The Wheel of Darkness (16 page)

Constance nodded. Marya took a deep breath, then opened the door.

The room beyond was as small as a prison cell, perhaps fourteen feet by ten. Six narrow lockers were set into the far wall. There were no chairs or tables, no adjoining bath. The walls to the left and right were occupied entirely by spartan bunks, set three high. At the head of each bunk was a small shelf, topped by a light. As Constance looked around, she noticed that each of these shelves was filled with books, photos of loved ones, dried flowers, magazines—a small, sad imprint of the individual who occupied the bunk.

“There are
six
of you in here?” she asked incredulously.

Marya nodded.

“I had no idea conditions were so cramped.”

“This nothing. You should see Deck E, where the NPC staff sleep.”

“NPC?”

“No Passenger Contact. Crew who do laundry, wash engine rooms, prepare food.” Marya shook her head. “Like prison. They no see daylight, no breathe fresh air, for three, four months maybe. Work six days week, ten hours a day. Pay is twenty to forty dollars a day.”

“But that’s less than minimum wage!”

“Minimum wage where? We are nowhere—in middle of sea. No wage law here. Ship registered in Liberia.” She looked around. “My bunkmates in mess already. We find them there.”

She traced a circuitous path through the narrow, sweat-fragrant corridors, Constance close behind. The crew dining area was located amidships, a large, low-ceilinged room. Crew members, all in uniform, sat at long cafeteria-style tables, heads bent over their plates. As they took their places in the buffet line, Constance looked around, shocked at the plainness of the room—so very different from the opulent dining rooms and grand salons the passengers enjoyed.

“It’s so quiet,” she said. “Why aren’t people talking?”

“Everyone tired. Also, everyone upset about Juanita. Maid who went crazy.”

“Crazy? What happened?”

She shook her head. “Is not uncommon, except it usually happen at end of long tour. Juanita go crazy . . . rip out own eyes.”

“Good God. Did you know her?”

“A little.”

“Did she seem to have any problems?”

“We all of us have problems,” Marya said, quite seriously. “Otherwise not take this job.”

They made their lunch choices from an unappetizing variety—fatty slices of boiled corned beef, waterlogged cabbage, mushy rice, gluey shepherd’s pie, anemic-looking squares of yellow sheet cake—and Marya led the way to a nearby table, where two of her bunkmates picked listlessly at their plates. Marya made the introductions: a young, dark-haired Greek woman named Nika, and Lourdes, a middle-aged Filipina.

“I have not seen you before,” Nika said in a thick accent.

“I’m assigned to cabins on Deck 8,” Constance replied, careful to add a German accent of her own.

The woman nodded. “You must be careful. This isn’t your mess. Don’t let
her
see you.” She nodded toward a short, hirsute, thickset woman with frizzy bottle-blonde hair, standing in a far corner and surveying the room with a scowl.

The women made small talk in a strange mixture of languages with a lot of English words thrown in, apparently the lingua franca of the
Britannia
’s service decks. Most of it focused on the maid who had gone crazy and mutilated herself.

“Where is she now?” Constance asked. “Did they medevac her off the ship?”

“Too far from land for a helicopter,” said Nika. “They lock her in infirmary. And now I have to do half her rooms.” She scowled. “Juanita, I knew she was heading for trouble. She is always talking about what she see in the passengers’ rooms, poking her nose where it not belong. A good maid sees nothing, remembers nothing, just does her job and keeps her mouth shut.”

Constance wondered if Nika ever took her own advice on the latter point.

Nika went on. “Yesterday, how she talk at lunch! All about that stateroom with the leather straps on bed and vibrator in drawer. What is she doing looking in drawer? Curiosity killed the cat. And now I have to clean half her rooms. This Jonah ship.”

Her mouth set firmly into an expression of disapproval and she sat back and crossed her arms, point made.

There were murmurs and nods of agreement.

Nika, encouraged, uncrossed her arms and opened her mouth again. “Passenger disappear too on ship. You hear that? Maybe she is a jumper. This Jonah ship, I tell you!”

Constance spoke quickly to stem the flow of words. “Marya tells me you work in the larger cabins,” she said. “You’re lucky—I just have the standard suites.”

