The Emperor's Revenge (The Oregon Files) Read online

  “Good evening, Captain,” Maurice said in his plummy British accent. As a veteran of the Royal Navy, Maurice insisted on using the nautical honorific rather than “Chairman,” which was what the rest of the crew called him as the head of the Corporation.

  Juan waved him in and Maurice set the tray on his small dining table. Beneath the cover were a marinated rib eye, green beans, and potatoes O’Brien. Maurice poured steaming coffee from a china pot into one of the three cups. He even knew Linda and Max would be joining him.

  “Thank you, Maurice. I hope you had a better day than I did.”

  “That somewhat depends on whether we really did lose all of our money.” In addition to being the best steward on the high seas, Maurice had a nose for information. If Juan wanted the latest gossip on what was going on behind the scenes on the Oregon, Maurice was the first place he turned.

  “That’s what I’m going to find out,” Juan said as he savored the Kenyan brew.

  “I know you will, Captain.”

  He slipped out of the room like a wraith a moment before Linda and Max appeared in the doorway.

  “Come in,” Juan said. “Pour yourselves some coffee. Did you already eat?”

  Max Hanley had been the first person Juan hired for the Corporation and its second-in-command as president. A former Vietnam War Swift Boat commander, Max was also the ship’s chief engineer and had helped design the Oregon, so he considered it his baby. Not only was he in charge of running the ship when Juan wasn’t on board but he was also Juan’s best friend. Though he was in his sixties, with gray licking at the red curls circling his balding head, Max seemed to have the attitude of a much younger man and was as cantankerous as ever.

  “Chef fed me well tonight,” Max said.

  “Well, I figured you ate,” Juan teased, looking pointedly at Max’s stomach. “I was asking Linda.”

  “Are you kidding?” Max said. “She wolfed down more than I did.”

  Juan raised an eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Linda Ross, the Corporation’s vice president of operations and third-in-command, was as lovely as a wood elf and about as small. Her cute, upturned nose and high-pitched, girlish voice might have kept her from getting promotions when she served in the Navy on an Aegis cruiser and as a Pentagon staffer, but Juan brought her on because she had no trouble putting that voice to use when she was barking out commands during battle. She’d earned the entire crew’s respect for her skill and discipline. But now that she was out of the military, she took advantage of the less stringent rules and frequently changed the color of her hair. Today, it was a vibrant silver, cut in a shaggy bob.

  “Believe it,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “I was starving.”

  “Me, too,” Juan replied, taking a seat. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat while you fill me in. Tell me what happened.”

  Linda and Max sat as well. Max sipped his coffee while Linda explained the events of the afternoon.

  “Hali is a big Formula 1 fan, so he was keeping an eye on the race and saw the whole thing in real time.” Hali Kasim was their Lebanese American communications officer. “By the way, he said Langston Overholt will be calling in a few minutes. As far as they can tell, the Credit Condamine president, Henri Munier, sabotaged his own bank and then went on a rampage. He crashed through a barrier and destroyed several race cars before smashing into a pit garage and setting off a fuel tank. They’re still cleaning it up, but the latest news is seven dead and dozens injured. I’ll show you.”

  She tapped on her phone and the screen on Juan’s wall suddenly flickered to a view of the Monaco Grand Prix. They watched the recordings of the frenzy of destruction from multiple angles as Linda shared more of the details.

  Juan shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. I met the guy once and he seemed as mild-mannered as you’d expect a bank president to be. Do the police have a motive?”

  “Not that we know of,” Max said, “but the investigation is just getting under way.”

  “And what about our account? The message I got was that our money is gone. Don’t you mean ‘stolen’?”

  Linda gave him a grim look. She and Juan shared the duties of keeping track of the Corporation’s finances. “The problem is that we don’t know. It looks as if Munier somehow disabled the accounts. The money could still be locked in there somewhere, the money might have been transferred, or he could have done something else to destroy the accounts. I’ve been putting together our files here, but even if we prove what was in there, it could take months for the money to be accessible again.”

  Juan didn’t like the sound of that. Cash flow was always an imperative for the Corporation. Running a ship this size wasn’t cheap. The outlay for the latest operation had been substantial: weapons, chartering the cargo jet, buying and modifying the Scorpions and the Daedalus. A bonus was due for finding the WMDs, but it wouldn’t tide them over for long.

  The Corporation was run like a partnership, with each crew member getting a share of the profits, which also meant that they would share in any losses. They were paid extremely well for the hardships and hazards they endured, but their income and retirement savings depended on a healthy and financially solvent Corporation. They needed to find out what happened in the bank attack and get their money back.

  Juan’s phone rang. It was Langston Overholt IV, Juan’s former boss at the CIA and the person most responsible for encouraging him to found the Corporation. He put it on speaker.

  “Juan here, Lang,” he said. “I’ve got you on speaker with Linda Ross and Max Hanley.”

  “I hear you have some good news for me,” said the octogenarian in a gravelly voice.

