Текст книги "The Wheel of Darkness"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“A lot of hard blowing, but no official reaction yet. They’ve dispatched a bunch of suits to meet us in St. John’s. Basically, they’re reeling. Their main concern is bad publicity. When the press gets hold of this . . .” His voice trailed off and he shook his head.

A soft chime from the chartplotter announced that the waypoint had been reached. As the autopilot automatically adjusted to the new heading, LeSeur felt the faintest vibration: the new course had slightly changed the ship’s angle to the sea and the rolling had grown worse.

“New bearing two two zero,” LeSeur murmured to the staff captain.

“New bearing acknowledged, two two zero.”

The wind buffeted the bridge windows. All he could see was the ship’s forecastle, half hidden in the mist, and beyond that an endless gray.

Mason turned. “Mr. LeSeur?”

“Yes, Captain?”

She spoke in a low voice. “I’m concerned about Mr. Craik.”

“The chief radio officer? Why?”

“I’m not sure he’s getting with the program. It seems he’s locked himself in the radio room.”

She nodded to a door at the rear of the bridge. LeSeur was surprised: he had rarely seen it closed.

“Craik? I didn’t even know he was on the bridge.”

“I need to make sure that all the deck officers are working as a team,” she went on. “We’ve got a storm, we’ve got over four thousand terrified passengers and crew, and we’ve got a rough time ahead of us when we get to St. John’s. We can’t afford to have any second-guessing or dissention among the deck officers. Not now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need your help. Rather than make a big deal about it, I’d like to have a quiet word with Mr. Craik—just the two of us. I think perhaps he felt intimidated by you and the others into going along.”

“That sounds like a wise approach, sir.”

“The ship’s on autopilot, we’re still four hours from passing the Carrion Rocks. I’d like you to clear the bridge so I can speak to Craik in a nonthreatening environment. I feel it’s especially important that Mr. Kemper absent himself.”

LeSeur hesitated. The standing orders stated that the bridge must be manned by a minimum of two officers.

“I’ll temporarily take the watch,” said Mason. “And Craik could be considered the second bridge officer—so this won’t violate regulations.”

“Yes, sir, but with the storm conditions . . .”

“I understand your reluctance,” Mason said. “I’m asking for just five minutes. I don’t want Mr. Craik feeling he’s being ganged up on. I’m a little worried, frankly, about his emotional stability. Do it quietly and don’t tell anyone why.”

LeSeur nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. LeSeur.”

LeSeur walked over to the lookout. “Join me in the companionway for a moment.” He nodded to the helmsman. “You, too.”

“But—”

“Captain’s orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

LeSeur rejoined Kemper. “Captain’s taking the watch for a few minutes. She’d like us to clear the bridge.”

Kemper looked at him sharply. “Why?”

“Orders,” LeSeur repeated in a tone he hoped would discourage further questions. He checked his watch: five minutes and counting. They withdrew to the companionway just beyond the bridge hatch and LeSeur shut the door, taking care to leave it unlocked.

“What’s this all about?” Kemper asked.

“Ship’s business,” LeSeur repeated, sharpening his tone even further.

They stood in silence. LeSeur glanced at his watch. Two more minutes.

At the far end of the companionway, the door opened and a figure entered. LeSeur stared: it was Craik. “I thought you were in the radio room,” he said.

Craik looked back at him like he was crazy. “I’m just reporting for duty now, sir.”

“But Captain Mason—”

He was interrupted by a low alarm and a flashing red light. A series of soft clicks ran around the length of the bridge hatch.

“What the hell’s that?” the helmsman asked.

Kemper stared at the blinking red light above the door. “Christ, someone’s initiated an ISPS Code Level Three!”

LeSeur grabbed the handle of the bridge door, tried to turn it.

“It automatically locks in case of an alert,” said Kemper. “Seals off the bridge.”

LeSeur felt his blood freeze; the only one on the bridge was Captain Mason. He went for the bridge intercom. “Captain Mason, this is LeSeur.”

