by Tom Wilde
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Aboard the Phaeton
The next thing I knew, I was miserably surprised to find myself alive. I was cold, chilled by the damp clothes I still wore, and nauseated by a gut that had been set afire. I opened my eyes and instantly shut them again as a spear of light shot into my head. I gritted my teeth and forced my body to rise, aided by the grip I found on the edge of the bed, and hauled myself up to a sitting position while ignoring the grinding pains in my chest. Shading my eyes, I guardedly looked around and saw I had been left on the floor of the neo-samurai stateroom. My head felt dizzy and I could feel the motion of the ship along with the subtle vibrations of the engines. Sunlight was pouring into the room from the partially curtained windows, far too bright to be coming from something as small as a common porthole. I went to check the time on my watch and found myself staring dumbly at my bare wrist. A cursory search yielded the fact that my pockets had been emptied as well. I’d been completely stripped of anything useful, including my self-made lock picks.
I gathered what was left of my strength and stood up on shaking legs, pushed off from the bed, and bounced along the wall to the doors. To my surprise, they were unlocked, and I leaned my head out into the hallway only to see a young, darkly handsome man dressed in a white uniform and cradling a shortened AK-47 standing guard in the rotunda down the hall. He motioned with the barrel of the assault rife, urging me back into the stateroom. As I shut the doors, I briefly wondered how many thousands of dollars worth of damage he could have done to the richly appointed hallway if he’d let rip with his machine gun.
Retreating back inside the room, I tried the only other set of doors, a pair of black lacquered ones adorned with gold-leaf inlays, and found a small but lavishly furnished bathroom, complete with a shower and tub. The only thing that ruined the view was the reflection in the triple mirror of a walking corpse. I’d seen drowning victims look better than I did at the moment. But as the bath was equipped with everything a guest might need, I wasted no time peeling off my clammy clothes and getting into the shower, pouring some cleansing liquid heat on my skin, and scouring the bitterness out of my mouth. When I felt halfway human, I reluctantly shut off the water and rubbed myself dry with the oversized towels. I grimaced at my face in the mirror as I saw the clean-shaven swath that Rhea had made on my neck with the combat knife, and since my hands weren’t shaking quite so badly now I decided I might as well take the rest of my whiskers off.
Finally, I wrapped myself in a guest robe, let the steam out into my cabin, and opened the curtains. I had a full-sized window view of a vast expanse of sea under a cloudless blue sky with sunlight sparkling off the waves as the ship arrowed across the water.
I heard the door to the stateroom open behind me as Rhea called out cheerfully, “Good morning. I heard you were awake.”
I turned to look and almost did a double take. Rhea was wearing a sundress that was a riot of color, and had her long, glossy black hair down and free. The way she was smiling, she looked like a tourist having the time of her life.
“What are you doing here?”
She glided up to me, standing too close for comfort, and offered up a white bundle. “I’ve brought you some clothes. Please dress now. Vanya wants to speak with you.”
I took the clothes from her and waited for her to back up and give me some space, but she just stood there, smiling at me. So I let the robe fall—damned if I was going to let her make me flinch—and put on the white shorts and short-sleeved shirt that looked like they could have been a British Navy tropical uniform. While I was buttoning the shirt, Rhea reached out and took my left hand in hers. She lifted my arm up until the wedding ring I wore reflected sunlight. “Why do you still wear this?” she asked. “That woman back on the island is not your wife. Are you actually married to someone else?”
“No.”
“Ah. Well, then, you won’t be needing it anymore.” Rhea slipped her fingers up my hand, pulling the ring off while reaching over with her free hand to open the sliding glass window. A buffet of warm salt air and engine noise blew into the room and my ring flew out of it, taking its electronic secret to a watery grave. I kept my face in neutral as I wondered what Smith would make of the ring’s last signal.
As she slid the window shut, Rhea sighed as if in satisfaction and said, “Now, we need to go. Vanya does not like to be kept waiting.”
