Buzz Cut (24 page)

It was not the captain on the phone, but one of his Italian stooges. Chief Officer Rudolfo Vincetti wanting to know what Blaine could tell them about that voice. Pudgy Vincetti.

"I heard it," Blaine said. "What exactly do you want to know?"

"Did it originate in the media room? The captain wants a response immediately."

Blaine told him to hold on. He moved across the room to the bank of power switches. Everything from the refrigerated morgue to the two hundred slot machines was wired through that giant circuit breaker board. He ran his finger down the row of switches, found the media room toggle, then went back to the phone and told Vincetti, no, the voice could not possibly have originated there. The media room was off-line. Typically, not turned on till two hours into the voyage when the stream of public announcements formally began. Blaine heard Vincetti repeat the information to the captain, and Gavini replied in Italian.

Blaine waited, absently watching the screens of the engine room. The Asian sweathogs down there with their ear protectors, their blue jumpsuits grease-stained already, moving like dwarfs in the catacombs. Then seeing someone else walking in a strange bowlegged gait down the narrow metal grating between the big turbines. This man wasn't one of the midget Filipino or Malaysian mechanics. This guy was tall and thin, lugging a nonregulation tool bag. He thought for a moment it was Robbie Dorfman, the junior assistant engineer on this watch. Half an hour ago Blaine had dispatched Robbie down to the engine room to answer a call, and he hadn't reported back. But this guy was taller than Robbie. Didn't move like him. Blaine was angling closer to the TV screen, squinting, when Vincetti's voice rattled in his ear.

"Captain also wants you to check on NFU for port rudder."

"What's the problem?"

"He wants you check it. See if any difficulty exists."

"Is this an exam or something? You're not going to tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be looking for?"

Vincetti said something to him in curt Italian. Blaine was pretty sure it was a curse. Calling him a shithead, probably, or something similar. The Italians were fond of shit curses. Shit on your sandwich, they'd say. Shit in your marriage bed.

He smacked the phone against the console, went over to the NFU control board. The navigational function unit relayed electronic messages from the autopilot up on the bridge down to the hydraulic power modules in the engine room. The NFU box was a way station for the flow of data through the navigational process.

Week after week routine procedure rarely varied. A few miles out, the captain turned on the autopilot with its preset destination encoded. He entered the desired ETA and sat back for the next several hours, letting the unit calibrate course heading, factoring in tidal differentials, wind speed, taking the ship along its course. The computer's job was to absorb all the electronic garble flowing through the various sensors and decide any necessary course adjustments and speed settings. Normally the captain took the control of the ship only as it approached the shipping lanes or harbor.

The NFU box was simply one of several monitoring devices along the track between bridge and rudder. If Gavini suspected trouble with the NFU, it probably meant he was having difficulty reconciling the actual course with the preprogrammed course. If the NFU unit was defective, bad things could happen. Worst-case scenario, you could find yourself sailing north when you'd instructed the autopilot to take you south.

But the fact was, in two and a half years, Blaine had never seen a single defect in the ship's navigational equipment. Once the autopilot was set, Gavini could damn well sit back and light up his pipe. And this time, just as he'd thought, there was no indication in the NFU box that anything was operating at less than a hundred percent. The unit was alive, green light lit, normal functioning.

He returned to the phone, told Vincetti everything was normal, and Vincetti relayed the information to the captain and Murphy asked again what the hell was going on. Without a thank you or good-bye, Vincetti hung up.

Blaine Murphy slammed the phone down. He stood staring at it for a moment, feeling the blood heat his face. "Fucking wops. Fucking third-world wops."

He sat down in his swivel chair, brought it around so he could glance at the video screens again. For half a minute, Blaine stared at the image on the number-two screen without absorbing it. Some blob obscuring the normal view.

