Pandora's Curse

by Du Brul, Jack

He followed the trail like a bloodhound, twisting through the labyrinth while a subconscious part of his brain mapped his route of retreat. A door opened just as Mercer passed, and without breaking stride, he threw himself into the handsome, twenty-something man who had come out wearing a purple robe. They crashed into the bunk beds on the far wall of the cabin, the young man yelping in pain. Mercer closed the door with his foot.

  “Don’t hurt me please!” the blond boy said. He was English, delicate as a girl. A waiter, Mercer guessed.

  “I won’t.” Mercer kept menace in his voice. “What size shoes do you wear?’

  The boy’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Shoes? What size shoes?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Got any sneakers?” Mercer hoped the American and English sizes were the same, or at least close. The boy nodded. “Give them to me.”

  Mercer let the waiter back to his feet and stripped off his monk’s robe. The boy blubbered when he saw the handle of the Mauser. “Give me the shoes and keep your mouth shut, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  The young Englishman opened a closet and rummaged through the detritus at the bottom for his sneakers. “Here, here you are. You won’t hurt me?”

  “I promise. Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.” Mercer used a tie from the closet to bind the waiter’s hands to the metal bed frame. The ball of socks he found was still warm and damp from the day’s use. Mercer jammed the socks in the youth’s mouth.

  Gagging at first, the young waiter calmed enough to start drawing even breaths. Mercer put on the shoes, pleased that they fit. “When your roommate unties you and you go to the security office, you might want to come up with a better story than a deranged terrorist stealing shoes.”

  The boy mumbled into his gag and Mercer laughed. “Don’t worry, kid. Believe it or not, your sneakers might save everyone on this ship.”

  Back in the hallway, Mercer took up the trail again. The scuff marks led him to a watertight door much thicker than any he’d seen in the below decks area. It was marked ENGINEERING STAFF ONLY. The floor thrummed with the force of the ship’s mighty power plants. He decided that he’d come as far as he should. Fumbling around down here was wasting time he didn’t have. He’d take his chances getting into the communications room without Rath’s prisoner. He had the Mauser and the element of surprise.

  Backtracking, he passed the waiter’s cabin again. He couldn’t hear anything from within. Satisfied, Mercer rounded a series of corners, brushing past a few off-duty crewmen who shot him queer looks but said nothing. As he turned one more corner, he had just enough time to recognize a mass of blond hair before his crotch exploded in agony. Mercer dropped to his knees and through tear-streaked eyes saw a knee coming at his face. He could do nothing. His world had gone black by the time his head hit the deck.

  Fighting the urge to retch, Mercer came awake in slow increments. His lower body felt distant, like the pain belonged to someone else. But as he became more aware, he knew the agony was his alone. The pulsing waves radiated from his genitals and settled in his lower belly like molten lead. To distract himself, he concentrated on the sharper pain in his face. Experimentally he traced his tongue across his teeth and was relieved they were all there. He tasted blood. Opening his eyes sent bolts of electricity to his battered nose. He spat.

  “Who are you?” The question came from beyond Mercer’s gray vision.

  “An idiot.” Mercer’s voice was pinched by clotted blood in his nose. He braced himself for what was about to come and sharply exhaled twin jets of red mist. After a surreal moment where his head felt like it had shattered, he peered around the spiky pinwheels of pain. It took him a minute to realize where he was—a crawl space below some kind of engineering room tangled with piping—and who had spoken—the blond man he’d first spotted talking to Gunther Rath in the Pandora cavern.

  “I promised myself when I saw you again I’d kill you.” Mercer pulled his hands against the plastic strip ties binding his wrists over an insulated pipe above him. The man was similarly shackled. “You’re Rath’s boss, aren’t you?”

  “Klaus Raeder.” They were both on their knees under a steel catwalk. Even if they could stand, there was barely enough room. Lamps in the room above them made the floor under the grated catwalk look like bricks of light mortared with shadow. The ties were threaded over a pipe suspended from the metal grid. Mercer pulled until the plastic ripped his flesh.

