The Wheel of Darkness Read online

  Why? LeSeur had asked. If he couldn’t guess why, then she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of spelling it out. To her, it was obvious. There had never been—not once—a female captain on one of the great transatlantic liners. How foolish she had been to think she would be the one to break the teak ceiling. She knew—and this was not vanity—that she was twice the captain of most of her peers. She had graduated at the very top of her class at the Newcastle Maritime Academy, with one of the highest scores in the history of the school. Her record was perfect—unblemished. She had even remained single, despite several excellent opportunities, in order to eliminate any question of maternity leave. With exquisite care she had cultivated the right relationships at the company, sought out the right mentors, all the while taking care never to display careerist tendencies; she had assiduously cultivated the crisp, professional, but not unpleasant demeanor of the best captains, always genuinely pleased at the success of her peers.

  She had moved easily up the ladder, to second, then first, and finally staff captain, on schedule. Yes, there had been comments along the way, unpleasant remarks, and unwelcome sexual advances from superiors, but she had always handled them with aplomb, never rocking the boat, never complaining, treating certain vile and buffoonish superiors with the utmost correctness and respect, pretending not to hear their offensive, vulgar comments and disgusting proposals. She treated them all with good humor, as if they had uttered some clever bon mot.

  When the Oceania had been launched four years ago, she and two other staff captains were in line for the command—herself, along with Cutter and Thrale. Thrale, the least competent, who had a drinking problem besides, had gotten it. Cutter, who was the better captain, has missed it because of his prickly, reclusive personality. But she—the best captain of the three by far—had been passed over. Why?

  She was a woman.

  That wasn’t even the worst of it. All her peers had commiserated with Cutter, even though many of them disliked the man. Everyone took him aside and expressed the opinion that it was a shame he didn’t get it, that the captaincy was really his, that the company had made a mistake—and they all assured him he’d get the next one.

  None of them had taken her aside like that. No one had commiserated with her. They all assumed that, as a woman, she didn’t expect it and, moreover, couldn’t handle it. Most of them had been jolly fellows together in the Royal Navy; that had been denied her as a woman. No one ever knew about the burning slight she had felt—knowing that she was the best candidate of the three, with the most seniority and the highest ratings.

  She should have realized it then.

  And then came the Britannia. The largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. It cost the company almost a billion pounds. And she was now the clear choice. The command was hers almost by default . . .

  Except that Cutter got it. And then, as if to compound the insult, they had somehow thought she would be grateful for the bone of staff captain.

  Cutter was not stupid. He knew very well that she deserved the command. He also knew she was the better captain. And he hated her for it. He felt threatened. Even before they were aboard, he had taken every opportunity to find fault with her, to belittle her. And then he had made it clear that, unlike most other liner captains, he would not spend his time chatting up the passengers and hosting cheery dinners at the captain’s table. He would spend his time on the bridge—usurping her rightful place.

  And she had promptly given him the ammunition he needed in his struggle to humiliate her. The first infraction of discipline in her entire life—and it occurred even before the Britannia left port. She must have known then, subconsciously, that she would never command a big ship.

  Strange that Blackburn should have booked the maiden voyage of the Britannia: the man who had first proposed to her, whom she had turned down out of her own burning ambition. Ironic, too, that he had become a billionaire in the decade since their relationship.

  What an amazing three hours they had passed together, every moment now seared into her memory. His stateroom had been a marvel. He had filled the salon with his favorite treasures, million-dollar paintings, sculpture, rare antiquities. He had been particularly excited about a Tibetan painting he had just acquired—apparently not twenty-four hours earlier—and in his initial flush of excitement and pride he’d taken it out of its box and unrolled it for her on the floor of the salon. She had stared at it, thunderstruck, astounded, speechless, falling to her hands and knees to see it closer, to trace with her eyes and fingers every infinite fractal detail of it. It drew her in, exploded her mind. And as she had stared—mesmerized, almost swooning—he had pulled her skirt up over her hips, torn away her panties, and, like a mad stallion, mounted her. It had been the kind of sex that she’d never experienced before and would never forget; even the smallest detail, the tiniest drop of sweat, the softest moan, every grasp and thrust of flesh into flesh. Just thinking of it made her tingle with fresh passion.

  Too bad it would never happen again.

  Because afterwards, Blackburn had rolled up the magical painting, returned it to its box. Still aglow with the flush of their coupling, she had asked him not to; asked him to let her gaze upon it again. He’d turned, no doubt seen the hunger in her expression. Instantly, his eyes had narrowed to jealous, possessive little points. He’d jeered, said that she’d seen it once and didn’t need to see it again. And then—as quickly as lust had swept over her—a dark, consuming anger filled her. They had screamed at each other with an intensity she never knew she was capable of. The speed with which her emotions whipsawed had been as shocking as it had been exhilarating. And then Blackburn had ordered her to leave. No—she would never speak to him again, never gaze upon the painting again.

  And then came the supreme irony. Their shouting had provoked the passenger in the next cabin to complain. She had been seen leaving the triplex. Someone reported her. And that had been an opportunity Cutter couldn’t miss. He had humiliated her on the bridge, in front of all the deck officers. She had no doubt it had already gone into her file and would be reported back to the company.

