The Wheel of Darkness Read online

  There was another silence, longer this time.

  “You’re going to . . . gamble?” Hentoff asked slowly.

  “Why not?” Pendergast spread his hands. “We’re on holiday, after all. And you know how I adore blackjack. I was thinking of teaching it to Constance as well.”

  Hentoff looked at Kemper in alarm.

  “I’ve been told I’m a quick study,” Constance said.

  Kemper ran his hand through his damp hair again. He could feel the wetness creeping down from his armpits. It just got worse and worse.

  The atmosphere in the room grew strained. At last, Kemper finally let his breath out with a rush. “It’s going to take some time to prepare.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll aim for a general fire alarm on Deck 9 at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. It’s the best I can do.”

  Pendergast nodded curtly. “In that case, we’ll just have to wait until then. Let us hope things are still, ah, under control by that time.”

  “Under control? What do you mean by that?”

  But Pendergast simply bowed to each of them in turn, then sat down once again and returned to his dinner.

  38

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN MADDIE EDMONDSON SLOUCHED DOWN the central corridor of Deck 3, bored out of her mind. Her grandparents had brought her on the voyage as a present for her sixteenth birthday, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But nobody had told her what to expect—that the ship would be a floating hell. All the really fun places—the discotheques and the clubs where the twentysomethings hung out, the casinos—were off-limits to a girl her age. And the shows she could get into seemed to appeal to those over the age of a hundred. Antonio’s Magic Revue, the Blue Man Group, and Michael Bublé doing Frank Sinatra—it was like a joke. She’d seen all the movies, the swimming pools had been closed due to rough weather. The food in the restaurants was too fancy, and she felt too seasick to enjoy the pizza parlors or hamburger spots. There was nothing for her to do besides sit through lounge acts, surrounded by octogenarians fiddling with their hearing aids.

  The only interesting thing that had happened was that weird hanging in the Belgravia Theatre. Now that had been something: all the old biddies leaning on their canes and squawking, the grandpas harrumphing and contracting their bushy eyebrows, the officers and deckhands running around like headless chickens. She didn’t care what anybody said, it had to be a gag, a stage prop, some publicity stunt for the new movie. People just didn’t die like that in real life, only in movies.

  She passed the gold-lamé-and-green-glass entrance to Trafalgar’s, the ship’s hottest club. Loud, thumping house music droned from its dark interior. She paused to look in. Slender figures—college types and young professionals—were gyrating in a miasma of smoke and flickering light. Outside the door stood the requisite bouncer: thin and handsome and wearing a tux, but a bouncer no less, eager to keep underage people like Maddie from going inside to enjoy herself.

  She continued morosely down the corridor. Although the clubs and casinos were hopping, some of the blue-rinse crowd that normally thronged the passageways and shops had disappeared. They were probably in their cabins, hiding under their beds. What a joke. She hoped to hell they weren’t really going to institute the curfew she had heard rumored about. That would be the end. After all, it had been just a gag—hadn’t it?

  She rode an escalator down one level, wandered past the shops of Regent Street, the upscale shopping arcade, climbed some stairs. Her grandparents had already gone to bed but she wasn’t the slightest bit tired. She’d been wandering aimlessly around the ship like this for the past hour, dragging her feet on the carpet. With a sigh, she slipped a pair of earbuds out of her pocket, stuffed them into place, and dialed up Justin Timberlake on her iPod.

  She came to an elevator, stepped in, and—closing her eyes—punched a button at random. The elevator descended briefly, stopped, and she got out—another of the ship’s endless corridors, this one a little more cramped than she was used to. Turning up the volume on her music player, she dragged her way down the hall, took a turn, kicked open a door bearing a sign she didn’t bother to read, skipped down a set of stairs, and wandered on. The corridor took another turn, and as she went around it, she had the sudden feeling she was being followed.

  She paused, turning to see who it was, but the corridor was empty. She took a few steps back and looked around the corner. Nothing.

