Текст книги "Radiant Angel"

Автор книги: Nelson Demille

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Gorsky turned and left the captain’s quarters, closing the door behind him. He crossed the vestibule, and knocked on the door of the ship’s office.

“Come in.”

Gorsky stuck his pistol under his shirt and opened the door. The ship’s navigator, Carlo Lentini, dressed in his whites, was sitting at a computer keyboard. Without looking up, the man asked, “Yes?”

Gorsky did not reply, and the officer turned his head toward him and asked in Italian-accented English, “Who are you…?” Then, “Oh…” He stood and said, “How may I help you?”

“You may sit, Mr. Lentini.”

The officer hesitated, then sat and waited for the guest to say something.

Gorsky asked, “What are you doing?”

The navigator looked at his unannounced guest, and there was something in the man’s tone and manner that troubled him. He replied, “I… I am entering in the ship’s log.”

“And where will the officers dine tonight?”

“We dine tonight in the captain’s quarters.”

“And who will have the watch?”

“A deckhand will take the watch.”

“And who will bring you your dinner?”

“A steward. Why—?”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Good.” Gorsky looked at his watch and said, “Make a final entry in your log, Mr. Lentini.” He pulled his small pistol from his belt and said, “All ship’s officers were killed by twenty-one hundred hours…” He fired a single shot into the navigator’s chest, which spun the swivel chair around, and Gorsky put another round into the base of the man’s skull. “… and dined in hell.”

Gorsky left the ship’s office, closed the door, and took up a position in the vestibule behind the spiral staircase, near the elevator, waiting for the steward and the deckhand.

Hunting people, like hunting game, had two basic elements—stalking and waiting in ambush. He preferred stalking, but sometimes one needed to wait. Killing was an art. Being killed, not so much.

Vasily Petrov slung his submachine gun, wrapped in the bartender’s towel, over his shoulder and walked quickly past the two dead stewards and through the long dining room whose table was set for ten. He noticed through the large windows that the sea was calm, though there was a fog coming in from the south. This could be a problem for the rendezvous with the fishing trawler and for the trawler’s lifeboat with only Captain Gleb onboard to find The Hana. But they had made provisions for a bad-weather rendezvous, and Petrov was confident that Gleb and the nuclear device would be aboard The Hana within the hour. He hoped that Gleb had been fully briefed about the corpses all over the ship.

Petrov passed through the butler’s pantry and entered the main galley.

The four kitchen staff were putting garnish on ten appetizer plates, which appeared to be some sort of pink creamed fish. Petrov disliked French food and he was glad he didn’t have to eat this.

One of the kitchen staff saw him and tapped the chef’s arm and nodded toward the door.

Chef André, a tall thin man, looked up from his food preparation and said, “Yes?”

Petrov knew that the galley would be a problem; it was filled with tightly packed steel equipment, open flames, and propane tanks. Not a good place to fire an automatic weapon. Also, the five kitchen staff—three men, one woman, and the chef—were spread out and moving quickly as they went about their duties.

“Monsieur, may I help you?”

“His Highness has permitted me to see your kitchen.”

“Yes? What do you wish to see?”

“A photo, s’il vous plaît.” Petrov held up his cell phone. “It will go quickly,” he promised.

The chef hesitated, then, realizing it would be better to accommodate the prince’s guest than to protest, he motioned his three male staff and the woman to stand with him in the aisle between the cutting table and the food locker.

They all assembled, closely packed in the narrow aisle, and Petrov raised his cell phone. If anyone noticed or wondered what it was that he had slung in a towel over his shoulder, they didn’t ask. “Smile!”

He would have actually snapped the photo, but he’d removed the battery from his phone so that the Americans could not track his signal.

“One more, please.”

Everyone smiled again, though the chef, André, looked impatient.

Petrov dropped the phone into his pocket, then swung the submachine gun to his front, pulled off the bar towel, and fired a low sweeping burst of rounds into the posed group, who for a half second didn’t understand what it was in his hands that was spitting flames. In fact, the woman was still smiling when she was hit. The ricochets pinged off the tile floor and kitchen equipment. Then everything was silent.

Petrov put the weapon on single shot and stood at the feet of the five white-smocked people who were spurting blood from their legs and abdomens. They were all alive, and Petrov began with the woman, who was starting to cry out in pain, and fired a bullet into her head. Then in quick succession he gave the other four what André would call the coup de grâce.

