Assault on the Empress (9 page)

Alyard thought he nodded, but when he moved his head, the pain engulfed him again and his eyes closed against it. He could hear the man's voice—Vols?

“Get this man a blanket, Piotr, before he freezes to death, naked like this.”

“Yes, Comrade Major.”

“Vassily. See if you can find something to drink. Look in the kitchen. A nice glass of whiskey would be pleasant. And remember, after all the time I've spent in England, when I say whiskey I mean what you or Piotr would call scotch. Check with Piotr and see what he wants. And get something for yourself.”

Alyard opened his eyes again. The face was looming over him. “I'd offer you a drink, Mr. Alyard, but I'm not sure it would be wise to mix alcohol with so much of the residue from the gas still in your bloodstream. After we've gone, I'd say give yourself a few hours of sleep before you touch the stuff. Just friendly advice. Take it or leave it as you will.”

“Thanks.”

“Glad to see you can talk, at least. I'm not sure what's in it, but we used it once before and I got a whiff of it. Bloody awful smelling and even that one sniff gave me a headache for an hour or more. Ahh, Piotr!”

Alyard had closed his eyes again, and now felt a blanket being draped over him, a draft that chilled him to the bone as it settled.

“Once you're up to it, just let me know and we'll help you off this table. I apologize for that, but when we let ourselves in, you were closer to the table than the couch and I wanted to make certain you still had a pulse. Problem when you go playing around with chemicals with human beings. Everyone's so different. What will put one man to sleep might kill somebody else.”

Alyard opened his eyes again. Vols's face was pleasant looking. He even smiled faintly, like a benign father or a physician. His eyes were a washed-out blue and he had sandy brown hair and was light complected. If this Vols fellow had worked in England for the KGB, with his speech, his manner and his appearance, he would have seemed the typical man on the street.

A shorter man-Vols was apparently on the tall side-handed Vols a tumbler and Vols sipped at it. “Decent.” Vols nodded. “KGB safe houses are usually stocked with terribly cheap liquor. I think it's from maturing with vodka. There's a difference from brand to brand, of course, but it's not so noticeable as it is with whiskey or bourbon or rum. But the CIA always goes first class, doesn't it?”

Alyard didn't say a word.

“You're wondering how we found you. Well, it wasn't your fault, so relax on that. Mr. Fabrizzi has worked for us for years, usually just filling us in on who used the safe house here and the like. But this was rather on the important side. You should have heard the flap it caused on Derzhinsky Square when it was learned the Americans of all people had stolen the ampule. I mean, that's the sort of theatrical thing one expects from the British. Right out of one of their thriller novels. Secret agents and all of that. Don't go contemplating avenging yourself on old Fabrizzi, by the way. He'll be long gone and out of your reach by the time we're through talking and that headache's worn off.”

“Not to introduce a note of discord, but you're not getting shit out of me. And anyway, I don't know anything.”

“Ahh, but you do, Mr. Alyard. I hate sounding so depressingly formal. Do you prefer Thomas or Tom?”

“Whatever.”

“That's an odd diminutive for Thomas—a joke, Thomas. Feel like sitting up yet?”

Alyard started to try, fell back, felt hands catching him so he wouldn't knock his head, at last sat up. He felt stupid, naked except for the blanket sitting in the middle of the dining room table. And he felt more vulnerable than he ever had in his life. Which was, of course, what they wanted; he knew that as surely as he knew that he was.

“Let's get Thomas off the table and into a chair or someplace comfortable. Ahh! That reclining chair.”

Alyard felt strong hands on him, getting him into a standing position for a moment, the blanket falling away and he was naked. And then the blanket was wrapped around him and he was helped to the recliner and helped to sit. All that was missing was them tucking him in and singing him a lullaby.

He closed his eyes against the pain in his head, then opened them again. Vols was perched on the arm of the couch, holding his whiskey tumbler and staring down at him almost sympathetically.

“First up. Let me apologize for barging in like this and taking over your flat. But soon as you've helped us with a few details, as I mentioned before, we'll be off packing.”

“Going far away?”

