The Last Passenger (22 page)

XXXIX

“I can’t leave here, Robert,” Kate said. “There’s a guard at the door, and Moore, Feldman, and everyone else seem to have gone mad. What can I do?”

Just then, more than two hundred feet below them, a small digital clock ticked down to its final second. A row of zeroes blinked across a screen before sending a tiny electric signal to several packages of Semtex that had been fastened to the lateral stabilizers.

The explosives went off in rapid sequence, and a roaring fireball propelled by a wave of destruction swept through the room, blasting the stabilizing engines into a thousand pieces. A bulkhead, held up with rusted rivets that were decades old, could not withstand such a violent force and was blown up, followed by a cloud of tiny steel splinters.

The three engineers in the adjacent room did not stand a chance. A volley of shrapnel passed through and ripped apart their bodies, scattering their remains across the engines. They were dead even before the floor gave way.

The rumbling shook all of the
Valkyrie
as if a giant had decided to kick the ship. The table lamps trembled, and the bed moved a few inches. All around the ship, the noise of hundreds of items falling to the ground and breaking could be heard as security alarms began sounding once more.

“What was that?” Kate asked.

Robert raised his head and kept his eyes closed for a good while. He seemed to be listening to an inner voice that only he could hear. He reminded Kate of a Tibetan monk in a state of deep meditation. His face was relaxed and peaceful, and he looked like he existed in some mystical realm beyond good or evil.

When he finally opened his eyes, he looked extremely worried and even slightly afraid.

“The lateral stabilizers have been blown up,” he said.

“The what?”

“A modern addition Feldman made. Something foreign to the original design of the
Valkyrie
. That’s why she allowed it.”

“Will that stop the ship?”

Robert shook his head. “No, although it will make everything more difficult. There’s still a way to stop the ship, but you’ll need backup.”

“I have you.” Kate held him close, worried he might evaporate into thin air again.

“I can’t help you with this. But Senka Simovic can.”

“Senka?” Kate thought of Senka, who had been sent to the brig by Moore. She had no idea where that could be. “Why can’t you help me? I don’t want to leave you. Not again!”

“Kate, when we are together she can’t see us, but only if we stay in a cabin. That is all I can do. I already told you that there are rules. If we move about the halls, she’ll find us. This time she’ll really be mad.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’ll try to distract her. Make her angry. Divert her attention.” Robert got up and began getting dressed with confident, deliberate movements. His entire life he’d exuded an air of confidence. He acted like he was about to go out for coffee rather than being on the verge of confronting a dark force. “In the meantime you look for Senka and then head for the engine room.”

“What for?”

“You’ll know when the time is right. Trust me. Now get dressed, love. If you walk around the ship naked, I don’t think you’ll go unnoticed.”

She dressed quickly, choosing the most comfortable clothing she could find, suspecting she would be moving around a lot during the next few hours.

“You still haven’t told me how we’re supposed to get out of here,” Kate said. “Remember, I can’t walk through walls.”

“Nor can I.” He walked over and hugged her. He smelled like cologne and sex. “But I can do other things.”

He approached the closed door and turned the handle. The lock clicked, and the door swung open soundlessly. If the situation hadn’t been so frightening, Kate would have clapped like a schoolgirl watching a magic trick.

Cautiously, Kate leaned into the hall. The guard had vanished, possibly headed toward the blast or to receive orders.

“Be careful, my love,” she heard Robert whisper from behind.

Kate turned around to respond, but he had vanished again.

“I hate it when you do that, Robert Kilroy,” she whispered as she stepped into the hall. “I really hate it.”

She had no idea where to start. The
Valkyrie
was vast, and apart from her fleeting excursion into the lower decks the day before, she was familiar with only the first-class section and a couple of halls in second class. She didn’t know where Senka was being kept or what the hell to do when she found her.

Luckily, she remembered something important. Before communication had been cut off, Anne Medine had said she would send information pertaining to the
Valkyrie
. Maybe it would provide a clue about where to begin.

The Gneisenau Room was two levels above where Kate stood. She would have to try to get there and pray nobody saw her, especially Moore. Kate perceived a subtle change in the balance of power aboard the
Valkyrie
. Feldman had stepped aside and allowed that English brute to make decisions as he saw fit. But she was certain that Feldman still played a vital role in everything happening aboard his ship.

She walked down the hall without seeing a single person. She was surprised that a couple of cabins were wide open with no one inside, as if their occupants had forgotten to close the door after leaving their rooms. Kate scanned inside them and found unmade beds, scattered clothes, and books and computers lying about. Then, she heard a dull, repetitive noise approaching.

She had nowhere to hide. Trapped, she scurried into one of the rooms and hid beneath the bed, waiting for the noise to pass.

A dull click-click-click, like a damaged gear shaft, came closer, and a pair of legs and the wheels of a laundry cart came into view.

The legs stopped in front of the cabin. Kate swallowed, certain she’d been seen. But the legs remained motionless as if their owner were unsure what to do next. Kate lifted up the bed skirt a hair for a better look. It was Mrs. Miller, Feldman’s maid. She was wearing a verdigris KDF uniform. Her hair was in an old-fashioned bun, and she looked haggard and worn as if she’d been drinking. Her white apron as well as her mouth and chin were streaked with blood that had run from her nose. She was moving sporadically like a robot losing its charge.

