He checked his watch. Eight forty-five.
He rearranged the packing to disguise the cut he had made, screwed the end of the crate back in place, then rose with a smile. “Mr. Johnson,” he said, “my apologies for interrupting your evening.”
“Yeah, well, you still haven’t told me who you are or what you’re doing.”
“Nor will I, Mr. Johnson.”
They went into the living room and Pendergast turned to his host. “We have just enough time to enjoy another glass.” He refilled their glasses. Johnson drank his off in a shot, then set it down. Pendergast sipped his more slowly, then pulled another sheaf of bills from his pocket.
“As promised,” he said.
Johnson took them silently.
“You did well.” Pendergast smiled, gave a half bow, and departed quickly.
23
BACK IN THE SUITE, CONSTANCE FOUND PENDERGAST HUNCHED over a chemistry set. She watched as he dipped a cotton swab into a vial of a clear liquid and applied it to a paint chip in a test tube. Immediately, the fragment turned black.
He moved to another test tube and another, applying the same test. Finally he looked up. “Good evening, Constance.”
“Any results?”
He nodded to the tests. “Indeed. These paint samples all show unacceptable levels of lead. Our Mr. Lionel Brock has six crates of impressionist paintings in his spare bedroom, and if the rest are like these, they’re all forgeries. Brock must be employing a European art forger—a man of considerable talent—to imitate the work of minor artists, which he no doubt salts among his genuine paintings by major artists. Quite a clever scheme, really: nobody would question the authenticity of thesecond-tier paintings carried by a dealer known to sell the finest, most scrupulously provenancedfirst-tier works.”
“Clever indeed,” said Constance. “But it seems to me a man like that wouldn’t risk all this on a Tibetan artifact.”
“Exactly. We can strike him.” With a rustle, Pendergast produced his list. “I have also crossed off Lambe—the man’s as soft as risen dough.”
“How did you manage that? Impersonate a doctor?”
“Ugh. Let us not speak of it. I have also struck Claude Dallas from the list, as well as Lord Cliveburgh, who is busy smuggling cocaine. Strage is illegally exporting several extremely valuable and quite genuine Greek vases, and while this might lessen the chances that he’s also smuggling the Agozyen, we can’t quite rule him out. Which leaves us with three: Blackburn, Calderón, and Strage.” He turned his silver eyes on her. “How did your adventure belowdecks go?”
“I met the woman assigned to clean Blackburn’s triplex. Luckily—for us, anyway—she took over from another worker who apparently suffered a psychotic break shortly after departure and killed herself.”
“Indeed?” said Pendergast with sudden interest. “There’s been a suicide on board?”
“That’s what they say. She just stopped working in the middle of her shift, returned to her cabin, and had a breakdown. Later, she stabbed herself in the eye with a piece of wood and died.”
“How odd. And the woman who’s cleaning Blackburn’s triplex—what does she say?”
“He brought his own maid, and she lords it over the ship’s maid. Blackburn also had his suite redecorated for the crossing with his own furniture and artwork.”
“That would include his Asian art collection.”
“Yes. The same housekeeper I met also cleans Calderón’s stateroom, which is next door. It seems he picked up a lot of French antiques. Apparently, he’s as pleasant as Blackburn is obnoxious: he gave her a nice tip.”
“Excellent.” For a time, Pendergast’s eyes seemed to go far away. Slowly, they came back into focus.
“Blackburn is a strong number one on our list.” He reached in his pocket, withdrew yet another sheaf of crisp bills. “You are to temporarily switch places with the ship’s housekeeper assigned to Blackburn and Calderón’s rooms. Get in there when the suite is empty.”
“But Blackburn won’t let the ship’s maid in without his maid being there.”
“No matter—if you’re caught you can always chalk it up to bureaucratic error. You know what to look for. I would suggest going late this evening—Blackburn, I’ve noticed, is partial to baccarat and will probably be in the casino.”
“Very well, Aloysius.”
“Oh—and bring me his trash, please.”
Constance raised her eyebrows briefly. Then she nodded and turned toward the staircase, preparing to change for dinner.
“Constance?”
She turned back.
“Please be careful. Blackburn is one of our prime suspects—and that means he could well be a ruthless, perhaps psychopathic, killer.”
24
SCOTT BLACKBURN PAUSED AT THE ENTRANCE TO OSCAR’S TO BUTTON his Gieves & Hawkes bespoke suit, adjust his mauve tie, and survey the room. It was eight forty-five and the second seating was well under way: a horde of slim, elegant foreign waiters rushing in with the main courses under silver domes, which they brought to each table, laid down, and then—all at once, a waiter standing behind each diner—whipped off to reveal the dish underneath.
With a sardonic crook to his lip, Blackburn strolled over to his table. His two companions had already seated themselves and they rose obsequiously as he arrived. As well they should—Blackburn had invested several hundred million in their respective companies and sat on their boards’ compensation committees. Two bottles of burgundy already stood empty on the table, among the scattered remains of hors d’oevures, antipasti, and a first course of a smallish bird that might have been squab or pheasant. As he sat down he took one bottle into his hand and examined the label.