He found a bigger towel to wrap his submachine gun and slung it across his back, then went to the stove and shut off the gas under the pots and saucepans. He smelled something unpleasant and looked through the glass door of the raised oven and saw mutton chops roasting in a pan. Who could eat this? He shut off the oven and left the galley.

Now on to the crew quarters.

Viktor Gorsky waited for the steward and the deckhand.

He carried his submachine gun, still gift-wrapped, under his left arm, leaving his right hand free to draw his pistol, which was in his trouser pocket. So far, this had all been handgun work; not the type of work where one needed a submachine gun. That, however, would change in the salon with the ladies.

Gorsky heard the hydraulic whine of the elevator and stood off to the side of the door.

The door slid open and a food cart appeared, followed by a white-coated steward who pushed the cart across the vestibule toward the captain’s door, not seeing Gorsky, who was behind him.

The steward glanced at the closed security door to the bridge, then knocked on the captain’s door and waited. He then moved, without the cart, to the bridge door and pressed the intercom button. “It is Abdi. Dinner.” He waited a few seconds, and Gorsky could tell that Abdi was perplexed and didn’t know what to do. Ring again? Or push the entry pad to open the bridge door, which Gorsky guessed was rarely, if ever, closed.

The steward pulled his handheld radio from his pocket and was about to make a call, but Gorsky said, “Excuse me.”

The steward turned with a start, then, recognizing a guest, he relaxed, though he didn’t know where the man had come from. The staircase perhaps.

“Yes, sir?”

“I am waiting for the deckhand who will stand watch.”

“He should be on the bridge.”

“He is not.”

The steward looked at his watch and said, “Perhaps a few minutes. Why—?”

“I will wait.”

Gorsky knew he could shoot the steward there and then, without concern that the round would pierce the bulletproof door or bulkhead and strike something vital on the bridge. But he didn’t want a dead man in the vestibule when the deckhand arrived, so he said, “The captain awaits you.”

“I have knocked—”

“Please.” He motioned toward the captain’s door and the food cart.

The steward hesitated and looked at the Russian standing on the far side of the staircase railing with a wrapped object under his arm, then returned to the captain’s door and knocked again. He glanced at the guest, shrugged, and said, “Perhaps he is in the ship’s office.”

“He is not.”

Clearly the steward was finding this situation unusual, and he reached again for his radio. Gorsky reached for his gun.

The sound of footsteps came up the spiral staircase, and the steward said, “That will be Malkin.” He seemed relieved, Gorsky thought, that someone else would take charge of this situation. The steward had many guests to attend to. Or thought he did.

The head and shoulders of a man wearing the blue shirt of a deckhand appeared on the spiral staircase. As the man stepped into the vestibule, he glanced at the closed door to the bridge, then noticed the steward at the captain’s door and asked, “Why is the bridge door shut, Abdi?”

The steward shrugged, then nodded toward the guest near the elevator, noticing that he had laid his package on the floor.

The deckhand, Malkin, turned and saw Gorsky. “Yes, sir?”

Gorsky drew his pistol and held it in a two-handed grip, steadied his aim, and fired a round at the center mass of each man, both of whom were thrown back against the wall. The deckhand slid slowly to the floor, but the steward bounced off the wall and fell across the food cart.

Gorsky came quickly around the spiral staircase and threw open the door to the captain’s quarters and pushed the food cart with the steward’s body lying atop it into the captain’s room, then grabbed the deckhand by his collar and dragged him into the room. Both men were still alive and Gorsky fired a bullet into each man’s head, then exited the captain’s room and closed the door.

Gorsky pocketed his pistol, retrieved his package, and moved quickly to the spiral staircase, descending three steps at a time toward the salon level. As he descended, he could hear music and women’s laughter.

Vasily Petrov moved quickly from the main deck galley down to the tank deck, still carrying his MP5 slung across his back. He passed no one on the way, but in the narrow passageway that led to the crew’s quarters a deckhand suddenly appeared, coming toward him. The man stopped and braced himself against the wall as the guest hurried past him.

Petrov suddenly spun around, pulled his pistol, and fired a bullet into the side of the man’s head.

A serendipitous kill was as good as a planned kill, except in a hallway, which presented problems. Petrov looked around, then opened a door marked VALVE ACCESS, revealing a maze of vertical and horizontal pipes. He dragged the man across the floor and squeezed him into the tight space, then shut the door and continued toward the midship of the tank deck.

