There were just three of them in the room, two men and a woman; Concepcion swung her gun his way when the door opened. Hank ignored her, as well as he could, and looked towards Uzi and Josep.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
Josep spat a bit of tobacco leaf from his lips and turned to the table to take another of his black cigars. Uzi answered the question.
“It has been a momentous evening. The resistance forces of Uruguay and Paraguay have succeeded in taking control of the QE2. Very few of the crew are aware of this, and none of the passengers. At the present time the vault in the cashier’s office is being cut into to retrieve the Nazi diamonds. The two representatives of Global Traders are tied side by side in one bed, to their mutual discomfort, and the last time that they were checked they were uneasily asleep. All of the conspirators appear to be asleep, including the injured Fritz, who is loaded to the eyeballs with opiates and feeling nothing at all. Doctor Llusera was heard to say he will not lose the arm. After much rationalization, the Nazis have resigned themselves to the loss of the diamonds since they have the arms ship.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“A small hitch in the plans. All of this operation hinges on striking hard and fast, seizing the diamonds and the captives and transferring them to a Mexican fishing boat named the Tigre Amarillo. Unhappily for us, the Yellow Tiger has turned tail. It has been damaged in the storm and has headed to port for repairs.”
“My God! What are you going to do?”
Uzi smiled wryly. “As you might imagine, that has been the subject of our discussion. We do not have many choices since the Tigre Amarillo will not be ready for sea for another twenty-four to thirty hours. A broken rudder and bent mainshaft.”
“Is there any chance of getting another boat?”
“Absolutely negative. This is a very dangerous business and it was hard enough to arrange for this one. We must use the Yellow Tiger or nothing. But can we keep control of this ship long enough for the repairs to be made? And even if we do hold out — how many more hours after that will it be before we can rendezvous with the fishing boat?”
“The answer to that one is obvious,” Hank said. “You meet the boat a few hours after it is required.”
“What do you mean? How can they catch up with us that quickly?” Josep said.
“Let me ask you a question first. What course is this ship following?”
Josep shrugged. “I don’t see the importance of the question. The plotted course, naturally. We are making no changes in the ship’s operation. We do not have enough men to control these factors…. “
“Of course!” Uzi interrupted. “Hank has pointed out to us that we are being incredibly stupid. The QE2 must vanish.”
“What are you babbling about?” Josep was tired and exasperated.
“Look at this.” Hank roofed through the papers in the top of the desk until he found the one that he wanted. “Here is the brochure with all the details about this cruise. Just look at this map — it’s diagrammatic but it’s clear enough. After leaving Acapulco we are heading south along the Mexican coast, then past Central America. Right in the middle of all the heavy coastal shipping all the way. But why? Each minute we are leaving our contact boat further and further behind. They’ll never catch up.”
“Of course,” Josep said. “We must turn back.”
“No,” Hank said. “There is no reason to, yet. And you don’t want the ship to be observed. What you must do is head away from land for half of the time it takes for the repairs, then turn back for the second half. So when the boat comes out the contact can be quickly made.”
“Even better,” Uzi said, stabbing his finger onto the map. “We turn in the one direction that no one would ever expect, a reciprocal of the course that brought the Queen to Acapulco. We head back the way we came — into the Pacific. And we shut down the radios at once. No reports, no cables, no contacts. Just one last coded message to your Mexican contact to make arrangements for communication later, as though the cable originated from another ship. As long as this storm keeps up no one will be able to find us. It will be as though the QE2 vanished from the face of the earth.”
“That won’t be too easy,” Hank said. “The weather satellites and American military satellites will easily spot a ship this big.”
“Not as long as this storm holds out,” Uzi was jubilant. “They can’t see through the muck up there and as long as all the radios and satellite navigation aids are turned off we will be invisible. And nothing is to be marked on the navigation charts, either. There must be no record of where we are and where we are going.”
“Now we are beginning to think,” Josep said, signalling to Concepcion. “Get up to the bridge. Esteban is on guard there. He is a sailor, a ship’s officer, he will know about the course thing. Have him make these course changes as we have said. Go!”
“Can you hold the ship for another twenty-four hours?” Uzi asked, the sudden excitement drained away.
“I don’t see why not. As the new crew members come on duty we make them prisoners and put the ones going off watch in with the Captain and the others. We can’t do this forever, but hopefully we can hold out for a day. The Chief Engineer Officer was getting suspicious that something wasn’t right, so the Captain sent for him and he is our prisoner, too, and issuing the right orders. Yes, we can hold out for a while yet.”
“What about the passengers?” Hank asked.
Josep laughed. “Not a clue. Most of them are too sick to care in any case.”
“All right, then,” Uzi said. “We have the matter of our course under control, and if we don’t make any slips we should be able to hold the ship until we rendezvous with the fishing boat. Which brings us back to the matter we were discussing when Hank came in.”
“I no longer care to talk about it.”
“You’re going to have to. You agreed there would be no unwarranted violence or killing. You gave Diaz your word.”
“I did. It has nothing to do with the situation.”
“It does. Unless you do something soon, the man will die and that will be deliberate murder.”
“What’s happening?” Hank broke in. It was Uzi who answered him.
“One of the ship’s crew was injured when the cashier’s office was captured. Shot. Unless he sees a doctor he’ll be dead. Josep doesn’t want to take him to a ship’s doctor. A gunshot wound would be too suspicious. He wants to wait until morning when we capture the Uruguayans. Then we can use their doctor. I want them taken now, without any more delay.”
“No. We will adhere to the schedule. We cannot risk a slipup.”
There was a rattle of a key in the lock and Diaz came in while they were talking. “Concepcion has taken my post on the bridge,” he said. “I have come to see what you are doing about the doctor for the injured man.”
“The plans are unchanged,” Josep said with grim determination. “They will not be altered for the sake of this fast shot who killed one of my people.”
“We made an agreement. There was to be no unnecessary bloodshed.”
“The situation has changed.”
“It has not. If you will not act I will get one of my men and we will take over the Uruguayan suite now. We must have that doctor.”
“You will risk everything for a stranger’s life?” Josep was puzzled, not angry. An attitude like this was beyond his comprehension.”