Christie turned to Pam. “Can I introduce you to Sebastian, the Grim Reaper?” she said. Both Pam and Sebastian looked bemused.
“Sorry, are you referring to me?” Sebastian said, somewhat in shock.
“Don’t take it personally, Piano Man. I have been on three ships you’ve played on, and on each ship, we’ve had passengers die or go missing. You’re jinxed!” Christie explained.
“Conversely, you have been on three that I have been on, and I have just found out that on those cruises, passengers have died or gone missing,” Sebastian lied. “I think maybe you’re the jinx,” he said.
Pam giggled at the quick retort.
“Yes, I suppose what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Christie said.
Soon after they had finished their coffees and split the gratuities, sixty percent for Sebastian and forty percent between the two singers, Sebastian retreated to his large but single cabin on deck three. He sat down on the daybed to collate his thoughts. While not having the capacity to worry, he did not like loose ends, and Christie had become a loose end. Pam had been there as well, and while it may have seemed to be banter, she had heard them, and could relay the conversation to anyone at a later date.
Sebastian knew he had been on a killing spree in the last fifteen years and if anything, he was surprised he had not been the butt of speculation before. His mistake was to stay with the cruise company Christie had worked for and to remain for two years. The contract was the longest he had stayed with any one cruise company. Jon Deloitte, the chief executive of the Jules Verne Cruise Line, had signed him to an exclusive contract, with no freelancing for any other company for the two-year period.
This was a wake-up call, a revelation to Sebastian how sloppy he had become. He thought himself extremely intelligent and forensically aware. He had taken some chances, but, overall, he thought he had covered his tracks as well as anyone could. Staying two years with the one company had put his careful planning at risk, and he had not considered this in his risk analysis.
Sebastian kicked the chair in front of him and launched into a tirade of self-recrimination and abuse. Once he calmed down and collected his thoughts, he knew some things would have to change; he would not make this mistake again. He liked this ship, but what he was planning meant that he would have to move on after the three-month tour was up. But before handing in his resignation letter, he had loose ends to clear up.
Several days later, the Classical Canta Libra left Odessa, the principal port in Ukraine, and would soon be anchoring a short tender trip away from Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula.
Some guests, no matter where they were in the world, would not stray too far from the restaurants and bars on the ship. Many of the guests had taken full advantage of the historic stop in Yalta.
The tender boats from the port had been transporting the tourists all morning, from the ship to shore, over two thousand souls. Some would go off to 4x4s, discovering the mountainous routes in the area. A significant number of the older guests would visit the Livadia Palace, the venue for the historic Yalta Conference between Russia, America, and Great Britain, the aim to have their photos taken in front of the palace between the white marble lions, not far from the famous picture of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.
Those with no interest in history would board the coaches transporting them to the Swallow’s Nest. The fairy-tale castle perched perilously 130 feet above the Black Sea on a mountain which had cracked during an earthquake and closed the Nest for 40 years. An entrepreneur had poured his roubles into stabilizing the crack and refurbished the Nest into a restaurant. The balcony on three sides of the Nest overhung the sea and gave the impression of being on a cliff edge looking far below into the sea. From the balcony, some mile out to sea, the Classical Canta Libra stood proudly on the still surface of the water.
All crew members, including the entertainers and officers, would have to attend compulsory evacuation and lifeboat drills. The exercise would include boat practice, taking the boats a thousand feet offshore and circling, with members of the crew acting as guests.
Sebastian knew that the entertainers that were part of groups or teams would be placed together for the drills. It had been quite simple to get the drill emergency plan and staff allocation list, as it had been published on the sophisticated Intranet the ship used as one of the tools to communicate with staff employees and entertainers.
Lifeboat four was located with other even-numbered lifeboats on deck six, starboard side. The groups quickly gathered at their allocated lifeboat stations and stood in orderly lines on hearing the alarm sound seconds before.
The captain had decided to continue with the exercise, even though most of the CCTV for the external areas had stopped working several hours before. The control box with the main fuses for the system had suffered a minor fire, cause unknown, and this would put the system out for repairs for the next sixteen hours.
Six persons were allocated to each lifeboat, plus the pilot. The lifeboats swung down on their hoists, known as gravity davits, level to the deck. Crew members removed the guardrails, and the allocated participants started to embark onto the lifeboats. Odd-numbered lifeboats on the port side were lowered down first, with even numbers on the starboard side following shortly after.
The first boats lowered had detached the harnesses that attached them to the gravity davits and were pulling away from the ship as the even-numbered