No answer.

“Captain Mason! There’s a Code Three security alert.

Open this door!”

But again there was no reply.

50

AT HALF PAST ONE O’CLOCK ROGER MAYLES FOUND HIMSELF leading a fractious group of Deck 10 passengers to the final lunch shift at Oscar’s. For over an hour he had been answering questions—or rather, avoiding answering them—about what would happen when they got to Newfoundland; about how they would get home; about whether refunds would be made. Nobody had told him shit, he knew nothing, he could answer nobody—and yet they had exhorted him to maintain “security,” whatever the hell that meant.

Nothing like this had happened to him before. His greatest joy of shipboard life was its predictability. But on this voyage, nothing at all had been predictable. And now he felt he was getting close to the breaking point.

He walked along the corridor, a rictus-like smile screwed onto his face. The passengers behind him were speaking in raised, querulous voices about all the same tiresome issues they’d been talking about all day: refunds, lawsuits, getting home. He could feel the slow roll of the ship as he walked, and he kept his eyes averted from the broad starboard windows lining one side of the corridor. He was sick of the rain, the moaning of the wind, the deep booming of the sea against the hull. The truth was, the sea frightened him—it always had—and he never enjoyed looking down into the water from the ship, even in good weather, because it always looked so deep and so cold. And endless—so very, very endless. Since the disappearances began, he’d had a recurring nightmare of falling into the dark Atlantic at night, treading water while watching the lights of the ship recede into the mist. He woke up in a twisting of sheets each time, whimpering under his breath.

He could think of no worse death. None.

One of the men in the group behind him quickened his pace. “Mr. Mayles?”

He turned, not slowing, the smile as tense as ever. He couldn’t wait to get into Oscar’s.

“Yes, Mr.—?”

“Wendorf. Bob Wendorf. Look here—I’ve got an important meeting in New York on the fifteenth. I need to know how we’re going to get from Newfoundland to New York.”

“Mr. Wendorf, I’ve no doubt the company will work out the arrangements.”

“Damn it, that’s not an answer! And another thing: if you think we’ll go by ship to New York, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m never setting foot on a ship again in my life. I want a flight, first class.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the ranks behind him. Mayles stopped and turned. “As it happens, the company is already lining up flights.” He knew of no such thing, but at this point he was ready to say anything to get these clods off his back.

“For all three thousand passengers?” A woman with rings on every wizened finger pushed forward, flapping her bejeweled, liver-spotted hands.

“St. John’s has an international airport.” Did it? Mayles had no idea.

The woman went on, voice like a buzz saw. “Frankly, I find the lack of communication intolerable. We paid a lot of money to make this voyage. We deserve to know what’s going on!”

You deserve a boot up your prolapsed old ass, lady.

Mayles continued smiling. “The company—”

“What about refunds?” interrupted another voice. “I hope you don’t think we’re going to

pay

for this kind of treatment—!”

“The company will take care of everyone,” Mayles said. “Please have patience.” He turned quickly to avoid more questions—and that’s when he saw it.

It was a thing;a thing like a dense massing of smoke, at the angle of the corridor. It was moving toward them with a kind of sickening, rolling motion. He halted abruptly, paralyzed, staring. It was like a dark, malignant mist, except that it seemed to have a textureto it, like woven fabric, but vague, indefinite, darker toward the middle with faint interior glints of dirty iridescence. Shapes like bunching muscles came and went across its surface as it approached.

He was unable to speak, unable to move.

So it’s true

, he thought.

But it can’t be. It can’t be . . .

It moved toward him, gliding and roiling as if with terrible purpose. The group stumbled to a halt behind him; a woman gasped.

“What the hell?” came a voice.

They backed up in a tight group, several crying out in fear. Mayles couldn’t take his eyes off it, couldn’t move.

“It’s some natural phenomenon,” said Wendorf loudly, as if trying to convince himself. “Like ball lightning.”

The thing moved down the hall, erratically, closing in.

