Текст книги "The Wheel of Darkness"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“I’m afraid that would do no good, sir,” said the guard.

“Well then, the staff captain it is.”

They did not seat themselves. A moment later a woman appeared in the door, in an immaculate uniform, her hair tucked under her hat. As soon as he was over his surprise at seeing a woman, Bruce was immediately impressed by her calm, serious demeanor.

“Please sit down,” she said, taking as a matter of course the seat at the head of the table—another small detail that did not escape Bruce’s approval.

The banker got to the point immediately. “Captain Mason, we are clients of and representatives from one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom—a fact I mention only to impress on you our bona fides. I myself am ex–Royal Navy, former captain, HMM Sussex. We are here because we feel the ship is facing an emergency that may be beyond the ability of the crew to contain.”

Mason listened.

“There is great anxiety among the passengers. As you probably know, some people have begun locking themselves in their rooms. There’s talk of a Jack the Ripper–style killer aboard.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“The crew, in case you haven’t noticed, is spooked as well,” Emily Dahlberg interjected.

“Again, we’re aware of these problems and are taking steps to handle the situation.”

“Is that so?” asked Bruce. “Well, then, Captain Mason, may I ask where the ship’s security is? So far, they’ve been practically invisible.”

Mason paused, looking at each of them in turn. “I’m going to be straight with you. The reason you see so little security is that there isvery little security—at least, relative to the size of the Britannia. We’re doing all we can, but this is a very, very large ship and there are four thousand three hundred people on board. All our security staff are working around the clock.”

“You say you’re doing all you can, but then why hasn’t the ship turned around? We see absolutely no choice but to head back to port as quickly as possible.”

At this, Captain Mason looked troubled. “The closest port is St. John’s, Newfoundland, so if we were to divert, that’s where we’d go. However, we’re not going to divert. We’re continuing to New York.”

Bruce was aghast. “Why?”

“These were the commodore’s orders. He has his . . . well-considered reasons.”

“Which are?”

“Right now we’re skirting the edge of a large nor’easter sitting on the Grand Banks. Diverting to St. John’s will take us into its heart. Secondly, diverting to St. John’s will also take us straight across the Labrador Current during the July iceberg season, which, while not dangerous, will require us to slow our speed. Finally, the diversion will only save us a single day. The commodore feels that docking in New York City would be more appropriate, given—well, given the law enforcement resources we may require.”

“There’s a maniac on board,” said Emily Dahlberg. “Another person could be murdered in that ‘single day.’ ”

“Nevertheless, those are the commodore’s orders.” Bruce stood. “Then we insist on speaking directly with him.”

Captain Mason also stood, and as she did so the mask of professionalism slipped away for a moment and Bruce glimpsed a face that was drawn, weary, and unhappy. “The commodore can’t be disturbed right now. I’m very sorry.”

Bruce glared back at her. “We’re sorry, too. You can be assured that this refusal of the commodore to meet with us will not be without repercussions. Now

and

later. We are not people to be trifled with.”

Mason extended her hand. “I’m not unsympathetic to your point of view, Mr. Bruce, and I’ll do all I can to convey to the commodore what you’ve said. But this is a ship at sea, we have a ship’s master, and that master has made his decision. As a former captain yourself you’ll surely understand what that means.”

Bruce ignored the hand. “You’re forgetting something. We’re not only your passengers—and your customers—but we’re your responsibility as well. Something can be done, and we plan to do it.” And, motioning his group to follow, he turned on his heel and left the room.

36

PAUL BITTERMAN STEPPED OUT OF THE ELEVATOR, SWAYED, AND steadied himself on the polished chrome railing. The Britanniawas in heavy swell, but that was only part of the problem; Bitterman was struggling with the combination of an exceedingly heavy dinner and nine glasses of vintage champagne.

Still gripping the railing, he looked up and down the elegant Deck 9 corridor, blinking, trying to orient himself. Raising a hand to his lips, he eased up a belch that tasted—revoltingly—of caviar, truffled pâté, crème brulée, and dry champagne. He scratched himself idly. Something didn’t look right here.

After a minute or so, he figured it out. Instead of taking the port elevator, as he usually did, in the champagne fog he had somehow taken the starboard, and it had gotten him turned around. Well, it was easily fixed. Humming tunelessly, he fumbled in his pocket for the passcard to suite 961. Letting go of the railing, he struck out a little gingerly in what he thought was the right direction, only to find the room numbers moving in the wrong direction.

