Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

I doubled over, whooping air into my lungs. Helen stood back until I took a full breath and stood up straight, one hand at my lower back.

“Alright?”

I gave her a short nod. “I wasn’t expecting that. I should have stretched first.” The truth was, it had been some time since I’d wrapped myself like a pretzel around someone I was trying to kill, to say nothing of choking someone out. It’s more a matter of leverage than brute strength, but you always feel it in your biceps and traps as soon as you’re finished if you’ve done it right. Too many people think it comes from the forearms, but that’s a good way to end up with a bad case of tennis elbow.

Generally, I was good with my age. Turning sixty hadn’t sent me into a tailspin or whipped up an existential crisis. Aging in our business was a luxury most never got. But it straight up pissed me off when I came up against something I couldn’t do as easily as I used to. Every day I walked ten miles and did two hours of yoga. I spent twelve hours a week pounding my fists into a heavy bag and lifting weights. I popped supplements like they were Pez, but once in a while some little shit like Brad Fogerty crossed my path and I felt every damned year.

I dropped to my knees on the carpet and put my chest to the floor, stretching my arms out into puppy-dog pose while Helen surveyed the device.

“Billie, again, I don’t mean to sound critical,” she said patiently, “but is this really the best use of our time?”

“Helen, my lower back has seized like a son of a bitch and I don’t know what the rest of this evening’s activities are going to require, so how about you hush up and see if you can figure out how to disarm that thing while I persuade my vertebrae to be friends again.”

It was a cranky reply, but I was annoyed. Helen had been one of the best—cool, reliable, unflappable. And now she seemed well and truly flapped.

But she’d regained something of her old spirit by the time I’d worked my way through child’s pose and a few sets of cat and cow. I pushed myself to my feet.

“Thoughts?”

She shook her head. “You know I’ve always hated these things.” She pulled a face. Bombs were messy; explosives left bits and pieces of people lying around like so much litter after a Mardi Gras parade. Helen liked things tidy. She took great pride in the fact that she’d once drilled a mark in a stiff wind at eight hundred yards, so cleanly that she put the round directly through the socket of his eye, not even skimming the bone. She’d been given a commendation for that one.

I closed the case, snapping the clasps. “Then we have to take it with us.”

Just then Fogerty emitted an unpleasant noise accompanied by a smell I knew too well. The human body has over sixty sphincters, and every one of them relaxes in death.

My usual remedy was a Brach’s Star Brites mint—easy to carry and not suspicious—but anything peppermint will do. I went into the bathroom and grabbed his toothpaste, dabbing a bit under my nose. I knelt next to him and went through his pockets. He had his crew lanyard stuffed into one but nothing else.

“He must have stashed his ID and money with his means of escape,” I told Helen. “We should get going.”

Helen and I exchanged glances, then she heaved a sigh and dragged the cover off his bed, snapping it out as she draped it on the floor. We rolled him into it, then maneuvered him into the wardrobe. When we finished, Helen sprayed lavishly from the bottle of cheap aftershave in his Dopp kit. I surveyed our handiwork. Anyone taking a quick glance would think he had left a bundle of dirty bedclothes stuffed into his wardrobe. It wouldn’t stand up to a close inspection, but it might buy us some time.

Helen took the case, tucking it carefully under her arm and draping her pashmina over it while I closed the door behind us. Helen and I made our way up two flights of stairs to our deck, careful to look like we were having a nonchalant chat as we went.

“Ladies!” Heather Fanning found us just as we reached my cabin. “Everything okay? We’re missing a swell dinner! There’s even a lovely rose petal rice congee for dessert.” She pitched her voice high, the way tiresome people do when they’re talking to anyone older than they can ever imagine being.

Helen turned to face her. “Thank you, dear. My friend has a touch of seasickness and I thought I’d see her to her cabin. She just needs a little lie-down.”

I hunched over, clutching my stomach, and Heather Fanning’s face puckered in distaste. “Oh, that is a shame! If you need the doctor, do let us know. In the meantime, we offer a full assortment of ginger-based natural remedies in the wellness shop on the Hygieia deck.”

I growled a little in the back of my throat.

“Thank you, dear,” Helen told her sweetly. “But I brought some edibles.”

She took the key card from my hand and swiped it viciously, shoving me inside the cabin and shutting the door firmly on Heather Fanning’s shocked face before I burst out laughing.

“Edibles?”

She went to put the attaché case down on Mary Alice’s bed. “I hate people like her. Talking to us like we’re toddlers.” Her voice rose in perfect mimicry. “You’re missing a swell dinner. Rice pudding for dessert!”