“Oh, my God!”

Behind him, Roger Mayles registered a general confused retreat, which quickly devolved into a stampede. The confused babble of screams and cries faded away down the hall. Still he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He alone remained rooted to the spot.

As the thing approached, he could see something inside it. It was an outline, squat, ugly, feral, with madly darting eyes . . .

No, no, no, no, noooo . . .

A low keening sound escaped Mayles’s lips. As the thing drew nearer, he felt the growing breath of wetness and mold, a stench of dirt and rotting toadstools . . . The keening in his throat grew into a gargling flow of mucus as the thing slunk by, never looking at him, never seeing him, passing like a breath of clammy cellar air.

The next thing Mayles knew, he was lying on the floor, staring upward at a security officer holding a tumbler of water.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came save a sigh of air leaking from between his vocal cords.

“Mr. Mayles,” the officer said. “Are you all right?”

He made a sound like a punctured bellows.

“Mr. Mayles, sir?”

He swallowed, worked his sticky jaws. “

It . . . was . . . here

.”

A strong arm reached down and grasped his jacket, pulling him to a sitting position.

“Your group came tearing by me, hysterical. Whatever it was that you saw, it’s gone now. We’ve searched all the adjacent corridors. It’s gone.”

Mayles leaned over, swallowed unhappily, and then—as if to exorcise the very presence of the thing—vomited on the gold pile carpeting.

51

CAPTAIN MASON!” LESEUR JAMMED HIS FINGER HARD AGAINST the intercom button. “We’ve got a Code Three alert. Please answer me!”

“Mr. LeSeur,” said Kemper, “she knows very well we’ve got a Code Three. She activated it herself.”

LeSeur turned and stared. “You’re sure?”

Kemper nodded.

The first officer turned back to the hatch. “Captain Mason!” He yelled into the intercom. “Are you all right?”

No response. He banged on the hatch with his fist.

“Mason!”

He spun toward Kemper. “How do we get in there?”

“You can’t,” said the security chief.

“The hell I can’t! Where’s the emergency override? Something’s happened to Captain Mason!”

“The bridge is hardened just like an airline cockpit. When the alert is triggered from within, it locks down the bridge. Totally. Nobody can get in—unless let in by someone on the inside.”

“There’s got to be a manual override!”

Kemper shook his head. “Nothing that would allow entry by terrorists.”

“Terrorists?” LeSeur stared at Kemper in disbelief.

“You bet. The new ISPS regulations required all kinds of anti– terrorist measures aboard ship. The world’s largest ocean liner—it’s an obvious target. You wouldn’t believe the antiterrorist systems on the ship. Trust me—you won’t get in, even with explosives.”

LeSeur sagged against the door, breathing hard. It was incomprehensible. Had Mason had a heart attack of some kind? Lost consciousness? He glanced around at the anxious, confused faces looking back at him. Looking to him for leadership, guidance.

“Follow me to the auxiliary bridge,” he said. “The CCTVs there will show us what’s going on.”

He ran down the companionway, the others following, and opened the door to a service stair. Taking the metal steps three at a time, he descended a level, pulled open another door, then tore down the corridor, past a deckhand with a mop, to the hatchway leading into the aux bridge. As the group entered, a guard monitoring the security feeds within looked up in surprise.

“Switch to the bridge feeds,” LeSeur ordered. “All of them.”

The man typed several commands on his keyboard, and instantly a half dozen separate views of the bridge appeared on the small CCTV screens arrayed before them.

“There she is!” LeSeur said, almost sagging with relief. Captain Mason was standing at the helm, back to the camera, apparently as calm and collected as when he had left her.

“Why couldn’t she hear us over the radio?” He asked. “Or the banging?”

“She could hear us,” said Kemper.

“But then why . . . ?” LeSeur stopped. His carefully attuned shipboard senses felt the vibration of the huge vessel change ever so slightly, felt the sea changing. The ship was turning.

“What the

hell

?”

