The young woman hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure, sir.”
“You have the wheel; you’re the only one who can tell me,” LeBlanc said, trying to be as reassuring as he could be.
“It feels sluggish,” she said, diffidently, “like there’s something wrong with the steering gear, or the rudder or something.”
Granger came back to the phone. “The shafts are balanced.”
“Could one of our rudders be out of alignment, somehow, or maybe bent?”
“It’s possible,” Granger said, “but there’ve been no collision reports. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll check on it.”
“Right,” LeBlanc said. He hung up the phone and stood for several long moments staring at the multifunction display. The numbers he was reading and what Granger told him simply did not add up.
The sweeping view from the bridge was nothing short of magnificent during the day, but at night very little could be seen beyond the reflections of the various instruments in the windows and the cast of the ship’s running lights on the waters. They had passed the small settlement of Kake to their starboard several minutes ago. Its airfield beacon was very prominent. Forty minutes earlier they had left the lights of the even smaller settlement of Fanshaw to their port. Out ahead there was nothing except for the occasional blinking green or red channel marker, and the village and airfield of Petersburg fifty miles to the south where they would put in tonight. On moonlit nights the glaciers glowed with an eerie violet cast, and on some special evenings in the fall the aurora borealis flashed and wavered from horizon to horizon as if the entire world were on fire. But tonight all was flat twilight outside the windows of the bridge, and First Officer LeBlanc was concerned, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why.
The intercom phone buzzed. It was Granger in engineering. “There may be a slight drag on the starboard rudder post. But it’s nothing serious, and certainly there’s nothing we can do about it until we get to Seattle.”
LeBlanc glanced at the multifunction display. Their speed had increased slightly, but the RPMs had climbed by ten revolutions. That wasn’t right. “Keep an eye on it,” he told the engineering officer. “If there’s any change let me know.”
“Roger.”
LeBlanc stepped over to the helm. “Excuse me,” he told the young AB. He took the wheel, and slowly moved it a quarter turn to starboard. The ship’s head came right, but sluggishly. He turned the wheel back to port until the ship swung to its original course, and then he neutralized the helm.
Something was definitely amiss. “The helm is yours,” he told Lane and she took the wheel from him.
The captain’s strict rule was that if something appeared to be out of order, he was to be called, no matter the time of day or night, no matter what he was doing. LeBlanc called the chief steward’s alcove adjacent to the Grand Salon.
“With my compliments, ask the captain to come to the bridge.”
“Is there a problem, Mr. LeBlanc?” Chief Steward Tony Bianco asked. LeBlanc had shipped with the man for the past five years. Bianco was a dynamo of an officer whose proudest achievement was serving as number four on the steward’s staff of the Queen Elizabeth II.
“No. And it wouldn’t do to alarm the passengers.”
“Yes, sir.”
LeBlanc hung up the intercom phone and glanced up at the multifunction display. Their speed had crept up a little higher, but so had the RPMs.
“Is something wrong, sir?” Abfalter asked. He had come to the Spirit right out of the Merchant Marine Academy.
“If it’s anything at all, it’s just a minor problem in engineering that somebody doesn’t want to answer for,” LeBlanc said. But that didn’t seem right to him.
Captain Bruce Darling, all six feet six of him, arrived a couple of minutes later, his summer white uniform incredibly crisp. He was an even greater stickler for details than his first officer. He took in his bridge crew and the ship’s instruments in one sweep, his gaze lingering for just an extra moment on the multifunction monitor.
“What’s the problem?”
LeBlanc explained his misgivings and the steps he had taken to isolate the problem. Darling took the helm, moving the wheel to starboard and then back to port exactly as his first officer had done. “We’re towing something,” he said. “Maybe one of the life rafts came adrift, or the stern anchor. Go aft and check it out.”
LeBlanc felt foolish that he had not suggested it. He resolved not to forget the feel of the helm. “Just be a minute, sir,” he said.
He left the bridge, hurried past the owner’s suite, which was occupied by former secretary of defense Shaw and his wife, and took the elevator down three levels to the main deck just forward of the galley. Out on the promenade deck he hurried past the Klondike Dining Room, empty now that dinner was over except for the cleanup crew. The passengers had moved to the Grand Salon forward and up one deck for the evening’s entertainment, but even this far aft, LeBlanc could hear the music and laughing. The beasts, as passengers were called, though never to their faces, were having a good time. But then for the money they paid for these cruises they ought to be having a good time.
The blinds were drawn on Soapy’s Parlor, the farthest aft passenger space, where on nights like these there was usually a poker game going that would last well into the wee hours of the morning. Technically, gambling was not allowed within three miles of the shoreline, but even though the stakes were usually high — often in the thousands of dollars — the ship’s officers were encouraged by the company to turn a blind eye, though that bothered LeBlanc. It would be different once he had his own ship.
As soon as he came around the curve of the aft bulkhead, he knew there was a problem. A one-inch line, leading overboard beneath the lowest rung of the rail, was secured to a port cleat. They were indeed towing something. He crossed the afterdeck and peered over the stern. A fairly large sportfisherman, but with a low-slung bridge deck, its VHF whips laid flat, wallowed in Spirit’s wake. It was no wonder their speed had dropped and steering was sluggish. Whatever fool had set up the towing rig had not used a proper three-point bridle, nor had he given the towline enough scope. Though what the boat was doing attached to them was anyone’s guess, at this point LeBlanc was more curious than alarmed.
He turned to call the bridge from one of the deck intercom phones when a dark figure, clad in the dress uniform of a cruise ship captain, stepped out of the deeper shadows. “Who are you—”
A thunderclap burst in LeBlanc’s head, and he did not feel his body fall into the water because he was already dead.
Khalil stood at the open doorway to the darkened Soapy’s Parlor. The five elderly gentlemen who had been playing poker had been shot to death, their bodies hidden out of sight in storage lockers just minutes ago. Two of his operators had just tossed the officer’s body overboard.
“Who was he?” Khalil asked.
“LeBlanc, the first officer,” Adani said. “We’re well rid of him; he could have caused trouble.”
“Who else will be trouble?”
“The captain and the chief engineer. But both of them will be in the Grand Salon—” Adani hesitated. He stared at the stern rail, as if something had just occurred to him. “We might have a slight problem,” he said, turning to Khalil.
“What is it?”
“LeBlanc was on the bridge tonight. The only thing that would bring him back here is if he suspected there was a problem. They might have detected the tow. But before he left the bridge, he would have called Captain Darling.”
“Where’s the problem?”
“The captain carries a satphone wherever he goes.”