The comm officer was listening hard to his own earphones, talking with the pilot in easy tones despite the fear they all heard from the speaker.
“…ifty feet… iring flare now.” It was a cruel twist of atmospherics that the last seconds of broadcast from the helicopter came in so crisply that it sounded like the pilot was in the room with them. His scream was piercing enough to shatter crystal.
“Mercer, chopper’s down! Chopper’s down! They fired the flare. Did you see it?” Ira mashed the earphones to his head. “Mercer, are you receiving? Over.”
Nothing.
He tried again every thirty seconds for the next half hour. And the results were always the same. Mercer was gone.
ROTTERDAM, HOLLAND
Amid the rusting tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships, the
She could comfortably accommodate four thousand passengers as well as her full-time staff of three thousand. Her list of world records for a cruise liner included everything from number of restaurants — thirty-nine — to casino square footage to having a four-hole pitch-and-putt golf course. Her cost too was a world record likely to hold for years — $1.7 billion.
Despite the ascetic beliefs of many of those who would be sailing on her, few could help but be awed by the sight of her snugged against a concrete pier. The
Because of the tight security surrounding the Universal Convocation, the quay was quiet except for the guards posted all along the length of the ship. Harbor patrol boats buzzed along her starboard side, and overhead military helicopters kept the roving media choppers at a safe distance. So far there hadn’t been a single credible threat against the ship or her passengers, but with so much world attention focused on the greatest religious meeting in history, the authorities were taking no chances. After lengthy interrogations, her crew had been sequestered aboard for the past week, and she was searched daily with bomb-sniffing dogs.
Getting the ship ready and secure had been a massive operation, and now that the passengers were embarking, those in charge of security had redoubled their vigilance. Each passenger, from the pope down to the lowliest secretary, was escorted through unobtrusive metal detectors calibrated to allow nothing bulkier than religious medals to pass through. The latest generation of chemical-sniffing devices was also used to detect the most minute amount of gunpowder. Even if someone sneaked a ceramic pistol past the metal detectors, traces of gunpowder from the bullets would be picked up on these machines.
It had been agreed earlier that only the pope’s Swiss Guard would be allowed to carry weapons on the
Neils Vanderhoff was a guard at a manifest checkpoint assigned to verify each of the lesser-known passengers against a master list, authenticating their identity with a computer database of photographs compiled from six different sources. The pictures dated back at least a year before the Convocation’s announcement to prevent terrorists from using carefully built false legends to slip aboard.
In front of him now was a tall, middle-aged man wearing a shiny suit that cost more money than Vanderhoff made in three months. His face was deeply tanned and smooth, and he had the whitest teeth the Dutchman had ever seen. He sported a diamond-encrusted Rolex and an elaborate ruby pinky ring. While his hair was thinning and silver at the sides, on top it was as dense and jet black as a sable’s pelt. Neils wondered why the man spent so much on his wardrobe, teeth bleaching, and jewelry yet wore such an obvious toupee.
Clutching his elbow was a sight Vanderhoff would never forget. The man’s wife might have been pretty once, but her fight against time had been a long, bloody campaign that had left the battlefield in ruins. She wasn’t that much younger than her husband but her face had been so frequently lifted that it was as tight as the head on a snare drum. She looked like a poorly cast wax model of herself. Behind black false lashes, her eyes bulged from one too many tucks. Her makeup was as overvibrant as that applied to a corpse by a color-blind mortician. Above her eyes were thick slashes of blue and yellow, her cheeks were so rouged they looked sunburned, and her collagen- puffed lips had been troweled over with layers of frost white. Her big hair was brass blond and piled six inches high. She had maintained her figure, or possibly had it maintained for her, but still her hips and backside strained against a skirt sized for a woman fifteen pounds lighter. Her breasts were silicone fantasies that threatened to spill over the top of her lame blouse.
In her arms was a nervous Pekingese that yapped continuously. The woman made no move to quiet her rodent-size dog.
She popped a piece of chewing gum as her husband passed over their passports. Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. As if Neils couldn’t tell they were Americans. He stared at the caricatures slack-jawed.
“I know what you’re thinking, son.” Tommy Joe’s enormous teeth flashed like a mirror pointed at the sun, and he spoke as if addressing a crowd of ten thousand. “You’ve seen my ministry on television, and you can’t believe you’ve gotten a chance to meet me.”
“Honey, they don’t carry our show in Europe, ’cause they don’t talk American here.” Lorna Farquar had a little-girl voice with an adult’s ignorance. “Do they, Pookie? They haven’t been saved yet. No, they haven’t.” The Pekingese’s whine was deeper than its mistress’s.
“Sure they do, Lorna. It’s on satellite feed, don’t you remember?”
“I’m sure I don’t,” she simpered, her eyelashes tangling like fighting spiders when she blinked up at him.
Neils Vanderhoff shook off his amused incredulity and typed their names into his workstation. Instantly a series of pictures appeared on the screen, mostly publicity shots of the couple at a blue satin altar adorned with the words MIRACLES OF JESUS CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES. He noted wryly that Mrs. Farquar’s bosom had been noticeably smaller last year.
Craning her head to see what the customs man had chuckled at, Lorna wailed, “Oh, sweet Jesus! Those pictures are from before I had my titties done.”
“There, there, dear.” Tommy Joe patted her hand.
Vanderhoff checked to see the most recent entry stamps on their passports as per his orders. He was on the lookout for any suspicious travel since the Convocation had been announced. The Farquars’ passports had numerous stamps to Caribbean islands but nothing in the past six months. He handed them back without a word, praying they would move on without braying at him again.
The next person in line was a large man traveling alone, and by the dark robes he wore, heavy silver cross hanging from a chain around his neck, and his full beard, Neils recognized him as a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The priest must have heard the exchange, so Vanderhoff gave him a conspiratorial smile. The black-robed figure didn’t change his stony expression. He handed over a Russian passport.
Feeling rebuffed, the customs agent noted that Father Anatoly Vatutin had been in Germany before coming to Holland for the Convocation. He punched up the name, comparing the fierce-eyed cleric in front of him to photographs taken a few years earlier at an Eastern Rites meeting in Istanbul. Vatutin had more gray in his beard and hair now but time had not softened his hawkish features. Giving back the passport, Vanderhoff felt a chill when the intense priest nodded in acknowledgment.
Anatoly Vatutin slid his passport back into his battered shoulder bag and hurried along the corridor. Before reaching the exit, he passed the obnoxious television minister, who had stopped so his trashy wife could let her dog
