Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  They stood quietly and watched the last shelf of priceless wine disappear into the floor. Despite his own worries, and Hawke’s misgivings about Jet, he knew now he’d never have gotten this far without her.

  “Okay,” Jet said. “We’re almost in.”

  She placed her right hand flat against a matte black panel to the right of the doors. A bar of red light passed under her hand as the bio-metric scanner read her palm. Instantly, a small light above the panel began flashing green. Stoke could hear a faint rumble and knew an elevator car was descending behind the steel doors. It took the cab a long time to get down to their level.

  Stoke suddenly saw the whole thing.

  “This elevator shaft goes up inside the mountain right behind the guesthouse, doesn’t it?” he said. Jet nodded.

  “Welcome to the Schloss Reichenbach,” Jet said as the doors slid silently open. “One of the most secure and exquisite private residences in the Alps.”

  “Cool,” Stoke said.

  They rode up in silence. The interior walls of the elevator were lined with highly polished brass. Stoke looked up. There was a strange light fixture in the ceiling, a bronze eagle with spread wings holding an illuminated glass globe in its claws. It took ten minutes to get to the top of the mountain. When the cab stopped the doors slid open he and Jet stepped out into the most awesome space he’d ever seen.

  “Glorious, isn’t it?” Jet said, studying his face.

  “I can’t talk,” Stoke said.

  Stoke simply stood there, taking it all in. They must have been at six or seven thousand feet. One whole wall opposite them was a massive stretch of curving glass. Beyond, a series of moonlit snow-capped mountains marched off into the distance under a black and starry sky. A massive chandelier hung from the peak of the soaring ceiling above them. Jet touched the button that illuminated it.

  There was very little furniture in the room. No rugs or carpet on the floors, just vast areas of polished wood in various intricate inlaid designs. A few low leather chairs were arranged around a great open-hearth stone fireplace to Stoke’s left. Above the carved mantel hung a large oil portrait. Two men on horseback in the snow, high up in these mountains. Even from a distance, Stoke recognized one of the two men as von Draxis. He was wearing some kind of funky uniform. Very heroic-type painting.

  “Who’s the other guy?” he asked Jet, moving toward the fireplace to get a better look.

  “That’s Luca Bonaparte,” she said. “Schatzi’s best friend.”

  “Bonaparte, huh? So that’s him. I should have guessed by the way he’s got his hand stuck inside his overcoat. Well, I’ll be darned. Wow. What’s that neat outfit Schatzi’s wearing?”

  “Alpenkorps. The uniform of the German Alpine Corps. World War II vintage. He has quite a collection of military uniforms at Tempelhof.”

  “There’s that word again. What’s Tempelhof? You mean the airport?”

  “The old aerodrome at Berlin. Designed by Albert Speer and built around 1937. A huge crescent building about five kilometers long. After Hitler conquered the world it was going to be the continent of Germania’s main airport. A few years ago, the city of Berlin was going to tear it down but Schatzi bought it out from under their noses. It now houses all of the von Draxis corporate offices and shipbuilding and aircraft design studios.”

  “Is that right? Germania. That’s what he planned to call the world, huh? I never knew that.”

  A single crescent-shaped table with one chair stood facing the great window. On its highly polished surface stood only a black and white photograph in a large silver frame and the model of an old three-masted sailing ship. The hull was some kind of black stone and the sails were all made of ivory so thin you could see starlight right through them.

  “So this is his desk?” Stoke said, approaching a semicircular table of walnut with carved eagles for legs. Behind the desk and the curving glass wall, the top of the world unfolded and rolled out below.

  “Yes. Sit in the chair.”

  “You don’t think he’d mind?”

  “I’m sure he would. Go ahead.”

  Stoke did as she said. Sitting here, it was hard not to feel like the man who owned the world. It was a very uncomfortable sensation.

  “Who’s that in the silver frame? Daddy?”

  “Kaiser Wilhelm.”

  “You don’t say. My, my, my. Isn’t that something?” Stoke placed both of his hands palm-down on the desk and spread his fingers, quiet for a few seconds, just thinking about the whole thing. After a few long moments he looked up at her and said, “Tell me, Jet. What exactly does your boyfriend do for a living?”

