Cold Vengeance

by Douglas Preston

  With a small push of the stick, the man shoved the improvised barque away from shore, where it drifted into the current, joining other random pieces of flotsam and jetsam.

  It moved out until it was a few hundred feet offshore. There it floated, turning slowly, as it drifted sluggishly toward a group of silent yachts in a mooring field, their anchor lights piercing the darkness. Slowly, the flotsam floated past the boats, bumping against one hull, then another, on its seemingly random journey. Gradually, it approached the largest yacht in the anchorage, knocking lightly against its hull and drifting past. As it neared the stern there was the very slightest of movements, a rustle and a faint splash, and then silence as the now-tenantless piece of garbage continued past the yacht and vanished in the darkness.

  Pendergast, in a sleek neoprene suit, crouched on the swim platform behind the stern transom of the Vergeltung, listening intently. All was silent. After a moment, he raised his head and peered over the edge of the stern. He could see two men in the darkness, one relaxing on a sitting area on the aft deck, smoking a cigarette. The other was walking around on the foredeck, barely visible from this angle.

  As Pendergast watched, the man on the aft deck raised a pint bottle and took a long pull. After a few minutes, he rose—unsteadily—and took a turn around the deck, pausing at the stern not five feet from Pendergast, looking across the water, before reinstalling himself in his nook and taking another long drink from the bottle. He stubbed out the cigarette, lit another.

  From the small dive bag he carried, Pendergast removed his Les Baer .45 and gave it a quick check. He shoved it back into the bag and removed a short length of rubber hose.

  Again he waited, watching. The man continued drinking and smoking, then finally rose and walked forward, disappearing through a door into the interior of the yacht, where dim lights glowed from various windows.

  In a flash Pendergast was over the stern and onto the aft deck, crouching behind a pair of tenders.

  Thanks to his new friend Lowe, Pendergast had learned there were probably only a few crew members on board. Most had gone ashore that afternoon, leaving, the general manager believed, only four on the vessel. How accurate this information was remained to be seen.

  According to Lowe’s description, one of the men was undoubtedly Esterhazy. And then there were the supplies Lowe had observed being loaded recently, including a long stainless-steel dry-goods box large enough to hide an unconscious person—or, for that matter, a corpse.

  Pendergast briefly considered what he would do to Esterhazy if the man had already killed Constance.

  Esterhazy sat on an engine room bulkhead next to Falkoner, the redheaded woman whose name he did not know, and four men carrying identical Beretta 93R machine pistols configured for automatic three-round burst action. Falkoner had insisted they retreat to the engine room—the most secure place on the boat—for the operation. Nobody spoke.

  Soft footfalls approached outside the door, and then a triple knock sounded lightly, followed by a double knock. Falkoner rose and unlocked the door. A man with a cigarette in his mouth stepped inside.

  “Put that out,” said Falkoner sharply.

  The man quickly stubbed it out. “He’s on board,” he said.

  Falkoner looked at him. “When?”

  “A few minutes back. He was good—arrived on a floating piece of trash. I almost didn’t catch it. He climbed onto the swim platform and now he’s in the aft deck area. Vic up on the flybridge is keeping track of him with the infrared night-vision setup.”

  “Does he suspect anything?”

  “No. I pretended to be drunk, like you said.”

  “Very good.”

  Esterhazy rose. “Damn it, if you had an opportunity to kill him you should have taken it! Don’t get cocky—this man is worth half a dozen of you. Shoot him at your first chance.”

  Falkoner turned. “No.”

  Esterhazy stared at him. “What do you mean, no? We already discussed—”

  “Take him alive. I have a few questions before we kill him.”

  Esterhazy stared. “You’re making a huge mistake. Even if you manage to take him alive, he won’t answer any questions.”

  Falkoner gave Esterhazy a brutal smile, which stretched the already repulsive mole. “I never have problems getting people to answer questions. But I wonder, Judson, why you would have a problem with that? Afraid we might find out something you’d rather keep hidden?”