  “I’ve tried that,” Raeder said. “You won’t be able to do it.” He paused. “I recognize you now from your Surveyor’s Society picture. You’re Philip Mercer.”

  Mercer was unwilling to give Raeder the satisfaction of being right. He’d already guessed that Rath had somehow double-crossed his superior to steal the last Pandora box. “Why did he lock you up?”

  “He needed me to get aboard the Sea Empress. We came on the boat stored on the Njoerd. The captain wouldn’t have given him permission if I wasn’t forced to order him to.”

  “And when you got to the ship, you were put in here in case Rath needed you again?” Raeder nodded. “What’s Rath’s plan with the last box?”

  “I was going to dump them in the sea,” Raeder boasted. “No one was supposed to know about it and no one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “You think I care about your intentions?” Mercer couldn’t believe the German’s self-righteousness and lack of shame. “Your hopes don’t amount to shit and never have, considering how easily Rath managed to hijack your plans. Someday I’d like to know how you thought you could sweep something like the Pandora Project under the rug. For now I have to worry about stopping Rath.”

  “It was an economic decision.” Raeder feebly clung to his original justification. “I was trying to save my shareholders from paying hundreds of millions of dollars for something none of us are responsible for.”

  “Your company profited from the thousand dead slaves in that cavern and you’re telling me you’re not responsible?” Mercer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Hate to tell you this, Raeder, but you are. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Just because you didn’t pull any triggers doesn’t mean you can duck the culpability of the company you represent.”

  “I thought I could get away with it.” Raeder’s voice was nearly drowned by the sound of pumps and other machinery. The air was stifling hot.

  “No one can walk away from their past.” Mercer began looking around for something sharp to cut his bonds. “And that includes a company like Kohl. Now your company is going to lose a lot more than the money it rightly owed and you are going to pay with your life.”

  “Do you think you’re immune? Your life is as forfeit as mine. No one can stop Rath. He controls the box—and me—which means he controls everything. He’s invincible.”

  There were no tools within reach, but Mercer’s tone was still defiant. “You sound like you want him to win.”

  “No. I just know he will. It’s hopeless.”

  “Because he beat you?” Mercer scoffed. “Arrogance and gullibility are a dangerous mix. And Rath will be stopped. There are five other people from the U-boat with me, and we have a contact on the ship. They’ll get the alarm out.”

  “Sorry to tell you this, but when they brought you down here, Greta Schmidt was talking with another of Rath’s people about a report of stolen clothing near the ship’s marina. I suspect that was your doing. She was on her way there to investigate.”

  A door above them crashed open and Mercer heard a babble of voices he recognized: a snarling curse from Ira, Hilda’s quiet sobs, and Anika’s attempts to comfort her. Greta Schmidt’s clear laughter sounded, and again Mercer strained at his bonds. The effort left him panting. A guard lifted a section of the catwalk directly above him and let it fall back on its hinges. His partner kept Mercer and Klaus Raeder covered with a submachine gun as he came down the steps to the low crawl space.

  “How are your balls?” Greta smirked from the catwalk above.
/>   “Sweaty. Want a taste?”

  In a fury, she slammed her boot onto his exposed hands and would have broken Mercer’s wrists if he hadn’t laid them flat together. Gritting his teeth against the pain did little. “When Gunther is finished on the bridge, you are going to be the first to die.”

  The guards led Mercer’s party into the cramped space and tied them to other lengths of pipe, far enough apart so they could not help one another escape. Hilda was in tears, and despite the bravado he was trying to show in front of the women, Marty Bishop’s cheeks were also wet. Erwin was nearly catatonic. Only Ira and Anika had embers of the fire that had carried them so far. Anika even managed to throw Mercer a smile just before her plastic cuffs were wrenched tight. Her body rippled with pain.

  Ira waited until Greta finished speaking with one of the guards before he said, “Mercer, don’t worry. We made the call to your FBI buddy Henna on the sat-phone. By now he’s alerted our Navy as well as Iceland’s.”