He could hear voices coming through a large door at the end of the passageway, and he conjured a mental image of the crew area deck plan: an open common space for recreation and dining, flanked by five small rooms on the port side for the chef and his kitchen staff, all of whom were now accounted for.

On the starboard side were two-man cabins that were the sleeping quarters of the seven deckhands and the seven stewards, and farther toward the bow was the crew’s pantry and galley.

Petrov tried to determine how many men would be in the crew area. He had already eliminated four stewards in the bar and dining room, and he knew that one or two stewards would be with the ladies in the salon, where everyone should be dead by now if Gorsky was on schedule. That left one or two stewards unaccounted for—though they should not be down here because of the large number of guests onboard. Therefore, only deckhands should be in the crew area—except the one who was in the valve access room. So, with the ship at anchor, he might find the six remaining deckhands, including the Bulgarian, having dinner, which would make his life and their deaths much easier.

Petrov unslung his MP5 submachine gun and loosely re-wrapped it in the towel with his right hand in the folds, four fingers around the vertical grip and one finger on the trigger. He checked that the shell casings had enough room in the towel to eject, then let his arm fall at his side and opened the door marked CREW QUARTERS.

Four young men in white jeans and blue shirts sat around a table toward the rear of the large common room, eating their dinner as they watched a flat-screen television. None of them was the Bulgarian he’d passed earlier on the staircase. That man, therefore, was elsewhere, and so was the seventh deckhand. Perhaps they were in their rooms.

The television was showing a war film, and he heard American voices coming from the soldiers on the screen. They looked like brave young men, and they seemed confident as they fired at ill-dressed and bearded men carrying Kalashnikov rifles. Iraq, perhaps, or Afghanistan. There was a lot of blood. He wondered if the prince would approve of this movie.

One of the deckhands noticed him and said something to the other three men, who took their eyes off the television and stopped eating.

None of them stood, but at least one recognized him, because the man called out, in Russian, “Are you lost?”

Petrov remembered the man from the tender garage and replied, in English, “No. Are you?”

The man laughed tentatively, then asked, in English, “What do you have there, sir?”

“A gift from the chef for the crew.”

No one replied, and Petrov asked, “Where are your mates?”

The Russian-speaking man replied, “You will find Malkin on the bridge, standing watch. As for Diaz, he just left to assist your ladies in the salon—in any way he can.” He smiled.

The other three men laughed, and Petrov, too, smiled, knowing that six deckhands were now accounted for—Diaz dead in the valve closet, Malkin on the bridge and now similarly indisposed, and these four men a few seconds from joining their mates, leaving just the Bulgarian to find. Petrov asked, “And where is your Bulgarian shipmate?”

No one answered, and Petrov realized he had asked one question too many and the men were now staring at him and glancing at his towel-wrapped arm.

One of them asked, “What have you brought us?”

Petrov, still standing outside the door, glanced over his shoulder, raised his arm, and aimed the towel-wrapped submachine gun. “Smert.” Death. He fired a long burst at the men around the table, and the towel smoked and caught fire.

He ripped the towel off and flung it aside as he strode quickly into the crew area to the table where all the men had been knocked off their chairs and now lay on the deck in spreading pools of blood. Petrov flipped the MP5 onto single shot and fired into each man’s head, then turned and looked at the table, which was covered with splattered blood, food, and broken dinnerware. He spotted an unbroken bowl filled with sliced apples, and he helped himself to a piece before checking the pantry and the crew’s galley, which were empty. He then went from door to door and checked each room, but they were also unoccupied. The seventh deckhand, the Bulgarian, was still missing.

Petrov took a handheld radio from the belt of one of the crewmen and listened, but no one was communicating. Well, he thought, if Gorsky was having equally good hunting, The Hana was now a ghost ship. He put the radio in his pocket and found a pillowcase in a linen closet and put his submachine gun into it.

He looked again at the flat-screen TV. An American soldier with a sniper rifle was taking aim at a bearded man in a turban who held a Kalashnikov rifle. Yes, this was Afghanistan, but it reminded him of Chechnya. He pulled his Makarov pistol and fired two quick shots—one at the American sniper and one at the Islamist fighter. The screen transformed into a kaleidoscope of colors, then went black. Petrov smiled and walked out of the room.

