Twenty minutes later, the helicopter lifted off from the rig and flew the short distance to the containership. The chopper touched down on the wide foredeck. Austin and Zavala ran under the still-spinning rotors. The aircraft was airborne a moment later. They had barely adjusted their intercoms when the pilot said, “Where to, gents?”
The hijackers had a big head start, which meant that it was unlikely they would be anywhere near the ship. Austin asked the pilot, whose name was Riley, to head in any direction for five miles, then go into a low-altitude expanding spiral with the ship at its center.
Riley gave him a thumbs-up and flew the helicopter due west at about a hundred miles an hour.
“What are we looking for?” Riley said.
“Anything big enough to hold two choppers,” Austin replied.
Riley gave another thumbs-up. “I got ya.”
Several minutes later he put the helicopter into a banking turn and made the first circle. The fog had cleared and visibility was two to three miles. They saw a handful of fishing boats and big chunks of ice, including one which might have been Moby-Berg. The only large ship was a freighter. Its deck was too small to hold two copters and was obstructed by cranes that would have made takeoff and landing impossible.
Austin asked the pilot to make two more circles. On the second circuit, they saw a big vessel silhouetted against the ocean sheen.
“Ore carrier,” said Zavala from the backseat.
The helicopter dropped to an altitude of a few hundred feet and paced the black-hulled ship. Rectangular hatch covers that covered ore-storage holds were evenly spaced on the long deck between the tall crew house at one end and the high, raised bow at the other.
“What do you think?” Austin asked the pilot.
“Hell. It’d be easy to land a chopper on that deck,” Riley said. “It’s like an aircraft carrier.”
Zavala agreed. “If you wanted to hide something, there’d be plenty of room in those cargo holds.”
“Hafta modify a few things,” Riley said. “No big deal.”
Austin asked the pilot to check out the ship’s name.
The helicopter flew over the ship’s wake, offering a clear view of the big white letters on the transom: SEA KING
The ship was registered in Nicosia, Cyprus. There was a logo of what looked like a bull’s head next to the name.
Austin had seen enough. “Let’s head home.”
The chopper wheeled around and the vessel faded into the haze.
As the whup-whup of the rotors faded, a pair of pale round eyes watched from the bridge until the helicopter shrunk to the size of a mosquito. Adriano lowered the binoculars, a tight smile on his lips. The helicopter had come close enough to give him a clear view of the face in the cockpit window.
The hunter had become the hunted.
AS THE OIL PLATFORM helicopter approached the containership, a Coast Guard cutter could be seen anchored a short distance away. The pilot put the helicopter down on the deck of the containership. When Austin and Zavala stepped out of the aircraft, Captain Lange was waiting for them. He said the Coast Guard had sent over an investigatory team to start interviewing witnesses.
Austin was going on sheer nerve power. His brain was fried. His rib cage throbbed. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a tedious interrogation. A good night’s sleep would be preferable. He knew that the Coast Guard would bring a fresh perspective to the crazy events of the day, but he was just plain weary.
The Coast Guard lieutenant who conducted the investigation in the recreation room was businesslike and efficient. He drew statements from Austin and the others, and said he would work his way through the rest of the crew. Austin must have winced with pain more than once, because the lieutenant suggested that he should have his wound properly tended to in a hospital. The captain said the oil rig helicopter could run him back to the mainland in the morning.
Carina asked if she could go with him. She said she wanted to attend a reception in Washington the next evening and wouldn’t worry about her cargo with the Coast Guard cutter escorting the ship. Zavala wanted to get back to prepare for his trip to Istanbul. Austin called Captain Dawe and said they would have to take a rain check on the hunt for Moby-Berg.
“I’m disappointed,” Dawe said. “I’ll have some new jokes when you come back.”
“I can’t wait.” Austin said.
