Текст книги "Plague Ship"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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He did add, “Of course, we will keep up the search.”

“Of course,” Cooper said.

Kovac turned his full attention to Cooper. “Sir, may I tell you what a privilege it has been to work for you for the past few years? Your teachings have fundamentally changed my life in ways I never knew existed.

It would be my greatest honor if I could shake your hand.”

“Thank you, Zelimir, but, alas, I cannot. Despite my youthful appearance, I am almost eighty-three years old. When I was still doing genetic research, I developed an antirejection drug tailor-made to my DNA so I have been able to receive a new heart, lungs, kidneys, and eyes from enterprising sources, and cosmetic surgery keeps me looking younger than I should. I have artificial hips, knees, and discs in my back. I eat a balanced diet, drink only occasionally, and have never smoked. I expect I should be able to enjoy a full and vigorous life well past one hundred and twenty years old.” He held up his gloved hands.

The fingers were bent and twisted like the limbs of an ancient tree. “However, arthritis runs in my family, and I have been unable to arrest its crippling effects. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to shake your hand in recognition of your kind words and excellent service, but I am simply unable.”

“I understand.” Kovac saw no irony in a man espousing a smaller world population while artificially lengthening his own life span.

“And, don’t worry,” Cooper added, “there isn’t much that Kyle Hanley could have deduced during his brief stay on Greece. And even if his father gets that information to the proper authorities, there isn’t time for them to react. Interrogating the father is just a minor detail, the mere tying of a loose thread, as it were. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

“Yes, sir,” Kovac said automatically.

“On to other business,” Severance said. “We are pushing up our timetable.”

“Because of Kyle Hanley’s rescue?”

“Partially. And Gil Martell’s, er, suicide. We had no trouble from the local Greek authorities, but the government in Athens has started showing an interest in our affairs. Lydell and I thought it best if we sent out the trainees now. There is nothing more that they need to know, so there really isn’t any reason to delay. Naturally, we paid a premium for the tickets on such short notice.” Severance gave a wry chuckle,

“Of course, we can afford it.”

“You’re sending out all fifty teams?”

“Yes. Well, forty-nine. There’s already a team on the Golden Skyfor the final test of the transmitter. So fifty teams and fifty cruise ships. It will take three or four days to get everyone in position. Some of the ships are at sea while others are on the other side of the globe. Our people will carry the virus that Lydell perfected and we manufactured in the Philippines. How long will it take to initialize a test?” Kovac thought for a moment. “Perhaps by this afternoon. We need to run up the other engines to fully charge the batteries, as well as stabilize power distribution in order to protect the antenna.”

“The test virus we gave the people on the Golden Skyis a simple, fast-acting rhinovirus, so we will know within twelve hours if the receiver got the signal. As long as we send it no later than tonight, we should be fine. Of course, there’s a second team aboard her that is planting our principal virus.”

“This is a great moment, gentlemen,” Lydell Cooper said. “The culmination of everything I have worked for. Soon, there will be a new beginning, a fresh dawn, where humanity will shine like it was meant to.

Gone will be the burdensome multitudes that tax our natural resources and return nothing but more mouths to feed. In one generation, with half of the world unable to bear children the population will return to a sustainable level. There will be no more want or need. We will abolish poverty, hunger, even the threat of global warming.

“Politicians all over the world give lip service to these problems by offering short-term plans that make their constituents think something is being done. We know it is all lies. One just has to read a newspaper or watch the news to see that nothing is going to change. In fact, it is getting worse. Struggles for land and water rights are already sparking conflicts. And how many have already died to protect dwindling oil supplies?

“They tell us we can fix everything if humans changed their habits—drove less, bought smaller houses, used different light-bulbs. What a joke. No one is willing to take a step back from their luxuries. It goes against our deepest instincts. No, the solution isn’t to call for minor sacrifices that in reality don’t address the crux of the problem. The answer is to change the playing field. Rather than have more and more vying for less and less, just reduce the population.

