The Wheel of Darkness Page 27

  “What are you doing?”

  No response.

  “God damn it, Mason, talk to me!” He slammed his fist against the glass so hard it hurt.

  Still she merely looked back.

  “Mason!”

  At last, she stepped around from the helm and walked up to the glass. Her voice came to him faintly, filtering through the glass and the roar of the storm. “The question is, Mr. LeSeur, what are you doing?”

  “Don’t you realize we’re on a collision course with the Carrion Rocks?”

  Another twitch of the lips, harbinger of a smile. She said something he couldn’t hear over the storm.

  “I can’t hear you!” He clung to the rim, wondering how long until his fingers gave out and he fell away into the furious gray spume.

  “I said”—she moved to the glass and spoke louder—“that I’m well aware of it.”

  “But why?”

  The smile finally came, like sun glittering on ice. “That is the question, isn’t it, Mr. LeSeur?”

  He pressed himself against the glass, struggling to maintain his grip. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.

  “Why?” he screamed.

  “Ask the company.”

  “But you . . . you can’t be doing this deliberately!”

  “Why not?”

  He stopped himself from screaming to her that she was mad. He had to reach her, find her motives, reason with her. “For God’s sake, you don’t mean to murder four thousand people like this!”

  “I have nothing against the passengers or crew. However, I am going to destroy this ship.”

  LeSeur wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears on his face. “Captain, look. If there are problems in your life, problems with the company, we can work them out. But this . . . there are thousands of innocent people on board, many women and children. I beg you, please don’t do this. Please!”

  “People die every day.”

  “Is this some kind of terrorist attack? I mean”—he swallowed, trying to think of a neutral way of putting it—“are you representing a . . . a particular political or religious point of view?”

  Her smile remained cold, controlled. “Since you ask, the answer is no. This is strictly personal.”

  “If you want to wreck the ship, stop it first. At least let us launch the lifeboats!”

  “You know perfectly well that if I even slow the ship down, they’ll be able to land a SWAT team and take me out. No doubt half the passengers have been e-mailing the outside world. A massive response is unquestionably under way. No, Mr. LeSeur, speed is my ally, and the Britannia’s destination is the Carrion Rocks.” She glanced at the autopilot chartplotter. “In one hundred and forty-nine minutes.”

  He pounded his fist on the glass. “No!” The effort almost caused him to fall. He scrabbled to recover, ripping his nails on the gelcoat and watching, helplessly, as she resumed her position at the helm, her eyes focusing into the grayness of the storm.

  55

  AT THE SOUND OF THE DOOR OPENING, CONSTANCE SAT UP. The open door brought with it the muffled noise of panic: shouts, curses, pounding feet. Pendergast stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  He walked across the entryway, something large and heavy balanced on one shoulder. As he drew closer Constance saw that it was an ivory-colored canvas duffle, snugged closed with a drawstring. He stopped at the door to the kitchen, unshouldered the duffle, dusted off his hands, then walked into the living room.

  “You made the tea, at least,” he said, pouring himself a cup and taking a seat in a nearby leather armchair. “Excellent.”

  She looked at him coolly. “I’m still waiting to hear your theory about what’s going on.”

  Pendergast took a slow, appraising sip of tea. “Did you know that the Carrion Rocks are one of the greatest hazards to shipping in the North Atlantic? So much so that right after the Titanic sank, they first thought it might have fetched up on them.”

  “How interesting.” She looked at him, sitting in the armchair, calmly sipping his tea as if there were no crisis at all. And then she realized: perhaps there was no crisis.

  “You have a plan,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Indeed I do. And come to think of it, perhaps now is the time to familiarize you with the details. It will save some effort later on, when we might have to react to changing situations rather quickly.”

  He took another languid sip. Then, putting the teacup aside, he stood and walked toward the kitchen. Tugging the laundry duffle open, he pulled something large out of it and stepped back into the living room, placing it on the floor between them.

