Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  “Is Hawke still on the air? Alex, you there?”

  “Still here, sir.”

  “Is your Oman team still intact?”

  “It could be in twelve hours, Mr. President.”

  “Good. I’ve got one more urgent matter that needs mopping up.”

  “Paris, sir?”

  “Paris.”

  The stern was the last remnant of the great vessel remaining on the surface. There was a slight increase in ambient light and in that faint rosy glow of dawn, Alex Hawke saw her name, picked out in glints of gold on the massive stern.

  Leviathan. The sea monster.

  A large wave came awash of the monster’s deck and a small gathering of survivors who’d ignored the “abandon ship” and were clinging to the rails were now carried off and under the tumultuous seas. Hawke watched for them to reappear but they did not.

  The net had now been hoisted to just below the helo. The deep wound in the small of his back burned like hell but there wasn’t much he could do about it. So he just took it, waiting patiently as Tynan was lifted out of the net and up into the chopper. The boy was still breathing, but he’d left a lot of blood in the basket. Hawke could do no more for him.

  For now, he was content to hang there in the sky and watch the end.

  Hawke watched the huge liner’s death throes with both horror and a grim sense of satisfaction. Rows of lights still winked from the portion of the black hull that remained visible above the water. He gauged the stern’s downward progress by the illuminated portholes that were snuffed out as she slid under. You could almost imagine them hissing and popping as they went out, although most probably remained alight for some time.

  The ship’s after-quarter rose to a precipitous angle and then rose higher still, until it was standing upright like a huge black column. This would not be an agreeable sensation for any man still remaining aboard. He would be clinging desperately to anything bolted down to stay alive for an extra minute or two. Hawke could make out a few more struggling figures on the deck, and some bodies perhaps, entangled in lines or in mangled metal.

  The stern quarter, perhaps a good 150 feet of Leviathan’s remains, stood outlined against the star-speckled sky, looming black in the darkness. It hung there for a few brief minutes and then, sinking back a little, slid forward rapidly through the water and plunged straight downward.

  There was no great noise. Only the slight sound of a gulp marked the end. She went quickly under and the water swirled and finally closed over her golden name.

  Unlike most such disasters, this one did not leave the sea filled with panic-stricken survivors crying out for God’s mercy and gasping for air; there were no agonized cries of death from a thousand throats. No, after Leviathan was gone, only a thin whitish-grey vapor remained. It hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea. For a while, you could see an undulating field of flotsam and jetsam that had bobbed up from somewhere far below.

  By tomorrow or the next day, this slate of the ocean would be wiped clean. Above him, Yankee Victor angled up and away, bearing Alex Hawke toward the shimmering glow of the distant New York skyline. Hands reached down inside the net for him. As they lifted him up, he took one last look at the great liner’s grave.

  It was over.

  Tomorrow morning, no trace would remain of all that had happened here.

  Seabirds would circle and spin above the Atlantic swell.

  And the sun would shine down on waves like blue glass.

  Epilogue

  PARIS HAD DANCED ITS LAST TANGO.

  Somebody had flipped the wrong switch, forgotten to turn on the City of Light. The blackout was no mistake, of course. It was Boney’s last stand. A week earlier, the Chinese had left him to the wolves and now the wolves were at his door. On that blackest of days, Bonaparte decreed that every light in Paris be extinguished at 9:00 P.M. Suddenly, it was 1944 all over again. There was a nine-o’clock curfew. Anyone caught on the streets after that hour without good reason or a government pass was arrested.

  Jet had a good reason. She was running for her life.

  After Hong Kong, she had fled to Paris. It had seemed a brilliant place to hide. There was a flat there, a modest love nest she’d shared with Schatzi. A decade earlier, after a row, he’d told her to clear out. He cut off the rent, the lights, the heat. She stayed, and eventually bought it under an assumed name. It was her safe house. A place where no one knew her name.