“Lucky?” Nika looked at her incredulously. “For me is twice as much work.”

“But the tips are better, right?”

Nika scoffed. “The rich ones give you smallest tips of all. They always complain, want everything just so. That ryparóç in the triplex, he make me come back three times today to remake his bed.”

This was a piece of luck. One of the people on Pendergast’s list—Scott Blackburn, the dot-com billionaire—had taken one of only two triplex suites. “Do you mean Mr. Blackburn?” she asked.

Nika shook her head. “No. Blackburn even worse! Has own maid, she get linens herself. Maid treat me like dirt, like I
her
maid. I have to take that triplex also, thanks to Juanita.”

“He brought his own maid along?” Constance asked. “Why?”

“He bring
everything
along! Own bed, own rugs, own statues, own paintings, own piano even.” Nika shook her head. “Bah! Ugly things, too: ugly and ryparóç.”

“I’m sorry?” Constance feigned ignorance of the word.

“Rich people crazy.” Nika cursed again in Greek.

“How about his friend, Terrence Calderón, next door?”

“Him! He okay. Give me okay tip.”

“You clean his stateroom, as well? Did he bring his own things?”

She nodded. “Some. Lot of antiques. French. Very nice.”

“The richer they are, the worse they are,” said Lourdes. She spoke excellent English with only a faint accent. “Last night, I was in the suite of—”

“Hey!” a voice boomed right behind them. Constance turned to see the supervisor standing behind her, hands on copious hips, glaring.

“On your feet!” the woman said.

“Are you speaking to me?” Constance replied.

“I said, on your
feet
!”

Calmly, Constance rose.

“I haven’t seen you before,” the woman said in a surly tone. “What’s your name?”

“Rülke,” Constance said. “Leni Rülke.”

“What’s your station?”

“The Deck 8 cabins.”

A look of bitter triumph came over the woman’s fat features. “I thought as much. You know better than to eat here. Get back down to the Deck D cafeteria where you belong.”

“What’s the difference?” Constance asked in a mild tone. “The food’s no better here.”

Disbelief took the place of triumph on the supervisor’s face. “Why, you impudent bitch—” And she slapped Constance hard across her right cheek.

Constance had never in her life been slapped before. She stiffened for a moment. Then she took an instinctive step forward, hand closing tightly over her fork. Something in her movement made the supervisor’s eyes widen. The woman stepped back.

Slowly, Constance laid the fork back on the table. She thought of Marya and the pledge of secrecy she owed her. She glanced down. Marya was staring at them, her face white. The other two women were looking studiously at their plates.

Around them, the low murmur of apathetic conversation, which had stopped for the altercation, resumed. She looked back at the supervisor, committing her face to memory. Then—cheek burning—she stepped away from the table and left the cafeteria.

F
IRST
O
FFICER
G
ORDON
L
ESEUR FELT A RISING SENSE OF CONCERN
as he stepped into Kemper’s monastic office. The missing passenger had not shown up, and the husband had demanded to meet with all the senior officers. Commodore Cutter had been cloistered in his cabin for the last eight hours, in one of his black moods, and LeSeur wasn’t about to disturb him for Evered or anybody else. Instead, he’d assigned the watch to the second officer and rounded up the staff captain, Carol Mason, for the meeting.

Evered was pacing back and forth in the cramped confines, his face red, his voice shaking. He looked like he was teetering on the brink of hysteria. “It’s past four in the afternoon,” he was saying to Kemper. “It’s been eight goddamn hours since I alerted you to my wife’s disappearance. ”

“Mr. Evered,” Kemper, the chief of security, began. “It’s a big ship, there’s a lot of places she could be—”

“That’s what you all said before,” Evered said, his voice rising. “
She’s not back yet
. I heard the PA announcements like everyone else, I saw the little picture you posted on the TVs. This isn’t like her, she would never stay away this long without contacting me. I want this ship searched!”

“Let me assure you—”

“To hell with your assurances! She could have fallen somewhere, be hurt, unable to call out or get to a phone. She could have . . .” He stopped, breathing heavily, savagely brushed away a tear with the back of his hand. “You need to contact the Coast Guard, contact the police, get them here.”

