A Death in Geneva (35 page)

“—told me he was going to make up everything to you”—Tooms took a long pull from his bottle—“probably buy you Martinique or the Bahamas.”

“Not Bermuda? Good.”

“He knows your tastes. Don't let me keep you, Tina; break a leg. Got to get going myself—got the tanker photo pageant, messages to write, young Paul Head and Filippo—”

“Those wonderful eyes . . .” She was silent for a moment. “Have I ever told you Oats, I find all three of them slightly unsettling. Make them behave. I love you for calling.”

Unsettling . . . they'll behave. Tooms mulled the words, gently rocking the receiver in its cradle. Behind his bubbly façade, the entire Divequest escapade had become seriously troubling to him. The dolphis were into some sort of double game that he still could not fathom. He was in the homestretch now and knew he had to stick with them. But he would have them out of Towerpoint forever, paid off and back on their Mediterranean rock, at the first chance.

What the hell was it that had started him churning just a couple of days before? “Timer,” that was it, timer. Head and Tonasi had been taking a smoke, backs to him, leaning against a rail when he had come across them and heard that goddamned word, and had seen them clam up as soon as they had spotted him. What the hell were they talking about timers for. Those two little bastards; he was going to hawk their every step.

Tooms checked the
Mayan
's schedule with the watch, then proceeded to the communicator's shack, mentally outlining the contents of Starring's security directive to Adrian enroute. The boss was right, an important message; it would have to be transmitted in code. That was good, force him to keep it brief. He checked the designators and heading with the communications officer, took half-a-dozen message forms, and dragged a chair over to the spare typewriter. He made a hash of the first form, balled it up, and continued to type.

“I can't read the bloody pressure, Italian. Check my tanks.”

“Three thousand pounds.”

“Both?”

“Both. You're set, Zulu.”

“We're going to bugger this if we're not out of here now!”

They dropped through the habitat's trunk into the bay. Head set himself in the forward cockpit. The glowing faces on the work chariot's instrument panel came alive. Tonasi cast them off, swung into his seat, and stabbed at the “forward” signal. They rose with the first testing thrust of propulsion, then pushed ahead with full turns of power. The bubbling exhaust of his breath trailed aft. The chariot drove at maximum speed toward the center of the bay.

When they surfaced, they were on the edge of the main channel, with less than an hour until the attack. The sky had taken on a yellowish cast, the haze of early summer heat. The surface was flat; nothing was near them. Sails off either shore hung near-motionless in the water. In the distance, a triangle of holiday flags pinpointed the
Octagon.

Tonasi was out of his seat, talking to Head as he had to Leslie the day before. “Keep us low, Paulo. You're good; you're good now. Just our heads, no sea today, easy to spot us. You ready?”

“Do it in my sleep. After this one, we'll put the next on the bloody catamaran—port or starboard hull?”

“Inboard, starboard, split her in two.”

“They'll blow tonight!”

“Ten o'clock—all three of the bastards. This fucking tanker will be the bomb—
arhhrumph
!”

“What are your settings?”

“Eight hours—
arhhrumph
!—need an asbestos suit within five miles.”

“We'll be bloody further than five miles; on our way, Italian.”

“On our way. We should pay out the anchor, to the south, just enough turns to keep the line taut. I'll watch for you.”

They slipped beneath the surface. Tonasi counted the markers emerging from the reel—“Ten!”—they were still under way. He hit “surface.” The submersible slowed, rose. He worked the last of the line free from the reel, brought the tail forward—all clear. It held. He had rigged it himself. He released the empty reel, followed its plunge to the bottom. His left arm was bad, his gash reacting to the renewed immersion. They broke the surface. The pain was terrible. He reached for his knife to slice off the new sleeve, bake the arm in the warm air. The knife stayed in its sheath. Both hands went to the mine instead, ran along the curve of the shroud. They waited.

First the compass, then the throb through the water, a ship, a big ship—the swinging dial, the vibration of energy; where was it? Mask-high in the water, Head craned his neck to spot the approaching hull. He was going nuts; there was nothing! He cursed into his mouthpiece, kicked at the chariot's controls—bring it up some more. He spat out the regulator, shouted over his shoulder, “Where is the bastard? Where, bloody hell?”