  Must have been some random ship noise: down here, the damn thing thrummed and vibrated like some monster treadmill.

  She wandered on, letting herself slide along one wall, pushing away with her elbow, then tacking over to the other side to slide again. Four more days to New York City. She couldn’t wait to get home and see her friends.

  There it was again: that feeling she was being followed.

  She stopped abruptly, this time pulling out the earbuds. She looked around but, once again, there was nobody. Where was she, anyway? It was just one more carpeted corridor with what looked like private meeting rooms or something on either side. It was unusually deserted.

  She tossed back her hair with an impatient gesture: jeez, now she was getting as spooked as the old-timers. She glanced through an interior window into one of the rooms and saw a long table lined with computers—an Internet room. She considered stepping inside and going online, but decided against it—all the good sites would certainly be blocked.

  As she turned from the window, she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye and caught sight of someone just ducking around the corner behind her. No question about it this time.

  “Hey!” she called. “Who’s that?”

  No answer.

  Probably just some maid—the ship was crawling with them. She moved on, but more quickly now, keeping the earbuds in her hand. This was a depressing part of the ship anyway; she should get back up to where the shops were. As she walked, she kept an eye out for one of the diagrams posted about that told your current location. But as she did so, she could swear she heard, over the hum of the ship, the brush of feet on the carpet.

  This was bullshit. She walked faster still, taking another turn, then another, still without coming to a map or an area she recognized—just more endless corridors. Except that now she noticed the carpet underfoot had given way to linoleum.

  She realized she’d entered one of the off-limits areas of the ship, having missed the Do Not Enter sign. Maybe it had been the door she’d kicked open. But she didn’t want to retrace her steps and go back: no way.

  There were definite footfalls behind her, bolder now, that quickened and slowed with her pace. Was some pervert following her? Maybe she should run—she could outrun an old pervert any day. She came to a side door, ducked through, and descended a metal staircase, coming into another long corridor. She heard the clatter of footsteps on the staircase behind her.

  That was when she broke into a run.

  The corridor made a dogleg, then ended in a door with a label stenciled in red:

  ENGINEERING ONLY

  She grasped the handle. Locked. She turned in a panic, holding her breath. She could hear, echoing down the corridor, running footfalls. She frantically tried the door again, shaking it and crying out. Her iPod slipped out of her pocket and skidded across the floor, unheeded.

  She turned again, looking around wildly for another door, a fire exit, anything.

  The running footsteps got closer, and still closer—and then, suddenly, a figure came around the corner.

  Maddie jerked violently, a scream rising in her throat—but then, looking more closely at the figure, she broke down, sobbing with relief. “Thank God it’s you,” she said. “I thought . . . someone was following me. I don’t know. I’m lost. Totally. I’m so glad it’s you—”

  The knife came out so fast she didn’t even have time to scream.

  39

  LESEUR STOOD IN THE REAR OF THE BRIDGE, MASON AT HIS SIDE. He watched Commodore Cutter, hands clasped behind his back, pac
e back and forth in front of the bridge workstation, alongside the array of flat-panel screens, one foot placed carefully in front of the other, moving with slow deliberation. As he strode the length of the middle bridge, his silhouetted form passed before each screen, one after another. But his eyes remained straight ahead, neither looking at the screens nor at the officer of the watch, who stood to one side, displaced and unhappy.

  LeSeur glanced across the radar and weather system displays. The ship was skirting the southern flank of a large, unusual clockwise storm system. The good news was they were traveling with the wind at their backs; the bad news was this meant moving in a following sea. The stabilizers had been fully extended hours ago, but even so the ship had a slow, queasy rotational yaw that guaranteed additional discomfort for the passengers. He glanced over the displays again. Seas were running thirty feet, winds at forty knots, the radar showing a lot of scatter. Nevertheless, the ship was doing beautifully. LeSeur couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride.

  Kemper appeared soundlessly at his elbow, his face a ghastly blue in the artificial light from the displays. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind.

  “A word, sir,” he murmured.