  “We recovered two cases from a B-47, serial number 52-534. Each of them contains a nuclear weapon core.”

  “Are they still intact?”

  “The cases are a little worse for wear, but no leakage that we could detect.”

  “And Nazari?”

  “Dead, along with his soldiers. We also got a few Libyan terrorists who came to the party.”

  “Excellent work as usual,” Overholt said. There was some clicking of a keyboard on the line. “There’s a U.S. destroyer in your region, the Bainbridge. Can we set a rendezvous tonight to make the transfer?”

  “Yes,” Juan replied. “How about near Sicily? We’re headed in that direction anyway.”

  “Right. I know about your problem resulting from the bank heist in Monaco.”

  Linda spoke. “We’ve already changed all of our accounts and passwords in case any of them were compromised in the incident. I’ve forwarded you our new information for payment.”

  “Yes, I received it. Your fee will be sent by wire transfer once we have the cases. In fact, your situation with Credit Condamine has national security implications for us as well. That’s why I want you to team up with an analyst we have embedded with Interpol. She’s a forensic accountant based in Paris who’s been authorized to investigate the incident on our behalf. Since you’re intimately affected by the results and have expertise that might help her, I thought it would be a good match.” There was a slight hesitation before he continued. “Her name is Gretchen Wagner.”

  Juan’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, a green bean dangling in midair. He put the fork down and sat back, his eyes looking into the unfocused distance.

  “Gretchen Wagner?” he said.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Overholt asked.

  Juan composed himself after a second and said, “No. No problem at all. Linda and I will head to Monaco to meet her, once we get the cases squared away.”

  “Good. I’ll have the Navy contact the Bainbridge’s captain. I’ll send you the coordinates in a few hours. And we’ve begun negotiations with the Algerian government to retrieve the remains of the Air Force pilot and search for the others. I’m sure their families will be gratef
ul for your discovery.”

  He hung up.

  Linda stared at Juan for a moment, but when she saw that further explanation wasn’t coming, she stood. “I’ll go make the arrangements to cast off and set course for the rendezvous.”

  “Thanks, Linda,” Juan said. “Let’s book a flight out of Palermo to Monaco.”

  “Got it.” She closed the door behind her.

  Juan pushed his plate away, no longer hungry. He rose and made a motion to follow Linda out.

  Max got up, too. “Where are you going?”

  Juan opened the door. “To make sure those cases aren’t spreading radiation all over my ship.” He knew his voice sounded a bit more terse than usual, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Wait a minute,” Max said, catching up to him in the hallway, all but blocking the way. “This Gretchen Wagner—it sounded like you knew the name. Do you two have a history together?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Why? How do you know her?”

  “Well, for three weeks, she was my wife.”

  Juan gave Max an inscrutable grin and left him standing in the cabin passageway, mouth agape.

  NINE

  SOUTH OF MAJORCA

  With a storm fast approaching, Cobus Visser didn’t want to stay out on the deck of the containership Narwhal any longer than he had to. He and Gustaaf Bodeker had been tasked with checking every single reefer unit connection to make sure they were secure enough to weather the morning squall. If the refrigerated containers lost power during the storm, the vegetables inside would rot before they could reach port in Malta.

  As the lowest-ranking members of the twelve-man crew, Visser and Bodeker had been assigned this tedious and undesirable task. Lanky, twenty-year-old Visser was the newest addition, and while he didn’t mind the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, he didn’t understand why they’d been sent so far from their home port of Rotterdam. Normally, this small feeder cargo vessel was limited to short trips in the North Sea, distributing loads from Dijkstra Shipping’s giant containerships that carried goods from ports in Asia. But without explanation from the captain, the Narwhal had been suddenly diverted on the long trip to Malta, an island country located between Italy and Libya, which had caused much speculation among the crew.

  “Why do you think the captain won’t tell us what we’re picking up in Malta?” Visser asked Bodeker, who was inspecting the connections on their thirtieth reefer unit. The former speed skater, with thighs the size of beef slabs, seemed irked by the discussion, but Visser didn’t care.

  “We’re paid to go where the captain takes us and where the owner tells us to go,” Bodeker replied. “Why does it matter what we carry? All of the containers look the same anyway.”

  “Yes, but we’ve always been told before. We know these reefers hold tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The rest of the containers are filled with computer parts to be recycled in China. I saw the bill of lading. But the cargo master told me we are picking up only one container in Malta. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “No more strange than being sent to the Mediterranean in the first place.”

  “That’s another thing!” Visser went on excitedly. “We’ve been shuttling back and forth between Rotterdam, Oslo, and Bergen for the last three months, and then, out of nowhere, we’re going a thousand miles in the other direction to pick up a single container?”

  “So?”

  “Well, it’s weird. Do you want to know what I think?”

  “Not really,” Bodeker said.

  Visser ignored him. “I think we’re on a classified mission for the Dutch government. We’re picking up cargo that they don’t want anyone to know about.”

  Bodeker rolled his eyes. “You would think that. Don’t you ever get tired of all these conspiracy theories?”

