Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  Polk didn’t know who Ann Gray was, and he didn’t know how she was connected to The Associates. He only knew that she had seen him in Los Angeles, then seemed to have deliberately slowed down, as if she didn’t care that he was there.

  Doesn’t matter, Polk thought. He liked the S.S. Badger. This overnight ferry ride across Lake Michigan was an opportunity. He had a Walther P22 with a suppressor in his backpack. He would catch the tall woman in a dark corner. Maybe she would decide to take a nap. The idea made him chuckle.

  * * *

  The Badger offered tiny staterooms for those who wanted to actually sleep during the cruise. Experience told Gray that about half the riders on the overnight crossing would take staterooms, while the others would stretch out in one of the TV lounges. On daylight cruises, activities abounded: bingo and games in the main lounge, a movie room, arcade, children’s play area, and of course, lots of open space on the top deck. But after midnight, the S.S. Badger was quiet.

  On the lower deck, she walked through the darkened main lounge, skirting the TV rooms and aft end lounge. A quiet, semi-enclosed deck area with scattered chairs opened toward the stern. Gray settled in to one of the plastic chairs, angling it so that her back was against a side bulkhead and she could see anyone who came into the area. She put her purse and travel bag at her feet, and she sat down to wait.

  After half an hour, a sleepy truck driver wandered into the area and made small talk with her. She was polite but aloof, and eventually the man went away. Gray continued to watch the entrance. Once she thought she saw a shadow moving in the aft lounge area.

  She bent to her travel bag, took out the CZ 75, and transferred it to her purse.

  * * *

  Polk watched from behind a wall, breathing quietly. The woman sat very still in her deck chair, looking out at the ship’s wake. He gave her credit—she could be so still as to seem asleep, but he knew she was awake and alert. People drifted through the lounge at times, stopping to look out at the ship’s stern. Some of them chatted with Gray. Some didn’t.

  At a few minutes past 3:00 A.M., Gray stood up, taking her bags with her. Polk took a step into the protection of a recessed section of the wall. She walked through the TV room. A dozen or so people sat in the chairs. Only one was awake.

  Gray moved forward. Polk emerged from the shadows and followed her.

  * * *

  Gray angled past the closed Portside Bar and entered the main ladies’ room, across from the cruise director’s office—also closed on this crossing. She set her travel bag very carefully on the floor, counted to thirty, and emerged, turning quickly into the dark starboard hallway. She met no other crew or passengers. The row of staterooms was ahead, where some of the passengers slept.

  She reached a breezeway that contained a set of steps to the top deck. On the other side of the open area was a strip of rooms: a maritime museum/quiet room, the ship’s gift shop, movie lounge, arcade, and kids’ playroom.

  Gray closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She pictured the hallway beyond this point. There might be passengers sleeping in the quiet room. The gift shop—or Boatique, as the Badger called it—would be locked. She couldn’t remember if the movie room ran DVDs on the overnight cruise. The arcade or the kids’ area would be best. She’d only seen one child boarding the ship, an already-asleep toddler with her mother in the aft TV lounge.

  She listened to the hallway forward of her position, hearing the low, constant hum of the ship itself, and the water outside. Above the ship sounds, she heard the footsteps somewhere behind her.

  Gray turned toward the staircase and stepped heavily onto it, making a lot of noise. Then she put another foot on it, making noise there as well. She turned quickly, kicked off her flats, and ran for the starboard hallway in her bare feet.

  * * *

  Polk was passing stateroom #34 when he heard the slight clatter. He’d seen the central stairwell earlier when he did a quick recon of the ship after boarding. He entered the clearing from the corridor, feeling the warm breeze from the open deck at the top of the staircase. He ran to the stairwell, drawing the P22.

  Polk’s heart started to pound. He clambered up the staircase and stood at the top in the warm night air. The dark rolling water of Lake Michigan lay just beyond the rail.

  He looked left and right. There was no movement, and the darkness was deeper here.

  She’d only been a few seconds ahead of him, and there was no place to hide up here, only a long, narrow walkway before the railing of the ship.