  LeSeur glanced at Mason and gestured with his eyes. The two of them followed Kemper out to one of the covered bridge wings. Rain hammered against the windows, running down in heavy sheets. Outside, all was blackness.

  Wordlessly, Kemper handed LeSeur a sheet of paper. The first officer glanced over it in the dim light. “Good Lord. Eighteen more people reported missing?”

  “Yes, sir. But you’ll see at the bottom that sixteen have already turned up. Someone steps out of a cabin for ten minutes and their spouse calls security. The point is, the situation on the ship is deteriorating. The passengers are getting more and more panicky. And my staff is just about paralyzed.”

  “What about these two that haven’t been found?”

  “One is a sixteen-year-old girl—her grandparents reported it. The other is a woman with a mild case of Alzheimer’s.”

  “How long have they been missing?”

  “The girl for three hours. The old lady for about an hour.”

  “Do you consider this a cause for serious concern?”

  Kemper hesitated. “Not the old lady—I think she’s probably gotten confused, maybe fallen asleep somewhere. But the girl . . . yeah, I’m concerned. We’ve paged her regularly, we’ve searched the public spaces. And then, there’s this.” He gave LeSeur a second sheet.

  The first officer read it with growing disbelief. “Bloody hell, is this true?” He stabbed his finger at the sheet. “A monster roaming the ship?”

  “Six people on Deck 9 reported seeing it. Some kind of . . . I don’t know what. A thing, covered with smoke, or made of dense smoke. Accounts vary. There’s a lot of confusion.”

  LeSeur handed the sheets back to Kemper. “This is absurd.”

  “Just shows the level of hysteria. And to me, that’s a troubling development—very troubling. Mass hysteria, on an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic? As it is, I don’t have the staff to deal with all this. We’re overwhelmed.”

  “Is there any way to transfer other ship’s staff to temporary security duty? Pull some capable junior engineers off their usual jobs?”

  “Forbidden by standing orders,” said Staff Captain Mason, speaking for the first time. “Commodore Cutter’s the only one who could override that.”

  “Can we make the request?” Kemper asked.

  Mason glanced coolly toward the middle bridge where Cutter was pacing. “This is not a good time to ask the commodore anything, Mr. Kemper,” she said crisply.

  “What about closing the casinos and assigning Hentoff’s staff to security?”

  “Corporate would string us up. Forty percent of the profit margin comes from the casinos. And besides, those people are dealers and croupiers and pit bosses—they aren’t trained in anything else. We might as well reassign the waitstaff.”

  Another long silence.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kemper, for your report,” said Mason. “That will be all.”

  Kemper nodded and left, leaving LeSeur and Mason on the bridge wing, alone.

  “Captain Mason?” LeSeur finally asked.

  “Yes, Mr. LeSeur?” The staff captain turned to him, the hard lines of her face dimly illuminated in the low light.

  “Forgive me for raising the subject again, but have there been any more discussions about diverting to St. John’s?”

  A very long silence followed this question, stretching to almost a minute. Finally, Mason answered. “No official discussions, Mr. LeSeur.”

  “Would it be forward of me, sir, to ask why not?”

  LeSeur could see Mason thinking carefully how to formulate her response. “The commodore has already expressed his firm orders on that point,” she said at last.

  “But what if this missing girl . . . is another victim?”

  “Commodore Cutter shows no evidence of changing his mind.”

  LeSeur felt a swell of anger. “Excuse me for speaking frankly, Captain, but we’ve got a brutal murderer roaming on board this ship. If this Pendergast is to be believed, the man’s killed three people already. The passengers are freaking out, half of them are hiding in their cabins, and the rest are getting drunk in the lounges and casinos. And now it seems we’ve got some kind of mass hysteria building, talk of an apparition roaming the ship. Our security director has as much as admitted the situation is beyond his control. Under the circumstances, don’t you think we should seriously consider diversion?”

  “Diverting the ship would take us deeper into the storm.”