  “You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with,” Esterhazy said quickly, a stab of familiar fear suddenly freighting his anxiety. “You’re a fool if you don’t kill him right away, on sight, before he figures out what’s going on.”

  Falkoner narrowed his eyes. “There are a dozen of us. Heavily armed, well trained. What’s the matter, Judson? We’ve taken care of you well enough all these years—and now you suddenly don’t trust us? I’m surprised—and hurt.”

  The voice was laden with sarcasm. Esterhazy felt the old fear grow in the pit of his stomach.

  “We’ll be in open water on our own boat. We’ve got the advantage of surprise—he has no idea he’s walking into a trap. And we’ve got his woman tied up below. He’s at our mercy.”

  Esterhazy swallowed. As am I, he thought.

  Falkoner spoke into his headset. “Take her out to sea.” He looked around the group gathered in the engine room. “We’ll let the others take care of him. If things go awry, then we’ll make our move.”

  Pendergast, still crouching behind the tenders, felt a rumble shudder through the yacht. The engines had been turned on. He heard some voices forward, heard the faint splash of a mooring pennant tossed overboard; and then he felt the prow of the boat swing westward, toward the navigational channel of the river, as the engines accelerated to full throttle.

  Pendergast pondered the coincidence of his arrival and the boat’s departure, and decided it was not a coincidence after all.

  CHAPTER 68

  Aboard the Vergeltung

  ESTERHAZY WAITED IN THE ENGINE ROOM with Falkoner. The twin diesels, now running at cruising speed, were loud in the confined space.

  He checked his watch. Ten minutes had passed since Pendergast came on board. The air of tension was gradually increasing. He didn’t like this—didn’t like it at all. Falkoner had lied to him.

  He’d taken exquisite care in reeling Pendergast in. Constance had done precisely what he’d expected, escaping her loose bonds, writing a note and tossing it out the window of the safe house to his plant in the next garden. And since Pendergast was now on board, he had clearly swallowed the bait so carefully dangled—“vengeance,” which of course in German translated to Vergeltung. It had been a balancing act, giving Pendergast just enough information to locate the boat but not enough to suspect a trap.

  But now Falkoner was insisting on taking Pendergast alive. Esterhazy felt a twinge of nausea: he knew that one reason Falkoner wanted this was because he enjoyed torture. The man was sick—and his arrogance and sadism could still mess everything up.

  Esterhazy felt the old sense of fear and of paranoia increase. He checked his handgun, racked the slide. If Falkoner didn’t follow through at the first opportunity, he’d have to do it himself. Finish what he’d started on the Scottish moors. And do it before Pendergast—intentionally or otherwise—did in fact reveal the secret Esterhazy had kept from the Covenant for the past decade. Christ, if only Pendergast hadn’t examined that old gun; if only he had let sleeping dogs lie. The man had no idea, no idea, of the madness he’d unleashed. Maybe he should have let Pendergast into the awful secret years ago, when he first married his sister.

  Too late now.

  Falkoner’s radio crackled. “It’s Vic,” came the voice. “I don’t know how, but we seem to have lost him. He’s not behind the tender anymore.”

  “Verdammter Mist!” Falkoner said angrily. “How the hell could you lose him?”

  “I don’t know. He was hiding where we couldn’t see him. We waited awhile and nothi
ng happened, so I left Berger on watch in the main cabin and went to the sky deck to look from a better angle—and he was gone. I don’t know how—we would’ve seen him no matter which way he went.”

  “He must still be down there somewhere,” said Falkoner. “All the doors are locked. Send Berger onto the aft deck; cover him from your position on the flybridge.”

  Esterhazy spoke into his own radio headset. “A locked door is no impediment to Pendergast.”

  “He couldn’t have gotten past the main cabin door without us seeing him,” said Viktor.

  “Flush him out,” Falkoner repeated. “Captain, what’s our position?”

  “We’re just coming into New York Harbor.”

  “Maintain cruising speed. Head for open ocean.”