  She doubled back, Polk thought, then turned to the stairs. On the main deck again, he saw the shoes under the edge of the stairway.

  Left or right? Port or starboard?

  Polk dashed to the left, the side he’d come down a few seconds ago. He looked aft—he saw a crewman in dark shirt and khakis, carrying a garbage bag, crossing through the main lounge. Otherwise, nothing. He looked forward—nothing. No movement at all.

  Polk turned and started down the port hallway, toward the quiet room and the front of the ship.

  * * *

  Gray inched her way down the starboard corridor, past the empty quiet room. The passageway was so still that it felt as if the entire four-hundred-foot ship was empty—except for Zale’s man and her.

  The quiet room and the other public rooms were in the center of the deck. Corridors lined with staterooms ran along either side. Gray stayed in the center of the corridor, hoping no sleepy passenger felt an ill-timed urge to go to the restroom.

  Gray moved sideways, her back to the staterooms. She passed the gift shop, with its racks of S.S. Badger T-shirts and pens and postcards and all kinds of nautical-themed kitsch. It was locked tight.

  She listened for the steps. The man was coming faster. She passed the movie lounge. The DVD player was off, the room dark. The only light came from the hallway. Gray knew that each of these rooms had entrances from either side. She wondered if her adversary knew that as well.

  Gray hurried past the movie room, then flattened herself against the wall by the door to the arcade. She held the CZ 75 in firing stance and inched into the doorway.

  Nothing.

  The steps had faded. She couldn’t hear the man, which meant she was either hearing more ship noise … or he had stopped moving.

  * * *

  Polk passed the movie room. The woman was still a few steps ahead of him. He could hear her in the opposite corridor.

  He raised the P22, took two more steps, and turned into the door of the arcade.

  Motion. Movement. There!

  She was on the opposite side of the room, her head coming into view in the doorway.

  Video game machines lined both walls of the narrow room, their lights flashing and glowing. In the daylight, they would be inviting to kids and teenagers. At 3:00 A.M., the lights seemed grotesque.

  Polk planted his feet and aimed his weapon across the expanse of the room.

  * * *

  Gray only put half of her head through the doorway, the rest of it—and most of her body—still concealed behind the wall. She had only an instant to see the man and his weapon. She couldn’t tell what it was, but by the shape of the gun, it looked like he was using a suppressor, as she was. A necessary precaution in a public place, even though the myth about sound suppressors was just that—they weren’t “silencers.” Even with the sound reduced considerably, no firearm was ever completely silent.

  Down here, Gray thought, the ship noise would be a benefit. With a suppressed weapon and the natural sound from the engines, there was a good chance they still wouldn’t be discovered.

  The man took his shot as Gray pulled away from the doorway. The bullet slammed into the wall a foot from where she had been. She was right, though—between the ship noise and the suppressor, there was very little sound.

  Gray spun into the hallway and the man fired again, trying to catch her in motion. Glass shattered—he must have hit one of the video games. She took two steps toward the
children’s playroom, then stopped.

  The footsteps pounded away on the other side of the corridor. He was no longer trying to be quiet. Gray had no idea how many people were in these staterooms, but she willed them to stay asleep.

  Gray shuffle-stepped toward the arcade, turning partway into it as she had before. The man was gone.

  * * *

  Polk raced into the children’s room, the last one before the forward bulkhead and the two sides of the corridor came together. There were brightly colored “play huts” for small kids to crawl through, a table loaded with coloring books, a large plastic animal of some sort wearing a captain’s hat.…

  Polk stumbled over a bucket of crayons on the floor and went down with a crash, losing his grip on the P22.

  He rolled over onto his side, quickly regaining his weapon. He swept the room—she wasn’t here. Polk pushed himself to his feet and raced out the way he had come.

  * * *

  Gray leaned inside the arcade, leading with her bare feet, gingerly moving bits of safety glass from the shattered video game out of her way.

