Clive Cussler - Plague Ship

As a veteran of the Royal Navy, Maurice strongly believed in the English tradition of grog aboard ships, or, in this case, amber bottles of an Ethiopian honey wine called tej , whose sweet flavor could cut the strongest spices.

Cabrillo’s brain trust—Max Hanley, Linda Ross, Eddie Seng, and Dr. Huxley, as well as Stoney and Murph—sat around the table. Juan knew that, down in the armory, Franklin Lincoln was holding a meeting of his own with the Ops team. Juan didn’t have much of an appetite, so he charged his glass with the wine and took an appreciative sip. He let his people fill their plates, before calling the meeting to order by leaning forward in his seat.

“As you know, we are facing two different but possibly related problems. The first is rescuing Max’s son from the Responsivist compound in Greece. Using satellite images and other information that Mark and Eric put together, Linc is working with his gundogs on a tactical assault plan. When they’re finished, we’ll go over it separately. What do we need to do on our end, once we’ve gotten Kyle?”

“Will he need to be deprogrammed?” Hux asked, wondering if Kyle would require specialized psychiatric help to break the mental grip Responsivism had on him.

“By all indications, yes,” Mark replied.

“So they are a cult?” There was heaviness in Max’s tone, sorrow that his directionless son had fallen in with such a group.

“They fit all classic parameters,” Eric said. “They have charismatic leaders. Members are encouraged to sever relationships with friends and relatives who do not belong. They are expected to live by a certain code laid out in their founder’s teachings, and when someone drifts away from the group other members will try to stop him.”

“Stop them how?” Juan asked. “Physically?”

Eric nodded. “There are reports of lapsed members being abducted from their homes and transported to facilities run by the group for, uh, reeducation.”

“We know about the compound in Greece,” Juan said, looking around the burnished table. “And they replaced their old headquarters in California with that estate Murph showed me pictures of this afternoon.

What else do they have?”

“More than fifty health clinics in some of the poorest third world countries in the world—Sierra Leone, Togo, Albania, Haiti, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and several in China—where they receive a lot of government support, as you can well imagine.”

“That’s an interesting case,” Mark Murphy interjected, with his mouth half full of food. “The Chinese hate cults with a passion. They crack down on practitioners of Falun Gong all the time, seeing it as a threat to the central party rule, but they allow the Responsivists because of their whole population-control thing.” Under a ragged denim shirt, Murph wore a T-shirt that had an arrow pointing up with I’M WITH STUPID below it.

“Beijing knows they could be a threat but are willing to risk it because the Responsivist presence gives a little Western legitimacy to their draconian one-family, one-child policy.” Eddie said. Given his experience inside China, no one doubted his assessment.

“Back to helping Kyle,” Juan said, to move the meeting along. “Have we been in touch with a deprogrammer?”

“We have,” Linda Ross replied. “Technically, we are kidnapping Kyle, so we need to get him out of Greece as quickly as possible to avoid any problems with local police. The counselor will meet us in Rome. Tiny’s repositioning the Gulfstream from the Riviera to the Athens airport to fly him to Italy. We have rooms reserved at a hotel near the Colosseum. The shrink’s name is Adam Jenner. He specializes in helping former Responsivists return to a normal life, and, from everything we’ve been able to gather, he’s the best in the world.”

“Was he a member himself?” Juan asked, knowing it was common for deprogrammers to have once been held sway by the group they fight against, much like recovering alcoholics helping others overcome their addiction.

“No, but he’s made it his life’s mission to bring the group down. He’s helped more than a two hundred people escape Responsivism in the past ten years.”

“And before that?”

“A private-practice therapist in L.A. Not that it matters, but his fee is fifty thousand dollars, plus expenses. He guarantees, however, that, when he’s finished, Kyle will be back to normal.”

“He damned well better be,” Max grumbled.

“For someone to make their living deprogramming, the group must be pretty big,” Eddie said. “How many members are there?”

“On their official website, they claim there are more than a hundred thousand worldwide,” Linda replied.

“Jenner’s site said that that estimate is overblown by half. Either way, it’s still a significant number. And with some high-profile Hollywood types jumping on the bandwagon, recruitment is up as people copy the stars.”

“Just so I know in case I meet him, what cover story did we use in our approach of Jenner?” Juan asked.

“I have it all here in my report.” Linda held up a binder. “Max is a real-estate developer from L.A. who wants to get his son back. We are the private security company he’s hired to coordinate his return.

Jenner’s assistant was pretty nonplussed when I laid out our story, so I have a feeling this is something they’ve seen before.”

“Okay, so once we grab Kyle we get him to the airport, where Tiny Gunderson flies to Rome, and we hand him over to Jenner.” Cabrillo had a sudden thought. “They’ll have control of his passport, so we need to make a new one.”

“Chairman, please,” Linda said, as if she’d been insulted. “Max’s ex has e-mailed a picture of Kyle.

We’ll doctor it so it looks like an official passport shot and print a new one from our store of blanks.” Juan indicated Linda should wipe some grease from her chin. “That takes care of problem number one.

Now, on to problem number two. What happened to the Golden Dawn and why? What do we know so far?”

Linda tapped at the keys of her laptop to bring up the information. “The Golden Dawn and her sister ships, the Golden Sky and Golden Sun , are owned by Golden Cruise Lines. They’re out of Denmark, and have been in business since the mid-eighties. They do the typical Caribbean, Mediterranean, and South Seas cruises that everyone else does, as well as charter ships for specific groups or events.

“The company was approached four months ago to ferry four hundred and twenty-seven Responsivists from the Philippines to Greece. The Dawn was the only ship available.”

“That seems like a lot of people to staff a reproductive-education clinic,” Juan said.

“I thought so, too,” Linda agreed. “I’m looking into it. There is nothing on the Responsivist website about the trip or what such a large group was doing in the Philippines.”

“Okay, keep going.”

“They left Manila on the seventeenth, and, as far as what Murph could get from the logs, there were no incidents reported. It was smooth sailing all the way.”

“Right up to the point where everyone died,” Max said caustically.

Eric glanced down the table at the Corporation’s number two. “Not everyone died. I went back over the computer discs of the UAV flyby. One of the Golden Dawn ’s lifeboats was missing.” He glanced at Cabrillo. “Sorry, I didn’t notice it last night.”

Juan let it pass.

“The ship’s computer log confirms that a lifeboat was lowered about eight hours before we showed up,” Mark confirmed.

“So the killer or killers were on the Dawn the whole cruise?”

“That’s what it looks like to us. Stoney and I hacked the cruise line’s computer for a passenger manifest and list of the crew, but without having the bodies to verify who was aboard when she went down there’s no way to narrow our list of suspects.” Mark forestalled Juan’s next question. “We already checked.