Carpathian (7 page)

“Who in the bloody hell is that?” the man caught in the lie asked.

“She’s a royal,” Lee said as he started to go after Alice.

“A royal?” the Israeli asked.

“A royal pain in my ass—Hamilton, wait a minute.”

Alice stopped on her way to the salon staircase. She turned to face her employer.

“When are you going to stop this unrelenting testing of my knowledge? It took me all of a minute to figure out who your buddy was. Trust, Garrison, that’s what’s missing in your soul, trust.” She started to turn away but Lee grabbed her arm.

“Look, his name is Ally Ben-Nevin. He just took over the Gaza region for state security. He’s here to keep the Palestinian people and his own from having their shared history vanish into rich American, European, and Chinese mansions.”

“And you’re telling me he knows who you are?” she asked, skeptical at the very least.

“Of course not, President Truman would have me hung from the Washington Monument if that little secret got out. No, Hamilton, he thinks we work for the State Department.”

“I’m shocked that you’re competent enough to pull that little deception off without getting caught.”

“Okay, that’s about enough of—”

The tremendous explosion rocked the
Golden Child
from bow to stern.

Alice was thrown forward and Lee wasn’t far behind. As the ship listed sharply to the starboard side, Garrison pulled Alice aside as the giant block from Jericho tilted crazily on its steel pedestal. Alice was able to get her legs free at the last second as Garrison pulled on her for all he was worth. The stone block hit the carpeted deck and then after a moment’s hesitation the massive weight of the block smashed through the teak wood and then crashed into the bowels of the ship. Lee was stunned as a giant geyser of water shot through the opening and slammed into the ornate chandelier. Water and glass cascaded onto the men and women trying to pick themselves up off the deck.

“I believe our host may have angered someone. I do think this bloody ship is sinking,” Ben-Nevin said as he helped both Lee and Alice to their feet.

With water already lapping at Lee’s ankles he reached into his jacket and pulled an old Colt .45 automatic from his hidden place beneath his bright red cummerbund. He turned and looked at Alice and just winked with his good eye.

“Now you know why the giant red cummerbund, Hamilton.” Lee nodded his head at Israeli intelligence agent Ben-Nevin and then gestured toward the large staircase where people were making their way out of the salon. “May I suggest we see if there’s another mode of transportation back to Hong Kong?”

Around them horns and sirens were blaring and men and women were screaming. Lee just started pushing women and men toward the stairs. Alice turned and the last thing she saw of Lee was him disappearing into the panicked crowd of secret bidders. The lights flickered and then went out to the accompaniment of more screams and shouts. Somewhere in the darkness a gunshot sounded. Then that was followed by another. Garrison found a woman on the flooded floor and assisted her to her feet. It was the haughty French woman who had given Lee a most distasteful look earlier in the evening.

“This is unacceptable, unacceptable!” the woman screamed as she tried to push Lee’s hands from her.

“Well, you’re going to find out there’s a hell of a lot more that’s unacceptable in a minute if you don’t get your fat ass up those stairs.” He slapped her hard on her behind, sending the shocked socialite through the water. As Lee watched her leave he saw a small black-painted wooden statue float by in the churning water. His eyes widened when he saw the wolf’s head and the articulated hands depicted on the carved wood. Lee reached out and grabbed one of the surviving auction pieces and then shoved it into Ben-Nevin’s jacket pocket. “Get this to your people and tell them they’re hemorrhaging antiquities and the bloodsuckers are getting rich. Now go!” Lee pushed Ben-Nevin away even as his eyes didn’t understand.

As the eighty-plus guests and crew fought their way through the jumble of broken artifacts and buffet items, Lee saw that the water was rising far faster than the men and women were moving. The ship must have taken a shape charge directly to her waterline and possibly one to her keel. A very professional job if he were correct.

The last twenty men and women were close to the top of the stairs when something blew. It knocked several people back and over the top of the darkened stairs. Lee saw agent Ben-Nevin hurled into the far wall where he hit and slid into the water and then slowly regained his feet. Garrison pulled the intelligence agent to his feet and pushed him toward the now bent and burning stairs.