“Good—packing. No, but I may, yes, depending on how far the ampule has gone. You see, Thomas, you and I have a lot more in common than you'd suppose. I mean, certainly, we're on opposite sides. You fight for truth, justice and the American way and all, and I fight for the slimy tentacles of Communism and repression and all that rot; but, both of us have roughly similar jobs and we're both caught in the middle on this. Are you a friend of David Stakowski?”

Alyard didn't respond.

“Well, in any event, we've packed David off to Moscow by now, I suspect. He'll get a severe talking to and spend a few weeks in prison somewhere until this is all sorted out, but then he'll be sent back to your people in some sort of trade. But, and this is merely personal observation, but, you might think of assigning David to more or less standard intelligence duties. He's really not very good at this cloak and dagger sort of thing. Just a bit of advice.”

Alyard didn't say anything.

“As I was about to say, you and I do have one thing in common. We're trapped in the middle. I mean, you didn't steal the ampule with the virus. And it wasn't stolen from me. You were sent in when David botched things up on his end, and I was sent in when the security people at the facility and the Albanians botched things up on their end. We're both rather like clean-up men or something, Thomas. I'll find the ampule regardless, but I could use a bit of help from you. I don't expect you to talk freely, of course. We're both professionals. I'm going to give you a shot of some new type of truth serum just developed. It's perfectly safe, but I don't think it would have mixed too well with alcohol either. And if I were you, I'd turn this rather disappointing experience into something positive. The truth serum is very new and once you've awakened, I'd rush off to a chemist and look up getting some blood drawn before it's completely metabolized so it can be analyzed. Could be a real coup for you and ease the career-dampening effect this might have otherwise.”

“What the hell kinda guy are you?” Alyard couldn't help but say it.

Vols smiled, genuinely it seemed. “I'm a patriotic Soviet citizen doing my duty. Over the years, I've found that sadism and other mental quirks can make a chap lose sight of things. If I'd been specifically told to scorch the earth of anyone involved in this, then you'd be dead as soon as you talked. But, lucky for both of us, no such instructions were passed down. Killing you would achieve absolutely no purpose. And the last thing anyone in our business should want is more of the David Stakowskis in the ranks. Incompetents are dangerous. We both know that. Now, if you're feeling up to it, let's have the left arm. And don't struggle. There are three of us and you're not exactly in fighting form at the moment at any rate. Broken needles are unpleasant. By the way?”

“What?”

“You're not allergic to peanut oil, are you? I understand that's one of the components of this new truth serum. I have some of the old stuff, but that'll only delay me and prolong things for you and the results will be the same.”

“No. I'm not allergic to anything that I know of.”

“Lucky you! I have a terrible time with evergreen pollen in the late spring. Piotr, you hold his arm. Vassily, swab that spot with alcohol first, then administer the injection.” Vols took a swallow of his scotch. “And by the way, no need to worry. This is a spanking-new needle. We've been very cautious with that sort of thing since all this AIDS flap started. Go ahead, Piotr.”

It was like living in a nightmare where everything was so totally insane and yet it was impossible to escape. He let them give him the needle. Stakowski had caused it all with his incompetence and if he resisted, all he'd get would be a broken needle in his arm and they'd try again.

Vols asked him to count backwards from one hundred and Thomas Alyard did as he was asked. It only seemed natural….

The car's heat was too high and Darwin Hughes reached over and turned the fan down to its lowest setting. The door opened and Lewis Babcock slipped behind the wheel. “I turned down the heat a little. It was stifling in here.”

“No. Thelma's always been a little cold-blooded. You know?”

“Women are more sensitive to temperature changes but have greater tolerances for the extremes. Now. What have you set up, Lewis?”

“What have you set me up for?”

“You mean, why am I here? It's a long story.” Babcock threw the car into gear. Hughes looked up at the house and waved to Mrs. Hayes, who was watching from a yellow lighted window, the drapes drawn back. “I was approached by a Brigadier General, a man named Robert Argus. He has Presidential authorization as well as authorization from House and Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle to reactivate us. The three of us. He swears up and down that what happened last time wouldn't happen again.”

“He's talking out of his hat.”

“Probably so, lad, but you must admit the possibilities would be intriguing.”

“Well—and I appreciate you helping out here, regardless of your motivation—but you can count me out. I've started setting up a practice. I'm going to start a real life.”