  Constance stared at it curiously. It was an oblong, hard-shelled container of white rubber and plastic, about four feet by three, lashed shut with nylon straps. Various warning labels were stamped on its face. As she watched, Pendergast removed the nylon straps and detached the faceplate. Nestled inside was a tightly folded device of Day-Glo yellow polyurethane.

  “A self-inflating buoyant apparatus,” said Pendergast. “Known familiarly as a ‘survival bubble.’ Equipped with SOLAS B packs, an EPI radio beacon, blankets, and provisions. Each of the Britannia’s freefall lifeboats is equipped with one. I, ah, liberated this from one of them.”

  Constance stared from the container to Pendergast and back again.

  “If the officers prove unable to stop the captain, they may try to launch the ship’s lifeboats,” he explained. “Doing so at this rate of speed would be dangerous, perhaps foolhardy. On the other hand, we will encounter minimal risk if we launch ourselves into the water in this from the stern of the ship. Of course, we will have to be careful where we effect our evacuation.”

  “Evacuation,” Constance repeated.

  “It will have to be from a deck low over the waterline, obviously.” He reached over to the side table, picked up a ship’s brochure, and pulled out a glossy photograph of the Britannia. “I’d suggest this spot,” he said, pointing to a row of large windows low in the stern. “That would be the King George II ballroom. It will most likely be deserted given the current emergency. We could precipitate a chair or table through the window, clear ourselves a hole, and launch. We’ll of course convey the apparatus down there hidden in that duffle to avoid attracting attention.” He thought for a moment. “It would be wise to wait thirty minutes or so; that will bring us close enough to the impact site to be within reasonable distance of rescue vessels, but not so close that we will be hindered by last-minute panic. If we launch ourselves from one of the ballroom’s side windows, here or here, we’ll avoid the worst of the ship’s wake.” He put the photograph aside with a sigh of self-satisfaction, as if well pleased with this plan.

  “You say ‘we,’ ” Constance said, speaking slowly. “That is, just the two of us.”

  Pendergast glanced at her in mild surprise. “Yes, of course. But don’t be concerned: I know it may look small inside this case, but it will be certainly large enough for both of us when fully inflated. The bubble is designed to hold four, so we should find ourselves easily accommodated.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You’re proposing to save yourself and just leave the rest to die?”

  Pendergast frowned. “Constance, I will not be spoken to in that tone of voice.”

  She rose in a cold fury. “You . . .” She choked off the word. “Stealing that flotation device from one of the lifeboats . . . You weren’t out there looking for a way to defuse the crisis or rescue the Britannia. You were just arranging to save your own skin!”

  “As it happens, I’m rather attached to my skin. And I shouldn’t have to remind you, Constance, that I’m offering to save yours, as well.”

  “This isn’t like you,” she said, disbelief, shock, and anger mingling. “This gross selfishness. What’s happened to you, Aloysius? Ever since you returned from Blackburn’s cabin, you’ve been . . . bizarre. Not yourself.”

  He looked back at her for a long moment. Silently, he reattac
hed the faceplate to the plastic enclosure. Then he rose and stepped forward.

  “Sit down, Constance,” he said quietly. And there was something in the tone of his voice—something strange, something utterly foreign—that, despite her rage and shock and disbelief, made her instantly obey.

  56

  LESEUR TOOK A SEAT IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM ADJACENT TO THE aux bridge. He was still soaked to the skin, but now, instead of being cold, he felt like he was suffocating in the heat and the smell of sweaty bodies. The room, meant to hold half a dozen people, was packed with deck officers and senior crew, and more were still arriving.

  LeSeur didn’t even wait for them to sort out their places before he stood up, rapped his knuckles on the table, and began.

  “I just talked to Mason,” he said. “She confirmed that her plan is to run the Britannia onto the Carrion Rocks at flank speed. So far, we haven’t been able to break into the bridge or bypass the autopilot. And I haven’t been able to find a doctor or psychiatrist sufficiently compos mentis to either diagnose her condition or suggest a line of reasoning that might work with her.”

  He looked around.