“They all know this is the only way, only they don’t have the courage to say it, so the world spins closer and closer to chaos. As I have written, we are breeding ourselves to death. The desire for offspring is perhaps the strongest force in the universe. It cannot be denied. But nature has natural mechanisms to regulate it. There are predators to cull the population of prey animals, forest fires to renew the soil, and cycles of flood and drought. But man, with his large brain, has continuously found ways to sidestep nature’s efforts to contain him. We killed off any animal that sees us as prey so that there are only a handful left in nature and the rest are caged in zoos. That left the lowly microbe to thin our ranks with disease, so we created vaccines and immunizations, all the while breeding as if we still expected to lose two out of every three children before their first birthday.

“Only one country has had the courage to admit their numbers were growing too fast, but even they failed to slow population growth. China tried to legislate population with its one-child policy, and there are two hundred million more of them now than there were twenty-five years ago. If one of the most dictatorial countries in the world can’t stop it, no one can.

“People simply can’t change, not in any fundamental way. That’s why it is up to us. Of course, we are not madmen. I could have engineered our virus to kill indiscriminately, but I would never consider the outright murder of billions of people. So what was the solution? The original hemorrhagic influenza virus I started with had the side effect of leaving its victims barren but also had a mortality rate near fifty percent.

After I gave up medical research, I worked with the virus over tens of thousands of generations and mutations, coaxing out its lethality while maintaining the one trait I desired. When we release it on those fifty ships, it will infect nearly one hundred thousand people. It sounds like a large number, but it is just a drop in the bucket. The passengers and crews aboard the ships come from every part of the world and from every socioeconomic background. On a cruise ship, one finds a microcosm of society, from the titan of industry to the lowly deckhand. I wanted to be entirely democratic. No one will be spared. When they return to their suburban homes in Michigan, their villages in Eastern Europe, or their slums in Bangladesh, they will carry the virus with them.

“It will remain symptomless within its host for months, as it is spread from person to person. And then the first sign of infection will come. It will seem like every person in the world has come down with mild influenza and a high fever. The mortality rate should be less than one percent, a tragic but unavoidable cost to those with weakened immune systems. Only later, when people seek out answers to why they aren’t having children, will they learn that one half of the world’s population has become barren.

“When that harsh reality strikes, there will be rioting, as frightened people seek answers to the questions their leaders had been afraid to ask. But it should be brief—weeks or months at most. And the world economy will stutter as we adjust, but adjust we will, because that is humanity’s other great driving force: its ability to adapt. And then, oh my friends, then we will have solved all those problems, cured all those ills, and ushered in a period of prosperity the likes of which the world has never known.” A tear ran unabashedly down Zelimir Kovac’s cheek, and he made no move to wipe it away. Thom Severance, who had known Cooper for all of his adult life and had heard him speak a thousand times, was equally moved.

CHAPTER 26

“THOSE TWO THERE,” LINDA ROSS SAID AND POINTED.

Mark Murphy followed the line of her arm and spotted the couple immediately. While many of the passengers streaming off the Golden Skywere elderly, or at least middle-aged, she had spotted a man and woman in their thirties. Each held a hand of a little girl, about eight years old, wearing a pink dress and Mary Janes.

“Candy from a baby,” Mark said when he saw the woman hand her credit card-sized ship ID to her husband. He slipped it into his wallet and returned his wallet to his front pocket.

Behind the army of disembarking passengers, eager to tour Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and get fleeced at the bazaar, the Golden Skylooked eerily like her sister ship. Chilling memories rushed in on Mark every time he glanced up at her. He hadn’t thought through his emotions very carefully when he’d volunteered for the mission and wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of boarding her.

“They’re heading for the buses.” Linda nodded to where the young family was veering toward the curb, where a dozen chartered buses idled. Passengers were showing attendants their day passes to board.

“Do it now or follow them downtown?”

“No time like the present. Let’s do it.”

They waited for the three to get ahead of them before easing into the crowd. They moved effortlessly through the mostly slow-walking people until their target was just ahead of them, and had no idea they were being tracked.

“Hurry!” Linda suddenly called out. “I think our bus is going to leave.” Mark quickened his pace and brushed against the man as he passed. The man immediately felt for his wallet. Keeping it in his front pocket and feeling for it when someone accidentally brushed into him showed the hallmark of a seasoned traveler. In most instances, this security practice would have been sufficient. But as they had planned, when Linda breezed by him the passenger felt secure that the Americans rushing by weren’t a threat and he didn’t check his pocket a second time.