Chapter 15
VIKTOR BALTAZAR HAD LISTENED in silence as Adriano told him about the foiled hijacking plot. The bile had risen higher in his throat with each detail of the failed attempt to steal the Phoenician statue. Although he displayed no outward manifestation of his anger except for a vein pulsating in his forehead, Baltazar’s fury was like the molten innards of a nascent volcano. When Adriano described how the mineral ship had been shadowed in a helicopter by the same pale-haired man who had prevented the theft of the statue, Baltazar could stand it no more.
“Enough,” he growled.
Baltazar squeezed the cell phone in his mailed fist, tightening his thick fingers like a vise, until he felt the satisfying crunch of plastic and metal. He tossed the ruined instrument to the groom holding the reins of a giant gray sorrel. He took a steel helmet from the hands of his waiting squire and lowered it onto the padded cap on his head.
With his sturdy frame encased in gleaming armor from head to toe, Baltazar resembled a hulking robot from a science-fiction film epic. He was far more agile than any metallic monster, however. Even wearing armor that weighed seventy pounds, he easily pulled himself into the stallion’s high-backed saddle.
The squire handed Baltazar a fifteen-foot wooden lance. Called a courtesy lance because of the blunt steel tip that distinguished it from a sharp-pointed war lance, the weapon was still potentially lethal when propelled forward by the power and strength of the huge Belgium horse. Baltazar had bred the animal from a long line of great warhorses that were known as destriers in medieval times. The animal was twice the size of an ordinary riding horse. Even without its protective armor, his mount weighed more than a ton.
Baltazar rested the lance across the thick, arching neck. The squire handed him a shield that came to a tapering point at the bottom. The head of a bull was emblazoned in black on the white shield. The same bull’s-head motif decorated Baltazar’s tunic and a flowing cloth that was draped over the horse’s body.
With the lance at rest, Baltazar bent forward until he could see through the occularium, a narrow horizontal slit set high in the face of the helmet. On his left was a low, solid fence known as the tilt. On the other side of the tilt, at its far end, was a rider, also dressed in full armor, who was mounted on an equally large horse.
Baltazar had singled the man out of his mercenary corps. His practice opponent had a sturdy physique and was an accomplished rider. Like a sparring partner for a professional boxer, he usually came out on the losing end in his jousts with Baltazar. He was paid extra to compensate for his bumps and bruises. Baltazar tended to treat his opponent lightly, not because of any sympathy. He simply didn’t want the bother of training a new practice knight. But after learning about the failure of the hijacking, Baltazar was in a murderous mood.
He glared at his unsuspecting opponent with blood in his eyes. He had refrained from unleashing his vicious temper on Adriano. The young Spaniard he had rescued from a murder charge was intensely loyal. Despite Adriano’s size and strength, Balthazar’s personal assassin was in some ways as delicate as a fine watch. Threatening or scolding Adriano would have sent him into a spell of despondency, and he might have dealt with it by going on a self-destructive and awkward killing spree.
Baltazar clenched his teeth and tightened the grip on his lance. A herald dressed in a gaudy medieval costume raised a trumpet to his lips and blew a single note. The signal to charge. Baltazar raised his lance and put his long gold spurs to the horse’s flanks.
The massive animal dug its hooves into the sod and moved out in a deceptively slow amble known as pacing. The smooth rid
e kept the rider in his saddle where he was better able to aim the lance. Both riders kept their lances pointed toward their left at a thirty-degree angle. Each man kept his head two feet from the tilt and his right hand three feet. The left hand was protected by the raised shield.
The horses accelerated with a thunder of hooves. At the midpoint of the tilt the riders clashed. Baltazar’s opponent was the first to score. His lance hit Baltazar’s shield dead-on. The fluted breastplate was designed to shunt off a lance head, diluting the force of the impact, but the shaft shattered even before it was deflected to the side. Baltazar’s lance found its mark a second later. The blunt tip slammed into his opponent’s left shoulder.
Unlike his opponent’s weapon, Baltazar’s lance stayed intact. Even the blunted lance had a battering ram impact. The force of the moving horse and rider, concentrated on one small spot, knocked his opponent out of his stirrups. He crashed to the ground with a noise like a junkyard avalanche.
