Odd Hours

sat shaking, first with residual dread and then with relief.

I suppose now that in swimming to retrieve the boat, I might have experienced a dim presentiment of the shooter who, a couple of years later, would take Stormy from me.

Sometimes, I like to call into memory that day on the lake. The sky and the water. Safe in that sphere of blue.

I tell myself that I can still dream our future into existence: the two of us on a new Earth all our own.

Now and then, as we floated on our backs, the winglike motion of our arms brought our hands in contact beneath the water, and we gripped each other for a moment as if to say I’m here, I’m always here.

The tugboat yawed, and the rubber bumpers squealed between the vessels, and from above and aft came a solid thud that trembled the deck.

I slid off the radio operator’s desk and got to my feet.

Having tumbled from his chair, the dead man lay on his side, his head twisted so that he faced the ceiling. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were like those of a fish on ice in a market.

That I had never seen Stormy’s body in death, that in mercy she had been brought to me only as ashes in a simple urn, filled me with a gratitude beyond measure.

Leaving the radio room, I knew the time had not yet come for me to venture above. Once the transfer of the nukes had been completed and the crates lashed down, once Junie’s Moonbeam sailed away into the fog, Utgard and Buddy would at once kill Jackie and Hassan. My best chance to succeed at this was to time my afterdeck appearance to that bloody moment.

Opening off the passageway was one room I had not explored, the aft compartment on the starboard side, across from the radio room. I tried the door, found a light switch, and stepped into a lavatory.

A red cross marked a white corner cabinet full of first-aid supplies.

After pulling off my sweatshirt and T-shirt, I spread the wound with my fingers. I poured rubbing alcohol into the shallow gash.

No stitches were needed. Bleeding, renewed by this attention, would eventually stop again.

Leaving the laceration open to the air and the rub of clothing, however, ensured a continuous stinging that distracted me. I had to work at an awkward angle, and I might not have a lot of time; so I used no gauze, only wide waterproof adhesive tape to seal the cut.

Stripping it off later, I would inevitably tear open the laceration. I didn’t worry about that, because if the time came for me to peel away the tape, that would mean I had survived Utgard and his crew.

As I put on my sweatshirt, another heavy thud from the afterdeck shivered through the tugboat.

Although I did not think anyone would come below until the work was done, I turned off the light and stood in blackness. Should the door open, I could shoot as he reached for the switch.

The small lavatory had no porthole. The room would admit no thread of light around the door frame.

I thought of the mirror in Sam Whittle’s bathroom, which had reached out to claim his lingering spirit.

The lavatory featured a spotted mirror above the sink. I could not see what might be forming in its dark reflective surface.

My usually fevered imagination could do nothing with this rich material.

Real violence had come. More was pending.

The door to ruthlessness that I had opened in my mind had not been closed. More than darkness and mirrors, I feared what could come out of that inner door.

Heavier vibrations translating through the sea into the tugboat hull were proof that the transfer had been completed and that Junie’s Moonbeam was getting under way once more. We began to roll in the wake of the departing yacht.

I left the lavatory and went to the aft companionway, moving counter to the deck to keep my balance.

At the top of the stairs stood the door through which I had originally come below. A porthole provided a view of the long fog-swept afterdeck, which was still brightened by the halogen work lamp.

Two crates, neither of which had been there when we had motored out of the harbor, lay toward the starboard quarter of the deck. The size of coffins, wrapped in fog as they were, these twin containers suggested that we had not taken aboard anything as fantastic and grotesque as weapons that could destroy whole cities, but instead merely the less unnatural cargo of Count Dracula and his bride, who were sleeping now on beds of Transylvanian soil inside sunproof caskets where soon they would wake.

Utgard Rolf-dressed in black nylon pants with elastic cuffs tight at the ankles and a matching jacket-and a man I had not seen before were conferring near the small crane.

Two other men were at work on the port side, stowing tools in a secured deck box.

Pulling pistols as they moved, Utgard and the man to whom he had been talking, no doubt Buddy, crossed the deck behind the other two men and shot them in the back. Both sprawled facedown, and their executioners bent to administer a final shot to each at the base of the skull.

THIRTY-EIGHT

HESITATING BEHIND THE COMPANIONWAY DOOR, I thought that they would weight the dead men with chains before tossing them overboard.

Evidently, they were confident that from this distance the sea would not bring the bodies to shore for days-if ever-and that by then they would have vanished into their new lives in far corners of the world. They put away their guns, grabbed the cadavers by collars and belts, and began to drag them toward the portside deck wall.

Their backs were to me, but they would remain vulnerable only briefly. Bull strong, Utgard did not long drag his victim, but soon lifted him clear of the deck and carried him.

I dared not think about what was required of me here, but had to focus my mind on why I must not fail to act: the possibility of children seared to the bone by blast heat, of women crushed and torn by the detonation wave, of men atomized, buildings hammered to dust, museums in rubble, churches obliterated, blacktop streets boiling like rivers of lava, and square miles of ashes soaked with the blood of millions.

With no awareness of having pushed through the stairhead door, I found myself on the open deck, in motion.

The immediate fog was silver with halogen reflections, white overhead, and gray beyond the limits of the boat, the yacht lights already having been swallowed as completely as Jonah and his lantern.

The chill wet air on my face was not as cold as the pit of my stomach, and the plume of my breath across my lips seemed cold as well.

With his burden, Utgard reached the port wall. He heaved the body overboard, but the dead man’s feet hooked on the gunwale. For a macabre moment, he hung that way, until Utgard gave him a final push into the sea.