At the same time, there was an unmistakable shudder as the ship’s engine speed increased—increased significantly.

An ice-cold knot began to harden in his chest. He glanced down at the screen displaying the course and speed, watched the sets of numbers ticking away until they steadied on a new heading and course. Two hundred degrees true, speed gradually increasing.

Two hundred degrees true . . . Quickly, LeSeur glanced at the chartplotter running on a nearby flat-panel monitor. It was all there, in glorious color, the little symbol of the ship, the straight line of its heading, the shoals and rocks of the Grand Banks.

He felt his knees go soft. “What is it?” Kemper asked, staring closely at LeSeur’s face. Then he followed the first officer’s eyes to the chartplotter.

“What—?” Kemper began again. “Oh, my God.” He stared at the large screen. “You don’t think—?”

“What is it?” asked Craik, entering.

“Captain Mason has increased speed to flank,” LeSeur said, his voice dull and hollow in his own ears. “And she’s altered course. On a heading straight for the Carrion Rocks.”

He turned back to the closed-circuit television screen showing Captain Mason at the helm. Her head had turned ever so slightly, so that he caught her in profile, and he could see the faintest of smiles play across her lips.

In the corridor outside, Lee Ng paused in swabbing the linoleum corridor to listen more intently. Something big was going on, but the voices had suddenly ceased. In any case, he must have misunderstood. It was a language problem—despite diligent study, his English was still not what he wished it could be. It was hard, at the age of sixty, to learn a new language. And then there were all the nautical terms that weren’t even listed in his cheap Vietnamese-English dictionary.

He resumed pushing the mop. The silence that came from the open door to the auxiliary bridge now gave way to a burst of talking. Excited talking. Lee Ng edged closer, head down, swinging the mop in broad semicircles, listening carefully. The voices were loud, urgent, and now he began to realize that he had not misheard.

The mop handle fell to the floor with a clatter. Lee Ng took a step back, and then another. He turned, began to walk, and the walk became a run. Running had saved his life in desperate situations more than once during the war. But even as he ran, he realized that this was not like the war: there was no place of refuge, no protective wall of jungle beyond the last rice paddy.

This was a ship. There was no place to run.

52

CONSTANCE GREENE HAD LISTENED ATTENTIVELY TO THE acting captain’s announcement over the public address system, greatly relieved to hear the ship was finally diverting to St. John’s. She was also reassured by the stringent security measures that were being undertaken. Any pretense that this was still a pleasure voyage had been dropped: now it was about safety and survival. Perhaps, she thought, it was karma that some of these ultra-privileged people had a glimpse of life’s reality.

She checked her watch. One forty-five. Pendergast had said he wanted to sleep until three, and she was inclined to let him. He clearly needed the rest, if only to pull him out of the funk he seemed to have fallen into. She had never known him to sleep during the day before, or drink alcoholic beverages in the morning.

Constance settled on the sofa and opened a volume of Montaigne’s essays, trying to take her mind off her concerns. But just as she began to lose herself in the elegant French turns, a soft knock came at the door.

She stood up and went to the door.

“It’s Marya. Open, please.”

Constance opened it and the maid slipped in. Her usually spotless uniform was dirty and her hair disheveled.

“Please sit down, Marya. What’s going on?”

Marya took a seat, passing a hand over her forehead. “It is out there.”

“I’m sorry?”

“How you call it? An asylum. Listen, I bring you news. Very bad news. It’s going around belowdecks like fire. I pray it’s not true.”

“What is it?”

“The acting captain, they say—Captain Mason—has locked herself on the bridge and is steering the ship toward rocks.”

“What?”

“Rocks. The Carrion Rocks. They say we will hit the rocks in less than three hours.”

“It sounds to me like a hysterical rumor.”

“Maybe,” said Marya, “but this one, all the crew believe it. And something big is happening up on the auxiliary bridge, many officers coming and going, lots of activity. Also that, how you say, that ghosthas been seen again. A group of passengers this time, and the cruise director as well.”