Baltazar wheeled his horse around and tossed the lance aside. He slid out of the saddle and drew his sword. His opponent’s body was on its back, twisted at an unnatural angle. Ignoring the groans of pain, he stood over the man with straddled legs and held his sword high in both hands. The point was aimed down. He savored the moment, and then he drove the sword into the ground a few inches from the man’s neck.
With a snarl of disgust, he left the sword in the ground and strode off toward a tent covered in fabric that repeated the bull’s-head design. A medical crew that had been standing nearby hurried out to tend to the injured jouster.
Baltazar’s squire helped him remove his armor. Underneath his chain mail suit he wore a protective layer made of Kevlar. His opponent would have worn the more traditional suit of padded cotton, which offered little protection. Baltazar always liked to give himself an edge. His lance contained an alloy core that prevented it from shattering like that of his opponent’s wooden weapon.
Still wearing his chain mail, Baltazar got behind the wheel of an Umbrian red Bentley GTC convertible and drove away from the jousting field. He accelerated the twelve-cylinder, twin-turbocharged car to sixty miles per hour in less than five seconds. Although the car could go nearly two hundred miles per hour, he held it at half that speed. He raced along a road for a couple of miles before turning onto a driveway that led past manicured lawns to a vast pile of stone built in the style of a Spanish villa.
He parked the Bentley in front of the mansion and strode to the door. A house the size of Baltazar’s would have begged for a large staff, but he employed only one servant, a trusted valet who doubled as a chef of considerable accomplishment. Baltazar lived in a few rooms of the mansion. If he needed chores done, he summoned members of his private army, who lived in a nearby barracks when they weren’t patrolling the grounds of the vast estate.
The valet met him at the door. Despite his servant’s quiet household manner and skills, he was a master of martial arts and highly trained as an armed bodyguard. Balthazar made his way to his pool house and stripped to the skin. He swam half a mile in the Olympicsized pool and then soaked in the hot tub, letting the anger ooze out of him. After his bath, he slipped into a white hooded robe similar to those worn by monks.
Even dressed in the loose robe, Baltazar cut an imposing figure. The garment could hide the thick arms and legs, but there was no way to contain the wide shoulders. Baltazar’s imposing head looked as if it had been sculpted out of granite that by some miracle of alchemy had been transformed, almost, into flesh and blood.
He left orders with his valet that he not be disturbed and locked himself in his portrait gallery. The walls of the huge room were covered with pictures of Baltazar’s forebears going back hundreds of years. Baltazar poured cognac into a snifter, swished the liquor around, and took a sip. He set the glass aside and went over to an eighteenth-century oil painting of a young matron that hung on the wall near the huge flagstone fireplace. He put his face inches from the portrait so that their eyes met. He placed his hands on the carved panels to either side of the painting.
Tiny sensors located behind the subject’s eyes probed his retinas and matched the findings with data in a computer database. Hidden scanners in the panels compared his hand-and fingerprints to those in a database. There was a soft click and a section of the wall opened to reveal a stairway.
He descended the stairs to a steel door that opened with a pushbutton combination. Behind the door was a room lined with glass-enclosed cabinets. The airtight cabinets were controlled for temperature and humidity to protect hundreds of thick volumes arranged by date.
The books contained the history of the Baltazar family going back more than two thousand years. The chronicles told of the family’s origin in Palestine, its move to the island of Cyprus, where they flourished as shipbuilders. The family provided ships for the Fourth Crusade. They were involved in the bloody looting of Constantinople, where they stole as much gold as they could carry in their vessels.
After the Crusade, the family threw its lot in with the Crusaders. They moved to western Europe and joined a cartel that used the stolen gold as the basis for a mineral empire. Since then, every birth, death, and marriage, going back to Cyprus, had been recorded. Business dealings. Feuds. Diaries. Each detail, no matter how sordid, embarrassing, or criminally liable, was enclosed between the covers of the gold-embossed volumes.