I followed her out of the stateroom and aft to the rotunda. Mirrors inlaid with gold leaf gave the illusion of depth as Rhea led me to a circular stairway, where I also noticed that the ship had an elevator system installed. We went one deck down and Rhea took me to another door aft, only this one looked as solid as the hatch of a submarine. She spun the locking wheel and pulled the hatch open, then she reached in and pulled aside a thick white curtain. When I stepped through, I saw that the bulkhead in this room was heavily armored.
Rhea should have said “Open Sesame,” because going inside was like walking into a story straight out of the Arabian Nights. The large room was hourglass shaped and dressed in silky curtains. Soft light emanating from chandeliers illuminated a sybaritic scene that a Saudi prince would have envied. My bare feet sank into a rich Oriental rug as my sense of smell was allured by the scent of rich and exotic food, spiced with a hint of incense. Low tables on either side held delicacies, and it took more willpower than I cared to admit to not let my empty stomach lead me astray.
Vanya was ensconced on a divan of plush cushions, guarded on either side by a couple of his young soldiers. Vanya himself was decked out in something that looked like a cross between white silk pajamas and a naval admiral’s uniform, while his guards wore the same white shirt and shorts arrangement that I did. It would have been a lot more aesthetic if they’d been carrying spears instead of automatic rifles. The last person in the room was an older man with dark, scarred features, standing off to the side with arms crossed and bearing a scowling expression. He was also in a white uniform, but one that declared him to be a ship’s captain. He gave the impression that he’d be more at home among the Barbary pirates of old.
Vanya waved a greeting. “Ah, Blake. So, what do you think of my ship?”
“Caligula would have been envious. I need to know about Caitlin. This deal is off if she dies.”
Rhea said, “It’s been just over nine hours since we left. We should reach Corsica within forty hours overall.”
“Forty hours! But Caitlin—”
“Will be past the virus’s incubation period,” Rhea finished. “She is young. She should be able to survive for some time after we arrive. But I don’t think Ombra will make it. You could save her much earlier, you know.”
“How?”
It was Vanya who answered. “You could tell us exactly where the tomb of Alexander is. Once we have verified the information, we could send the signal to give the cure to your Caitlin. And Ombra too, if you like, though I don’t know why you’d want to save him.”
I felt my jaw clench as if to keep the secret of the Blood Islands locked in my teeth. I was absolutely certain that once Vanya knew the location, I’d be tossed overboard to join my wedding ring down in the depths. Not trusting myself to speak, I just shook my head.
Vanya shrugged, as if the matter was of no great importance. “Regardless, Captain Tobias here will need to know where we should anchor the ship once we reach Corsica. We should be in the vicinity by early tomorrow evening. Also, I need to know exactly what resources we will need to recover Alexander’s remains.”
Rhea directed me to sit on the other side of a low oval table across from Vanya, and she settled in next to me. The table itself was covered in nautical charts and several color photographs I assumed were of the island of Corsica. They depicted a variety of locales, from dusty rose-colored Mediterranean towns to rugged mountains and forests to seaside scenes. Surveying the maps, I asked, “Where are we now?”
Captain Tobias answered in a rolling bass voice with a lilting accent, “We are on course fo
r the Strait of Messina once we round Italy; six hours present speed.”
My eyes traced our route from the Ionian Greek islands across to the southern tip of Italy and the narrow passage between the Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily. Once clear of the strait, the course would be northwest to Corsica. There was another chart on the table that displayed Corsica itself and the smaller islands surrounding it. Then a particular photograph caught my eye.
“What is it?” Rhea asked quickly. “What do you see?”
Mentally, I was kicking myself. While I was looking over the maps and photos on the table, Rhea was studying me—watching to see if I would give away a clue to our destination by making a reaction. The picture that arrested my interest was of a stone tower standing guard on a rocky shoreline. It looked like a giant-sized rook chess piece, and my heart skipped a beat as I wondered if this was the watchtower Lord Byron referred to in his letter to Percy Shelley.