Tonasi had spotted it. They were too high on the surface. “We're okay, Zulu. Down, down, down again. We're okay.”

The thin vertical line had appeared from the north, no more than a stake in the center of the channel. His eyes had found the white of the bow wave next, then the curve of the hull. “Submarine, Paulo, running on the surface.” As the distance closed, the angle opened, revealing the sleek black sail of the conning tower, the top of the tear-drop hull, a streamlined shape broken only by the raised missile housing, then white wake and trailing behind, as if detached, the black trapezoidal blade of the rudder.

The sound racing through the water was different from that of any merchant hull, power tightly packaged, finely machined to a deadly precision. The heads and shoulders of the men atop the sail were silhouetted against the afternoon sky. The black beast of war slid quickly to the south, her ensign snapping in the sixteen-knot breeze generated by the forward thrust of nuclear propulsion.

They followed her, braced as the wake slammed into them, carrying the full size and strength of the seven-thousand-ton ballistic missile submarine. Head brought the chariot back on course. The horizon was clear. The “submerge” light had them diving to fifteen feet, swinging slowly to port at two knots, little more than pivoting against the pull of the sea anchor. The compass measured the maneuver in its quarter turn from 180 to 90 degrees.

They surfaced. It was time. Adrenaline was pumping through Tonasi, the excitement of the kill. “Good work, Zulu, good as yesterday.” His hands worked the mine's mechanisms—cocked and running, all but one restraining strap gone.

Head had not heard Tonasi's words. A fat, black bug was on the southern horizon—not the sub, fat, wide as the channel—“Bloody bitch is here!”

Tonasi's eyes were to the north. He squinted hard at the still indistinguishable shape—and the shock ran through him. He and Head
were back to back. “Two ships!” Head's shout, the single word “Dive,” and they were angling beneath the glassy green of the surface.

The pilot aboard the
Towerpoint Mayan
had already established the course and speed of the approaching hull, a Greek cruise ship under charter out of Baltimore on one of the off-season holiday excursions to Florida, St. Thomas, and return. He rubbed the fine stubble on his chin, took his decision.

His instruction from Towerpoint had been to slow to three knots. This would have him pass the cruise ship port-to-port when abeam of the flagship
Octagon.
Under these circumstances, the Greek would obscure the view. He could not slow the ladened
Mayan
beneath three knots and wait for the Greek to pass. He would not risk a thousand feet of loaded LNG tanker near dead in the water with no maneuvering room.

He crossed the bridge, conferred briefly with the
Mayan
's master, who immediately nodded his concurrence, and stepped into the wheelhouse to radio the
Octagon.
The
Mayan
would give the Greek another forty feet of channel and maintain twelve knots, beating the cruise ship to the point of ceremonial salute abeam the flagship, providing a clear field for Towerpoint's photographers.

White waves curled from the bows, hissed back along the deep-blue hull before rolling free on either side, fanning outward in a spreading vee. The bridge watch sung out the ranges and bearings. Two minutes, then four minutes passed. The pilot's lips flexed in approval. His calculations had been correct. The Greek was still a quarter-mile up-bay when he crossed to the port wing of the bridge beneath the rolling thunder of the
Mayan
's salute.

Head fought back against the panicking jolt, hauled with all his strength on the forward planes control as the tanker seized the snare line at twelve knots and dragged the chariot forward, sideways, down into darker water. As his body wrestled with the machine, his eyes, blurring with the violence of the encounter, caught the instruments. The line tore free from the bow claw. The pull on the chariot was now from the forward deck padeye, slewing the slender craft sideways out of control, rolling the cockpit toward the hull. Head battled furiously
against the almost useless controls, his mind raging at the tanker's counterattack.

In the aft compartment, Tonasi had locked his body against the inside walls of the chariot's hull, straining to right the craft, to escape from the unbelievable force which held them. In the struggle, he bit through the rubber in his mouth; the regulator was gone, trailing from his back tanks in the gray-green hell. The speed, the first hard, diving roll had snapped the mine from his hands, and it had vanished in an instant, now a part of the bay. A minute later, he was dead, smashed against the
Mayan
's hull, skull and neck destroyed, body plucked from the chariot and sucked aft into the cut of the bronze propeller. Head blindly cut at the tow.