Aleksandr Pevsner, attired in a terry-cloth bathrobe, darted his large, blue, and extraordinarily bright eyes coldly at them but didn’t reply.
“So, what’s bothering you on this sunny morning in sunny Cozumel?” Castillo pursued.
Again Pevsner didn’t reply. But the look in his eyes, which previously had been chilly, changed to one that would have frozen Mount Vesuvius.
“I guess he didn’t see that sign in the lobby, Tom,” Castillo said.
“What sign in the lobby?” Barlow asked.
“The one that says, ‘Abandon Despair, All Ye Who Enter Here! Welcome to the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort!’”
“I guess not,” Tom agreed.
“Tell us why you haven’t abandoned despair, Alek,” Castillo said. “Perhaps we can help.”
“I knew I should have killed you on the Cobenzl,” Pevsner said.
The Battle of Vienna in 1693, which saw the troops of the Ottoman Empire flee the battlefield leaving only bags of coffee beans behind, was directed from the Cobenzl, a high point in the fabled Vienna Woods.
Castillo had first met Pevsner there after Pevsner had had him abducted at pistol point from the men’s room of the Sacher Hotel.
“You told us God stayed your murderous intentions,” Castillo said. “You remember him saying that, Tom, right?”
“I remember him saying just that,” Barlow replied. “‘I was just about to kill Charley when God stayed my hand’ is exactly what he said.”
“Well, that wasn’t the first mistake God’s made,” Pevsner said. “Staying my hand like that.”
“We’re back to what’s troubling you, Alek,” Castillo said. “You can tell us. Tom is family, and I soon will be. What’s bothering you?”
“Do you have any idea how much money that stupid sonofabitch has cost me?”
“It would help, Cousin Alek, if you told us to which stupid sonofabitch you’re referring. Then we could guess.”
“Nicolai Nicolaiovitch Putin.”
“Nicolai Nicolaiovitch Putin? Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s cousin?” Tom Barlow asked. “I thought he’d joined the Bolshoi Corps de Ballet after they threw him and his boyfriend out of the Navy.”
“No, stupid. Not that stupid Nicolai Nicolaiovitch Putin. The other one. The one who’s captain of the Czarina of the Gulf and before that captain of the atomic submarine Blue September. The submarine the Americans stole. No wonder we lost the Cold War.”
“So, what has Captain Putin done to so annoy you, Alek?” Castillo asked.
“He’s cost me a fortune, that’s what he’s done. And ruined the reputation of Imperial Cruise Lines, Incorporated. People will now be laughing at Imperial, instead of at Cavalcade Cruise Lines.”
“Refresh my memory, Cousin Alek,” Tom Barlow said. “Why were people laughing at Cavalcade Cruise Lines?”
“Some people thought it was amusing when the helmsman of the Cavalcade Carnival became distracted by the sight of bare-breasted maidens in grass skirts and ran the ship aground on the island of Bali.”
“I remember now,” Castillo said. “It turned over and they had to cut holes in her bottom to get the passengers off. So what has Captain Putin done that’s worse than that?”
“When I gave him command of the Czarina of the Gulf, Charley,” Pevsner said, suddenly far more calm than he had been just moments before, “I counseled him. I’m sure both you and Dmitri—excuse me, Tom—have yourselves counseled your subordinates before giving them an important command, so you’ll understand what I’m saying here, right?”
Both Tom and Charley nodded.
“What I said was, ‘Nicolai Nicolaiovitch, you are an experienced officer and seaman. You’re an honors graduate of the Potemkin Naval Academy. In the glorious days of Communism, you rose to command the nuclear-powered submarine Blue September, in which you prowled under the seas for years trying to scare the Americans. I wouldn’t dream of telling someone of your experience and reputation how to command the Czarina of the Gulf. But, as I’m sure you know, there is always an exception to every rule. And here’s that exception: The Czarina of the Gulf will be calling at ports in Mexico. When that happens, whatever you do, don’t take on any water. Not for the boilers. Not for the water system. Not even water in plastic bottles.’
“That’s what I told Captain Putin. So I ask you, does that order seem clear enough?”
“Sounds clear enough to me,” Tom Barlow said.
“Maybe you should have added, ‘under any circumstances,’” Castillo said. “That would have cleared up any possible misunderstanding.”
“Maybe I could have, but I didn’t,” Pevsner said. “I thought I was making myself perfectly clear.”
“I gather Captain Putin didn’t obey your order,” Barlow said.
“Let me tell you what that sonofabitch did,” Pevsner said. “He sailed from Miami on schedule. The Czarina of the Gulf had the AEA Single Women’s Sabbatical Educational Tour aboard. Sixteen hundred and six of them. It should have been a pleasant voyage for him and his officers, and a really profitable voyage for Imperial Cruise Lines, Incorporated.”
“And who are they?”
“Schoolteachers from Alabama. Single women schoolteachers, either ones who never got married or are divorced. When school is out, they get a vacation—that’s what ‘sabbatical’ means—paid for by the taxpayers. It’s supposed to broaden their horizons. Anyway, since they do this every year, we know how to handle them. They get on the Czarina of the Gulf in Miami. There’s a captain’s dinner with free champagne to get things started, and they start either romancing the ship’s officers—those schoolteachers really go for those blue uniforms with all the gold braid—or they head for the slot machines or the blackjack tables.