  She picked her way around the glass to the opposite door of the arcade, wedging herself between the wall and the last game console. The man was in the hallway. He knew where she was, but she’d bought a few seconds by going toward the kids’ area, then turning back.

  Then a voice, male, very close, from the direction of the stairway: “What’s going on? Hey, are you okay?”

  No, Gray thought. Go back, she silently told the crewman. Go back, go back …

  Zale’s man scrabbled in the hallway. One step, two, three …

  Gray kept her hand firmly around the butt of the CZ 75.

  “Hey!” said the other voice. It was closer now, within a few steps of the entrance to the arcade.

  Too late, Gray thought. She hoped the crewman had the good sense not to try anything heroic.

  Zale’s man ignored the voice. Gray could hear his breathing.

  Keep coming, another step, then another …

  Zale’s assassin turned into the arcade, his pistol in front of him.

  Keep coming. That’s right …

  Gray held her breath, invisible in the space beside the game console. The crew-cut assassin stepped into the center of the room. He kicked at a piece of broken glass.

  Gray took one step from her spot behind the game console. An instant later, the crew member—young, blond, with a scraggly beard, probably a college kid—turned into the arcade.

  “What’s all this?” he said.

  Zale’s man jumped and shot him twice, catching him in the neck and chest, then stepped forward, bending toward the young man’s body. Gray took another step from behind the console. The assassin was three feet away. He looked up from the crewman he had killed, and before he could raise his gun hand again, Gray placed a round in the center of his forehead. He toppled backward, tripping over the body of the young crewman, landing with his torso draped over the crewman’s legs.

  Gray stepped around the two bodies. She quickly went through the assassin’s pockets and found his wallet. The driver’s license was from Maryland, and the name was Craig Polk. It wouldn’t be his real name, of course, if he was working for The Associates, but it gave Gray a point of reference. In the back pocket of his jeans was a cell phone. Gray took it without looking at it, then moved away from the two bodies. She had no choice but to leave them where they were. If she’d been on an upper deck, she would have dragged them to the rail and lifted them over the side. But she wasn’t confident she could take two bodies all the way down the corridor to the stairs, up the stairs, and over the side. They would have to stay where they fell, and she would have to be ready to cooperate, like any other passenger, when they were discovered and the questions began. She retrieved her shoes and her travel bag and reclaimed her seat at the stern. It was less than five minutes since she’d left.

  It was still dark, and no one else was in the aft seating area. Gray took out the CZ 75, examined it a moment, then tossed it over the side and into Lake Michigan. It was a good piece of equipment, but she had no choice. After the bodies were discovered, whether in minutes or when the ship docked in Ludington just before 6:00 A.M., there would be questions. Passengers would no doubt be searched. There would be a delay in allowing the ship to be emptied.

  Gray turned on Craig Polk’s cell phone, then sat motionless. There was no cell service in the middle of the lake. A little after five-thirty, she acquired a cell signal. The Badger would be docking in less than half an hour. With luck, she would be at home with her husband and son by eight o’clock.

  With the signal acquired, Gray checked the phone’s call log and punched the last number called. After four rings, Victor Zale’s drawling voice said, “Well? Is the bitch dead?”

  “No, she isn’t,” Gray said. “Don’t be so vulgar.”

  There was a breath-filled silence on the other end of the line.

  “Have I caught you speechless, then?” Gray said.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “This changes everything. I hope you understand that. This was unnecessary and highly unprofessional.”

  “Shit,” Zale spat. “You’re calling me unprofessional? You are a hell of a piece of work, Ann.”

  “Perhaps. An innocent bystander died tonight, too, and there was no need for it.”

  “Oh, here we go. The assassin with a conscience. Well, it’s over, Miss Ann. We’re shutting it down and tying everything off.”

  Gray sat up straight. It was still dark behind the ship, off toward Wisconsin, but she could sense a faint glow of light in the other direction. “Excuse me?”

  “The operation is over. Too many things have gone wrong, and we’re shutting it down.”

  Gray looked around. No one was nearby. “I’ll need to—”

  “No, Ann, you don’t need to do anything. I’m taking care of it.”