The woman muttered something unintelligible in German. Kate watched as she approached the table in the cabin and gathered all of the books on top as well as the laptop and its cables. Next, as if it were the most normal thing to do, she tossed everything into the laundry cart. The computer cracked as it hit the metal. Mrs. Miller then left the cabin and paused outside the door across the hall. She jingled her keys a moment before she managed to open the door and enter.

This was Kate’s chance. She crawled out from underneath the bed and went back into the hall. Passing the cart, she glanced at its contents and became pale. Piled up haphazardly, at least twenty laptops, cell phones, chargers, calculators, and digital tablets were mixed in with technical manuals. Some of the gadgets had cracked screens. It looked like a heap of trash ready to be tossed into the sea.

They were slowly eliminating any sign of the twenty-first century. The
Valkyrie
, or whatever lived inside the ship, had imposed her voice adamantly.

Kate headed for the elevator, which she thought would be less risky than taking the stairs. She pressed the button and waited nervously for the elevator to arrive. The humming of the engine and the rattling of the gears sounded like cannon fire in the ghostly silence that had overtaken the ship. The sirens had stopped sounding, and silence covered everything. If she hadn’t known there were other people on the ship, Kate would have sworn she was the sole passenger.

I’m starting to understand how you felt, Carroll,
she thought.
Alone, yet pursued by some dark, malevolent force.

The elevator arrived with a cheerful ding. Kate clenched her jaw and figured it had been heard as far as the dance floor, so she quickly stepped into the elevator, closed the gate, and pressed a button.

As the elevator went up, she fell back into the cushioned seat. Her legs were too weak to stand. She noticed a folded newspaper and picked it up, her hands shaking. She was completely unsurprised by what she saw.

It was a copy of the
Völkischer Beobachter
, the official newspaper of the Nazi party. On the front page a wrathful Goebbels was speaking to a feverish crowd. In the corner was the date: August 1939. She dropped it like a poisonous snake and frantically rubbed her hands on the seat cushion, trying to get off the invisible filth.

The elevator came to a stop with a jolt.

Kate jumped to her feet and opened the elaborate elevator gate. Just as she was about to get out, she stopped, paralyzed as if hit by lightning.

In front of her, staring with glassy eyes, stood Isaac Feldman.

XL

Time seemed to stand still. Feldman looked at Kate curiously, wondering how the hell she’d gotten there. Kate, for her part, looked back hopelessly. Her game was up. Any moment now he would shout out, and a slew of security guards would be at his side. She remembered how brutally Moore had treated Senka, causing a pang of terror.

Feldman looked deplorable. He had only a few tufts of hair remaining, and the rest of his scalp was red and scabby as if he’d contracted ringworm. Hunched over, he was now shakier than ever, using an umbrella as a cane. His eyes were dull, and Kate noticed what appeared to be a cataract in one of them. His skin was wrinkled and dry as if the business tycoon had aged fifty years in the matter of a few hours. He was trembling like a leaf about to fall from a tree.

“Hi, Isaac,” she murmured. “Listen to me, please. I beg of you. Let me explain.”

“Do you know where my grandpa is?” His voice was as parched as an old newspaper. “I want to see my grandpa.”

“Isaac, what are you talking about?”

“My grandpa. I want to see my grandpa right now,” pouted the old man as a string of thick, foul-smelling spittle dribbled from his mouth.

The colossus known as Feldman, the business tiger who’d made people tremble, had lost his mind, reduced to an elderly man with dementia shuffling through the hallways of the
Valkyrie
. The ship had destroyed the only passenger still alive from the original 1939 voyage. His body was still alive but not his mind. With a shiver she wondered if Feldman’s consciousness had become a black hole hiding in some remote part of his brain.

Kate approached him and held his arm. Carefully, she walked with him toward a chair and helped him take a seat. Feldman smelled strongly of urine.

“Have a seat, Isaac,” she said in a soothing voice, watching behind her the whole time. If a guard were to appear, everything would be lost. “Let’s make a deal. I’m going to search for your grandfather. We’ll come back for you in a little bit, but you can’t move from here or make any noise in the meantime. OK?”

Feldman did nothing but continue staring off into the infinity of space. His jaw hung open as if he were in a permanent catatonic state. Kate looked at him sympathetically and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. The last time she’d seen him he’d been acting so curtly with her, which had made Moore treat her like a terrorist. But he was no longer himself. Everything that had made him Feldman was now gone. Unsteady remnants were all that was left, a Feldman who no longer recognized her voice.

When she was certain he would not move, she set off down the hall again.

Feldman stayed in his seat, trapped in the heavy netting of a deep dream from which he was unable to awake. He was burnt out like a lightbulb after a power surge.

The Gneisenau Room was deserted. The stations that should have been occupied by the research team were empty, and all of the monitors had been shut off. Above the table the small projector Cherenkov had used during the opening presentation was still there. Kate felt like that had been a million years ago even though it had been only four days.

