Kane Kinsey was in deep thought.

  “I was with this chick, Penelope. She was freaking. Crying and everything,” he said. “It was fucking insane, man.”

  The old man was silent, still hunched over, head in his hands.

  “That was our only chance,” Parks said. “What were there, a couple of hundred of us up there? And six or seven of them?”

  “Had to be more of them than that,” Diamond said. “No way was it just six or seven of them.”

  “That’s all I saw,” Parks said. “All I’m saying is, that was our chance. We had them outnumbered. We could have rushed them, could have done something. That was our chance.”

  “Let’s roll,” said Kane Kinsey.

  We looked at him.

  “You know? Like on that plane, the one on 9/11. The terrorists and everything.”

  “Flight 93,” said Parks.

  “Yeah, the movie. I was up for the lead. You know, the guy who said it, ‘Let’s roll.’ Only they gave it to this other guy. And my agent was like, ‘OK, we can’t have the lead, we’re out of here.’ Because, you know, ‘Let’s roll,’ that’s what it was all about. And then everyone dies.”

  The silence that followed was welcome.

  12

  Parks took another look at my head, applied the towel, examined it for more blood—there wasn’t much—then tossed it into the bathroom.

  “You need to lie down, Chasteen? Those bastards worked you over pretty good. Diamond there can move off the bed, let you stretch out.”

  Diamond obviously didn’t embrace the idea. He didn’t move.

  “I’ll be alright,” I said. “But tell me something.”

  “Yeah?” Parks said.

  I pointed at the cabin door.

  “What’s out there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when they were bringing you down here, what did you see?”

  “Oh, that. I don’t know.” He thought about it. “A long hall, cabin doors lining it, maybe ten or twelve on each side.”

  “And what was at the end of the hall?”

  Parks shook his head.

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying that close attention to what was out there, just what was going to happen next. I thought they were bringing us down here to shoot us.”

  I looked at the others.

  “That’s about all I remember,” Diamond said. “The guys with the guns, they’d unlock a door, tell some of us to go inside. Then they’d close the door and move down the hall with the rest of us.”

  Kane Kinsey had drifted off, as removed from our conversation as the old man sitting next to him.

  I looked at Parks.

  “Where along the hall is this cabin?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a third of the way down it. As I remember, they split off five or six groups into cabins before they got to us.” Parks looked at Diamond. “That the way you remember it?”

  “Something like that,” Diamond said. “We came down the stairs, entered the hallway, and then they started splitting us off. Yeah, maybe a third of the way down. Maybe a little more.”

  I squared myself to the cabin door. Then I closed my eyes, tried to picture it.

  “So that way . . .” I pointed right, toward the ship’s bow. “That way are four or five cabins and then the stairs. And that way . . .” Pointing now to the ship’s stern. “That way are more cabins and we don’t know what at the end.”

  “Sounds about right,” Parks said.

  I looked at the cabin door. A peephole in the middle of it. A deadbolt above the lever handle. I remembered the sound of the card key from when the waiters pushed me inside the cabin. Still, these were crew quarters, not storerooms. No way could we be locked inside.

  I stuck an eye to the peephole. Not much to see. No waiters with guns. No movement of any kind. A door directly across the hall. And walls angling out from our cabin door. I tried to remember the way it was in the suite I shared with Barbara. Seemed there was an alcove just outside the door. Maybe that explained why I was seeing the walls jut out like they did.

  I gripped the door handle, gave it a turn.

  Diamond said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Just gonna take a look around,” I told him.

  “You can’t go out there. You’ll get us all killed.” Diamond stood up and headed for me. “I won’t have this.”

  Parks said, “Sit down and shut up.”

  And he pushed Diamond back onto the bed.

  The cabin fell quiet. I gave it a few seconds, looked out the peephole again. Same scene as before.

  I pushed down on the handle, the door cracked open. I counted to ten. Then I cracked it open some more. Another ten count. And I slipped outside.