  “I’ve had several conversations with the captain of the Grenfell, the only ship close enough to attempt a rescue. Other ships—civilian and Coast Guard—have been diverted. They won’t get to us before the estimated collision. The Canadian CG has also dispatched two fixed-wing aircraft for surveillance and communication purposes. They have a fleet of helicopters on standby, but as of now we’re still out of range of coastal rotary aircraft. We can’t expect any help from that quarter. And the Grenfell is in no way equipped to handle four thousand three hundred evacuees.”

  He paused, took a deep breath. “We’re in the middle of a storm, with forty-foot seas and forty- to sixty-knot winds. But our most intractable problem is the ship’s speed relative to the water: twenty-nine knots.” He licked his lips. “We would have many options if we weren’t moving—transfer of people to the Grenfell, boarding by a SWAT team. But none of that’s feasible at twenty-nine knots.” He looked around. “So, people, I need ideas, and I need them now.”

  “What about disabling the engines?” someone asked. “You know, sabotaging them.”

  LeSeur glanced at the chief engineer. “Mr. Halsey?”

  The engineer scowled. “We’ve got four diesel engines boosted by two General Electric LM2500 gas turbines. Shut down one diesel and nothing happens. Shut down two, and you better shut down those turbines or you’ll get a gas compression explosion.”

  “Disable the gas turbines first, then?” LeSeur asked.

  “They’re high-pressure jet engines, sir, rotating at thirty-six hundred rpm. Any attempt to intervene while that bastard is running at high speed would be . . . suicide. You’d tear out the bottom of the ship.”

  “Cut the shafts, then?” a second officer asked.

  “There are no shafts,” said the engineer. “Each pod is a self- contained propulsion system. The diesel and turbines generate electricity that powers the pods.”

  “Jam the drive gears?” LeSeur asked.

  “I’ve looked into that. Inaccessible while under way.”

  “What about simply cutting all electric power to the engines?”

  The chief engineer frowned. “Can’t do it. Same reason they hardened the bridge and the autopilot system—fear of a terrorist attack. The geniuses in the Home Office decided to design a ship that, if terrorists tried to commandeer it, there’d be nothing they could do to disable or take control of the vessel. No matter what, they wanted the officers locked into the bridge to be able to bring the ship into port, even if terrorists took over the rest of the vessel.”

  “Speaking of the bridge,” a third officer said, “what if we were to drill through the security hatch and pump in gas? Anything that will displace the air within. Hell, the kitchen has several canisters of CO2. You know, knock her out.”

  “And then what? We’re still on autopilot.”

  There was a brief silence. Then the IT head, Hufnagel, a bespectacled man in a lab coat, cleared his throat. “The autopilot is a piece of software like any other,” he said in a quiet voice. “It can be hacked—in theory, anyway. Hack it and reprogram it.”

  LeSeur rounded on him. “How? It’s firewalled.”

  “No firewall’s impregnable.”

  “Get your best man on it, right away.”

  “That would be Penner, sir.” The head of IT stood up.

  “Report back to me as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  LeSeur watched him leave the conference room. “Any other ideas?”

  “What about the military?” asked Crowley, another third officer. “They could scramble fighters, take out the bridge with a missile. Or get a sub to disable the screws with a torpedo.”

  “We’ve looked into those possibilities,” LeSeur replied. “There’s no way to aim a missile precisely enough. There aren’t any submarines in the vicinity, and, given our speed, there’s no way for one to intercept or catch us.”

  “Is there a way to launch the lifeboats?” a voice in the back asked.

  LeSeur turned to the bosun, Liu. “Possible?”

  “At a speed of thirty knots, in heavy seas . . . Jesus, I can’t even imagine how you’d do it.”

  “I don’t want to hear what you can’t imagine. If it’s even remotely possible, I want you to look into it.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll find out if it’s possible. But to do that I’ll need a full emergency launch crew—and they’re all tied up.”

  LeSeur cursed. The one thing they lacked were experienced deckhands. Sure, they had every bloody plonker in the world on board, from croupiers to masseurs to lounge crooners—all so much ballast. “That man who came up here a while ago, what’s his name? Bruce. He was ex–Royal Navy and so were his friends. Go find him. Enlist his help.”

