The Last Passenger (19 page)

XXXIII

As the elevator creaked and groaned its way up the shaft, Kate tried to collect her thoughts. After the euphoria of reuniting with Robert, the sense of dread at being aboard the
Valkyrie
had returned once again. She couldn’t get her husband’s words out of her head.

There’s something evil on this ship. Dark, voracious, and evil.

As the elevator rose, the blare of the alarm system became shriller. The stench of smoke and burning plastic became stronger. Something had gone awry upstairs.

The elevator stopped with one final jerk. Kate pulled the gate open and found her path blocked by a steel plate. She realized she was in first class, and the elevator had been one of the access points sealed off by Feldman’s team. Her anger at being blocked out quickly turned to relief. The steel plates were tangible objects belonging to the real world in which she lived.

She pushed against the steel. It gave way slightly. When they had made the door, it was only to impede anyone from accessing the restricted area from the outside. Kate kicked the steel door with all her strength. It was like kicking a granite wall. Her foot hurt like hell. She tried again, but this time she attacked one of the welding joints. It was in vain. Without a lever it would be impossible to make the steel budge.

She was trapped there like a rat. So close and yet so far away. She wasn’t exactly sure what awaited her on the other side, but at least there would be light. Nonetheless, she had no other choice but to go back down into the depths of the
Valkyrie
and try to retrace her steps.

The stress of the situation paralyzed Kate; she could do nothing but lean against the elevator wall. Loud cracking broke the silence. To her amazement the metal sheets began to bend as if being hit by an invisible force. The metal heaved repeatedly until the door finally crashed to the floor.

I’ll be with you, babe,
Robert had said.

“Thanks, honey,” Kate whispered, feeling better than she had since first boarding the ship.

Cautiously, she leaned out of the elevator and found herself in one of the first-class service corridors. The pale light of morning pushed weakly through the small circular portholes. The light was tinged with the ghostly color of the fog that surrounded the
Valkyrie
. Gusts of wind lashed rain against the glass.

The smell of smoke was very strong now. Kate walked down the hall until she came across a staircase and suddenly found herself back in a part of the ship she recognized. It was then that Moore and several of his men appeared from around a corner. A couple of them wore firefighter suits and carried firefighting equipment. The others were holding fire extinguishers and an enormously long fire hose.

“Make way, Miss Kilroy,” Moore bellowed before roughly pushing her aside.

Kate was flattened against the wall, but she was oddly happy. Moore had recognized her. The world was spinning in the right direction again.
She followed the men out into the rain. It did not take more than two minutes for Kate to be soaked to the bone. The heavy rainfall limited visibility to almost nothing. She caught sight of a few people to her left, at the foot of a staircase that led to the highest point of the ship, a deck that passengers typically couldn’t access.

She joined the group, but no one said a word. Feldman was there wrapped in a yellow poncho as his men began to climb up the stairs with their gear. Feldman looked so fragile that Kate worried a gust of wind would carry him away. When he saw her, he nodded as if she were just another piece of the puzzle.

“I was wondering where you might be hiding, Kate,” Feldman said, pointing up and looking serious. “I figured you wouldn’t want to miss this.”

His tone made Kate frown, but she said nothing and began climbing the staircase with Feldman right behind her. She looked back to check on him, convinced that he was going to be blown out to sea, but Feldman seemed to have some hidden reservoir of energy in his feeble body.

Battling the rain, they eventually made their way to the upper deck. When they did, Kate couldn’t believe what she saw. Near the bow and just above the bridge, where before there had been a multitude of antennas, it was now nothing more than a few steel joists all twisted and bent.

“What happened up here?” Kate asked.

“We’ve lost our entire communications system,” growled Moore, who looked very pale.

“How? Was it an accident?”

Moore shook his head, enraged. “Someone came up here and cut the main power supply to the communications network. The system was designed with an emergency backup to avoid losing power in case of an outage.” He pointed to the center of the destruction, where two of his men were cleaning up the debris. “Fifty high-capacity generators.”

“Were the generators not working properly?”

“The generators worked fine,” Moore replied. “There was a power surge, and fifty fucking generators exploded at once because someone made a bridge that connected them all.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“Not yet, Kate,” Feldman’s voice came from behind her. “But we’ll get to the bottom of it soon. By the way, where have you been?”

