Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“So what happened?” Barlow asked.

“About four hours out of Tampico, in other words about ten a.m., the air-conditioning went out. Now, I’m willing to accept some small responsibility for that—”

“You got here last night, right?” Barlow interrupted.

“Correct.”

“Which means before that, you were in Argentina, right?”

“Correct.”

“So how could you be responsible for an air-conditioning system failing in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?”

“Because, when I was in Korea having them build the Czarina of the Gulf I naively believed a Korean swindler when he told me his Korean Karrier air conditioners were just as good as American Carrier air conditioners and he could let me have them for half of what Carrier was asking. Okay? Curiosity satisfied?”

“You say the air conditioners went out?” Castillo asked. “So what?”

“So it gets pretty warm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on a sunny day.”

“So you open the portholes,” Charley said. “And let the cool sea air breezes in.”

“Unfortunately, that is not possible on the Czarina of the Gulf,” Pevsner said.

“You can’t open the portholes on the Czarina of the Gulf?”

“The way that miserable Korean con man sold me his Korean Karrier air conditioners was to tell me that since I would have air-conditioning I wouldn’t have to open any portholes; that I could save all the money it would have cost me to install all those fancy and expensive brass porthole hinges and locks. And that the money I was going to save by not installing openable portholes was going to just about pay for his Korean Karrier air-conditioning. At the time, I considered it a cogent argument. So there you are.”

“Well, what happened when the air-conditioning went out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?” Barlow asked.

“Well, the Alabama schoolteachers, most of whom were a little hungover anyway, naturally got pretty thirsty and started drinking that goddamned bottled Aqua Mexicana. And thirty minutes after they did—whammo!”

“Montezuma’s revenge,” Castillo said sympathetically.

“In spades,” Pevsner said. “In spades!”

“What does that mean?” Barlow asked.

“Try to picture this, Dmitri,” Pevsner said. “Try to imagine sixteen hundred and six hungover schoolteachers afflicted with Montezuma’s revenge—”

“What’s Montezuma’s revenge?” Barlow asked.

“Think urgent needs, Tom,” Castillo explained.

“Oh!”

“. . . all trying to get into the Czarina of the Gulf’s four hundred ladies’ restrooms at the same time. That averages out to four schoolteachers per restroom. It was chaos, absolute chaos, and that’s an understatement if there ever was one.”

“What finally happened?” Barlow asked.

“Well, and I’ll admit that at this point Captain Putin had no choice, he managed to get most of the crew into the engine room.”

“Why did he do that?” Barlow asked.

“Unless he had there would have been a massacre. The schoolteachers were roaming the ship with fire axes they were going to use to behead—or maybe castrate—the crew. Captain Putin had to use fire hoses to restrain them. And when he finally got everybody he could into the engine room—the Karrier a/c shorted out the engines—he battened the hatches and sent out an SOS. And the rest is history.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The Mexican Coast Guard sent a tugboat out to the Czarina of the Gulf and towed her here. Where the world’s press was waiting. The whole world saw Captain Putin being taken off in chains to face charges of crimes against humanity. The Mexicans had a hard time protecting him from the schoolteachers and their union representatives.”