“She said it was a very lovely rose petal congee,” I reminded her.

“I don’t care what she calls it. It’s rice pudding, and I am so goddamned tired of being old.” She sat heavily on my bed, and I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. I went to the bathroom and got a hand towel. The ice bucket had been filled and left with an orchid on the console. I tossed the orchid aside and wrapped a handful of ice in the cloth. I brought it to Helen and laid it gently on the back of her head.

“You took a crack.”

She held it in place. “I suppose it’s no use complaining about feeling decrepit when there’s a bomb ticking down five feet away and I may never get any older,” she said reasonably. “It’s just that ever since Kenneth died, I’ve aged twenty years. I can’t even touch my toes anymore, let alone do what you just did,” she added in an accusing tone.

“Helen, cut yourself some slack. I didn’t lose the love of my life. Mourning is a bitch. And it’s a process. You’re just not finished with it.”

“That’s the point,” she said. “I think I am. At least I want to be. I am so sick and tired of waking up feeling like someone tore off one of my limbs. Every morning, for just a few seconds, I forget. I wake up and it hasn’t happened yet. There’s nothing but emptiness and calm. And then it comes crashing down and I hate it. I hate it so much.”

I sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Not even a little. It feels like a physical weight, something that somebody thrust into my arms and made me carry. I didn’t ask for this. I wish I could break pieces of it off and hand them over to other people. Let them have their turn.”

“We all have our turn in the end,” I said. I put my arm around her, trying not to feel how little flesh was left on her bones. If I blew hard enough, I could send her tumbling away like a dandelion seed. God only knew where she would land.

She took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose if we die tonight, I’m okay with it. I’ve had a good life, you know. I was married to Kenneth for over thirty years. Eighteen of them were really happy. That’s not so bad.”

“What happened to the other twelve?”

“Erectile dysfunction and his abortive attempt to breed Weimaraners.”

I burst out laughing and for an instant she bristled like she was getting ready to take offense. But then she laughed too.

Just then the door opened and Mary Alice and Nat appeared with our handbags and boxes of leftovers. “What happened to you two?” Mary Alice asked as Natalie held up one of the boxes.

“Some sort of rice pudding shit with rose, but it’s good,” she said. She handed out spoons as Mary Alice looked at the case on her bed.

“What’s this?” she asked. I told her the code and she opened it. “Well, hell,” she said, stepping back.

Nat shoved a spoonful of rice pudding into her mouth before coming close, bending over the explosive like a fond mother with a newborn child.

“Oh, that’s good stuff,” she said. “So the little prick was getting ready to blow the boat—with us on it.”

“We’re either the marks or the Museum doesn’t care if we were collateral damage,” I said.

“That’s hurtful,” Mary Alice put in. “We’ve given forty years to those assholes and this is how they repay us. But why? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s not a now problem,” I said, reverting to training. It was a reminder to focus on the job at hand and set the priorities where they should be. “Right now, we have to figure out how to dismantle this or how to get everyone off this boat before it blows.”

“Easy,” Nat said, spooning up more of the pudding. “Override code.”

Helen cleared her throat. “Billie removed Fogerty from the equation before we could secure it.”

“How far removed?” Mary Alice asked.

“Completely,” I said.

“Dammit, Billie—” Nat began.

Helen put up her hand. “Billie did what she had to do,” she said. For all her prissiness, Helen was loyal as a lapdog. “And it’s done now. We checked his cabin and pockets. He must have memorized it like he was supposed to instead of leaving it lying around.”

“Just our luck he wasn’t a complete slackass,” Natalie said. She tapped the spoon against her teeth.

Mary Alice looked around. “We have to get everyone off the boat.”

I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll do it. It’s my mistake so I’ll clean it up.”

Mary Alice gave me a level look. “Fire in the engine room?”

I nodded. “I’ll make it good and smoky. One of you hit the alarm. That will start evacuation procedures,” I said, remembering the lifeboat drill from the previous day.

“But not everyone will go,” Mary Alice objected. “The engine room crew will stay and try to put it out.”

“Not if the lifeboats are pushed out. Each one has crew assigned to it, and the engine room boys will have to man their lifeboat. I’ll sweep for stragglers,” I promised her. “And I’ll set multiple fires to ramp up the confusion. We’ll get everyone off in time. The captain will send a mayday before he abandons ship. At worst, people will have a few rough hours in the lifeboats on the open sea before help arrives, and the explosion will be chalked up to an engine room malfunction.”