The fire was now spreading across the ceiling of the salon. Lee’s escape was blocked both at the main salon entrance and the exit leading to the galley.

“Oh, this is good,” he said as he shoved the Colt back into his pants and then scanned the interior of the darkened and fire-lit salon for Alice, but she was nowhere to be seen. For the first time in many years, Garrison Lee was frightened. Frightened that he had lost someone he really cared about. He shook his head as the flames and the water were coming close to meeting in the middle, one from above, the other from below.

As he fought his way back into the center of the salon, he knew then that he loved Alice, had from the very first moment he had laid his one good eye upon her in the hospital in Washington, D.C., in 1945 when she had come to inquire about the husband she had lost in South America during the war. Why he thought the most beautiful woman in the world would, or even could, love a man as scarred as physically and emotionally as Lee, he could never figure out. But Lee knew he had to try. As flames reached from above and water from below Garrison Lee made a quick decision and then dove headfirst into the gaping hole where the stone block and its strange animal had vanished when it crashed through the deck to the spaces below.

“You!” The shout came from behind Lee just as he surfaced into chaos on the third deck. As he turned he saw their host, Lord Harrington, standing between two of his guards. They had guns pointed his way. The Englishman was soaked and his hairpiece looked as if it had hit an iceberg. “I don’t know who you are, but you did this!”

Lee was beginning to wonder if his real identity and intentions had been stenciled on him. First the girl and now this antiquities thief seemed to be excellent guessers at his true vocation. Garrison felt the weight of the old Colt .45 in his cummerbund but knew he would never reach it.

“Who sent you?” the Englishman shouted as another, even larger geyser of seawater shot through the massive hole in the deck. Garrison saw his opportunity as he was obscured at the last second by the eruption. He pulled the gun, ripping away the hated cummerbund, and dove for the water. Lee surfaced and with the biggest guess of his life took a chance and started shooting as soon as he surfaced. The first two .45 caliber rounds missed. The third struck one of the armed men and sent him backward into the roiling water. The Englishman’s eyes widened as Lee took quick aim at the second man and fired. The bullet caught the man dead center of the forehead. He slowly eased himself back down into the water, not feeling anything in his now dead brain. Garrison moved the barrel toward Lord Harrington.

“No, no,” he shouted, raising his arms.

Normally Garrison would have had no compunction in shooting the thief, but he also realized that it wasn’t his job. He lowered the .45 automatic. The look on Harrington’s face was decidedly relieved. That was short-lived however when as Lee looked on in stunned silence a three-foot-long aluminum shaft slammed into Harrington. The small spear protruded from his chest as he stared down at the instrument that had killed him. He slowly looked up at Lee, who grimaced as he realized the man had been murdered right in front of him and amid the chaos of the sinking
Golden Child
. As he watched Harrington also slid beneath the water. Garrison looked around, aiming the gun in the darkness and the flickering electrical shorts, and saw what he was searching for. The girl smiled, lowered her diving mask, and then tossed the spear gun toward Lee. The young woman with the strange eyes waved at Lee and then vanished into the rolling water. Garrison saw one of her fins swipe at the air as she kicked away beneath the shattered deck.

Lee decided that the girl was showing him a way out. He dove after her, praying that Alice had made it to the main deck and over the side.

*   *   *

Alice Hamilton watched as the panic-driven guests fought their way to the main deck. She angrily removed the fur stole and her white gloves as she reached down to assist an elderly man to his feet and then unceremoniously push him over the railing of the heavily listing
Golden Child
.

“Damn it, Garrison, where in the hell are you?” she shouted at the many frightened faces jumping over the side of the ship. She kicked off her high heels and furiously started back toward the salon opening.

*   *   *

Lee held his breath as he felt the shudder come from beneath the
Golden Child
. Another scuttling charge went off, sending a pressure wave through his eardrums that came near to stunning him. The blast was obviously meant to send the $6 million yacht to the bottom of the South China Sea. The murder of the antiquities thieves and bidders had been meticulously planned out. The first charge was meant to send the guests scurrying off the ship. The second was meant to break the back of the
Golden Child
and send her to the bottom. A tactic Lee had used himself on numerous occasions during the war, both in Europe and South America.