Constance paused. The ship shuddered through another massive wave, yawing strangely. She looked back at Marya. “Wait here, please.”

She went upstairs and knocked on the door of Pendergast’s stateroom. Usually he responded immediately, his voice as clear and collected as if he’d been awake for hours. This time, nothing.

Another knock. “Aloysius?”

A low, even voice issued from inside. “I asked you to wake me at three.”

“There’s an emergency you should know about.”

A long silence. “I don’t see why it couldn’t wait.”

“It can’t wait, Aloysius.”

A long silence. “I’ll join you downstairs in a moment.”

Constance descended. Several minutes later, Pendergast made his appearance, wearing black suit pants, a starched white shirt hanging open unbuttoned, black suit jacket and tie thrown over one arm. He tossed the jacket on the chair and cast his eyes about. “My eggs Benedict and tea?” he asked.

Constance stared at him. “They’ve shut down all room service. Food is being served only in shifts.”

“Surely Marya here is clever enough to scare something up while I shave.”

“We don’t have time for food,” said Constance, irritated.

Pendergast went into the bathroom, leaving the door open, pulled the shirt off his white, sculpted body, tossed it over the shower rail, turned on the water, and began to lather his face. He took out a long straight razor and began stropping it. Constance got up to shut the door but he gestured to her with his hand. “I’m waiting to hear what’s so important that it has disrupted my nap.”

“Marya says that Captain Mason—the one who took over from Cutter after he refused to change course—has seized the bridge of the ship and is sending us on a collision course with a reef.”

The razor paused in its smooth progress down Pendergast’s long white jaw. Almost thirty seconds passed. Then the shaving resumed. “And why has Mason done this?”

“Nobody knows. She just went crazy, it seems.”

“Crazy,” Pendergast repeated. The scraping continued, maddeningly slow and precise.

“On top of that,” Constance said, “there’s been another encounter with that thing, the so-called smoke ghost. A number of people saw it, including the cruise director. It almost seems as if . . .” She paused, uncertain how to articulate it, then dropped the idea. It was no doubt her imagination.

Pendergast’s shaving continued, in silence, the only sounds the faint booming and buffeting of the storm and the occasional raised voice in the corridor. Constance and Marya waited. At last he finished. He rinsed, wiped off and folded the razor, mopped and toweled his face, pulled on his shirt, buttoned it, slipped the gold cuff links into his cuffs, threw on his tie and knotted it with a few expert tugs. Then he stepped into the sitting room.

“Where are you going?” Constance asked, both exasperated and a little frightened. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

He picked up his jacket. “You mean you haven’t figured it out?”

“Of course I haven’t!” Constance felt herself losing her temper. “Don’t tell me you have!”

“Naturally I have.” He slipped on his suit coat and headed for the door.

“What?”

Pendergast paused at the door. “Everything’s connected, as I surmised earlier—the theft of the Agozyen, the murder of Jordan Ambrose, the shipboard disappearances and killings, and now the mad captain driving the ship up on a reef.” He gave a little laugh. “Not to mention your ‘smoke ghost.’ ”

“How?” Constance asked, exasperated. “You have the same information I do, and I find explanations to be so tiresome. Besides, it’s irrelevant now—all of it.” He waved his hand vaguely around the room. “If what you say is true, all this will shortly be wedged in the abyssal muck at the bottom of the Atlantic, and right now I have something important to do. I’ll be back in less than an hour. Perhaps in the meantime you might manage a simple plate of eggs Benedict and green tea?”

He left.

Constance stared at the door long after it had closed behind him. Then she turned slowly to Marya. For a moment she said nothing.

“Yes?” Marya asked.

“I have a favor to ask you.”

The maid waited.

“I want you to bring me a doctor as soon as possible.”

Marya looked at her with alarm. “Are you ill?”

“No. But I think

he

is.”

