“So the solar max abated enough for us to use it.” Mercer smiled. “About damn time. I was tired of playing staked goat until you could use it.”
Greta looked from one man to the other, dismayed that she couldn’t detect fear in their voices. “You have no satellite phone,” she said at last.
Ira gave her the withering look he’d used on a generation of naval cadets. “I tossed it just before you captured us. Why do you think we didn’t put up a fight? We’ve won already — only you don’t know it.”
“This is not true.” There was doubt in her eyes.
“You go right ahead and believe that, you sick bitch,” Anika Klein blazed. “The truth should be here in about an hour aboard a dozen American helicopters.”
Greta crossed over to where Anika was tied to a heat exchanger. “And I will tear out your ovaries long before they get here.”
She considered slapping Anika’s face, thought better of it, and climbed the seven steps back to the catwalk. A guard closed the hatch grate, and the outer door slammed with a metallic bang.
From his position, Mercer couldn’t see where Ira Lasko had been secured, but he thought it was someplace behind him and around a piece of equipment. “You were trying to tell me that you found Erwin’s friend and he had a sat-phone, right?”
“Ah, no. That was all bullshit. We called his cabin again, but he wasn’t there. Greta found us about five seconds after Erwin and I got back from the dining room. Seems we robbed the only Buddhist monks who actually care about their property. They had gone to the ship’s security office and Rath was alerted. Greta and a couple of his boys ferreted us out. Considering their firepower, we figured surrender was a better idea than suicide.”
“We thought you were still free,” Anika added.
“I went to find Rath’s prisoner. That’s him over in the corner. Klaus Raeder’s his name. He’s the head of Kohl.”
“Hi, hope you burn in hell,” Ira called as a greeting.
Perhaps he’d survived one narrow escape too many or perhaps because with all of them together and under Rath’s control they were as good as dead — either way, Mercer finally lost control. This was as far as he could go. There were no other options. There was no hope.
He began to laugh. The deep anomalous sound crashed against the steel confines of the machinery room, lashed everyone and echoed back, hammering. It was manic, frightening. When he caught his breath again, silence hung as heavy as steam.
“I figured out the paradox to the mythological story of Pandora,” he said, in control of his voice if nothing more.
“What paradox?” Anika asked. “She opened a box that Zeus gave to Epimetheus and accidentally released all the ills on the world. But when everything like greed and envy and disease had escaped, she found that hope was still in the box. It’s a beautiful story that means despite everything that may happen to you, hope always remains.”
“That’s the lesson people get from it,” Mercer agreed bitterly. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why hope was in the box to begin with? Why was it in there with disease and hate and lust? Because hope’s as destructive as any of those, maybe worse. It was never meant to be a gift from the gods. It was punishment. Hope gives you strength when you have a chance. When the situation’s impossible, it becomes a torture.”
The pain in his voice stunned everyone, especially Anika. “Are you really that cynical?”
Mercer didn’t answer. Despite his words, he pulled against his shackles with every fiber of his being, his eyes closed so tightly they felt crushed into his skull. He bellowed in rage and frustration and… hopelessness. And with a metallic snap the thick plastic cuffs parted and his hands were free.
For a moment he stared at the cleanly severed ends dangling from his wrists. It wasn’t humanly possible to break these cuffs yet the evidence was right in front of him. How? A miracle? The divine intervention of the gods telling him he’d missed the point of the Pandora myth?
Klaus Raeder was the only person who could see what Mercer had done and he gaped. “How did you do that?”
Mercer looked upward in an age-old glance of reverence to a higher power. That’s how he spotted a spectral figure standing on the grating above him with a fire ax in his hands. He was dressed in black with silver hair and a beard that approached his waist. Understanding dawned immediately. “Father Vatutin?”
“Da.” Vatutin lifted the hatch and moved down the steps. The others began to cheer when they heard what was happening.
Mercer massaged his wrists. “I’m not complaining, but how did you know?”
“I see a Buddhist monk near dining room when I go in for supper.” Vatutin’s English was terrible. “I see him check expensive Swiss watch that no monk can own. I look more closely. Not monk but man made to look like monk. I follow. You knocked out by blond woman and brought here. I hide. Then more people brought here and I see Erwin. I wait until guard posted at door turns away and use blunt edge of ax.”
Mercer got to his feet and shook the Orthodox priest’s hand. “You have no idea what I was thinking when the cuffs broke.”
Vatutin touched the heavy cross resting on his chest. “I know what you think.”
The two began to release the others. Anika smiled when Mercer reached her. “I told you that there’s always hope.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” Mercer was chagrined.
Vatutin and Erwin Puhl embraced for a long time after the priest learned Igor Bulgarin was dead.
“I’m gonna start calling you Pessimism Man from now on,” Ira Lasko said to Mercer when he was freed. “That thing about hope being in the box was a good point. Just promise me it’s your last death-row revelation.”
“I promise.” Mercer took the weapons Vatutin had liberated from the guard: a silenced H amp;K P9S automatic pistol and a compact MP-5 submachine gun also fitted with a long silencer. “Now it’s time to put an end to this nightmare.”
“Any ideas?” Marty asked.
“That all depends on Herr Raeder.” Mercer looked down at him since they had yet to cut his bonds. “How about it? You willing to help?”
“I told you earlier that I wanted to destroy the boxes. It is Rath who wants to sell them.”
“Does he have a buyer?”
“Libya.”
Shit! “And when this is over you’re going to make full restitution?”
“Yes.”
Mercer had a hard time believing such a quick answer. “Because you got caught?”
“Because I was wrong,” Raeder countered. “Think what you like of me, Dr. Mercer, but I am not a monster. I am a businessman. A capitalist. Being an American, you should understand. My personal beliefs had nothing to do with my decision to conceal Kohl’s past. And no matter how much my company pays, I don’t believe full restitution can ever be paid to the victims of the Holocaust.”
“I don’t trust you but I also don’t have a choice,” Mercer hissed. An ax stroke severed Raeder’s plastic cuffs. “What are the security arrangements on this ship?”
“The pope’s Swiss Guards are in charge of the Convocation’s delegates and the Sea Empress has personnel of her own. About twenty, I think. I recognized several of them as part of Gunther Rath’s special-projects department. They’re his people, like those at the Greenland base. They won’t listen to me.”
“Who did you speak to when Rath needed permission to board?”
“The captain,” Raeder answered at once. “He wouldn’t let Rath approach the ship until he heard I was on the boat from the Njoerd. He doesn’t know that I am Rath’s prisoner. No one does.”
“So he’ll listen to you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Once we reach the captain, will Rath make a stand or try to run?” Mercer said, thinking aloud.
“Neither option’s too good,” Ira said. “The world’s religious leaders are on this ship. If Rath opens that box the repercussions are going to be bloody. Every fanatic in the planet would use their deaths as an excuse for holy war.”