“Are you implying I was involved in this?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Feldman replied coldly, the shadow of mistrust fluttering in his eyes.

Feldman looked as if he had undergone chemotherapy or was suffering from some strange disease that was eating him from the inside out. His face was shriveled and covered with little veins, erasing his previously smooth, healthy skin; his trademark hawkish look had been replaced by a dull, confused expression, like someone on the verge of dementia. The change was so devastating that it made Kate sick, and she was unable to shake the memory of the shadow that had chased her earlier—whether it had been an hour or seventy years ago, she couldn’t really say.

“Someone has done my ship harm,” Feldman barked. “My poor
Valkyrie
. Anyone who attacks her attacks me.”

“It wasn’t me, Isaac,” she said in slow, clear speech. “I’ve been inside the whole time.”

“You weren’t in your cabin,” Moore shouted without turning away from the damage, “and you weren’t in any of the common areas.”

“Where have you been, Kate?” Feldman asked.

Kate hesitated and both men took note.

“It wasn’t me, Isaac,” she repeated. “You’ll have to believe me whether you like it or not.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Moore grumbled. One of his men had just whispered something in his ear. “In five minutes there will be no doubt. Let’s go to the control room.”

Feldman nodded with a maniacal grin. He was losing his mind, skidding into a darkness filled with suspicions and imagined threats.

They went down toward the bridge. When they entered Kate noticed a few changes that made her feel that much more uneasy.

First, the back wall was empty. All the modern navigation equipment was gone. Where the sonar and satellite had been was now occupied by a few wires hanging out of the wall and a few sad metallic brackets. Kate could understand that the radar and communications system might not be working, and that, of course, this would constitute an enormous problem, but what she couldn’t understand was why the sonar and meteorological station had been removed.

Harper was there, without the bushy mustache and with his eyes brown again. But he still had on the same uniform Kate had seen him wearing in the dance hall. When he saw them he clicked his heels to the floor and saluted them.

“Guten Tag, meine Herren,”
he spat. “I trust all of our troubles will soon end. We cannot have a relaxing cruise if these incidents continue. Someone has to take responsibility for this mess.”

“Not to worry,
Herr Kapitän
,” Moore replied. “We’re on it. We’ll soon smoke out that Communist agent.”

Communist agent?
Kate thought it better not to ask. She had bigger problems. Two of Feldman’s men stood at the door holding assault rifles across their chests, and they were looking right at her.

XXXIV

They entered the radio room, where the security screens were. The same operator was seated as usual, but this time he had his headphones on and looked to be deep in concentration. Kate noticed a new sign on the door with an illustration of a technician fixing an old radio; his hand was inside the device, and all of his hair was standing on end as if he were getting shocked.

The operator looked at her and arched his eyebrows in a gesture of recognition. Kate sighed in relief. At least he had not gone crazy.

“Hello,” Kate said, hoping for a friendly smile. “How did the Knicks do yesterday?”

He looked at her perplexed. “The what?”

“The Knicks.” She pointed to the television screen, which was off. “The basketball game.”

“Basketball?” The man looked at her like she had just asked him to plant a field of barley on the moon.

Kate tried to choke back her growing sense of dread. She was in her own reality, that was for sure, but it was a reality composed of dozens of subtle changes. The whole scenario was maddening.

“Do we have the images?” Moore demanded.

Harper was at his side, imposing and princely in his uniform. Feldman, hunched over, leaned against a corner and gave a deranged, breathless laugh.

“Yes, sir,” the operator answered. He punched in a series of commands, and one of the screens blinked to life.

It was a closed-circuit black-and-white video. In one corner, numbers furiously ticked as the video advanced. It showed the deck where the antennas had stood.

“This is from yesterday afternoon,” the operator said, fast-forwarding the recording. The numbers went wild as the rain formed complex patterns through the speeding images. Suddenly, the operator paused the video. “It’s here,” he murmured with the satisfaction of a professional marveling at a job well done. “Look closely.”

All that could be seen was the bridge until a dark figure walked into the frame from bottom left. It was Senka. She was unmistakable with her long blonde hair and cargo pants. But she was walking strangely, as if someone were pulling invisible strings to make her move.

Senka stumbled forward a few steps, tripping over her own feet. Suddenly, she stopped, tilting her head to one side like a cat trying to hear the rat inside a cupboard.

