The Goddess Under Zakros

by Paul Moomaw

  “Polish crystal,” Fugger said, pointing to it.

  “First class,” Pray said, unable to resist.

  Fugger grinned. “Absolutely, Herr Pray.”

  Crew quarters lay on the deck below. “Two men to a cabin,” Fugger said. “No carpet, perhaps, but real beds. And television in each one.” He pointed to a closed cabinet in one corner. “We have a satellite dish.”

  “No bar, though,” Pray said.

  “Very true. I absolutely forbid the crew to use alcohol, or drugs of any kind for that matter. To allow it could cause a very serious loss of control, and I insist on control here. It is my little world. The television is part of that. If they are watching the video, they aren’t talking, and if they aren’t talking, they aren’t conspiring, yes? For the opposite reason, the passenger quarters have no television. I want them to talk, to develop a sense of camaraderie. It makes their memories of the voyage more positive, and that increases the likelihood they will send their friends tome.”

  “Quite the psychologist,” Pray said.

  Fugger nodded curtly. “I have studied that, yes. I like to have insight into the people I deal with.”

  “More control?”

  Fugger spread his hands, gestured around him.

  “This is my world, Herr Pray. If I were to lose it, I would lose everything that matters to me. I do not take chances with it.” He led them back toward the bridge. “The crew will return soon, and there will be dinner to eat and the sunset to watch. In the meantime, let me offer you another drink.”

  Pray hung back as they reached the bridge.

  “I think I’d like to stay in the breeze for a while,” he said.

  Fugger cocked his head quizzically. The wind was strong and gusting. “Of course,” he said at length. “Whatever you like. Only, don’t fall off anything, please.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Pray said. He watched the others disappear into Fugger’s stateroom, counted to one hundred, and then stepped quickly onto the catwalk that led to the stern.

  His eye caught movement below, and he froze, then stepped slowly forward, rocking on the balls of his feet. Gotard stood at the edge of a sea of barrels on the deck below the catwalk, head to head with a dark man in a caftan. Gotard waved his hands and talked rapidly to the other man, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking stiffly out to sea. Gotard grabbed his shoulder, and the other man shifted and gazed at him silently. Even at a distance, Pray could feel the intimidation and power in the look. Gotard released the man’s shoulder and stepped back, slumping a little and continuing to talk. He pointed out over the barrels, jerked his head toward them, and began to maneuver through them toward the stern. He stopped once and turned back to speak to the other man, who shrugged and threw his hands skyward, then began to follow.

  Pray dropped to a crouch and began to follow, wanting to place himself close enough to hear the conversation. Then he froze again. Someone approached from behind.

  “Please, I must insist that you join the rest of us.”

  Pray turned. Fugger stood behind him. “I simply cannot risk having a guest injured, and as I have said, this part of the ship is dangerous.” He smiled without appearing amused. “Will I have to padlock your stateroom tonight?”

  “You never know,” Pray said. He straightened and walked past Fugger and toward the bridge. The German followed silently.

  Chapter 42

  Terry Parker sat silently under the Old Man’s gaze and squirmed inside. Bad had, indeed, gone to worse. Bad had been when the Old Man summoned him back to Langley. Worse was now, with the Old Man here, the fat old man who hated to travel, even more hated to fly, and most of all hated to spend time anywhere south of Paris or east of Berlin. Worst of all was that he sat, now, in a run down hotel room in the port of Tunis, where the people only approximated white. He stared at Parker with lizard eyes while a third man, whom the Old Man had introduced as Moishe Levy, and who was supposed to be Israeli, an agent of the Mossad, but who had the cold, blond look of a German, and all the charm of a Gestapo agent, talked about a string of events that could lead the Old Man to only one conclusion that Parker was a fuckup.

  “The device is small,” Levy said. He handed the Old Man the first of a stack of photographs he held in his hand. “A suitcase bomb, or in this case a barrel bomb.” He smiled a thin smile. “When I was in college in the United States, we carted beer kegs around that would contain this weapon nicely. For parties. We called them keggers. This would be a hell of a kegger.”