He sat up straight. Then rose from his chair and marched across the room, craning up at the monitor. He stood just below the screens and peered at number two. Something he'd never seen before was filling the screen. A solid mass, a blurry pale shape suspended an inch or two from the video lens, blocking the camera as if somebody had hauled himself ten feet off the floor and was holding the palm of his hand in front of the lens. Whatever the hell it was, the object was vibrating from the beat of the engines like everything else down there.

Blaine had a small degree of control over the engine room cameras, so he went back to the main control board and toggled the camera to the right, then abruptly sent it left. The movement nudged the object hanging in front of it, sent whatever the hell it was into a small pendulum swing.

He repeated the process, toggling right and left, then did it again and one more time, swinging the object into wider and wider arcs. He pushed away from the control board, skipped back over to the screen, grabbed a swivel chair from behind the radio panel, and climbed up for a closer look.

On one swing to the right, Blaine made out what appeared to be a coil of electrical cord, three loops, four, on the next he was staring at what looked a whole lot like a fucking human eye.

He yelped, jumped down from the swivel chair, ran back to the control panel, rocked the camera back and forth, getting a rhythm that sent the object into ever wider paths. Four, five, six times, then running back to his swivel chair, climbing up and bringing his face close to the screen. Getting right up there into the halo of electrons until he was certain what he was looking at.

Blaine Murphy felt his throat clamp, the fluorescent light in the room yellowed, and his body swayed on the chair. Suddenly he was feeling very ungainly.

He drew a careful breath. Gingerly he let himself down. Blaine had never had a fainting spell before. Never even come close as far as he knew.

He sat back on the swivel chair, lowered his head to his knees. A rush of nausea flooded his throat. He knew he should get to the phone, call security, call the bridge. Protocol, protocol. And he'd do that, sure he'd do that. As soon as the dizziness passed. As soon as he got the image out of his head—Robbie Dorfman's face swollen up, tongue peeking out, the noose at his neck.

"Gives you the collywobbles, doesn't it, Blaine?"

Blaine jerked upright, lost his balance, had to lunge to his right, grab the console to keep from tumbling out of the chair. A man was standing on the other side of the control panel. Tall and thin, his blond hair grown out long in the three years since Blaine had seen him last.

"What the fuck you doing in here?"

"What's wrong, Mr. Sit-up Champ, you having some technical difficulties down here? Something you can't fix?"

"You! You did that. To Dorfman."

Butler Jack smiled sadly. Glanced over at the number-two screen: Dorfman's mouth was smushed against the video lens, a corner of his tongue.

"I could tell you what's wrong with the NFU box, and for that matter with the entire navigation system. Hold your hand, lead you through it step by step, show you all the trapdoors, the tricks, the little surprises. You could pass the info on to Gavini and win yourself some more brownie points. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mr. Sit-up. Add to all the points you got stacked up already."

"A fuckup like you, Butler, what could you show me I don't know already?"

"Well, I guess we're about to find out, aren't we? And, Murph, you be real careful now, you hear? You don't want to wind up like our friend Dorfman."

Leaving him with a tricky smile.

***

Thorn could see that Lola had passed on to Sugarman her best features. Her delicate nose, her long lashes, and narrow lips. The exquisite cheekbones of a Scandinavian princess. As they gathered behind the center console, the captain greeting each of them, Lola gave Thorn a brief but empty smile.

She wore a sleeveless jumpsuit, sand colored. A string of shiny black beads at her throat. The diamond on her slender hand probably exceeded the combined net worth of everyone in the room. Excepting, of course, Sampson himself. She was tanned and fit and seemed to have lost most of the nervous flutter Thorn remembered from his youth. She moved with the studious ease of someone born to this role. A bland nonchalance that probably fooled her TV audiences. But Thorn knew a little of her real history, and he could see in the way her eyes warily clicked over the men on the bridge that she was on constant lookout for anyone who might call her bluff.