  Only a few other automobiles were on the streets when she fled her dark and shuttered building at 88, avenue Foch. She jumped into the Mercedes, took a deep breath, and forced herself to drive slowly away from the curb. Every car, including hers, was blindfolded, the taped headlights showing only a sliver of light at the very bottom. It made driving very tricky.

  Heading south and east toward the Tuileries, she saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, standing like a thin black finger pointing at the heavens. A tiny aircraft warning light, blinking red at the top, was the sole illumination. Blackout curtains hung in every window. The venerable chestnut trees lining her street were black against the starry night.

  She glanced nervously at her rearview mirror. A police car had been following her closely for two blocks, then, inexplicably, it turned off into the avenue George V. Gripping the steering wheel with her left hand, she noticed her right hand shaking badly as she held the car’s lighter to her cigarette. Her nerves were understandably frayed. This morning, Te-Wu plainclothes officers had come to her apartment.

  She’d escaped down the service staircase with only the clothes on her back. Six hours later, she’d gone back. She watched the entrance from a bench situated in a small park across the street. After four long hours, she’d decided to take a chance. She raced across the boulevard and inside, taking the stairway to her third-floor home. It was destroyed, but she paid no attention to it. It took all of ten minutes to get what she wanted—money and her gun from a safe hidden in the floor beneath a mountain of shoes. Some irreplacable jewelry.

  On the way out, she scooped up the new Sharpei puppy that she’d named Stokely. Now, the dog was in the black Hermès bag on the seat next to her. In her lap, she had her Chinese Te-Wu shield and her small handgun. If anybody stopped her, she’d already decided to shoot.

  After wandering the streets all morning, afraid to return home, she’d taken a room under another assumed name at the Ritz. She called the number Stokely had told her to use in case of just such an emergency. Surprisingly, Stoke was in Paris. He wouldn’t say exactly why, but she could guess. Bonaparte was holed up inside the Elysée Palace. There were snipers on the roof and tanks in the courtyard. No UN resolution was going to get him out any time soon.

  Stoke said it was a dirty job but somebody had to do it.

  She told him she had to get out of Paris. Tonight. Right this minute. He said he understood. He’d figure something out. He’d call her cell after nine tonight and tell her what to do.

  She kept her speed down en route to the location Stoke had given her. Memories stirred, not her own. Newsreels of Paris during the Nazi occupation. Shadowy people hurrying through the darkened streets, anxious to be home, to be safely inside. She passed a CNN crew on a street corner, using available light to shoot a reporter’s account of the grim darkness that gripped Paris. In the near distance, a muffled boom and a flash of lightning bloomed on the horizon.

  The camera swung crazily around trying to capture the moment.

  Déjà vu, she thought.

  Jet knew what the American reporters were saying on the radio. There were many conflicting rumors and points of view of the current impasse. The Loyalists believed the embattled president was the last, best hope of the nation. But the noose around Bonaparte’s neck was tightening. The anti-Bonapartists claimed he’d paid men to roam the town, shooting anyone who didn’t have the right answer to their questions. They said the president blamed Anglo-American bombers that no one ever saw. Planes no one could see. He initiated the blackout but the bomb
s kept exploding.

  It was whispered Bonaparte himself was blowing up the buildings, so his military police could clamp down even tighter. So more loyalists would take up arms in his defense. So he could keep the dark city under his thumb while he plotted with his generals, all of them cloistered in the Elysée Palace, desperately clinging to power.

  The people who spoke such treason against Bonaparte disappeared nightly.

  The bridge was coming up on her right. Jet swung the sleek black Mercedes right onto the Pont Louis Philippe and across the Seine to the tiny island called the Île St-Louis, just south of the Île de la Cité. There was a parking place just after the bridge and she took it. She hit the key remote as she walked away, locking the car. She walked quickly, eyes moving rapidly side to side. No one else was on the streets. No one she could see, at any rate. Since les flics had turned off, she didn’t think she’d been followed, which was a small comfort.