Four days.

A cold sweat slid down her back. If it had already been four days since departure, then that meant the
Valkyrie
would be approaching the same place where its passengers had disappeared more than seventy years ago. An appointment with destiny, once again.

Time was running out.

In a corner of the room sat piles of folders with documents and temperature readouts that no longer meant anything to anyone.

The scene was one of desolation and absolute emptiness—the remains of a shipwreck forgotten by its own passengers.

Someone had knocked over papers, and the ground was layered with wrinkled pages covered in mathematical calculations. Dried blood stained many of the pages, like disfigured flower petals. Kate put her hand up to her nose, relieved to find that she was still not bleeding. For now.

She pushed past several reports and studies on electromagnetism that nobody would ever read again until she found a set of pages stapled together that was labeled “Attention Kate Kilroy.” Although there didn’t seem to be anything useful in the forty to fifty pages, she would have to try to find clues, but this was no place to do it.

She exited the room and went to the great gallery. Its name was far too grandiloquent for what it really was, but Kate supposed that the place was probably quite impressive to a passenger in the 1930s. It was a long, wide corridor with high, ornate ceilings that were dotted with stained glass depicting Germanic gods contemplatively frowning down at the wood floors below. Along the sides were spots for small shops where KDF had planned to put bars, jewelry shops, cafés, and several other types of businesses for the first- and second-class passengers to enjoy. Kate paused beneath one of the stained-glass pieces. Above her, a bearded and muscular Germanic pagan deity looked like he’d just eaten a meal that was too spicy. Kate approached one of the empty shop fronts. She found it was locked with all of its lights off, as were all of the others.

This was her first time in this part of the ship. Dust and plastic covered the floor, and wires still remained from the restoration efforts. It didn’t seem like anyone had been there since the ship had embarked on this journey. Although the commercial walkway was much smaller than ones found on modern cruise ships, the
Valkyrie
had still been ahead of its time for the 1930s by implementing such a commercial center.

Kate turned a door handle, and the door swung open noiselessly. She walked through the shadows until she came to a corner where a stream of dim afternoon light filtered through a porthole. On the other side the fog had become denser, and it clung to the
Valkyrie
even more closely. The rain continued to whip violently across the ship, and the wind howled like a distressed soul.

She fervently leafed through the file. Just as she’d been promised, the list of passengers and crew was there. One of the pages had the name
Schweizer
underlined, the owner of the straw hat she’d found. Kate found it almost funny that she had been so scared of that, in light of all that had happened since. As she had expected, there was no blueprint of the ship or any clue as to where Senka might be found.

“Typical, Robert,” she whispered angrily, tossing half the pages to the floor in frustration.

Then, she looked down at the last two pages in her hand. It was a copy of the
Valkyrie
’s logbook, the one Captain Harper—if he still even answered to that name—had consulted on the bridge. She noticed that Anne Medine had copied only the pages from the last two days. Her eyes jumped down to the final passage that had been made in the angular handwriting of Captain Kuss, the German who had led the original voyage in 1939. In the bottom right-hand corner, there was a small, dark stain, like someone had spilled a drop of ink on the page and tried to wipe it off with a finger.

20.47 GMT: 53 degrees 94' 17" north and 28 degrees 47' 09" west. Slight wind blowing NNW with strong gusts of wind interspersed. Ten-foot-high waves. Fog bank unchanged since the last changing of the guard. Direction and speed constant. Next to the boilers, a strange vibration has been detected. Oberfeldwebel Dittmar found no apparent irregularities. During the following inspection, five stowaways were discovered in the lower deck in boiler room number two. The captain left the bridge to attend a Gala dinner. Official duties were delegated to head of security Otto Dittmar. Changing of the guard performed without incident.

After that, the rest of the logbook was blank until the
Pass of Ballaster
had discovered the
Valkyrie
at four thirty that morning, empty and adrift.

Kate reread the passage many times. Stowaways on board the
Valkyrie
. This was the first she’d heard of this. Feldman had never said a word about it, and it wasn’t in the file Robert had started. It made complete sense, considering how the logbook had been buried in naval archives up until a year ago, hidden beneath a stack of administrative documents from that era. But if Feldman knew about it, why had he not said anything?

Then, it came to her. Feldman must have been one of those stowaways.

Everything he’d done stemmed from there, hoping to discover what had happened to that family.
His
family.

He wanted to find the root of his origins. The anomalies, Cherenkov’s research, Wolf und Klee—none of it made a difference to Feldman.

Approaching footsteps scared Kate out of her thoughts, and she scurried under a table like a rat. The steps stopped right in front of the entrance. Kate gleaned a dark, shapeless shadow outlined against the windowpane. Distressed, she looked around, but there was nothing she could use to defend herself and no way out.

She watched as the doorknob turned, and the frosted pane of glass embedded in the door rattled.

The air in Kate’s lungs felt as if it were being sucked out.

Harvey Carter, the American physicist, stood in the doorway. A ray of light from above bathed his face in a dull shine. Before he had worn a whimsical raccoon pin, but now he wore a gleaming swastika, red as blood.