I was glad to see my hand wasn’t shaking as I reached across the photograph of the watchtower and tapped the map of the sea that separated Corsica from Italy. “Monte Cristo island,” I said aloud.
Vanya leaned forward with greedy alacrity. “Monte Cristo? Is that the location?”
“No,” I replied. “But that would have been fun, wouldn’t it? It does make me wonder why Alexandre Dumas chose that particular island as the location for the hidden treasure in The Count of Monte Cristo.”
Vanya was not amused. “Indeed,” he said flatly as he settled back into his cushions. I examined the chart showing the Tyrrhenian Sea that separated Italy from Corsica, thinking about Lord Byron’s letter, where he wrote that he could see Elba and Corsica from his seaside villa. Although he didn’t know it at the time, old Byron was also looking straight at the place where his friend and fellow poet Percy Shelley was destined to drown. But all of this concerned the eastern side of Corsica. The Blood Islands, or the “Iles Sanguinaires,” as the map proclaimed, were on the western side of the island, right next to Ajaccio, the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. And again I wondered at the confluence of historical events.
I let my eye wander over the photographs, careful not to display particular interest. “Looks like lots of mountainous terrain here.”
“Is this a concern?” Vanya inquired.
I shrugged. “I guess we won’t know until we get there.”
“We’ve been doing our homework,” Rhea said. “Corsica is one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea and covers over three thousand square miles. It’s interesting to note that Corsica has over one hundred caves scattered throughout the island.”
The last statement was a gambit designed to draw information out of me. “Really?” I said in my best politely bored voice. To move Vanya’s attention away from the map and pictures, I asked, “So what resources do we have on this old tub of yours?”
It was Rhea who replied with, “We have twenty-eight able-bodied young men aboard. All have had military training. And we have enough armaments and explosives to overthrow a small government, if we had to.”
Vanya stroked his white beard and said with a sly tone in his voice, “It would save considerable time if we knew what part of Corsica we should head toward. Time your Caitlin can’t afford to lose.”
I was trapped between the inescapable logic of Vanya’s statement and my need to retain enough information to save my own life. Finally I said, “You can put into port at Ajaccio. That will be close enough.”
Vanya’s eyes lit up as he hissed, “Ajaccio! Of course! It was Napoleon’s first destination after he fled from Egypt. But I’d have thought that was too obvious. Still, we’ll anchor well off the coast. I don’t want to be trapped in the harbor.”
Rhea said, “We have a variety of small boats aboard. We can move our men to the island on those.”
“What sort of defenses can we expect?” Vanya asked quickly.
I just shrugged like a gambler with a fifth ace up his sleeve and said, “I guess you’ll just have to take me along to find out.”
Vanya’s eyes flashed, and then clouded over as he leaned back on his cushions. “Very well,” he said, then to Rhea, “Take Blake back to his room.”
Rhea and I stood and I let her lead me out of the suite while Vanya had a hurried and hushed discussion with Captain Tobias. Walking down in the marble-floored hallway of the rotunda, I saw another armed guard on duty, who nodded to Rhea as she escorted me to my room. “Try and get some rest,” she advised with a cryptic smile. “I’m sure you’ll need it.”
Once back in my seagoing-samurai stateroom, I was glad to see an array of silver platters and carafes of food and drink waiting for me, fit for Arabian royalty. I wasted no time in refueling myself while I observed that the main difference between the forces of Good and Evil came down to the fact that in this particular case, Evil had much better accommodations.
The rest of the day was torture in slow motion, with every moment counting as a nail in Caitlin’s coffin. At one point during the seemingly endless day I heard the engines slow and I felt waves of uneven turbulence sway the ship. I drew the curtains back and saw we were traversing the Strait of Messina. From my port-side window I watched as we sailed past the island of Sicily with the western sun backlighting the buildings and towns dotting the reddish rocky landscape and the ships and boats sailing to and from the harbors, until we cleared the last spur of land and picked up speed in the open sea.