  Stokely had given her very precise instructions. She hurried down the steps leading to the lower quay. Then she walked along the tree-lined pavement toward the western tip of the island.

  She reached the designated spot at the end of the island. Stokely had told her to wait here. That was it. No further instructions. She stopped and lit a cigarette. The twin towers of Notre Dame, with the floodlights extinguished, looked black and oddly forbidding against the sky. She could make out the hunched figures of the gargoyles and a slight chill went up her spine. She looked back up at the bridge she’d just crossed. Empty.

  Quasimodo’s bell in the south tower of Notre Dame suddenly chimed. It was fifteen minutes before the stroke of midnight. She paused and looked out across the river, not knowing what to look for or who might be meeting her. The Seine was dark and glassy in the moonlight, not even a ripple on the surface. No activity on the river at this hour. No bateaux mouche steaming her way. Nothing. She felt completely alone.

  Then, a faint, droning buzz from upriver. Somewhere to the west of the Île de la Cité. It didn’t sound like a motorboat. It sounded more like a small airplane, flying very low. Whatever it was, it was hidden by the trees and buildings lining the Quai aux Fleurs just across the river. She glanced nervously up at the bridge again and then turned back to the Seine.

  Yes, a plane, she could see it now. But friend or foe was the question that caused her heart to knock in her ears.

  The small seaplane was flying on a slight angle east just above the river. It seemed to be headed directly toward her. It cleared the Pont d’Arcole by maybe six feet and then suddenly dropped. She saw the plane slow, almost to a stall, and then the nose came up a fraction just before the floats touched the water. The pontoons splashed on the glassy water, throwing up a wide spray to either side of the fuselage. Instantly the pilot throttled back and coasted to a stop.

  Jet froze. My God, she thought, if someone aboard that plane meant to harm her, there was absolutely nowhere to run, no cover.

  The seaplane, sleek and silvery, roared once more and accelerated toward Jet. It made a fast taxi over to the quay, then swung around with the nose pointed west, toward the Pont d’Arcole.

  The pilot’s window slid open. Jet’s hand slid inside her bag, her fingers searching for the gun. A familiar face appeared in the open window. Curly black hair. He was smiling and motioning for her to come aboard.

  “Come on!” Alex Hawke shouted above the engine’s roar. “Hop on, we’ve got company!”

  “What company?” Jet cried, instinctively looking up at the bridge behind her. A black sedan screeched to a stop and all four doors were flung open. She didn’t have to see their faces. She already knew. Te-Wu.

  Hawke had climbed down onto the pontoon and had his hand outstretched toward her. The little plane was drifting toward the quay. Only a few feet of water remained.

  “Jump!” Hawke said, “Now!”

  “Take the dog!” she said reaching the bag across.

  She looked over her shoulder just before she jumped for the pontoon. She saw them now, the men on the bridge. There were four of them, all leaning out over the parapet of the Pont Louis Philippe. One of them had his arm extended toward the plane.

  Pointing?

  No, shooting. Small geysers were erupting near the pontoons.

  She scrambled inside. The cockpit was tiny. She threw herself into the righthand seat. Hawke was instantly beside her, shoving the throttles forward with his right hand as he pulled the door shut with his left.

  “Nice to see you again!” he said. The roar of the engine was enormous for such a small plane. They were already racing away from the quay. She felt rather than heard small but troubling noises coming from the wing just below. She saw a line of small black holes suddenly appear stiched in the thin aluminum. The seaplane was accelerating rapidly now, zigzagging, as Hawke tried to avoid the weapons fire from the bridge behind them.

  “You, too!” she cried, as the plane rapidly gathered speed across the mirrored water. She craned her head to look behind them and saw all four of the men in black with their arms out, firing at the sea-plane. She looked back at her pilot and saw a grim smile.

  “Buckle up,” Hawke said. “Not a lot of room to get airborne here. Sorry.”

  “Sorry? I’m amazed you’re here—”

  “This will be tight—hold on.”

