The ship’s after-quarter rose to a precipitous angle and then rose higher still, until it was standing upright like a huge black column. This would not be an agreeable sensation for any man still remaining aboard. He would be clinging desperately to anything bolted down to stay alive for an extra minute or two. Hawke could make out a few more struggling figures on the deck, and some bodies perhaps, entangled in lines or in mangled metal.
The stern quarter, perhaps a good 150 feet of Leviathan’s remains, stood outlined against the star-speckled sky, looming black in the darkness. It hung there for a few brief minutes and then, sinking back a little, slid forward rapidly through the water and plunged straight downward.
There was no great noise. Only the slight sound of a gulp marked the end. She went quickly under and the water swirled and finally closed over her golden name.
Unlike most such disasters, this one did not leave the sea filled with panic-stricken survivors crying out for God’s mercy and gasping for air; there were no agonized cries of death from a thousand throats. No, after Leviathan was gone, only a thin whitish-grey vapor remained. It hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea. For a while, you could see an undulating field of flotsam and jetsam that had bobbed up from somewhere far below.
By tomorrow or the next day, this slate of the ocean would be wiped clean. Above him, Yankee Victor angled up and away, bearing Alex Hawke toward the shimmering glow of the distant New York skyline. Hands reached down inside the net for him. As they lifted him up, he took one last look at the great liner’s grave.
It was over.
Tomorrow morning, no trace would remain of all that had happened here.
Seabirds would circle and spin above the Atlantic swell.
And the sun would shine down on waves like blue glass.
Epilogue
PARIS HAD DANCED ITS LAST TANGO.
Somebody had flipped the wrong switch, forgotten to turn on the City of Light. The blackout was no mistake, of course. It was Boney’s last stand. A week earlier, the Chinese had left him to the wolves and now the wolves were at his door. On that blackest of days, Bonaparte decreed that every light in Paris be extinguished at 9:00 P.M. Suddenly, it was 1944 all over again. There was a nine-o’clock curfew. Anyone caught on the streets after that hour without good reason or a government pass was arrested.
Jet had a good reason. She was running for her life.
After Hong Kong, she had fled to Paris. It had seemed a brilliant place to hide. There was a flat there, a modest love nest she’d shared with Schatzi. A decade earlier, after a row, he’d told her to clear out. He cut off the rent, the lights, the heat. She stayed, and eventually bought it under an assumed name. It was her safe house. A place where no one knew her name.
Only a few other automobiles were on the streets when she fled her dark and shuttered building at 88, avenue Foch. She jumped into the Mercedes, took a deep breath, and forced herself to drive slowly away from the curb. Every car, including hers, was blindfolded, the taped headlights showing only a sliver of light at the very bottom. It made driving very tricky.
Heading south and east toward the Tuileries, she saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, standing like a thin black finger pointing at the heavens. A tiny aircraft warning light, blinking red at the top, was the sole illumination. Blackout curtains hung in every window. The venerable chestnut trees lining her street were black against the starry night.
She glanced nervously at her rearview mirror. A police car had been following her closely for two blocks, then, inexplicably, it turned off into the avenue George V. Gripping the steering wheel with her left hand, she noticed her right hand shaking badly as she held the car’s lighter to her cigarette. Her nerves were understandably frayed. This morning, Te-Wu plainclothes officers had come to her apartment.
She’d escaped down the service staircase with only the clothes on her back. Six hours later, she’d gone back. She watched the entrance from a bench situated in a small park across the street. After four long hours, she’d decided to take a chance. She raced across the boulevard and inside, taking the stairway to her third-floor home. It was destroyed, but she paid no attention to it. It took all of ten minutes to get what she wanted—money and her gun from a safe hidden in the floor beneath a mountain of shoes. Some irreplacable jewelry.
On the way out, she scooped up the new Sharpei puppy that she’d named Stokely. Now, the dog was in the black Hermes bag on the seat next to her. In her lap, she had her Chinese Te-Wu shield and her small handgun. If anybody stopped her, she’d already decided to shoot.
After wandering the streets all morning, afraid to return home, she’d taken a room under another assumed name at the Ritz. She called the number Stokely had told her to use in case of just such an emergency. Surprisingly, Stoke was in Paris. He wouldn’t say exactly why, but she could guess. Bonaparte was holed up inside the Elysee Palace. There were snipers on the roof and tanks in the courtyard. No UN resolution was going to get him out any time soon.
Stoke said it was a dirty job but somebody had to do it.
She told him she had to get out of Paris. Tonight. Right this minute. He said he understood. He’d figure something out. He’d call her cell after nine tonight and tell her what to do.
She kept her speed down en route to the location Stoke had given her. Memories stirred, not her own. Newsreels of Paris during the Nazi occupation. Shadowy people hurrying through the darkened streets, anxious to be home, to be safely inside. She passed a CNN crew on a street corner, using available light to shoot a reporter’s account of the grim darkness that gripped Paris. In the near distance, a muffled boom and a flash of lightning bloomed on the horizon.
The camera swung crazily around trying to capture the moment.
Deja vu, she thought.
Jet knew what the American reporters were saying on the radio. There were many conflicting rumors and points of view of the current impasse. The Loyalists believed the embattled president was the last, best hope of the nation. But the noose around Bonaparte’s neck was tightening. The anti-Bonapartists claimed he’d paid men to roam the town, shooting anyone who didn’t have the right answer to their questions. They said the president blamed Anglo-American bombers that no one ever saw. Planes no one could see. He initiated the blackout but the bombs kept exploding.
It was whispered Bonaparte himself was blowing up the buildings, so his military police could clamp down even tighter. So more loyalists would take up arms in his defense. So he could keep the dark city under his thumb while he plotted with his generals, all of them cloistered in the Elysee Palace, desperately clinging to power.
The people who spoke such treason against Bonaparte disappeared nightly.
The bridge was coming up on her right. Jet swung the sleek black Mercedes right onto the Pont Louis Philippe and across the Seine to the tiny island called the Ile St-Louis, just south of the Ile de la Cite. There was a parking place just after the bridge and she took it. She hit the key remote as she walked away, locking the car. She walked quickly, eyes moving rapidly side to side. No one else was on the streets. No one she could see, at any rate. Since les flics had turned off, she didn’t think she’d been followed, which was a small comfort.
Stokely had given her very precise instructions. She hurried down the steps leading to the lower quay. Then she walked along the tree-lined pavement toward the western tip of the island.
She reached the designated spot at the end of the island. Stokely had told her to wait here. That was it. No further instructions. She stopped and lit a cigarette. The twin towers of Notre Dame, with the floodlights extinguished, looked black and oddly forbidding against the sky. She could make out the hunched figures of the gargoyles and a slight chill went up her spine. She looked back up at the bridge she’d just crossed. Empty.
Quasimodo’s bell in the south tower of Notre Dame suddenly chimed. It was fifteen minutes before the stroke of midnight. She paused and looked out across the river, not knowing what to look for or who might be meeting her. The Seine was dark and glassy in the moonlight, not even a ripple on the surface. No activity on the river at this hour. No bateaux mouche steaming her way. Nothing. She felt completely alone.
Then, a faint, droning buzz from upriver. Somewhere to the west of the Ile de la Cite. It didn’t sound like a motorboat. It sounded more like a small airplane, flying very low. Whatever it was, it was hidden by the trees and buildings lining the Quai aux Fleurs just across the river. She glanced nervously up at the bridge again and then