  13

  I stood in the alcove, letting the door close without locking, weighing what to do next. One of the waiters might be patrolling the hall, might soon walk by. What then?

  “Why, hello there, perhaps you could help me. See, I ordered room service at least an hour ago and was just checking to see if . . .”

  I edged along the wall to my right, peeked out. No guard. Parks and Diamond had been fairly accurate. I counted four doors and then the stairwell maybe twenty yards away.

  I fell back inside the alcove. I could hear myself breathing, tried to notch it down. Then I edged along the left wall, peeked out the other way.

  A waiter, twenty yards in that direction. Sitting in a chair, fiddling with his rifle. I slid back into the alcove before he noticed me.

  Then I tried to recapture what I had just seen. The end of the hall looked to be another twenty– thirty yards beyond where the waiter was sitting. And while I couldn’t be sure, it appeared the waiter had placed his chair at a spot where side corridors met the main hallway. I had no idea where they led.

  I stepped back inside the cabin, closed the door.

  Parks and Diamond looked at me.

  “So here’s the good news,” I said. “Only one waiter in the hall. And five of us.”

  Kane Kinsey was still off in the ozone somewhere. And the old guy still sat with his head in his hands.

  “Make that three of us,” I said.

  Parks said, “And the bad news?”

  “Bad news is there’s a lot of hallway beween him and us and even if Marlon Fucking Brando and The Thinker were coherent, which they aren’t, then the waiter can probably get off enough shots to kill all five of us. Just three of us, we’re ducks on the pond.”

  Diamond got up from the bed, pacing the cabin. Which meant two paces in one direction and then back the other.

  “Goddammit, how could Jebailey and his people let this happen? Here he’s got one hundred invited guests on board—people of means, mind you, very affluent people, people with exceptionally high net worth, people who are obvious targets for terrorism or piracy or whatever this is—and there is nothing on board to protect them?”

  That’s when the old man raised his head.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

  Diamond stopped pacing. The sound of the old man’s voice even brought Kane Kinsey back from la-la land.

  Now that I could see his face, the old man didn’t really seem all that old. At least not when you saw his eyes. The rest of him might have appeared decrepit, but there was plenty of life in those eyes. They were bright and piercing eyes. Eyes that absorbed each of us as he looked around the room.

  “For the record,” the man said, “the Royal Star carries a full complement of weaponry, certainly in line with other vessels of her size and comportment. By established cruise industry protocol and primarily to avoid undue stress to passengers, ship’s officers do not carry sidearms. And only a very few officers—in the case of the Royal Star, just one, the first officer—are permitted to keep weapons in their quarters. The rest, six pistols, I believe, perhaps that many rifles, are kept in a small armory located in the office of the chief security officer. And that explains, Mr. Diamond, why Captain Falk and his officers could not respond with any degree of force.”

  The man rubbed his forehead. He looked tired, very tired.

  “The prevailing wisdom regarding cruise ship security, such as it is, holds that any threat will most likely come from exterior sources, i.e., hostile agents attempting to board the ship while it is at sea. Case in point—the fifth of November 2005, approximately 5:30 A.M., the Seabourn Spirit, cruising a hundred fifteen kilometers off the coast of Somalia and carrying a hundred fifty-one passengers, was attacked by two speedboats launched from a nearby mother ship. The pirates—and that’s what they were, pirates—first strafed the ship with machine-gun fire, then followed with rocket-propelled grenades, one of which lodged itself, unexploded, in a cabin. Fortunately, the Spirit was equipped with LRAD, and crew members used it to successfully repel the pirates. As for the Royal Star, it, too, is equipped with LRAD . . .”

  “Hold on,” Parks said. “What’s this el-rad?”

  “Long-range acoustical device. A sonic cannon. Essentially, it emits a high-frequency sound wave that can hit ninty decibels even at a range of three hundred meters, enough to give someone second thoughts about coming any closer, like a smoke alarm going off in your ear. For the average person, the threshold of pain is about a hundred thirty decibels and at a range of a hundred meters and less, the LRAD can shoot a burst of a hundred fifty decibels. Enough to bring someone to their knees. Closer than that, well, let’s just say anyone who gets too close can expect permanent bodily harm.”

