Sabotage (44 page)

“He blackmailed me,” Chatham yelled. “Can't everyone see that?”

Dirgo looked ready to rip a hole in his chest. “So you were behind the auction all along. There were times I seriously considered you might be on the Viking's team. I should have trusted my gut.”

“Of course he was with me,” Pearl said. “Unfortunately for us, that little gambit failed. You recovered the Baldr satellite. I won't see a dime from the auction.”

“Like I said,” Rove piped in, “your plan had a part two.”

“Care to share?” Pearl said.

“Soon after the acquisition of Pearl Voyages, you planned to destroy Sapphire Pacific. Not only that, but with one pulse you could temporarily deflate the cruise industry. You knew the hijacking of the
Pearl Enchantress
would send shockwaves through international media. Imagine what vacationers would do after learning terrorists had devastated a ship with three thousand passengers. Millions would cancel itineraries. Every cruise line would take a hit. Hotels and restaurants would feel the burn. An attack of this magnitude would wreak havoc in the travel industry.”

“Go on,” Pearl said. “Where's the opportunity?”

“By seizing the
Pearl Enchantress,
you were killing three birds with one stone. One, you had leverage against Glitnir in the auction. Two, you gave Deeb his demonstration. And three … you stood to gain by short selling Sapphire Pacific stock.”

Pearl nodded. “Not only Sapphire Pacific, but a number of hotel chains. As you pointed out, this single act of destruction will have astoundingly far-reaching effects. The only two people who posed any threat to my plans were Clare and Avdeenko. I thought perhaps one of them could find a way to recover the satellite. Vasya was ordered to assassinate Avdeenko, and Ragnar would think he was avenging his brother's death by killing Clare.”

Chatham began to shout. “It's a pack of lies. I had nothing to do with any of this! It was all Clifford Pearl.”

Dirgo looked as if she were about to slap him. Instead, she curled a fist and walloped him so hard in the cheekbone it might have fractured had he not withdrawn from the blow. “You're a good actor, Dan, but you didn't quite pass the smell test,” she said. “Why don't you face up to the truth? Back in the office, you announced to everyone that Baldr was hovering a little south of the Arctic Circle when all I'd previously said was, ‘Somewhere over the North Atlantic.' How were you able to offer that precision?”

“That doesn't prove anything,” he said.

“No, it doesn't. But it does conveniently corroborate the hunch I explored on my own. I called the SEC to report my suspicions and ask for assistance.” She yanked some papers from her jumpsuit pocket. “Nice investment portfolio, Mr. Chatham. Seems you don't have much confidence in the tourism industry, either. You sold short in Sapphire Pacific soon before the auction started. If that doesn't prove you were in cahoots, I don't know what does.”

“You had me fooled, Dan,” Clare said with sadness. “Never gave me any reason to mistrust you.”

Dirgo added, “When Clifford Pearl called at one point, he said integrity had taken a vacation within our premises. The reference to you is now clear.”

Chatham glanced around, seeing the rails. A feeling of desolation swept over him. He looked out over the wave crests, the undulating swells, the frothy whitecaps blowing over a plane of icebergs. It was the sea's warning that no trespasser would go unpunished.

“You knew from the get-go Pearl intended to sink his own ship,” said Dirgo. She had the opportunity to kick him where it would count, but had every intention of letting Ragnar do his worst. “You knew three thousand people would die.”

Chatham looked at Pearl's detonator, his voice still quavering. “So what?” he said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Good point,” Dirgo answered. “You're already a murderer. Why stop now?”

“I can't take this anymore,” Chatham said. “I can't!”

Ragnar's strides toward the man were slow, controlled. He closed a hand around Chatham's throat. “I saw you eyeing the rails,” Ragnar whispered so no one else could hear, his voice lacquered with venom. No one was standing in his way now—not even Pearl. “You can't wait to die.”

Chatham threw a fist at Ragnar, who caught the blow with his free hand, held the fist at arm's length, and squeezed with a force that snapped two metacarpals. His hand shattered, and Chatham shrieked, squirming, exhausted of the will to fight as Ragnar crushed his knuckles and proceeded to break three phalanges.

