Pandora's curse

emerged in a utility corridor.

It wouldn’t take long for the Swiss Guards to figure out where he went. Anika, he felt, would be treated well by the Swiss. They knew her as a hostage, not an accomplice. It would be hours before they discovered she wasn’t part of the Convocation, and by then Mercer hoped to have the whole situation wrapped up.

Once he got his bearings, he descended several decks, explaining to a few crew members he passed that he’d been doused fighting a kitchen fire. It took about five minutes to navigate to his destination, and once he was there, he found the door locked. Nonessential crew must have been ordered to their cabins until the nature of the emergency could be determined, he realized.

He knocked and a second later the English youth who’d already lost a pair of sneakers opened the door. “Hi.” Mercer grinned. “Remember me?” He showed the submachine gun, and with wordless resignation, the boy let him into the room. His roommate stared wide-eyed from his bunk. Mercer didn’t bother tying them this time. He just “borrowed” another pair of shoes, jeans, a Manchester United sweatshirt, and a long-billed Benetton cap that slid on his bald head.

As he closed the door he heard the Englishman say to his roommate, “I told you I wasn’t playing kinky games with that guy from housekeeping.”

Mercer tossed his weapons into a laundry cart. With a spare key card to Vatutin’s room, he could only pass as a panicked passenger if he wasn’t armed to the teeth. If everything had gone according to plan, Gunther Rath should be on his high-speed motor launch with Greta Schmidt and the Pandora box while Erwin and Klaus Raeder were speaking with the Sea Empress’s captain about stopping him. In all, Mercer felt pretty damned pleased with himself, even if he walked like he had a massive sunburn on his back. Every square inch of skin stung, and he knew he’d be black-and-blue for weeks.

He took an elevator back to the passenger area and a minute later fitted the magnetic card into the lock and fell into Vatutin’s room. The Orthodox priest and Hilda Brandt were already back from their excursion. The large woman looked stricken when she saw that he was alone. “Wo ist Anika?”

Mercer lowered himself into a chair and closed his eyes, letting the fear and tension wash out of his body. “She’s fine. The Swiss who have her think I took her hostage. They don’t know she was with us.”

Hilda looked to Vatutin and the Russian translated the answer as best he could. “Sehr gut,” she said.

“You guys have any trouble?”

“Nyet,” Vatutin said. “We separate from Mr. Lasko after theater, then come back here five minutes ago.”

There was a knock on the door, shave and a haircut but only one bit. It was Ira’s signal and Mercer reached behind him to flick open the handle. “Goddamn, that was fun,” Ira said, crashing onto the bunk. “But if I were the pope, I’d reconsider my security arrangements. Those Swiss Guards never got close.”

A few minutes later, the fire alarm cut off at the same time Vatutin’s phone rang. Hilda picked it up and handed it to Mercer. “I can tell by the silence,” he answered, “that you’ve succeeded.”

“Yes and no,” Erwin Puhl said from the captain’s stateroom. He sounded sick.

“What happened?” Mercer sat forward in his chair, suddenly tense again.

“Raeder explained to the captain what was going on, how we aren’t really terrorists and that Gunther Rath was the true threat. The captain said that, fifteen minutes ago, the ship’s computer reported the marina doors had been opened. He dispatched two officers to see what was happening, and they reported back that Rath’s boat was gone. We’ve tried to raise Rath in the cabin he commandeered, but no one’s answering.”

“What’s the problem? Sounds to me like everything went exactly as planned. Ira can now call Director Barnes at the CIA and have Rath intercepted. We won, Erwin. Relax.”

“We didn’t win, Mercer. Remember when you tried to reach your FBI friend and were told communications were out because of the solar max?”

“Yeah, we figured it was Rath blocking outgoing signals.”

“It wasn’t. The solar max has killed all radios and satellite phones on the ship. Ira can’t call anybody. Nobody can. We’re cut off.”

TEN MILES NORTH OF THE SEA EMPRESS

Conversation outside the launch’s cockpit was impossible with her twin Saab turbo-diesels at full throttle. The sea was calmer than could be expected, so the forty-foot craft once stowed aboard the Njoerd shot across the low waves like a thoroughbred. Gunther Rath was in the throttleman’s seat while Dieter, the professional car racer, manned the helm. Greta Schmidt and two of Rath’s security people were strapped against the bench seat behind them. Because of the boat’s offshore capabilities, no one actually sat. Rather, they leaned into specially designed C-shaped cushions that allowed them to use their knees to absorb impacts.

Everyone was armed. Everyone was tense.

The Pandora box was secured in the forward cabin accessible through the low door between the drivers’ positions. With it were four “guests.”

Thanks to the confusion Mercer created, their escape from the Sea Empress had been relatively simple. Soon after the initial burst of automatic fire at the atrium, Rath understood Mercer’s intentions weren’t to kill, merely to spread enough panic to ensure he left the ship. The German knew he was being manipulated, hated it, but had little choice. Raeder would need just a moment alone with the cruise ship’s captain and Rath’s plans were finished. Once he’d taken his hostages, he and Greta raced for the marina, avoiding any area where gunfire was reported. After making certain the Njoerd’s launch was fueled and ready, they wrecked the eight large shuttle boats stored in the garage by smashing holes in their fiberglass hulls with sledgehammers.

From the radar repeater on the Empress’s bridge, Rath knew the Italian destroyer was eight miles south of the luxury liner, protecting her seaward flank, and would be unable to pursue the launch once they swung north toward Iceland, ninety miles away. With the solar max at its zenith and even the most powerful marine radios hampered to a few miles’ range, the Italians were deaf and mute.

Rath was making the best of the disasters that had befallen him and maintained optimism that they would be able to recover the sunken Pandora boxes and turn them over to Libya. If he couldn’t, he was confident that the single box in his possession would guarantee a financially secure future for him and Greta.

He figured he only needed a two-hour head start to escape Iceland once they reached its shores. It would take twice that time just for the Empress to get close enough to the island to report what had happened. By then Rath would have sent a chopper to the Njoerd, and he and Greta would be on a leased jet for a hop to Tripoli. He looked over his shoulder to where she huddled in her parka and offered her a reassuring smile. They’d be okay.

Mercer would have slammed down the phone if Rath’s unimpeded escape hadn’t been entirely his fault. It didn’t matter that the rest of his team had agreed with his assessment about the communications from the Empress. He’d made the call to let Rath go and radio the authorities afterward. And now the German was miles away with one of the boxes and there was nothing he could do to stop him.

Like hell there wasn’t. The idea came to him in a moment of clarity that overwhelmed his swelling feelings of defeat. “Erwin, put Raeder on the phone.”

“You’re on a speaker phone here in the bridge,” the president of Kohl said at once. “What do you want me to do?”

“Rath will be heading to Iceland. Turn the Empress northward and tell the captain to push the engines as far as they will go.”

“Herr Mercer, this is Captain Heinz-Harold Nehring.” The voice was accented but commanding. Mercer imagined a ramrod-straight veteran who’d seen and done it all. “The Sea Empress is capable of twenty-eight knots. We will never catch Rath. His boat is too fast. I recommend we alert the destroyer Intrepido with signal flares and, once we are close enough for voice contact, have them