  None of us said anything. We just sat there listening. Some guys, they talk like they’ve swallowed an encyclopedia. He was one of them. He spoke with just the hint of an accent, so slight it was hard to identify.

  He cast his gaze upon Diamond.

  “As for your presumption that it would be difficult for six or seven hostiles to seize a ship with a crew that numbers in the hundreds, well, I’m afraid that history proves you wrong. Are you familiar with the Achille Lauro?”

  Diamond shook his head, but the name registered with me.

  “That cruise ship the Palestinian terrorists took over,” I said. “Somewhere in the Mediterranean. Years ago, I don’t remember when.”

  The man nodded.

  “October 1985,” he said. “The Achille Lauro was in Egyptian waters, sailing from Alexandria to Port Said. The hostiles, members of the Palestinian Liberation Front, had booked passage and were accidently discovered by a crew member while assembling weapons in their cabin. They seized him and took over the entire ship—four hundred passengers and a hundred fifty crew. Just four of them. Guns and leverage, that’s all it takes. The numbers are really insignificant.”

  I said, “They killed passengers, didn’t they?”

  “Just one. A man named Leon Klinghoffer. When Israel refused to release a group of Palestinian prisoners, the terrorists shot Klinghoffer. He was in a wheelchair . . . a wheelchair! They shot him because he was Jewish and dumped his body overboard.”

  No one spoke for a few moments.

  And then the man looked at me.

  “I can assure you that I am totally coherent . . . Mr. Chasteen, is it?”

  “It is,” I said. “And I’m sorry if I suggested otherwise.”

  He nodded, accepting the apology.

  “I agree with you that we must act. We must do something to stop these . . . these people, whoever they are. God only knows what they have in mind and they have already demonstrated that they will not balk at taking human life.” He trembled as he spoke, those eyes filled with rage. “But you are right, Mr. Chasteen. The idea of such a small group of people trying to overpower one of the gunmen, it is foolhardy at best. There is, however, another option.”

  The man looked up at the ceiling, then back at us.

  “Seven feet,” he said. “Quite a low ceiling, have you noticed that?”

  “Matter of fact, yes,” I said.

  I reached up and touched it, hardly a stretch.

  “Eight feet, four inches,” the man said. “That’s the standard ceiling height, the one you’ll find in the upper deck suites. But down here, well, there was need for a crawl space. Granted, it is a very tight crawl space, not even sixteen inches. Still, if need be, someone can get at the guts of the fiber optics, all the other wiring running around between decks. And someone, if he’s clever about it, can travel almost the entire length of this deck and no one will know he’s up there.”

  We all stared at the ceiling.

  It was Parks who spoke first.

  “Listen, mister, what you say is all very interesting. And I’m ready to hear more. But, before we go any farther, you mind telling me exactly how it is you know all this?”

  The man smiled.

  “No, not at all. Forgive me. It is quite rude not to introduce myself.” With no small effort he stood, offered us a small, courtly bow. “I am Hurku Linblom. And I designed this ship.”

  14

  THURSDAY, 10:15 P.M.

  Aboard the King of the Seas

  Captain Luca Palmano sipped grappa from his perch on the starboard bridge wing. A nightly ritual, just a little something to help him unwind at the end of the day.

  He had been in command of the King of the Seas for almost a year, ever since its inaugural launch. Still, the ship never ceased to thrill and amaze him. What a truly stupendous vessel it was, 16 passenger decks, 165,000 gross tons, the length of 5 football fields (almost 600 feet longer than the Titanic), and the bridge wings extending outward nearly 240 feet above the water.

  My God, the view was dizzying. The lights of Ocho Rios well behind them now, the moon lighting up the water, the surge of the mighty ship sending its towering wake across a frothy sea.