  “But he was an old man, in his seventies—” Kemper protested.

  “Mr. Kemper, I’ve known seventy-year-old ex-navy men who could drop you in two rounds.” He turned back to Crowley. “Get moving.”

  A voice boomed from the door, in a broad Scots accent. “No need to find me, Mr. LeSeur.” Bruce pushed his way through the crowd. “Gavin Bruce, at your service.”

  LeSeur turned. “Mr. Bruce. Have you been apprised of our current situation?”

  “I have.”

  “We need to know whether we can launch the lifeboats under these conditions and speed. Have you experience in that line? These are a new kind of lifeboat—freefall.”

  Bruce rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’ll have to take a close look at those boats.” He hesitated. “We might launch them after the collision.”

  “We can’t wait until after the collision. Striking a shoal at thirty knots . . . half the people on board would be killed or injured by the impact alone.”

  This was greeted by silence. After a moment, Bruce nodded slowly.

  “Mr. Bruce, I give you and your group full authority to address this issue. The bosun, Mr. Liu, assisted by Third Officer Crowley, will direct you—they are thoroughly familiar with the abandon-ship routines.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  LeSeur looked around the room. “There’s something else. We need Commodore Cutter. He knows the ship better than any of us and . . . well, he’s the only one who knows the number sequence for standing down from a Code Three. I’m going to call him back to the bridge.”

  “As master?” Kemper asked.

  LeSeur hesitated. “Let’s just see what he says, first.” He glanced at his watch.

  Eighty-nine minutes.

  57

  CAPTAIN CAROL MASON STOOD AT THE BRIDGE WORKSTATION, staring calmly at the thirty-two-inch plasma-screen Northstar 941X DGPS chartplotter running infonav 2.2. It was, she thought, a marvel of electronic engineering, a technology that had virtually rendered obsolete the skills, mathematics, experience, and deep intuition once required for piloting and navigation. With this device, a bri
ght twelve-year-old could practically navigate the Britannia: using this big colorful chart with the little ship on it, a line drawn ahead showing the ship’s course, conveniently marked with estimated positions at ten-minute intervals into the future, along with waypoints for each course alteration.

  She glanced over at the autopilot. Another marvel; it constantly monitored the ship’s speed through the water, its ground speed, engine rpms, power output, rudder and pod angles, and made countless adjustments so subtle they were not even perceptible to even the most vessel-savvy officer. It kept the ship on course and at speed better than the most skilled human captain, while saving fuel—which is why the standing orders dictated that the autopilot should be used for all but inland or coastal waters.

  Ten years ago, the bridge on a ship like this would have required the minimum presence of three highly trained officers; now, it required only one . . . and, for the most part, she hardly had anything to do.

  She turned her attention to LeSeur’s navigation table, with its paper charts, parallel rulers, compasses, pencils and markers, and the case that held the man’s sextant. Dead instruments, dead skills.

  She walked around the bridge workstation and back to the helm, resting one hand on the elegant mahogany wheel. It was there strictly for show. To its right stood the helmsman’s console where the real business of steering was done: six little joysticks, manipulated with the touch of a finger, that controlled the two fixed and two rotating propulsion pods and the engine throttles. With its 360-degree aft rotating pods, the ship was so maneuverable it could dock without help from a single tug.

  She slid her hand along the smooth varnish of the wheel, raising her glance to the wall of gray windows that stood ahead. As the wind intensified the rain had slackened, and now she could see the outline of the bows shuddering through spectacular forty-foot seas, great eruptions of spray and flying spume sweeping across the foredecks in slow-motion explosions of white.

  She felt a kind of peace, an utter emptiness, that went beyond anything she had experienced before. Most of her life she had been knotted up by self-reproach, feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, anger, overweening ambition. Now, all that was gone—blessedly gone. Decision-making had never been so simple, and afterward there had been none of that agonizing second-guessing that had tormented her career decisions. She had made a decision to destroy the ship; it had been done calmly and without emotion; and now all that remained was to carry it out.