“Get into bed and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me now or I’ll beat it out of you.” His threat was more habit than menace.
“I went below to check on Raeder and guess who I ran into?” Rath didn’t ask. “Philip Mercer.”
“What?”
“And what’s more, when I had him tied up with Raeder, a break-in was reported on a lower deck near the marina. I went with a couple of the ship’s security people and found the other five survivors.” She loved that her gift lifted his spirits. “They actually did try for Iceland in that antique sub but made it only as far as the Sea Empress.”
From the moment he’d lost the boxes, Rath had been scrambling to minimize the damage. The Libyans were waiting for the Njoerd’s precious cargo, and he had to get the one remaining box to them until a salvage operation could be mounted to raise the rest. He also needed to track down and kill Mercer and the others. It was clear they had been in the cavern and doubtlessly watched Rath empty the chamber through the submerged U-boat’s periscope. If Mercer managed to raise an alarm, Rath could forget any attempt at recovering the sunken boxes.
He laughed. “Mercer’s audacity is going to cost him his life. I wonder if he knew we were going to use the Sea Empress as a refueling stop on our trip to Iceland?”
“How could he? We didn’t know we’d need to come here until the rotor-stat went down. I’m just grateful it was here at all.”
Far from a lucky break, the Empress’s presence in the Denmark Strait had been the result of careful planning and timing. Greta had been the one to suggest it as fallback position months ago when Klaus Raeder was in discussions with the Vatican over the ship’s lease. Needing the cruise liner as a contingency had seemed unlikely, but Greta had insisted that, with so much money on the line, it would be foolish to rely solely on the Njoerd as transport. Raeder had had no idea of Rath’s ulterior motives when he passed along the suggestion to Cardinal Peretti, the pope’s secretary of state. The priest had thought cruising under the northern lights was a wonderful idea and successfully lobbied the other delegates to accept.
Greta pulled her shirt over her head, her breasts still red from earlier rough treatment. “Is my surprise worth a lay?”
“That and much more,” Rath said, launching himself from his chair and sweeping her into his arms. He laid her on the bed. “From triumph to disaster back to triumph, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”
His lips never left hers the whole time they were joined.
Rath was in a self-satisfied sleep when the call came from young Bern Hoffmann, who’d been detailed to relieve the guard they’d posted at the auxiliary pump room door. The prisoners had escaped! Rath slammed down the phone and tossed Greta aside.
“What is it?” She wiped sleep from her eyes, her body sticky with dried sweat from their lovemaking.
Rath was already in his pants. “Mercer escaped.”
She came more awake. “He couldn’t have. We’ve accounted for everyone on the DC-3, those killed in the crash, and the body we found after the pitaraq storm. There’s no one left to help him.”
“The guard they knocked out recalls a priest approaching him before he was struck.” Rath wanted to shower her scent from his skin but didn’t have time. “Somehow, Mercer has a contact on the ship we didn’t know about, maybe another member of the Brotherhood of Satan’s Fist. I should have killed Mercer’s group when you told me you’d captured them.”
“He can’t go anywhere.” Greta legged into her panties. “The marina garage doors are rigged to an alarm on the bridge, and he can’t launch a lifeboat for the same reason. There’s no sign of the U-boat, so they’re trapped. Mercer can’t go to the ship’s security people because Raeder must have told him they are loyal to you and the Swiss Guards would lock them up as stowaways.”
“I know the options he won’t choose,” Rath snapped. “I don’t know the one he will. He’s unpredictable.”
At that exact moment the fire alarm went off. Rath actually smiled. “You clever son of a bitch.”
“What’s clever about pulling the alarm? It’s a pathetic attempt to distract us so Mercer can escape.”
“But it alerts everyone on the ship to danger, and it won’t end with that single alarm.” Before Rath finished dressing and checking his personal weapons, the phone rang again. “What is it?”
“Herr Rath, it’s Dieter. I’m in the security office. We’re getting reports of gunfire in the port-side atrium.”
“Against our people?”
“No,” the rally driver said. “Someone shot at the damage-control team checking the fire pull station that just went active.”
“Mercer’s trying to make the Swiss Guards think the Convocation’s delegates aren’t safe.”
“It’s working. The captain of the Guards is screaming for an immediate SOS to bring reinforcements from the Italian warship shadowing the Empress.”
Rath made his decisions quickly. “Have everyone meet at the launch. We’ll let the Swiss Guards fight Mercer and leave the ship during the confusion.”
“Why leave?” she persisted. “We control the ship.”
“Not after Raeder contacts the captain and he turns to the Swiss Guards. We don’t have enough people to fight them.”
“But we’ll never be able to get the rest of the boxes!”
“Calm down. We can charter a helicopter in Iceland and return to the Njoerd. She has the right gear to mount a quick salvage job. We won’t recover all of them, but we’ll get enough to satisfy the Libyans.” Rath turned his attention back to the phone. “Dieter, I have an idea to buy us a little insurance. Have some men meet me on A deck.”
“I’ll join you myself.”
Rath turned to Greta, who had been dressing. “Once we get away from the ship, no one will touch us.”
“And if they try to follow?”
“Good point.” Rath used his walkie-talkie to contact the men converging on the marina and ordered them to disable all the large boats stored there. “That’ll buy us enough time to reach Reykjavik and take off again for the Njoerd.”
“What’s this insurance you mentioned?”
“We’re taking a few guests with us.”
They raced into the atrium from the corridor where the damage crew was cowering. Mercer unleashed another barrage into the skylight above, dodging a rain of glass shards. “We are the Action Front for Liberation,” he roared at the few men on the bridge with them. He menaced them with his gun and they dropped to the carpet. “End tyranny now!”
Leading Anika across the bridge, he dashed through a fire door and collided with a pair of Rath’s men coming up the echoing stairwell. Mercer’s momentum knocked one down the half flight of steps, and the other was a fraction too slow recovering from the unexpected collision. Mercer smashed him in the forehead with the side of the Model 12 and spun to target the guard on the landing. Recognition flared. It was Bern Hoffmann, the young German Mercer had saved from carbon-monoxide poisoning in Camp Decade.
In the moment of hesitation before Hoffmann reached for his holstered pistol, Mercer jumped the eight steps to the landing, dropping so his foot broke the young man’s wrist. Hoffmann cried out, but was silenced by a well-executed pistol-whip to the jaw. Mercer removed the pistol from Hoffmann’s limp hand and recovered a matching weapon from the unconscious man at the head of the stairs.
“Anika, let’s go. They’ll be fine.”
Her face was a mask of shock and revulsion. Mercer’s quick savagery had stunned her. “I can’t. I just…”
“Then give me your gun and hide yourself. We don’t have time to argue.”
She snapped out of her panic and came down the steps. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the broken figure of Bern Hoffmann. “I’m sorry,” she said. Mercer didn’t know if she was speaking to him or the unconscious man.
“Come on.” He took her by the hand, and they continued their descent. The sound of the fire alarm was diminished in the stairwell but came back when they emerged a few decks down. They were near one of the spas. Through a glass wall Mercer could see an elaborate gymnasium and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. A fire pull station was across the hallway and he yanked the handle. The other team would be doing the same at any pull station they happened across. The alarm panel on the bridge should be lighting up like a Christmas tree.