“I'll tell you what, lad. Why don't we put aside this matter until we've resolved the matter at hand. What's on tap for tonight?”

“I set myself up for the Devil's Princes to come after me. A guy by the name of Tyrone Cash is behind what happened to Ernie. Cash and two other guys—Randy Jones and Balthaszar Roman—were in it with him. They're the top guys in this street gang. Big cocaine and crack dealers. Got a reputation for killing anybody who gets in their way. That's why I set myself up. If they run true to pattern, they'll come after me. Only place they'd know to look was the hotel. But to be on the safe side, I wanted Thelma and the kids out of the house.”

“Does Ernie's sister's house present that much better an alternative?”

“Best we've got.”

“Could have tried a hotel.”

“Ernie's brother-in-law's a cop. I checked. He's gonna be home tonight watching a football game.”

“Assuming they're safe then, you set it up for these gentlemen with the picturesque-sounding names to come to the hotel and kill you?”

“Right.” Babcock nodded.

“What exactly did you do?”

Babcock quickly told Hughes about the visit to Devil's Princes' headquarters earlier in the day and the invitation he had left, including the false room number and then setting it up to have the incoming calls transferred to his own room.

“That's wonderful except for two things: First, the hotel operator, unless she's busy, might give them the correct room number in the event they need to call you again; and second, what about the poor slob in the target room?”

“It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. I figure I can do something about the people in the other room. I'm not sure what just yet. And with you here—you said you're on the same floor?”

“I'm the poor slob in the next room.”

Babcock started to laugh and then so did Hughes, although he didn't know why. Neither of them had a gun and it was likely that the delegation from the Devil's Princes would.

Abe Cross finished with his bow tie. He refused to consider a clip-on, so he contented himself with an imperfect but sincere knot.

When he had first started playing in the London hotels after the surgical strike in Iran was behind him, he had purchased a tuxedo off the rack. But after he'd felt secure enough in what he was doing that it appeared he would be doing it for quite some time, he had had three tuxedos custom tailored, three not an inordinate number since he needed to wear one every night with the places he worked. He had one white dinner jacket as well, just for necessity since he had always thought they made the wearer look like a lost waiter without a tray.

He found his cigarettes and lighter, grabbed up his music case and started out of his cabin. For the first time in a long time, the prospect of working was not just tolerable, but exciting. Jenny Hall was what excited him. He'd found that her arrangements were quite compatible with his own style of playing and, when he improvised a little, she not only didn't complain, but would vocalize along with it. Her voice was another matter. It was a perfect blending of alto timbre and a range which got her comfortably into soprano. And when she hit those notes, the higher ones, it was something he couldn't describe.

He wondered if he was in love.

The corridor was crowded and passengers were still arriving, stewards carting unbelievably stacked luggage carriers out of the elevators and into cabins, so many people moving about that twice he had to let an elevator pass before there was room enough for him to squeeze aboard.

“Do you work here, young man?” He turned his head and saw a pair of pretty blue eyes behind him under a crown of soft grey hair. She reminded him of his aunt a little.

“Yes, ma 'am. I'm Abe Cross. I'm playing in the Seabreeze Lounge.”

“Ohh! The piano! I love the piano, don't I Fred?”

Fred was apparently her husband, who looked at once bored and embarrassed but nodded that she did, indeed, like the piano.

“Well, I tell you what.” Cross smiled. “When you come down some evening and catch me play, just ask for something you'd like to hear and I'll bet I can play it.”

“Do you know ‘I'll Be Seeing You'?”

“My mother was a big fan of Liberace. I can play it. But I don't have a candelabra, I'm afraid.” For that matter, he didn't have a brother named George, either.

The elevator ride mercifully ended and he glanced at his Rolex as he made his way along the corridor—should it be called a companionway? he wondered—toward the Seabreeze Lounge. He entered from the enclosure-protected side as he had at noon. Now there was an elaborate easel set-up with a poster announcing the “vocal magic” of songstress Jennifer Hall. They didn't know how right they were about the magic part, he thought. The publicity still inset into the poster didn't do her justice at all but still looked good enough to eat. At the lower third of the poster it said something about the “inimitable piano styling of Abe Cross,” which made it sound as though he took pianos in for a wash and a set. The lounge was already filling up and as he started for the piano, he heard a familiar voice, Helen the barmaid. “Want something?”