  “So the solar max abated enough for us to use it.” Mercer smiled. “About damn time. I was tired of playing staked goat until you could use it.”

  Greta looked from one man to the other, dismayed that she couldn’t detect fear in their voices. “You have no satellite phone,” she said at last.

  Ira gave her the withering look he’d used on a generation of naval cadets. “I tossed it just before you captured us. Why do you think we didn’t put up a fight? We’ve won already—only you don’t know it.”

  “This is not true.” There was doubt in her eyes.

  “You go right ahead and believe that, you sick bitch,” Anika Klein blazed. “The truth should be here in about an hour aboard a dozen American helicopters.”

  Greta crossed over to where Anika was tied to a heat exchanger. “And I will tear out your ovaries long before they get here.”

  She considered slapping Anika’s face, thought better of it, and climbed the seven steps back to the catwalk. A guard closed the hatch grate, and the outer door slammed with a metallic bang.

  From his position, Mercer couldn’t see where Ira Lasko had been secured, but he thought it was someplace behind him and around a piece of equipment. “You were trying to tell me that you found Erwin’s friend and he had a sat-phone, right?”

  “Ah, no. That was all bullshit. We called his cabin again, but he wasn’t there. Greta found us about five seconds after Erwin and I got back from the dining room. Seems we robbed the only Buddhist monks who actually care about their property. They had gone to the ship’s security office and Rath was alerted. Greta and a couple of his boys ferreted us out. Considering their firepower, we figured surrender was a better idea than suicide.”

  “We thought you were still free,” Anika added.

  “I went to find Rath’s prisoner. That’s him over in the corner. Klaus Raeder’s his name. He’s the head of Kohl.”

  “Hi, hope you burn in hell,” Ira called as a greeting.

  Perhaps he’d survived one narrow escape too many or perhaps because with all of them together and under Rath’s control they were as good as dead—either way, Mercer finally lost control. This was as far as he could go. There were no other options. There was no hope.

  He began to laugh. The deep anomalous sound crashed against the steel confines of the machinery room, lashed everyone and echoed back, hammering. It was manic, frightening. When he caught his breath again, silence hung as heavy as steam.

  “I figured out the paradox to the mythological story of Pandora,” he said, in control of his voice if nothing more.

  “What paradox?” Anika asked. “She opened a box that Zeus gave to Epimetheus and accidentally released all the ills on the world. But when everything like greed and envy and disease had escaped, she found that hope was still in the box. It’s a beautiful story that means despite everything that may happen to you, hope always remains.”

  “That’s the lesson people get from it,” Mercer agreed bitterly. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why hope was in the box to begin with? Why was it in there with disease and hate and lust? Because hope’s as destructive as any of those, maybe worse. It was never meant to be a gift from the gods. It was punishment. Hope gives you strength when you have a chance. When the situation’s impossible, it becomes a torture.”

  The pain in his voice stunned everyone, especially Anika. “Are you really that cynical?”

  Mercer didn’t answer. Despite his words, he pulled against his shackles with every fiber of his being, his eyes closed so tightly they felt crushed into his skull. He bellowed in rage and frustration and . . . hopelessness. And with a metallic snap the thick plastic cuffs parted and his hands were free.

  For a moment he stared at the cleanly severed ends dangling from his wrists. It wasn’t humanly possible to break these cuffs yet the evidence was right in front of him. How? A miracle? The divine intervention of the gods telling him he’d missed the point of the Pandora myth?

  Klaus Raeder was the only person who could see what Mercer had done and he gaped. “How did you do that?”

  Mercer looked upward in an age-old glance of reverence to a higher power. That’s how he spotted a spectral figure standing on the grating above him with a fire ax in his hands. He was dressed in black with silver hair and a beard that approached his waist. Understanding dawned immediately. “Father Vatutin?”

  “Da.” Vatutin lifted the hatch and moved down the steps. The others began to cheer when they heard what was happening.

  Mercer massaged his wrists. “I’m not complaining, but how did you know?”