  “He’s a shipbuilder. The most successful and powerful in Germany. His family has been in the business for four centuries. The Krupp family built the guns. The von Draxis dynasty built the ships that carried the guns across the sea. The family shipyard in Wilhelmshaven is where they built the Graf Spee.”

  “Right. Germany’s ultimate pocket battleship. The Brits cornered her down in Uruguay, right? It took three Royal Navy ships to sink her.”

  “The Brits didn’t sink her, Stokely. Hitler ordered her scuttled in the Montevideo harbor. To prevent the British from learning the secrets of von Draxis’s construction and Krupp’s experimental weapons systems. The Graf Spee was designed and built by Schatzi’s grandfather, Konrad, for the Kriegsmarine. Launched in 1937.”

  “Kriegsmarine, huh? Does our little Schatzi still build boats for the German navy?”

  “Not so much now.”

  “German navy hasn’t got the big-bucks budgets it used to have. So, what kind of boats does he build these days?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Schatzi’s residence includes a marine design studio where the modelmakers first create what he creates and then do real-time simulations of sea trials. The boats are flawless before the real hulls ever splash.”

  “What’s he building now?”

  “The greatest ocean liner ever built.”

  “For Germany? Is he planning to put guns on this one?”

  “No. He’s building her for France.”

  “France. Isn’t that some fascinating shit? France and Germany. I guess they finally decided to kiss and make up. Let’s go take a look.”

  “Are you okay? You’re acting funny.”

  “I feel good. This is just how I get when I’m impressed.”

  They had to pass through a number of interesting rooms to reach the studio. There was a dining room with a table long enough to seat a small town. They came to a door marked Kriegsmarine and entered a model room where Stokely could have spent a week. Beneath the domed ceiling painted to look like a stormy sky was a sea of glass cases. Each one contained exquisitely detailed models of ships the von Draxis family had designed or built for the German navy.

  Stoke paused for a moment to admire a few of them. There were the massive battleships Tirpitz and Bismarck. But also Stoke’s personal all-time favorite, the Schnellboote. It was arguably the fastest and best-designed PT boat ever built during World War II. Maybe ever.

  A steel-and-bronze door with intricate carving barred the way to the next room. On it were depicted all the epic sea battles the Kriegsmarine had fought in the last few centuries. Stoke felt he was getting to know Schatzi better. And he was beginning to feel like Hawke’s decision to send him to Germany had been a good one. He couldn’t get the portrait over the fireplace out of his mind.

  Jet worked her electronic magic with the door and they entered the test model studio. The ceiling was a glassed dome and stars twinkled high above their heads. Jet was reaching for the light switch when Stoke touched her arm and said, “Don’t. Let’s just leave it like this a minute.”

  He walked inside ahead of her. There was only one model in this room and it stood in the center of the inlaid marble floor. It was encased in a closed glass structure at least thirty feet in length and fifteen feet high. Inside was the mo
st gorgeous ship Stoke had ever laid eyes on. The name of the giant ocean liner was on her stern in gold leaf.

  Leviathan.

  “Leviathan?” Stoke said.

  “The sea beast,” Jet said. “Biblical. It’s Schatzi and Luca’s idea of a joke.”

  “Got it,” Stoke said, although he didn’t. He guessed this new French monster was maybe half again as large as the world’s current largest liner, the Queen Mary 2, built by Cunard. That would make her about fifteen hundred feet in length and about three hundred feet high. If Stoke had to guess her gross tonnage he’d put it at three hundred thousand. Jesus.

  “It’s a working model,” Jet said, handing him a remote control pod.

  “What do you mean, ‘working’?”

  “Everything works. Here, I’ll show you.” She pressed one button and the ship lit up from stem to stern with a thousand tiny interior and exterior lights along the entire length of her superstructure. The red and green running lights on either side of her bow were as big as golf balls. She hit another button and the tiny anchors started to drop.

  “Holy shit,” Stoke said. The thing was truly beautiful.

