Plague Ship (30 page)

“That is very thoughtful of you all,” Janni said, smiling. “And the two are so close that I won’t even notice.”

“Hear that, Maurice?”

“I did not.”

“I believe we’re having herring,” Juan said, “which is the traditional start to any meal, followed by
fiskeboller
, which I understand to be fish dumplings. Then there is roast pork loin with red cabbage and browned potatoes, followed by your choice of
pandekager
pancakes with ice cream and chocolate or
ris à la mande
.”

At this, Janni’s smile widened. “That is a rice dessert,” she explained to the others, “With cherry sauce. It is my favorite in the world. We have it, too.”

“Are you from Oslo?” Linda asked as the first dishes were laid on the linen tablecloth.

“I moved there when my parents died, but I was born in the far north, in a small fishing village called Honningsvad.”

That explained her darker complexion, Juan thought. The native Lapps, like the Inuit of Alaska or the indigenous people of Greenland, had evolved darker skin as protection from the relentless glare of sunlight off the ice and snow. She must have some native blood.

Before he could ask a question, he spotted Hali Kasim framed in the dining-room entrance. His hair stuck up in tufts at the side of his head, and even at a distance Juan could see the plum-colored circles under his eyes and the fatigue that made his flesh look like it was slipping off the bone. Juan stood. “Would you all please excuse me?”

He strode across to his communications specialist. “You’ve looked better.”

“I’ve felt better, too,” Hali agreed. “You said you wanted the results of my work cutting through the static jamming our bug as soon as I finished. Well, here it is.” He handed a single sheet of paper to the Chairman. “I even used the sound-mixing board Mark has in his cabin. This is the best I could do. Sorry. The numbers in parentheses are the elapsed time between words.”

I DON’T . . . (1:23) YES . . . (3:57) ’BOUT DONNA SKY . . . (1:17) (ACT)IVATE THE EEL LEF . . . (:24) KEY . . . (1:12) TOMORR(OW) . . . (3:38) THAT WON’T BE . . . (:43) A MIN(UTE) . . . (6:50) BYE.(1:12)

“That’s it, huh?” Juan struggled to not show his disappointment.

“That’s it. There are a few unidentifiable sounds that the computer wouldn’t give more than a ten percent certainty of their meaning. Heck, it gave Donna Sky’s name only a forty percent chance of being right, but I’m pretty sure it is.”

“How long was Martell’s conversation with Severance from the time he turned on the scrambler to when he said good-bye?”

“Twenty-two minutes six seconds.”

Cabrillo read through it again. “The four things that stick out are
Donna Sky
, a key of some kind, and the word fragments
eel
and
lef
. What’s the computer probability on the accuracy of those last ones?”

Having spent countless hours poring over the data, Hali didn’t need to refer to his notes. “Sixty-one percent. Key was ninety-two.”

“Eel, lef, and the key came within forty-five seconds of one another, so it’s a fair bet they’re related. And coming a minute seventeen seconds after mentioning Donna Sky, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think she’s somehow connected, too.”

Hali gaped at him. “I stared at this piece of paper for hours before noticing that.”

“That’s because you were trying to deduce meaning from the words rather than the pauses.”

“I do have one more thing.” Kasim slipped a microcassette recorder from his pant pocket and hit PLAY. Juan heard the same static as before, and then it suddenly stopped. “End transmission,” a voice said clearly.

“Who the hell was that?”

“I ran it through the computer. English isn’t that guy’s native language. Best it could come up with is Middle European, and it put his age between thirty and fifty.”

“Ah,” Juan said, remembering the snippets of conversation they had managed to record before the jammer was activated. “I bet this is Zelimir Kovac. Come on.”

They returned to the table, where Mark Murphy was stammering his way through a joke that wasn’t going well. He seemed relieved when Juan interrupted. “Eric, did you manage to find anything on Zelimir Kovac this afternoon?”

“Nada, zip, and zilch.”

“I think I know this man,” Jannike said. “He was on the
Golden Dawn
. He is an important person with the Responsivists.”

“He never showed up on any of their websites, payroll, or anyplace else,” Eric responded, as if she’d insulted his research abilities.

