Jack Du Brul - Pandora's curse

It had been agreed earlier that only the pope’s Swiss Guard would be allowed to carry weapons on the Sea Empress. There had been some difficulty with the thirty Sikhs attending the convocation since their tradition demanded each carry a small knife at all times. The pope had gladly given them permission to maintain the practice.

Neils Vanderhoff was a guard at a manifest checkpoint assigned to verify each of the lesser-known passengers against a master list, authenticating their identity with a computer database of photographs compiled from six different sources. The pictures dated back at least a year before the Convocation’s announcement to prevent terrorists from using carefully built false legends to slip aboard.

In front of him now was a tall, middle-aged man wearing a shiny suit that cost more money than Vanderhoff made in three months. His face was deeply tanned and smooth, and he had the whitest teeth the Dutchman had ever seen. He sported a diamond-encrusted Rolex and an elaborate ruby pinky ring. While his hair was thinning and silver at the sides, on top it was as dense and jet black as a sable’s pelt. Neils wondered why the man spent so much on his wardrobe, teeth bleaching, and jewelry yet wore such an obvious toupee.

Clutching his elbow was a sight Vanderhoff would never forget. The man’s wife might have been pretty once, but her fight against time had been a long, bloody campaign that had left the battlefield in ruins. She wasn’t that much younger than her husband but her face had been so frequently lifted that it was as tight as the head on a snare drum. She looked like a poorly cast wax model of herself. Behind black false lashes, her eyes bulged from one too many tucks. Her makeup was as overvibrant as that applied to a corpse by a color-blind mortician. Above her eyes were thick slashes of blue and yellow, her cheeks were so rouged they looked sunburned, and her collagen-puffed lips had been troweled over with layers of frost white. Her big hair was brass blond and piled six inches high. She had maintained her figure, or possibly had it maintained for her, but still her hips and backside strained against a skirt sized for a woman fifteen pounds lighter. Her breasts were silicone fantasies that threatened to spill over the top of her lame blouse.

In her arms was a nervous Pekingese that yapped continuously. The woman made no move to quiet her rodent-size dog.

She popped a piece of chewing gum as her husband passed over their passports. Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. As if Neils couldn’t tell they were Americans. He stared at the caricatures slack-jawed.

“I know what you’re thinking, son.” Tommy Joe’s enormous teeth flashed like a mirror pointed at the sun, and he spoke as if addressing a crowd of ten thousand. “You’ve seen my ministry on television, and you can’t believe you’ve gotten a chance to meet me.”

“Honey, they don’t carry our show in Europe, ’cause they don’t talk American here.” Lorna Farquar had a little-girl voice with an adult’s ignorance. “Do they, Pookie? They haven’t been saved yet. No, they haven’t.” The Pekingese’s whine was deeper than its mistress’s.

“Sure they do, Lorna. It’s on satellite feed, don’t you remember?”

“I’m sure I don’t,” she simpered, her eyelashes tangling like fighting spiders when she blinked up at him.

Neils Vanderhoff shook off his amused incredulity and typed their names into his workstation. Instantly a series of pictures appeared on the screen, mostly publicity shots of the couple at a blue satin altar adorned with the words MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES. He noted wryly that Mrs. Farquar’s bosom had been noticeably smaller last year.

Craning her head to see what the customs man had chuckled at, Lorna wailed, “Oh, sweet Jesus! Those pictures are from before I had my titties done.”

“There, there, dear.” Tommy Joe patted her hand.

Vanderhoff checked to see the most recent entry stamps on their passports as per his orders. He was on the lookout for any suspicious travel since the Convocation had been announced. The Farquars’ passports had numerous stamps to Caribbean islands but nothing in the past six months. He handed them back without a word, praying they would move on without braying at him again.

The next person in line was a large man traveling alone, and by the dark robes he wore, heavy silver cross hanging from a chain around his neck, and his full beard, Neils recognized him as a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The priest must have heard the exchange, so Vanderhoff gave him a conspiratorial smile. The black-robed figure didn’t change his stony expression. He handed over a Russian passport.

Feeling rebuffed, the customs agent noted that Father Anatoly Vatutin had been in Germany before coming to Holland for the Convocation. He punched up the name, comparing the fierce-eyed cleric in front of him to photographs taken a few years earlier at an Eastern Rites meeting in Istanbul. Vatutin had more gray in his beard and hair now but time had not softened his hawkish features. Giving back the passport, Vanderhoff felt a chill when the intense priest nodded in acknowledgment.

Anatoly Vatutin slid his passport back into his battered shoulder bag and hurried along the corridor. Before reaching the exit, he passed the obnoxious television minister, who had stopped so his trashy wife could let her dog lift its leg against a wall. A dark puddle formed on the carpet, and the woman scooped up the Pekingese before its feet became soiled. The thought that these people worshipped the same god he did made Vatutin wince.

Unlike many who had preceded him, Father Vatutin did not pause when he got his first look at the luxury liner. He paid scant attention to the guards either. Head down and cheap shoes clomping, he moved across the pier toward one of four embarkation points, his expression one of anxious determination. The sun soaking into his black clothes was only partially responsible for the sweat that caught in his beard and trickled down his flanks.

He presented his ticket to a uniformed woman at the top of the gangway, not returning the cheery greeting. “You are in cabin E429, Father Vatutin,” the assistant cruise director said in passable Russian. “That’s on the starboard hull. Go straight into the ship, and when you reach the first atrium, you’ll see a broad hallway to your right. That’s the Champs Elysees, one of four main throughways connecting the two hulls. When you reach the atrium on the other hull, another attendant will direct you to the elevator bank closest to your cabin.”

“Spesiva,” Vatutin grunted, clutching at his shoulder bag as if afraid the bubbly attendant would take it.

He moved quickly through the ship, pausing for a flicker of a second to gaze upward when he reached the lofty, glass-crowned atrium that was the centerpiece of each side of the vessel. The balconies ringing the upper floors dripped with flowering plants, reminding Vatutin of an artist’s rendition of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He found the long corridor called Champs Elysees, then threaded through clusters of people conversing in excited bursts. He noted that the men outnumbered the women by a factor of fifty.

At the next atrium, he again presented his ticket and was directed to an elevator bank near the stern of the vessel, where he took one of the cars downward to the lowest of passenger decks. While his Spartan cabin had a small porthole, it presented a shadowy view of the channel between the hulls. The cabin pulsed with the vibration of the Sea Empress ’s engines. He paid no attention to the view or the vibration. His heavy antique wooden chest had already been delivered and sat in the middle of the tiny room, taking up so much space that Vatutin had to tuck his legs under the bed to face it. He checked the lock carefully, relieved to see that it hadn’t been tampered with. He had no idea what kind of scrutiny the luggage was given, and he had been concerned that if the contents had been examined, he wouldn’t have a ready explanation for what lay within.