The Pandora Box

by Lilly Maytree

  If Scott was Peterson’s grandson, he would know every inch of this boat. She had forgotten about that pass through the bilges. If you didn’t mind crawling on your stomach along the inside ledge, the way Starr had done just last week, when he thought there was diesel fuel leaking into there. But what did she have left that was heavy enough to weigh down the hatch cover?

  Nothing. At least nothing she was willing to remove from her barricade at the door. Oh, what did it matter? There was always some way to get in, and she was wasting time. It wasn’t until she fished around for a few moments that she remembered the journal wasn’t in her bag anymore. Hawk had it last.

  Probably still in his desk drawer. Sometimes the most obvious places were the last ones anyone would look. It was finally getting dark now, so she switched on the light. Which threw an immediate shaft through the porthole and onto the churning, rising sea. But she didn’t care. Enough was enough.

  She pulled open the drawer and started rummaging…not there. The small frustration almost crumpled her again. “Lord, where is it? Where could it possibly…”

  “Dee” Scott’s voice…still up on deck…and still at the wheel. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to know, Heinrich!” she muttered. “Wouldn’t you just like to…”

  Maybe there was a safe behind Peterson’s picture. Like there was in back of the painting in the main salon. She reached for it, but it didn’t swing open like the other, and she saw that it was actually screwed to the wall. There was a screwdriver in the drawer, somewhere, she had just seen it.

  “Come up here—can you hear me, Dee?”

  “I’ve heard enough from you, all right.” She spoke to herself as she worked at loosening the screw. Couldn’t budge the one side (too tight), so she tried the other. It started turning almost immediately. In a few moments, she had it out and was able to pivot the picture up to reveal the space behind. The two journals were inside. Dee snatched up the one she had taken from the safety deposit box, turned around, and was promptly tossed onto the floor by the sudden jolt of a wave. The boat dipped crazily toward the churning sea, just as the screwdriver rolled off the desk. The long screw followed after and clattered across the floor. “Too much sail up, gentlemen…” She reached for the edge of the desk to pull herself to her feet.

  Pandora steadied and leveled a little, obviously being steered by a practiced hand. All right, so he knew what he was doing up there. He could sail. She ran back to the bed, not so much on purpose, as the force of another rising swell sent her plummeting toward the low end of the cabin until she had to either leap or crash into it. She leapt. Just as a splash of cold sea spilled in from the open port.

  “Dee, come help reef the main before it gets too—”

  “Help yourself, Heinrich Keller, Junior.” She called out loud enough for him to hear this time and thrust her hand through the porthole to hold the journal directly in the beam of light, so he could see exactly what she was going to do.

  “Wait. Don’t!” He let go of the wheel and leapt for it so fast, she was caught off-guard when he actually grabbed hold.

  Her grasp held only for a few seconds before he wrenched it out of her hand. In the same moment, Pandora swerved into the wind. Von Hayden yelled and jumped for the abandoned wheel as the vessel began to roll onto its beam ends. His sudden yank caused the boat to jibe with a loud crash of rigging, before the backwind jerked it over onto its other side. Scott was flung into the churning water as if he had been shot out of some giant sling.

  Dee heard a gasp for air, caught a fleeting glimpse of gray sweater going under, and then frantic clawing against the side of the boat in an effort to catch something to hold onto. A split second later, she heard him call out. The panic in his voice, along with the desperation of those words, echoed through her as if she had been struck by something physical. Words that faded into the dark churning sea within a mere few seconds, but seared themselves into the depths of her very soul. An agonizing string of German words, of which she only understood, one…

  “Mutti!”

  She slammed the porthole closed to stop another torrent of water rushing in and stumbled her way toward the stern windows. But by that time, she could see nothing but an angry following sea. When the decks began to tilt at a steep, dangerous angle, and Von Hayden didn’t correct it, the thought occurred to her he might not know what to do. Was he busy helping Scott back onboard? Another wave crashed into them, sending Dee to the floor again.

