Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat (28 page)

A few seconds later, Conan heard heavy footsteps moving along the opposite railing and recognized a golden opportunity—or a last chance. If Demetriev was still by the side wall of the pilothouse…

Harrison’s voice was shrill with panic.

“I ain’t waitin’! I ain’t waitin’ for nothin’!”

“Harrison, what the hell—?”

But Zimmerman’s voice was drowned in a roar as the
Sea Queen
’s engine burst into life again, and the boat plunged sideways into an oncoming swell.

Conan careened against the railing, struggling to keep his footing against the wall of water pouring over the deck. He was dimly aware of a muffled, choked cry from the stern, then he staggered as a heavy body crashed into him.

“Help—help me!”

Demetriev.

He reached out for the physicist’s hurtling body, but with his bound hands, only managed to catch his arm, then as the
Sea Queen
pitched again, they both sprawled to the deck.

But even before the boat began to right herself, Conan was groping for Demetriev’s pocket. He almost had his fingers on the gun, when the boat heeled again.

“Harrison!” Zimmerman’s voice, screaming against the throb of the motor. “Damn you—stop!”

Conan’s fumbling fingers closed on the gun.

“Doctor, are you all right?”

He leaned down to hear Demetriev’s weak reply, at the same time taking advantage of a brief lull in the pitching of the boat to pull himself and the old man upright.

“I…I am all right. Do not worry—”

“Harrison, you damned fool!” Zimmerman again. Conan listened intently, trying to locate the sound of that voice. The opposite railing. He was moving toward the pilothouse.

“Doctor, get back in the stern. And keep down.”

The motor roared as the
Sea Queen
crashed into another swell, and Conan lost Demetriev. He could only hope he was capable of working his way back to the stern; it was all he could do to keep himself on his feet. At least Joe would be having the same problem.

The pilot—he had to stop Harrison. He clung to the railing with his left hand, the gun gripped in his right. His hands were numb; the ropes.

A beam of light streaked across the pilothouse, momentarily, revealing Harrison hunched over the wheel.

Flashlight. Zimmerman’s flashlight.

Conan dropped to the deck as the beam focused on him, the rush of air from the bullet coming simultaneously with a sharp cracking sound.

The
Sea Queen
groaned as she swooped into another deep trough, spinning at the bottom and meeting the next swell broadside. The crest of the wave broke over the railing, sweeping across the deck.

“Flagg!”
Another shot smashed into the planks.

He fought his way to the railing and pulled himself up, then fell up to the deck again as the flashlight homed in on him. He rolled sideways, then brought his arms up, steadying the gun.

At his second shot, the flashlight exploded into darkness. He heard a cry of pain, but didn’t take time to assess the damage. He made it to his feet before the boat heeled into the next trough, and clung to the railing as another wave flooded the deck. And he knew his disequilibrium was more than the movement of the boat now. Dizziness. But he had to hold on.

He was vaguely aware of a new sound—a strange whirring, beating sound—but he wasted no time trying to identify it. He lunged for the pilothouse, falling against the side wall as the boat heeled again.

“Harrison, stop the engine!”

The pilot didn’t seem to hear that shout. He was losing control of the boat, fighting the wheel, all the while babbling incoherently. Conan braced himself and jammed the gun against his side.

“Stop her, Harrison! You’ll sink this damned—”

“No—no—don’t shoot!” The wheel began spinning uncontrollably. “Don’t kill me! Don’t—”

“Harrison, for God’s sake, the engine—turn off the engine!”

Conan reached out and caught the wheel with his left hand, grimacing at the effort, almost losing his grip on the gun. The ropes cut into his wrists, and he was chilled with a new assault of dizziness at the pain in his shoulder.

“Harrison—”

The pilot was still stammering, fumbling for the ignition switch. The boat angled into another wave, and together they fought to control the wheel.

When the motor ceased its wracking vibration, Conan sagged back against the wall, letting Harrison take over, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

The sound. That beating whir…

For a moment, he thought it was in his head, but a wind moved around him that wasn’t a sea wind, and almost directly overhead, flashing red lights.…

The helicopter.

