All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  That had been his dream. That had been his plan the day he met the Hag. He had been swimming out into the bay to stow away on her ship. He’d decided to swim out, climb up the anchor chain, and hide somewhere on the ship until it was far out to sea.

  He had been looking for a pearl oyster to bring her as a gift when he got lost and confused among the coral, and wound up inside the Hag’s cave. When he finally came out of the cave and surfaced, the ship was already far out to sea.

  The next time Vasili saw her was nearly twenty years later in March of 1967, when one of the companies he was a major stockholder in, the Barracuda Tanker Corporation, hit financial disaster.

  The Torrey Canyon, a supertanker, one of the first of its kind, struck Pollard’s Rock in the Seven Stones Reef, between the Isle of Scilly and Land’s End. It was a navigational error that left her ripped open and bleeding oil. A 974-foot metal whale poured gallon upon gallon per second of the 120 tons of crude oil she carried.

  From the Cornwall coast to the coast of France, the environmental devastation was unlike anything the ocean had ever seen. Two hundred miles of coastline were contaminated by the 270-square-mile oil slick.

  The death toll to marine life was incalculable. Over 14,000 sea birds died. The devastation changed the face of the planet and hallmarked what would be the environmental cost of doing business in an oil-hungry world. She had been there to witness it. The face of the world had changed, but hers had not.

  Vasili was only thirty years old and well on the way to becoming the richest man in the world. He hadn’t gotten that way by letting other people handle his affairs, so when the news reached him of the supertanker’s wreck, he rushed to the scene just as Miranda arrived with a Dutch salvage crew. She was there to assess the damage to the sea life and help head up the volunteer sea bird rescue team.

  When Vasili first saw her, he could not believe his eyes. There she was, the beautiful princess of his childhood, still as young and as beautiful as ever. No more than in her early twenties by her appearance, she had the air and elegance of a dowager queen.

  To his surprise, she was actually a duchess, the legendary Duchess of Egeskov to be exact. She was traveling with her entourage, which included her companion, a dashing man in his seventies, but with the vigor of a much younger man. He was Frederick Bruun, and he was also her solicitor.

  It took only a moment for Vasili to realize there was a special relationship between them. He could see it in the way the man’s eyes followed her, and the soft confident familiarity in the way they touched each other. The mere thought of them together made Vasili furious with jealousy.

  If she had only waited an hour longer, those many years ago, before she’d sailed, he would have been aboard her ship and they would have spent the past twenty years together. This man had to die! And so Vasili saw to it that he did.

  He had killed his first man at the age of ten in a filthy back alleyway on Mykonos. The man had cornered the handsome street urchin and threatened him with a knife, but he had ended up skewered on that very same knife. From that day forward, murder became a valuable tool, to be used, according to Vasili, whenever necessary, or even just when it was more expedient than any other solution.

  The murder of Mr. Bruun occurred while Miranda was off caring for the dying seafowl. At the time, Mr. Bruun was on the Dutch salvage ship that was struggling to raise the Torrey Canyon up above the jagged rocks that had ripped it open.

  The fact that an accident significant enough to cause the death of Mr. Bruun would necessitate the death of the entire salvage crew, and exacerbate the environmental damage of the spill, meant nothing to Vasili.

  Vasili timed his appearance at the rescue operation so he’d be on hand when the young duchess received the grave news of the death of her companion. Just as he’d planned, she wept in Vasili’s arms as he held her tight to assuage her grief over the untimely demise of Frederick.

  Apparently it was made all the more terrible by the fact that he had hated the sea. Only Bruun’s extreme dedication to her had enabled him control his fear of ships. It was a phobia that had been brought on by the deaths of several members of his family who had been lost at sea.

  “He was only aboard the salvage ship because I needed him there to deal with extending legal contracts,” Miranda sobbed. Her grief, intensified by guilt, made her more emotionally malleable—a pliable victim in his capable hands. Vasili took her back to her hotel that night, sent flowers to her room, and anticipated spending the next few days consoling and wooing her.

