The Last Passenger (15 page)

XXV

Kate was in the middle of a particularly torrid dream when a knock at her door startled her awake.

Since her husband had died, she had yet to remember him in such a vivid and explicitly sexual way. In her dream Robert had undressed slowly, removing the clothes from his magnificent body garment by garment until he was standing in front of Kate completely nude. The two were alone in her cabin, and Robert was looking at her with that playful half smile she knew so well, mischief dancing in his eyes. Without a word he approached her for a long, marvelous kiss. His tongue executed a complicated dance with hers that left her quivering. Then, he threw her down to the bed and began to undress her. First, he removed her top, exposing her breasts. He paused to enjoy her nipples with rhythmic movements of his tongue. Then, with a practiced hand, he began to undo her jeans while she breathed faster. He brought them down to her ankles to reveal a little thong that he loved. She took delight in Robert’s hard body rubbing against her own. He grew larger as his hand slowly moved down her abdomen, lower and lower, until he reached the thin lacy edge of her underwear.

Then, someone began to pound on the fucking door, and Kate woke up, bathed in sweat and breathing hard.

With the agility of a drunkard, she stumbled to the door and attempted to tie her hair back. She had fallen asleep rereading her file on the
Valkyrie
for the hundredth time, trying to get a head start on her story.

Still dazed, she opened the door and found Senka with her fist in the air, about to knock once more. Senka looked very serious, but upon seeing Kate, a sweet, mischievous smile danced across her face.

The bitch knows,
thought Kate as Senka puckered her lips in a sensual pout. Kate’s flushed cheeks, her heavy breath, and the sweat on her neck—they were all clear signs to Senka, who was clearly delighting in the situation at hand.

“Hi, Kate,” she purred in a playful tone, looking over Kate’s shoulder into the empty cabin. “Did I interrupt something important? Maybe I could be of service?”

The innuendo hung in the air, thick and lewd, but Kate shook her head.

“I’m just a bit groggy, that’s all. What’s up?”

Senka shrugged, clearly disappointed. “Mr. Feldman would like to see you. Now.”

It sounded more like an order than an invitation. Kate liked the idea of changing, but that was out of the question with Senka there, so she quickly put on her shoes and strode out of the cabin following Senka.

Feldman’s cabin was a suite located on the stern of the ship. It had enormous windows that would normally offer its occupants a magnificent view of the ocean. But given the density of the dark-yellowish fog, only a weak light filtered into the room and stained everything a sickly color.

Feldman was seated. He looked worried. Moore was at his side with a jaw so tense he might as well have been chewing granite. His expression was a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

Kate noticed that Feldman looked older, as if some of his energy had fled his fragile body in search of a better home in which to nest. A flicker of vitality twinkled in his eyes when he saw Kate enter. He gestured for her to have a seat, and Senka closed the door behind them. This was a meeting for just the four of them. The tension in the room swelled up like the tide.

“Can I trust you, Kate?” Feldman asked.

“You know you can, Isaac. We made a deal.”

“I know, dear, I know.” Feldman shook his head. “The question is whether or not I can add one more secret to the list of little arrangements you and I have.”

“My lips are sealed,” she said without hesitation, her pulse quickening. “But if it’s got something to do with the
Valkyrie
, I want to know everything.”

“We have a serious problem,” Feldman said. “Twenty minutes ago one of Moore’s men was found dead, murdered.”

“Murdered? Are you sure?”

“Unless he decided to cut his own neck, I’m quite sure, Kate,” Feldman replied.

“How did it happen?”

“Moore has the details, but I believe it would be best if we go see it with our own eyes. We were waiting for you,” Feldman said, rising from his seat with great difficulty.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?” Feldman said.

“Why tell me this? Why me?”

“Because we trust each other. Because you’re a smart, sensible woman, and because I gave you my word to keep you up to date on all that happens on board. But primarily, because the four of us are the only ones on the ship that know about Wolf und Klee and the threat they pose. We are going to need the help of everyone to try to find out what the hell is going o
n . . .
and stop it from happening again.”

They left Feldman’s cabin and walked quickly through the internal maze of first class without running into a soul. It was lunchtime, and most of the crew members were busy taking care of service. When they arrived at a flight of stairs leading down, two of Moore’s men, heavily armed, were awaiting their arrival.