Hours later, after I’d watched the sun sink into a flaming red death, I heard the stateroom doors open and saw Rhea enter, leading a rolling chrome serving cart. She’d changed from her multicolored sundress into a red and gold kimono, but my eyes were drawn to the bottles she’d brought. “What are you doing here?” I inquired.
Rhea set the tray on one of the black lacquered tables. “This is my room,” she said simply.
I went over and looked at the contents of the serving tray. “Jack Daniel’s and Bacardi?”
“Yes. And Russian vodka, along with some cocaine from Peru or hashish from Turkey, if you’d prefer.”
I also spotted my crushed box of cigarettes and my lighter lying next to a hash pipe and small silver spoon. “Isn’t this kind of premature for a celebration?” I asked.
“This is our last night before we reach Corsica. We should take advantage of the time we have.” Rhea picked up my lighter and took one of my flattened cigarettes from the box. She lit up and drew in, then passed the cigarette to me, all the while keeping her dark eyes aimed at my face. I took the offered cigarette and tasted her lips on the filter as she held up my lighter, displaying the side with the dragon design, and asked, “Does this hold a special meaning for you?”
“My lighter? Not really. Why do you ask?”
Rhea traced the etching as she said, “I was born in the Year of the Dragon.”
I went to open the window. “Really? I’d have guessed some other creature entirely.”
I heard her laugh as she asked, “So what would you prefer?”
I gazed out across a sea full of stars. “I’ll take a Bacardi on ice and some privacy.”
I heard the tinkling of ice and glass, and then the lights went low and soft as gentle music floated into the room. Rhea’s jasmine scent heralded her arrival next to me as she handed me a glass and sat down on the divan beneath the window. She took my arm and guided me down beside her. “I’m staying here with you tonight,” she said softly.
“Why?”
“Vanya thinks someone should keep an eye on you, so you don’t get into any mischief. Besides, I’m the only woman on board. You should feel privileged.”
I took a drag of smoke and chased it with the liquid fire of the rum. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”
In the semidarkness, I watched as Rhea gracefully rose from the couch and walked around the large bed, letting the kimono fall from her body. She slid in between the covers and smiled at me, resting her head in her hand and letting her midnight-black hair spill over the pillows.
; Despite the fact that I knew what a dangerous and ruthless creature she was, I could feel the electric thrill evoked by the presence of a desirable woman. I took a last draw of my cigarette and tossed it overboard, then finished my drink in one swallow. I shut the windows as the lights in the room flickered out and I considered that my choices of places to sleep boiled down to the carpeted deck or sharing the large bed with Rhea. Despite my better judgment, I chose the bed.
The silken sheets felt cool and slick, but the temperature rose fast when Rhea slid over to my side, wrapping herself around me, and laughing as she felt the shirt and shorts I’d kept on. “This could be our last night together,” she whispered in a husky, bedroom voice.
She ran a finger down my face. Her fingertip felt rough, like the tongue of a cat—a reminder of all the deadly things her hands could do. She was a creature so much like myself, and like me—she wasn’t born this way. Something in her past had changed her. I reached up and took her hand. “What happened?” I whispered.
She froze. “What do you mean?”
“What made you sell out your country to a man like Vanya?”
She pulled her hand away as if it had caught fire. “A man like Vanya? There has never been a man like Vanya in my life,” she whispered fiercely.
Rhea raised herself up on one elbow, looking down at me. “As for the other so-called men I have known, my father abandoned my mother before I was born, leaving her in poverty. You don’t know what it was like growing up a half-caste in Japan, the rejected daughter of a ‘gaugin.’ The next man in my life came to me when I turned eighteen and told me how I could serve my country and my people. That’s when I became a whore for the government.”
Her bitterness was palpable as she continued. “I was trained for other things, of course. But with my appearance, my superiors thought that I could serve my country best by seducing men, and in some cases women, and stealing their secrets from them. After all, it was not like they were asking a pure-blooded woman to commit such unclean acts, no? Then I discovered that one of the many men I had been sent to have sex with had given me a disease.”