The captain was a swarthy individual with a face that looked like it had been deeply etched by acid rather than the wind and the sun. “As I was telling Ms. Trevor, there are seven more crewmen, mostly involved in engine room duties. Then there’s my first mate here, the communications officer, and the ship’s doctor, he’s in sick bay, tending to a crewman who fell ill two days out of Algeria. Oh, yes, and the cook.”
Bourne and Arkadin glanced at each other. The radioman seemed the logical choice, but when the captain summoned him he, too, was without the Black Legion tattoo. So were the captain and his first mate.
“The engine room,” Bourne said.
At his captain’s orders, the first mate led them out onto the deck, then down the starboard companionway into the bowels of the ship, reaching the enormous engine room at last. Five men were hard at work, their faces and arms filthy with a coating of grease and grime. As the first mate instructed them, they held out their arms, but as Bourne reached the third in line, the fourth man looked at them beneath half-closed lids before he bolted.
Bourne went after him while Arkadin circled, snaking through the oily city of grinding machinery. He eluded Bourne once but then, rounding a corner, Bourne spotted him near the line of gigantic Hyundai diesel engines, specifically designed to power the world’s fleet of LNG tankers. He was trying to furtively shove a small box between the structural struts of the engine, but Arkadin, coming up behind him, grabbed for his wrist. The crewman jerked away, brought the box back toward him, and was about to thumb a button on it when Bourne kicked it out of his hand. The box went flying, and Arkadin dived after it.
“Careful,” the crewman said as Bourne grabbed hold of him. He ignored Bourne, was staring at the box Arkadin brought back to them. “You hold the whole world in your hand.”
Meanwhile Bourne pushed up his shirtsleeve. The man’s arm was smeared with grease, deliberately so, it seemed, because when Bourne took a rag and wiped it off, the Black Legion tattoo appeared on the inside of his left elbow.
The man seemed totally unconcerned. His entire being was focused on the box that Arkadin was holding. “That will blow up everything,” he said, and made a lunge toward it. Bourne jerked him back with a stranglehold.
“Let’s get him back up to the captain,” Bourne said to the first mate. That’s when he saw the box up close. He took it out of Arkadin’s hand.
“Careful!” the crewman cried. “One slight jar and you’ll set it off.”
But Bourne wasn’t so sure. The crewman was being too vocal with his warnings. Wouldn’t he want the ship to blow now that it had been boarded by Sever’s enemies? When he turned the box over, he saw that the seam between the bottom and the side was ragged.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” The crewman was so agitated that Arkadin slapped him on the side of the head in order to silence him.
Inserting his fingernail into the seam, Bourne pried the box apart. There was nothing inside. It was a dummy.
Moira found it impossible to stay in one place. Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. The tanker was on the verge of meeting up with the tugboats; they were only a mile from shore. If the tanks went, the devastation to both human life and the country’s economy would be catastrophic. She felt useless, a third wheel hanging around while the two men did their hunting.
Exiting the wheelhouse, she went belowdecks, looking for the engine room. Smelling food, she poked her head into the galley. A large Algerian was sitting at the stainless-steel mess table, reading a two-week-old Arabic newspaper.
He looked up, gesturing at the paper. “It gets old the fifteenth time through, but when you’re at sea what can you do?”
His burly arms were bare to the shoulders. They bore tattoos of a star, a crescent, and a cross, but not the Black Legion’s insignia. Following the directions he gave her, she found the infirmary three decks below. Inside, a slim Muslim was sitting at a small desk built into one of the bulkheads. In the opposite bulkhead were two berths, one of them filled with the patient who had fallen ill. The doctor murmured a traditional Muslim greeting as he turned away from his laptop computer to face her. He frowned deeply when he saw the crossbow in her hands.
“Is that really necessary,” he said, “or even wise?”
“I’d like to speak with your patient,” Moira said, ignoring him.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.” The doctor smiled that smile only doctors can. “He’s been sedated.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
The doctor gestured at the laptop. “I’m still trying to find out. He’s been subject to seizures, but so far I can’t find the pathology.”
“We’re near Long Beach, you’ll get help then,” she said. “I just need to see the insides of his elbows.”
The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“I need to see whether he’s got a tattoo.”
“They all have tattoos, these sailors.” The doctor shrugged. “But go ahead. You won’t disturb him.”
Moira approached the lower berth, bending over to pull the thin blanket back from the patient’s arm. As she did so, the doctor stepped forward and struck her a blow on the back of her head. She fell forward and cracked her jaw on the metal frame of the bunk. The pain pulled her rudely back from a precipice of blackness, and, groaning, she managed to roll over. The copper-sweet taste of blood was in her mouth and she fought against wave after wave of dizziness. Dimly she saw the doctor bent over his laptop, his fingers racing over the keys, and she felt a ball of ice form in her belly.
The doctor arched up as the bolt pierced his spine. He staggered backward, toward where Moira sat, braced against the berth frame. His arms extended, his fingers clawing for the keyboard, and Moira rose, swung the crossbow into the back of his head. His blood spattered like rain over her face and hands, the desk, and the laptop’s keyboard.
Bourne found her on the floor of the infirmary, cradling the computer in her lap. When he came in, she looked up at him and said, “I don’t know what he did. I’m afraid to shut it off.”
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. “The ship’s doctor was Sever’s man.”
“So I see,” he said as he stepped over the corpse. “I didn’t believe him when he told me he had only one man on board. It would be like him to have a backup.”
He knelt down, examined the back of her head. “It’s superficial. Did you black out?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
He took a large gauze pad from the supply cabinet, doused it with alcohol. “Ready?” He placed it against the back of her head, where her hair was plastered down with blood. She moaned a little through gritted teeth.
“Can you hold it in place for a minute?”
She nodded, and gently Bourne lifted the laptop into his arms. There was a software program running, that much was clear. Two radio buttons on the screen were blinking, one yellow, the other red. On the other side of the screen was a green radio button, which wasn’t blinking.
Bourne breathed a sigh of relief. “He brought up the program, but you got to him before he could activate it.”
“Thank God,” she said. “Where Arkadin?”
“I don’t know. When the captain told me you’d gone below I took off after you.”
“Jason, you don’t think…”
Putting the computer aside, he helped her to her feet. “Let’s get you back up to the captain so you can give him the good news.”
There was a fearful look on his face. “And you?”
He handed her the laptop. “Go to the wheelhouse and stay there. And Moira, this time I really mean it.”
With the crossbow in one hand, he stepped into the passageway, looked right and left. “All right. Go. Go!”
Arkadin had returned to Nizhny Tagil. Down in the engine room, surrounded by steel and iron, he realized that no matter what had happened to him, no matter where he’d gone, he’d never been able to escape the prison of
