The Wheel of Darkness

by Douglas Preston

  79

  PATRICK KEMPER, CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER OF THE BRITANNIA , STOOD on the bridge and watched Cabot Tower, perched on a bluff at the entrance to St. John’s Harbour, glide past. A dull thudding of rotors sounded as yet another medevac chopper took off from the forecastle with a load of severely injured passengers. The medevac flights had been going continuously since the storm abated and the ship had come within chopper range of the coast. The sound of rotors changed timbre as the helicopter rose, temporarily passing through the bridge’s view, swung round, and disappeared overhead. It was like a war zone on the ship—and Kemper felt like a shell-shocked soldier returning from the front.

  The great ship passed through the Narrows and continued to slow, its two podded screws grinding and shuddering. LeSeur and the St. John’s harbor pilot struggled to maintain control of the now unwieldy ship: stripped of its rotating propulsion pods, the Britannia had all the maneuverability of the floating carcass of a whale. The only berth at St. John’s able to take the vessel was in the container port, and as two assisting tugboats pushed the ship to starboard the long, rust-streaked platform came into view, surrounded by a cluster of giant container cranes. The berth had been hastily vacated by a VLCC, which was now anchored in the harbor.

  As the Britannia continued to turn toward the berth, Kemper saw that the quayside looked like a scene out of a disaster movie. There were dozens of emergency vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks, morgue vans, and police cars ready to receive the dead and injured, a sea of flashing lights and distant sirens.

  Kemper was beyond exhausted. His head pounded and his vision was blurry from lack of sleep and nonstop stress. Now that their ordeal was over, he found himself speculating on the grim aftermath: the Maritime Board of Inquiry hearings, the testimonies, the lawsuits, the relentless press, the shame and the blame. For the first order of the day would be assigning blame. He knew well that he, as chief security officer, along with LeSeur—who was one of the most decent men Kemper had ever worked with—would bear the brunt. They would be lucky to escape criminal charges, especially LeSeur. Cutter had survived, and he would be an implacable enemy.

  He glanced at LeSeur, who was huddled with the harbor pilot over the ECDIS, and wondered what the first officer was thinking. Did he know what lay ahead? Of course he did—he was no fool.

  The Britannia was now moving only under tug power, being eased into its berth. Beyond, above the tower and on the far side of the harbor, he could see the hovering news choppers, kept out of the ship’s airspace but getting in plenty of shots from a distance. No doubt the damaged and limping outline of the Britannia was being broadcast live on millions of television screens at this very moment. It was one of the worst—or at least most bizarre—maritime disasters of recent history.

  He swallowed: he better get used to it. This was going to be his life from now on: Patrick Kemper, chief security officer on the maiden voyage of the Britannia. That’s what he would be known as until long after he was dead. It would be his dubious claim to fame.

  Forcing these thoughts out of his mind, he focused on the ship’s security screens. At least all systems had been stabilized—which was more than he could say for the vessel itself. He could only imagine what it must look like from the quay: the lower port portholes and balconies bashed in by the sea, the starboard side of Deck 6 peeled open like a sardine can by the bridge wing of the Grenfell. The insides were even worse. As they had limped in toward St. John’s, Kemper had done a security inspection of the lower decks. The sea had punched in through every piece of glass on the port side below Deck 4—portholes, plate-glass windows, and balconies alike—the water ripping through the shops, restaurants, casinos, and corridors with the force of a flash flood, smashing and piling everything up in the corners and leaving behind a mess worthy of a hurricane. The lower decks stank of seawater, old food, and dead bodies. He had been horrified to see how many people had been killed or drowned in the flood, their mangled bodies strewn about or wedged horribly among piles of debris, some even dangling from ceiling fixtures. In all, more than one hundred and fifty passengers and crew had lost their lives and nearly a thousand more had been injured.