  A bridge was coming up fast. The Pont d’Arcole. A black sedan screeched to a stop in the middle of this bridge, too. Men were jumping out and pointing at the oncoming airplane. Crouched inside, she felt as if the tiny aircraft was about to fly apart. The vibration and noise were tremendous, the strain on every seam and bolt horrific. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from rattling.

  For a second she thought Hawke was going to zoom right under the arch of the bridge. But, with their wingspan and height, going beneath the bridge didn’t seem remotely possible. Or over it, for that matter. Suddenly, the nose came up. She felt the water lose its grip just as the bridge filled her view. She held her breath, afraid to look over at Hawke. A surreal beat of time, and she knew they’d made it. The pontoons couldn’t have missed the car by more than a foot. They screamed over the Pont d’Arcole just low enough to make the men dive for the pavement.

  She waved an ironic good-bye to the Te-Wu men as the seaplane suddenly lifted and roared away into the nighttime sky. She looked down at the city while slipping on her headset. Paris looked even blacker from above than it did from the ground.

  “What are you doing here?” Jet said, looking at him now. “Shouldn’t you be storming the Bastille?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You took time out from that to save me?”

  “Stokely said you were in trouble. By the look of things, he wasn’t exaggerating.”

  “Thank you, Alex. I hardly know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything. We’ll catch up later. There’s something on the radio we have to listen to.”

  “What is it?”

  “I had an idea. If it works, it might save a lot of innocent lives. The president agreed to give it a shot tonight. All the radio and television networks have agreed to the broadcast. We’ll see…”

  Hawke reached over and twisted the radio receiver knob.

  She heard a burst of static and then the modulated voice of the BBC announcer saying, “And now, from the White House, the president of the United States.”

  “Good evening. I speak tonight to America’s oldest ally, the brave men and women of France. Frenchmen shed blood in the cause of our own Revolution. Americans died fighting for French freedom in 1917 and 1944.

  “In a garden in Normandy stands an American memorial to peace. On it are a few simple words this American president would like you to hear.

  “From the heart of our land

  Flows the blood of our youth

  Given to you in the name of Freedom.

  “Tonight, the lights no longer shine in Paris. Fear roams her streets. But I say France has nothing to fear. Not from America or those who stand with
us. Your distress at this hour can be laid at the doorstep of one man. A traitor to the noble ideals of France, a tyrant accused of willful murder, a man who now cowers behind darkened palace windows.

  “Make no mistake. I ask no one to take up arms against this evil man. I ask only for a show of hope. A visible sign that the citizens of Paris still cherish the rule of law. Our prayers tonight are that a liberated France soon regains her rightful place among the fraternity of free and lawful nations.

  “If you cherish freedom and democracy, show it. The eyes of the world are riveted upon you. I urge you now, every man, woman, and child, to go and make a light to shine in every window. Go out into the streets, climb up to your rooftops, not with guns, but with candles. Set your city aglow with candlelight. Light up the sky with your hope.

  “You will see, the whole world will see, that tyrants cannot abide your light of freedom. Tyranny cannot survive the will of a free people seen so clearly set against it.

  “So, tonight, I urge everyone, men, women, and children, go now, show the world that Paris is still what it has always been—a shining beacon of democracy and hope—still that beautiful City of Light you call home.

  “Thank you. Bon soir et bonne chance.”

  A few moments later, Jet reached over and squeezed Hawke’s hand on the throttle.

  “Alex, look. Just down there. And over there beyond the river. It’s amazing….”

  Hawke rolled his plane left. Below, he saw it beginning. It started with a few scattered pinpoints of light here and there, then small patches of brilliance were shining in the blackness. It began in the center of town and rapidly spread out to the farthest perimeter. Whole streets were lit up one at at a time, becoming grids of light. Soon, a rolling wave of light swept across Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter to the Jardin des Plantes and the Champs de Mars, and swept over the river to the Marais.

  What had started with a single lit window spread, as whole sections of the city were illuminated, until the city was a dazzling spectacle.