It had to be the Coast Guard helicopter. And behind the
Sea Queen
, toward the shore, running lights; two sets— The flash of light and sharp crack came from the starboard railing, and the window of the pilothouse exploded. Joe Zimmerman wasn’t out of the game yet.

Conan dropped to the deck, then took cover behind the side wall of the pilothouse as another bullet slammed into the instrument panel.

“
Flagg! Damn you—where are you?”

Conan looked out from behind the wall, his eyes straining into the darkness where he heard Zimmerman’s thick, slurred voice. Then a scuffling movement in front of him; another gunshot and a yelp of pain.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t—it’s
me
! Don’t—”

“Harrison?” Joe’s voice was closer now. “Damn it, get out of the way! Where’s the old man?”

“I—I don’t know! Don’t shoot me!”

Conan looked up, shivering in the wind of the ’copter’s rotors, directing an urgent, wordless plea to the men in that roaring mantis machine—
hurry.…

“Flagg!”

A series of shots erupted from the starboard railing, staccato pulse beats of light and sound, aimless and random, expressions of rage.

Conan watched that explosion of frustration, but his gaze kept shifting to the helicopter. It was slowly descending, and now a new sound was added to the cacophony of beating rotors: the wail of a siren.

And the wail was echoed in Zimmerman’s long-drawn howl of stymied rage as the darkness vanished in a cold glare of spotlights from the ’copter.

The light was a sensory shock. Conan recoiled, reeling with a sensation near vertigo as the light threw everything around him into sharp, surrealistic relief. He heard a voice blaring from a loudspeaker, but he was incapable of assimilating the words.

The intensity of the light drowned all color. Every detail was limned in harsh blacks and whites: Harrison cringing on the deck only a few feet away, clutching a bleeding arm; Demetriev crouched against the stern, looking somehow broken, like a wounded bird; and across the boat, Zimmerman, almost unrecognizable in his vengeful frenzy, backed against the railing like an animal at bay, the left side of his face smeared with blood.

Conan pulled himself to his feet and moved out from behind the pilothouse.

“Joe!”
He heard the amplified voice from the helicopter, urgent and demanding, but still could make no sense of the words, and he knew Zimmerman was beyond hearing them. “Joe—it’s all over!”

Zimmerman’s gaze shifted and the full intensity of his berserk rage was focused on Conan; he raised his hand, the gun coming up, aimed directly at Conan’s heart.

But he didn’t fire.

With a shutter-click flick, he seemed to assess and dismiss him, then turn with inevitable purpose toward the stern—to Demetriev. And without a split-second’s warning, his gun came around, aligned with Demetriev’s frozen face, and Conan saw his finger tightening on the trigger.

Conan reacted, reflexes impelling nerves and muscles without a conscious decision. There was no time.

His hands came up, the gun aimed and fired—straight at Zimmerman—all in half the blinking of an eye.

The .32 seemed to explode in his hand.

And that explosion went on and on—not echoing, but caught in a sensory time lapse; an intensely heightened awareness of the finest detail of every passing millisecond.

He saw Zimmerman’s body jerk spasmodically even as his finger closed on the trigger of the .45. And the gun recoiled, leaping from his hand, the bullet smashed into the stern, a foot from Demetriev’s head.

Zimmerman falling, toppling. And he turned in that endless descent and stared at Conan, his mouth open and moving as if he were trying to speak. Then his jaw went slack, and his body crumpled with the impact of collision against the unyielding surface of the deck.

CHAPTER 28

Conan had known, even as Zimmerman fell, that he was dead. Still, he searched for some faint beat of life. Finally, when it was obvious there was no trace of a pulse, he reached across the body with his left hand and gripped the railing, sinking under the weight of a sudden, debilitating weakness.

He wondered vaguely why he should feel anything for killing this man. And he wondered, too, how human beings ever inured themselves to killing other human beings.

He looked across the deck toward Demetriev. Two Coast Guardsmen were bending over him, one administering oxygen. The helicopter still hovered overhead, a rope ladder dangling, swaying in the wind of the rotors. That aural assault was still numbing, but mercifully the sirens had stopped.

He was aware of movements around him, crisp orders, terse questions and responses, and somewhere, Harrison’s meaningless babbling. Beyond the railing, he saw the cutter approaching, and another boat standing off a little distance. He smiled weakly as he read the name on her side. The
Josephine
.

