middle bridge, his silhouetted form passed before each screen, one after another. But his eyes remained straight ahead, neither looking at the screens nor at the officer of the watch, who stood to one side, displaced and unhappy.
LeSeur glanced across the radar and weather system displays. The ship was skirting the southern flank of a large, unusual clockwise storm system. The good news was they were traveling with the wind at their backs; the bad news was this meant moving in a following sea. The stabilizers had been fully extended hours ago, but even so the ship had a slow, queasy rotational yaw that guaranteed additional discomfort for the passengers. He glanced over the displays again. Seas were running thirty feet, winds at forty knots, the radar showing a lot of scatter. Nevertheless, the ship was doing beautifully. LeSeur couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride.
Kemper appeared soundlessly at his elbow, his face a ghastly blue in the artificial light from the displays. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind.
“A word, sir,” he murmured.
LeSeur glanced at Mason and gestured with his eyes. The two of them followed Kemper out to one of the covered bridge wings. Rain hammered against the windows, running down in heavy sheets. Outside, all was blackness.
Wordlessly, Kemper handed LeSeur a sheet of paper. The first officer glanced over it in the dim light. “Good Lord. Eighteen more people reported missing?”
“Yes, sir. But you’ll see at the bottom that sixteen have already turned up. Someone steps out of a cabin for ten minutes and their spouse calls security. The point is, the situation on the ship is deteriorating. The passengers are getting more and more panicky. And my staff is just about paralyzed.”
“What about these two that haven’t been found?”
“One is a sixteen-year-old girl—her grandparents reported it. The other is a woman with a mild case of Alzheimer’s.”
“How long have they been missing?”
“The girl for three hours. The old lady for about an hour.”
“Do you consider this a cause for serious concern?” Kemper hesitated. “Not the old lady—I think she’s probably gotten confused, maybe fallen asleep somewhere. But the girl . . . yeah, I’m concerned. We’ve paged her regularly, we’ve searched the public spaces. And then, there’s
The first officer read it with growing disbelief. “Bloody hell, is this true?” He stabbed his finger at the sheet. “A
roaming the ship?”
“Six people on Deck 9 reported seeing it. Some kind of . . . I don’t know what. A thing, covered with smoke, or made of dense smoke. Accounts vary. There’s a lot of confusion.”
LeSeur handed the sheets back to Kemper. “This is absurd.”
“Just shows the level of hysteria. And to me, that’s a troubling development—
“Is there any way to transfer other ship’s staff to temporary security duty? Pull some capable junior engineers off their usual jobs?”
“Forbidden by standing orders,” said Staff Captain Mason, speaking for the first time. “Commodore Cutter’s the only one who could override that.”
“Can we make the request?” Kemper asked.
Mason glanced coolly toward the middle bridge where Cutter was pacing. “This is not a good time to ask the commodore anything, Mr. Kemper,” she said crisply.
“What about closing the casinos and assigning Hentoff’s staff to security?”
“Corporate would string us up. Forty percent of the profit margin comes from the casinos. And besides, those people are dealers and croupiers and pit bosses—they aren’t trained in anything else. We might as well reassign the waitstaff.”
Another long silence.
“Thank you, Mr. Kemper, for your report,” said Mason. “That will be all.”
Kemper nodded and left, leaving LeSeur and Mason on the bridge wing, alone.
“Captain Mason?” LeSeur finally asked.
“Yes, Mr. LeSeur?” The staff captain turned to him, the hard lines of her face dimly illuminated in the low light.
“Forgive me for raising the subject again, but have there been any more discussions about diverting to St. John’s?”
A very long silence followed this question, stretching to almost a minute. Finally, Mason answered. “No official discussions, Mr. LeSeur.”
“Would it be forward of me, sir, to ask why not?”
LeSeur could see Mason thinking carefully how to formulate her response. “The commodore has already expressed his firm orders on that point,” she said at last.
“But what if this missing girl . . . is another victim?”
“Commodore Cutter shows no evidence of changing his mind.”
LeSeur felt a swell of anger. “Excuse me for speaking frankly, Captain, but we’ve got a brutal murderer roaming on board this ship. If this Pendergast is to be believed, the man’s killed three people already. The passengers are freaking out, half of them are hiding in their cabins, and the rest are getting drunk in the lounges and casinos. And now it seems we’ve got some kind of mass hysteria building, talk of an apparition roaming the ship. Our security director has as much as admitted the situation is beyond his control. Under the circumstances, don’t you think we should seriously consider diversion?”
“Diverting the ship would take us deeper into the storm.”
“I know that. But I’d rather weather a nor’easter than deal with an out-of-control mob—of passengers
crew.”
“What you and I think is irrelevant,” said Mason coldly.
Despite her tone, LeSeur could see this last point of his had struck home. Ship’s officers were acutely aware of just how relatively small their numbers were. Along with fire at sea, passenger unrest—or worse than unrest—was always a great fear.
“You’re the staff captain,” he pressed. “The second in command. You’re in the best position to influence him. We can’t go on like this—you’ve
to persuade him to divert.”
Mason turned to him, her eyes dead tired. “Mr. LeSeur, don’t you realize? Nobody can change Commodore Cutter’s mind.
