Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)

by Mims, Lee

  “Now just a damn minute—”

  “No! Stop right there, Duchamp. I don’t know how to make it any clearer: I was only going along with you to save the company. That’s not necessary any longer. I don’t want to hear another word about it, and I especially don’t want the Coast Guard back out here picking you up, making things public and jeopardizing the entire operation—”

  “Shut up! Keep your voice down. I’ve already taken care of everything. There is a treasure, and you’ll get your share. And for your information, a chopper’s already on the way to pick me up.”

  I didn’t hear Braxton Roberts’s reply, but I could tell by his footsteps that he was heading my way. Remembering the reflector bands on my hard hat, I jerked it off and squished myself farther underneath the stairs. He was within 10 feet of me when he turned back and said, “And for God’s sake, don’t call me or contact me in any way.” Then he was gone, and I slumped with relief.

  That little conversation certainly explained a lot, but what did Duchamp’s “taken care of everything” mean?

  With my hard hat still in my hands, I eased over to the edge of the stairs trying to figure out Duchamp’s next move. Problem was, I didn’t hear anything so I tiptoed behind some barrels and listened again. That’s when Davy Duchamp seemed to materialize out of thin air, grabbing me by the throat and jerking me off my feet.

  “You stupid witch! I knew I’d find your dumb ass alone if I waited long enough.”

  “Hey, knock it off, moron!” I answered with a false bravado as my hard hat hit the deck. Struggling to regain my footing—an impossibility, as my feet were barely touching the deck—I landed a few ineffectual punches on my captor’s brawny arms. He responded by shoving me hard into the bow rail.

  “Moron? You’re calling me a moron?” he repeated contemptuously. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me? How much you almost cost me and my people? Not to mention bringing the police down on me and my boys! Questioning us about a death we had nothing to do with!”

  “Er, you didn’t?” I gasped, trying with both hands to prize his steel fingers from my neck.

  “No! But not to worry, ’cause you’re the only person standing between us and what’s rightfully ours. And now I can use you.”

  “What?”

  “For the first time in our brief but miserable acquaintance, you are exactly what I need: a diversion. Goodnight, Ms. Cooper!” And just like that, Davy Duchamp tossed me overboard like so much garbage.

  Remarkably, as I plummeted to the warm Atlantic 22 feet below, my brain was still in analytical mode and I was thinking of someone other than myself. Shouldn’t I get points for that? What had Davy meant when he said I was the only person standing in his way? Had he found Viktor before he left the ship? Had he killed him too? For that matter, was I really going to die?

  Then I hit the inky black water.

  I suspect the impact would have been much the same had I hit a concrete sidewalk, but maybe not, since I was pretty sure I was still in one piece as I kicked and fought my way back up. Thank God for safety training. I’d hit the water feet first with relaxed joints, but I still couldn’t feel my legs. As though in a dream, I heard myself gasping for air when I surfaced. Alarms were blaring, the water had turned from black to ice blue, and any second now, the Magellan, outlined in a blaze of lights, was about to plow me over. Technically I was being pushed into it by the ripping currents brought about by a tide change in full swing, but this wasn’t the time for semantics.

  I barely got my arms up over my head before I collided with the hull and was sucked under with a force far greater than I’d ever have imagined. Leaving the lighted water behind, I was dragged, rolling and tumbling, down, down, down 40 feet until I reached the bottom of Magellan’s hull. It all happened in a few seconds, yet they were the longest ones I’d ever experienced.

  I had one thought and one thought only, which was to get out of the flow of water being pulled into the thrusters! I’d seen diagrams of how they worked—videos complete with arrows showing the flow of water through the gigantic 12-foot circles of steel enclosing five spinning propeller blades—and knew whatever went into those blades would come out on the other side with quite a different molecular arrangement. There wouldn’t be enough left of me to make a decent sausage patty.