“Mr. Evered,” Staff Captain Mason said, quietly taking charge, much to LeSeur’s relief. “We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Even if the police or the Coast Guard had jurisdiction—which they don’t—they could never reach us. Now, you must believe me when I say we have time-tested procedures for dealing with this kind of situation. The chances are almost one hundred percent that, for some reason, she’s unwilling to be found. We have to consider the possibility that she may be in somebody else’s company.”

Evered jabbed a trembling finger at LeSeur. “I told him this morning, my wife’s not like that. And I won’t take that kind of insinuation, not from you or anybody else.”

“I’m not insinuating anything, Mr. Evered,” said Mason, her voice firm and quiet. “I’m simply saying there’s no reason to get upset. Believe me, statistically you’re safer on board this ship than even in your own home. Having said that, we take security seriously, and given the nature of the problem, we
will
institute a search of the ship. Immediately. I’ll supervise it myself.”

The staff captain’s low, competent voice and her soothing words had the intended effect. Evered was still flushed and breathing heavily, but after a moment he swallowed and nodded. “That’s what I’ve been asking from the beginning.”

After Evered had left, the three stood in silence. Finally, the security chief fetched a deep sigh and turned to Mason. “Well, Captain?”

The staff captain was staring thoughtfully at the empty doorway. “Is there any way we could get a psychiatric background report on Mrs. Evered?”

A silence. “You don’t think—?” Kemper asked.

“It’s always a possibility.”

“Legally we’d have to go through her husband,” Kemper said. “That’s a step I’d be most reluctant to take until we’re really sure she’s . . . no longer on the ship. Son of a
bitch
. We’ve already got a problem with crew morale over that crazy housekeeper—I hope to God we find her.”

Mason nodded. “Me too. Mr. Kemper, please organize a level-two search.” She glanced at LeSeur. “Gordon, I’d like you to work with Mr. Kemper personally.”

“Certainly, sir,” LeSeur said. Inwardly, he cringed. A level-two search meant every public space, all the crews’ quarters, and the entire belowdecks section of the ship—everything, in fact, but the staterooms. Even with the entire security staff mobilized, it would take a full day, at least. And there were some spaces deep in the bowels of the ship that simply couldn’t be searched successfully.

“I’m sorry, Gordon,” she said, reading the look on his face. “But it’s a step we have to take. Standing orders.”

Standing orders
, he thought a little morosely. And that’s all it was, really: an exercise in formality. Passenger cabins could only be examined in a level-three search, and Commodore Cutter would have to authorize that personally. No such search had ever been conducted on a ship LeSeur had worked on, not even when there had been a jumper. And that’s what LeSeur privately figured Mrs. Evered was: a jumper. Suicide at sea was more common than the passengers ever realized. Especially on high-profile maiden voyages, where some people wanted to go out in style. That was a huge irony, because it was the way of the cruise industry to sweep them under the rug and do everything to keep the news from the rest of the passengers. Instead of going out in style, Mrs. Evered might simply be five hundred miles behind them and a thousand fathoms deep—

LeSeur’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock. He turned to see a security officer standing in the doorway. “Mr. Kemper, sir?”

“Yes?” Kemper asked.

“Sir,” the man said nervously, “two things.” He shifted, waiting.

“Well?” Kemper snapped. “Can’t you see I’m in a meeting?”

“The maid who went crazy—she, ah, just killed herself.”

“How?”

“Managed to get free of her restraints and . . .” He faltered.

“And what?”

“Pried a sharp piece of wood free from her bedframe and jammed it into her eye socket. Went up into her brain.”

There was a short silence as this bit of information was digested. Kemper shook his head.

“Mr. Kemper,” LeSeur said, “I think you might want to have a word with the passenger in the last suite she cleaned before she went off the deep end. There might have been some kind of unpleasant encounter, an accident, perhaps . . . I was on a cruise ship once where a passenger brutally raped the maid that came in to clean.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

“Be circumspect.”

“Of course.”

There was a silence. Then Kemper turned back to the nervous security officer. “You mentioned a second thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well? What is it?” Kemper asked brusquely.

“There’s something you should see.”

“What?”

The man hesitated. “I’d rather you saw it directly, sir. It might pertain to the missing passenger.”

“Where is it?” Mason interrupted, her voice sharp.