Assault on the Empress (22 page)

Cross finished the turn, both blades ready in his hands, spinning in his fingers.

He saw Hughes and Babcock coming down the catwalk steps, Hughes flipping over the rail from the last landing, throwing himself toward the man who'd shot Jenny, Babcock running straight for O'Fallon.

And then the devil voice he'd heard, hated over the loudspeaker during the hostage executions, came in a high-pitched shout. “Freeze! Or the detonator gets its pretty button pushed, now!”

Cross held his blades, his eyes passing from Paddy—who stood stock still—to Babcock—stopped dead in his tracks less than six feet from O'Fallon—to O'Fallon himself. O'Fallon's right hand was raised high over his head, a small box in his outstretched fingers, thumb poised over a red button.

“Ya bloody peelers! We'll be together in Hell!”

Cross started to move, a blur of motion at his left, Vols diving for O'Fallon. Hughes—Cross saw the gun rising in Hughes's hand. Babcock was hurtling himself toward O'Fallon.

And then a carrot-haired boy, not much more than an older teenager—the one O'Fallon had called Martin—jumped up as if he were going for a slam dunk in basketball, his hands closing over O'Fallon's right hand, O'Fallon hurtled back against the bulkhead. O'Fallon's left hand moved. There was the blast of a gunshot and the carrot-haired boy was blown back. Babcock's head impacted O'Fallon in the crotch, the revolver discharging a second time. Vols threw his body upward, hands groping for O'Fallon's hand that held the detonator. Hughes fired, O'Fallon's right cheek blown away. Cross was suddenly there, not knowing how he'd gotten there, but simply being there, his right hand arcing downward, the long-bladed Tanto's blade biting through flesh, catching an instant, then passing through, O'Fallon letting out a hideous shriek as his thumb was severed.

Cross saw it, the thumb flying outward, the detonator, its antenna extended, tumbling from the thumbless hand. He threw himself after it, his body twisting as he impacted the deck plates, the Tanto falling from his fingers, his hands reaching.

His hands closed over the detonator, his own right thumb almost depressing it.

He saw a blur of motion coming for him. It was Paddy, still with his knife. Lewis Babcock twisted round and in his right hand was his pistol. The Beretta fired twice, then twice again, Paddy's body spinning, falling, Cross edging back to avoid the knife as Paddy fell.

“We did it,” Hughes said quietly. And he turned for the doorway. Children were screaming. “God forgive me this,” and the Beretta in Hughes's hand fired once. Cross twisted over onto his stomach and looked toward the doorway. The last of the terrorists slumped against the bulkhead, turned around, eyes wide open in death, then slipped to the deck as if he were just sitting.

Darwin Hughes turned to the children, dropped to his knees, holstering his gun. He tore off the mask which covered his face. “Children. I'm sorry you saw this. But there was no other way.” Some of the children began approaching him, the grey hair, the smile Cross knew was there, like an exceedingly fit, melifluous voiced grandfather cum hero. He outstretched his arms, drawing some of the children to him, holding them. “There are bad men in the world. You all know that. And sometimes, to stop bad men, we have to be bad ourselves. But none of you—none of you walk away from this taking human life cheaply. You have your lives. Respect life whether it's yours or someone else's.”

Cross watched, listened, picked himself up off the floor. It was like listening to Batman or The Lone Ranger, but he didn't feel like laughing. He started to disarm the detonator but realized his hands were trembling too badly.

He looked around behind him, remembering Jenny. Vols had her propped against him, and she was breathing. “I wonder if a KGB Major and a CIA case officer could ever make a go of it, Cross?”

Cross just stood there, then Lewis Babcock, taking the mask from his face, reached out for the detonator. “Give me that.”

Cross gave it to him.

Abe Cross looked out over the twenty-three steps that led down from the front porch. He lit a cigarette. Hughes and Babcock were inside, Hughes being beaten at chess.

O'Fallon had raped the
Empress.
Cross himself and Hughes and Babcock had done no better by her, opening her wide to the sea, the last intimate portion of her violated. And after not very much time at all, the
Empress
had bowed beneath the waves and the ocean itself had seemed to spasm with her coming.

Over twenty-two thousand feet deep according to the charts. Until diving technology took a quantum leap forward, a detailed enough exploration of the
Empress Britannia
to recover the ampule from the bottom of the Atlantic would be impossible. And, by that time, the Russians would have reinvented their virus or developed something worse and the United States would have its own version of the virus or its own version of something worse.

Or just maybe, nobody would want to bother with something like that by then. But Abe Cross doubted that part. Which, he supposed, was the reason he had told Darwin Hughes and Lewis Babcock that he'd come in it with them again.

It was a clear night and cool.

Jenny Hall's voice had been that way on the telephone from West Germany. She would be released in a few days. But no, she didn't want him to go to all the trouble of flying over. She didn't know when she'd be back. This time, she wanted to see a little of Europe, not just the nightclubs and lounges, and not just after most sane people were asleep. But when she came back—she would keep up her singing, not the other thing—she would make it a point to call him. She really would.

Good-bye.

The telephone rang. Abe Cross felt as if his heart had jumped into his throat. He heard Babcock's voice answering it. Then, “Abe, it's for you.”

He snapped the cigarette into the night and tore open the screen door, crossing the room in three wide strides, almost ripping the phone from Babcock's hand. “Thanks, Lew.” He spoke into the receiver.“Hello. Hey, listen, we can—”

“Cross?”

He knew the voice. He swallowed hard. “Vols?”

“Don't ask how I got your telephone number, old man. I've always had good connections.” There was silence, the kind between bad jokes from a stand-up comic. “Anyway, thought you'd like to know. I got back to Moscow and what do you suppose?”

“I don't know. They were pissed?”

“No—they gave me a medal! Can you believe that? Anyway, I was going to show Anna—remember the girl I mentioned to you while we were all floating around at sea waiting for your submarine to get us? And by the by, thanks awfully for doing your part about keeping me free.”

“You'll never be free there, doing what you do.”

“Oddly enough, I arrived at the same conclusion. I told the people on Derzhinsky Square that your chaps had gotten the ampule after betraying me and leaving me for dead. Sorry over that, but it was necessary. Rather thought it might give your johnnies the chance to neutralize the military potential of the bloody virus after all, our chaps having less of an incentive and all to use it with you having it.”

“What did you mean about arriving at the same conclusion, man?” Cross asked.

“Checked our files, actually. Found out some of our people had been indirectly working O'Fallon for years. Spread chaos in the West; that sort of thing. It didn't sit well, Cross. Anna and I are in West Berlin now.I'm on a coin telephone from the lobby of your Embassy. Never guess.”

“You're not—”

“We're defecting, yes. But we're still patriotic Russians and all that. Not going to tell anything damning to the Mother country. Just enough to qualify for new identities and passports after all the interminable questions.”

Cross lit a cigarette. “They'll get you eventually, Comstoek—Vols, I mean.”

“Eventually's a long time off. Look here, I don't think we'll likely speak again. But, well, maybe we'll meet again in that place O'Fallon suggested. Good-bye, old man.”

“Vols—”

The line went dead.

“What did he want? Everything all right?” Babcock asked.

Cross looked at Lewis Babcock, then at Darwin Hughes. The board between them showed that Hughes was about to be checkmated.

“What did he want?” Hughes asked.

“Aw, nothing much. Tell ya later. But he did suggest a place where we could get together sometime. But, well, I didn't have the heart to tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Babcock asked.

“They don't let guys like him in down there.” Cross stubbed out his cigarette.

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