“The next day, when they wake up about noon, they’re in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a captain’s luncheon, with more free champagne and more romancing of the officers, presuming the officers have any strength left. Some of the schoolteachers, especially some of the divorcées, are surprisingly… how do I say this? . . .”
“Frisky?” Castillo proposed.
“I was going to say ‘insatiable,’ but okay, ‘frisky.’ And then back to the casino as the Czarina of the Gulf makes for Tampico. They dock there and spend the night. Some of the teachers actually get off the ship to mail postcards home, things like that, but most of them stay aboard sucking up the free champagne and fooling around with the officers.
“In the morning, the Czarina of the Gulf heads here to Cozumel. Another captain’s brunch, more free champagne… getting the picture?”
“Getting it,” Castillo and Barlow chorused.
“And they finally dock here in Cozumel. They disembark, get on the buses waiting for them, drive to Cozumel International, get on the planes waiting for them, and two hours later they’re back in Mobile, Alabama, wearing smiles.”
“So what went wrong?” Barlow asked.
“When the Czarina of the Gulf docked at Tampico, Captain Putin went to bed in his cabin. He says alone, but I’m not sure I believe that. It doesn’t matter. He went to bed, and in the morning, when he didn’t answer a knock at his cabin door, the Czarina of the Gulf’s first mate took her to sea.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Castillo asked.
“While they were tied up, and while Captain Putin was asleep, supplies were taken aboard. The officer who was supposed to be watching wasn’t. He was tied up with an English teacher from Decatur. Or maybe the English teacher had him tied up.
“Anyway, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing, so Mexican water was taken aboard. Some went into the ship’s tanks, some went to the boilers, and there were five hundred cases of Mexican water, in twelve-ounce bottles, twenty-four bottles to the case. They call it ‘Aqua Mexica
na,’ whatever the hell that means. It’s got a picture of a cactus on the label.”
“So what happened?” Barlow asked.
“About four hours out of Tampico, in other words about ten a.m., the air-conditioning went out. Now, I’m willing to accept some small responsibility for that—”
“You got here last night, right?” Barlow interrupted.
“Correct.”
“Which means before that, you were in Argentina, right?”
“Correct.”
“So how could you be responsible for an air-conditioning system failing in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Because, when I was in Korea having them build the Czarina of the Gulf I naively believed a Korean swindler when he told me his Korean Karrier air conditioners were just as good as American Carrier air conditioners and he could let me have them for half of what Carrier was asking. Okay? Curiosity satisfied?”
“You say the air conditioners went out?” Castillo asked. “So what?”
“So it gets pretty warm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on a sunny day.”
“So you open the portholes,” Charley said. “And let the cool sea air breezes in.”
“Unfortunately, that is not possible on the Czarina of the Gulf,” Pevsner said.
“You can’t open the portholes on the Czarina of the Gulf?”
“The way that miserable Korean con man sold me his Korean Karrier air conditioners was to tell me that since I would have air-conditioning I wouldn’t have to open any portholes; that I could save all the money it would have cost me to install all those fancy and expensive brass porthole hinges and locks. And that the money I was going to save by not installing openable portholes was going to just about pay for his Korean Karrier air-conditioning. At the time, I considered it a cogent argument. So there you are.”
“Well, what happened when the air-conditioning went out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?” Barlow asked.
“Well, the Alabama schoolteachers, most of whom were a little hungover anyway, naturally got pretty thirsty and started drinking that goddamned bottled Aqua Mexicana. And thirty minutes after they did—whammo!”
“Montezuma’s revenge,” Castillo said sympathetically.
“In spades,” Pevsner said. “In spades!”
“What does that mean?” Barlow asked.
“Try to picture this, Dmitri,” Pevsner said. “Try to imagine sixteen hundred and six hungover schoolteachers afflicted with Montezuma’s revenge—”
“What’s Montezuma’s revenge?” Barlow asked.
“Think urgent needs, Tom,” Castillo explained.
“Oh!”
“. . . all trying to get into the Czarina of the Gulf’s four hundred ladies’ restrooms at the same time. That averages out to four schoolteachers per restroom. It was chaos, absolute chaos, and that’s an understatement if there ever was one.”
“What finally happened?” Barlow asked.
“Well, and I’ll admit that at this point Captain Putin had no choice, he managed to get most of the crew into the engine room.”
“Why did he do that?” Barlow asked.
“Unless he had there would have been a massacre. The schoolteachers were roaming the ship with fire axes they were going to use to behead—or maybe castrate—the crew. Captain Putin had to use fire hoses to restrain them. And when he finally got everybody he could into the engine room—the Karrier a/c shorted out the engines—he battened the hatches and sent out an SOS. And the rest is history.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The Mexican Coast Guard sent a tugboat out to the Czarina of the Gulf and towed her here. Where the world’s press was waiting. The whole world saw Captain Putin being taken off in chains to face charges of crimes against humanity. The Mexicans had a hard time protecting him from the schoolteachers and their union representatives.”