Viktor Gorsky stepped off the spiral staircase onto the salon deck. A set of glass doors led to the long salon where a buffet dinner was laid out on the sideboard, though the ladies, still in their bikinis and cover-ups, seemed to be ignoring the food and enjoying the champagne that was being poured by two stewards. Soft music came from the wall speakers, and he recognized Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which he supposed the prince had requested for his Russian guests.

One of the ladies saw him and called out in Russian, “What do you have there, Viktor? Come in. Why are you standing there?”

He stepped into the silk-draped salon and his eyes scanned the twenty-meter-long room of floor-to-ceiling windows. To the left was the side balcony, which was now occupied by three of the ladies. At the far end of the salon was the al fresco lounge where another three ladies were smoking and drinking.

One of the ladies in the salon said to him, “Where is your lover, Viktor?”

The other ladies laughed, but when Gorsky looked at them they stopped laughing. Gorsky forced a smile and said, “He has left me for the chef.”

The ladies laughed again, and one of them reached for the gift-wrapped submachine gun. “Is that for us?”

Gorsky held the blue package over his head and replied, “Yes. But you must earn it.”

A steward walked over to him and asked, “Can I help you, sir?”

“I am just seeing that my ladies are being taken care of.”

“They are, sir.” He reminded the guest, “Dinner is being served in the dining room.”

“Thank you.”

“May I show you to the dining room?”

“In a minute.”

Gorsky noticed that the other steward was on his handheld radio, apparently trying to call someone. Or someone had called him. But who was alive to call? Or to answer a call? In any case, it was time to act, before either of these stewards sensed that all was not right aboard this ship.

Gorsky called out, in English, “Ladies! I need your attention, please!”

The six ladies in the salon looked at Gorsky and he said, “I need everyone here.” He said to the stewards, “Go get the others.”

One steward went to the balcony, and the other who had been on his radio walked to the outdoor lounge.

One of the ladies asked, “What is it, Viktor?”

“Some good news.”

She replied, in Russian, “We don’t have to sleep with these Arab pigs?”

They all laughed.

Gorsky smiled.

The ladies from the balcony and the lounge were in the salon now, and the two stewards looked as though they were about to leave, but Gorsky said to them, “Please stay. This will take only a minute.”

Gorsky stood motionless, looking at the twelve women, and a feeling of sadness came over him. He had killed women before, but not Russian women—only Muslim women who were enemies of the Russian Federation.

“Viktor! Why are you standing there? Are you drunk?”

He looked at the woman, Tasha, the one who had given her phone number to the American. He would have liked to question her about the man, but Colonel Petrov wasn’t interested in any information that would abort this mission. And in any case, now that the killings had begun aboard The Hana, the mission was unstoppable.

The ladies were getting restless, and they were all probably drunk, Gorsky knew, and therefore more difficult to communicate with than usual.

One of them called out, “We want our cell phones back, Viktor.”

They all joined in agreement. “Our cell phones. Give them to us.”

He took a deep breath and said, “Yes, but first, the prince has a gift for all of you.” He held up his package, and though it was poorly wrapped and oddly shaped, he said, “There are diamond necklaces in here. And the prince wants a photograph of all of you wearing them.”

The ladies became excited and one of them called out, “Open it!”

“Yes, but now…” He motioned to the chairs around the coffee table. “You must sit and I will give them to you for the photo.”

A few of the ladies seemed impatient, but they all moved to the seating area where Tasha took charge, seating six of the women, with three standing behind them, and three kneeling in front, including herself.

“Excellent,” said Gorsky.

One of the ladies suggested to the others, “Take off your cover-ups so the prince can see his diamonds on our skin.”

Everyone thought that was a wonderful idea and they pulled off their cover-ups.

Gorsky noticed that the stewards now seemed more interested in staying in the salon, and he said to them, “Please see that each lady has a glass of champagne.”

One of the women protested, “Give us the diamonds, Viktor, and to hell with the champagne.”

They all laughed.

“Please,” said Gorsky, “the prince deserves a beautiful photograph.”

This was becoming more difficult than his work on the bridge. But he knew it would be.

The stewards were handing out glasses and pouring champagne into them.

Gorsky stepped onto the ottoman and faced the ladies and the two stewards.

Thirty rounds in the magazine, fourteen targets. He would probably have to reload.

One of the women said to him, “Now give us our diamonds, Viktor.” She stood and walked toward him, her hand extended.

He tore the paper from the submachine gun.

Tasha said, “What is…? Oh my God!”