“But he was there, I tell you,” Janni said defiantly. “People never talked to him but always about him. I think he is close to the group’s leader.”

Cabrillo wasn’t concerned that Kovac hadn’t come up on their radar. He was thinking about how he had been aboard the ill-fated cruise liner and now shows up in Athens. Then he remembered that one of the
Dawn
’s lifeboats had been missing from its davits when the
Oregon
found the ghostship. “He killed them.”

“What did you say?” Julia asked with her fork poised halfway to her mouth.

“Kovac was on the
Golden Dawn
and now he’s at the Responsivist retreat in Greece. He escaped the ship on one of her lifeboats, and the only reason he would have done that is if he knew all those people were going to die. Ergo, he killed them.” He turned to Janni. “Could you describe him?”

“He was very tall. Almost two meters.” That put him at six foot five. Big dude, Juan thought. “He looked very strong and serious. I only saw him a few times, and he never smiled. In truth, I was a little frightened of him.”

“Would you sit down with Eric and Mark and try to create a picture of him?”

“I can’t draw.”

“We have a computer that will do that for you. All you have to do is describe him and they will do the rest.”

“I will do anything you ask if it means he gets punished for what he did.” She started sobbing as the memories of that horrible night welled up. Eric put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him. Juan gave him credit for not beaming at Mark Murphy.

Julia Huxley dropped her fork and tossed her napkin on the table as she stood. She was at Janni’s side in an instant. “That’s enough excitement for one night. Let’s get you back down to medical.” She helped the stricken young woman to her feet.

Mark and Eric looked like they were going to help.

“Gentlemen,” Juan said in a warning tone, and they both sank back into their seats, dejected. “There is a time and place. This is neither.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, like contrite children. Had Juan not been occupied by all the information he’d gotten in the last couple of minutes, he might have smiled at their display.

He sat, turning his attention to Linda Ross. “Your mission’s scrubbed.”

“What? Why?”

“I won’t let you go into that compound unarmed knowing Kovac is there.”

She flared. “I can handle myself.”

“This isn’t open for discussion,” Juan said, his voice flinty sharp. “If I’m right, then Kovac is a mass murderer on an unimaginable scale. You aren’t going in there. Period. Hali scrubbed our recording further, and Donna Sky’s name featured prominently in Martell’s conversation with Thomas Severance. We know she’s a notable Responsivist and may have information on what’s going on. That’ll be our conduit into their plans.”

“If she’s a hard core believer, then she won’t talk to us,” Linda said.

“She’s an actress, not a trained agent. Five minutes with her and she’ll tell you everything you want to know. We just have to find her and get to her.”

“She’s arrived in Germany to film a movie recently.” Cabrillo was surprised Linda had that kind of information at her fingertips. He arched an eyebrow.

His vice president of operations blushed under her freckles. “What can I say—I’m addicted to Hollywood gossip.”

Eric Stone leaned forward in his seat. “As for getting to her, I have an idea. Kevin Nixon worked in Hollywood for years before coming to us. I’m sure he knows someone who knows someone.”

Nixon had been an award-winning effects and makeup artist for one of the big studios. He’d turned his back on that part of his life when his sister was killed during the 9/11 attacks. He had offered his unique talents to the CIA when Cabrillo poached him from the Agency.

“Good thinking. If he can get access to her on the set, maybe we can finally get a handle on what the hell’s going on.”

“Just playing devil’s advocate here, but what if she doesn’t know anything?”

“Pray that she does, Linda, because I’m not sending anyone into their retreat.”

“Speaking of sending people places, did you want me to go with you to the Philippines?”

“No, Mark. Thanks for the offer, but I’m taking Linc.”

“Spreading us kind of thin, aren’t you, boss?” Eric remarked.

Cabrillo didn’t disagree. “Of course Max is tied up for as long as he needs, but Eddie will be back from Rome the day after we reach Monaco. That will give us four of the senior staff including Julia. Linda, you won’t be gone for more than a day or two, and Linc and I will be back within three. Besides, the surveillance job is straightforward and passive for the most part, so I’m not concerned. Now, let’s enjoy our traditional
Danish
meal.”

Juan said this loud enough for Maurice, hovering by the kitchen door, to hear.