  “And I suppose you think the government tells us about everything they do.”

  “I didn’t say that. But don’t you think it’s more reasonable that the company has some time-sensitive cargo to bring back to Rotterdam and we’re simply the only ship that was available?”

  “Come on, Bodeker,” Visser said. “That’s just failure of imagination. And boring.”

  “Your pestering is getting boring. Let’s finish this job and get back inside.”

  Visser waved his hand in disgust. He stretched and looked out to sea, surprised to see a bone-white ship passing by in the other direction no more than a mile off the port bow. He’d never seen a design like it.

  He tapped Bodeker on the shoulder. “What do you think that is? It can’t be a navy ship.”

  Bodeker straightened in annoyance and then looked curiously at the vessel. “I’d say it’s a yacht.”

  “You’re kidding. That thing is huge!” The sleek vessel had to be 400 feet long, a hundred feet longer than their own cargo ship. “It’s got to be a cruise ship, although I’ve never seen one that had a twin-hull configuration. It’s too far away to make out the name.”

  “It doesn’t have enough portals or balconies for a cruise ship.”

  Before they realized it, she was even with the Narwhal, racing past as if she were a cigarette boat.

  Bodeker furrowed his brow. “How is that possible?”

  “What do you mean?” Visser asked.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was doing fifty knots.”

  Visser squinted at the odd ship. Without a reference point, it was difficult for him to tell speed at sea.

  “Are you sure it’s not just an optical illusion?”

  Bodeker blinked twice. “Must be,” he muttered.

  The yacht turned smartly and sped away on a perpendicular course.

  Bodeker shrugged. “You’ll soon learn that you see all kinds of strange things on the ocean, Visser.”

  He went back to work, and Visser followed him as they moved toward the bow, but the younger man couldn’t take his eyes off the bizarre vessel until it was no more than a dot disappearing into the gathering storm clouds.

  Then a bright light flashed above the yacht.

  “Looks like it got hit by lightning,” Visser said.

  “Then let’s get out of the weather as quick as we can,” Bodeker replied.

  Visser nodded, his eyes on the aft superstructure, where the dry and warm crew quarters were. He spotted the captain on the top-level bridge, watching the approaching storm with his binoculars. “Okay, but when we eat lunch, I’m going to ask the captain what—”

  His next words were drowned out by a massive explosion on the Narwhal’s bridge. The windows burst outward, and a section of the roof panel, along with the antennas, flew into the air. Fire and smoke belched from the remains. Bodeker and Visser were thrown to the deck.

  “What the hell happened?” Bodeker yelled.

  Visser felt himself shaking uncontrollably. “It just blew up.”

  A moment later, an enormous boom nearly deafened them, like a gigantic thunderclap from a lightning strike right next to them.

  “Heaven help us!” Visser screamed, terror gripping him.

  Bodeker could only shake his head, the whites of his eyes huge.

  Then another explosion took out the lower part of the superstructure. Every crewman inside had to be dead. The blast was followed a few seconds later by a second thunderclap.

  A third explosion in front of the superstructure blasted six of the forty-foot containers off the starboard side of the ship like they were aluminum cans. The explosion after that impacted the hull at the waterline, throwing a geyser into the air.

  Visser and Bodeker watched the carnage in silent awe, frozen in place. It was clear that they were under attack, but from where? Sabotage was the first thought that came to Visser’s mind. Someone had planted explosives all over the ship.

  Explosions and thunderclaps came in rapid succession, each getting c
loser to the bow where they were standing.

  Visser and Bodeker looked at each other. They realized there was no choice. The lifeboats were destroyed, and they didn’t even have time to find life jackets.

  By unspoken agreement, they both leaped overboard.

  Visser surfaced and panicked when he didn’t spot his crewmate in the churning waves. He swiveled around until he saw Bodeker twenty feet away, swimming for his life. Visser didn’t need to be told to do the same.

  Visser lost count of the explosions and didn’t stop to turn around. Bodeker was the first to halt, and he treaded water while he looked back.

  Visser was almost more terrified by Bodeker’s stricken look than by the prospect of seeing the damage. He forced himself to turn and face what had become of the Narwhal.

  He gagged when he saw the remains of his home at sea. The tidy ship had been reduced to a ruin, the Narwhal’s red and black hull transformed into battered metal. Its stern was already underwater. They watched without a word as the ship’s bow pointed straight up into the sky and then slipped beneath the waves. The refrigerated containers bobbed on the surface until they drifted from view.

  Visser cried, the tears stinging even more than the salt water. Bodeker linked arms with him, and they helped each other keep their heads above the waves, but with a storm coming their chances were slim. The cold water sapped their strength with each passing minute.

  An hour later, Visser was exhausted and about to give up in despair despite Bodeker’s staunch faith that they could make it. But when he saw an approaching ship in the distance, he began to believe.

  They both shouted for joy and waved their arms as the ship neared. It was another container vessel about the same size and shape as their own sunken ship. It even had the same red and black livery.