Without another word they began to descend the staircase. They came to another landing, which had several hallways forking off of it. There was also another flight of stairs that led to the
Valkyrie
’s mechanical facilities. A pair of heavy steel plates that had been fashioned into a door stood blocking the path to second class, but Kate noticed one of the plates was somewhat damaged. Someone had undone the soldering joints with a blunt object, and the steel plate was bent back far enough to allow a person to crawl through the space.

“We’re in the first-class service area. This section is unoccupied for our voyage,” Moore explained and pointed toward the steel door. “The door at the end of the hallway leads to the bow-side deck where Tom, er, I mean where the victim was standing guard. I have no idea why he came down here. Perhaps he heard something or found someone trying to sneak in.”

“We have to go down and see,” Senka said, taking several high-powered flashlights out of her shoulder bag. “Be careful and watch your step. These stairs are quite old and have not been restored.”

As Kate crawled through the open space between the steel plates, she noticed the steel had left a deep gash in the delicate varnish of the hardwood floors; the mark reminded her of an infected wound.

On the other side the staircase receded into the darkness. Below, a symphony of drips and creaks could be heard each time the
Valkyrie
encountered another ocean wave.

“Surely, there are leaks in the hydraulic system,” explained Feldman as they went down the stairs. Moore and one of his men led the way while Senka and another guard made up the rear. “So that’s what you are hearing.”

They entered a dark hallway that smelled stagnant and putrid. The carpet was no more than a complicated, frayed patchwork that had been destroyed by humidity. The paint on the walls was peeling in large, uneven chunks as if an especially virulent leprosy had attacked the ship and was consuming it from the inside out. In some places the wood floor bulged from water damage, making strange, grotesque shapes. The flashlight beams crisscrossed the walls as the visibly nervous security guards swiveled around looking for some threat in the darkness. Even Moore looked on edge.

“This way,” he said, pointing to his right. “It’s not far.”

They walked a bit farther down the dilapidated hallway and tried not to trip over the rotting wood debris cluttering the hallway. The doors, defeated by their own weight, had fallen off the hinges and were now no more than moldy pieces of lumber, revealing desolate cabins.

Finally, a blinking light could be seen at the end of the hallway, exposing the shadowy outline of a body on the floor. A wall clock, which had not worked for decades and was on the verge of crumbling, presided over the scene like a voiceless witness. A large rust-colored bloodstain had spread across the floor from beneath Tom McNamara’s body.

Kate tried to keep herself from heaving. Luckily, she had not eaten lunch yet.

Tom’s face was twisted into a bizarre expression, a strange mixture of unbounding terror and bewilderment. His throat was slit from ear to ear in the fashion of a second smile, toothless and malicious. In the shadowy lantern light, the effect was absolutely petrifying.

“He was killed here,” Moore said as if that were not already clear. “Someone came from behind and slit his throat. It had to be someone he knew. There’s no way Tom would have been caught off guard. He wasn’t the smartest guy, but he was good at what he did.”

“Where’s his gun?” asked Senka. “I don’t see it anywhere.”

They swept their lights over the floor, but there was no AK-47 to be found.

“Just what we need,” sighed Feldman. “Now whoever did this has a weapon. It just keeps getting better.”

“Wait a second, there are some drops of blood this way,” said Kate, pointing to a big round drop of blood the size of a dime. Not far away was another, at the edge of the darkness.

“His face is covered in blood,” Senka said in a shaky voice. “It’s like he was bleeding from his nose or mouth.”

They followed the droplets deeper into the heart of the ship. A heavy weight settled in Kate’s head, almost like she had a terrible hangover. Her temples were pounding incessantly. She noticed she was not alone. Moore was rubbing his eyes, and his men were shaking like they were each carrying two hundred pounds.

Straight ahead, something glinted in their beams of light. Moving closer, they saw that it was the dark barrel of the AK-47 resting on the floor like another of the ship’s leftover relics. The trail of blood ended there in front of a bleak, lonely cabin just like all the others.

“Whatever happened, it happened here,” Kate said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

The others remained quiet, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Contemplating the gun and wearing his usual poker face, Feldman was the only one who seemed to be unaffected.

“Nobody can know about this,” he finally said. “Take the body, put it in a bag, and keep it in one of the freezers. Moore, you’re in charge.”

The head of security still had his head tilted down as he stared blankly into the empty cabin. He looked a million miles away.

“Moore,” Feldman raised his voice. “Did you hear me?”

Moore turned his head slowly as if a dozen rusty gears controlled it. His look was darker than normal, and his nose had begun to bleed.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir,” he finally uttered, in perfect German, much to the terror of the others. “I believe it would be best if we contact Berlin immediately.”