  A precious few minutes of peace, away from the relentless activity aboard this floating city. As usual, the ship was at full capacity—5,218 passengers, 1,942 crew. And there was always something going on. Palmano could hear the music coming from two decks below—a sixteen-piece Latin jazz ensemble no less. Waiters and chefs bustling on an aft deck, setting up for the Midnight Pizza Party. Passengers in tank tops and shorts, heading to the casino. Others in formal attire spilling out onto the breezeways, signaling the end of a performance in the nine-hundred-seat cabaret. There would be another show at 1:00 A.M. And dancing in the disco until dawn.

  Palmano took another sip of grappa, enjoyed the burn.

  True, he had been at the helm of far more elegant ships, ships with graceful lines, beauties to behold. There was nothing particularly graceful or beautiful about the King of the Seas. It was a brick in the water, a giant brick, a Miami Beach high-rise condo turned on its side with six V-12 diesels powering three Azipod electric propulsion units and eight bow thrusters, all of it consuming, at a cruising speed of twenty-two knots, some twenty-eight thousand pounds of fuel per hour.

  It was what it was—the world’s largest cruise ship. The top of the heap, a marvel of modern transportation. And Palmano was proud to be its captain.

  He knew the cruise line had chosen him not so much for his nautical skills, which were far more than adequate, as for his social graces, which were impeccable. He could host night after endless night of dinners for VIPs at his table in the main dining room—on an elevated, halogen-drenched platform in the middle of everything—enchanting them with the same old stories, answering the same old questions, always performing with an enthusiasm, not altogether disingenuous, that made the passengers feel as if they were the most fascinating people with whom the captain had ever dined.

  It was a talent, it really was. The same talent he applied during the countless interviews with media types—there was always a group of them on board, representing outlets from all over the world—who delighted in his sharing various bits of minutiae about the ship. The eighty-six thousand lightbulbs on board, the thirty-two thousand eggs consumed in a week.

  It was a talent well applied to his administrative duties, too. He ran the ship with a fair hand, didn’t waste time on posturing or politics, and kept an open door to anyone who bore a grievance, be it the purser or the poor bastard who had spent the day repainting the starboard rails. With few exceptions, universal popularity being unattainable, the officers and crew liked him and were loyal to the core.

  Plus, it didn’t hurt that he looked really good in uniform. He had a tailor in Milan to thank for that. It cost Palmano a fair bundle and he absorbed the expense himself. The cruise line paid him well and he could afford it.

  Palmano buttoned his coat, shot the pleat of his pants, made sure a half inch of shirtsleeve was showing, all the better for highlighting the monogrammed gold cuff links (a jeweler in Florence). He finished off the grappa, turned his gaze to the north.

  Next stop: Isla Paradiso, Hispaniola. The “private island” leased by the cruise line to give its passengers the sense of exclusivity that can only come from being with 5,217 other passengers.

  Technically, Isla Paradiso was a peninsula, not an island. And technically, it was part of Haiti, Hispaniola being a name originally bestowed by Columbus on the dual-nation island occupied in the east by the Dominican Republic.

  But Isla Paradiso, Haiti? That just didn’t work. Haiti conjured such unparadisical images—the poverty, the politics, the pestilence. Isla Paradiso, Hispaniola—much more romantic. And that’s the way it was referred to by the cruise line in its brochures, itineraries, and daily in-room newsletters. No mention of Haiti anywhere.

  Not that it mattered to the passengers. They were Americans, mostly, and their ignorance of the Ca rib be an was truly staggering.

  Palmano remembered the woman who had dined at his table after a day spent at Isla Paradiso.

  “I loved Hispaniola, just loved it,” she said. “I always thought Puerto Rico would be so ugly, but . . .”

  Others assumed it was part of the Bahamas, which in the mind of the typical passenger also included Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Aruba, and all points in between, the Bahamas being interchangeable with the Ca rib be an, all of it under governance of the United States because, you know, it was so close.

 

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