He stopped; turned around; belched again without bothering to raise a covering hand this time; then headed back the other way. His head really was remarkably fuzzy, and to clear it he tried to reconstruct the series of events that had brought him—for the first time in his fifty-three years—to a state approaching intoxication.

It had all started earlier that afternoon. He had been seasick ever since waking up—hadn’t been able to eat a bite—and none of the over-the-counter medicines offered in the ship’s pharmacy seemed to help in the least. Finally, he’d gone to the ship’s infirmary, where a doctor had prescribed a scopolamine patch. Placing it behind one ear, as directed, he’d gone back to his stateroom for a nap.

Whether it was the miserable night he’d passed, or whether the patch itself had made him drowsy, Paul Bitterman didn’t know. But he had awoken at nine-fifteen in the evening, blessedly free of seasickness and possessed of both a dry mouth and a superhuman hunger. He had slept right through his normal eight o’clock dinner, but a quick call to the concierge had secured a reservation at the final seating for the night—at ten-thirty—in Kensington Gardens.

As it turned out, Kensington Gardens appealed greatly to Bitterman. It was more trendy, youthful, and hip than the rather stuffy restaurant he’d been eating in, there were some truly delicious women to look at, and the food was excellent. Surprisingly, the restaurant wasn’t full—in fact, it was almost half empty. Ravenous, he proceeded to order chateaubriand for two and then consume the entire portion. An entire bottle of champagne had been insufficient to slake his thirst, but the attentive wine steward had been only too happy to supply him with a second.

There had been some strange talk at the table next to him: a worried– looking couple, discussing some corpse that had apparently turned up. It seemed he might have slept through some serious event. As he made his slow and careful way down the Deck 9 corridor, he decided the first order of business tomorrow would be to get to the bottom of it.

But there was another problem. The room numbers were now headed in the right direction—954, 956—but they were all even numbers.

He paused, gripping the hallway railing again, trying to think. He’d never find 961 at this rate. Then he laughed out loud. Paul, old buddy, you’re not using your noodle. He had come out on the starboard side, and the odd-numbered staterooms, like his, were all on the port side. How could he have forgotten? He’d need to find a transverse corridor. He set out again, weaving ever so slightly, the fog in his brain offset by a delightful floating sensation in his limbs. He decided that, deacon or not, he’d have to drink champagne more often. Domestic stuff, of course—he’d won this trip in the YMCA raffle and could never afford bottles of vintage French on his teacher’s salary.

Ahead and to the left he could see a break in the line of doors: the entrance to one of the midships lobbies. This would lead to the port corridor and his suite. He stumbled through the door.

The lobby consisted of a brace of elevators opposite a cozy lounge with oak bookcases and wing chairs. At this late hour, the place was deserted. Bitterman hesitated, sniffing. There was a smell in the air here—a smell like smoke. For a moment, his sense of lazy euphoria receded: he’d attended enough safety drills to know that fire was a ship’s worst danger. But this scent was unusual. It was like incense, or, more precisely, the joss sticks he had once smelled in a Nepalese restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

More slowly now, he walked through the lobby to the port corridor that lay beyond. It was very quiet, and he could both hear and feel the deep thrum of the ship’s diesels far below his feet. The smell was stronger here—much stronger. The strange, musky perfume was combined with other, deeper, far less pleasant scents—moldy fungus, maybe, along with something he couldn’t identify. He paused, frowning. Then, taking one look back at the lobby, he turned into the port corridor.

And stopped abruptly, inebriation vanishing in an instant.

Up ahead lay the source of the odor: a dark cloud of smoke that blocked his path down the corridor. Yet it was like no smoke he had ever seen, strangely opaque, with a dense, dark grayish color and a rib-like outer surface that reminded him—in some bizarre and unpleasant way—of linen.

Paul Bitterman drew in his breath with an audible rasp. Something was wrong here—very wrong.

Smoke was supposed to driftthrough the air, curling, and shifting, attenuating to faint wisps at the edges. But this cloud just sat there, man-sized, strangely malignant, motionless, as if confronting him. It was so regular and even that it looked solid, an organic entity. The reek was so strong he could barely breathe. It was impossible, alien.

He felt his heart suddenly accelerate with fear. Was it his imagination, or did the thick cloud have the formof a man, too? There were tendrils that looked like arms; a barrel-like head with a face, strange legs that were moving, as if dancing . . . Oh, God, it looked not like a man, but a demon. . .