  To his dismay, however, the next morning she was gone. He went into a rage and smashed everything in his hotel room, then gave the manager a generous check for the damages. He left the same day.

  Vasili was determined to find Miranda, and keep her a secret from the Hag. Apparently her ethereal beauty was fact, not just his infatuation. He knew from the Hag that there were certain immortals that she herself feared and sought to control or destroy.

  An incredibly wealthy, eternally beautiful, legendary duchess might very well be such a person. She might even have the power to free him from the Hag.

  So, he searched for her in secret. Despite all his efforts to find her, which he had anticipated would not be difficult since she was titled nobility with vast estates, he did not see her again for another twenty years.

  During that time he married the Hag’s descendant and sired five children with her. But even that had not cooled his desire for Miranda.

  The Hag continued to give him gold and treasures, and he continued to make that wealth prosper. His ability to manipulate and control people and business transactions was uncanny. Vasili was almost supernatural in his own right. As a pair, together they were peerless in their drive to acquire and dominate. And they were both absolutely merciless.

  Oil and Water

  Vasili had given up hope of ever seeing Miranda again. Many oil spills and tanker accidents had occurred since they’d finally met in 1967, and she had never reappeared. Then in 1993, that changed.

  The Braer, a Liberian-registered tanker carrying 84,500 tons of crude oil ruptured off of the northern coast of Scotland’s Shetland Islands. A huge oil slick twenty-five miles long devastated the area.

  Vasili was in Athens when he heard about it, having long since trained executives to handle the daily workings of his businesses. Sitting in his living room, he turned on the news to get details of the damage. As the newscaster described the devastation, he saw Miranda on the screen. She was there as part of several international animal rescue teams coping with the damage to the marine life and seafowl.

  She hadn’t changed! She seemed every bit as young and lovely as she had been the day he’d seen her when he was a boy—over forty years ago! He was fifty-five now, but still young and much more virile than most men his age. The ring the Hag had given him was keeping the promise she had made him of long life and good health.

  Could Miranda be one of the immortals that the Hag was searching for? Her enemy? The creature more powerful than she? What else could explain Miranda’s eternal beauty, and her ability to disappear for years at a time? Was she the legendary mermaid? He wanted her now more than ever. If he were to join with Miranda, he could kill the Hag, gain his freedom, and live as an immortal.

  Vasili called his pilot and told him to have his private jet fueled and ready to leave immediately. Within the hour, he was flying off to Britain to find Miranda and win her love, one way or another.

  Even though the ship had not been owned by one of his many companies, when Vasili arrived at the scene of the newest environmental disaster, he was ready to grab the spotlight. He stormed in brandishing a large checkbook, spouting philanthropic rhetoric, and flashing his famous smile. With his movie star good looks and millionaire promises, he became a media sensation. He also succeeded in catching Miranda’s attention.

  Miranda had spent many years mourning the loss of Frederick Bruun. They had never married due to Frederick’s fear of the sea and aversion to
all things aquatic, but their shared interests had kept them together—a love of music, art, literature, and a need to make a difference wherever hapless victims suffered from any sort of disaster. They had shared a deep, loving, and rich relationship for nearly half a century until his accidental death. At least Miranda thought it to have been an accident.

  The memory of Frederick’s death and Vasili’s subsequent kindness were still fresh to her, so she felt warm and grateful to see him this time. She had felt badly about leaving without explanation years ago, but one does not explain to a mortal that one has decided to walk into the sea, transform into a mermaid, and swim home to your mother to deal with your grief in your own way.

  He had not seemed to age so much as he had matured; indeed, he had grown more masculine and magnetic. It had been a long time since she had gone to the theater or a fine restaurant or discussed books or music. He’d told her that when he’d recognized her there, working with the Animal Rescue League, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Although Miranda was born an immortal, she was hardly immune to flattery. He insisted on taking her to London on his private jet for dinner and the opera. Opera was her passion. Her father had taken her to several operas, but Frederick had not favored it, so she was delighted to reconnect with the art.

