“She’s a tiger,” he agreed. The hotel suite was temporarily empty except for Ben and me. He had inserted his finger into a specific page in the album. Now he let it flop open on his lap.
“How much do we really know, Hal?” he asked, and tapped a photo in the upper corner of the right-hand page.
I leaned over. The picture showed five people in suits posed stiffly in front of a curtain.
“So?” I said.
“This must have been taken by a Russian photographer and passed on to Golokhov’s people. Mrs. Golokhova pasted it in with all these other photos, but this is the last album she compiled, I think. There was a big Communist Party–sponsored conference in New York in 1949, the ‘Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace.’ Also known as the Waldorf Conference. Bigwigs and celebrities came from all over the world to attend. Pre-McCarthy, of course. I think there was coverage in Life magazine. “
“So who are they?”
He ran his finger over the photo. “The fellow on the left is a novelist, Alexander Fadeyev. He was head of the Soviet Writers’ Union. Just another Colonel Klink in Stalin’s zoo—’I see nothing, I hear nothing!’ Next to him is Norman Mailer, the original Stormin’ Norman, and Jewish of course. This guy is Arthur Miller, also Jewish. Married Marilyn Monroe, who some say slept with John F. Kennedy. Between them is Dmitri Shostakovich. Pretty good composer, struggled with Stalin for years. But this guy on the right, with the Windsor hairdo—who do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” I said, irritated. But the profile of the fifth man in the picture had already caught my eye. I picked up the album, held it closer. The nose, the eyebrows, the stance . . .
I felt my hands get sweaty, instant anxiety.
“What do we really know, Hal?” Ben asked. “Who’s running whom around here? You tell me.”
The fifth man looked a lot like Rudy Banning. A few years younger, but otherwise unmistakable.
“Nineteen forty-nine,” I said. “You sure?”
“Look at Mailer,” Ben said. “Just an ambitious sprout. And Miller, all that black hair. Absolutely, that picture is from New York in 1949.”
“They could have retouched it.”
“Hal, she glued that picture into the album in 1949 or 1950. It’s part of a sequence from the conference. I’ll bet Maxim Golokhov was there, making plans with his American contacts.”
“It could be a fake.”
“I don’t think so.”
I met Ben’s gaze. “Still going in?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Ben answered, and clapped the album shut.
Outside, Florida’s balmy night brought out constellations of mercury and sodium lamps over all the shopping centers, parking lots, apartment complexes, and restaurants that served Port Canaveral and the cruise ships, and in particular, the Lemuria. The big ship’s display and running lights came on last. She looked like a row of ziggurats dressed up as Christmas trees. A bare dozen of the windows in the four towers were illuminated; only a few of the ship’s condos had been sold and occupied.
At nine, Breaker returned with the marine architects. They spread rolled sheets of plans on the table. Each of us would carry a small map showing our proposed routes through the ship. They judged Tammy’s key codes to be unreliable. We would find other ways of getting into Golokhov’s sanctuary. Still, Ben handed me a copy of Tammy’s sketch map and the codes. I folded it and stuffed it in my pocket.
We were still operating with a hodgepodge of assets and personnel. We would “borrow” a cabin cruiser from Port Canaveral’s private marina. Ten Marines would accompany us. Others would board Lemuria from at least two and possibly four Coast Guard helicopters. In addition, if the details could be worked out, two cutters from the Coast Guard station would join in the fun.
Ben listened with a long, sober expression. Rob’s original crazy scheme was going to be carried out, but on a grander scale than any of us had hoped.
I was getting pumped—a kind of delayed shock reaction. Something was going on deep in my head but I couldn’t drag it out into daylight. To compensate, to find some solid ground, I fantasized about confronting Maxim Golokhov. I wanted to rifle his clandestine laboratories and maybe grab a few clues. He owed me.
Everyone there owed me. I blamed their ignorance and intransigence for all I had been through, and for Rob’s death. I would carry on for the both of us. Rob’s memory deserved that much.
Despite all I had seen and survived, I was still a fool for the Long Haul.
Delbarco and Breaker brought in sleeping bags still in plastic wrappers, more white towels for the bathroom, stinking of fresh disinfectant, and a box of MREs—Meals Ready to Eat, not gourmet and not fresh, packaged in 1997.
Carson caught me studying the back of my hand.
“Any puckering, Dr. Cousins?” he asked.
I closed the hand into a fist. “No,” I said.
36
AUGUST 19 • THE ATLANTIC OCEAN/LEMURIA
The sixty-foot cabin cruiser bounced through three- and four-foot waves, following the Lemuria on the open Atlantic. Dawn was a faraway glow as yellow as lemon ice cream over the dark gray sea.
“The Eagle has landed,” Breaker said. He walked forward, bracing his hand against the stained walnut burl bulkhead of the forward bunk room, and sat on a padded bench next to Delbarco and across from me and Ben. “The President has finished detagging. He is with us.”
Candle and Carson sat slumped against the rear bulkhead, behind a small table. Three of our ten Marines, two young men and a woman, sat stiffly on luxurious leather swivel chairs, dressed in desert-style camouflage that I doubted would be effective on a cruise ship. They steadied their helmets in their laps and listened closely to all we said, with a focus and intensity that impressed me.
I was working on my third cup of black coffee. I had felt like hell since waking up, dizzy and disoriented, over four hours ago.
Breaker watched the distance close between our boat and the giant cruise ship. “We’re not going to get everything we asked for. Washington’s in more of an uproar than ever. Secrecy is shot; some senator went to the ship’s owners and told them we’re on our way. By the time we get there, we’re hoping Coast Guard contingents will have already secured cooperation from the captain and crew. We’ll board after they’ve taken control.”
Nobody commented on appearances. We were all marked by the singular effects of both the ocean chop and another round of elixir, incorporating yet more modified bacteria, incubating phages eager to express antisense messenger RNA. We were high-tech seasick in a bad way, cranky and touchy, and nobody could tell us what we would find in the bowels of the floating city.
Lemuria was now five miles ahead and cruising south-southeast at about fifteen knots. Carson and Candle grew more tense as the day brightened.