  The Old Man passed the photo to Parker without comment.

  Levy handed the next snapshot to Parker. “I believe you know this man,” he said. The picture was of Rashid al Hamani. “He acquired the device in Marseilles, from a French neo-Nazi named Derain, who got in turn from a German dealer in contraband, a man of no particular political allegiance, named Egon Tarnewitz. The German got it from an American, a senior master sergeant who has made a nice sideline for several years selling armaments from the U.S. Army depot at Frankfurt.” Levy smiled again. “Your military counterintelligence has known of him. They say they are setting him up for a sting, and that they don’t want to rush things, because they are convinced persons of greater authority are involved. They say they don’t want to frighten the higher-ups away.” The Israeli shrugged and handed the rest of the pictures to the Old Man. “They have been saying that for a year and a half.”

  Spread the blame a little at least, Parker thought, not that it would do him any good. The current mess had happened on his watch. Make it good or be dog meat, he knew. What he did not know was how to make it good.

  The Old Man glanced briefly at the photos and gave them to Parker, who shuffled through them. One especially caught his eye; it was of Gotard and Rashid, standing on the deck of a small craft in some harbor or other, a black barrel between them.

  “Rashid has recently made connections with a Frenchman named Gotard,” Levy said. “He is first mate aboard a waste disposal ship.”

  “Your friends,” the Old Man said. He rubbed his hands briskly together. “Mr. Levy proposes to take care of our little problem for us.”

  “We know the nuclear device is at present aboard that ship,” the Israeli said. “We are informed that Rashid al Hamani intends to use it, directly or indirectly, in an attack on the state of Israel. We cannot permit this, of course. We intend to take the ship and dispose of the weapon. We will dispose of Rashid at the same time, of course, in a manner that will send a message back to Libya.” He rose, rubbed his hands together, and grinned. “If you like, we can finish with your Frenchman, too.”

  Parker sat still, the sinking feeling intensifying. To be rescued by an Israeli tore it for sure. The Old Man didn’t like Jews. “When does this happen?” he asked.

  “Tonight.” Levy replied.

  Chapter 43

  Julian was drunk. Pray sat cross-legged on one of the stateroom’s twin beds and gazed at his brother’s snoring form, sprawled across the dark blue spread that covered the other.

  “What a disappointing big brother you’ve turned out to be,” Pray said. He stretched out on his back and stared at the ceiling. He had not noticed how much Julian had been drinking during the evening. He himself had accepted almost none of the wine and liquor that had flowed throughout mealtime. He had been too busy observing Fugger, and big, ugly Gotard. They made an odd couple, the Frenchman and his German boss. Fugger sipped at champagne, about which he had made an almost apologetic little speech to the effect that the sparkling wine solved the problem of red versus white, because it transcended the issue, and made polite conversation with the brothers Pray, skipping from subject to subject, displaying a surprising amount of knowledge. Gotard gulped straight shots of iced vodka, occasionally berating the young steward loudly when the liquid was not cold enough. He ignored the other men pointedly, and pawed happily at Demetria, who appeared to enjoy it. Julian had seemed not to notice or care. But something, Pray decided, Demetria’s defection, or Irene’
s death, or maybe just life in general, had been eating at him.

  A low pitched, hollow bong nudged Pray from his musings. The sound repeated once, followed by a heavy grinding noise. It reminded him of a well-muffled garbage disposal. Pray touched the bulkhead next to the bed and felt vibrations.

  His curiosity aroused, Pray rolled off the bed and slipped on his jacket, then glanced down at his pale blue Levis.

  “Won’t do at all,” he muttered. He opened his duffel, pulled out a pair of dark gray sweats, and slipped them on over the jeans. As he bent over the bag to close it again, he saw the Minox camera that Londos had given him, reached for it, paused, then finished the movement and tucked the camera into his jacket pocket with a shrug. Vietnam had left him with little faith in high tech gadgets, but the camera, at least, could do no harm. He returned to the door and opened, glancing back at his brother as he did. Julian had not stirred.

  The door closed smoothly, with only the softest of clicks.

