Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

They wrapped the unconscious woman in a blanket and carried her up, to the promenade deck on the lower side. The fog had miraculously disappeared, and a small flotilla surrounded the ship, blazing lights reflected in the sea. Coast Guard helicopters hovered above like dragonflies. A steady stream of lifeboats plodded back and forth between the stricken liner and rescue ships.

Most of the lifeboat traffic was between the Doria and a huge passenger ship with the words Ile de France on its bow. Searchlights from the Ile were trained on the Doria. Word to abandon ship had never come down. After waiting for two hours, passengers simply went over the side on their own. Women and children and older people were being taken off first. Progress was slow because the only. way they could get off the boat was with ropes and nets.

Mrs. Carey was strapped onto a stretcher that was carefully lowered with lines down the side of the ship to a waiting lifeboat, where friendly hands reached up to receive her.

Carey leaned over the rail watching until his wife was safe, then turned to Angelo. '

"Better get your butt off this ship, my friend. She's gonna go down."

Angelo looked sadly around him. "Pretty soon, Mr. Carey I help a few more passengers first." Smiling, he said, "Remember what I say about my name." When Angelo first met the Careys he'd joked that his name meant "angel," someone who serves others.

"I remember." Carey enveloped the waiter's hand in his. "Thanks. I can never repay you. If you ever need anything, I want you to come to me. Understand?"

Angelo nodded "Grazie. I understand. Please say goodbye to the beta signora. "

Carey nodded, heaved himself over the side, and slid down a rope into the lifeboat. Angelo waved goodbye. He hadn't told Carey or anybody about the wild scene in the garage. This wasn't the time. There might never be a right time. Nobody would believe a fantastic story told by. a lowly waiter: He remembered a Sicilian saying: The bird who sings in the tree ends up in tie cooking pot. .

The death watch was almost over.

The last survivors had been taken off the ship in the pinkish

light of dawn. The captain and a standby crew stayed on the ship until the last minute to keep the liner from being claimed as salvage. Now they, too, slid down ropes into lifeboats.

As the warm morning sun climbed into a cloudless sky, the ship's list became ever sharper. By 9:50 A.M. she lay on her starboard side at a fortyfivedegree angle. The bow was partially submerged.

The Stockholm hove to about three miles away, her prow a twisted mass of metal. Debris littered the oily water. Two destroyer escorts and four Coast Guard cutters stood by Planes and helicopters circled overhead.

The end came around ten o'clock. Eleven hours after the collision, the Doria rolled completely onto her right side. The empty lifeboats that had defied all the crew's efforts to launch them floated away on their free of their davits at last. Foamy geysers exploded around the perimeter of the ship as air trapped in the hull blew out under pressure through the portholes.

Sunlight glinted on the huge rudder and the wet blades of the twin nineteenfoot propellers that had sent her steaming proudly across the ocean. Within minutes water engulfed the bow, the stern lifted at a steep angle, and the ship slid beneath the sea as if she'd been sucked under by the powerful tentacles of a gigantic sea monster.

As she sank, more seawater rushed into the hull and. filled compartments and staterooms. The pressure tearing apart metal and rivets produced that spooky, almost human moaning that used to send chills up the spines of submariners who had just sunk a ship.

The ship plunged toward the bottom in almost the same angle and position at which she sank. Two hundred twentyfive feet below, she came to a jarring stop, then settled levelly onto her sandy bier on her starboard side. Bubbles seething from hundreds of openings transformed the normally dark water around the wreck to a light blue.

Rubbish whirled around a tremendous vortex for at least fifteenteen minutes. As the water returned to normal, a Coast Guard boat moved in and dropped a marker buoy where the ship had been.

Gone from the world's sight was the twomilliondollar cargo of wines, fine fabrics, furniture, and olive oil.

Gone, too, was the incredible artworkthe murals and tapestries, the bronze statue of the old admiral.

And locked deep in the ship's interior was the black armored truck with the bulletriddled bodies and the deadly secret they had died for.

The tall blond man came .down the gangplank of the Ile de France onto Pier 84 and made his way to the customs shed. Wearing a black wool sailor's cap and a long overcoat, he was indistinguishable from the hundreds of passengers who swarmed onto the deck .

Discharging its humanitarian duty had put the French liner thirtysix hours behind schedule. It arrived in New York on Thursday afternoon to a tumultuous welcome, stayed long enough to unload seven hundred thirtythree Doria survivors. After accomplishing its historic rescue, the ship did a quick turnaround, steamed back up the Hudson

River and out to sea. Time was money, after all.

' "Next," the customs officer said as he looked up from his table.

The officer wondered for a second if the man in front of him had been injured in the collision and decided the scar had healed long ago. ,

"State Department's waiving passports for survivors. Just sign this blank declaration card. All I need is your name and U.S. address," the customs inspector said.

"Yes, thank you. They told us on the ship." The blond man smiled. Or maybe it was just the scar. "I'm afraid my passport is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean." He said his name was Johnson and that he was going to Milwaukee.

The officer pointed. "Follow that line, Mr. Johnson. The Public Health Service has got to check you for communicable diseases. Shouldn't take long. Next, please."