  Many of the officers and crew, even the married ones, had sexual liaisons on board; it was so easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. They never seemed to get reported—because they were men. Men were expected to do this sort of thing, discreetly and on their own time, just as she had done. But it was different for a woman . . . or so company culture seemed to say.

  Her career was over. All she could hope for now was the command of a middling-size cruise ship, one of the shabbier ones that tooled aimlessly around the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, stuffed with fat, white, middle-class seniors on a floating excursion of eating and shopping. Never seeing blue water, running from every storm.

  Cutter. What better way to exact revenge than to take his ship from him, rip its guts out, and send it to the bottom of the Atlantic?

  58

  FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, CONSTANCE WATCHED AS PENDERGAST paced back and forth across the living room of the Tudor Suite. Once he paused as if to speak, but he merely began pacing again. At last, he turned to her. “You accuse me of selfish behavior. Of wishing to save myself at the expense of others on board the Britannia. Tell me something, Constance: exactly who on board ship do you consider worth saving?”

  He fell silent again, waiting for an answer, the light of amusement lurking in his eyes. This was the last thing Constance had expected to hear.

  “I asked you a question,” Pendergast went on, when she didn’t answer. “Who among the vulgar, greedy, vile crowd on board this ship do you deem worthy of being saved?”

  Still, Constance said nothing.

  After a moment, Pendergast scoffed. “You see? You have no reply—because there is no reply.”

  “That’s not true,” Constance said.

  “Truth? You’re fooling yourself. What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. From the moment you boarded this vessel, you yourself w
ere revolted by the wretched excess, appalled by the smarmy self-satisfaction of the rich and pampered. You yourself noted the shocking inequity between the serving and the served. Your behavior at dinner on that very first night, the ripostes you made to those unbearably gauche philistines we were forced to dine with, showed you had already pronounced judgment on the Britannia. And you were right to do so. Because I ask you again, another way: is not this very ship a floating monument to man’s cupidity, vulgarity, and stupidity? Is not this palace of crass concupiscence richly deserving of destruction?”

  He spread his hands as if the answer was obvious.

  Constance looked at him in confusion. What he was saying did strike her as true. She had been repulsed by the bourgeois airs and pork-belly gentility of most of the passengers she’d met. And she was shocked and outraged by the brutal working and living conditions of the crew. Some of the things Pendergast was saying rang an uncomfortable chord in her, arousing and reinforcing her own long-held misanthropic impulses.

  “No, Constance,” Pendergast went on. “The only two people worth saving are ourselves.”

  She shook her head. “You’re referring to the passengers. What about the crew and staff? They’re just trying to make a living. Do they deserve to die?”

  Pendergast waved his hand. “And they, for their part, are expendable drones, part of the great sea of working-class humanity that comes and goes from the shores of the world like the tide on the beach, leaving no mark.”

  “You can’t mean that. Humanity is everything to you. You’ve spent your whole life trying to save the lives of others.”

  “Then I’ve wasted my life on a useless, even frivolous, endeavor. The one thing my brother Diogenes and I always agreed on was there could be no more odious a discipline than anthropology: imagine, devoting one’s life to the study of one’s fellow man.” He picked up Brock’s monograph from the table, flipped through it, handed it to Constance. “Look at this.”

  Constance glanced at the open page. It contained a black-and-white reproduction of an oil painting: a young, ravishing angel bending over a perplexed-looking man, guiding his hand over a manuscript page.

  “Saint Matthew and the Angel,” he said. “Do you know it?”

  She glanced at him, puzzled. “Yes.”

  “Then you know there were few images on this earth more sublime. Or more beautiful. Look at the expression of intense effort on Matthew’s face—as if every word of the Gospel he’s writing was struggling up from the very fiber of his being. And compare it to the languid approach of the angel assisting him—the way the head lolls; the half-naïve, half-coy posturing of the legs; the almost scandalously sensual face. Look at the way Matthew’s dusty left foot kicks out at us, almost breaking the plane of the painting. No wonder the patron refused it! But if the angel seems effeminate, we only need to glimpse the power, the glory in those magnificent wings, to remind us that we are in the presence of the divine.” He paused a moment. “Do you know, Constance, why—of all the reproductions in this monograph—this one is in black and white?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Because no color photograph of it exists. The painting was destroyed. Yes—this magnificent expression of creative genius was bombed into oblivion during World War II. Now, tell me: if I had to choose between this painting or the lives of a million useless, ignorant, ephemeral people—the humanity you say is so important to me—which do you think I’d choose to perish in that conflagration?” He pushed the image toward her.

  Constance stared at him in horror. “How can you say such a vile thing? And what gives you the right to say it? What makes you so different?”

  “My dear Constance! Don’t think for a minute that I believe I’m better than the rest of the horde. I’m as guilty of the fundamental flaws of bestial man as anyone. And one of those flaws is self-interest. I am worth saving because I wish my life to continue—and I’m in a position to do something about it. This is not just the thin end of the wedge anymore: we are sailing toward catastrophe at flank speed. And on a practical level, how could I possibly save this ship? As in any catastrophe, it’s every man for himself.”