He hadn’t felt Linda’s small hand reach into his khakis and pull his wallet free.

An amateur would have veered away from the mark as soon as the pocket had been picked, but Linda and Murph continued their ruse of being hurried passengers and strode for the buses. They loitered near one of them until the young family had showed their passes to an attendant on another bus and climbed aboard. Only then did Linda and Murph break from the crowd and head back to where they had parked their rental car.

With Linda standing next to the open back door to shield the interior from curious passersby, Mark worked on one of the laminated identification cards with a kit especially packed back on the Oregon. He used a scalpel to remove the transparent plastic and cut away the photograph. He then inserted an appropriate-sized picture of Linda from the stash he’d brought and ran the card through a battery-powered laminator. He spent a moment smoothing it out and trimming away excess plastic.

“There you go, Mrs. Susan Dudley,” he said, showing Linda the still-warm card.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” Linda remarked.

“I was fifteen when I arrived at MIT, so you can best believe I know all about making fake IDs.” There was a hint of something wan in his voice that Linda noticed. She said, “It must have been rough.” Mark paused from his work and looked up at her. “You can imagine that place was loaded with uber

–geeks, but I was a stand-out. Briefcase, tie, pocket protector, the whole enchilada. The school administration assured my parents they had counselors for accelerated students to make the transition easier. What a crock. I was on my own in the most competitive environment in the world. It only got worse when I went into the private sector. That’s why I joined Juan and the Corporation.”

“Not for the money, huh?” Linda teased.

“I’m not bragging or anything, but I took a serious pay cut when I joined up. It was worth it, you know.

You guys treat me like an equal. When I was designing weapons systems, these macho generals would strut around, looking at us like we were insects or something they had to scrape off the bottom of their shoe. Sure, they liked the toys we gave them, but they detested us for being able to deliver. It was like high school all over again, in the cafeteria, with the military guys sitting by themselves like a bunch of jocks and the rest of us hanging around the fringe, hoping to get noticed. Kinda pathetic, really.

“That doesn’t happen on the Oregon. We’re all on the same team. You and Linc and Juan don’t make Eric and me feel like outsiders even though we push it a little with the whole nerd thing. And for the first time in my life, I don’t feel I have to search for an empty table when I go into the mess hall.” He seemed to look as though he’d said too much, so he threw her a grin and said, “I hope you don’t charge for geekotherapy.”

“You can buy me a drink tonight on board.”

Mark looked startled, and then a knowing smirk raised his lip. “We’re not getting off the Golden Skyuntil we find something, are we?”

She pressed a hand to her breast in a shocked gesture. “Are you actually accusing me of disobeying Eddie’s direct order?”

“Yup.”

“Surprised?”

“Nope.”

“Still game?”

“I’m fixing the second ID, aren’t I?”

“Good man.”

Mark fed the two cards into an electronic device attached to a laptop computer and recoded the embedded magnetic strips. Ten minutes later, he and Linda stood at the bottom of the Golden Sky’s gangplank. Nearby, a forklift was loading pallets onto the ship through a large hatch while gulls wheeled and squawked above the vessel like warplanes in a dogfight.

“Is everything all right, Mr. Dudley?” the assistant purser manning the gangplank asked when they said they wanted to return to their cabin.

“Just my knee,” Mark said. “I blew my ACL playing college football, and it flares up every once in a while.”

“As you know, we have a doctor aboard who can look at it for you.” The purser swiped the two cards through an electronic monitor. “That’s odd.”

“Problem?”

“No, well, yes. When I swiped your cards, my computer crashed.” As part of any major cruise line’s security, the electronic ID card brought up a file on the computer that had a picture of the bearer as well as information about his or her itinerary. Mark had recoded the stolen cards so that nothing would show on the screen. The purser would either have to trust that the two people standing before him were who they said they were or delay them while someone fixed the computer. With customer service being so important, it was unlikely he would inconvenience passengers over a simple glitch.

The purser ran his own employee identification through the scanner, and when his picture popped up on his screen he handed the two IDs back to Murph. “Your cards don’t work anymore. When you get back to your cabin, ring the purser’s office and they will arrange replacements.”

