The group had decided to come here when the announcement had sounded over the PA system perhaps forty-five minutes ago, planning on having some breakfast while watching the drama unfold outside. A good way to keep the women out of the way of the rescue, Myers thought. Lots of other passengers evidently had thought the same, that it would let them watch without getting stepped on. The Lost Continent was crowded with people. They'd been lucky to get here early enough to beat the rush and get seats.
'Oh, good,' Ms. Jones said. 'Elsie! Anne! You're just in time! They're starting to toss ropes across to the other ship!'
'It's all so perfectly excitingl' Ms. Dunne added.
'Never mind that,' Ms. Caruthers said. 'Donald! There's something wrong aboard this ship!'
Myers sighed, looking up. Both of the women appeared slightly flushed, perhaps a bit out of breath. 'Such as what, Ms. Caruthers?' he asked.
'Elsie and I were just coming out of our cabin, up on the Hera Deck,' Ms. Jordan said. 'We were in a hurry because we wanted to come down and join you all for breakfast and — '
'I believe there are terrorists on board, Mr. Myers,' Caruthers interrupted.
'Terrorists?' Myers said. He managed not to laugh out loud. Since they'd come aboard Thursday, he'd been playing with the thought he'd had about the women's terrorist and sewing circle and wishing he could share it with someone. Caruthers' blunt statement brought the humorous image back to mind.
'Terrorists,' Caruthers said firmly as the two women sat down at the places left for them. 'Men with guns!'
'Slow down, Elsie,' Roger Galsworthy said. 'What men with what guns?'
'There were three of them,' Jordan said, 'and they were coming down the hallway as we were leaving our stateroom, bold as you please, and one of them bumped against me and almost — '
'They were wearing ship's crew uniforms,' Caruthers said, interrupting again. 'And they were carrying machine guns!'
'Machine guns?' Abe Klein said, chuckling. 'Seems a little unlikely.'
'They were those Russian guns, like in that movie Russian Dawn back in the eighties,' Ms. Jordan said. 'Where a bunch of high school kids fight a Russian invasion of the U. S.?'
'I think you mean Red Dawn, Anne,' Caruthers said.
'Red Dawn, that's right. The rifles were this long,' Jordan continued, holding her hands apart, 'and black, except for orange wood underneath the barrel, and back on the stock. And the… the thing where they keep the bullets? It was this long and curved. And one of the men said something to the others when the one bumped into me, and another looked like he was going to hit me, but another one snapped at him and they just kept on going.'
'What did they say?' Myers asked.
'I don't know,' Caruthers said. 'It wasn't English or French.'
'It sounded foreign' Jordan added.
Myers frowned. 'Foreign languages often do.'
'One of them,' Jordan continued, 'the one who'd snapped at the other one, just kind of looked at us and said, 'Ship's Security, go back to your stateroom.' And they kept on going down the hall. Running, almost.'
'So what did you do?' Ms, Dunne asked.
'Came right down here to find you, of course,' Caruthers said. Her mouth was set in a hard-lined expression of disapproval.
'Look… you said they were wearing crew uniforms?' Myers asked.
'That's right,' Caruthers said. 'White slacks, dark blue shirts, ship's logo on the left chest, where a shirt pocket would be if it had one. But they had dark skin. Not like coloreds, but dark, Mediterranean-looking. And they all had beards. Have you seen anyone in the Atlantis Queen's crew with beards?'
'Yes, actually,' Myers said, trying to ignore the unpleasantly racist comment. Caruthers was old and had grown up in the South of the 1940s. 'Some of the line handlers when we left the dock yesterday had beards.'
'I am not crazy, young man,' Caruthers told him. 'I know what we saw!'
'I'm sure you do.' Myers was continually bemused by Anne Jordan's taste in movies. Schwarznegger action films… and now Red Dawn. Her description of the rifle, though, sounded very much like an AK-47, or something just like it — an AKM, perhaps. Orange stock and fore-grip, banana clip magazine… not a machine gun, but an assault rifle, certainly.
'We need to tell the captain!' Caruthers said.
'Ms. Caruthers, I'm sure you saw what you say you did. But I feel very sure that there's a logical explanation.'
'Such as?' Caruthers said, staring him in the eye and lifting her chin. 'In my world people don't run around with guns, bumping into decent people and talking in foreign languages!'
'These people,' Myers said carefully, 'take security very seriously on this ship. You all saw that at the security checkpoint the other day, right?'
'Up to a point,' Caruthers said. She almost smiled at the memory.
Myers was still embarrassed about that scene. In the end, the security guards had settled for using a handheld metal detector to check Caruthers and the others who'd refused to submit to the X-ray scan head to toe, then waved them on through. Caruthers clearly considered that to have been a victory for moral and upstanding people everywhere.
Myers pointed out the window. 'We're coming alongside another ship. I would be willing to bet any money you like that if this ship has to get close to another ship, the rules say that armed security guards take up stations where they can keep an eye on things.'
'Makes sense,' Abe Klein said, nodding.
'Of course it does,' Galsworthy added. 'Us former-military types have seen this sort of thing before, right, Donald?'
'Uh, right. Yeah.' Galsworthy, he remembered, was ex-Air Force from the Vietnam era, and made a lot of the fact when given half a chance.
The conversation wandered on, moving on to the fine points of twentieth-century piracy and the security systems in place on board the Atlantis Queen — key cards to keep unauthorized personnel out of secure areas, for instance, and scanners to make sure people weren't wandering off where they shouldn't. Bored, Myers turned away and watched the docking taking place outside. Crewmen — and many of them were bearded, he noted — had tossed massive hawsers out and down to the far smaller ship alongside. Crewmen on the other ship had made the hawsers fast to cleats in the deck.
He could see the name of the other ship across her transom — Pacific Sandpiper She looked like an oil tanker, with her superstructure all the way aft behind a long, long forward deck, but she was a lot smaller than he would have expected for a tanker. He'd seen photos of ships like this one designed for carrying grain on the Great Lakes. Maybe that's what she was… a grain ship.
A helicopter was circling both ships in the distance — part of the rescue operation, no doubt.
Terrorists. He shook his head and, again, suppressed a laugh. The only terrorists on board were at this table.
'Lutfin, Komutanim!' Lia DeFrancesca said. 'Please, sir! We really need your help on this!'
Colonel Tarhan looked up at Lia from behind his desk and rubbed at his luxuriant mustache with a nicotine- stained finger. 'Well..
'Everywhere I go,' she told him, 'the bureaucracy stands in the way. And we must have this information before the British have to release the suspect.'
'Yes, I can certainly understand that,' Tarhan replied. He picked up the wire photo of Nayim Erbakan and studied it again. He glanced up at Lia. 'You say you're with Interpol?'
'Zswropol, Komutanim,' she replied. The Turkish honorific was reserved for a military superior officer, rather than a civilian. It emphasized, Lia hoped, the essential fraternity of military personnel, their bond of brotherhood,
