“Maybe,” she said.
“No more maybe. Tell me what all this is about, Jet.”
“I was supposed to find out why Hawke was in Cannes.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Did your job. So why’d Schatzi get so mad at you?”
“I was disobedient. My orders were to alert my colleague aboard the Star of Shanghai if I determined a hostage rescue was in play. I—hesitated. Hawke presented a clear threat and I did nothing.”
“What colleague?”
“My subordinate officer was aboard the Star with the prisoner. He took responsibility for reacquiring the American agent in Morocco. And returning him safely from France to Hong Kong. He and I work for the Te-Wu. Chinese secret police. I hold the rank of captain.”
“Your job to stop Alex, Cap?”
“My job was to kill him. I failed. I’d say my career at this point is pretty much over. Assuming I survive, I have no idea what to do next.”
“Kill him how?”
“With this,” Jet said, and reached inside the high slit in the silk robe. She pulled out a nasty little gun she must have had strapped to the inside of her thigh.
“You going to not kill me same way you didn’t kill Alex Hawke?” Stoke asked, “Are you? Captain?”
Jet held the gun up, loosely pointed at Stokely’s left eye. Her gun hand drifted out over the rail for a second, and the pistol fell thirty feet or so to the water. It made a faint splash. More symbolism, Stoke thought, looking at her hard now.
“Jet, this may turn out to be the worst idea I ever had in my whole life. How’d you like a free trip to Germany? All expenses paid.”
“You going, too?”
“Absolutely.”
“What a pair we’d make. What makes you think I won’t betray you?”
“Observed behavior. Love makes people do crazy things. You just changed sides, girl, even though you don’t know it yet.”
Girl didn’t reply and Stoke took that as a yes.
“We got to make one stop first. Pick up your stuff aboard Valkyrie. Also, I may need to talk to my friend Admiral Bruno again. How well do you two get along?”
“Bruno has seen every one of my pictures twenty times.”
“Does he like you enough to keep his mouth shut?”
“He worships the ground I will walk on in future lifetimes.”
“Good. Call Bruno up. Be nice. Tell him you’d like to come back. Like, early this evening. Would he go for that?”
“Yes.”
“You think you could occupy his mind for twenty minutes?”
“I think I could.”
“Okay. We go soon as it’s dark. I like to swim at night.”
Half an hour after the sun went down, Jet was aboard Valkyrie, finding new and different ways to distract Bruno without letting him anywhere near her. Stoke, in his old SEAL gear, was treading water about two hundred yards from the yacht’s bow. He looked at his dive watch. Jet was down in her stateroom by now, collecting her stuff and making goo-goo eyes at fat little Bruno. She had promised Stoke she’d keep him occupied for ten minutes minimum. Stoke thought that should about do it.
He’d dropped Jet off at the starboard-side boarding float. Then he’d gunned the Zodiac out of sight of anybody paying attention on board Valkyrie, zigzagging through all the anchored yachts. He found a good spot, threw a small Danforth anchor over the side, and paid out enough line to keep the inflatable hidden behind a big Feadship. Then he slipped over the side and swam the last thousand yards about ten feet below the surface.
When he got to the huge German yacht’s bow, he dove deeper, following the hull aft a few feet, inspecting the length of it for camera placement. He saw the first one, mounted in a clear housing suspended from the keel. The lens was moving slowly toward him. The new underwater video surveillance cameras made even the old- fashioned stuff a little tricky. He counted six cameras in all, two fore and aft, two amidships on either side of the keel housing.
That was weird. There was no keel. Maybe it was retracted inside the hull.
He paused for a few seconds, memorizing the different camera cycles while running his fingers along some odd protrusions on the hull. Through-hull fittings. A hairline seam in the steel. And some kind of retracting hatch, it looked like. Big enough to drive a truck through when it was open. What the hell? He swam then, kicking hard and fast, zigzagging through the oscillating cameras, until he reached the sternmost section of the hull. Two cameras remained, outboard of the massive bronze screws.
No divers had splashed. Good sign. His Draeger rebreathing apparatus meant no bubbles were visible on the surface. So he drove his flippers harder, swam through the two aft cameras while they were still both cycling outboard, and then hung in the water off the stern and simply allowed buoyancy to take him up. He surfaced just off the wide stern platform that ran the width of the beam.
This was the area they used for launching sailboards and Jet Skis and other equipment. Empty. Except for one bald-headed guy in a white jumpsuit who emerged through a small door in the hull. The guy stepped out to the edge of the platform and whipped out his willy. What?
Oh, yeah. Drain the lizard. While the bald guy took his pee off the stern, Stoke swam a few silent strokes to the far end of the platform and pulled himself up onto the teak deck.
The guy, still with a good stream going, turned around and looked at the recently arrived monster from the Blue Lagoon. Stoke had seen VC and NVA regs in Nam simply faint dead away at the sight of him appearing suddenly in his SEAL shit on a dark night. This guy didn’t faint or do anything much at all.
“How you doing?” Stoke said, getting to his feet. “Water was getting a little warm off the stern.”
“What the—”
“Shh. I ain’t supposed to be here. Private property.”
Stoke saw the guy had a lipmike and was about to use it. He covered the distance between them in one millisecond and smothered the man’s mouth with his gloved hand. When he felt teeth biting through the rubber glove, he shut the guy down with two fingers into the neck, collapsing the carotid artery. He put one hand on the unconscious man’s chest to hold him up and quickly patted him down. He didn’t normally swim with guns, but one might come in handy tonight.
No guns on the guy. Just a glass vial of pills and some kind of weird instrument in a black metal barrel that looked like a very high-tech fountain pen. He’d seen one like it before but couldn’t place it. Stuck both items in his waterproof dive bag just for fun. He rolled the guy over the edge into the water and looked back at the narrow through-hull door. There was a keypad beside it, but he wouldn’t be needing any entry codes right now. The guy’d figured on a quick squirt so he’d left it open. Mistake.
He stepped inside and was surprised to find himself in a small elevator. He hit the lowest button and it started to move, down and forward. He imagined the thing was on an angled track, running down the keel. Good. Real good. He was very curious about this part of the boat that was so boring nobody needed to see it.
When he stepped out, he was disappointed. He hadn’t any idea of what to expect, some kind of Dr. No running around with goggles on his head, maybe, dials and big glass static lightning balls, maybe. But not nothing at all, which was what he found down in the bilges. A huge black space, empty, except for some serious hydraulic machinery. It was mounted above the keel housing that rose from the shiny steel waffle-plated decks.
Having nothing better to do, he walked over to check it out. Below the boat, underwater, he’d noticed the keel was retracted. Which made sense in such shallow water. You needed the keel down only when you were sailing. Otherwise, you kept it stowed right here, winched up inside the hull.
What didn’t make sense was that somebody would remove the keel altogether. There was just a big housing,