  “I see a Buddhist monk near dining room when I go in for supper.” Vatutin’s English was terrible. “I see him check expensive Swiss watch that no monk can own. I look more closely. Not monk but man made to look like monk. I follow. You knocked out by blond woman and brought here. I hide. Then more people brought here and I see Erwin. I wait until guard posted at door turns away and use blunt edge of ax.”

  Mercer got to his feet and shook the Orthodox priest’s hand. “You have no idea what I was thinking when the cuffs broke.”

  Vatutin touched the heavy cross resting on his chest. “I know what you think.”

  The two began to release the others. Anika smiled when Mercer reached her. “I told you that there’s always hope.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.” Mercer was chagrined.

  Vatutin and Erwin Puhl embraced for a long time after the priest learned Igor Bulgarin was dead.

  “I’m gonna start calling you Pessimism Man from now on,” Ira Lasko said to Mercer when he was freed. “That thing about hope being in the box was a good point. Just promise me it’s your last death-row revelation.”

  “I promise.” Mercer took the weapons Vatutin had liberated from the guard: a silenced H&K P9S automatic pistol and a compact MP-5 submachine gun also fitted with a long silencer. “Now it’s time to put an end to this nightmare.”

  “Any ideas?” Marty asked.

  “That all depends on Herr Raeder.” Mercer looked down at him since they had yet to cut his bonds. “How about it? You willing to help?”

  “I told you earlier that I wanted to destroy the boxes. It is Rath who wants to sell them.”

  “Does he have a buyer?”

  “Libya.”

  Shit! “And when this is over you’re going to make full restitution?”

  “Yes.”

  Mercer had a hard time believing such a quick answer. “Because you got caught?”

  “Because I was wrong,” Raeder countered. “Think what you like of me, Dr. Mercer, but I am not a monster. I am a businessman. A capitalist. Being an American, you should understand. My personal beliefs had nothing to do with my decision to conceal Kohl’s past. And no matter how much my company pays, I don’t believe full restitution can ever be paid to the victims of the Holocaust.”

  “I don’t trust you but I also don’t have a choice,” Mercer hissed. An ax stroke severed Raeder’s plastic cuffs. “What are t
he security arrangements on this ship?”

  “The pope’s Swiss Guards are in charge of the Convocation’s delegates and the Sea Empress has personnel of her own. About twenty, I think. I recognized several of them as part of Gunther Rath’s special-projects department. They’re his people, like those at the Greenland base. They won’t listen to me.”

  “Who did you speak to when Rath needed permission to board?”

  “The captain,” Raeder answered at once. “He wouldn’t let Rath approach the ship until he heard I was on the boat from the Njoerd. He doesn’t know that I am Rath’s prisoner. No one does.”

  “So he’ll listen to you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Once we reach the captain, will Rath make a stand or try to run?” Mercer said, thinking aloud.

  “Neither option’s too good,” Ira said. “The world’s religious leaders are on this ship. If Rath opens that box the repercussions are going to be bloody. Every fanatic in the planet would use their deaths as an excuse for holy war.”

  “But who will die if we let him run with the box and can’t catch him again?”

  “We’ll get him.” Ira Lasko considered leaving it at that, but he continued, his voice tinged with guilt. He edged Mercer away from the others for privacy. “Get me to a working phone and I guarantee that Rath won’t make it fifty miles from the Sea Empress.”

  The confidence in Ira’s statement made everything suddenly clear to Mercer. The fury was like an explosion ten times more powerful than Greta Schmidt’s knee to the crotch. “You’re working with the goddamned CIA, aren’t you?”

  Ira nodded. “I’m sorry, Mercer,” he said, meaning it.

  “That fucker Charlie Bryce set me up.”

  “You were my backup in case something went really wrong.”

  “I can’t believe this!” And then Mercer thought it through and he could believe it. Who better to back up an agent on a scientific expedition than a scientist? His name wasn’t unknown in various government circles, including the CIA. It all made perfect sense in a compartmentalized, need-to-know sort of way. “You were after the boxes for our military.”