Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

Kerikov blew out a heavy sigh. “God, I miss the Cold War. You’re Chechen, aren’t you?”

“If it appeases whatever remains of your conscience, I am not Chechen, and the weapon won’t be used anywhere within the former Soviet Union.” He could almost see Kerikov thinking that the weapon wouldn’t be used at all.

“The codes are locked in the safe behind that painting.” He nodded toward a nude hanging on one wall.

Juan used the barrel of his pistol to swing the painting back on its long hinge in case it was booby-trapped. The safe was about two feet square, with a ten-digit electronic pad. “Combination?”

“Two-five, one-zero, one-nine-one-seven.”

It took Juan a second to recognize the numbers, because Europeans put days ahead of months when giving dates. “The date of Russia’s October Revolution. Nice touch.”

He punched in the numbers, and made Kerikov stand directly in front of the safe when he threw the handle. Juan had recognized the safe model, and knew if an incorrect code had been entered a stun grenade would detonate. The code was legitimate.

Inside were stacks of currency, a pistol, which Juan stuffed in his pocket, and countless folders and files.

“Should be near the bottom.” Kerikov offered, to get this ordeal over with quicker.

Juan scanned some of the documents as he searched. The Russian was involved in some heavy deals, including arming Saddam Hussein before the U.S. invasion, and a triangle trade of Afghan opium for Russian weapons for African conflict diamonds.

Near the bottom was a file with the label November Sky in Cyrillic. Juan leafed through a couple of pages, satisfying himself that it was what he was after. Once the computer aboard the Oregon translated it into English, he assumed Eric and Hali could understand the technical jargon.

He slid the document into a waterproof bag and turned to Kerikov. As much as he wanted to tell Kerikov what he thought of him, Juan held his tongue. “When you find al-Asim, tell him what happened tonight is unrelated to your business together. Tell him it is a piece of your past coming back to haunt you, but the situation is now resolved. Now please turn around and drop to your knees.”

For the first time since Juan had pulled the gun on him, Kerikov showed fear. It was in his eyes, though he managed to keep it out of his voice. “You got what you wanted.”

“I am not going to kill you.” Juan withdrew the hypodermic case and removed one of the needles. “It’s the same drug I gave al-Asim. You’ll be out for a few hours. Nothing more.”

“I hate needles. I’d rather have you hit me over the head.”

Juan smashed his FN into Kerikov’s temple so hard that a pound or two of extra force would have shattered the bone and killed him. He collapsed like an imploded building. “Suit yourself,” Juan said, and jabbed the needle home anyway.

The outside wall of Kerikov’s office was curved glass that bowed out from the hull in a shallow arc. Juan opened one of the windows and peered upward. There was no one hanging over the railing above him. He stripped out of his tux jacket, shirt, and the fat suit. Beneath it, he wore a skintight black T-shirt with long sleeves. After stuffing the waterproof bag under the shirt and tossing Kerikov’s pistol out the window, he kicked off his shoes and eased himself into the water.

So long as he remained silent and didn’t look up, so his face wouldn’t show, his black wig made him blend in with the inky Mediterranean. He swam forward along the Matryoshka’s hull until he came to the anchor chain. There, he dove under the surface, crawling link by link down the chain until he came to the diving equipment Eddie and Franklin had cached earlier.

He donned the Draeger rebreather, weight belt, fins, and mask, and took a bearing off the luminous compass they had left for him. The Oregon was only a mile away, and, with the slack tide, his going would be even easier.

As he swam, he made a silent vow that this wouldn’t be the last time he paid a visit to Ivan Kerikov, and that the Russian wouldn’t fare so well in their next meeting.

CHAPTER 31

IT HADN’T BEEN TOO DIFFICULT FOR MARK AND Linda to hide the fact they didn’t have an assigned cabin. They purchased clothing and toiletries from the shops, and could shower in the locker rooms adjacent to the ship’s fitness facility. They slept in shifts on poolside deck chairs during the afternoon and spent their nights in the casino. With his photographic memory, Murph was an expert card counter, and had turned the four hundred dollars they brought with them into a sizable pot. He could have made a fortune, had he wanted to, but they needed to maintain their anonymity so he kept his winnings reasonable.

That all changed on the second day.

To the other passengers, the closing of the ship-to-shore communications room was mostly just an inconvenience. A few businesspeople grumbled, but most people either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Mark and Linda knew otherwise. And there were other subtle signs as well. They saw more crewmen roaming the decks, ostensibly to perform maintenance. However, they spent a great deal of time watching the passengers. No one was asking to see room keys yet, but Linda and Murph knew it was only a matter of time.

It was clear that the word was out that there were stowaways on the Golden Sky, and the cruise line was determined to find them.

More troubling than this information were the sniffles.

On the morning of their second day aboard ship, a number of passengers and crew had runny noses and suffered occasional bouts of sneezing. By listening to people talking near the pool and around the dining room, the two pieced together that everyone had felt fine t

he night before but that the ones who were sick had all gone to the midnight buffet, and that the waitstaff and cooks who’d worked the buffet shift were ill as well.

“It has to be a test,” Mark surmised.