  “First class,” Pray murmured with a smile. The passageway was empty, and he moved quickly along it to the stairs that led up to the bridge. The doorway to the outside was latched open, and Pray paused again at that point, listening for sounds of life. The night was clear and calm, and der Rattensinger lay dead in the water, an uneven breeze sweeping over it from the bow. The muffled grinding that had penetrated his cabin wall now transformed itself into the clear sound of machinery at work, somewhere toward the stern. Pray caught snatches of men talking, their voices reaching him in the eddies of the breeze.

  He eased himself onto the bridge, stepped forward, and looked over the railing toward the darkened bow of the ship. The circle of the helicopter landing pad glowed faintly under the glimmer of stars. If there was a moon, it had either set, or not yet risen.

  To the stern light shone softly through the mesh flooring of the catwalk that led from the bridge to the giant dome. Pray hesitated briefly, then crept onto the catwalk, keeping low, scuttling more than walking. Once, he froze when he heard a scraping sound on the deck below him, but no other noise followed, and he continued until he reached the dome, where a narrow, railed platform, built of the same mesh as the catwalk, circled out of sight. The source of light lay beyond that. Pray stared back toward the bridge, trying to pierce the darkness, and realized for the first time that the ship did not show any running lights.

  Somebody wants to be invisible, he thought, and began to edge around the platform toward the rear of the dome. Half way around, he discovered the source of both the sound he had heard, and the light. A giant ramp cut through the middle of the deck, beginning just behind the dome, and sloping down to open water. It housed a wide conveyor belt that rumbled as it moved, carrying clusters of black barrels downward. Just above it, imbedded in the vertical bulkheads on either side of the ramp, soft hooded lights glowed. They gave a ghostlike illumination to the barrels that descended the ramp like dark, lumpy soldiers. At the bottom, where the conveyor belt curled into the sea, a small craft rose and fell gently in the swell.

  Someone spoke, directly under his feet. Pray squeezed against the wall of the dome, certain he recognized Gotard. Slowly, he edged back toward the railing, then lifted himself for a cautious peek. At the rear of the dome a steel ladder dropped to the deck. The Frenchman lounged against it, hands on hips, close enough to spit on if Pray had possessed the nerve, jerking his head toward the ramp as two men Pray assumed were crew struggled with one of the barrels.

  “Keep moving,” Gotard said in French. “I pay you to work, not play with yourselves.” The Arab, the one whom Pray had seen with Gotard earlier, stood nearby. He smiled at Gotard’s remark, the subdued lighting from the ramp reflecting from remarkably white teeth. The Arab glanced up suddenly, and Pray shrank back again, convinced momentarily that the man’s dark eyes had been focused on him. He counted to ten, then peeked over the rail again. The Arab had turned back to the work at hand, and showed no sign of having seen anything unusual.

  Pray squatted again pulled the Minox from his pocket. Then he rose slightly and took a position against the railing, wanting to expose as little of himself as possible, but unwilling to shoot blind, because he did not know how wide a field the lens would cover. He glanced cautiously over the railing. The Arab had gone, but Gotard. Pray raised himself a little more and pointed the camera down. He got what he hoped was a good shot of Gotard’s profile, another of the men with the barrels, and two of the barrels themselves on their ponderous march down the conveyor belt.

  He was trying for a shot of the little boat that rode at the bottom of the ramp when something cold and hard pressed against his head, just under and to the rear of his left ear. A voice he did not recognize, one that purred like a jungle cat, said, “I think you must come with me. Please stand up very slowly.”

  Pray rose, the pressure behind his ear riding up with him, then leaving. He turned slowly and looked. The Arab who had stood on the deck with Gotard gazed back at him.

  “Please,” he said, and motioned with the pistol he held in his hand.

  Pray took a cautious step backwards, then another, guiding his way with a hand on the railing until it fell away, telling him he had reached the ladder that stretched from platform to deck.

  The Arab waved the gun again. “Down, now, please.”

  Pray reached for the first run with his foot, found it, and began to descend. The Arab leaned over him.