53

GAVIN BRUCE AND WHAT HE HAD BEGUN TO CALL HIS TEAM SAT in the midships lounge on Deck 8, engaged in conversation about the state of the ship and the next steps they might take. The Britanniaseemed remarkably quiet for early afternoon. Even though a curfew had only been instituted for the nighttime hours, it seemed many of the passengers had taken to their cabins, either through fear of the murderer or exhaustion over an extremely tense morning.

Bruce shifted in his chair. While their mission to speak to Commodore Cutter had failed, it gratified him that the man had been removed and his recommendations had been acted upon. He felt that, in the end, his intervention had done some good.

Cutter had clearly been out of his depth. He was a kind of captain Bruce knew well from his own career in the Royal Navy, a commander who confused stubbornness with resolve and “going by the book” for wisdom. Such men often choked when circumstances grew chaotic. The new captain had handled the transition well; he’d approved of her speech over the PA. Very professional, very much in command.

“We’re moving into the teeth of the storm,” said Niles Welch, nodding at the row of streaming windows.

“Hate to be out in that mess on board a smaller ship,” Bruce replied. “Amazing how sea-kindly this big ship is.”

“Not like the destroyer I was a middy on during the Falklands war,” said Quentin Sharp. “Now that was a squirrelly vessel.”

“I’m surprised the captain increased speed back there,” said Emily Dahlberg. “Can’t say I blame her,” Bruce replied. “In her position, I’d want to get this Jonah ship into port as soon as possible, the hell with the passengers’ comfort. Although if it were me I might just ease off on the throttle a trifle. This ship is taking quite a pounding.” He glanced over at Dahlberg. “By the way, Emily, I wanted to congratulate you on how you quieted that hysterical girl just now. That’s the fourth person you’ve managed to calm in the last hour.”

Dahlberg crossed one poised leg over the other. “We’re all here for the same reason, Gavin—to help maintain order and assist any way we can.”

“Yes, but I could never have done it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody that upset.”

“I just used my maternal instincts.”

“You’ve never had any children.”

“True.” Dahlberg smiled faintly. “But I’ve got a good imagination.”

The sound of urgent footsteps and confused shouting came echoing down the corridor.

“Not another group of drunken sods,” Sharp muttered.

The voices grew louder, and an unruly group of passengers appeared, led by a man who was clearly drunk. They had fanned out and were pounding on stateroom doors, the occupants coming out into the corridor behind them.

“Did you hear?” the man in the lead shouted, his voice slurred. “You hear?” The others in the group kept banging, shouting for everyone to come out.

Bruce sat up.

“Is something wrong?” Dahlberg asked sharply.

The drunken man stopped, swaying slightly. “We’re on a collision course!”

There was a babble of frightened voices. The man waved his arms. “Captain’s seized the bridge! She’s going to wreck the ship on the Grand Banks!”

A burst of questions, shouts.

Bruce rose. “That’s an incendiary charge to make, sir, on board a ship. You’d better be able to back it up.”

The man looked unsteadily at Bruce. “I’ll back it up. I’ll back

you

up, pal. It’s all over the ship, the whole crew is talking about it.”

“It’s true!” a voice in the rear shouted. “The captain’s locked herself on the bridge, alone. Set a course for the Carrion Rocks!”

“What nonsense,” said Bruce, but he was made uneasy by the mention of the Carrion Rocks. He knew them well from his navy days: a broad series of rocky, fanglike shoals jutting up from the surface of the North Atlantic, a grave hazard to shipping.

“It’s true!” the drunken man cried, swinging his arm so hard he almost pulled himself off balance. “It’s all over the ship!”

Bruce could see a panic seizing the crowd. “My friends,” he said in a firm tone, “it’s quite impossible. The bridge on a ship like this would never, ever be manned by one person. And there must be a thousand ways to retake control of a ship like this, from the engine room or from secondary bridges. I know: I was a commander in the Royal Navy.”

“That’s not how it works these days, you old fool!” the drunken man cried. “The ship’s totally automated. The captain mutinied and took control, and now she’s going to sink the ship!”