“Bind his wrists behind his back,” Ragnar told his soldiers. “Have you heard of a strappado, Mr. Chatham?” Three Marauders approached, having hoisted up one of the ropes dangling from a grappling hook.

Before they could control him, Chatham bolted toward the stern of the ship. A host of automatics turned to follow his sprint, waiting only for their commander's nod to open fire. At first Ragnar assumed the getaway attempt was a product of mania, the dash nothing but an ill-planned, short-term escape strategy. Then he realized where Chatham was headed.

“Don't shoot!” he shouted to his legion.

Bounding up the stairs to the helipad, Chatham had made a beeline for the Augusta. Soon after he disappeared inside the craft, the rotor blades began to revolve, accelerating, lifting the giant piece of machinery skyward.

“Not yet…” Ragnar said.

The chopper hung suspended before banking north, the rhythm of the blades growing louder as it passed over them toward Iceland. Ragnar held up a hand, waiting for the helicopter to fly out of range of his corsairs. Then he signaled.

“Now!”

The chopper lurched. Even Dirgo withdrew at the sound of a hundred streams of bullets blasting the airborne chassis. Its twin engines aflame, the helicopter ascended thirty yards but remained well within reach. The tail boom quivered, its smaller rotor showering sparks. The canopy smashed inward, and the rear vertical fin twisted beyond recovery. The Augusta slowed its climb into the fog. The sound of tortured metal shrieked above all else, until the volley bombarded the swash plate that stabilized the rotors. The Augusta spiraled nose-first into the water.

The legion ceased fire, and the last they could see of the chopper was the tail boom disappearing beneath the surface.

“Your work is done,” Pearl said. His extended arm swiveled to face Ragnar, the Luger trained on the bulk of the man's torso. “Today, no guilty party goes scot-free. Let this be a lesson to your men. I have been informed that some of you, unsatisfied with your share of profits, are staging a little mutiny. I feel I've been generous. For entertaining the demands of these insubordinates, your leader will join Mr. Chatham in these waters.” He waggled the Swiss pistol. “Over the rails, Ragnar.”

Ragnar sprinted toward Pearl like a bull, banking on his ability to survive a raft of haphazard bullets.

Pearl fired one shot.

 

FORTY-FIVE

The bullet ripped through Ragnar's lower leg, shattering his tibia.

His knees buckled, and the man's upper body slammed down on the deck. He groaned, clasping his wound, and stood again, balancing on one foot and using the rail for stability.

“Into the water,” Pearl said, “while you still have one good shin.”

Ragnar knew he'd lost his only chance to tackle Pearl. The pain was excruciating.

“Don't be a coward like Chatham.” Pearl sneered. “Do this for your crew. You've avenged your blood brother. Now redeem your sea brothers.”

Limping, he swung his intact leg over the railing.

If the sea was his shrine, he was kneeling at the altar. He balanced there, staring into the roiling waters, and realized it wasn't the churning he dreaded, but the cold. Even with a wound to hinder his ability to tread water, he knew it was the hypothermia that would kill him. The Marauders hailed him as he made his most difficult decision. He shut his eyes and flung his other, bleeding leg over the rail, hanging there for a moment, the few glories of his life flashing through his mind. His nostrils flared, allowing a salty scent to pervade.

The tension in his body released. He let go of the rail.

*   *   *

“Did you see that?” Pearl shouted. “No one else crosses me.”

One of the Marauders spoke to him. “Cargo's loaded, sir. We're ready to sail.”

“Have everyone board your ships. I'm almost done here. Only fifteen minutes to the firework show, one I'd prefer watching from a distance.”

“Step onto one of those corsairs,” Rove said, “and you'll sail straight to hell.”

Pearl faced Rove and folded his arms. “I'm curious, Jake. How'd you know it was me?”

“A few reasons,” he said. “For starters, you were sloppy about your horn-rims. During poker games in the card lounge, you wore the glasses to study your hands and squinted without them. I figured you were farsighted. Then it struck me. After dinner with Selvaggio, second day of the cruise, the waiter had brought out a dessert menu. You didn't have your glasses with you, yet you had no trouble reading the fine, cursive print. Baffled by this, I borrowed your glasses once, only to discover they made no difference. They're fakes, part of your disguise. Your vision is fine. At this point I knew there was something you weren't sharing.”