Baltazar had read every word in every volume, and it was his Crusader past that had stoked his interest in jousting and other trappings of chivalry. A touch screen computer built into the wall was used to make entries and serve as a reference guide.
A stone idol sat on a platform in the center of the room. It was the figure of a man, with his palms up, arms angled slightly downward, as if he were waiting to be handed something. He had a round, bearded face, and his lips were spread wide in a smile that was just short of a leer. Twin horns protruded from the sides of his head. The god Ba’al was given a special place because he was the namesake of the Baltazar family, which had courted his favor and asked it to guard its fortunes since its very beginning.
The idol had been used in unspeakable rites of human sacrifice. It had originally been set up on the edge of a fiery pit. The stone feet were still blackened by smoke and heat. In hard times, priests of Ba’al would sacrifice infants, placing them on the sloping arms, where they rolled into the flames. Instead of a blazing fire, the space in front of the idol was occupied by an altar. Sitting on the altar was a chest made of dark wood and decorated with dozens of precious stones.
Baltazar pushed back the lid and lifted out a smaller, undecorated wooden box. Inside the box were several sheets of parchment, which Baltazar spread out on the altar. His father had introduced him to the contents of the box when the family’s main base was still in Europe. The script told of his family’s history before it fled to Cyprus. But it was not until he was older and had studied Aramaic that he was able to understand the dark secrets that had resulted in their exile.
As he read the instructions set forth by his ancient ancestor, he could feel the weight of centuries pressing down on his shoulders. After a moment, he carefully replaced the parchment in its twin receptacles and closed the lid.
He lifted eyes that were nearly colorless and saw Ba’al’s stony gaze. It was as if the ancient god were looking directly into his soul. Power seemed to flow from the statue into Baltazar’s body. He drank in the invisible emanations like a thirsty pilgrim until it seemed as if he would burst.
He backed up to the door, then turned and climbed the stairs to his study. Still shaken by the experience, he finished his brandy to calm his nerves. Then he picked up the telephone. He punched the keys, and his call was relayed to Adriano through a series of connections, each designed to disguise its origin.
Baltazar thirsted for details on the failed hijacking and theft. He wanted to know the identity of the man who had spoiled his plans. Whoever he was would receive the same fate as hundreds of others who had run afoul of the Baltazars: th
e promise of a long and painful death.
Chapter 16
FOR A SUPERSECRET GOVERNMENT ENTITY, the National Security Agency is remarkably visible to the world at large. The NSA’s headquarters are at Fort Meade, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, in two high-rise office buildings, faced in blue-black glass, that look as if they had been created by a cubist in a dark frame of mind.
The office buildings are an illusion. The structures represent only part of an extensive complex said to include ten acres of underground operations. The NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the U.S., possibly the world, and the agency’s twenty thousand or so employees include the best cryptologists in the country.
Angela Worth, the assistant librarian at the American Philosophical Society, drove past the NSA complex and turned into the parking lot for the NationalCryptographicMuseum. She had arisen early in the day, called in sick, and driven south from Philadelphia. She found a parking space, grabbed an old briefcase from the passenger seat, and headed for the museum’s front door.
She asked the receptionist in the museum’s lobby if she could see D. Grover Harris. A few minutes later, she was approached by a skinny, mop-headed young man dressed in jeans. He shook Angela’s hand.
“Hi, Angela,” he said with a bashful grin. “Nice of you to come all this way.”
“No problem, Deeg. Thanks for seeing me.”
Angela had met Deeg at a convention of puzzle fans. They had hit it off immediately. They were both geeks. Deeg was pleasant and good-looking, and impossibly bright. And like Angela, he was low on the institutional ladder. He ushered her into his cluttered office and offered her a seat. The space was hardly bigger than a closet, confirming Harris’s bottom status on the agency’s food chain.
Harris settled behind a paper-covered desk that would have been considered a firetrap by any competent inspector. “You sounded pretty excited on the phone. What’s going on?”
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