“Richebourg Domaine de la Romanée-Conti ’78,” he said. “You fellows are breaking out the good stuff.” He turned and poured out the heel into his own glass. “And you’ve left me with nothing but sediment!”
Lambe and Calderón laughed reverentially, and Lambe gestured for a waiter. “Bring out another of these from our private cellar,” he said. “One of the ones already opened.”
“Right away, sir.” The waiter glided off as silently as a bat.
“What’s the occasion?” Blackburn asked.
“We just thought we’d indulge ourselves,” Lambe said, rocking his soft, slumpy shoulders. Blackburn noticed that the man was less green about the gills than before. The weenie was, apparently, growing accustomed to the ocean.
“Why not?” Blackburn said. “This voyage is proving to be even more interesting than I anticipated. Among other things, I ran into an old girlfriend last night, and found her obliging—veryobliging. At first, anyway.”
This was greeted with a roar of laughter from his two listeners.
“And then what?” Lambe asked, eagerly leaning forward.
Blackburn shook his hand and laughed. “I don’t know which was more exciting—the fucking or the fight afterward. Whew, what a wildcat.”
More toadying laughter.
The waiter glided back with the bottle and a fresh glass, and Lambe indicated for him to pour Blackburn a taste. Blackburn swirled the liquid around in the glass, took a quick whiff, swirled again, then stuck his nose in and inhaled the bouquet. Then he sat back, his eyes half closed, appreciating the aroma. After a moment, he lifted the glass to his lips, drew in a small amount, rolled it around on his tongue, then drew in some air through his lips, bubbling it through the wine before swallowing. Ritual complete, he placed the glass down and waved the waiter away.
“What do you think?” Lambe asked eagerly.
“Magnificent.”
They relaxed.
Blackburn raised his glass again. “And, it so happens, I have something to announce.”
Both friends turned to him eagerly.
“Fill your glasses.”
They did so with alacrity.
“As you know, since selling Gramnet for two billion, I’ve been knocking around, looking for some new little thing to
mess around with. I believe I’ve found that thing.”
“Can you talk about it?” asked Calderón.
Blackburn enjoyed the long pause.
“It has to do with scanning and searching visual databases on the web.” He smiled. “When I sold Gramnet, I retained the rights to my proprietary image-compression algorithms. I’ll push image content onto everybody’s desktop, and it’ll be content that looks a hundred times better than anything else out there.”
“But Google’s been working on image-matching technology for years,” said Lambe. “They can’t seem to get it right.”
“I’m going to use a different technology: old-fashioned elbow grease. I’ve got thousands of programmers and researchers I can put to work on it, 24/7. I’m going to build the largest online multimedia database on the web.”
“How?”
“Images can be linked just like web pages. People searching images go from one similar image to the next. Don’t analyze the metadata or the images: analyze thelinks . Once they’re in your own database, you can build on billions, trillions, of user-generated links. Then I’ll grab the images themselves, super-high-res, and use algorithms and mathematical signatures to compress them. I’ve got a dozen server farms, idling, just waiting to be filled with data like this.”
“But the copyrights to the images—how will you deal with that?”
“Screw copyright. Copyright’s dead. This is the web. Information should be free for the taking. Everybody else is doing it—why not me?”
A reverent hush fell on the group.
“And to kick it off, I’ve got an ace in the hole.” He raised his glass and gave a deep-throated chortle. “
And what an ace it is
.”
Then he took a three-hundred-dollar swallow of wine, closing his eyes with sheer orgiastic pleasure.
“Mr. Blackburn?” a low, deferential voice sounded at his elbow.
Blackburn turned, annoyed at having his enjoyment interrupted. A man in a rather indifferent suit stood there. He was short and ugly and had a Boston accent.
Blackburn frowned. “Who are you?”
“Pat Kemper’s the name. I’m chief security officer of the
Britannia
. May I have a few words with you privately?”
“Security? What’s this about?”
“Don’t be alarmed, it’s routine.”
“My friends can hear anything you have to tell me.”
Kemper hesitated a moment. “Very well. Mind if I take a seat?” And glancing quickly around the dining salon, he took a chair at Blackburn’s right.
“My deep apologies for interrupting your dinner,” Kemper said, his Boston accent already grating on Blackburn’s nerves. The guy looked and talked like a cop. “But protocol requires that I ask you a few questions. It’s about the staff member who was first assigned to clean your suite. Juanita Santamaria.”
“The maid?” Blackburn frowned. “I have my own private maid, and she’s supposed to supervise your people.”
“Santamaria cleaned your room twice. The second time was on the first night of the voyage, around eight-thirty P.M., when she went in to turn down your beds. Do you recall her coming to your suite?” “Eight-thirty last night?” Blackburn leaned back in his chair, took another sip of wine. “Nobody was there. My own maid was in medical, seasick and puking her guts out. I was at dinner. And on top of that, I gave strict instructions that no one was to enter my suite unsupervised.”