Pearl chuckled. “Impressive.”

“On the night of the pulse, I'd been sipping a drink on the balcony. As soon as we lost power, I heard shattering glass and watched someone fall from one of the bridge wings. Someone had been murdered. Less than an hour later, I knocked on your door. When you answered, your trousers were dusted with flakes of glass. I later pieced together that you'd been on the bridge. It was you who shot Selvaggio and forced him out the window.”

Pearl looked riveted. Rove keep talking, seeing Victoria's growing worry as they idled in conversation under a clock ticking toward demolition. Trying not to aggravate her concern, he hoped she wouldn't act on impatience.

“I noticed a few strange things during the blackout. Cameras and other small electronics didn't work anymore. When I determined it was a pulse, not a generator failure that had taken out the ship's power, I thought back to Selvaggio's public broadcast. He had warned of a ship-wide power outage. But how could he know about the pulse before it happened? There were only two explanations. Either he had inside knowledge, or someone had invaded the bridge and held him at gunpoint during his announcement. He was all nerves that night, so I guessed the latter.

“Later I returned to the bridge myself, and found Trevor Kent near death. In his last breaths he uttered Selvaggio's name. This raised my suspicion again. I thought maybe I was wrong, that he was the one who'd planned the seizure of his own ship. But Selvaggio never turned up again. He'd disappeared. His body had broken through that window and fallen overboard. After you forced him to make the announcement, which you'd written to prevent mass hysteria from getting in the way of yours plans, you shot him. Big picture: If anyone knew how to handle an emergency, it was the captain. Your hijackers wanted him dead.

“It goes deeper. When I came to your room to make the chlorine bomb, I noticed the sheets of crumpled aluminum foil on your nightstand. What had you been wrapping so heavily? Maybe you'd been protecting something from the pulse. Maybe you'd created a Faraday cage. All you'd need was a shell of conducting material to block out harmful electromagnetic radiation. A few layers of aluminum foil would do the trick. The question remaining was, what had you needed to shield?

“While we were bagging the cleaning chemicals, I intentionally spilled some ammonia in with the bleach. That was no mistake. As toxic gases began to fume, I told you to gather your things and move to my room. I watched what you chose to bring with you. When you thought I wasn't looking, you reached into a drawer and took out a satellite phone. This verified my Faraday cage theory. Why would you bring a phone if it had been destroyed by the pulse? Of course, it hadn't been; you'd come prepared. From your own stateroom, you'd been communicating with people on land. Chatham, apparently. The foil had protected the circuitry from the pulse, making your phone one of the only pieces of working electronics aboard the
Pearl Enchantress.
You must have brought plenty of spare batteries.

“I began to think back on other events. Two stood out. On the day we met, you practically invited yourself to be my guest for the bridge tour and dinner. It seemed strange a veteran steward would find the idea of a bridge tour so enthralling. Would a flight attendant on a commercial jet ask for a chance to see the cockpit? Then I understood. You needed an excuse to get inside the bridge so you could alter the radar system. Kent had suspected tampering. During the tour, you stepped aside to install a virus that would later mask the corsairs from the radar screen. Five unidentified vessels bound for the
Pearl Enchantress
would cause alarm. You concealed them.”

“All accurate so far,” Pearl said. “You said there was a second event?”

“My night dive. You saw me enter the water by climbing down the fire hose. Our cabins are practically connected. You watched my descent from your window. When I resurfaced, the hose was untied. Someone had tossed it into the water. At the time I'd assumed it was the work of a hijacker, but later I realized you had done it. You knew I threatened your scheme, so you tried to kill me by removing my only means of returning aboard. You figured one of Ragnar's men would finish me. Which explains your surprise when I next came knocking at your stateroom. It became clear when, soon after I brought food to Dr. Clare, your men captured me. I'd told you right where I was going to be.”

“Right again,” said Pearl. “But if you suspected me, why would you trust me to help you shepherd those fifty passengers onto a lifeboat?”