  Since I had been standing slightly to starboard of the point of the bow, apparently I missed being pulled into the first of the three thrusters. Briefly, the possibility of survival crossed my mind. Just then, the propulsion stream of that first thruster hit me and I was tossed about like a T-shirt in a washer. Water churned by 7,000-horsepower motors practically washed my eyeballs from their sockets. I don’t know how many times I bounced off the hull, hearing crunching noises each time I hit. I tried to relax my body to lessen the impact of the blows, but I was utterly helpless to shift my direction out of the stream of water toward one of the side mounted thrusters.

  Being enveloped in total darkness, not even knowing which way is up as you’re hurtling toward the ultimate meat grinder was a horror so intense it was paralyzing. My lungs burned. The desire to breath, to suck in anything, was overpowering. I could feel my life slipping away. I just hoped to die before I was sucked into a thruster. Even as a few brain cells valiantly kept firing, trying to keep me conscious, I simply gave up, rolled into the fetal position, and waited for the inevitable.

  Then something warm and comforting enveloped me; it felt like someone cradling my balled-up body in their arms. Instantly my brain fired up to wide-damn-open and I groped for the source of my hope. Opening my stinging eyes, I saw a face mask. It was attached to the person jamming a respirator into my mouth.

  Viktor! Hungrily, I sucked in several deep breaths and felt the life flow back into my limbs. The desire to live returned with a vengeance and I fought to help him as he doggedly pulled me from the propulsion stream, out from under Magellan’s hull, and we began our ascent.

  After a few powerful kicks of his strong legs and fins, Viktor stopped. We fought the current while I took another buddy-breath. Then he took the respirator back, grabbed my hips with both hands, and, kicking hard, propelled me straight up until I could see the emergency lights on the surface above me. Only at that moment did he let me go.

  I wasn’t even surprised. Call it sudden insight arising from a near-death experience, call it whatever you want—but for a few seconds, everything came crystal clear. Just before I resumed my struggle to the surface, I looked back down. The headlight from Viktor’s mask grew faint, then blinked out.

  This time when I surfaced, I was on the port side of the Magellan and the current was carrying me diagonally away from and down the length of the ship. I needed to get someone’s attention before I was swept out of the lighted area. Fortunately, the alarm had been cut off. I let out a howl like I was facing down a band of al-Qaeda.

  All the men on the rail who’d been looking past me instantly turned my way. Several life rings hit the sparkling blue water about 10 feet from me … up current. That’s when I realized my arms weren’t working right, there was blood in the water and I was fast becoming too weak to stay afloat. Even adrenalin has its limits.

  I was giving it my all, but with every feeble stroke I was losing ground and sinking into unconsciousness. Then I saw a familiar figure running along the rail ahead of me. Without a pause, he dove off the edge, life ring in one hand, life vest in the other. Bud! The only man I know who can save your life and give you choices while doing so.

  Twenty-Six

  Next thing I knew I was being loaded into a friggin’ helicopter. Great. I was really safe now. My eyes were stinging and burning. I closed them and let darkness overtake me.

  When I opened them again, everything was blurry, but I was pretty sure I was in a hospital. Blinking, trying to bring my surroundings into focus, one thing was certain: every part of my body hurt. I tried to raise one
arm. It was in a temporary cast. My head pounded. Good grief. I shut my eyes again and let sleep overtake me.

  The next time I felt like opening them, I thought better of it. I mean, what would I find this time? Would my legs be in casts, too? After a few minutes of listening to hospital sounds, wondering what was making that damn beeping noise, curiosity got the better of me. At least this time the room came into focus and so did the person sitting on the edge of my bed looking at me, his face etched in sorrow.

  “Bud,” I croaked.

  Tears sprang to his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He bit his lip and sniffed. And right then I knew. I knew with the clarity only a cerebral lightning strike can bring, that I’d played this scene before.