  The tugs slowly brought the great vessel into position. He could hear, faintly through the bridge windows, the sirens and bullhorns shrieking as the emergency responders geared up to receive the hundreds of injured passengers and crew still on board the ship.

  He wiped his face and ran an eye once more down the security systems panels. He needed to focus on the miracle that most of them were still alive—the miracle that had happened on the bridge just before the Carrion Rocks. The miracle he could not explain, and never would be able to explain.

  The ship began to creep into place alongside the quay. Great hawsers, used as springlines, were dropped on the quay and manhandled over massive bollards by teams of longshoremen. LeSeur broke away from the vector radar. “Mr. Kemper,” he said, his voice the very quintessence of exhaustion, “we will be docked in ten minutes. Please make the announcement we discussed regarding evacuation procedures.”

  Kemper nodded, then keyed up the public address system and spoke into the bridge mike. “Attention all passengers and crew: the ship will be docking in ten minutes. Seriously injured persons will be evacuated first. Repeat: seriously injured persons will be evacuated first. All others must remain in their staterooms or the Belgravia Theatre and await further instructions. Thank you.”

  Kemper could hear his own voice echoing over the PA system on the bridge, and he hardly recognized it. He sounded like a dead man speaking.

  80

  A LIGHT DRIZZLE OF RAIN FELL FROM THE EARLY MORNING SKY as LeSeur leaned against the teak rail of the Britannia’s bow, looking back over the enormous vessel. He could see the dark crowds of passengers pressing forward along the decks, and he could hear, drifting up with the rain, their querulous voices as they jockeyed for position before the gangway, every one trying to get off the ship as quickly as possible. Most of the emergency vehicles had left, and now it was time for the uninjured passengers to disembark. Over his shoulder, lined up on the quay, were ranks of buses ready to take people away to area hotels and homes that had been volunteered by Newfoundlanders.

  As the deckhands were preparing to remove the gangway rope, the raised voices of the crew on board mingled with the shrill voices of complaint and threat from the passengers. It amazed LeSeur how these people still had the energy to be outraged. They were damned lucky to be alive.

  Ropes, construction tape, and movable stanchions had been set up in a jerry-rigged effort to direct and manage the efficient processing of the passengers. At the head of the line he could see Kemper, who appeared to be giving his people the final directions on what to do: each passenger had to be identified and photographed—by orders of the RCMP—and directed to their assigned bus. No exceptions.

  They were not going to like it, LeSeur knew. But the corporation had to create some kind of legal record of who had disembarked from the ship if they were ever to sort out the missing from the injured and the healthy. Corporate wanted a photograph, he was told, because they didn’t want healthy passengers later suing for injuries. It was still, even after all that had happened, about money, first, foremost, and last.

  The gate over the gangway was lifted and the dark stream of passengers came rolling down, like a ragged line of refugees. And wouldn’t you know it: the first off was a burly man in a filthy tux, shoving his way past the women and children. He came charging down the ramp, yelling, and in the windless air his voice carried all the way to the bow. “God damn it, I want to talk to the man in charge here! I will not be photographed like some criminal!”

  He burst through the press of debarkation crew members at the base of the gangway, but the St. John’s stevedores and RCMP officers who had been called in to assist were not to be trifled with. They blocked his way, and when he resisted they slapped cuffs on him and took him aside.

  “Get your hands off me!” came the ma
n’s shout. “How dare you! I manage a twenty-five-billion-dollar hedge fund in New York! What is this, Communist Russia?”

  He was promptly bustled off to a waiting paddy wagon and shoved inside, yelling all the way. His fate seemed to have a salubrious effect on anyone else thinking of making a scene.

  With effort, LeSeur tuned out the voices raised in complaint and outrage. He understood why they were upset and sympathized with them, but the bottom line was that this was the fastest way to get them off the ship. And there was still a serial killer to be found.

