Charon's Landing (44 page)

Lyle Hauser was too stunned to react. The flare’s noxious smoke had created such a dense cloud that he couldn’t clearly see what was happening. The automatic launch sequence continued, dropping the lifeboat so quickly it felt as if gravity had found new strength.

At the full extension, there was only a two-foot gap between the lifeboat and the flat stern of the
Southern Cross.
When the winches released the boat, the terrorist was caught in this narrow chasm. His legs fouled against the ship’s railing while his upper body was still in the lifeboat. The drop sheared him neatly in two, his still-burning torso spilling into the lifeboat and his disembodied legs pinwheeling into the turgid North Pacific.

Hauser screamed maniacally as the larger section of the body fell into the boat with him, sizzling like a steak on a summer barbecue. The lifeboat hit the ocean with a bone-jarring crash, a cascade of water spilling in through the open hatch. An instant later an arc of electricity flashed through the lines securing the lifeboat to the
Southern Cross
, cutting the cables as easily as threads, and suddenly the boat was free, tossing on the tanker’s wake.

The two lifeboats stowed port and starboard hit the water at the same time as Hauser’s, but the supertanker’s forward momentum caused both to capsize and sink only moments after being released. Because it was located in the stern of the tanker, Hauser’s craft remained upright, though the ride was rough until it slipped from the ship’s wake.

Nearly overcome by the chemical smoke of the phosphorus flare, Hauser kicked at what was left of the terrorist, forcing the charred member out of the hatch and into the water. Despite his revulsion at the burned and blistered hunks of flesh that coated the bottom of the hatch, Hauser forced himself to close the aperture.

It was two minutes past midnight.

Not knowing what had transpired on the bridge to allow him to escape, Hauser wanted to make certain he made the best use of what providence had given him. With the radar still out, he knew that Riggs would never be able to find the lifeboat in the empty expanse of the North Pacific. But it was possible that she could triangulate his position if he made his distress call too early. The lifeboat’s radio was small, with only a limited range in the best of conditions. To make it work properly, and to protect himself, Hauser had to get far away from the ship and much closer to shore and hope that someone was listening this dark night. He was two hundred and thirty miles from the coast and, unknown to him, the nearest receiving post was an eleven-year-old boy charged with monitoring the radio aboard his father’s fishing trawler.

The boy was fast asleep.

W
idowed for so many years that getting to work at ungodly hours was the norm, David Saulman moved through the maze-like warrens of his office like a lord, turning on lights and grabbing express mail envelopes from the desks of his associates as he made his way to his personal suite. A coffeemaker slaved to the light switch in the reception area had started making a potent brew as soon as he’d entered the offices that took up an entire floor of a Miami bank building.

By the time Saulman got to his desk, there was a full pot of coffee waiting. Filling a mug the size of an oil can, he ignored the first salmon hint of daylight peeking over the watery horizon. Twenty-seven floors below, the city slumbered, eking out its last moments of quiet before the day seized it in another scorching session of existence.

The first thing associates learned when they joined Berkowitz, Saulman & Little was that there was no Berkowitz or Little, never had been. The names were figments of Dave Saulman’s imagination, weighty names to give his firm a solid feel when he’d first started out three decades ago. The second thing they learned was that no matter how early they arrived at the law firm, their boss would be there before them — and he’d be going through their mail.

Dave Saulman was a benevolent dictator who was once quoted as saying, “If it’s delivered to my office, it’s mine.” During the mideighties, when bicycle messengers routinely delivered drugs to some of the younger lawyers, he came to possess almost as much cocaine as Metro Dade Police. He never chastised those lawyers who used it, knowing that normal people couldn’t put in the hundred-hour workweeks lawyering demanded. Saulman figured there were some very happy fish in Biscayne Harbor because of him.

Only a dozen red, white, and blue priority envelopes had been delivered last night, distributed through the offices by the firm’s utility service. He opened and read them all in just a few minutes, categorizing most as hyped-up client anxiety. It was amazing how a few million dollars, when it was hanging out in the open, could panic a client.