  “I know that. But I’d rather weather a nor’easter than deal with an out-of-control mob—of passengers and crew.”

  “What you and I think is irrelevant,” said Mason coldly.

  Despite her tone, LeSeur could see this last point of his had struck home. Ship’s officers were acutely aware of just how relatively small their numbers were. Along with fire at sea, passenger unrest—or worse than unrest—was always a great fear.

  “You’re the staff captain,” he pressed. “The second in command. You’re in the best position to influence him. We can’t go on like this—you’ve got to persuade him to divert.”

  Mason turned to him, her eyes dead tired. “Mr. LeSeur, don’t you realize? Nobody can change Commodore Cutter’s mind. It’s that simple.”

  LeSeur stared at her, breathing hard. It was incredible, an unbelievable situation. He peered down the wing and into the main bridge. Cutter was still pacing about, immersed in his own private world, his face an unreadable mask. LeSeur was reminded of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, locked in denial while the ship descended inexorably into chaos. “Sir, if there’s another killing . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Mason said, “Mr. LeSeur, if there’s another killing—God forbid—we will revisit this issue.”

  “Revisit the issue? In all frankness, sir, what’s the point of more talk? If there’s another—”

  “I’m not alluding to more idle talk. I’m alluding to an Article V action.”

  LeSeur stared. Article V dealt with the removal of a captain on the high seas for dereliction of duty.

  “You aren’t suggesting—?”

  “That will be all, Mr. LeSeur.”

  LeSeur watched Mason turn and walk back to the center of the bridge, pausing to confer with the navigator at the con as coolly as if nothing had happened.

  Article V. Mason had guts. If it came down to that, so be it. This was quickly becoming a struggle—not just for safe operation of the Britannia, but for survival itself.

  40

  KEMPER WALKED OUT OF THE CENTRAL COMPUTER AND DATA processing complex on Deck B, headed for the nearest elevator bank. It had taken him the better part of the night to arrange the false alarm. It had been a bitch resetting the ship’s safety management systems without leaving a trail, and it had been especially difficult to disable the sprinkler syst
em. It wasn’t so long ago, he reflected grimly, that the only electronic systems on an ocean liner had been radar and communications. Now it seemed that the whole damn ship had been turned into a giant, networked system. It was like some massive floating computer.

  The elevator arrived and Kemper entered, pressing the button for Deck 9. It was close to madness to set off a false alarm in the middle of an already nervous ship, with a master who was in denial at best, or deranged at worst, in a storm in the mid-atlantic. If this ever came out, he’d not only lose his job, he’d probably rot in jail. He wondered how Pendergast had managed to talk him into it.

  And then he thought of Corporate, and remembered why.

  The elevator doors opened onto Deck 9. He stepped out and checked his watch: nine-fifty. Clasping his hands behind his back, clamping a fresh smile onto his face, he strolled down the starboard corridor, nodding and smiling at the passengers returning from breakfast. Deck 9 was one of the ritziest on the ship, and he hoped to God the sprinklers wouldn’t go off after all his careful work. That would be an expensive disaster for North Star, given that some of the staterooms and suites had been decorated by the passengers themselves, with costly objets d’art, paintings, and sculpture.

  Not the least of which was Blackburn’s own triplex.

  He casually checked his watch again. Nine fifty-eight. Hentoff should be at the far end of the Deck 9 corridor with a security guard, ready to spring into action.

  Eeeeeeeee! The fire alarm ripped like a screeching crow down the elegant corridor, followed by a recorded voice in a plummy English accent:

  “Attention: this is a fire alarm. All passengers must evacuate the area immediately. Ship’s personnel to their muster stations. Please follow the instructions posted on the inside stateroom doors or the orders of fire safety officers. Attention: this is a fire alarm. All passengers . . .”

  Up and down the corridor, doors were flung open. People crowded out, some dressed, others in nightgowns or T-shirts. It was remarkable, Kemper thought, how quickly they reacted; it was almost as if they’d all been waiting for something.