“Ice water'd be terrific. Thanks.”

“Man, you are different from Lenny Brooks.”

He didn't know what to say to that. He stepped up onto the smallish stage and started laying out his music. He heard a voice behind him, a man's, totally unfamiliar. “Mr. Cross?”

“Yes,” He quickly added a ‘sir' after he saw the uniform. He guessed he'd been expecting somebody who looked like the guy from “The Love Boat,” but the captain of the
Empress Britannia
was a short, stockily built man with a thick head of dark hair so brown it was almost black, streaks of grey at the sides, the sideburns short and pure white.

“I'm John Milewski, but I answer to the name Captain.” He extended his hand—it was the size of a five-pound ham and had heavy black hair on the back—and smiled. “I understand you play terrifically. I have spies everywhere.” And then he grinned. “And I also understand you were a Naval officer. Correct?”

“That's right, Captain. I was a lieutenant.”

“Dry land or water?”

“A little of both. I was a SEAL Team Leader. Last duty station was in the Med. But that was a while ago.”

“Annapolis?”

“Nope. Navy ROTC.”

The grin widened still further. “Good. Annapolis men can be a pain in the ass. I know. I was one. Have a drink with me later, all right?”

“That'll be my pleasure, sir.”

“Well, good luck, tonight. Won't be seeing me around much until after we shove off and we're out of Naples harbor.” He cocked his head like some sort of salute and strode off.

Abe Cross returned to laying out his music. Helen showed up with the ice water. He checked his watch. He didn't have to start for another ten minutes according to the schedule given him that afternoon, but he decided to get off on the right foot just in case the captain did have spies everywhere.

He took some of the more popular Beatles songs, in a medley alternating the faster ones with the slower ones, the focus of the medley the song “Yesterday,” measures of it used to segue from one song into another and to cover key changes. He glanced at his watch again when he was through. It had killed twelve minutes. He noticed the grey-haired lady from the elevator and he did a long, complicated sounding but easy enough run which led into “I'll Be Seeing You.” He glanced up as she sat down and she looked positively sweet as she smiled at him. He segued into “I'll Get By,” and then decided on a slightly different attack before he started having people coming down with hyperglycemia attacks. Movie tunes were always popular and at once unexpected. He did “The Magnificent Seven” and “High Noon.”

A gorgeous blonde whose breasts and the top of her dress were slowly but steadily parting company it seemed, came up to the piano and gave him a big smile and slipped five bucks into a glass Helen the barmaid had put out and asked him if he could play any Barry Mannilow and he told her he could. Fred, the little old lady's husband, came up, apparently having seen the donation from the blonde, and started slipping a ten into the glass. “Those were on me. Tell her I said so,” Cross told the man.

“Thanks, fella.”

“Anytime.” He had learned to play on one level of consciousness and carry on conversations, even once or twice make change.

After about twenty minutes, Helen came by and asked if he needed anything and he asked for an ashtray. As he lit up a Pall Mail, he started playing “Set ‘Em Up Joe,” the cigarette hanging from the left comer of his mouth. It was the wrong brand of cigarettes, he didn't own a porkpie hat, and he wasn't Sinatra, but Abe Cross kept playing the song anyway….

He hadn't gotten rid of the PPK. It was smaller than his own gun and easier to carry around aboard the ship if it came to that. But there was no reason to suppose that it would. He moved through the engine room now, along a section of pipe which brought steam to the turbines, which in turn cranked the screws. He'd been tapped for the job by the people at Langley for one reason. The ampule couldn't be transferred by military aircraft because the military might somehow get wind of it and want it for their own biowarfare studies, he'd been told. And it couldn't be transported by civilian aircraft because the airports would be watched. Even though he had always worked the Orient whenever he'd done any out-of-country things, it was always possible that someone would recognize him from a file photo or something.

There was an ancillary problem with moving the ampule by aircraft at any event. A virus, he'd been told, it might be something which could infect when vectored in air. If some catastrophe were to take place on a seagoing vessel at least, the worst that could happen was the ampule going down. He had placed the ampule and its maroon container inside a waterproof, air-cushioned bag just in case of that.

