What’s she like? Has she changed? I mean, since you saw her last?”

“Yes, but...”

“How?”

“She’s... she’s the same as she always was. Only more controlled. It’s as if she’d found some sort of purpose in life. It’s... but Nick. That would mean...”

“Komaroff’s ill, you know.”

“Oh? I hadn’t heard.”

“Michel let on today that we’re under sail, cumbersome as that is, because of Komaroff’s stomach. He can’t stand the hum of the diesels underfoot.”

“Then maybe he has her doing some of his dirty work. Yes, that would fit. I had been wondering, you know. There I was a rumor that filtered down — from the other side of the salt, as one says — that she had taken a new lover. It was during the last cruise. And... but no, this makes more sense. Of course; he has never trusted anyone else to do the work for him, and if he is deathly ill...”

“Sonia,” I said. “I think tomorrow night’s the big night. The more I think of it...”

“The big night? For them?”

“No, for us. Tomorrow night the party will give you a chance to slip ashore and make some sort of contact with Leon — with the organization.”

“Me? What about you?”

“I’m going to case the Forbidden City tonight. And tomorrow, when the party’s going on...”

“Nick.” She grabbed my arm in her strong little hand. “Yes. I saw the duty roster today. There will only be a skeleton crew aboard her. Almost all the crew has been given shore leave. Yes, yes...”

“Right. And even if it blows my cover, it may not matter much longer. With the big push set for four days from now...”

“Splendid. Nick — I have the little wireless Leon gave me. I will hide it in the bottom of the picnic basket. I will take it to town and set it up and call Leon. If I were to do it here someone would pick up my carrier frequency, so close by. But tomorrow, with, more than likely, only a substitute in the radio shack...”

“Dandy,” I said. “Okay. And I’ll slip back aboard at the same time and see what I can find out.”

“Nick,” she said, squeezing my arm. “I... I am going to worry about only one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That woman. Alone with you... tonight...”

I bent over and kissed her again, still keeping the shirt clear of her smock. “Not to worry. That’s an order. I’m immune. Now skedaddle.” I patted her on the bottom. Komaroff’s flunkey is due here any minute now.

“Okay. Nick... it will go all right, won’t it?”

“Sure,” I said, nice and confident. I hoped it would, anyhow. “You’ll do okay. If you weren’t all right, Leon wouldn’t have kept you around all this time. He’d have drummed you out of the family.”

“Yes,” she said with a shy smile. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

I followed the silent servant up one flight and into a long hall, paneled in rich hardwoods, with the fittings starting at one end of the hall in polished antique brass and ending at the other in silver — the latter being Russian turn-of-the-century objects, lanterns made for gas operation and converted. Underfoot were Persian carpets; overhead was more paneling.

It was the walls — decked out the way they were, you couldn’t call them bulkheads — that really made the impression. Stuck in precisely fitted niches were a series of matched paintings that looked somehow familiar in style but not in subject matter: I looked at the brass plaques underneath the pictures — a set of depictions in a classically severe style of famous massacres and slaughters — and whistled. If Komaroff were to die intestate I’d have bet Spain would have mortgaged Morocco to buy them — and to build, a special Goya museum to house them. In between the paintings were tapestries equally priceless: one, not noticeably different from its neighbors, gave you what purported to be an eyewitness view of the Battle of Crecy. Another was the Battle of Agincourt, by a man who claimed to have watched it. And, true to the code Komaroff seemed to run by, when we passed a covert guard booth on the way, the man inside it looked out from the filigreed walls of a confessional booth from the days of Torquemada, four hundred years ago.

Komaroff’s man stopped me at the saloon and announced me through an antique speaking tube connected to the starboard door. He heard some reply I couldn’t make out; then he left me alone in the big room.

Here the decor was strictly business. No paintings. No wall hangings. Just weapons.

It seemed, as a matter of fact, to be a kind of museum of weapons — picking out not the various stages of a given gun, but the great breakthrough weapons that, over the course of history, changed warfare. In opposite corners were a Maxim gun and a Gatling, sitting majestically on the decking.

The walls were a beautifully arranged hodgepodge, until you started to get the pattern. Here was a fossilized antelope humerus, marked “Olduvai Gorge” and indexed according to the latest of Dr. Leakey’s datings. There beside it were a stone battle-ax; a Bronze Age Greek short-sword (if I could believe the legend, from the original Schliemann dig at Troy); an iron mace; a suit of armor; a crossbow; an English longbow; a Sharps rifle; a Colt’s Pacemaker...

The other side was more of the same, only specializing in elegant forms. Here were a pair of matched Toledo dueling swords; another pair of Heidelburg Schlaeger; a pair of flawless flintlock dueling pistols; a pair of sai, like the one I’d taken from the assassin in Hong Kong, and a pair of those efficient mock-Bowies Will Lockwood had wielded with such deadly efficiency against three men at a time. So that was the “butterfly knife” Basil Morse had warned me about. And for good reason, I decided.

“Mr. Archer...”

The soft voice behind me startled me out of my reverie. I turned and when I saw who had called my name I said to myself no, baby, no way. You are never going to convince me that this is Alexandra Komarova.

But she didn’t try. The girl in the golden chains said “This way, Mr. Archer.” She averted her eyes. Her head was held down in a slave-like attitude. And the more I thought about it, looking at her, the more I thought that was exactly what she had to be: a slave.

She was dressed in little golden chains, starting from a gold collar around her neck and working down. That collar was connected to tiny chains; these connected to the bound, manacled hands she held so pitiably before her; the manacles connected to the long chains that reached the hobbling bands around her slim ankles.

Other than the chains and manacles, she was totally naked.

As she turned to lead me inside the huge teak door, I could see her back was a mass of fresh scars from a recent whipping.

My mouth pursed to whistle softly, but it was so dry I couldn’t make a sound. I followed the strange girl with the strange, whipped-dog demeanor inside the room. Her soft soles made no sound on the teak flooring.

A voice said: “You may go now.” Not “Thank you, you may go now.” Just “You may go now.” You don’t thank chattels. Pets. Slaves.

I looked around.

I picked her out of a nest of silk cushions. She was, I decided, pretty enough. That much I had already made out from the two long-distance glimpses Td got of her in street clothes. Now she wore a transparent blouse and pants, her nipples gleaming through the gauze with the gold paint she’d put on them. Gold flashed from rings on her fingers and toes, from a jewel in her bellybutton and a diamond gleaming in one pierced nostril.

Her voice was languid, full of drugs. “Ah, Mr. Archer. Come over here and let me have a look at you...”