  I stared at him and he stared back at me, tenderly cradling my hand in his, just like he had that night on the ship. Then he let out a shaky sigh, stood, and, being careful not to disturb the IV needle in my arm—the source of the obnoxious beeping no doubt—laid my hand on the bed.

  “I’ll go get a doctor or nurse … or somebody,” he muttered and left, wiping his face with the palms of his hands.

  Warmth from where he had been sitting radiated through my hand, the IV beeped, and my mind flew back to the night I’d been attacked on the Magellan. The first time. I remembered how I’d awoken in my bunk with Bud leaning over me, crying. He’d rescued me from a fate worse than death—maybe from death itself, too. Bad memories and bad questions made me squirm, bringing on a fresh jolt of pain. I resolved to lay still … but I couldn’t stop thinking: Didn’t that mean I was back to my original fear that Bud was Hunter’s killer?

  I supposed someone else could have come along after I fainted, smashed in the back of Hunter’s head, pushed him overboard, and left me lying where Bud found me later. Maybe one or both of the twins, since orange material similar to their jumpsuits was found twisted into Hunter’s watchband, and since their dad believed Hunter had been trying to steal the treasure out from under him. He’d implied as much at the nursing home. Then it dawned on me: it had been four in the morning. Why would the twins be in their work clothes? That was a definite plausibility gap.

  Back to Bud as the killer, then. If he’d done the deed and then pretended to have come looking for me and found me knocked out cold as a cod on the ROV pad, obviously the victim of an attack, wouldn’t it have made his story more believable if he’d caused an uproar? Demanded justice for me? Of course it would. And if he did just happen along and found me unconscious, Hunter already overboard, wouldn’t he still have been furious and insisted on finding the culprit? Of course he would. Wouldn’t he?

  My headed pounded with all my deliberations, but I couldn’t stop my brain. It was like Tulip when she picked up a scent. What about the cylinder—the reason I was lying in this miserable place in this sorry state in the first place—what happened to it?

  And where was Viktor? Thinking of him made my blood boil, but not with lust anymore. I might have been pulverized to within an inch of losing my life, but I knew betrayal when I experienced it and I wondered: how long had it taken him to decide to steal the cylinder and leave me with nothing? Was it immediately upon my confiding in him that night in my driveway when he’d saved me from the twins, or had it taken a few days for him to succumb to greed? Okay, so he’d also repeatedly saved my life, but apparently that came with the territory if you were spending time with me.

  I’d thought his saving me meant he’d switched his loyalty to me, that I could trust him, that we’d sort of become partners. The more I pondered my last hours on—and under—the Magellan, the more convinced I was that he’d never been loyal to me. Common sense told me Duchamp had had more to offer.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Bud bustled back into the room with a wizened little doctor who somewhat resembled the gnawed end of a pencil. He explained my injuries: contusions, abrasions, lacerations—a few requiring stitches—a broken arm, two sprained ankles, and a concussion. Then he hustled out like he was late for something. Next came a nurse who went over my medications: painkillers, antibiotics to prevent infections, and more meds to prevent blood clots from the deep bruising. Before leaving, she disconnected the IV and asked a few stupid questions. “Would you like to watch television?” Hell no. “Would you like to up your pain medication?” Hell yes.

  Bud rose stiffly from a corner recliner and returned to my bedside. “There’s a police detective named Pierce in the hall waiting to see you.”

  Despite the pain killers, I perked up. “How long’s he been here?” I asked. “For that matter, how long have I been here and where, in fact, is here?”

  “Here is Carteret General. Amazingly, your injuries weren’t life-threatening, so I managed to convince everyone who wanted to have you flown to Duke that I knew you best and you wouldn’t want ridiculous measures taken when all that was needed was some serious bandages and lots of bed rest. Now, with the emergency stuff done, I’ll take care of the bed rest. I’ve made arrangements to take you home soon as they discharge you later this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon? Last time I looked, it was night.”

  “We got you here around nine last night. It’s now a little after four … p.m. The detective guy has been prowling around out there like an hungry cheetah. He’s very insistent about talking to you. You want to see him?”

