Джордж Мартин – Mississippi Roll (страница 11)

It took a couple of hours to get all the groceries unloaded. When the task was finished Ray thanked the launch’s crew for their help and then he and the others headed back to the motel. No one noticed that Max Klingensmith had remained on the Schröder.

They all crowded into the room shared by Ray and the Angel. Colonel Centigrade was lying on the bed, still exhausted and fighting his bad head cold. Moon, still in her collie form, curled up next to him on the bed, but watched alertly as Harrison Klingensmith took the room’s only comfortable chair, settled into it. The Angel looked on with some interest while Ray paced restlessly back and forth across the small room.

‘What can you see?’ he asked the pale, scarecrow-thin SCARE agent.

Huginn screwed both eyes shut tightly, frowning with concentration. When he opened them he stared at the plain, dull green drapes drawn across the hotel room window.

‘I see,’ he intoned in a soft, faraway voice, ‘people eating.’

Ray made an impatient sound.

‘Munnin,’ he added, ‘is panning the room. It looks mostly calm. Most seem resigned, some are angry.’

He went on, narrating the scene as if it were a movie, relaying what his twin brother could see with his own left eye. His right eye saw just the blank cloth of the drapery he was staring at. This mixed vision shared by two minds could be disorienting as hell, which was why he concentrated his own sight on a neutral view. His brother also saw what he saw from his left eye. Their ace had no distance limit and could never be turned off. Unfortunately – or, for them, perhaps fortunately – vision was the only sense they shared, and it had taken long and hard practice to get used to the disorientation this collective sight caused. It was, of course, an ideal means of instantaneously transferring information.

‘Hold on – something’s happening. Max is leaving the hold where most of the refugees are encamped.’

‘Why?’ Ray stopped pacing.

‘Hard to say. He’s being stealthy, though. Sneaking. He’s good at that. Sticking to shadows, ducking. He’s on deck. It’s dark now, nighttime. He’s watching a small launch approach. Men are coming aboard.’

‘How many?’

‘I count eight. Max is going to the bridge. Olena’s there with the captain and some of his officers and the man you described as the JADL liaison, who’s talking to them. He looks worried, like he’s trying to tell them something they’re not believing. Max is concealed outside the bridge, but he can hear them. Hold on. He’s writing something – we carry pads to communicate complicated messages. I can read it as he writes. Robicheaux says that you can’t trust the man called Witness. He’s gotten in touch with his contacts in Cuba – someone from the Gambione family. No one in Havana knows anything about the Schröder getting asylum there. But they know this guy Witness – he’s heavily into human trafficking.’

‘I knew it,’ the Angel said between clenched teeth. ‘I knew they couldn’t trust the bastard.’

‘Wait – the men are coming to the bridge. Max is retreating into deeper cover. The one leading them is big, blond, muscles like a weightlifter. Handsome, except for a smashed nose. The men with him are armed. They’re dragging the old guy from the bridge, Olena is trying to stop them but they’re pushing her down. She’s screaming. They’re – they’re throwing the old guy off the side of the ship. That guy, that snake guy is coming fast, to the bridge. They’re shooting at him—’

‘Damn!’ Ray said. ‘We’ve got to get there, fast! We should have staked out someplace closer, dammit!’

‘The Schröder’s engines are starting. There’s commotion on the Coast Guard cutter. Lights are going on all over her!’

‘Angel—’ Ray said.

‘I can’t help you,’ she said numbly. ‘You know I can’t.’ She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

Ray stood before her, took her arms, and lifted her from her chair. Supporting her weight, he held her upright before him.

‘You have to,’ he said. ‘But not me. You have to help those people on that goddamned boat. There’s no telling what will happen to them.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘I know you are,’ Ray said earnestly. ‘And I know you’re hurt. I understand if you can’t do this anymore. But if you have anything left, now’s the time to dig down deep and find it. Just get me there – that’s all you have to do. I promise.’

Ray could feel her body stiffen, her legs take her weight, and she stood upright, on her own.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘but we’d better step outside.’

Ray smiled. ‘Good point,’ he said. He turned to the others. ‘Follow as quickly as you can.’

