Warren Murphy - Ship Of Death

He looked straight ahead and Helena recognized the look. He was staring ahead, through days, weeks, months or years to some uncharted future that only he could see. A small smile played along the sides of his mouth. She put her fingers back on the railing and recoiled almost immediately when it was touched again by something damp. She looked at her fingers, then leaned toward the railing and looked down at the water, expecting to see a loose rope flapping against the side of the launch. Instead, she saw Remo's teeth. He was smiling at her. Then he raised a finger to his mouth for her to be quiet.

She looked toward Thebos to see if he had noticed anything, but Thebos was still staring ahead toward a world where his fantasies were fact, his power unquestioned, his status unequaled.

Helena looked back at the water. Remo was gone. Gone. Had she imagined it? She looked around the water near the boat. No trace of him.

She smiled. Imagination and desire were powerful drugs. She could better understand her father and his private reveries.

When the launch returned to the yacht Ulysses, crewmen clustered around to help Thebos and Helena from the small boat.

Helena lingered on the deck of the yacht, looking around in the water, then sighed. Imagination.

But her fingers still tingled.

Thebos was speaking to the pilot of the launch. "Go back," he said. "You will find eight of our lunatics aboard the big ship. Bring them back."

"Where will they be, sir?"

"Probably fighting with a ghost on a lower deck," Thebos said.

Helena turned away as Thebos kept talking.

"Good night, Father," she said.

"Good night, dear."

Thebos let his eyes follow her as she walked away. Tall and lissome, as her mother had been. But her mother had been a businesswoman in her own right, a woman of unfailing judgment and driving talent. Men had often told Thebos that they would rather deal with him than with his wife—not because she had a better business head than he, but because her overwhelming beauty made them worse businessmen. Helena had inherited some of the beauty and all of the intelligence, but from neither father nor mother had she inherited any business sense at all. How he wished for a son. But his first wife had died long ago trying to give birth to a boy who died also, and the succession of Thebos' wives had been no more successful. No sons to carry on the fight against Skouratis. Just Helena. Thebos smiled. At least he had a daughter; Skouratis had nothing. The one daughter he had once had was a suicide soon after marrying Thebos. It was one of the things in life most worth remembering.

Behind him, the launch started again and moved away from the yacht across the black ocean toward Ship of States.

Thebos went to bed. Tomorrow Skouratis would arrive and tomorrow all things would be made right. All things.

And he would be Number One. Without question.

Helena's personal maid had prepared the bed in her forward stateroom and now slept in a small connecting room, attached to her mistress by a call button connected to a small earphone she wore while she slept. This tradition came from decades of service to the Thebos family.

The small night-light was on in the room when Helena entered. Without real hope, she glanced about the room but it was empty.

Remo had been a hallucination, a mirage, the result of drinking two glasses of Ouzo instead of one, Too bad.

She sat at her dressing table, taking off her jewelry, then looked up startled when the bathroom door opened and Remo strolled out wearing one of her soft velvet shower robes.

He met her eyes in the mirror. "I'm glad you had this," he said. "My clothes were soaked and I hate making it in wet clothes."

"Making what?" said Helena.

"Love."

"Oh? We are going to make love?" asked Helena. She stood and turned to face Remo who was tying the bathrobe's belt into a knot around his waist.

He looked at her with inkwell-deep eyes. "Naturally. Aren't we?"

Helena paused. "Yes," she said softly. "But not naturally."

"I've heard about you Greeks," Remo said.

Helena laughed, a small, tinkly, soft sound that, without being loud, managed to contain all joy. She shook her head. "Naturally means once. And we are going to make love more than once. Many times more than once." She removed her gold-wire earrings.

"Think I'm up to it?" Remo asked.

"You will be, American. You will be."

"Good. But first we'll talk."

"No. First, we'll make love. Then we'll talk." She used a long-handled wooden device to pull down the back zipper of her evening gown.

"We'll talk as we go," Remo said. "If your father hates Skouratis, why's he throwing him a party?"

Helena shrugged. The motion slid her black gown down off her shoulders.

"One never knows what my father is doing. I think he is really impressed by Skouratis' ship."

"I don't believe it," Remo said.

"I don't want to believe it," Helena said. She slid both arms out of the sleeves of the gown. "Skouratis is a crass, heavy-handed, evil man who belongs in a barnyard. I have warned my father: who sleeps with sheep smells like sheep dip."

"Yeah, well, Greeks probably know more about that than I would," Remo said.

"I hate that man. He contaminates all he touches."

"He built a pretty good boat," Remo said.

"A ship, not a boat. Ptaah. A stunt. It may never cross the ocean." She stepped out of her gown. She was wearing silk lace panties and a thin demi-bra that pushed her breasts upward and inward.

"The boat's like a city," Remo said.

"Ship," Helena corrected again. "Who cares?" She turned to her dressing table and lit a dark brown cigarette. Even across the room, Remo could smell the deep pungent tobaccos.

"Do you know there's a ship inside that ship?" asked Remo. "Like an underground city."

"The whole thing should be underground," Helena said, taking another deep drag. She giggled. "Or under water. Maybe with luck it soon will be. Along with the zoo it carries." She laughed aloud. "Noah's zoo survived; this one fails; one out of two isn't bad."

"You don't know anything about any secret passages on that ship?" Remo said. "Remember those guys who came out of the wall today at us?"

"Just more of Skooratis' idiotic security measures," Helena said. She placed the cigarette in an ashtray and reached behind to unhook her bra.

"Did you mention it to your father?" Remo said. "Does he know what Skouratis is up to?"

"He has no idea," Helena said. She dropped the bra onto the floor. She took a last drag off the cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. Then she lifted her arms in welcome and walked across the room toward Remo.

"Time for bed," she said with a smile.

Remo shook his head. "I better get back," he said. He untied Helena's bathrobe. Under it he was still wearing his slacks and tee shirt.

"What?" said Helena.

"I've got to go now. It's a long swim," said Remo.

"You are leaving me?" Her tone tested new heights of outrage.

"Unless you want to swim back with me."

"Listen," she said. "Because you pulled a pretty good trick, don't go thinking that it was real. I know you let the launch tow you over on a line. Now don't be foolish. In the morning, I'll have the launch bring you back."

"Sorry, I'd rather swim," Remo said. "I never get any exercise any more. Besides, I don't think your father would like the idea of my spending the night."

"Father lives his life and I live mine. We made that agreement when I became a woman."

"I've seen fathers before. They honor agreements like that only when they're talk. Put them into action and they renege."

"Try me," said Helena.

"Sorry. Gotta go," Remo said. He slipped on his black loafers, which he had put under Helena's bed. "See you soon."