  “Damn right. Precious time is wasting,” I said, trying to push myself up straighter in bed. “Ouch! Ouch!”

  “Here, let me help,” Bud said, reaching for me.

  “No! Go get Pierce! Oh, and Bud, what about the kids?”

  “I’ve called them—”

  “Finally, Ms. Cooper, you’re awake.” Here came Pierce. “Hope you don’t mind my barging in, but I heard voices and—”

  “Listen, I’ve got a lot to tell you. Bud, you need to hear this too. The man who pushed me overboard and his buddies have a thirteen-hour jump on you—”

  “Pushed you overboard!” Bud’s face twisted in anger. “I thought you fell!”

  “Bud, please. Have I ever just fallen off a boat?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “If you’ll just be patient, I’ll tell you what happened.”

  Despite the fact that from time to time my brain would fog up—apparently banging one’s head repeatedly on the steel hull of a ship doesn’t do good things for it—soon the two of them knew everything about my saga of almost finding the Amber Room, starting with meeting young Viktor Kozlov three weeks and a lifetime ago. (Well, I did leave out the part about my unwitting fall from grace into Viktor’s bed. But seriously, who wouldn’t?)

  I looked at Bud and my gut squeezed. His expression was stony, but his eyes told a different story. Suddenly I realized how much I must have hurt him by confiding in Viktor instead of him. Pierce’s expression stayed steady on furious.

  He said, “Remember our interview just this last weekend? You said you didn’t know of anything of great value hidden in a cylinder on the ship. Something Hunter might’ve been looking for. That was a boldfaced lie, huh?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I shot back. “You said on the Magellan. At the time, the cylinder was on U-498, two thousand feet below it.”

  “You might think you can split hairs with me, Ms. Cooper, but I’d like to point out that if you had voiced your suspicions regarding Mr. Duchamp sooner, it would have saved you from being keel-hauled the way you were.”

  “The hell!” I fumed. “You’re the one who screwed up and let him get away—after he pulled a gun on you, I might add. If anyone is to blame for my nearly ending up as chum, it’s—”

  “Knock it off, you two,” ordered Bud. “What’s done is done. Cleo, you should count your lucky stars that … friend of yours, Viktor, did double-cross you and was under the ship stealing the booty at the precise moment you needed him and that Duchamp used the alarm as a distraction so he could leave the ship unnoticed.”

 
Pierce now jumped in. “How do you think Viktor got under the ship? And do you think he knew Duchamp was intending to get rid of you?”

  I heaved a sigh and blinked away the heavy cloak of exhaustion that was threatening to drape over my brain again and said, “Here’s how I think things went down. Viktor knew Duchamp had ‘left’ your custody because I told him not long after you told me. At that point, we all but had the cylinder. Soon as I left the ROV van to go back to the logging lab, I think he called Duchamp, told him he’d found the cylinder and that he’d need diving equipment—a small twenty-minute tank of air, a mask, and some fins—to retrieve it. Duchamp probably brought it with him in a small duffel in the chopper and stashed it where Viktor told him. Likely near one of the personnel escape lines. They’re stowed at various locations along the rail and can be lowered in seconds.”

  “Wouldn’t someone have seen him going overboard?” Pierce wanted to know.

  “Not if he chose carefully, probably somewhere near the bow. He could have easily found a blind spot behind some of the tons of equipment and supplies stacked there. Besides, it only takes a few minutes to throw the line over and hustle down. It is for emergencies, after all.”

  “But how did he get to shore with only what was left on a twenty-minute tank?” Bud asked.

  “He didn’t have to. Remember, from the time I told him his old boss and apparent benefactor had escaped, Viktor and the twins had over two hours to throw together a plan. Duchamp left the Magellan, flew somewhere, and waited for them. You thought he’d picked up his boat in Morehead and taken it to Louisiana, right?”