The steward scowled.

CHAPTER 19

EDDIE WAS LEANING AGAINST THE ELEVATOR’S REAR wall when the car reached the lobby. Max was to his right. When the doors opened, he pushed himself off the wall as two strangers in suits charged inside.

Eddie thought nothing of this lapse in elevator etiquette as the men brushed against him. Then he felt one of them reach a hand into his coat pocket and start to lift the Beretta hanging in his shoulder holster. He turned to react, and a gun fitted with a silencer was pressed between his eyes. Max was just as quickly disarmed. It took all of two seconds.

“Either of you move and you’re dead,” the larger of the two men said. His English was accented.

The close quarters negated most of Seng’s power martial arts moves, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to put up a fight. He tensed fractionally, and the gunman somehow sensed it. The pistol was rammed into Max’s gut, expelling his breath in an explosive whoosh.

“That is your last warning.”

The doors whispered closed and the elevator began to rise.

As Max struggled to reinflate his lungs, thoughts swirled through Eddie’s mind. He wondered how they had been tracked so easily and quickly, and if he should reveal that he suspected this was Zelimir Kovac, the man mentioned on the bug Juan had planted at the retreat. He also wondered why Kyle Hanley was so important to the Responsivists that they would take a chance like this to get him back. It didn’t make sense.

“You’re going to have to kill me,” Max was finally able to say. “You’re not getting your hands on my son again, Kovac.”

The Serb appeared surprised that Max knew his name, but the look quickly faded. He must have deduced they had heard the tape from the bug. Despite Kovac’s thuggish appearance, Eddie realized he wasn’t a stupid man.

“That is the most likely outcome,” Kovac agreed.

Not until you know who we are
, Eddie said to himself,
and how much we’ve already learned
.

As bargaining chips went, it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. If he was in Kovac’s shoes, he would need to know how deeply the Responsivists’ security had been penetrated. How much time that would buy them depended on how they were interrogated. And what they could do with that time was a whole separate issue. He and Max were on their own. There would be no rescue, and the hotel staff had already been informed that their guests in the top-floor suite weren’t to be disturbed for any reason.

By the time the elevator reached the sixth floor, Eddie had come to the depressing realization that Kovac had them boxed in.

That meant he and Max had to split up if they wanted to get out of this alive. Max had been a hell of a war fighter in his day, and Eddie put him up there with the Chairman when it came to cunning, but he wasn’t physically up for an escape, and, with his son hanging in the balance, he wasn’t there emotionally either.

The elevator doors opened. Kovac and his silent partner stepped back, motioning with their weapons for Eddie and Max to precede them. The two Corporation operatives exchanged a glance that conveyed their thinking had been on a parallel course and had come to the same conclusion. Just the tightening of Max’s eyes and the barest of nods told Eddie that Max knew they had to make a break for it on their own but that he wouldn’t leave his son behind. Eddie saw Max’s permission to go, as well as his acceptance of the consequences.

They walked down the hallway to their suite. They paused at the door. Eddie considered attacking again. Kovac’s lieutenant was close enough to kill with one blow, but the Serb was several paces away. It was clear he understood the dynamics of moving prisoners.

“Using your left hand, remove your key card,” Kovac ordered.

Again, Eddie understood that most right-handed people would put the key in their right pocket. It would be awkward reaching for it with the off hand.

Eddie turned to partially face Kovac and said, “There is a special lock on the door. We can’t get in.”

“I am familiar with such a device. You can still enter. Talk again and I shoot your left kneecap.”

Eddie jammed his left hand in his right pant pocket and fished out the electronic key card and used it. The insert light on the lock flicked from red to green, and he could turn the handle.

“Step back,” Kovac ordered.

Eddie and Max did as ordered. Kovac’s partner entered the suite. In just seconds, they heard Dr. Jenner cry out, “What is the meaning of this?” The gunman ignored him as he made the demand again. Twenty seconds later, the partner shouted out to Kovac, in clear American English, “Suite’s secure. Only the deprogrammer and the kid.”

Kovac flicked the gun barrel, and Max and Eddie entered the room. The Serb inspected the lock Jenner had placed around the door knob and smartly didn’t let the door swing closed.