Clive Cussler - Deep Six

Another figure loomed in Suvorov’s place, standing inside the cell’s doorway, and Loren found herself staring into a friendly face with deep green eyes and a faint crooked grin.

“Just between you and me,” said Pitt, “I’ve never believed that rot about getting there is half the fun.”

Noon, a brilliant azure sky with small cottonball clouds nudged by a gentle westerly breeze, found the Leonid Andreyev passing within eighteen miles of Cabo Maisf, the easternmost tip of Cuba. Many of the passengers sunbathing around the swimming pools took no notice of the palm-lined coastline on the horizon. To them it was just another one of the hundred islands they had passed since leaving Florida.

On the bridge, Captain Pokofsky stood with binoculars to his eyes. He was observing a small powerboat that was circling from the land on his starboard quarter. She was old, her bow nearly straight up and down, and her hull was painted black. The topsides were varnished mahogany, and the name Pilar was lettered in gold across her transom. She looked an immaculately kept museum piece. On the ensign staff at her stern she flew the American stars and stripes in the inverted position of distress.

Pokofsky walked over to the automated ship’s control console and pressed the “slow speed” switch. Almost immediately he could feel the engines reduce revolutions. Then, waiting a few minutes until the ship had slowed to a crawl, he leaned over and pressed the lever for “all stop.”

He was about to walk out on the bridge wing when his first officer came hurrying up the companionway from the deck below.

“Captain,” he said, catching his breath. “I’ve just come from the brig area. The prisoners are gone.”

Pokofsky straightened. “Gone? You mean escaped?”

“Yes, sir. I was on a routine inspection when I found the two security guards unconscious and locked up in one of the cells. The KGB agent is dead.”

“Paul Suvorov was killed?”

The first officer nodded. “From all appearances, he was strangled.”

“Why didn’t you call me immediately over the ship’s phone?”

“I thought it best to tell you in person.”

“You’re right, of course,” Pokofsky admitted. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time. Our Cuban security people are arriving to transport the prisoners to shore.”

“If you can stall them, I’m confident a search effort will quickly turn up the Americans.”

Pokofsky stared through the doorway at the closing boat. “They’ll wait,” he said confidently. “Our captives are too important to leave on board.”

“There is one other thing, sir,” said the first officer. “The Americans must have received help.”

“They didn’t break out by themselves?” Pokofsky asked in surprise.

“Not possible. Two old men in a weakened condition and one woman could never have overpowered two security people and murdered a professional KGB man.”

“Damn!” Pokofsky cursed. He rammed a fist into a palm in exasperation, compounded equally by anxiety and anger. “This complicates matters.”

“Could the CIA have sneaked on board?”

“I hardly think so. If the United States government remotely suspected their government leaders were held on the Leonid Andreyev, their Navy would be converging on us like mad bears. See for yourself; no ships, no aircraft, and the Guantanamo Bay naval station is only forty miles away.”

“Then who?” asked the first officer. “Certainly none of our crew.”

“It can only be a passenger,” Pokofsky surmised. He fell silent, thinking. Utter stillness fell on the bridge. At last he looked up and began issuing orders. “Collect every available officer and form five-man search parties. Divide up the ship in sections from keel to sun deck. Alert the security guards and enlist the stewards. If questioned by the passengers, make up a believable pretext for entering their cabins. Changing the bed linen, repairing plumbing, inspecting fire equipment, any story that fits the situation. Say or do nothing that will cause suspicion among the passengers or set them to asking embarrassing questions. Be as subtle as possible and refrain from violence, but recapture the Smith woman and the two men quickly.”

“What about Suvorov’s body?”

Pokofsky didn’t hesitate. “Arrange a fitting tribute to our comrade from the KGB,” he said sarcastically. “As soon as it’s dark, throw him overboard with the garbage.”

“Yes, sir,” the first officer acknowledged with a smile and hurried away.

Pokofsky picked up a bullhorn from a bulkhead rack and stepped out on the bridge wing. The small pleasure boat was drifting about fifty yards away.

“Are you in distress?” he asked, his voice booming over the water.

A man with a squat body and the skin tone of an old wallet cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted back. “We have people who are quite ill. I suspect ptomaine poisoning. May we come aboard and use your medical facilities?”

“By all means,” Pokofsky replied. “Come alongside. I’ll drop the gangway.”

Pitt watched the mini-drama with interest, seeing through the sham. Two men and a woman struggled up the metal stairway, clutching their midriffs and pretending they were in the throes of abdominal agony. He rated them two stars for their performance.

After a suitable length of time for pseudodoctoring, he reasoned, Loren, Moran and Larimer would have taken their places in the pleasure boat. He also knew full well the captain would not resume the cruise until the ship was scoured and the congressmen apprehended.

He left the railing and mingled with the other passengers, who soon returned to their deck chairs and tables around the swimming pools and cocktail bars. He took the elevator down to his deck. As the doors opened and he stepped out into the passageway, he rubbed shoulders with a steward who was entering.

Pitt idly noticed the steward was Asian, probably Mongolian if he was serving on a Russian ship. He brushed past and continued to his cabin.

The steward stared at Pitt curiously. Then his expression turned to blank astonishment as he watched Pitt walk away. He was still standing there gawking when the door closed and the elevator rose without him.

Pitt rounded the corner of the passageway and spied a ship’s officer with several crewmen waiting outside a cabin three down and across from his. None of them displayed their usual shipboard conviviality. Their expressions looked deadly earnest. He fished in his pocket for the cabin key while watching out of the corner of one eye. In a few moments, a stewardess came out and said a few words in Russian to the officer and shook her head. Then they moved toward the next cabin and knocked.

Pitt quickly entered and closed the door. The tiny enclosure looked like a scene out of a Marx Brothers movie. Loren was perched on the upper pullman bunk while Moran and Larimer shared the lower. All three were ravenously attacking a tray of hors d’oeuvres that Giordino had smuggled from the dining-room buffet table.

Giordino, seated on a small chair, half in the bathroom, threw an offhand wave. “See anything interesting?”

“The Cuban connection arrived,” Pitt answered. “They’re drifting alongside, standing by to exchange passengers.”

“The bastards will have a long wait,” said Giordino.

“Try four minutes. That’s how long before we’ll all be chained and tossed on a boat bound for Havana.”

“They can’t help but find us,” Larimer uttered in a hollow voice. Pitt had seen many such washed-out men — the waxen skin, the eyes that once blazed with authority now empty, the vagrant thoughts. Despite his age and long years of self-indulgent living amid the political arena, Larimer was still a powerfully built man. But the heart and circulation were no longer up to the stress and dangers of staying alive in a hostile situation. Pitt didn’t require an internship to recognize a man who was in dire need of medical treatment.