  Was this how it was going to end, then? Were they all going to drown at sea?

  Why hadn’t the Lord protected them? Had she strayed so far from her roots that she was no longer traveling (as her father always put it) on Divine assignment? Was there no way back from here?

  Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will save thee.

  The scripture flashed through her mind, and she took hold of it, just like the lifeline that was trailing out behind them. “Lord, if there’s a way out of this—if you show me the way out of this—I promise, I—”

  There was a familiar surge, and the yacht rose up and up, until the boat leveled out on the crest, paused and shuddered, and then went racing down the back of another giant swell like a toboggan in winter. Proof that the storm was coming up behind them like some growling hungry monster. She heard a splash off the stern and realized Von Hayden must have thrown out a sea anchor, in preparation for reducing sail.

  “Anna!” he called out. “Anna!” But there was no answer from the forward cabin.

  All at once, Dee heard a heavy grating sound behind her, and as she turned, the wooden hatch cover in the closet rose up slowly, as if of its own accord. She gasped at the sudden horror that Scott had found the lifeline, climbed back onto the boat, and crawled through the bilges to get in here. But just as she leapt to fling herself against it, she caught sight of a familiar swath of multicolored scarf instead.

  “Marion.” She pushed the heavy cover aside and dragged her friend out of the hole. “Oh, Marion! I thought you were dead!”

  “So did I!” she replied in a hoarse whisper. “I fell into a dead faint the minute I lifted this bilge hatch, and—I’ve been passed out in that hole for—I don’t know how long!”

  “You’ve been in the bilges all this time? Oh, Mare that was genius!”

  “Starr told me to get in there. That little passageway that runs along the starboard side of the engine room. I was hiding in it.” She pulled the trailing end of her caftan up behind her and wrung bilge-water out of it before getting unsteadily to her feet. “He said he had a bad feeling about everything, and—and oh, Dee! I thought they shot you!”

  “They missed.” Dee helped her over to the window seat but was reluctant to let go of her for fear she was just a vision that might disappear.

  “Where are the guys? Are they…”

  Dee couldn’t answer, except to cover her mouth with her hand as if she could stifle the sobs that were rising up in her.

  “I thought so!” Marion put an involuntary hand to her chest as if it were difficult to breathe. “But—I just can’t believe it!”

  “They got dumped off,” Dee practically choked on the words. “Left on that sinking boat. It all happened so fast, I’m not sure.”

  “What about White Fox?”

  “They came and they went.”

  Marion gasped. “They couldn’t have! I would have screamed my lungs out no matter how much it hurt―I can’t believe it!”

  “They released some toxic kind of nerve gas in here. I was just coming out of it when we were boarded, but I couldn’t move, holler or anything.”

  “You’d think somebody would have recognized you!”

  “They had my face covered with bandages. Said I was someone else and had a brain injury. That my parents and a surgeon were waiting to meet us in Japan. Anyway, they convinced White Fox we were the wrong boat and they let us go. Just like that! So we’re on our own, Mare.”

  “What are we going to
do?”

  There was a surge and a roll, and they both reached for the wall to hang on. “We could try the radio,” Dee replied. “But I can’t even relay our position. What good would that be?”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Just Dr. Von Hayden and the nurse. Scott fell overboard—oh, Mare, it was awful!”

  “Scott Evans? Our own Scott Evans?”

  “Marion, he’s Heinrich Keller! And for all I know, he could have climbed back aboard on the end of that lifeline, already! I thought it was him coming out of that hole, just now.”

  “I thought Peterson was Heinrich Keller.”

  “I just heard him confess to using Peterson’s real name—he’s been doing it for years. Probably ever since they locked Peterson up in Wyngate. He’s worse than the original, too. Anyway, he is Peterson’s grandson, and I’m convinced now that Peterson was the real Heinrich Keller. Who knows? Maybe they were in cahoots when they first started out. That old man had an amazing knack for getting people to do things.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “We’re going to go down with this boat if we don’t help them, but… they’ll kill us when we’re done. Oh, it… it just doesn’t look good for us, Marion!”