“What about us?” Helen asked.

“What about us?” Natalie replied.

“Someone from the Museum is trying to kill us. When the lifeboats are recovered, they will log the passengers to make sure no one is missing.”

“And?” Nat still wasn’t getting it, but the light was dawning for me.

“We won’t be dead,” I told her. “We’ll be listed officially as surviving the explosion.”

“And they’ll try again,” Mary Alice added. “They might have even assigned Fogerty a backup we haven’t spotted yet.”

We looked at one another. “Shit,” Natalie said.

“So, we need to get off the boat before it blows but not with the other passengers,” Helen summed up.

“And we have about five minutes to make a plan,” Mary Alice added. “We can’t take a lifeboat because they’re all assigned.”

“That’s a very ‘glass is half-empty’ attitude, Mary Alice,” Natalie told her.

I held up a hand. “She’s right. So that leaves the rubber launch we rode in to Basseterre. It’s got a motor but the fuel tank is small. We’ll run out before we get halfway to land, but it has sails and charts. Helen, you’re the only one of us who knows how to sail. Grab anything you think we’ll need. Nat, you sound the alarm and pitch a wall-eyed fit until people start getting into boats. A little bit of old-lady hysteria will get them nervous. Mary Alice, provisions. Water and any food you can find that’s packaged. It may be some time until we’re picked up or can get to an island. Leave your phones. No credit cards, but bring all your cash. And leave the passports. From the minute we go over the side of this boat, we’re operating off-grid.”

Nat groaned and Helen looked resigned. Ditching the passports and credit cards would be a pain when we eventually reached land, but anything that could track us was out of the question.

I started to get up, but Mary Alice stopped me. “You realize what this means? We’re burning our identities. Our own identities.”

We looked at each other, our faces grim. Every assignment had brought cover identities, pseudonyms and papers we tossed aside as soon as the job was done. We never traveled or worked under our own names; it was too dangerous. The aliases gave us a buffer, a layer of protection between our civilian lives and the work we did.

And now the work was forcing its way in, unwanted and uninvited.

“We don’t have a choice,” I said simply.

She nodded. “I know. I just . . . Akiko.”

We were silent again. Akiko would get a call, the call. Someone from the State Department, probably. Informing her in short, awful phrases that her wife had been lost at sea.

“Not a now problem, Mary Alice,” I told her flatly.

I got up and this time she didn’t stop me. I grabbed a few bottles from the minibar and put them into the laundry bag from the wardrobe along with the morning’s newspaper and a T-shirt.

My identification and other papers I left. If any scraps survived, they would support the fiction that we had died in the explosion. I pocketed my cash—a few hundred American dollars—along with a tin of Altoids. I stripped the thin neoprene case off of my e-reader and put the case into the same pocket, stopping just long enough to grab a couple of large safety pins out of the vanity kit to secure it closed.

Into the other pocket went the Swiss Army knife I’d brought in my checked bag, but I left that pocket open just in case I needed quick access to it. I grabbed my lighter, heavy and silver, stashing it in my pocket with the knife. There wasn’t much in my jewelry roll, just a few pairs of hoop earrings and some diamond studs, which I put into my ears. They were a carat each, so clear and flawless they looked like fakes, but they’d be a useful source of cash if we needed to pawn them. Also in the jewelry roll was a narrow belt of gold coins that looked like replicas but were Pahlavis, souvenirs from a job in Iran and the only other thing of value I had brought. I would have clipped it around my waist, but it clattered like hell so I handed it over to Helen for safekeeping. She stuffed it into her Birkin with her address book and her pills.

By the time I finished sorting my things and turned my attention back to the others, they were on their feet. The change in posture had changed the mood. They were focused now, serious and businesslike. We checked our watches—some things we like to do old-school—and looked at each other. We were in a small huddle, standing close enough to one another that I could smell Helen’s Shalimar, Natalie’s neroli oil, Mary Alice’s green tea shampoo. A wave of love for them hit me so hard, it nearly buckled my knees.

“Screw it,” I said abruptly. Emotion is a good way to get yourself killed, the Shepherdess had taught us. I hefted the attaché case.

“You’re taking it?” Helen asked.

“It’s better this way. The lower down it is when it detonates, the greater the chance it will take out the whole boat.” I went to the door and took one last look. “See you on the other side.”

“The other side,” they said. Three old women, nodding their heads like the witches in Macbeth. I’d known them for two-thirds of my life, those impossible old bitches. And I would save them or die trying.