The whore understood the situation. “Cabimas,” she told McGarvey. “He said he was shipping out. He was going to Cabimas to get his ship. If he’s still in Venezuela he’ll be there, across the lake.”
“Was anyone with him?”
“No.”
McGarvey got to his feet as the bouncer reached him. The girl snatched the money and got out of the way. A crowd was gathering inside the bar and outside on the street. Sailors loved a good fight. But once it started it would become nearly impossible to get away before the police arrived.
He’d gotten an answer, although it wasn’t the one he’d expected. The girl had said Graham had come for a ship; he’d not mentioned anything about a crew. Either he’d been indiscreet or he had been covering his tracks.
The girl said he’d been here two days ago. But if Cabimas had been his target, why had he spent his first two days on this side of the lake, in this kind of a neighborhood? And why had he bothered to get a whore mad at him?
The bouncer planted himself a couple feet away from McGarvey, a fierce grin on his broad face. He knocked the baseball bat into the palm of his left hand with a flat slap. He was at least six-five and three hundred pounds, most of which was not fat.
McGarvey spread his hands and stepped away from the table. “No trouble,” he said. He wasn’t going to pull his pistol for fear someone innocent would get hurt, but he wanted to get back to the hotel, find Gallegos, and get over to Cabimas as soon as possible.
The bouncer poked the bat into McGarvey’s chest. “I don’t like gringos,” he said in good English. “Loud-mouthed bastards who come here with their money to buy the little Maracuchos.”
He poked the bat in McGarvey’s chest again.
“I don’t want any trouble,” McGarvey tried one last time.
“¡Bastardo!” he said. “You’re leaving feet first.”
The bouncer cocked the bat as if he were preparing to hit a home run. McGarvey stepped inside the man’s swing, and hit his Adam’s apple with a short, very sharp chop.
The bouncer reeled backwards, suddenly off-balance, unable to catch his breath through his badly bruised trachea. The horse-faced waitress came to his side as he dropped the bat and slumped to one knee.
A hush had come over the crowd, and they parted to make a path for McGarvey as he left the bar. “Bad attitude,” he said to one of the sailors outside. “I don’t think he liked me.”
TEN
It was midnight local when Graham held up at the door to the bridge. He’d managed to get a couple hours of rest in his cabin after dinner with his officers, but he’d not been able to sleep because of the recurrent nightmare about his wife, and he was very tired now. He would see her somewhere, usually downtown London in the workday crowds. He called her name, but she never heard him. When he tried to run to her, his legs were encased in mud.
Helplessly he watched her step out into the street into the path of a police car, its lights flashing, weaving in and out of traffic, and she was struck and killed instantly.
It was his fault that he wasn’t able to get to her in time. And now it was even worse because he could not see her face in his mind’s eye. Instead, he saw her likeness everywhere; the attendant on the Aeromexico flight to Maracaibo four days ago, the whore two days ago, and, aboard ship, the meddlesome Russian steward.
He saw Jillian in all of them, and the fact that they were alive and his wife was dead filled him with a nearly uncontrollable rage. He wanted to lash out. Destroy them. Beat them into the ground. Mutilate them so that they would no longer resemble her.
For a second or two longer, he stood at the door, swaying on the balls of his feet, a thin bead of sweat on his upper lip. This afternoon on the bridge and again earlier this evening in the officers’ wardroom his first officer, Jaime Vasquez, had given him odd looks, as if the man was searching for something, as if he were suspicious.
It was the Russian steward who’d probably said something to Vasquez’s girlfriend, who in turn had gone to her lover. Nattering bitches just like some other women he’d known; unable to keep their noses out of people’s business. In that, at least, Islam had it right; women needed to be kept silent behind their veils.
Graham took the pistol out of his pocket, checked to make certain that the silencer was tight, and slowly racked the slide back.
If Vasquez had become suspicious, as he had every right to be, he should have done something about it, Graham thought. At the very least call the company in Dubai to confirm Slavin’s background and description. Why couldn’t a Russian from St. Petersburg speak proper Russian? Had the tables been reversed it’s what he would have done.
He held the gun out of sight behind his back, squared his shoulders, and entered the bridge, closing the door behind him.
Third Officer Novak stood leaning against the chart table by the back bulkhead, several navigational charts, manuals, and plotting tools laid out. He was young and ambitious enough to study for his second officer’s test at every available opportunity. He’d confided that he had a fiancée in Detroit whom he would marry as soon as he made first officer. “An admirable plan,” Graham had told him.
Only one AB was on the bridge, at the starboard radar display.
Novak looked up, mild surprise on his face. “Captain.”
“Where is your other crewman?” Graham demanded.
“I sent him below for some coffee,” Novak said. “He should be back any minute.”
The AB, a young Pole, looked up. “Sir, I’m painting a small vessel about eight miles off our starboard bow. She’s coming right at us. Very slowly.”
“Damn fool,” Novak said, starting for the radar display.
Graham brought the pistol from behind his back and fired one shot, hitting Novak in the back of the skull, driving him forward facedown on the deck. The front of his head exploded, spewing blood and brain tissue across the instrument panels and the side of the AB’s face.
Graham switched aim and fired a second shot, hitting the AB high in the chest, staggering him backwards against the radar display. He was still alive. He raised his hand, as if to ward off another blow, his eyes wide, unable to believe what was happening. Graham steadied his aim and fired a third shot, this one hitting the AB in the forehead, killing him instantly. His body slumped to the deck.
Keeping an eye on the door for the second AB, who would soon be returning with coffee for his dead shipmates, Graham went to the VHF radio, switched to channel 67, and took down the mike.
“Ready one,” he said. “Ready one.”
“Ready two. Ready two.” The reply came immediately.
The door opened and the AB who’d gone for coffee came in, carrying a tray laden with two thermos pitchers and a plate of sandwiches from the galley. He spotted the mess in front of the starboard radar display, and pulled up short.
Graham calmly replaced the mike on its hook and raised the pistol as he turned toward the young crewman.
The AB dropped the tray and frantically scrambled back through the door as Graham fired one shot, hitting the crewman high in the left shoulder, and staggering him to his knees.
Graham calmly walked to the door. The AB, his blue eyes wide, his mouth open in shock, blood splattered on his long blond hair, held out a hand in supplication.
No one had heard the tray clattering to the deck, nor had the crewman cried out for help.
Graham fired one shot at point-blank range into the boy’s forehead, flinging him backwards onto the deck. Careful not to step in the gore, he dragged the body back onto the bridge so that it would be out of the way when the mission crew came aboard. The little messes throughout the ship would have to be cleaned up, of course, and the bodies either dumped in the bilges, or stuffed in the frozen food lockers. But all that would be accomplished long before the sun rose this morning.