“And the schoolteachers will sue for damages,” Barlow said. “That’s really going to cost you a fortune, Alek.”
“Actually, no,” Pevsner said.
“No?” Castillo said. “You underestimate tort attorneys.”
“You underestimate me,” Pevsner retorted. “Of course I thought of those miserable parasites. I hired the best one I could find. Which of course cost me a small fortune.”
“Whatever it cost,” Castillo said, “it was money well spent to have the best of the parasites defending you in court.”
“What my legal counsel did, Friend Charley,” Pevsner said, “was compose the small print on the back of the tickets. When my passengers sign the back of their tickets, acknowledging receipt of same, they also acknowledge the hazards of the sea, and agree that if something unpleasant happens, a one-time payment of seven dollars and fifty cents will provide full and adequate compensation for any and all inconveniences they may have experienced.”
“You’re an evil man, Alek,” Castillo said.
“No more or less than any other cruise ship operator,” Pevsner said.
“I guess the Czarina of the Gulf will be out of service for some time,” Castillo said.
“I’ll have it cleaned up by the time your wedding guests arrive, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, it’s not. Before I heard what had happened to it, I was hoping I could charter her for twenty-four hours.”
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“So that I can run the C. G. Castillo Pirated Ship Recovery Training Program on her.”
“And what in hell is that?”
Castillo told him, concluding, “My plan was that cameras would be rolling as the SEALs take the ship back from Delta Force. I would then have loaded Roscoe J. Danton into my birthday present and Dick Miller would have flown him to Washington, where he would have shown the video to the President, which would have convinced ol’ Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen I’m working hard to carry out his orders.”
“Several questions, Charley,” Pevsner said. “Starting with what birthday present?”
“The Cessna Mustang Sweaty gave me for my birthday.”
“I’d momentarily—probably due to the disaster on the Czarina of the Gulf—forgotten that,” Pevsner said. “But now that it’s come up—if you don’t mind a little advice. Once you marry Svetlana, Charley, you’re going to have to get her spending under control. That’s the key to a happy marriage. That and never saying ‘yes’ or even ‘maybe’ to your wife when she asks you if you don’t agree she’s putting on a little weight where she sits.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Castillo said. “What other questions did you have?”
“How much of the ship will you require for your movie for President Clendennen?”
“Enough cabins for the Delta Force people and the SEALs. About twenty of the former, and a few more than that many SEALs. Plus the photographers and some of my people. Not much, on a ship that large.”
“And when is this going to happen?”
“As soon as possible after Delta and the SEALs get here. The SEALs are coming, bringing their boats and telephone poles, by bus from my grapefruit farm in Oaxaca Province. The Delta people will be flying in here this afternoon. They’re coming as the Fayetteville Blood Alley Ping-Pong Wizards.”
“As the what?”
“The Fayetteville Blood Alley Ping-Pong Wizards. While they’re here, they hope to challenge the Greater Sverdlovsk Table Tennis Association to a demonstration match.”
“Sorry to rain on your parade, Charley, but I don’t think those Russians know how to play Ping-Pong,” Pevsner said.
“I thought that might be the case,” Castillo said. “Roscoe J. Danton is arranging for the match to be televised on the Wolf Sports International channel.”
“You’re an evil man, Charley Castillo,” Pevsner said.
“No more or less than any other former Delta Force operator,” Castillo said. “Endeavoring to win the hearts and minds of people by whatever non-lethal means one has available.”
“What were the SEALs doing at your grapefruit farm in wherever you said?”
“They were aboard the nuclear submarine USS San Juan returning to California from Venezuela when General Naylor ordered them to report to me for hazardous duty. Because I was at the grapefruit farm, that’s where they went. When they got there, the sub surfaced, they loaded their telephone poles into their rubber boats, and headed for shore. You should have been there, Alek. The sight of twenty-four large SEALs and six telephone poles jammed into two small rubber boats racing across the waves is one I won’t soon forget.”
“A couple of questions, Charley. What’s with the telephone poles? And what was the nuclear submarine doing off the coast of Venezuela?”
“So far as the telephone poles are concerned—the SEALs are touchy on the subject—the best I’ve been able to figure out is that the SEALs train with them. Like when I went through the Q course—”
“The what?”
“Q for Special Forces qualification. When I went through the Q course at Camp Mackall, they issued us a rifle, a pistol, and a knife. We had to keep all three with us around the clock. I don’t know that I buy it, but I’ve been told that the SEALs do the same thing with telephone poles. Makes one think about it. Did you ever see a picture of SEALs training without a telephone pole in it?”
“Now that you mention it, no.”
“So, what was suggested to me is they become emotionally involved with their telephone poles. They become, so to speak, their security blankets. They just don’t feel comfortable unless they have a telephone pole—the bigger the better, I was told—around.”
“Makes sense,” Pevsner said. “And what was the sub doing off the coast of Venezuela?”
“Just between us? I wouldn’t want this to get around.”
“My lips are sealed.”
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