Petrov quickly searched the tank deck—the engine room, laundry room, storage compartments, and all the belowdeck areas of the large ship—calling out, “Is anyone here? I am lost! Can anyone help me?”

But no one replied.

Petrov climbed a staircase to the lower deck where the tender garage and the swimming platform were located, as were the guest staterooms and the officers’ quarters.

He went first toward the stern, calling out in the tender garage, “Hello! Is anyone here?”

He then moved to the glass doors that led outside to the swimming platform and noticed that the doors were bolted from the inside, meaning that no one had gone out to the swimming platform and abandoned ship by this route. He unbolted the doors and walked out to the platform.

The low clinging fog was getting thicker, and the sky was filled with stars, with a half-moon rising in the east. The sea, he saw, was still calm. Off in the distance, he saw the lights of a helicopter, hovering unusually low. He put this out of his mind and looked at his watch. Captain Gleb would be arriving in half an hour. And there was still work to do aboard The Hana.

Petrov left the swimming platform, rebolted the doors, and passed through the tender garage. He walked down the long, wide passageway between the ten staterooms, knocking on the locked doors and opening the unlocked ones, calling out, “Hello! Is anyone here?”

No one replied, except Dr. Urmanov, still locked in his stateroom. Petrov called to him, “Stay where you are!”

It would be good, he thought, if Gorsky had come upon the last deckhand. It would be bad, however, if this Bulgarian had seen the dead bodies and was hiding. Well, Petrov thought, they had anticipated this in their planning, and as long as the man had no access to the radios on the bridge, then for all Petrov cared he could hide like a rat until the ship exploded in a mushroom cloud.

But the thought of the bridge with all its communication equipment troubled him, though Gorsky should have finished his business in the salon and returned to the bridge by now. Petrov passed through the officers’ quarters and took the elevator up to the bridge level.

Viktor Gorsky remained standing on the ottoman, surveying the carnage in the salon.

Yes, it was a difficult thing, and though he had tried to do it quickly, there were too many targets, and he had to go first for the men, and after he emptied his thirty-round magazine some of the ladies began running or crawling toward the exits, and he had to reload quickly and take them down, one at a time, with short bursts of fire. They had been terrified, and their screaming still echoed in his ears.

But at least he hadn’t hit any of the windows, so there would be no outward evidence of violence onboard The Hana as it sailed into New York Harbor and lay at anchor through the night.

He stepped down from the ottoman, drew his pistol, and surveyed the nearly naked and still-bleeding women. A few were wounded only in the legs and were crying, or trying to crawl away, or imploring him to spare them. He went quickly from one to the other until his magazine was empty. He reloaded and continued.

He came to Tasha, who was lying on her back, a bullet wound in her abdomen and a grazing wound across her thigh. She was crying, though not so much from the pain, he thought, as from sadness.

He said, “I am sorry.”

She looked at him and managed to say, “Why…?”

“Close your eyes, Tasha.”

She shut her eyes and he fired a bullet into her heart.

He saved the two mortally wounded stewards for last, then went to the bar, washed his hands, and poured himself a flute of champagne.

Gorsky checked his watch. Twenty-two minutes since he had first walked onto the bridge. The operations officer in Moscow had estimated fifteen. But the desk idiots didn’t know anything.

The stereo was still playing Swan Lake, which he liked.

Vasily Petrov exited the elevator into the vestibule of the bridge deck.

He held the MP5 in one hand, his finger on the trigger and the firing switch set to fully automatic.

He noticed that the bridge door was closed, and he wondered if Gorsky had closed it, or if the officers had been alerted and sealed themselves off. He felt his heart beating quickly in his chest, but then he saw to his left the bloodstains on the wall and floor near the captain’s quarters, and he knew that Gorsky had been successful here, which gave him a sense of relief.

He moved quickly to the door marked SHIP’S OFFICE and pointed his MP5 at the door as he threw it open and dropped to one knee.

He saw that Gorsky had also been there, and he stood, closed the door, and went to the captain’s quarters and threw open the door.

It took him a second to process what he was seeing, and he wasn’t certain how this scene had come about and he didn’t care, but he saw that the deckhand, Malkin, was now a confirmed kill. Sprawled across a food cart was a steward, and sitting in his easy chair was Captain Wells, staring at the book in his lap.

Petrov closed the door, then went directly to the bridge door and pushed the intercom buzzer.

No answer.