  “Do you really think you could live with yourself if you abandoned all these people to their fate?”

  “Of course I could. And so could you.”

  Constance hesitated. “I’m not so sure,” she murmured. Deep down, a part of her found something deeply seductive in his words—and that is what disturbed her most of all.

  “These people mean nothing to us. They are like the dead you read about in the newspapers. We will simply leave this floating Gomorrah and return to New York. We shall lose ourselves in intellectual pastimes, philosophy, poetry, discourse: 891 Riverside is exceedingly well furnished as a place of retirement, reflection, and seclusion.” He paused. “And was this not the way of your own first guardian, my distant relation, Enoch Leng? His crimes were far more heinous than our little moment of self-interest. And yet he managed to devote himself to a life of physical comfort and intellectual satisfaction. A long, long life. You know this to be true, Constance: you were there with him, all along.” And he nodded again, as if this were the killing stroke of his argument.

  “It’s true. I was there. I was there to see the pangs of conscience slowly eat through his peace of mind like worms through rotten wood. In the end there was so little left of a brilliant man it was almost a blessing when . . .” She could say no more. But her mind was made up now: she knew she could not be persuaded by Pendergast’s nihilistic message. “Aloysius, I don’t care what you say. This is horribly wrong. You’ve always helped others. You’ve devoted your entire career to it.”

  “Precisely! And to what advantage? What has it ever profited me other than frustration, regret, alienation, mortification, pain, and reprimand? If I were to leave the FBI, do you think my absence would be mourned? Thanks in part to my own incompetence, my only friend in the Bureau died a most unpleasant death. No, Constance: I have at last learned a bitter truth. All this time, I’ve been laboring pointlessly—the fruitless labor of Sisyphus—trying to save that which, ultimately, is unsalvageable.” With that he eased himself down again in the leather armchair and picked up his teacup.

  Constance looked at him in horror. “This isn’t the Aloysius Pendergast I know. You’ve changed. Ever since you came back from Blackburn’s stateroom, you’ve been acting strangely.”

  Pendergast took another sip of tea, sniffed dismissively. “I’ll tell you what happened. The scales finally fell from my eyes.” Carefully, he placed the teacup back on the table and sat forward. “It showed me the truth.”

  “It?”

  “The Agozyen. It’s a truly remarkable object, Constance, a mandala that allows you to see through to the real truth at the center of the world: the pure, unadulterated truth. A truth so powerful that it would break a weak mind. But for those of us with strong intellects, it is a revelation. I know myself now: who I am, and—most importantly—what I want.”

  “Don’t you remember what the monks said? The Agozyen is evil, a dark instrument of vengeance, whose purpose is to cleanse the world.”

  “Yes. A somewhat ambiguous choice of words, isn’t it? Cleanse the world. I, of course, will not put it to such purpose. Rather, I will install it in the library of our Riverside Drive mansion, where I can spend a lifetime contemplating its wonders.” Pendergast sat back and picked up his teacup again. “The Agozyen will thus accompany me into the flotation device. As will you—assuming you find my plan to be a palatable one.”

  Constance swallowed. She did not reply.

  “Time is growing short. The time has come for you to make your decision, Constance—are you with me . . . or against me?”

  And as he took another sip, his pale cat’s eyes regarded her calmly over the rim of the teacup.

  59

  LESEUR HAD DECIDED THAT THE BEST WAY WAS TO GO ALONE.

  Now he paused before the plain metal door to Commodore Cutter’s quarters, tryin
g to calm his facial muscles and regulate his breathing. Once he felt as composed as possible, he stepped forward and knocked softly, two quick taps.

  The door opened so quickly that LeSeur almost jumped. He was even more startled to see the commodore in civilian dress, wearing a gray suit and tie. The ex-master stood in the doorway, his cold stare affixed somewhere above and between LeSeur’s eyes, his small body projecting a granitelike solidity.

  “Commodore Cutter,” LeSeur began, “I’ve come in my authority as acting captain of the ship to . . . ask for your assistance.”

  Cutter continued to stare, the pressure of his gaze like a finger pushing on the middle of LeSeur’s forehead.

  “May I come in?”

  “If you wish.” Cutter stepped back. The quarters, which LeSeur had not seen before, were predictably spartan—functional, neat, and impersonal. There were no family pictures, no naval or nautical knick-knacks, none of the masculine accessories you normally saw in a captain’s quarters such as a cigar humidor, bar, or red leather armchairs.

  Cutter did not invite LeSeur to sit down and remained standing himself.

  “Commodore,” LeSeur began again slowly, “how much do you know about the situation the ship is in now?”

  “I know only what I’ve heard on the PA,” said Cutter. “Nobody has visited me. Nobody has bothered to speak to me.”

  “Then you don’t know that Captain Mason seized the bridge, took over the ship, increased speed to flank, and is intent on driving the Britannia onto the Carrion Rocks?”