He tossed the keys to the Escalade to Huginn and hand in hand he and the Angel ran out the motel room door, down the hallway, and to a side exit off the first floor.

The night was hot and muggy, as usual for New Orleans. They stood together in the parking lot, bathed in the light of the incandescent bulbs illuminating the rows of cars.

The Angel put her arms around him. ‘I could drink a case of you,’ she murmured, and pulled him close.

He put his arms around her and they kissed. Ray felt as if he could feel the hurt and need in her and kissed her as if to draw it all out of her and into himself. After a moment he felt heat all around him and he knew it for the touch of the unburning flames that covered her wings, and suddenly they were airborne. Ray could feel the rush of the breeze from her beating wings upon his face and he laughed aloud as the Angel’s strength bore him effortlessly through the sky.

The city of New Orleans was spread below them, its streets outlined by lamplights and rows of car headlights moving like tracers over the ground. After the Angel gained sufficient altitude she turned toward the river and the bend bordering the French Quarter. It took only a minute or two, traveling as the angel flies, until they could see the lighted deck of the Schröder moving on the river, being pursued by half a dozen launches as well as the Coast Guard cutter Triton, which was quickly gaining on her.

‘She’s under way,’ Ray said.

The Angel’s expression was serene as a Madonna’s. Ray felt a stab of happiness to see her so. All the cares and worry and anxiety were washed away from her face as she bore them both through the sky.

Ray frowned as he looked down at the ship. ‘She’s moving pretty fast,’ he said. ‘The cutter is trying to block her way – they’re going to collide!’

The ships hit with the anguished scream of shrieking metal as the Angel spiraled down to the Schröder’s main deck. The much larger freighter smashed the cutter aside as if she were a plastic toy. The Coast Guard vessel buckled where the freighter’s prow struck her amidships. The Schröder continued to plow serenely upstream as the Triton broke into two pieces. The launches trailing the runaway freighter stopped to pick up sailors who’d abandoned the wrecked and rapidly sinking Triton.

The Angel touched down on the stern of the freighter, unnoticed in the darkness.

‘All right,’ Ray said quietly. ‘You stay here. I’m going to go see what the hell is going on.’

The Angel shook her head. ‘No, I’m coming with you.’

‘You going to be all right?’ he asked, his expression concerned.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that there’s someone I wouldn’t mind seeing again.’

‘All right. If you’re sure.’

‘I already said that I’m not.’ Ray didn’t mind the impatience in her voice and in her expression. It was at least a sign of engagement, of a return to the world. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’ She smiled and Ray liked that even better. ‘One sword at least thy right shall guard.’

Ray remembered those same words spoken a dozen years ago and moved off into the darkness feeling whole for the first time in a long time.

The decks were deserted and quiet. His first thought was for the refugees. They found a companionway headed down into the hold and cat-footed it into the eerily lit space where they bivouacked. The lighting was provided by strung bulbs of low wattage that gleamed like will-o’-the-wisps hovering over a swamp. The air still smelled terrible. As they went silently down the ladder, they could see the mass of people sitting and standing in close ranks in the cramped hold, three men covering them with automatic rifles.

‘Jesus,’ one of them was saying, ‘what a sorry-assed lot. Be lucky if one in ten of them was worth keeping.’

‘They are a pretty useless bunch of rag-heads. Still, I reckon some of them will bring a nice price. The rest, well, fuck ’em. They can go down with the ship when we scuttle it.’

‘Hey,’ said the third, the one in the middle, ‘give me a cig, will you? I need something to cover up the stench in here.’

Ray reached the hold’s floor, maybe twenty feet behind them.

‘I need a light myself.’ The three men sidled together, keeping their rifles pointed at the mass of people in front of them. Many of the refugees, at least those who hadn’t sunken into complete lethargy, must have seen Ray creeping as stealthily as a panther, but no one gave him away with either a look or a gesture.

One of the men cradled his rifle to his side under his arm while he bent down to light his cigarette with the match offered him by the middle man, while the third reached for a packet he kept in his shirt pocket.