And it was then the thing slowly stretched out its ragged arms and—with a horrible, undulant purpose—began to move slowly toward him.

“No!” he shouted. “NO! Keep away!

Keep away!”

The desperate shouts that followed quickly opened stateroom doors up and down the port-side corridor of Deck 9. There was a brief, electric moment of silence. And then, the sound of gasps; shrieks; the thud of a fainting body collapsing on the carpet; the frantic slamming of doors. Bitterman heard none of it. All his attention, every fiber of his being, was riveted to the monstrous thing that glided closer, ever closer . . .

And then it was past.

37

LESEUR STARED FROM HENTOFF TO KEMPER AND BACK AGAIN. He was already feeling aggrieved that the commodore had shoved this problem onto his plate—he was a ship’s officer, after all, not some casino employee. Not only that, but this problem wouldn’t go away—it just kept getting worse. With at least one murder, and perhaps as many as three, he had more dangerous and alarming things to deal with than this. He shifted his stare from Hentoff to Kemper and back again.

“Let me make sure I’ve gotten this right,” he said. “You’re telling me this Pendergast fellow contrived for the card counters to lose a million pounds at the blackjack tables, in the process raking in almost three hundred thousand for himself.”

Hentoff nodded. “That’s about it, sir.”

“It seems to me that you just got fleeced, Mr. Hentoff.”

“No, sir,” said Hentoff, a frosty note in his voice. “Pendergast had to win in order to make them lose.”

“Explain.”

“Pendergast started off by tracking the shuffle—a technique in which you observe a full shoe of play, memorizing the positions of certain critical cards or groupings, called slugs, and then follow them through the shuffle, visually. He also managed to get a glimpse of the bottom card, and since he was offered the cut, he was able to place that card inside the deck exactly where he wanted it.”

“Doesn’t sound possible.”

“These are well-known, if exceedingly difficult, techniques. This Pendergast seems to have mastered them better than most.”

“That still doesn’t explain why Pendergast needed to win to make them lose.”

“By knowing where certain cards were, and combining that with a counting system, he was able to control the cards going ‘downstream’ to the rest of the players by either jumping into a game or sitting it out—as well as by taking unnecessary hits.”

LeSeur nodded slowly, taking this in.

“He

had

to shortstop the good cards in order to let bad ones go downstream. To make the others lose, he had to win.”

“I get it,” said LeSeur sourly. “And so you want to know what to do about this man’s winnings?”

“That’s right.”

LeSeur thought for a moment. It all came down to how Commodore Cutter would react when he heard about this—which, of course, he would eventually have to. The answer was not good. And when Corporate heard about it, they would be even less sympathetic. One way or another, they had to get the money back.

He sighed. “For the sake of all of our futures with the company, you need to get that money back.”

“How?”

LeSeur turned his weary face away. “Just do it.”

Thirty minutes later, Kemper walked down the plush corridor of Deck 12, Hentoff in tow, feeling a clammy sweat building inside his dark suit. He stopped before the door of the Tudor Suite.

“You sure this is the right time for this?” Hentoff asked. “It’s eleven P.M.”

“I didn’t get the sense LeSeur wanted us to wait,” Kemper replied. “Did you?” Then he turned to the door and knocked.

“Come in,” came a distant voice.

They entered to see Pendergast and the young woman voyaging with him—Constance Greene, his niece or something—in the salon, lights low, sitting around the private dining table with the remains of an elegant repast before them.

“Ah, Mr. Kemper,” said Pendergast, rising and pushing aside his watercress salad. “And Mr. Hentoff. I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?”

“Naturally. Our business is not complete. Please sit down.”

Kemper arranged himself with some awkwardness on the nearby sofa. Hentoff took a chair, looking from Agent Pendergast to Constance Greene and back again, as if trying to sort out their real relationship. “May I offer you a glass of port?” Pendergast asked.

“No, thank you,” said Kemper. An awkward silence developed before he continued: “I wanted to thank you again for taking care of those card counters.”

“You’re most welcome. Are you following my advice about how to keep them from re-winning?”

“We are, thank you.”

“Is it working?”

“Absolutely,” said Hentoff. “Whenever a spotter enters the casino, we send over a cocktail waitress to engage him in trivial conversation—always involving numbers. It’s driving them crazy, but there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“Excellent.” Pendergast turned a quizzical eye on Mr. Kemper. “Was there anything else?”