  Viktor crouched on the flybridge of the Vergeltung, three stories above the surface of the water. The boat had just passed the site of the fast-rising One World Trade Center and was rounding the southern tip of Manhattan, the Battery on their left, lit up by a cluster of spotlights. The buildings of the financial district rose like clusters of glowing spikes, casting an ambient light across the water, bathing the boat in an indirect radiance.

  Below him, the aft deck of the Vergeltung was softly illuminated in the glow of the city. Two outboard tenders—small motorboats used for coming and going when the yacht was at anchor—lay side by side on the port stern deck, each in its launching cradle, covered with canvas. There was no way for Pendergast to have gone forward without crossing the open deck. And they had been watching that deck like a hawk. He must still be back in the stern area.

  Through the night-vision goggles, he saw Berger emerge from the main cabin, gun at the ready. Viktor lowered the goggles and raised his own weapon to cover him.

  Berger paused a moment in the shadows, readying himself, then skipped alongside in the cover of the first tender and crouched behind its bow.

  Viktor waited, his Beretta pointed, ready to unload at the slightest movement, the briefest exposure. He was ex-military and didn’t care much for Falkoner’s order to take the man alive; if this fellow showed his head, he’d take him down anyway. He wasn’t going to risk the others for a live catch.

  Slowly, Berger worked his way alongside the boat toward the stern.

  Viktor’s radio crackled, Berger speaking to him through his headset. “No sign of him behind the tenders.”

  “Make double sure. And be careful: he might have slipped back behind the stern transom, waiting to jump anyone coming out.”

  Keeping his weapon trained on the scene, Viktor watched as Berger crept from the first tender to the second.

  “Not here,” came the whispered voice.

  “Then he did slip back behind the stern,” Viktor said.

  Viktor watched as Berger advanced to the stern rail, keeping to a low crouch. Then the man tensed and sprang up to full height, training his weapon on the twin swim platforms behind.

  A moment later he dropped back down. “Nothing.”

  Viktor thought hard. This was crazy. “Inside. He might be hiding inside one of the boats, under the tarp.”

  Viktor shifted his gunsights to the tenders as Berger grasped the stern ladder of the first, swung it down, stepped onto it, and raised himself up. He leaned against the propeller shaft in order to lift the edge of the tarp and peer underneath.

  Over the radio, Viktor heard a faint click, then an electronic beep.

  Oh, Jesus, he knew that sound! “Berger—!”

  A sudden earsplitting roar erupted from the tender’s outboard; Berger screamed and there was a shower of dark spray as his body was kicked sideways by the whirling propeller, his side ripped wide open.

  After an instant of horrified shock, Viktor raked the tender with multiple bursts from his Beretta, sweeping back and forth until the magazine was empty, the rounds shredding the canvas and punching through the boat, riddling anyone who might have been hiding within. After a moment, flames erupted in the stern area of the tender. Berger’s body lay where it had fallen, unmoving, a puddle of black spreading out from beneath it.

  With trembling hands Viktor ejected the empty mag and rammed another home.

  “What’s going on!” came Falkoner’s furious voice over his headset. “What are you doing?”

  “He killed Berger!” shouted Viktor. “He—”

  “Stop firing! We’re on a boat, idiot! You’ll start a fire!”

  Viktor stared at the flames licking up the canvas from the tender. There was a muffled thump and a shudder as more flames burst upward from the ruptured gas tank. “Shit, we’ve already got a fire.”

  “Where?”

  “On the tender.”

  “Launch it. Get it off the yacht. Now!”

  “Right.” Viktor scrambled down to the main deck and raced to the tender. The man Pendergast was nowhere in sight—no doubt he was lying dead in the belly of the tender. He unclipped the stays fore and aft, threw open the stern transom, and hit the windlass switch. As the gears on the windlass hummed, the twelve-foot tender lurched back, sliding on launching rails; Viktor seized the bow and gave it an additional shove to keep it moving. When the burning stern of the tender hit the fast-moving wake, the water grabbed it and yanked the little boat off the deck, the chains snapping; Viktor was thrown off balance but managed to grab the stern rail, recovering quickly. The burning tender fell astern, spinning in the water, already sinking. It had taken the fire with it and most likely the dead body of the target. Viktor was vastly relieved.