  “I told you there was someone up here,” he called down. “You are too careless.”

  “Not as careless as this one,” Gotard’s voice floated up. Pray looked over his shoulder. The Frenchman stood at the foot of the ladder, grinning. As Pray neared the deck, Gotard grabbed for his leg.

  Pray jerked away. “Don’t touch the merchandise,” he said.

  Gotard laughed and reached for the leg again. Pray kicked. His heel caught the Frenchman under his chin. Gotard straightened up with a high-pitched grunt, and sat down abruptly on the deck.

  “You see?” the Arab said. “Too careless.”

  Gotard snarled and rolled to his feet as Pray dropped the rest of the way to the deck and crouched to face him. The Frenchman charged. He was fast, much faster than his size should have allowed. Pray hopped to one side and slipped the left fist Gotard threw at him, then stepped past a right punch, parrying it with his left hand and jamming his elbow as hard as he could into the other man’s ribs. The elbow bounced off and Gotard swung his arm back around, the back of his wrist and knuckles slamming into the Pray’s jaw, sending him staggering across the deck. As Gotard launched himself forward again, Pray caught his balance, cocked his left leg, and met him with as hard a roundhouse kick as he could muster. The foot landed perfectly, powerful and well focused. He might as well have kicked a steel wall. Pain shot up his leg, and then Gotard had grabbed his ankle and sent him, with a twist, flying into one of the nearby barrels. The Frenchman followed, again with that unsettling speed, and sent his foot snapping toward Pray’s head. Pray rolled to one side, then lifted himself onto his elbows, spun his body in an arc, and swept a heel at Gotard’s lower leg, trying to take his balance away. Gotard saw it coming and stamped Pray’s ankle into the deck. The pain reached all the way to the top of his head, and he gritted his teeth, trying not to whimper. Gotard stood with his hands on his hips, tossed his head back, and laughed. Then, as if to show his contempt for Pray, he leaped into the air and did a backwards somersault, never removing his hands from his hips. Pray’s eyes widened. Someone so big should not have such agility. He found himself remembering, irrelevantly, a television show he had watched once during an idle moment in a motel room. The screen had been filled with prancing, oiled body builders, who flexed to show their muscles, and then, to prove they were not muscle bound, performed feats of limberness. One of them had bent over backwards until he could bring his head up between his legs and grin at the audience. Another had sat down on the stage and tucked both of his legs behind his head, the feet sticking out like giant ears.

  But th
is was no television show, and Gotard was not interested in winning a prize. He already had his trophy, and demonstrated it by bending over Pray and slapping him repeatedly in the jaw. Pray fought desperately to avoid the blows, but no matter how he dodged and twisted, the Frenchman’s heavy hand was there to meet him. Finally it was all Pray could do to hang onto consciousness, and even that began to slip away as Gotard picked him up like a bag of garbage and carried him under one arm to the head of the ramp that still carried barrels down toward the water.

  “Good-bye, cochon,” he said. He lifted Pray over his head, hunched his shoulders a little, and tossed him a dozen feet down the ramp. It did not hurt as much as it might have, because Pray was still half unconscious, and the slope of the ramp made his landing gentler. Pray rolled another several feet, unable to stop, until his body came to a halt against one of the drums. He lay there, dazed, telling himself to get up, to move, before the ramp carried him to the water. There was a thump and a rumble, and then one of the barrels from the deck was rolling and bouncing toward him while Gotard wrestled another one to the edge of the ramp. Pray willed himself again to move, finally managed to, but not quite enough, and the barrel rolled over a part of his left hand. It didn’t hurt right away, but Pray knew it would, and the fingers seemed not to want to function.

  Gotard sent another drum down the ramp. As he turned for a third, Pray became aware of a loud sound, and thought at first it was his own heart hammering in his temples. But the sound grew louder, and was joined by a hooting wail from somewhere forward on the ship. Gotard wheeled and looked skyward, then sprinted with a curse for the ladder the Arab had escorted Pray down. He swarmed up it, half pulled, half vaulted himself onto the platform, and disappeared.