XXVI

“What the hell are you talking about, Moore?” Feldman grunted threateningly. “Do what I say. Now.”

“Moore? Who’s Moore?” sputtered the head of security, shaking as he talked like he was having trouble staying upright.

It was all too much for Feldman. He walked straight toward Moore and shoved him against the wall with all the might he could muster. It was like moving a mountain of meat, but Feldman was undaunted.

“Come on, Moore! Wake up,” he shouted. “What the fuck has gotten into you?”

In slow motion the English bodyguard brought his hands up to his eyes as he was racked by a ferocious attack of trembling. He rubbed his face and looked all about with confusion. Moore looked at Feldman as if his sudden proximity were a surprise.

“Of course, Mr. Feldman.” He turned to his men and furrowed his brow as he tried to figure out what was going on. “We’ll take the body to a freezer immediately. Let’s go, boys. Be careful.”

Kate watched as two of the men gingerly lifted up Tom McNamara’s body. One of the guards absentmindedly used the sleeve of his uniform to wipe away a bit of blood that was running from his nose. The other guard was humming a soft melody, repeating the same line over and over. A heavy odor in the air lay hidden under the stench of dried blood. It was giving Kate a terrible headache.

“Let’s get out of here,” commanded Feldman.

He did not have to repeat himself. McNamara’s body was placed into a body bag that someone had brought down, and the group practically raced out of second class. Nobody wanted to be the last to leave. Moore brought up the rear and looked back anxiously every few seconds as if he had heard something behind him.

Something that scared him.

As they were climbing the stairs, Kate noticed her head clearing up as if the vise that had been compressing her temples had suddenly loosened a little. She saw that the same was true of the others. Even Moore no longer had cloudy eyes, although he still appeared to be dizzy.

When they got to the service hallway, they parted ways. Moore and his two men went toward the enormous industrial freezers in the kitchen. They would store their macabre package there while Feldman, Senka, and Kate headed toward the upper deck.

Outside on the deck the temperature had dropped another three or four degrees, and the difference between that and the warmth of the ship’s interior was immense. The yellowish fog enveloped them completely, and as soon as they had taken a few steps forward, Kate had the sensation they were suspended in a cold, wayward vacuum with no points of reference or cardinal directions.

“What happened down there?” she asked.

“I suppose an agent from Wolf und Klee caught our man by surprise,” Feldman said.

“That’s not what I mean,” Kate interrupted with a slight tremble in her voice. “You know what I’m talking about, Isaac. I mean Moore talking nonsense in German. That strange feeling.”

“I felt it, too,” Senka added. The Serbian, normally so levelheaded, looked extremely pale. “It was like I could suddenly hear dozens of people all at once inside my brain. It
hurt
.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Feldman looked truly baffled by the discussion taking place. “I didn’t feel anything, and I didn’t hear anything, either. You were probably just spooked.”

Senka and Kate looked at each other with surprise. Had Feldman really not noticed that wave of numbness that had rushed over them? Had he not been affected? Or was he right, and the two of them had simply behaved like two impressionable young women?

“But Moore told us to contact Berlin,” Kate ventured.

“Mr. Moore hasn’t been getting much sleep in the last forty-eight hours,” Feldman countered. “He has fifteen, make that fourteen, men to keep watch over an enormous ship that is five hundred feet long and twelve levels high, eight of which are sealed up. Or they were. Fatigue makes people say strange things.”

What Feldman was saying made sense, or at least it made more sense than the vague notions Kate was cooking up in her head.
Occam, Occam,
Kate repeated to herself.
The simplest explanation is probably the correct one
.

They continued slowly inside. Lunch had already passed, and the three of them were famished. When they arrived at the dining hall, nobody was there except a group of crew members seated around a table in the corner. They had their heads down and were murmuring to each other in low voices. Kate noticed that many of them looked extremely pale. They hardly resembled people accustomed to life at sea.

Feldman excused himself by saying he was exhausted and needed to rest in his cabin. Kate imagined Mrs. Miller would personally take charge over all the magnate’s needs.

Sharing the intense experience earlier had eased some of the antagonism between Kate and Senka. Kate was not a woman who kept many friends, but the last thing she wanted at that moment was to eat alone. She wondered where Carter and the others might be.

The two women tried striking up a conversation, but they were too shocked to discuss trivialities. Kate felt a deep pang of nostalgia tinged with sorrow. If Robert were there, everything would be
different
. He’d always known what to say and how to act to make her comfortable. But Kate’s only company was another frightened woman stuck on this ship, hundreds of miles away from safe haven.