A woman rushed forward and seized Bruce’s suit. “You were navy! For God’s sake, you’ve got to do something!”

Bruce extricated himself and raised his hands. He had a natural air of command and the frightened hubbub diminished.

“Please!” he called out. A hush fell.

“My team and I will find out if there’s any truth to this rumor,” he went on.

“There is—!”

“Silence!” He waited. “If there is, we’ll take action—I promise you that. In the meantime, all of you should stay here and await instructions.”

“If I recall,” said Dahlberg, “the Admiral’s Club on Deck 10 has a monitor that shows the ship’s position on the crossing, including course and speed.”

“Excellent,” Bruce said. “That will give us independent verification.”

“And then what?” the woman who had seized his suit practically shrieked.

Bruce turned to her. “Like I said, you stay here and encourage any others that happen by to do the same. Keep everyone calm, and stop spreading this rumor—the last thing we need is a panic. If it’s true, we’ll help the other officers retake the ship. And we’ll keep you informed.”

Then he turned back to his little group. “Shall we check it out?”

He led them down the hall and toward the stairs, at a fast walk. It was a crazy story, insane. It couldn’t be true . . .

Could it?

54

THE AUXILIARY BRIDGE WAS CROWDED AND GETTING HOTTER BY the minute. LeSeur had called for an emergency staff meeting for all department heads, and already the ship’s hospitality and entertainment chiefs were arriving, along with the chief purser, bosun, and chief steward. He glanced at his watch, then wiped his brow and looked for what must have been the hundredth time at the back of Captain Mason, displayed on the central CCTV screen, standing straight and calm at the helm, not a stray hair escaping from beneath her cap. They had called up the Britannia’s course on the main NavTrac GPS chartplotter. There it was, displayed in a wash of cool electronic colors: the heading, the speed . . . and the Carrion Rocks.

He stared back at Mason, coolly at the helm. Something had happened to her, a medical problem, a stroke, drugs, perhaps a fugue state. What was going on in her mind? Her actions were the antithesis of everything a ship’s captain stood for.

Beside him, Kemper was at a monitoring workstation, headphones over his ears. LeSeur nudged him and the security director pulled off the phones.

“Are you absolutely sure, Kemper, that she can hear us?” he asked.

“All the channels are open. I’m even getting some feedback in the cans.”

LeSeur turned to Craik. “Any further response to our mayday?”

Craik looked up from his SSB and satellite telephone. “Yes, sir. U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard are responding. The closest vessel is the CCGS Sir Wilfred Grenfell, hailing port St. John’s, a sixty-eight-meter offshore patrol boat with nine officers, eleven crew, sixteen berths plus ten more in the ship’s hospital. They are on an intercept course and will reach us about fifteen nautical miles east-northeast of the Carrion Rocks at . . . around 3:45 P.M. Nobody else is close enough to reach us before the estimated time of, ah, collision.”

“What’s their plan?”

“They’re still working on the options.”

LeSeur turned to the third officer. “Get Dr. Grandine up here. I want some medical advice about what’s going on with Mason. And ask Mayles if there’s a psychiatrist on board among the passengers. If so, get him up here, too.”

“Aye, sir.”

Next, LeSeur turned to the chief engineer. “Mr. Halsey, I want you to go to the engine room personallyand disconnect the autopilot. Cut cables if need be, take a sledgehammer to the controller boards. As a last resort, disable one of the pods.”

The engineer shook his head. “The autopilot’s hardened against attack. It was designed to bypass all manual systems. Even if you could disable one of the pods—which you can’t—the autopilot would compensate. The ship can run on a single pod, if necessary.”

“Mr. Halsey, don’t tell me why it can’t be done until you’ve tried.”

“Aye, sir.”

LeSeur turned to the radio officer. “Try to raise Mason on VHF channel 16 with your handheld.” “Yes, sir.” The radio officer unholstered his VHF, raised it to his lips, pressed the transmit button. “Radio officer to bridge, radio officer to bridge, please respond.”