He broke eye contact. Then noticed that Klaus Raeder was pulling on a wet suit. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Coming with you,” the industrialist said. “None of this would have happened if I’d faced my accountability rather than trying to buy it off. I’m not going to let you clean up my mistake.”
Mercer considered denying Raeder his opportunity for repentance, but he sensed the German’s sincerity. Raeder wanted Rath dead more than he did. Mercer understood why. “Know how to handle a weapon?”
Raeder nodded, then boasted, “I’m also a black belt in judo.”
“Good for you.” Mercer was unimpressed. “I intend to shoot Rath from as far away as I can. If you want to go beat up his corpse afterward, be my guest.”
Erwin Puhl had opened the outer doors, and frigid sea air swept the gasoline fumes from the garage. While Ira Lasko slid his thin frame into a wet suit, Marty attached the lifting lines from the overhead crane to hard points on the speedboat. Retractable rails would move the Riva out of the garage and lower it to the ocean between the Empress’s twin hulls.
“Let’s saddle up,” Ira said when he was dressed.
Just before Mercer fired the Mercruisers, a ship’s officer burst into the marina. Erwin and Raeder recognized him. Captain Nehring. No one paid attention to the elderly figure behind him wearing black slacks and a gray sweatshirt.
Nehring was white haired and commanding as Mercer had imagined, but also physically and emotionally exhausted. “I’ve had stewards going over the ship to take a count of our passengers.” He panted from the run from the bridge. “We just discovered that Gunther Rath has taken hostages.”
“Damn it!” Mercer hadn’t anticipated this possibility. “Who?”
The gentleman behind him stepped forward. Not until Mercer looked closely, seeing past the casual clothes, did he recognize Pope Leo XIV. In the hallway he caught the shadows of several Swiss Guards. Stunned, Mercer spoke before thinking. “Holy shit.”
“The pope informed me that his secretary of state, Cardinal Peretti, is missing, and we’ve been unable to locate an American televangelist and his wife.”
“Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar?” Ira recalled the flashy minister and his ditzy wife.
“Possibly a target of opportunity he grabbed in a hallway,” Captain Nehring said, then added somberly, “Rath also kidnapped the Dalai Lama.”
Everyone exchanged frightened looks.
Rath couldn’t have chosen a more emotionally evocative hostage if he’d tried. The Dalai Lama’s influence beyond his six million Tibetan followers was incalculable. After the pope, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was the most recognized religious figure in the world, seen as a sage statesman and the voice of the oppressed all over the globe.
“The captain has told me you are going after the kidnappers.” The pope’s English was accented yet musical. “I understand why you want to do this thing, but I can’t allow you to sacrifice your lives for the hostages. I have known the Dalai Lama for several years. He would not wish you to trade your life for his. Neither would Dominic Peretti. And in his own way Minister Farquar worships the same God as I do, and my heart tells me that he too would not want you to die to save him.”
Who had been taken hostage meant nothing to Mercer. To him, it didn’t matter if one of them was the Dalai Lama or the guy that fetched the Lama’s morning tea. This wasn’t about hostages or even revenge. It was about preventing the Pandora box from spreading death.
“I understand what you’re saying, Your” — Worship? Holiness? Grace? Mercer didn’t know what title was appropriate — “sir. And I appreciate your concern. But we’re not going to rescue the four hostages. We’re going because Gunther Rath possesses something that threatens every living thing on the planet.” Not knowing if he’d offended the pontiff, Mercer pointed to Anatoly Vatutin. “Father Vatutin can tell you what I’m talking about.”
The pope looked like he was going to ask another question but stopped himself. The determination in Mercer’s eyes and voice was enough to convince him that the men on the speedboat had no intention of martyring themselves. “Go with God and my blessing.”
Mercer felt the power of a billion Catholics behind that simple sentence. “Thank you.” He refocused on Captain Nehring. “Keep trying those radios. Alert the American base at Keflavik as soon as you can. If the Italians get their chopper in the air, send it after us.”
He keyed the Riva’s ignition, and the roar of the engines drowned out any other attempt at conversation. Raeder and Ira hung on tightly as Marty used the crane to lift the boat off its cradle and maneuver it to the launching rails. Mercer took a second to look at Anika. She was at the door of the marina, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression unreadable. Against his better judgment, he gave her a wink and thought he detected a small crack in her resolve, a tiny lifting at the corners of her mouth. It could have been his imagination.
The canal between the hulls streamed like a swift-flowing river. Marty’s hands were unsure on the crane controls, so when he lowered the Riva, it hit with a powerful splash and immediately bucked against the ropes. Mercer advanced the throttles to the same speed as the Sea Empress and their ride stabilized enough for Ira to cast off the lines.
Like the other extravagant marques Italy is famous for — Masarati, Ferrari, Lamborghini — the Riva came alive when Mercer gave it her head, firewalling the engine controls as soon as she was free. She came on plane and shot from the canyon-like channel, rounding the bow of the Sea Empress. The three men settled dive masks over their faces to protect themselves from the stinging wind and the spray whipped up when she cut through the swells. They wore throat-to-ankle two-piece suits, dive gloves, and hoods, and the goggles covered the last area of exposed skin. As long as the speedboat didn’t encounter seas she couldn’t handle, they would be safe from hypothermia. If she did hit a wave and capsize, the suits would buy them another few minutes in the water, which hovered just a few degrees above freezing.
The night dazzled with swaying tides of auroral light intense enough to hide all but the brightest stars. None bothered to notice. At the helm, Mercer kept his eyes focused to where he thought the horizon line divided sky from sea while Ira watched the compass to make sure they stayed on course. Klaus Raeder hunkered behind them on the bench seat designed for cocktail parties and relaxing soirees. The guns were at his feet. Without wind to roil its surface, the north Atlantic remained calm enough for them to maintain maximum speed.
With the air whipping past them at fifty miles per hour, speaking was out of the question. Instead, the three men were left with their nagging fears, constantly aware that a rogue wave could rear up without warning and end their desperate race. If by some miracle they survived the sea when it shelved against Iceland’s jagged shore, they still had to deal with a determined, and dangerous, Gunther Rath.
Mercer calculated that, with Rath’s one-hour head start, the two boats would reach the coast at about the same time, provided he could maintain their current speed.
That likelihood vanished as the sea grew restless.
It was barely noticeable at first, just a slow undulation like gently rolling hills, but after they were out in the open for an hour, the waves grew until the white slashes of foam topped all but a few of them. The Riva began to rock. Mercer was forced to nose the boat into the waves, pulling them off course so they didn’t take the swells broadside. Even with the Riva throttled back to thirty-five knots, the ride was punishing. The sleek craft became airborne off the larger waves, skipping across swells so that her props thrashed water and air in equal measure. Explosions of black water doused the men as they rode the turgid sea. Punished by their safety straps and lashed by an icy wind from the west, they held tight.