He pushed the entry pad, leveled his submachine gun, and dropped to one knee as the door slid open, revealing the two dead officers on the floor.

Petrov stood and went onto the bridge, moving quickly to the instrument console to inspect it for damage.

“I was very careful.”

Petrov spun around to see Gorsky standing in the opening. He caught his breath and snapped, “That is a good way to get yourself killed, Gorsky.”

Gorsky wanted to say, “You are the one who would now be dead.” But he said, “I trust your quick judgment, Colonel.”

Petrov did not respond to that, but asked, “Are you finished in the salon?”

“It is done.”

“Good… so tell me.”

“You can see this for yourself. All four officers, a deckhand, and a steward. As for the ladies… they are all gone, as are two stewards.”

Petrov confirmed, “That accounts for all seven stewards.”

“How do we get that number?”

“There were four with the prince and his six guests.”

Gorsky nodded, and inquired, “And all the cooks were in the galley?”

“They still are.” He smiled.

Gorsky, too, smiled, and asked, “Did you remember to shut off the gas?”

“I forget nothing, Viktor.”

“Yes, Colonel.” He asked, “And how was your visit to the crew’s quarters?”

“Four, and one in the passageway.”

They stood there a second, each waiting for the other to point out that a deckhand was missing. Finally, Petrov said, “So, unless you have forgotten a man you killed, there is one not accounted for.”

Gorsky nodded.

“I actually passed him earlier on a staircase. A Bulgarian.” Petrov added, “He said he was going to dinner, but he wasn’t in the crew dining room.” He smiled. “Well, he can’t go far.”

Gorsky pointed out, “He can, if he goes into the tender garage and takes the amphibious craft.”

Petrov looked at the instruments on the panel that monitored the tender garage. There was no indication that anyone was opening the door and flooding the compartment.

Gorsky went to the security camera screen and pulled up the garage, but he couldn’t see anyone there, and the amphibious craft sat in its chocks on the dry deck.

Petrov said, “I think we should not worry about one deckhand.”

Gorsky didn’t like his colonel’s inattention to a problem. Petrov did this too often, and one day it would prove fatal to him. Or to the mission. He thought again of the man and woman at Tamorov’s house. Problems—real or imagined—had to be addressed quickly and forcefully. He said, “I will go look for this man.”

Petrov checked his watch. “Gleb will be here soon.” He said to Gorsky, “We will follow the plan. I will stay here and secure the bridge, and you will go to the garage and open the door for Captain Gleb.” He added, “Don’t forget our nuclear physicist on the way.”

Gorsky nodded.

“I will call you on the public address system when I see Gleb’s craft approaching.” He smiled. “No one else will hear me.”

Gorsky ignored the joke and reminded Petrov, “The deckhand will hear you. And if he is Bulgarian, he will speak or understand some Russian.”

“Well, then, Viktor, see if you can find him on your way to the garage.” He smiled again. “You have as good a nose for finding the living as a cadaver dog has for finding the dead.”

Gorsky did not reply.

Petrov was feeling suddenly better, and he said to Gorsky, “You did a good job, Viktor.”

“Thank you, Vasily. Yourself as well.”

“The pieces are almost all in place. We now await our new captain, and our cargo. And then we sail for New York.”

Gorsky nodded. The colonel’s optimism was perhaps justified. They were more than halfway toward the successful completion of the most important military mission that Russia had mounted since the Great Patriotic War against the Germans. For the colonel, this meant a promotion to general and a comfortable position in Moscow for the rest of his life. And of course, his father would be proud of him. As for Gorsky, he had been promised any assignment he asked for—as long as it was in Russia. Neither he nor Colonel Petrov would ever be allowed to leave Russia again. Not after what they did in New York. They would take that secret to the grave with them.

Petrov said, “I will remove these corpses from the bridge so they don’t upset Captain Gleb. You will now go to the garage—”

The beating sound of helicopter blades penetrated into the nearly soundproof bridge, and both men looked through the windshield and saw the lights of a helicopter off their port side, at about two hundred meters altitude, traveling west.

Petrov said, “A commuter helicopter from the Hamptons.”

Gorsky did not reply, though he knew that a commuter helicopter would not fly that low or be this far from land. But perhaps it was a Coast Guard helicopter, looking for a boat lost at sea.

Petrov said, “Go. Gleb will be here shortly.”

Or, Gorsky thought, the Coast Guard was looking for them.