  “I’ve managed the project from the beginning. You can’t be serious.”

  “Serious as I can be.”

  “That’s a mistake. I’ll take care of it.”

  “No, you won’t,” Zale said. “Tonight was a warning, Ann. Next time you won’t see us coming.”

  Gray almost laughed. “A warning? No, tonight wasn’t a warning, Victor. Your man wasn’t up to the job. If he’d been a bit better, I would be dead now and we both know it. Next time, send a professional.”

  Gray never raised her voice—she thought it unseemly—but the rage was coursing through her, an unfamiliar emotion. Gray did not hate. She was a professional, and while she often worked with and for ideologues, she was not one. There was only the job, and the belief in one’s own ability. But the uncouth and thoroughly unprofessional Zale had stirred anger in Gray. It had already been brewing, in the wake of Zale’s recent decisions. The man killed with impunity, with no thought whatever to the consequences. For a moment Gray thought of that line in the dossier she’d read several weeks ago, a sentence about an eleven-year-old boy who liked to play chess—much like her own thirteen-year-old son.

  Victor Zale, while wielding enormous power, was a little man who only possessed that power through others. He was a puppet and a puppeteer at the same time. A dangerous, foolish, immoral little man.

  A man who must be taught a lesson.

  “You think you’re going to stay hidden from me?” Zale said. “You think I won’t find you, Ann? You don’t screw me over this way and get away with it. That’s not the way it works.”

  “You’ll soon find out the way things work.” Gray’s voice was calm, almost serene. She would not lose her dignity.

  “Threatening me?” Zale roared. “It’s over, Ann. All of it. Silver Cross is finished, and all thanks to you. I won’t forget that.”

  “Goodbye, Victor,” Gray said, and ended the call. She immediately turned off the phone and tossed it over the stern.

  She heard urgent sounds behind her, people talking and moving. No doubt the bodies of “Craig Polk” and the unfor
tunate crewman had been found. Gray closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind. But it was difficult. She wanted to think of Rick and Joseph at home in Fremont, Michigan, waiting for her. She’d been gone nearly two weeks.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about what she needed to do. Her mind raced, and she wondered what conclusions the reportedly brilliant Meg Tolman of RIO had reached. And she wondered about the addition of Professor Nick Journey. He could prove useful.

  As the sun rose in stunning hues of orange and pink ahead of the S.S. Badger, Gray was thinking about Dana Cable on the seawall at the tip of Cape Fear, and she was still thinking about the Silver Cross.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Tolman slept poorly, even though Journey’s futon was comfortable and she was more than exhausted. She was also frustrated. After the morning meeting with Graham Lashley, she’d accomplished very little the rest of the day. She was able to connect to a few RIO databases and begin to build files on Barry and Jim Cable, and, reluctantly, on Dana. She woke up at four-thirty in the morning, the day after she and Journey met with Lashley, opened her laptop, and booked a midday flight to Washington. Sitting in Journey’s dark living room, the computer open on her lap, she inadvertently tapped out the rhythm to one of Chopin’s polonaises—not the Heroic or the Military, the ones everyone knew, but the fourth one, the Funeral polonaise. She’d played it for a recital years ago, but she hadn’t thought of it in a long time. She didn’t even realize what piece it was at first.

  The cemetery in Cassville, she thought. Dana and Barry and Jim Cable, all dead within the last few months. Then she thought of the woman and the envelope: “You may find some enlightenment there.”

  Enlightenment.

  A joke? A riddle? A code?

  Gunshots from across the road.

  The Silver Cross.

  Tolman closed her laptop, then stood up as she heard a door open. Andrew Journey came around the corner, and Tolman flashed back to the first time she’d seen the boy, several months ago. A different place, a different situation. But he was the same kid, a little taller, a few acne breakouts starting to dot his face. But much was the same—the nut-colored hair, the big gray-green eyes, the loose-fitting clothes. What do you say to someone who can’t say anything back? she wondered.