“Will do. Thanks.” Mark took the IDs and shoved them in his pocket. Arm in arm, he and Linda climbed the ramp, with Murph playing up a limp.

“College football?” she questioned when they were out of earshot.

Mark patted his less-than-taut belly. “So I’ve let myself go to seed.” They entered the ship on the main atrium level. The ceiling lofted four stories and was crowned with a stained-glass dome. A pair of glass elevators gave access to the upper levels, and each deck was fringed by safety-glass panels capped by gleaming brass rails. A rose marble wall with water sheeting down its face and collecting in a discreet fountain was opposite the elevators. From their vantage, they could see signs for small luxury stores one deck up and a neon fixture lighting the way to the casino. The overall effect was opulence bordering on tacky.

They had discussed their plan while still on the Oregon, and both had studied the layout of the ship from the cruise line’s website, so there was no need to talk now. They went straight for the public restrooms behind the fountain. Linda handed Mark a bundle of clothing from her utilitarian shoulder bag. Moments later, they reemerged dressed in workers’ overalls with the cruise line’s logo stitched in gold thread over their hearts, thanks to Kevin Nixon’s Magic Shop. Linda had scrubbed off most of her makeup, and Mark had tamed his unruly hair with a cruise-line baseball cap. The maintenance-crew uniforms gave them the virtual run of the ship.

“Where do we meet if we get separated?” Linda asked as they started walking.

“The craps table?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“Library.”

“Library,” she parroted. “All right, let’s go play Nancy Drew.”

“Hardy Boys.”

“It’s my operation, so it’s my call. You can be my sidekick, George Fayne.” To Linda’s surprise, Mark asked, “Not Ned Nickerson?” It was the name of Nancy’s boyfriend.

“Not in your wildest dreams, and someday we need to talk about your adolescent reading habits. Or maybe we shouldn’t.”

The easiest way to leave the ship’s public accommodations was through the galley, so they climbed a flight of nearby stairs and found the main dining room. Large enough to seat three hundred people, the room was empty except for a housecleaning crew vacuuming the carpet.

They weaved purposefully through the tables toward the back and entered the kitchen. A chef looked up from his cooking but said nothing as the duo strode in. Linda glanced away. Unlike the dining room, the galley was loaded with staff preparing the next meal. Aromatic steam rose from bubbling pots as assistant chefs cleaned, chopped, and sliced away in a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation.

There was a door at the rear of the kitchen that led to a brightly lit hallway. They found a staircase and descended, passing a bevy of waitresses heading up for their shift. They encountered several more people, but no one paid them the slightest attention. As janitors, they were practically invisible.

Mark spotted a folding ladder leaning against a bulkhead and grabbed it to further their disguise.

With the Golden Skytied to the dock and most passengers ashore, she was drawing minimal power, and, as a result, her engineering spaces were deserted. Linda and Mark spent the next several hours crawling over every pipe, conduit, and duct, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Unlike Juan’s time on the Sky’s ill-fated sister ship, their search was unhurried and methodical, but, in the end, the results were essentially the same.

“Nothing,” Mark said, the frustration in his voice coming from his anger at himself for not figuring it out.

“Not one damned thing that shouldn’t be here. Nothing attached to the ventilation system or the water supply.”

“Those are the most efficient ways of spreading a virus, sure.” Linda used a ball of cotton waste to wipe grease off her hands. “What else is there?”

“Short of walking around and spritzing every surface on the ship with an atomizer, I can’t think of anything. If we’ve had this much time down here by ourselves, the Responsivists probably did, too.” He pointed overhead, where ducts as big as barrels were anchored to the ceiling. “In two hours, I could take apart a section of that and set up my dispersal system inside.” Linda shook her head. “The risk of being caught is too great. It has to be something much simpler and quicker.”

“I know, I know, I know.” Mark rubbed his temples, where the beginnings of a headache was pressing in on his brain. “I remember Juan on the Golden Dawnsaying he wanted a look at the main intakes for the air-conditioning system. That might be something to check.”

“Where would they be?”

“Topside. On the front of the funnel, most likely.”

“That’s pretty exposed.”

“We should wait until tonight.”