  The plane was elegant. Flying was not something she ever felt the need to do, so she had never purchased a private jet of her own. But now, the idea of flying from city to city, traveling so quickly in such comfort, suddenly appealed to her.

  Vasili chose Annabelle’s, a lush private club in the heart of London, as a place to dine, and Mozart’s, “The Magic Flute”, for the opera. It was a magnificent evening … the kind of evening she had spent with Frederick and her father and missed so terribly.

  Vasili had the dark, dashing good looks of her father, so different from the fair, Nordic charm of Frederick. He was different in a way that made her remember Frederick and yet enjoy the difference between the two men, without falling into moody comparisons.

  She had fallen for Vasili’s charms, and so she stayed on in London with him for a week. She was deeply infatuated with him. His story of the recent loss of his wife to cancer in a clinic in Switzerland, had given her a chance to return his kindness and consol him, a consolation that had finally culminated in a full relationship with him. He was passionate, unlike Frederick who had been tender and reverent, and the only man she had known before.

  Miranda decided to have Bruun & Gottorp make a large, anonymous donation in memory of Vasili’s wife to the clinic in Switzerland where she had died. It was simply a loving gesture on her part to pay honor to the mother of his children, whom she was looking forward to meeting someday. When Miranda received a call from her lawyer’s office informing her that Vasili’s wife had not died, but was in fact in Zurich recovering from successful chemotherapy, she flew into a rage.

  “You lied to me! You’re no widower! Your wife is doing fine in Zurich, and you have just been using me like some cheap whore!” she screamed at him.

  “Miranda, that’s not true. I love you. I have loved you since I was a boy of twelve when you came to my village in Mykonos. I know who and what you are! I want to be with you more than anything in the world. I don’t love my wife. I never have. I want to be with you!” he cried.

  “You want to abandon your wife and children for me? I don’t want that from any man. And as to who and what I am, I have no idea what you are talking about, and I do not care to find out!” And she stormed out of the room. He followed her, of course, as she stomped down the hall to her suite. To his dismay, she slammed the door in his face.

  He stood outside her door, pounding and screaming at her. “I know you’re immortal! I know you’re a mermaid! I love you and would give up everything to be with you! Miranda! Open the door! I swear I will leave my wife! She means nothing to me and never has! Miranda!” He pounded and kicked the door, smashing his fist against it. “Miranda!” Then the hotel security arrived and politely yet firmly escorted him back to his room.

  A few hours later, half a dozen tall Nordic men arrived and escorted Miranda out of the hotel and took her to safety. The disturbance required a report to be filed and names to be recorded, so this time when Miranda disappeared, instead of trying to track her, Vasili took the names of the men on the list who claimed to be in her employment, and tracked them. It didn’t take long to find a small chink in the armor Miranda had surrounded herself with.

  It took Vasili even less time to arrange his wife’s death. The papers called it a suicide. “Billionaire’s wife takes own life over rumors of husband’s infidelities,” a headline read. Now that should make Miranda feel guilty, he thought. It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. Now that Vasili had been with Miranda, he could never let another man near her. He would manipulate people and circumstances to make her see things his way. People always wound up seeing things how he wanted, one way or another.

  No More Mister Nice Guy

  Vasili’s efforts to reach Miranda were going nowhere. She was not like other people. She was protected by people imbued with centuries of loyalty, generations of family service, and the ability to keep secrets. Every one of his attempts was frustrated. And the worst of it was that he had overplayed his hand when he contacted the firm of Bruun & Gottorp demanding to speak to Miranda.

  “Bruun and Gottorp, may I help you?” a pleasant feminine voice had answered his call.

  “This is Vasili Thermopolis, and I wish to speak to the Duchess Miranda,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, sir, this is a law firm, not a private residence. Would you like me to transfer you to information?”