She suddenly had a great urge to speak with someone who wasn’t on the ship. She wondered if Captain Harper would let her use the communications center to call the newspaper and talk to Rhonda. She wanted to explain how her story was going and ask for advice. But more than anything she simply wanted to hear the voice of a friend.

Something told her that the guard’s death had much bigger implications. Since boarding the
Valkyrie
, everything seemed to be spiraling out of control. But she figured there might be a hidden pattern behind it all that she had not yet discovered. She suspected that if Tom McNamara’s throat really had been slit, then it must have been for something he saw. But what?

Maybe Anne Medine could give her more facts about the ship and the hallway in second class? A different perspective.

She got up from the table hurriedly, knocking over a glass of water. It fell to the floor and shattered, but no one turned their heads at the noise. Everyone was too lost in thought to care.

She bid farewell to Senka and beat a hasty path toward the Gneisenau Room. When she entered she did not see a single person. There was no hint of Cherenkov’s research team; the chairs were vacant, and the computer screens idly flashed Feldman’s company logo. The room was totally empty.

She sat down at one of the terminals to begin the connection process. She entered her user ID and waited. A series of numbers flashed across the screen before going blank again. Kate waited five long minutes with no success. Suddenly, a blinking cursor appeared on the monitor.

S
TANDBY
C
OMMUNICATIONS
S
YSTEM

CBX7800000
AAA
879000// SONORA//
VALKYRIE

S
IGNAL INCOMING
. . .

A
NNE
M
EDINE
// SONORA: G
OOD AFTERNOON
, M
ISS
K
ILROY
. W
E
’
RE HAVING SOME DIFFICULTIES WITH THE SIGNAL RECEPTION
. T
HE SATELLITE HAS BEEN DOWN FOR TWO HOURS NOW
. W
HILE THE TECHNICIANS ARE WORKING ON IT
,
WE
’
LL ONLY BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE VIA CHAT
. I
HOPE THAT WON’T BE A PROBLEM
:-)

Slightly taken aback by the message, Kate began typing.

KK
ILROY
VALKYRIE
: T
HAT SHOULD BE FINE
. W
ILL IT BE POSSIBLE TO RECEIVE INFORMATION THROUGH THE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM LIKE THIS
?

A
NNE
M
EDINE
// SONORA: O
F COURSE
. T
HE DATA FLOW GOES THROUGH A DIFFERENT CHANNEL THAT’S STILL UP AND RUNNING
. W
HAT DO YOU NEED
?

KK
ILROY
VALKYRIE
: I
NFORMATION ON SECOND CLASS
. T
HE LIST OF PASSENGERS ON THE ORIGINAL VOYAGE
. T
HINGS OF THAT NATURE
.

Kate stopped. She was not sure if she should ask for information on Wolf und Klee. She had no idea how involved Anne was in the grand scheme of things.

A
NNE
M
EDINE
// SONORA: O
F COURSE
. I’
M SENDING THAT NOW
. I
T
’
S A LARGE FILE
,
AND WITH THE LIMITATIONS OF THIS CONNECTION
,
IT WILL TAKE A WHILE TO DOWNLOAD
. I
THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE IT IN ABOUT AN HOUR
.

Kate nodded, appeased. She was taking steps in the right direction. She was about to say good-bye when the screen lit up once more.

A
NNE
M
EDINE
// SONORA: A
LSO
,
I
’
VE FOUND YOUR
M
R
. S
CHWEIZER
. I
T TOOK ME A WHILE
,
BUT THE NAME SOUNDED SO FAMILIAR THAT I DECIDED TO DO SOME DIGGING
. I
FOUND HIM
. H
E WAS ONE OF THE PASSENGERS
.

Kate didn’t understand.

KK
ILROY
VALKYRIE
: O
NE OF THE PASSENGERS
? H
OW IS THAT POSSIBLE
? I
THOUGHT NONE OF THE SCIENTISTS OR CREW HAD THAT LAST NAME
? J
UST YESTERDAY YOU SHOWED ME THE PASSENGER LIST
.

The cursor blinked a few moments that stretched on forever.

A
NNE
M
EDINE
// SONORA: I’
M SORRY
. I
SHOULD HAVE CLARIFIED
. M
ARTIN SCHWEIZER
,
SINGLE
,
AGE FORTY-SIX
,
CABIN
172. H
E WAS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL PASSENGERS ABOARD THE
V
ALKYRIE
. I
N
1939.