“Then let’s head back to the public areas and change.” Meandering their way out of the labyrinthine engine room, they finally came out into a corridor filled with people. Guest-service workers in various uniforms were gearing up for the passengers’ return, and engineers were making their way to the engine room in preparation for leaving Istanbul.

A chance glimpse through a doorway near the laundry suddenly brought Linda up short. A man in his thirties, wearing a uniform much like the one she had on, was standing just outside the laundry. It wasn’t the man or even his casual stance that caught her eye. It was the way he looked away when their eyes met. She recognized the same furtive glance she herself had given the first chef she’d seen in the galley. It was the look of someone who was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

He turned away slightly but then peeked back over his shoulder. As soon as he saw Linda still studying him, he took off running in the opposite direction.

“Hey!” Linda shouted. “Stop!”

She started after him, with Mark a pace or two behind.

“No,” Linda said sharply. “Check if there are any more of them down there.” Mark turned and ran back, leaving Linda in sole pursuit.

The runner had a twenty-foot head start and six-inch-longer legs. The advantages seemed to do him no good because Linda’s determination to catch him was simply greater than his body’s ability to get away.

She quickly cut down his lead, running around corners without a check in her pace, springing as lightly as a gazelle but with the ferocity of a hunting cheetah.

He gained some distance when they climbed a flight of stairs. He was able to take the steps three at a time to Linda’s two. They raced past startled workers. Linda wished more than anything that she could call out for help, but that would leave her explaining her illegal presence on the ship.

The man flashed through a doorway, and when Linda reached it a moment later she scraped her arm cutting it so close.

She never saw the fist. He coldcocked her right on the point of her chin. Even though the man was no trained fighter, the blow was enough to snap Linda’s head back and slam her into a wall. He stood over her for a second before running, leaving Linda struggling to clear her mind.

Before she was certain she was up to it, she was on her feet and after him again, swaying dizzily with each pace.

“Hit a girl, will you,” she grunted.

They broke out onto Broadway, the long central corridor that ran nearly the length of the ship and was used by the crew to get from their cabins to their duty areas. Some artistic crew member had even made up theater-style marquees like those along the famed New York street the hallway took its name from.

“Coming through. Emergency.”

Linda could hear the man calling out, as they dashed through the congestion of workers either heading to their posts or hanging out and socializing. He moved through the crowd like a snake, weaving around people and gaining precious ground, while Linda felt like her head was going to explode from the growing ball of cotton that had been her brain.

He twisted through another door and started climbing more stairs. Linda pounded open the door five seconds after him. She used the handrail to launch herself up each flight of steps, throwing her body around the corners because she knew that they were fast approaching the passengers’ accommodations area. If the guy was smart, and if he knew the ship, they could emerge close to his cabin. If Linda didn’t see which one, she’d never be able to find him again.

He burst through the door at the top of the stairs, bowling over an elderly woman and knocking her husband out of his wheelchair. He lost precious seconds disentangling himself from the couple. Linda flew through the door before the automatic mechanism could close it. She gave a savage grin. They’d emerged on the upper level near the atrium.

The man looked back to see Linda only a few paces behind. He quickened his stride, running for the elegant stairs that curled around the twin glass elevators. There was very little for passengers on the top level of the atrium. The shops were one level down, and the lower levels would certainly be more crowded. Linda had seen guards outside the ship’s exclusive jewelry store earlier, and she couldn’t gamble being stopped by security.

They were almost to the stairs when she leapt, her arms outstretched. Her fingers caught on the cuffs of the man’s jumpsuit, which was enough to trip him up. They had been running flat out, so his momentum propelled him headfirst into the glass-panel railing. The panel was designed for just such an impact, but a weld that held a bracket in place popped and the entire panel broke free. It tumbled four stories before hitting the floor in a tremendous explosion of flying fragments. Startled screams filled the atrium.

Linda had lost her grip as soon as she made contact and sprawled on her chest, sliding on the slick floor after the Responsivist. He managed to grab on to a brass banister as he tumbled over the edge and, for a moment, he looked up at her as she tried to reach his hand. She imagined the look in his eye was that of a suicide bomber the instant before detonation—resignation, fear, pride, and, most of all, defiant rage.