  There were a few moments of silence as the full impact of that thought set in.

  “We’ve got to do something! We can’t just sit here.”

  “The only choice I can see is if we want to drown or be shot,” Dee replied miserably. “I’m so sorry, Mare!”

  Pandora plummeted down the backside of another wave and Marion reached for the wall and held on. “Gads, It feels like we’ve got way too much sail up.”

  “We do. But I don’t care. It’s keeping Von Hayden busy.”

  “Well, they’ll get it taken care of sooner or later. We’ve got to think of something.”

  “It’s just Von Hayden up there right now. The nurse is sleeping off some kind of sedative in your cabin. Hey…hey…”

  “Do you have an idea? I knew you’d come up with one!”

  “While he’s busy, we could get a rope and tie her into your cabin.” There was another long pause as they both thought about it. “No… no, that wouldn’t work. She’d just climb out the hatchway.”

  “What hatchway?” Now Marion began to get excited. “There’s no hatchway in my cabin, only portholes! That’s why there’s that little crawlspace alongside the bilge. In case of fire or something.”

  “Yes, but what’s to stop her from getting out the same way you did? She knows this boat better than we do.”

  “Dee, I was scared stiff. How could I tell who might come after me? I wedged it shut with a crowbar from the engine room.”

  “You’re kidding!” she whispered. “Marion, that was brilliant! Let’s go for it, then, that’s our only hope. We better hurry, though. She can’t stay out much longer, especially with Von Hayden calling her every few minutes.”

  “What if he comes down here while we’re doing it?”

  “He’d have to tie off the wheel first, wouldn’t he? I mean, he can’t just let go of it. Maybe if you sit on the galley sink and peek at him through the porthole, we’d have plenty of warning before he actually came down.”

  “What if she comes out first?”

  “Well, I’ll… I’ll… take that little can of pepper spray I have on my key chain and squirt her with it!” Dee hurried to the closet to search through her canvas bag. “I don’t know if it will work. I’ve carried it around for three years and never even tried it.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, then. I better back you up with a frying pan. Whoever comes first, you squirt them and I’ll smack them!”

  “Gosh, that sounds awful. But it’s the only thing we can do. Here it is, but I wonder…”

  “Just come on.”

  They quietly removed the barricade to the door and crept stealthily through the companionway. The galley was tilted at such an angle that Marion hardly had to step up to sit on the counter. She peeked out the porthole. Von Hayden was still hanging onto the wheel.

  Dee slipped into the engine room to get some rope and went to work quickly on Marion’s door. It was eerily quiet inside as she tied the handle securely to the handle of the bathroom across the companionway. She had barely finished and was still on her knees, when Von Hayden’s voice bellowed from the cockpit again.

  “Anna! Anna, come up! Can you hear? I need your help! Anna!”

  There a momentary thumping and stumbling, then a startled scream from the woman when she realized she was locked in. After that there was such a loud riotous pounding against the door, Dee could actually see it flexing against the hinges. Followed by an angry barrage of hysterical German. Dee only understood one word, repeated over and over…Heinrich!

  “He’s tying it off!” Marion’s voice sounded as if she were about to go rushing down the highest loop of a roller coaster. “Hurry up—here he comes!”

  38

  The Last Stand

  “No one but a man can do this?” ~ Nellie Bly

  Dee hurried over to take her position opposite Marion, on the other side of the companionway ladder.

  “No, wait…” Marion peered out the porthole over the sink. “Wait…he’s heading for the upper deck, instead…”

  A tremendous thundering sound of flapping canvas filled the air as a sail was let loose, and the boat eased back into a normal thirty-degree angle. Marion rose up with the counter top, increasing her position to an almost deadly advantage with the frying pan.

  “It sounds like he released the jib sheets,” Dee whispered. “I think he’s going to try it alone.”