  “That’s nothing. Watch this,” Jet said. She hit a button and the interior of the glass case began filling with clear blue water illuminated from below. It rapidly rose up the walls of the case until it reached Leviathan’s waterline.

  “You can simulate all kinds of sea conditions,” Jet said, “There are wave paddles hidden at the bottom of the case. And sensors throughout the tank to monitor the parameters of wave action on the hull. Want to see a Force Five gale? A tsunami? Seas of fifty feet?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Would you like me to start her engines?”

  “Yes, that I would like to see,” Stoke said, transfixed as Jet fingered the remote. There were propulsion pods hung from the stern. As she pushed the joystick, the pods revolved 360 degrees and the minature bronze props began spinning, creating whorls of white water around them.

  “There you go. Four propulsion pods. She carries two fixed, and two azimuthing. This model is an exact replica of the real thing, down to the most minute detail.”

  “What’s that big bulge in the keel? Weird looking.”

  “That? Bulb keel. Lowers the VCG. The vertical center of gravity.”

  “You know a lot about this stuff, Jet.”

  “Enough.”

  “How come she doesn’t have any smokestacks?”

  “That’s an easy one. She’s nuclear.”

  “Holy shit,” Stoke said, “Nuclear? An ocean liner?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Is the baron actually building this thing?”

  “Oh, she’s already built. Her maiden voyage is coming up soon. She’s sailing from Le Havre to New York.”

  “Le Havre,” Stoke said, “That’s in France, isn’t it? I’d like to be at that launching. But first I think we ought to go back to Berlin and poke our noses around that Tempelhof aerodrome. Do it at night like this, you know, so nobody will bother us.”

  “Hmm,” Jet said, looking at her watch. “Look, it’s getting late. We’d better get down the mountain and back in our beds before we’re missed.”

  “You ever read ‘Hansel and Gretel’?” Stoke asked, “No? Just curious.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Coney Island

  “HE WON’T COME DOWN?” CAPTAIN MARIUCCI WAS ASKING the manager of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. “What do you mean he won’t come down?” The captain was clenching his jaw in frustration. It seemed the semiretired mobster, a Mr. Joseph Bones, was alive but currently unavailable for questioning. Joey was holed up in one of the sixteen swinging cars at the very top of the world’s tallest Ferris wheel.

  “How can I say this better? I mean, he won’t come down,” Samuel Gumpertz said, running his hands through the imaginary hair on top of his head. He’d been studying the car where Joey was hiding through his binoculars. He’d gaze in frustration at all the unhappy customers standing around the old Wonder, and then he’d look back up at Joey. The Gumpertz family had been running the number-one attraction at Coney for the last three decades. But it was Sammy’s baby. It was his show. This action, he had to admit, was a first.

  His night man, Joey Bones, an old Mob guy who knew his carny shit backward and forward, was ordinarily a stand-up guy. But about an hour ago, what happened was Joey had flipped out about something, he wouldn’t say what. So now, he was up at the top of the wheel holed up in one of the cars and there was no way on earth to get his skinny old ass down.

  In addition to a growing crowd of very pissed-off paying customers, he also had this NYPD captain all over his ass. Him and his sidekick, this English cop from Scotland Yard looking like something out of an old Sherlock Holmes movie wearing a caped coat and one of those weird goddamn backward and forward caps on his head. Smoking a pipe, for chrissakes. Give me a frigging break with this shit.

  “May I borrow those binoculars?” this English character Congreve asked Gumpertz.

  “Why, certainly,” Gumpertz replied, “My pleasure.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “I hate to interrupt this little tea party, Mr. Gumpertz,” Captain Mariucci said, “But I’m only going to say this one more time. I want you to start up that goddamn Ferris wheel up and bring that man down. Okay? Capisce?”

  “How many times I gotta explain this again, Captain? All right. One, Joey is an old goombah, you know. He’s eighty-five. Set in his ways. He’s stubborn. He don’t like being told what to do by nobody. Two, he’s my brother-in-law, all right? He’s my wife Marie’s brother, okay? Bottom line, anything happens to Joey up there, I’m dead meat. And, three, he did something funny to the frigging gearbox. So we can’t turn the wheel. End of story.”