Then, she began to walk again with more confidence. She headed toward the staircase leading to the upper deck. In her hands she held a tool kit and a roll of cable. She paused at the foot of the stairs to stuff a few things in her pockets. It took her an eternity as if the instructions she’d been given were not being clearly communicated to her hands. Finally, when she managed to put the last item in her pocket, she took hold of the banister and began climbing up the stairs, exiting the frame.

“This is one hour and ten minutes later,” the operator said, pressing another button that made the image jump to the instant Senka’s feet appeared again on the stairs.

This time she was totally soaked. She was no longer clumsy like before. Her face was completely exposed. She looked scared, and her body was trembling uncontrollably.

But most of all she looked confused. And terrified.

Looking all around, she crouched down to avoid being seen, and sneaking off the bridge, she disappeared from the screen.

Kate was horrified.
Senka?
She couldn’t believe it. That woman adored Feldman to no end. Kate had gotten the sense that he was like a father figure to her. There was no way she was a spy for Wolf und Klee.

“Very good,” Moore said with satisfaction. “It seems we’ve found our traitor. Do we know who she is?”

Captain Harper cracked his knuckles, and another crew member came over with a heavy book in his hands. He began leafing through it. Kate watched as color photographs of all the passengers flipped by page after page.

“Here we are,” Harper said in triumph. “First-class passenger Senka Simovic, Serbian nationality. Cabin fifteen.”

“Serbian, eh?” Moore mumbled as if he had never heard of the woman he had worked with side by side for several years. “We’re going to have to talk with our little Communist immediately.”

From where he stood in the corner of the radio room, Feldman heaved out bizarre, asthmatic laughter. Kate noticed with disgust that he was drooling.

“She might have accomplices on board,” the old man murmured, throwing a homicidal glare at Kate.

“Not to worry, Herr Feldman.” Moore looked sadistic. “We’ll know shortly.
Kommen Sie!
”

He made an abrupt sign to his men, and all of them, except Harper and his crew, filed out. Feldman stayed on the bridge and looked out of the window. His mind seemed to be wandering further from reality.

Kate ran after the group, certain that everything was just a silly misunderstanding. The recording had to be fake. Perhaps the ship itself had created it. If it could make hundreds of passengers appear out of thin air, then it could certainly make a fake tape. Still, there was nothing she could say to convince Moore and his men. Hopefully Senka could.

They ran down the hall toward Senka’s cabin. When they got to the door, Moore’s men stationed themselves on both sides of it. The muscular Brit planted himself in front and knocked with such force that the hinges creaked.

“Senka Simovic! Open the door!”

There was a moment of silence before a muffled voice came from inside. A few seconds later they could hear the lock being undone. The door opened and there was Senka. She looked groggy, like she had just awoken from a particularly intense dream. She was wearing only a T-shirt and cotton panties. A streak of dried blood ran from her nose down to the collar of her shirt.

“What’s going on, Moore?” she said sleepily.

The head of security smiled and then brought his hand back and slapped Senka. She was caught unaware, and her head smacked the door frame. She fell to the floor, and her nose started bleeding again.

“Senka Simovic, you are under arrest in the name of the German Reich on charges of sabotage, conspiracy, and destruction of property belonging to the Reich,” Moore snarled. “Take her away.”

Senka blinked, far too confused to respond. Her eyes, full of fear, darted from face to face in hopes of finding some semblance of understanding.

“Moore. What the hell are you talking about?” she stuttered from the floor. “It’s me, dammit. I don’t know what the hell—”

Moore kicked Senka in her ribs with all the force he could muster, and she doubled over on the floor, gasping for breath. Moore’s men grabbed her and yanked her to her feet.

Senka’s horrified eyes fell on Kate, and the two exchanged a panicked look of understanding.

“Kate,” she gasped. “Help me—”

This time Moore closed his fist before hitting her. Blood began openly pouring from her mouth.

“Quiet, bitch,” Moore snarled. “Take her to the brig.”

“You can’t treat her like that,” Kate shouted.

“She’s a traitor,” Moore said, eyeing Kate with the look of wanting to pick a fight. “As far as I know, you might be one, too, missy. Maybe fucking Communists work in pairs.” He pointed his thumb at Kate and looked over at his men. “Lock up this one in her cabin until we figure out what to do with her. She’s to have contact with nobody until I say otherwise.”