  “Don’t give me that garbage!” he’d shouted, making no attempt to compose himself. “I know Miranda. I know who she is, and what she really is, and I know your firm represents her. So get someone on the phone now who can tell me how to find her!”

  There was a click and a momentary pause, then a man’s voice came on the line. “Mr. Thermopolis, this is Canute Bruun. I suggest you control your temper and keep a civil tone to your voice if you wish this conversation to continue.”

  “I need you to get a message to Miranda for me,” Vasili snapped without any conciliatory words or tone.

  “Your needs are not my concern, sir. In fact, I doubt that you have anything of interest to say to me.”

  “Mr. Bruun, did you say?” Vasili snickered, as he tossed back another shot of ouzo. He’d had far too many of them already, and the fiery liquor of his homeland had made him headstrong and reckless.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Was Frederic Bruun your father?”

  “He was my grandfather. Did you know him, sir?

  “Not really. But he got in my way, and people who get in my way don’t stick around very long, Mr. Bruun. So, I suggest you do as I tell you,” and Vasili laughed wickedly.

  Canute Bruun was a cautious man with a brilliant mind who had adored his grandfather. When the accident that took his grandfather’s life occurred, he had suspected foul play but could figure no reason for it, and there had been no evidence to support it. Now he knew the reason, and needed no more evidence than the arrogant chuckle in his ear.

  After a long pause, Canute answered Vasili slowly and firmly. “Thank you for calling, Mr. Thermopolis, and thank you for that last bit of information. I promise you I will act upon it. And let me assure you, no call from you or on your behalf shall ever be accepted or delivered to the duchess. Accidents can happen to lots of people, Mr. Thermopolis, and you are not the only man capable of arranging them. I suggest you tuck your tail between your legs and hide, Mr. Thermopolis, for the drums of your doom are beating as we speak.”

  The line went dead. Vasili blinked, and he rocked slowly back and forth and stared at the phone for several seconds in disbelief. Then a slow, steady, animal growl of hatred, anger, and rage vibrated through him, erupting in a howl of furry. He hurled the phone across the room and then threw everything he could lay his hands on in eve
ry direction.

  Mr. Bruun was good to his word, and no further communication with Bruun & Gottorp was possible, even through proxy or mail. They seemed to know his every move and those of all his associates. Then things began to happen very quickly. Vasili’s assets were frozen, bank accounts were seized and revealed, and even his “impossible-to-track” Swiss bank accounts were compromised. Legal battles began to crop up from every direction that would last for years at great expense. Vasili’s fortune dwindled from billions, to hundreds of millions, to a few million. The entire world was after him, it seemed.

  The only one excited and pleased with him was the Hag—when he told her that the threats had begun when he suspected Miranda of being a mermaid and confronted her. He had sired the Hag’s descendants, and exposed her enemies. She didn’t even mourn the loss of his wife, her own relative, Konstantina. She had just been a name and a vessel for the Hag’s plans of domination. She wanted to know more about Miranda. She wanted to know about Helmi, and she ordered Vasili to find out more, no matter what the cost.

  So, Vasili put a plan into action. On his orders, two men in Miranda’s service were abducted, beaten, and tortured to death, but, through it all, they revealed nothing. Then he ordered the abduction of a third man, and this man he had taken to the Hag herself. This one talked. Actually, he screamed in absolute terror deep in her dark, oily cavern, held captive by the black corylians and other more diabolical playmates she had invented all on her own.

  It seemed there was a manor house in the Faeroes that Helmi, “Queen Helmi” the man had called her, owned and often visited. The Hag knew better than to try to approach Helmi in the sea, but she now knew where to look for her on land.

  Vasili was still useful to the Hag, so she would find ways to keep him safe. She could wait a little longer.. The Hag may not have been born in the sea like the lovely little mermaid, but she had spent centuries in its darkest corners and deepest places. She knew enough to destroy her enemies if she could get them to play into her hands.