Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

The Agozyen was in the room: he was certain of that. But he was also certain that further searching was a waste of precious time. A Buddhist phrase came to his mind: When you cease searching, then you will find.

He seated himself on Blackburn’s overstuffed couch, closed his eyes, and—slowly, calmly—emptied his mind. When his mind was at rest, when he ceased caring whether he found the Agozyen or not, he opened his eyes and once again looked around the room, keeping his mind a blank, his intellect quiescent.

As he did so, his gaze gravitated toward an exquisite painting by Georges Braque hanging unobtrusively in the corner. He vaguely remembered the painting, an early masterpiece by the French cubist that had recently been auctioned at Christie’s in London—purchased, he recalled, by an unknown buyer.

From his position on the sofa, he examined the painting with relaxed pleasure.

Seven minutes.

45

LESEUR INTERCEPTED STAFF CAPTAIN MASON AS SHE WAS entering through the outer bridge security hatchway. She paused when she saw his face.

“Captain Mason . . . ,” he began, then faltered.

She looked at him, her face betraying nothing. She still appeared cool, collected, hair tucked under the captain’s hat with not a single strand out of place. Only her eyes bespoke a deep weariness.

She looked through the inner hatchway toward the bridge, taking in the current operational status with a quick, professional glance, then returned her attention to him. “Is there something you wish to tell me, Mr. LeSeur?” Her voice was studiously neutral.

“You’ve heard about the latest killing?”

“Yes.”

“Commodore Cutter refuses to divert to St. John’s. We’re maintaining course for New York. Sixty-five hours and change.”

Mason said nothing. LeSeur turned to go and felt her staying hand on his shoulder. He felt a mild surprise: she had never touched him before.

“Officer LeSeur,” she said. “I wish you to come with me when I speak to the commodore.”

“I’ve been dismissed from the bridge, sir.”

“Consider yourself reinstated. And please call the second and third officers to the bridge, along with Mr. Halsey, the chief engineer. I will need them to act as witnesses.”

LeSeur felt his heart accelerate. “Yes, sir.” It was the work of five minutes to quietly round up the junior officers and Halsey and return to the bridge. Mason met them at the security hatch. Over her shoulder, LeSeur could see that the commodore was still walking back and forth before the bridge windows. His pace had slowed still further, and he was putting one foot before another with excruciating precision, head bowed, ignoring everyone and everything. At the sound of their entry, he at last paused, looked up. LeSeur knew Cutter could not help but see the bridge staff arrayed in a row behind him.

Cutter’s watery eyes went from Mason to LeSeur and back again. “What is the first officer doing here, Captain? I dismissed him.”

“I asked him to return to the bridge, sir.”

There was a long silence.

“And these other officers?”

“I asked them to be here, as well.”

Cutter continued to stare at her. “You are insubordinate, Captain.”

There was a pause before Mason replied. “Commodore Cutter, I respectfully ask you to justify your decision to maintain course and heading for New York instead of diverting to St. John’s.”

Cutter’s gaze hardened. “We’ve been over this already. Such a diversion is unnecessary and ill-considered.”

“Pardon me, sir, but the majority of your officers—and, I might add, a delegation of prominent passengers—think otherwise.”

“I repeat: you are insubordinate. You are hereby relieved of command.” Cutter turned to the two security officers standing guard by the bridge hatch. “Escort Captain Mason from the bridge.”

The two security guards stepped up to Mason. “Come with us, please, sir,” one of them said.

Mason ignored them. “Commodore Cutter, you haven’t seen what I have; what we have. There are four thousand three hundred terrified passengers and crew on board this vessel. The security staff is wholly inadequate to handle a situation of this magnitude, something Mr. Kemper freely acknowledges. And the situation continues to escalate. The control, and therefore the safety, of this ship is at imminent risk. I insist that we divert to the closest available port—St. John’s. Any other course would endanger the ship and constitute dereliction of duty under Article V of the Maritime Code.”

LeSeur could hardly breathe. He waited for an enraged outburst, or a cold, Captain Bligh–like rebuff. Instead, Cutter did something unexpected. His body seemed to relax, and he came around and leaned on the edge of a console, folding his hands. His whole demeanor changed.

“Captain Mason, we’re all more than a little distraught.” He glanced at LeSeur. “Perhaps I was a little hasty in my response to you, too, Mr. LeSeur. There’s a reason why a ship has a master and why his orders are never to be questioned. We don’t have the time or luxury to start wrangling among ourselves, discussing our reasoning, voting like a committee. However, under the circumstances, I’m going to explain my reasoning. I will explain it once, and only once. I expect” —he glanced over at the deck officers and the chief engineer, and his voice hardened again—“you to listen. All of you must accept the ancient and time-honored sanctity of the master’s prerogative to make decisions aboard his ship, even decisions that involve life-or-death situations, such as this one. If I am wrong, that will be addressed once we reach port.”

He straightened. “We’re twenty-two hours to St. John’s, but only if we maintain speed . If we did divert, we’d be plunging into the heart of the storm. Instead of a following sea, we’d be subjected to a beam sea and then, as we cross the Grand Banks, a head-on sea. We’d be lucky to maintain twenty knots of headway. By this calculation St. John’s is thirty-two hours away, not twenty-two—and that’s only if the storm doesn’t worsen. I could easily imagine arriving in St. John’s forty hours from now.”

“That’s still a day ahead—”

The captain held up his hand, his face darkening. “ Excus e me. A straight heading to St. John’s, however, will take us dangerously close to Eastern Shoal and the Carrion Rocks. So we will need to chart a course around those obstacles, losing at least another hour or two. That makes it forty-two hours. The Grand Banks are riddled with fishing vessels, and some of the larger factory ships will be weathering the storm offshore, with sea anchors out, immobile, making us the give-way ship in all encounters. Knock off two knots of speed and add maneuvering room, and we lose another few hours. Even though it’s July, the iceberg season isn’t over, and recent growler activity has been reported along the outer margins of the Labrador Current, north of the Eastern Shoal. Knock off another hour. So we’re not twenty-two hours out of St. John’s. We’re forty-five.”

He paused dramatically.

“The Britannia has now become the scene of a crime. Its passengers and crew are all suspects. Wherever we land, the ship will be detained by law enforcement and not released until the forensic examination of the ship is complete and all passengers and crew interviewed. St. John’s is a small, provincial city on an island in the Atlantic, with a minuscule constabulary and a small RCMP detachment. It doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of resources needed to do an effective and efficient job of evidence gathering. The Britannia could languish in St. John’s for weeks, even a month or more, along with its crew and many passengers, at a loss to the corporation of hundreds of millions of dollars. The number of people on board this ship will swamp the town.”