  Mariucci said, “Whatever he did to it, it ain’t funny. Fix it.”

  “Fix it, he says.”

  “That’s what I said, fix it.”

  “Would that I could, Captain, just fix it. You see that fat-assed guy in the machine shed now? That’s my mechanic, Manny. What do you think he’s doing in there right now? Jerking off? Playing canasta? No. He’s trying to fix the frigging Ferris wheel. But there’s a little problem, as I explained to you earlier. Joey did something to the mechanism before he went up; you see what I’m saying? He took something out of the machinery, I dunno. Something critical. A wheel, a gear, who the fuck knows.”

  “He stuck a fucking monkey wrench in the thing,” the mechanic said. He had appeared in the shed’s doorway, his face and T-shirt blackened with century-old grease from the machinery. The news on his face wasn’t good.

  “You see that,” Gumpertz said, “a monkey wrench sounds about right.”

  “He jammed a big spanner in the main drive wheel,” Manny said. “He stuck it in so the big wheel would only do one half a rotation. Then she’d lock up. Smart.”

  “Yeah, he’s a frigging genius,” Gumpertz said. “So pull the frigging spanner out, all right? Hey! It’s Friday night! Hello? I got huddled masses coming out the friggin’ wazoo here, and you’re giving out progress reports. Get your ass back in there and pull that thing out of there. Could you do that for me, please?”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” the mechanic said, turning his back on them. “I’ll give it another shot.”

  “Give it a shot? Do me a favor. Just do it. Jesus. I need this, right, Captain?”

  A strong wet wind had suddenly come up, howling in off the Atlantic. The undersides of boiling black and purple clouds were painted bright yellow and red with the carnival glow of the midway below. Congreve stood with the borrowed binoculars observing the car with Joe Bones inside.

  The swinging car rocked violently to and fro in the gusty easterly wind. To the east, a flash followed by a rumble of thunder. A big storm. Ambrose imagined the pendulum-like motion of the rocking car was enough to make even a strong man wish he were someplace else. And it hadn’t even started to blow
yet.

  “Mr. Gumpertz,” Congreve said, “Tell me again precisely what caused Mr. Bones to engineer his current predicament.”

  “Okay, look, here’s what I know, Inspector. Something spooked him, okay? Earlier. About nine-thirty I think it was. He got a call in the ticket box. He came outside, offloaded the wheel, then put the chains up, closing down the ride. I said something like, ‘Hey, asshole, what the fuck you think you’re doing?’ and he’s like, ‘Sammy, ya gotta help me, I’m in deep shit.’”

  “But he didn’t say what kind of trouble?”

  “No. He didn’t have to. Spend your whole life on the streets of Brooklyn, you know that look, believe me. He got the word on the phone. Somebody was coming to whack him.”

  “Did he say who called him?” the English detective asked.

  “Yeah. He said it was his buddy Lavon over at the Bide-a-Wee rest home. Joey used to go over there all the time and watch ballgames with his old pal Benny Sangster.”

  At that moment, someone in the crowd screamed.

  Congreve whirled about and saw a large woman in a black babushka pointing upward at another soaring attraction just across the midway from the Ferris wheel. It appeared to have been out of operation for many years. The blackened and twisted wreckage of the tall wrought-iron structure resembled the Eiffel Tower after a bad fire. The thing was enormous. It had to be almost three hundred feet tall. Congreve raised the binoculars to his eyes. A third of the way up, at about a hundred feet above the midway, a man in white coveralls was rapidly climbing the superstructure.

  “Captain Mariucci,” Congreve said, “I think we have a problem.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Up there.” Ambrose handed him the binoculars.

  “Aw, shit. I don’t believe this.”

  “What’s going on, Captain?” Gumpertz asked, looking up.

  “We’re screwed, that’s what’s going on,” the captain said. “You see that little guy all the way up there? He’s going to climb high enough until he’s got a clean shot at your employee Mr. Bones.”

  “You got any idea why they want to whack him?”