“Sir…can I help you?”

He couldn’t seem to make sense of the simplest words. He looked around at the Guardsman, his eyes going out of focus. The pain and weariness he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in the grim necessity of crisis were coming home to him now, and his lips were numbed as he tried to speak.

“Dem-Demetriev—the old man…is he all right?”

“I think so. There’s a doctor and an ambulance standing by at the dock.” A brief hesitation, then, “Sir, are you—should I call the medic?”

Conan looked over at the anxious group clustered around Demetriev.

“Not now. He has his hands full. Later—”

He tightened his grip on the railing, and finally, feeling some return of strength, pulled himself to his feet. He knew he could hold out a while longer, but he was still grudgingly thankful for the Guardsman’s supporting hand.

Someone had cut the ropes from his wrists. He wondered when; he hadn’t been aware of it. And he noted absently that Nicky’s beautiful job of stitching hadn’t been up to the rigors of the evening. Dark threads of blood were moving down the back of his hand.

The movement of the boat was becoming intolerable.

He turned away; turned from that mute, lifeless form at his feet, and felt his way along the railing toward the bow.

*

Charlie Duncan pushed through the crowd gathering on the dock. A signal from one of the FBI agents opened the way for him when he reached the
Sea Queen
,
but he’d have boarded her, one way or another, without the official sanction, in spite of the cordon of policemen and Guardsmen.

He surveyed the crowded deck, a frown drawing his brows together. Demetriev, in the stern, was enclosed by Guardsmen, policemen, white-garbed ambulance attendants, and FBI agents, whose conservative business suits seemed as much like uniforms as the other, more straightforward uniforms in evidence here.

He spoke briefly with Inspector West, who was part of the cluster gathered around Demetriev. Nicky Heideger was there, too, but she was too busy to look up.

Then he stepped aside as a sheet-covered stretcher was carried off the boat. Harry Morton. The courier. Duncan scanned the deck again, his mouth tightening irritably at the noise and confusion.

Finally, he walked around the pilothouse and into an area of relative quiet. Conan was sitting against the starboard railing near the bow, entirely alone; Alexei Demetriev was the center of attention now. Conan sat with a certain stoic patience, cross-legged, with a blanket wrapped around him, and Duncan almost laughed. Chief Joseph.

But he suspected the stoicism reflected a physical state more than a philosophical attitude. He walked over and knelt beside him.

“Hey, Chief.”

Conan looked up, bringing his eyes into focus; his field of vision was rather narrow, but at the moment it didn’t bother him. Very little bothered him. He smiled faintly.

“Hello, Charlie. Thanks for sending the Marines.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry it took so long for them to land. How’re you feeling—or…maybe you better not try to answer that.”

Conan laughed at Duncan’s uncertain frown. There was no cause for concern; he wasn’t feeling much of anything now.

“I’m all right. I think I’m…a little seasick. Funny. I’ve never had any trouble with it before.”

“Sure. Well, hold on awhile. Nicky’ll be here. She’s busy with Demetriev now.”

“How is he?”

“All I know is he’s still alive. She’ll fill you in.”

Conan nodded. “Charlie, what happened to Berg? Is he—?”

Duncan laughed and settled himself on the deck, cross-legged like Conan.

“Well, he’s okay, but it’s a long story.”

“Just give me the high points, then. Do you have a cigarette? Mine are rather wet.”

“Like the rest of you.” He reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and lit one for Conan, noting that he was using his left hand exclusively. “What the hell did you do—jump in?”

Conan took a long drag on the cigarette, savoring it, letting his eyes close briefly.

“No, but I might as well have. What about Carl?”

“Well, you remember I told you he’d sighted a couple of city police cars right before he signed off.” He paused to light a cigarette for himself, the flare of the match momentarily lighting his tense features. “I don’t know where the tip came from. Maybe a neighbor. But somebody reported Carl sneaking around Demetriev’s house. Anyway, Harvey Rose picked him up. Suspicion of intent to burgle, or something. He sent Carl down to your local emporium of justice with the second cop.”

“He
what
? Good God, but—”