As he swam though the darkness a fresh rush of seawater struck him from beneath. The powerful explosion placed along the keel of the ship sent a torrent of heated water upward, where it slammed Lee into the very block Alice had been mesmerized with not fifteen minutes earlier and that now sat at the lowest portion of the decking near the engine spaces.

Garrison was starting to lose faith that he had enough air left in his lungs to escape through the bottom of the
Golden Child
. As his hands fought for purchase against the rush of incoming sea, his fingers tore lose a large section of the stone block from Jericho. He held on to the small piece of stone as his vision started to tunnel and his lungs were close to exploding.

He knew he would never see Alice again. And he found that was the only regret he had. Alice.

Suddenly his leg was tugged on and he felt himself being pulled further down into the water. Whoever had his leg was not too gently pulling him to the bottom of the engine spaces where all hell was breaking loose. As Garrison fought to keep consciousness he saw the floating bodies of many of the
Golden Child
’s crewmen. Most were burned and some had parts of their bodies missing from the two powerful explosions. He was pulled even further along the hull. Then suddenly Lee and his savior were free of the
Golden Child
. The water was much cooler as he felt himself rising from the depths. When he broke the surface of the choppy sea he didn’t think he had enough strength to take a deep breath, then just before he did he felt his face being slapped hard.

“Don’t you know when you abandon ship you head to the deck, not the engine room?” the voice said as a life preserver was thrust into his hands.

Lee tried to catch his breath as he saw who his rescuer had been—the young Gypsy girl from the salon. She was treading water not inches from Lee’s face. Her smile caught the senator off guard.

“Don’t think us cruel,” she said as her swim fins kept her easily above the choppy water. “I set the first charge to scare the guests, the second to sink the ship, but I’m afraid it went off too early. I’m really not that good with explosives.”

“Who are you and who made you judge, jury, and executioner?” Lee said, spitting saltwater from his mouth.

“I am no one, Mr. Lee, but the woman who gave the execution order is that pig Harrington’s judge, jury, and executioner, and also my queen.” The girl smiled and lowered her dive mask. “Your woman is your equal American, but don’t allow her to follow us. It will only bring her grief. If we ever meet again, Keeper of Secrets, it will not go so well for you.”

Lee started to say something but the girl turned away. Lee watched her swim away as sirens and patrol boats from the distant harbor were starting to get closer to the scene of the tragedy at sea. Lee looked for the girl but she was nowhere to be found.

“Thank God!”

Lee quickly turned around.

“Hamilton!” he said as he reached for her.

Alice placed her arms around Lee and then they both just remained that way as the seas lifted them and then lowered their floating bodies back down. As Lee held her he noticed that they were being carried away from the survivors and the arriving rescuers.

“We better start swimming or it may be a while before I can apologize for being such an ass.”

Suddenly and before Alice could speak a splash sounded next to them. As Lee looked up he saw that an inflatable raft had been tossed into the sea.

“As I said, my crystal ball may be cracked, but it still shows a pretty clear picture of future events. Mrs. Hamilton, Mr. Lee, good luck, and swim that way.”

Lee and Alice looked up onto an ancient-looking Chinese junk. Standing at the railing was the young raven-haired girl. She was wrapped in a blanket. Standing next to her and leaning on the old wooden railing, the girl’s grandmother stood with her arm through that of the girl for support. The junk was slowly pulling out of the debris field left by the sinking
Golden Child
.

“Remember, Mrs. Hamilton, what you have seen here tonight cannot be.” She slowly waved her small hand, as did her grandmother. “God doesn’t have that kind of sense of humor. After all, animals like that cannot, should not exist. God wouldn’t have it,” the girl shouted. The junk slowly vanished into a fog bank and was gone.

“That has got to be the strangest girl I have ever met.”

Lee didn’t answer Alice, he just yanked the ripcord on the CO
2
cylinder and the raft immediately inflated. He pulled himself in and then Alice after him. As the sirens and the screams slowly started to fade because of distance, Lee looked into the fog after the fleeing ghostly image of the Chinese junk.