“I apologize for that, sir. But you don’t know of anything that might have happened in the suite that evening? An incident, someone she might have interacted with? Or perhaps she might have broken something, or . . . perhaps stolen something?”
“What, did something happen to her afterward?”
The security officer hesitated. “As a matter of fact, yes. Ms. Santamaria had a breakdown shortly after leaving your suite. She subsequently took her own life. Yet those who knew her, bunkmates and the like, saw no sign of impending trouble. She was, they say, a well-adjusted, religious person.”
“That’s what they always say about a mass murderer or suicide,” Blackburn said, with a scoff.
“They also mentioned that, when Ms. Santamaria left for work that day, she was in good spirits.”
“I can’t help you,” Blackburn said, swirling his wine and raising his glass to his nose again, inhaling. “Nobody was there. Nothing was broken or stolen. Believe me, I would know: I keep track of my stuff.”
“Anything she might have seen or touched? Something that might have frightened her?”
Blackburn suddenly paused in the middle of the oenophilic ritual, the glass arrested halfway to his mouth. After a long moment he set it down without having sipped from it.
“Mr. Blackburn?” Kemper prodded.
Blackburn turned to look at him. “Absolutely not,” he said in a thin, emotionless voice. “There was nothing. As I said, no one was there. My maid was in the infirmary. I was at dinner. What happened to this woman had nothing to do with me or my suite. She wasn’t even supposed to be there.”
“Very good,” said Kemper, rising. “I assumed as much, but you know, protocol and everything. North Star would have my hide if I didn’t go through the motions.” He smiled. “Gentlemen, we’ll speak no more about this subject. Thank you for your patience, and have a pleasant evening.” He nodded at each man in turn, then quickly walked away.
Lambe watched the security chief thread his way among the tables. Then he turned to Blackburn. “Well, what do you make of that, Scott old boy? Strange doings belowdecks!” And he struck a melodramatic pose.
Blackburn did not reply.
The waiter glided up to their table. “May I recite the chef’s specials for the evening, gentlemen?”
“Please. I’ve got two days of eating to catch up on.” And Lambe rubbed his hands together.
Abruptly, Blackburn stood up, his chair tilting backward violently.
“Scott?” Calderón said, looking at him with concern. “Not hungry,” Blackburn said. His face had gone pale.
“Hey, Scotty—” Lambe began. “Hey, wait! Where are you going?”
“Stateroom.” And without another word, Blackburn turned and exited the restaurant.
25
THAT SOUNDS JUST AWFUL,” SAID THE KIND, ATTRACTIVE STRANGER. “Would it help if I spoke to the old lady?”
“Oh, no,” Inge replied, horrified at the suggestion. “No, please don’t. It isn’t that bad, really. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“As you wish. If you change your mind, just let me know.”
“You’re very kind. It just helps to have somebody to talk to.” And then she paused, blushing furiously.
Nothing like this had ever happened to Inge Larssen before. She’d always lived a cloistered existence, been painfully shy. And here she was, pouring her heart out to someone she’d just met half an hour before.
The large, gilt-edged clock on the wallpapered wall of the Chats-worth Salon read five minutes to ten. A string quartet was playing quietly in a far corner, and couples strolled by at infrequent intervals, arm in arm or holding hands. The lounge was lit by a thousand tapered candles, and they freighted the evening air with a mellow golden glow. Inge didn’t think she’d ever been in a place quite so beautiful.
Perhaps it was the magical atmosphere of this place and this night that had helped her let down her guard. Or maybe it was simply the nature of her new friend: tall, self-assured, radiating confidence.
At the far end of the sofa, the stranger languidly crossed one leg over the other. “So you’ve lived in convents all your life?”
“Almost. Ever since I was six. That was when my parents died in an automobile accident.”
“And you have no other family? No siblings?”
Inge shook her head. “None. Except my great-uncle, who was the one who put me in the convent school at Evedal instead of one of the state schools. But he’s gone now. I have some friends from school.
They’re almost like family, in a way. And then there’s my employer.”My employer , she thought.Why couldn’t I work for somebody like this? She began to speak, then stopped, feeling herself blushing again.
“You were about to say something.”
Inge laughed self-consciously. “No, it’s nothing.”
“Please tell me. I’d love to hear it.” “It’s just . . .” She hesitated again. “Well, you’re such an important person. So successful, so . . . You’ve heard all about me, now—I was hoping to hear your story.”
“It’s nothing, no big deal,” came the somewhat tart reply.
“No, really. I’d love to hear how you accomplished the impossible and got to be where you are. Because . . . well, someday I’d like . . .” Her voice trailed off as she lost the words.
There was a brief silence.
“I’m sorry,” Inge said hastily. “I had no right to ask. I’m sorry.” She felt a sudden awkwardness. “It’s late—I should really get back to bed. The lady I take care of—if she wakes up, she’ll be frightened if I’m not there.”
The Wheel of Darkness p-8 Page 15