He let go before she could clutch his wrist and didn’t turn from her gaze as he plummeted. He dropped the forty feet, flattening himself out so he hit the tile floor on his back, his head turning to the side at the last second. The sound was a wet slap, and slivers of shattered bone burst through his clothes in a dozen bloody patches. Even from this height, Linda could tell his skull had lost half its width.

Giving herself no time to digest the horror, she sprang to her feet. The elderly couple was still struggling to get the old man back in his wheelchair and hadn’t seen a thing. She moved behind an enormous potted palm and stripped off the overalls and stuffed them into her bag. There was nothing she could do about the damp stains under the arms of her blouse.

The library was well forward, near the ship’s movie theater, but Linda turned aft. There was a bar that overlooked the pool near the stern, and she knew that if she didn’t get a brandy in the next two minutes her breakfast was going to make an encore appearance.

She was still sitting there an hour later when a Turkish ambulance pulled away from the ship, its lights off and siren silent. Moments later, the ship’s horn gave a trumpeting blast. The Golden Skywas finally leaving port.

CHAPTER 27

EVERY TIME JUAN BLINKED, IT FELT LIKE HE WAS scraping his eyes with sandpaper. He’d had so much coffee it had soured in his stomach, and the painkillers he’d swallowed hadn’t made a dent in his headache. Without looking in a mirror, he knew he had a deathly pallor, like his body had been drained of blood. Running a hand over his head, even his hair hurt, if such a thing was possible.

Rather than refresh him as it usually does, the wind streaming past the windscreen of the water taxi made him shiver despite the balmy temperatures. Next to him on the rear bench, Franklin Lincoln sprawled in a relaxed pose. His mouth was slack, and an occasional snore rose above the engine’s rumble. The lithesome driver who’d brought them into Monte Carlo from the Oregonforty-eight hours earlier had the day off, and Linc had no interest in her substitute.

Anger was the only thing keeping Juan going now, anger at Linda and Mark for disobeying Eddie’s order to disembark the Golden Skybefore she left Istanbul. The pair of stowaways was continuing to search for evidence of the Responsivists’ plan to hit the ship with their toxin.

Cabrillo was going to throw them in the brig when he saw them again and then give them raises for their dedication. He was fiercely proud of the team he’d assembled, and never more so than now.

His thoughts returned to Max Hanley and Cabrillo’s mood became more foul. There still hadn’t been any reply from Thom Severance, and every minute that ticked by made Juan think there never would be, because Max was already dead. Juan wouldn’t let himself say that aloud and felt guilty even thinking it, but he couldn’t shake the pessimism.

With Ivan Kerikov’s megayacht Matryoshkareturned to the inner harbor, the Oregonlay at anchor a mile off shore once again. When he studied his ship, Juan could sometimes glimpse what a beauty she must have been in her prime. She was well-proportioned, with just a hint of rake at bow and stern, and her forest of derricks gave her a look of commerce and prosperity. He could imagine her with fresh paint and her decks cleared of debris, facing a backing sea off the Pacific Northwest, where she’d had a career as a lumber hauler.

But as they now approached, all he saw was the rust-streaked hull, the patchwork paint, and the sagging cables draped across her cranes like disintegrating spiderwebs. She looked forlorn and haunted, and nothing shone on her, not even the propeller of the lifeboat hanging off its amidships davit.

The sleek taxi nosed under the boarding stairs, the waters so calm and the driver so deft at the controls that she didn’t bother setting out rubber fenders.

Juan tapped Linc’s ankle with his foot and the big man grunted awake. “You’d better hope I return to the same spot in the dream I was just having,” he said, and yawned broadly. “Things were just getting interesting with Angelina Jolie and me.”

Juan offered a hand to lift him to his feet. “I’m so damned tired I don’t think I’ll ever have a carnal thought again.”

They each hefted their bags, thanked the young woman who’d piloted them out, and stepped onto the boarding ladder. By the time they reached the top, Juan felt like he’d just scaled Everest.

Dr. Huxley was there to greet them, along with Eddie Seng and Eric Stone. She was beaming at Juan with a high-wattage smile and nearly hopping from foot to foot. Eddie and Stoney were smiling, too. For an instant, he thought they had news about Max, but they would have told them when he’d called from the airport following the flight from Manila.