Hovering beside Lola was a gaunt young man in his midtwenties in jeans and black high-tops. His wavy black hair hung to the middle of his back, almost obscuring the red script lettering on his silk athletic jacket. LOLA LIVE. He had the weary eyes of someone used to the headier climate of the Pacific time zone. He checked out everyone on the bridge, his smile becoming lazy and indulgent as if he'd seen all this a few times before, seen it done far better on a half dozen different movie sets.

"This is my fault," Sugarman said. "Yesterday before I was attacked, I saw something, it looked like some kind of radio unit planted in the media room. I forgot about it till our friend started giving us his lecture."

He held up the bundle of wires and transistors.

"That should stop his sermonizing for a while."

"Don't be so sure," Sampson said, cutting a quick glance at his wife. He was holding a squat leaded glass. A few dwindling cubes and the ragged remains of a lime wedge.

Thorn watched as the first mate, a stocky red-haired man, moved from his station at the port-side console and leaned close to whisper something to the diminutive captain. But the older man shook his head and waved the first mate away.

"It is my belief," the captain announced, his English shaped by the ornate constructions of the Mediterranean, "that we should immediately return to port. Were it any other occasion as one so momentous, I would have done so already. But I felt it was necessary to advise you of my decision before executing it."

"Not on your fucking life," Sampson said.

Lola grimaced and swung away, crossed her arms across her chest, and stared out the port side bank of windows at the empty spread of sea.

"Sorry," Sampson said. "I'm sorry, but I'm upset. Forgive my language."

"I agree we should turn back," said Lola, still facing away from the group. "We never should have gotten under way in the first place. I was against it. But I was overruled."

Sampson rattled the ice cubes in his glass, drained off the last sip. Once again the first mate stepped away from his controls and leaned close to Captain Gavini but the small man shook his head brusquely.

"Where's David Cruz?" Sampson turned his strained grin on Sugar. "I want him up here. I need someone on my side."

"I sent a man for him," Sugar said. "He'll be up in a sec."

The captain said, "I am fully aware of the gravity of such a decision. But the passengers' safety must be my primary concern, and for that reason I am ordering the ship to come about and return to Miami immediately. We should be docking in three hours."

"You've got to be kidding. Because some prankster gets on the PA system, we're turning about. It would take more than one person to hijack this ship. Don't you think, Captain?"

"I'm returning to port immediately, sir. I cannot take such a chance."

Sugarman nodded.

"Captain," the first mate said. "I'm sorry, sir. But you've got to look at this."

While the captain and the mate bent close to study the green screen of one of the radar units, Sugarman stepped over to the starboard windows. He steadied himself with a palm flat against the deeply tinted glass.

"Holy shit!"

A buzzer began to pulse on the center console panel. Thorn leaned toward the flashing red light, saw a black identifying strip fastened below it. Anticollision radar.

The captain had stepped quickly to Sugarman's side and now barked out a command in Italian. The first mate cranked back on a silver handle that looked like a throttle lever. Two other officers who'd been waiting outside in the chart room shot through the door.

"Dead slow," the captain shouted. "Dead slow, goddamn it."

The alarm buzzer continued its grating alert.

Thorn hustled over to Sugarman's side, peered south out the window. Less than a mile away the sister cruise ship he'd noticed earlier was moving along an intersecting course. The
Eclipse
seemed to be on a heading that would ram the other ship's port side in a matter of minutes.

"Sir, the autopilot won't shut down," the first mate said. "I can't override it. Rudder angle, course heading, everything's holding firm."

Captain Gavini bumped the mate out of the way and gripped the black-handled joystick in the center console and dragged it backward. The VHF radio sputtered and an angry voice shouted, demanding an immediate response from the M.S.
Eclipse.
No one moved to answer. The officers jostled each other as they moved up and down the panels, trying combinations of switches. Cursing.

"Shut down power. Complete shutdown."

One of the second officers lifted a clear plastic lid over a large red button and flattened his palm against it. Another of the officers snapped up a microphone on the port console and spoke quickly. "Engine room not responding, sir. Control room dead, sir."