Kemper rubbed his temple. “Well, there’s the question of . . . the money.”

“Are you referring to

that

money?” And Pendergast nodded to the bureau, where Kemper noticed, for the first time, a stack of fat envelopes wrapped in thick rubber bands.

“If those are your casino winnings, yes.”

“And there’s a

question

about the money?”

“You were working for us,” said Kemper, feeling the lameness of his argument even before he had made it. “The winnings rightfully belong to your employer.”

“I’m nobody’s employee,” said Pendergast with an icy smile. “Except, of course, the federal government’s.”

Kemper felt excruciatingly uncomfortable under the silvery stare.

“Mr. Kemper,” Pendergast continued, “you realize, of course, that I arrived at those winnings legally. Card counting, shuffle-tracking, and the other techniques I used are all legal. Ask Mr. Hentoff here. I didn’t even need to draw on the line of credit you offered me.”

Kemper cast a glance at Hentoff, who nodded unhappily.

Another smile. “Well then: does that answer your question?”

Kemper thought of reporting all this back to Cutter, and that helped stiffen his spine. “No, Mr. Pendergast. We consider those winnings to be house money.”

Pendergast went to the bureau. He picked up one of the envelopes, slid out a thick wad of pound notes, and lazily riffled through them. “Mr. Kemper,” he said, speaking with his back turned, “normally I would never even think of helping a casino recover money against gamblers who are beating the house. My sympathies would lie in the other direction. Do you know why I helped you?”

“To get us to help you.”

“Only partly true. It’s because I believed there was a dangerous killer on board, and for the safety of the ship I needed to identify him—with your assistance—before he could kill again. Unfortunately, he appears to still be one step ahead of me.”

Kemper’s depression deepened. He would never get the money back, the crossing was a disaster on every front, and he would be blamed.

Pendergast turned, riffled the money again. “Cheer up, Mr. Kemper! You two may yet get your money back. I am ready to call in my little favor.”

Somehow, this did not make Kemper cheer up at all.

“I wish to search the stateroom and safe of Mr. Scott Blackburn. To that end, I will need a passcard to the room’s safe and thirty minutes in which to operate.”

A pause. “I think we can manage that.”

“There’s a wrinkle. Blackburn is currently holed up in his room and won’t come out.”

“Why? Is he worried about the murderer?”

Pendergast smiled again: a small, ironic smile. “Hardly, Mr. Kemper. He’s hiding something, and I need to find it. So he will need to be coaxed out.”

“You can’t ask me to manhandle a passenger.”

“Manhandle? How crude. A more elegant way to effect his removal would be to set off the fire alarms for the starboard stern side of Deck 9.”

Kemper frowned. “You want me to set off a false fire alarm? No way.”

“But you must.”

Kemper thought for a moment. “I suppose we could have a fire drill.”

“He won’t leave if it’s just a drill. Only a mandatory evacuation will dislodge him.”

Kemper ran his hands through his damp hair. God, he was sweating. “Maybe I could pull a fire alarm in that corridor.”

This time, it was Constance Greene who spoke. “No, Mr. Kemper,” she said in a strange antique accent. “We’ve researched the matter carefully. You need to trigger a central alert. A broken firebox would be too quickly discovered. We’ll need a full thirty minutes in Blackburn’s suite. And you’ll have to temporarily disable the sprinkler system, which can only be done from the central fire control system.”

Kemper stood up, Hentoff quickly following. “Impossible. This is a crazy thing to ask. Fire is the most dangerous thing that can happen aboard a ship, aside from sinking. A ship’s officer, deliberately triggering a false alert . . . I’d be committing a criminal offense, maybe a felony. Jesus, Mr. Pendergast, you’re an FBI agent, you know I can’t do that! There must be some other way!”

Pendergast smiled, almost sadly this time. “There is no other way.”

“I won’t do it.”

Pendergast riffled the fat packet of notes. Kemper could actually smell the money—it was like rusty iron.

Kemper stared at the money. “I just can’t do it.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Pendergast stood, went over to the bureau, opened the top drawer, placed the wad of notes inside, and then raked the rest of the envelopes off the bureau into the drawer. He shut the drawer with slow deliberation and turned to Hentoff and nodded. “See you in the casino, Mr. Hentoff.”

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 thathad 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 hadto 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 Entersign. 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, pace 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.