  Kemper came up alongside him and leaned against the rail, watching the flow of people from a broader vantage point. They shared a moment of exhausted, silent commiseration. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  LeSeur’s thoughts turned to the board of inquiry hearings that lay ahead. He wondered just how he was going to explain the bizarre . . . thing he had witnessed attack Mason. It had been like a demonic possession. Ever since it happened, he had been going over the sequence of events in his mind—dozens of times—and yet he was no nearer understanding what the hell he had seen than when he first witnessed it. What was he going to say? I saw a ghost possess Captain Mason? Now matter how he couched it, they would think he was being evasive, or that he was crazy—or worse. No, he could never tell the truth about what he saw. Ever. He’d say, instead, that Mason had some kind of fit, an epileptic attack perhaps, and leave out the rest. Let the medical examiners figure out what happened to her limp, deflated body.

  He sighed, watching the endless files of people shuffling along in the drizzle. They sure didn’t look so high and mighty now; they looked like refugees.

  His thoughts kept returning obsessively to what he’d seen. Maybe he hadn’t seen it at all; maybe it had been a glitch in the CCTV feed. It could have been, in fact, a speck of dust trapped inside the camera, magnified a hundred times, joggled about by the vibration of the ship’s engines. His stress and exhaustion had led him to see something that wasn’t there.

  Yes, that was it. That had to be it.

  But then he thought of what they’d found on the bridge: the bizarre, sacklike corpse of Captain Mason slumped on the floor, her bones like so much mush . . .

  He was shaken from his thoughts by the approach of a familiar figure: a portly man with a walking stick and a white carnation on his spotless lapel. Immediately, LeSeur felt his guts turn to water: it was Ian Elliott, principal director of the North Star Line. No doubt the man had flown here to preside personally over his public keelhauling. At his side, Kemper made a small, strangled sound. LeSeur swallowed—this was going to be even uglier than he’d imagined.

  Elliott strode up. “Captain LeSeur?”

  LeSeur stiffened. “Sir.”

  “I wanted to congratulate you.”

  This was so unexpected that, for a moment, LeSeur didn’t understand what he’d heard. Perhaps it was all a hallucination—God knew he was tired enough to be seeing things.

  “Sir?” he asked in a very different tone of voice.

  “Thanks to your courage, seamanship, and level-headedness, the Britannia is still afloat. I don’t know the whole story yet, but from what I do know, things could have turned out very differently. I wanted to come here and thank you personally.” And he stuck out his hand.

  With a sense of unreality, LeSeur shook it.

  “I’ll let you get on with the disembarkation. But once all the passengers are off, perhaps you could fill me in on the details.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And then there’s the question of the Britannia.”

  “Question, sir? I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Well, once she’s been repaired and fitted out, she’ll need a new captain—won’t she?” And then, giving him a small smile, Elliott turned and walked away.

  It was Kemper who broke the silence. “I don’t frigging believe it,” he murmured.

  LeSeur could barely believe it either. Perhaps this was just the spin the North Star public relations people wanted to put on things—to paint them as heroes who saved the lives of over twenty-five hundred passengers. Perhaps not. In any case, he wasn’t going to question it. And he’d be happy to tell Elliott everything that had happened—at least, almost everything . . .

  His thoughts were interrupted by the approach of an RCMP officer.

  “Which of you is Mr. Kemper?” the man asked.

  “I’m Kemper,” the chief of security said.

  “There’s a gentleman here from the FBI who wants to speak to you.”

  LeSeur watched as a thin man stepped out of the shadows of the superstructure. It was the FBI agent, Pendergast.

  “What do you want?” Kemper asked.

  Pendergast stepped forward into the light. He was dressed in a black suit and his face was as gaunt and corpselike as anyone coming off the ill-fated ship. Tucked under one arm he carried a long, thin mahogany box. Next to him, linked in the other arm, was a young woman with short dark hair and dead-serious eyes.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kemper, for a most interesting voyage.” And with that, Pendergast eased his arm from the woman’s support and slipped a hand into a valise he carried.