Saulman wore a dark suit, faint chalk lines accenting his spreading figure. His silk tie had not been fully knotted, its juncture hanging an inch below the unbuttoned top of his starched shirt. Because he had a meeting at eight-thirty, he wore a prosthetic limb to compensate for his missing arm. Given his choice, he kept his empty sleeve hanging limply, but the sight seemed to bother many of the clients. The straps holding the plastic arm in place were already chafing.

Only a half dozen inches above five feet and starting to paunch, Saulman appeared taller because of the tremendous amount of nervous energy his body demanded he expend. He was never still. His right leg bounced constantly, whether he was seated or standing, his one good arm and his stump always in motion. Even his eyebrows, dark intimidating slashes, leaped and danced as he spoke. There was no deliberation to his movements, only an innate sense to move, and it served him well. He could intimidate almost everyone he met despite his stature.

Seated behind the broad expanse of his ash desk, his leg juddering like a palsy victim, he finished with the letters sent to his associates and turned his mind to the new London office he’d opened. It was midmorning there and they should be doing a brisk business. Most of the London people were involved with a leveraged buyout of a Dutch tug firm by a group of Germans, but there were enough lawyers left over to pursue more mundane if less lucrative ventures.

He was just reaching for the phone to put the fear of God into them when an apparition staggered into his office. Saulman recognized him immediately, but the man’s tattered appearance shocked him more than he cared to admit. Bud Finley slumped into one of the high-backed oxblood chairs facing Saulman’s desk. He was a private investigator.

Finley looked like a waste of space, his suit cheaply put together, his haircut not much better, a few greasy strands combed over a red, weeping scalp. He was heavily built, his shoulders like the crossarms of a gallows, his arms as menacing as an executioner’s rope. His gut, though ponderous and straining against his discount store shirt, was solid. Finley’s face was florid, widened by the years and pummeled by the experience, but his eyes were quick and intelligent. He had the look of a sewer rat and twice the cunning.

Although he’d expected Finley, the lack of self-respect the man showed himself still dumbfounded Saulman. Finley, never a neat man, looked like he’d just come from an industrial accident. “You’re early,” Saulman said to cover himself. He distinctly remembered relocking the outer office doors, a fact that seemed not to have slowed Finley.

Finley flared a match off his thumbnail, and as it burned toward his fingers, he calmly pulled a pack of generic cigarettes from a suit coat pocket and torched one before speaking. His voice was pure Deep South, garbled by a family tree without enough branches. “Ah donnit think you’d a wanted ta wait ta hear what Ah got to say.”

Ever since Mercer had called him requesting information about tankers in the Gulf of Alaska and most specifically Petromax Oil vessels, Dave Saulman had been hooked, sensing one of those challenges that Mercer was famous for stumbling into. At his own expense, Saulman sent his best investigator, Bud Finley, to Petromax’s main offices in Delaware and then to Louisiana, where Southern Coasting and Lightering had established their headquarters.

While they’d known each other for years, Mercer never failed to fascinate Dave Saulman. He could produce the easy solution to a complex problem, or find the obscure pattern buried in a simple issue. Mercer’s instincts were uncanny. Saulman was well aware that when Mercer called for a favor, it was just the beginning of something a lot more intricate.

So when he’d called a few days ago asking about vessels in the Gulf of Alaska, Saulman knew that there would be much more buried under such an easily answered question. If there was something dangerous behind the
Petromax Arctica
’s delayed arrival at the port of Valdez, an investigator of Finley’s expertise would find it. And while Saulman himself had casually asked around about the strange provisions of the sale of the Petromax fleet to Southern Coasting and Lightering with little result, he was confident that Finley would uncover the real truth behind the deal.

Saulman hadn’t expected Finley until late that evening at the earliest; the man had had only about forty-eight hours to gather information. He couldn’t imagine Finley getting anything out of a slick corporation like Petromax, let alone the shadowy SC&L, so quickly. None of Saulman’s contacts, even when pressed, could tell him anything more than SC&L had themselves been bought recently by an unknown party. Saulman was appalled that anyone could move within the labyrinthine but somewhat closed world of maritime commerce without his knowledge.

“Ever heard of a Arab named Hasaan bin-Rufti?” Finley invited.