  “No—here he comes!” Marion barely had time to whisper before Von Hayden took hold of the hatch cover and eased himself wearily down through the opening.

  “Anna! What the devil are you hollering about! I—what’s this? What—” He took in the length of knotted rope trailing along the floor, then met Dee’s gaze for one split second before the sudden thunk of the frying pan. “Ouch.” He grasped his hooded head in his hands. He tottered.

  Dee pressed down the tiny cap of the pepper spray container, and to her surprise, a fine stream hit Von Hayden square in the face as he was still reeling from the shock of having been struck with the pan. The result was immediate. He coughed, gasped, and dropped to his knees, trying to wipe the burning liquid from his face as he fought for air. In the next second, Marion brought the pan down once more, with a little more force this time, and dropped him flat. But instead of being knocked out, he simply lay on the floor writhing and moaning.

  “We better just tie him up. He’s too hard to knock out!” Dee reached for the other end of the fifty-foot rope she had tied the cabin doors closed with.

  “It sure isn’t like the movies.” Marion lay the pan aside, rubbed a hand over her injured arm, and then climbed down to help. “Let’s tie him to the table so he can’t move around.”

  They secured his hands to one end and his feet to the other, pulling him tight until he looked trussed up and hanging from a spit. Then, just as Dee was wondering why it had suddenly gotten so quiet up forward, a gunshot rang out.

  “Oh, Lord help us!” Marion’s face turned pale as another shot thudded into the teak door and then another. “She’s going to shoot her way out!”

  “I don’t think she can.” Dee rose cautiously to her feet, making sure to keep behind the bulkhead and out of line with the companionway. “If it was any other kind of wood but teak, she probably could, but—”

  The next shot was an unmistakable zinging of brass as the bullet crashed into a hinge. Then the creak and strain of wood, before the obvious sound of the door giving way. “Heinrich!” Anna screamed through the partial opening before lapsing into another barrage of German.

  “The radio, Marion—hurry! She only has one more bullet left, and then I’m going to run up to that crack and squirt her with the pepper spray!”

  “But what if it’s an eight gun? What if—”


  “Hurry!” She had to raise her voice to be heard over Anna’s. “They’ll at least pick up our mayday, and—”

  The gun went off again, zinging off the second hinge, but instead of breaking apart like the first one had, it held. One click of an empty chamber, then another and the clatter of the gun thrown against the door. In the same moment that Anna began to rattle the last loose hinge with both hands, Dee bent low and darted down the companionway. She positioned herself just beneath the opening Vee at the top where the door was hanging askew, aimed her little can, and waited for the woman’s face to appear.

  “Miss Parker.” No trace of an accent. “You haven’t got a chance. In less than an hour, this boat is going to rendezvous with our—”

  As soon as the disheveled blonde head leaned out, Dee pressed down on the cap and released a two second stream of liquid fire before the aerosol sputtered out and dribbled a puff of it down her own arm, enough to make Anna fall backward and gasping onto the floor of the cabin. It was also enough to make Dee’s own eyes smart and water from the vapors rising off her clothes.

  She stumbled her way to the galley sink, turned on the pump, and stuck her sleeve under the faucet to dilute the potent chemicals. At the same time, Marion’s voice quavered into the microphone. “Hello, out there, White Fox? This is Marion Marie Bates from Portland, Or—”

  An earsplitting scream rang out over Von Hayden’s low moans and Anna’s muffled sobs. The first thought Dee had was that the radio had been broken and there was water rushing in. She blinked back a blur of still-stinging tears, staggered over to Marion, and picked up the mike swinging back and forth on its cord, to see for herself. By that time her friend was standing, frozen, like Lot’s wife who had turned to salt when she looked back at a disaster.

  “What—is it broken? What’s—”

  “Look at that!” Marion’s voice was little more than a raspy whisper as she pointed to the barometer hanging on the wall. “It’s stuck over as far as it can go on that little peg, and it says hurricane! Oh, what else—what else! Even if they hear us, we could—”