  Kemper stared at the man in surprise. “There’s no need to tip the ship’s officers,” he said curtly.

  “I think you’ll want this tip,” Pendergast replied, extracting an oilskin-wrapped package from the valise. He extended it toward Kemper.

  “What’s this?” Kemper asked, taking the package.

  The man said nothing more. He merely turned, and then he and the woman melted back into the early-morning shadows, heading toward the moving masses of people.

  LeSeur watched as Kemper untied the oilskin.

  “Looks like your three hundred thousand pounds,” he said, as Kemper stared in silent astonishment at the soiled bundles of notes.

  “Strangest man I ever met,” Kemper said, almost as if speaking to himself.

  LeSeur didn’t hear him. He was thinking again of that demon-haunted shroud that had engulfed Captain Mason.

  Epilogue

  S UMMER HAD FINALLY COME TO THE LLÖLUNG VALLEY. THE Tsangpo River roared over its cobbled bed, fed by melting snows in the great mountains beyond. Flowers mortared the cracks and hollows of the valley floor. Black eagles soared above the cliffs, their high-pitched cries echoing from the great wall of granite at the valley’s head, mingling with the steady roar of the waterplume leaping off its rim and feathering down onto the rocks below. Beyond rose up the three massive peaks, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna, and Manaslu, swathed in eternal glaciers and snow, like three cold and remote kings.

  Pendergast and Constance rode side by side up the narrow track, trailing a pack pony on whose back was tied a long box wrapped in a canvas manty.

  “We should be there before sunset,” Pendergast said, gazing at the faint trail that wound up the granite face.

  They rode on for a while in silence.

  “I find it curious,” Pendergast said, “that the West, so advanced in many ways, is still in the dark ages when it comes to understanding the deepest workings of the human mind. The Agozyen is a perfect example of how much more advanced the East is in this area.”

  “Do you have any further thoughts on how it might work?”

  “As a matter of fact, by coincidence I read an article in the Times that might shed some light on it. It was about a recently discovered mathematical object known as E8.”

  “E8?”

  “E8 was discovered by a team of scientists at MIT. A supercomputer, running for four years, had to solve two hundred billion equations in order to draw an image of it—an admittedly very imperfect image. There was a crude reproduction in the newspaper, and when I saw it I was struck by its resemblance to the Agozyen mandala.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s quite indescribable, an incredibly complex image of interlocking lines, points, and surfaces, spheres within spheres, occupying nearly two hundred and fifty mathematical dimen
sions. They say E8 is the most symmetrical object possible. Even more than that, physicists think that E8 may be a representation of the deep inner structure of the universe itself, the actual geometry of space-time. Incredible to think that, a thousand years ago, monks in India somehow discovered this extraordinary image and committed it to a painting.”

  “Even so, I don’t understand. How could just looking at something like that alter one’s mind?”

  “I’m not sure. The geometry of it somehow lights up the neural networks of the brain. It creates a resonance, if you will. Perhaps on a deep level our brains themselves reflect the fundamental geometry of the universe. The Agozyen is a rare intersection of neurology, mathematics, and mysticism.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “There are many things the dull Western mind has yet to appreciate about Eastern philosophy and mysticism. But we’re starting to catch up. Scientists at Harvard, for example, have just begun to study the effect of Tibetan meditative practice on the mind—and to their amazement they discovered that it actually causes permanent physical changes in the brain and body.”

  They reached a crossing of the Tsangpo. The river was shallow and broad at the ford, running merrily over a shallow bed of cobbles, the rushing sound of water filling the air. Gingerly their horses stepped into the torrent and picked their way across. They came out on the far side and continued on.

  “And the smoke ghost? Is there some kind of scientific explanation for that?”

  “There’s a scientific explanation for everything, Constance. There are no such things as miracles or magic—only science we haven’t yet discovered. The smoke ghost was, of course, a tulpa, or ‘thoughtform’—an entity created through an act of intense, focused imagination.”