Twenty minutes later, after having heard the full story from Finley, Dave Saulman was on the phone with Mercer’s answering machine. “You know who this is. Give me a call ASAP or sooner. Finding that the
Petromax Arctica
was late for her latest run is only the tip of the iceberg. Call me at home. After what I’ve heard this morning, I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

T
he hospital lobby was a strange combination of institutional coldness and the grief of those forced to wait within it. Families clustered in tight enclaves of nervous expectancy and wailing. Amid the sanitized tiled walls and threadbare carpet paced by innumerable feet, Lady Millicent Gray cut a striking figure. Her long legs, mostly hidden beneath a loose-fitting linen dress, slid with an easy grace, the magnificent cinnamon mass of her hair flamed like a beacon. Her face, beautiful even at this early hour, with only subtle traces of makeup to mask the more obvious signs of the previous night’s sexual excesses, radiated the right trace of God-given confidence and royally appointed favor. Heads that until a moment before were bowed with grief came up and regarded her openly, their pain forgotten if only for the instant of her passage.

If asked later, none of the forty or so people who saw her stride through the lobby’s double glass doors would have remembered the figure who walked with her, an Arab woman fully covered and veiled as was proper for the more conservative sects of Islam.

At the hospital’s security desk, Millicent spoke to the figure at her elbow out of the corner of her mouth. “I hope you know, Trevor, that I want to wear that outfit when we’re finished here and I want you to ravage me like some Barbary pirate.”

“Are you kidding?” Trevor James-Price quipped quietly. “I may never give it up. I know why women wear skirts now. My God, the breeze blowing up to my bollocks feels wonderful. The old clappers have never known such freedom.”

“God, you’re incorrigible.” Millie Gray smiled.

The security guard at the duty nurses’ station didn’t question Millicent about her connection to Khalid Khuddari or why she was here. He could barely tear his eyes away from her breasts long enough to notice she wasn’t even alone. He tripped over his tongue telling her that Khalid had a private room on the fourth floor. Millicent Gray and the disguised Trevor James-Price veered toward the elevators, both of them suppressing the desire to hold hands. Lord Harold Gray would be back from his African hunt in fifteen days, and any second of their affair they squandered would never be recovered.

Five minutes after Trevor and Millie stepped onto the elevator, an intense young Kurd walked into the lobby. The lump bulging out the left breast pocket of his khaki overcoat was a folding cellular phone. The lump at the right was a silenced Sig Sauer P220.

Tariq had met him in the parking garage in front of the massive hospital and told him Khalid’s room number, having learned it last night after a lengthy reconnoiter. The Kurd had exactly twenty minutes to reach Khuddari, kill him, and make his way back to the parking garage where Tariq waited to drive them away. The young man paused in the lobby, squandering five of his minutes trying to steel his courage. Security was lax, but there were two burly guards at their station, talking easily with reporters who were waiting to get a statement from the unknown victim four floors above.

The gunman decided that now was his time to strike. If he was somehow caught, he knew he would take his own life, redeeming himself for the failure yesterday. His martyrdom would be secured. The silencer attached to the big automatic had never been used; it would work at optimum efficiency. The shot would be undetectable from more than a couple of yards from Khuddari’s room. The guards didn’t even glance in his direction as the gunman headed for the multiple banks of elevators.

Khalid Khuddari had been awake for nearly two hours, pain insidiously bringing him out of his drug-induced sleep. The scabs on his back felt hot even through the layers of gauze protecting them, and they itched fiercely. Every time he blinked, the delicate muscles around his eyes pulled against the raw wounds on his face, bringing fresh tears streaming down his cheeks. And when the tears stung the cuts, it was quite literally adding salt to a wound.

The thought made him chuckle painfully.

“You can’t be that hurt if you can manage to laugh at this ungodly hour.”

Khalid looked across the room. He barely remembered Millicent Gray, but he knew the voice from under the veils. He hadn’t heard them enter. Trevor James-Price pulled the black veil of the chador from around his head, his fine hair dancing with the motion before falling naturally over his boyish face. Despite his cocksure smile, there was true concern behind his bluer-than-blue eyes. “God, Khalid, you look terrible, even for a wog.”