  Until he felt a stiff shove from behind, his headset yanked off simultaneously, and he went tumbling into the water after the burning tender.

  CHAPTER 69

  CROUCHING AGAINST THE PORT SIDE of the remaining tender, Pendergast watched the burning boat disappear into the darkness as the waters of New York Harbor closed over it. The cries of the man he had pushed overboard grew fainter and fainter, soon lost amid the sounds of the yacht, wind, and water. He put on the headset, adjusted it, and began listening to the alarmed chatter. From it he created a mental image of the number of players, their relative locations, and their various states of mind.

  Most revealing.

  As he listened, he shrugged out of the movement-hampering wet suit and tossed it over the side. Pulling his clothes from the waterproof dive bag he’d brought along, he dressed quickly, then tossed the bag overboard as well. After a few minutes, he moved to the bow of the tender. The flybridge at the top of the boat seemed to be vacant. A single armed man was now patrolling the sky deck. From each end of his perambulation the man had a clear vantage point of the aft deck.

  Pendergast watched as the figure on the sky deck stared out in the direction of the sinking tender, speaking into his radio. After a minute, he entered the sky lounge and began pacing back and forth before the wheelhouse, guarding it. Pendergast counted out the seconds it took him for each turn, then timed his own move, sprinting across the open main deck to the aft entrance of the main saloon. He crouched in the door-well, the overhang now protecting him from view from above. He tried the door: locked. The window was smoked and the saloon beyond was dark, making it impossible to see inside.

  The simple lock yielded to a brief attack. There was enough ambient noise to cover his movements. Though the door was now unlocked, he did not yet open it. He knew from listening to the radio there were many more people on board than he had originally anticipated—Lowe had been deceived—and he realized he had fallen into a trap. The boat was heading for the Narrows and no doubt the Atlantic Ocean beyond. How unfortunate.

  Unfortunate, that is, for the survival chances of those on board.

  Again he listened to the chatter, building an ever-clearer picture of the situation on the vessel. No clue as to Constance’s whereabouts was offered. One person, clearly the man in charge, spoke in a mixture of German and English from a location with loud background noise—perhaps the engine room. The others were scattered about the yacht, all in place, all awaiting orders. He did not hear Esterh
azy’s voice.

  From what he could gather, however, there was no one in the main saloon. With exquisite care he cracked open the door and peered into the dim but elegant space, paneled in mahogany, with white leather banquettes, a granite-topped bar, and plush carpeting barely visible in the ambient light. He looked around quickly, making sure it was empty.

  He heard running footsteps in the companionway and a burst of radio chatter. Several men were on their way aft and would reach the saloon momentarily.

  Quickly, he backed out of the door again, easing it shut. He crouched again in the darkness of the door-well, ear to the fiberglass panel. The footsteps entered the saloon from the front. From the whispered radio chatter, he learned there were two of them. They were on their way to check on Viktor, last seen on the aft deck, who hadn’t responded to his radio since launching the burning tender.

  Excellent.

  He eased himself around the corner from the door and pressed himself against the aft wall, concealed from above by the overhang. All was once again quiet in the saloon. The two men were waiting and listening as well, evidently spooked.

  Moving with exquisite care, Pendergast reached an access ladder that ran to the upper aft deck; grasped a rung and slid himself up; and then, reaching out with one leg, transferred himself from the ladder to a small roof area above the saloon, still hidden from view of the sky deck by a large cowl vent.

  Stretching out on the polished fiberglass, Pendergast leaned down over the overhang and—with one arm extended—lightly brushed the barrel of his gun on the door. It made a faint noise, no doubt magnified inside the saloon.

  No response. Now the two men inside would be even more agitated. They couldn’t be sure if the sound was random or not; whether someone was outside the door. That uncertainty would, for the time being, keep them in place.