He was told that no one would suspect that such a valuable and dangerous item would be taken out the slow, old-fashioned way, by ship, anyway. The reason he'd been tapped for the assignment was that he'd spent two years in the Merchant Marines before finishing college and was qualified to pass himself off as an experienced man below decks. He didn't relish the idea of taking a cruise this way, but it was all in the line of duty.

He had packed his good clothing and changed to worn Levi's, a work shirt and even a peacoat and watchcap, taken his spurious seaman's documents and reported for work, the job arranged for him in advance before he had even reached Italy. He had asked why a cruise ship rather than some merchant vessel. He had been told it would be less suspicious. That hadn't rung one hundred percent true to him, but he had learned that information was often withheld for the supposed greater good of the mission.

He found an easily identifiable junction of pipes, yellow ones meeting red ones. He set about finding a suitable location in which to stash the ampule….

Ephraim Vols had not come to Italy prepared for a cruise at sea on a luxury liner. But the information the truth serum caused Thomas Alyard to reveal had led him inexorably to the conclusion that a cruise it must be. Through the description and name given him by Alyard, he had worked through contacts in the Italian Communist party to learn that a man of different name but identical description had chartered a plane from Rome to Naples less than twelve hours before. Fabrizzi's description of the man having matched identically to Alyard's, Vols had assumed it reasonably accurate. The man had rented a car at the airfield and returned it at his hotel, after which he had checked out leaving no forwarding address. A description gotten from an awakened desk clerk at the hotel had indicated that the American—another name used at the hotel—had left wearing blue jeans and a seaman's jacket. On a hunch, Vols had telephoned a source in the longshoremen's union and, after an hour's wait, been phoned back. Two black seamen speaking English and matching the same general description had signed aboard vessels leaving Naples harbor that night. One had given the name Nigel Hornsby, spoken ‘like an Englishman, like you,' and joined the crew of the
Herculaneum
, a merchant vessel leaving for Marseille and Cardiff. The second, giving his name as Alvin Leeds, had taken work below decks on the cruise ship
Empress Britannia
.

Vols had taken the only course of action open to him, since he had kept his word and left Thomas Alyard alive and well. He had ordered the man called Piotr to fly to Marseille and the man called Vassily to go on to Cardiff, each man with the same directive. If the black seaman leaves the vessel, kill him if necessary but first find out if he has the ampule. Each of his men had an injection kit similar to his own, the truth serum marked as insulin so it could get past airport security checks.

Something the longeshoremen's union contact had said about Alvin Leeds had made Vols determine to pursue Leeds himself. The job had been waiting for Leeds, held for him. That was not entirely unusual, but unusual enough to make a connection.

There had been more telephone calls then. Arranging passage on the
Empress
, rousting a sympathizer who ran a men's clothier—Vols had brought nothing with him to Italy except a change of underwear and socks, one clean shirt and his toothbrush and electric razor.

As a passenger, his luggage would be subject to search and any real weapons were impossible to bring along. But he could always improvise. Three suits and a tuxedo hastily altered and an appropriate number of shirts, ties, underpants (he never wore undershirts) and other necessities and a set of expensive luggage to help him look the part of the tourist (and because he liked real leather and had been looking for an excuse to get it past his expense reports)—he felt he was set. A last-minute call to Anna in Albania; David Stakowski had killed himself in his cell, the Albanians failing to keep the suicide watch Vols had ordered through her. Orders to Anna to fly to New York City where the
Empress
would first dock so she could take the ampule into an escape route that could be arranged while she awaited his arrival. And a promise to Anna that after this was over, they would still see to that Christmas tree he'd promised to show her. A taxicab to the docks, through the inspection points, his luggage taken away to be brought on board.

The “All Ashore That's Going Ashore” gong already sounding, people waving vigorously from the decks to the docks and from the docks to the decks, Ephraim Vols ascended the gangplank and boarded the
Empress
. The first officer welcomed him aboard and the recreation director assured him he'd have an exciting trip.

He hoped not too exciting. The call made just before his call to Anna had given him encoded specific details about the contents of the ampule. And if he hadn't talked to Anna, felt the reassurance of her calm, he would have become ill.