Страница 53 из 93
“One is a sixteen-year-old girl—her grandparents reported it. The other is a woman with a mild case of Alzheimer’s.”
“How long have they been missing?”
“The girl for three hours. The old lady for about an hour.”
“Do you consider this a cause for serious concern?” Kemper hesitated. “Not the old lady—I think she’s probably gotten confused, maybe fallen asleep somewhere. But the girl . . . yeah, I’m concerned. We’ve paged her regularly, we’ve searched the public spaces. And then, there’sthis .” He gave LeSeur a second sheet.
The first officer read it with growing disbelief. “Bloody hell, is this true?” He stabbed his finger at the sheet. “A
monster
roaming the ship?”
“Six people on Deck 9 reported seeing it. Some kind of . . . I don’t know what. A thing, covered with smoke, or made of dense smoke. Accounts vary. There’s a lot of confusion.”
LeSeur handed the sheets back to Kemper. “This is absurd.”
“Just shows the level of hysteria. And to me, that’s a troubling development— verytroubling. Mass hysteria, on an ocean liner in the middle of the Atlantic? As it is, I don’t have the staff to deal with all this. We’re overwhelmed.”
“Is there any way to transfer other ship’s staff to temporary security duty? Pull some capable junior engineers off their usual jobs?”
“Forbidden by standing orders,” said Staff Captain Mason, speaking for the first time. “Commodore Cutter’s the only one who could override that.”
“Can we make the request?” Kemper asked.
Mason glanced coolly toward the middle bridge where Cutter was pacing. “This is not a good time to ask the commodore anything, Mr. Kemper,” she said crisply.
“What about closing the casinos and assigning Hentoff’s staff to security?”
“Corporate would string us up. Forty percent of the profit margin comes from the casinos. And besides, those people are dealers and croupiers and pit bosses—they aren’t trained in anything else. We might as well reassign the waitstaff.”
Another long silence.
“Thank you, Mr. Kemper, for your report,” said Mason. “That will be all.”
Kemper nodded and left, leaving LeSeur and Mason on the bridge wing, alone.
“Captain Mason?” LeSeur finally asked.
“Yes, Mr. LeSeur?” The staff captain turned to him, the hard lines of her face dimly illuminated in the low light.
“Forgive me for raising the subject again, but have there been any more discussions about diverting to St. John’s?”
A very long silence followed this question, stretching to almost a minute. Finally, Mason answered. “No official discussions, Mr. LeSeur.”
“Would it be forward of me, sir, to ask why not?”
LeSeur could see Mason thinking carefully how to formulate her response. “The commodore has already expressed his firm orders on that point,” she said at last.
“But what if this missing girl . . . is another victim?”
“Commodore Cutter shows no evidence of changing his mind.”
LeSeur felt a swell of anger. “Excuse me for speaking frankly, Captain, but we’ve got a brutal murderer roaming on board this ship. If this Pendergast is to be believed, the man’s killed three people already. The passengers are freaking out, half of them are hiding in their cabins, and the rest are getting drunk in the lounges and casinos. And now it seems we’ve got some kind of mass hysteria building, talk of an apparition roaming the ship. Our security director has as much as admitted the situation is beyond his control. Under the circumstances, don’t you think we should seriously consider diversion?”
“Diverting the ship would take us deeper into the storm.”
“I know that. But I’d rather weather a nor’easter than deal with an out-of-control mob—of passengers
and
crew.”
“What you and I think is irrelevant,” said Mason coldly.
Despite her tone, LeSeur could see this last point of his had struck home. Ship’s officers were acutely aware of just how relatively small their numbers were. Along with fire at sea, passenger unrest—or worse than unrest—was always a great fear.
“You’re the staff captain,” he pressed. “The second in command. You’re in the best position to influence him. We can’t go on like this—you’ve
got
to persuade him to divert.”
Mason turned to him, her eyes dead tired. “Mr. LeSeur, don’t you realize? Nobody can change Commodore Cutter’s mind.
It’s that simple.
”
LeSeur stared at her, breathing hard. It was incredible, an unbelievable situation. He peered down the wing and into the main bridge. Cutter was still pacing about, immersed in his own private world, his face an unreadable mask. LeSeur was reminded of Captain Queeg inThe Caine Mutiny , locked in denial while the ship descended inexorably into chaos. “Sir, if there’s another killing . . .” His voice trailed off.
Mason said, “Mr. LeSeur, if there’s another killing—God forbid—we will revisit this issue.”
“
Revisit
the issue? In all frankness, sir, what’s the point of more talk? If there’s another—”
“I’m not alluding to more idle talk. I’m alluding to an Article V action.”
LeSeur stared. Article V dealt with the removal of a captain on the high seas for dereliction of duty.
“You aren’t suggesting—?”
“That will be all, Mr. LeSeur.”
LeSeur watched Mason turn and walk back to the center of the bridge, pausing to confer with the navigator at the con as coolly as if nothing had happened.
Article V.
Mason had guts. If it came down to that, so be it. This was quickly becoming a struggle—not just for safe operation of the
Brita
, but for survival itself.
40
KEMPER WALKED OUT OF THE CENTRAL COMPUTER AND DATA processing complex on Deck B, headed for the nearest elevator bank. It had taken him the better part of the night to arrange the false alarm. It had been a bitch resetting the ship’s safety management systems without leaving a trail, and it had been especially difficult to disable the sprinkler system. It wasn’t so long ago, he reflected grimly, that the only electronic systems on an ocean liner had been radar and communications. Now it seemed that the whole damn ship had been turned into a giant, networked system. It was like some massive floating computer.
The elevator arrived and Kemper entered, pressing the button for Deck 9. It was close to madness to set off a false alarm in the middle of an already nervous ship, with a master who was in denial at best, or deranged at worst, in a storm in the mid-atlantic. If this ever came out, he’d not only lose his job, he’d probably rot in jail. He wondered how Pendergast had managed to talk him into it.
And then he thought of Corporate, and remembered why.
The elevator doors opened onto Deck 9. He stepped out and checked his watch: nine-fifty. Clasping his hands behind his back, clamping a fresh smile onto his face, he strolled down the starboard corridor, nodding and smiling at the passengers returning from breakfast. Deck 9 was one of the ritziest on the ship, and he hoped to God the sprinklers wouldn’t go off after all his careful work. That would be an expensive disaster for North Star, given that some of the staterooms and suites had been decorated by the passengers themselves, with costly objets d’art, paintings, and sculpture.