Ben stayed close. Carson and Candle clutched their aluminum cases close to their chests and stared straight ahead, toward the elevator door, despite the view opening behind them as the elevator rose out of its black well and climbed the side of the ship.
We got out on the first deck of Tower Four and walked through a carpeted but unfurnished lobby—real marble and fake gold, very Las Vegas—to the glassed-in promenade. Escalators rose and fell all around us. Our camouflaged Marines stood out like muddy smears in a Greek temple.
Going to the rail and looking forward, I surveyed the curved glass along most of the starboard length of Lemuria, protecting five levels of walkways, cafes, and lounges.
“Looks like South Coast Plaza,” Ben told me in a low voice. “But I think this is bigger.”
Workmen gave us puzzled and partisan glances but continued bolting down tables, laying out massive rolls of precut carpet, and hauling stacks of cushiony chairs draped in streaming sheets of plastic. The room smelled of glue and fresh carpet and fabric. Large fans, like those used on movie soundstages, vented the odors through open segments in the promenade cover.
Breaker fidgeted with his folding map. “C Team should be here to escort us forward,” he said. Delbarco pointed.
A tall woman in a clinging blue gown stalked through a wide door and pushed ahead of four Coast Guard officers and two Marines. Her voice carried out over the unfinished lobby and echoed from the far walls like a harsh bell. Fortyish, tanned a coppery chocolate, eyes large and with prominent gleaming whites, adorned in plum lipstick and blue eye shadow, she looked ready to spit.
“I don’t believe I have any reason to cooperate. I don’t care what Captain Moustakis says. The passengers are upset, nobody’s said anything that makes a lick of sense, and—”
The woman clapped her mouth shut as the two groups squared off. She scanned the new invaders with leonine annoyance.
“Lieutenant,” Breaker said to a young Coast Guard officer. “Where are our suits?”
“They didn’t arrive, sir,” the lieutenant said. “Commander thought they were superfluous.”
“How in hell was that his call to make?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“Shit,” Delbarco said. “Was he tagged?”
“Don’t know, ma’am.”
For the first time, Delbarco seemed on the edge of losing it. She stared at the floor, clenching her jaw muscles spasmodically. Breaker watched her closely. She shook her head. “I’m all right.”
“We can’t stop now,” Breaker said, but his shoulders dropped, and he looked for a moment like a whipped kid.
“You,” the woman said, focusing on Breaker. “What in hell are we supposed to do, hand over all the passports and green cards and stand aside? This is a privately owned and funded ship . . .”
“Registered in Liberia and full of sin,” Breaker said, his patience coming to an end. “Just show us the way forward to Aristos Tower.”
“I have better things to do, believe me. We have a thousand guests who are unwell, in the banquet hall—”
“Unwell?” Candle asked, raising her head as if at some stage cue.
“I’ll say. There was a fire alarm and the sprinklers soaked everything. An awful smell. Now they’re throwing up and fainting and blaming it on bad food and seasickness. That’s utterly ridiculous—this ship has the world’s best chefs, seventy-eight stabilizers, and premium steel-and-aluminum construction. It’s the strongest and steadiest ship ever built. I need to get back there and do my job!”
Delbarco moved in, with Breaker’s tacit permission: woman to woman. “Ma’am, we have maybe an hour to finish what we came here to do,” the Secret Service agent said. “You haven’t a bat’s chance in a bonfire of understanding why we’re here, and we couldn’t tell you anyway. Enough to say that unless you want a lot of death and destruction, you will shut your fucking trap and take us forward!”
The woman absorbed this outburst with some resilience, obviously used to playing the lightning rod for tough customers. “I have a name,” she said. “I hope you will use it and treat me with respect. I am Mrs. Holloway.”
Delbarco rolled her eyes. “Fine. Mrs. Holloway. Please take us forward.”
Ben looked over the small crowd like a lighthouse keeper judging the weather, his face painted with a stiff, clownish grin. “Is that your war face?” I asked in an undertone.
“No suits. We’re fucked,” Ben said. “It’s a regular Phillips head screwup.”
“Why?”
“Food poisoning, Hal?” he asked.
“Anything you’d like to contribute?” Delbarco shouted. Breaker jumped at her voice, as did Mrs. Holloway in her tight blue gown. “Tell us how to get there!” Delbarco ordered her.
“The trains are in working order,” Mrs. Holloway said, blinking rapidly. “They follow the inside gallery. It runs the length of the ship, dividing the first seven floors of each tower. The Executive Express is the quickest way to travel on Lemuria. Are there others . . . of your party, expecting you?”
If she couldn’t make us go away, perhaps it was time to treat us like difficult guests.
“There are,” Delbarco said.
“Then I will help you get in touch with them.” Mrs. Holloway tugged at the waist of her gown, drawing it down over a disciplined Nancy Reagan figure. She shivered for an instant, throwing off her pique, and adjusted her hair with patting hands as she led us up an escalator. “If there’s anything else you need to know about Lemuria, please ask.”
We boarded the express, a full-fledged airport-style train running on a single track and rubber wheels. It rolled with absolute smoothness through the central gallery.
Even to someone who has been to Las Vegas, the gallery of Lemuria was stunning, over fifteen hundred feet long, a straight shot down the centerline of the ship. I could almost feel the overarching weight of the four huge towers interrupting long stretches of skylight. The express whisked us through blue grottos of layered decks, glass walls shot through with mosaics lit by neon and fiber optics, escalators made of what looked like crystal and studded with sea-glow lanterns. As we passed signs announcing we had arrived at the base of Aristos Tower, we rolled through a sunny golden Cretan palace that would have made Minos faint with envy. A giant robot Minotaur straddled the train platform, raising and lowering a golden double-bladed ax.
We were now about a thousand feet closer to the bow.
As the train’s doors slid wide, we heard shouting and gunshots echo from above. A clutch of workmen in denim overalls frantically hauled red tool chests and a compressor down a spacious marbled hall, babbling in German, getting out of the way as fast as they could.
A broad sliding glass door on our left, etched with sea horses, opened with a click. A Marine staggered through and tossed aside his rifle. He held out his arms, fingers wriggling, as if he couldn’t see, but his eyes jerked this way and that, tracking the walls, the ceiling. He broke into a run and caromed off a brushed-steel pillar onto a stack of carpet rolls, then clung to the rolls like a baby monkey on a terry-cloth mommy. Three of our Marines rushed forward to help.
“Keep the fuck away from him! Stay together! Stay on objective!” Breaker ordered. “He might be contaminated. Call for a medic. What the hell deck are we on? Where is this?”
