The Pandora Box (28 page)

34

White Fox

“I am positive she is somebody’s darling.” ~ Nellie Bly

At 7:20, Eddington and his partner came aboard the
USS White Fox
. Their small float plane had landed in choppy seas a short distance from the ship, the last leg of their journey having brought them from a United States aircraft carrier cruising some hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Japan. Because of the weather, the plane did little more than tumble its passengers onto the waiting launch before taking off into the darkening sky.

“You head for communications and set up the equipment,” he said to Reynolds as he took the last ladder up to the main deck two steps at a time. “I’m going to the bridge and find out what’s going on. We should have had an intercept by now.”

As he ducked through the door, the captain looked over at him.

“You Eddington? Looks like you had a rough trip.”

“What’s the last radio contact you had with the
Pandora?”

“Sometime around dawn this morning we picked up a partial mayday.”

Eddington breathed out a sigh of frustration.

“Let’s head on down to communications, and we can talk to search and rescue.” The captain picked up his hat. “Mr. Ramsey, have some coffee sent down, will you? This guy looks like he’s spent the last two hours in a deep freeze.” He called to a lieutenant on watch.

By the time they arrived in the communication center, his partner had already set up their equipment. “Got ‘em, Ren?” Eddington peered at the small scope over his shoulder.

“Yeah, barely,” his partner replied. “They changed course, Ed.”

“What?”

“Looks like they’re heading south. Right for the Tsugaru Straits. The most direct route to Vladivostok.”

“Well, what happened? He was on zero, three, niner before we left the carrier. I thought sure he’d stick with it. I would have bet money!”

“That’s nowhere near the search area.” The captain took his hat off and scratched the close shaved gray hairs with the same hand before setting it back on again. “I better call my helicopter back.”

“Search and rescue, sir,” a young man on the ship’s radio announced. “They just spotted a demasted sloop. Heading zero, three, niner... radios are down, but they’re going to lower someone in to assess the situation. Standing by.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Eddington moved over to stand behind the man as if he could watch the radio like a TV. “
Pandora’s
a ketch. Did Hawkins report any storm damage when you talked with him yesterday?”

“No, sir, he didn’t,” the young man replied. “It’s possible it could have happened before we got here, though. The vessel we boarded this afternoon had a crew member seriously injured by the rough weather, last night.”

“You boarded somebody?”

“We boarded a vessel earlier this afternoon.” The captain took a fresh mug of coffee brought in by a steward as he talked. “But they were just cruisers blown off course on their way to Japan. No reason to detain—”

Eddington stopped the captain. “They made the switch already! Get me a—”

The man at the radio perked up and listened to his headset.

“Unplug that thing so we can all hear, son.” The captain came to stand next to Eddington.

“Just a routine weather transmission, sir.” The man flicked a switch so that the tail end of the message rang out over the room.

“... along the east coast and the island of Honshu. Typhoon Hikari is expected to reach the southern tip of Hokkaido before midnight.”

“Right through the Tsugaru Straits,” Eddington moaned. “What else can go wrong?”

“Don’t worry about us,” the captain assured. “We might get a little backlash from the tail, but this far out there’s no need to worry too much about it.”

“Not us—
Pandora
!” Feeling suddenly stifled by the warmth, Eddington unzipped his thick leather jacket and moved back to the scope to look over Reynolds shoulder again. “At her present heading, she’s going to run right up over the back of that thing. We’ve got to change course and try for another intercept.”

“I can’t change course.” The captain looked over at him as if he had lost his mind. “I’m in the middle of a rescue. Even if I could, I wouldn’t run my ship up the back end of a typhoon, I’d get court marshaled.”

“Captain, I…”

“
Fox Wing
to
White Fox
,” the radio sparked to life over the room again. “Confirm sailing vessel
Seascape
located with three crew members aboard, one dead. Skipper is Major Wayne Hawkins. Standing by for damage report.”

“Let me talk to Hawkins,” Eddington headed back for the radio.

“The radios are down, sir,” the young man reminded him. “Any messages will have to be relayed through the pilot.”

“Tell him this is Eddington here, and I need to know who’s aboard
Pandora
.”

The radio operator repeated the message into the mike and then there was a long, agonizing silence while it was relayed to the man on deck. A minute and a half later, the pilot’s voice broke into the heavy silence of the communications room where all eyes were now turned toward the operator.

“This is
Fox Wing
to
White Fox
. Skipper confirms D.J. Parker, Marion Bates, Scott Evans, Anna Keller, and Doctor Eric Von Hayden...”

“Bingo…” Eddington breathed, as he listened to the rest.

“…says to tell Eddington they took the bait. The rest is disrespectful, sir, over.”

“Let’s have it, let’s have it!” Eddington nudged the young man impatiently.

“Request full message,
Fox Wing
. Over.”

“He says, Eddington, stop messing around. Get off your butt and go after
Pandora
. He wants his wife back. That was a paraphrase, sir. Over.”

“Dang…” Eddington straightened up slowly as the full realization dawned on him.
Those ladies are in some big trouble.

“Get me that damage report,” the captain snapped. “And an exact location so we can change our course accordingly. We should be able to pick them up in...” He glanced at his watch.

“Captain Fergusen,” Eddington said, “if we take time to rescue the sloop,
Pandora
could reach the protective waters of the Russian coast. That’s if they manage to beat that typhoon through the straits. Either way, we’ve lost them unless we change course right now, and concentrate all our efforts in that direction.”

“I already told you we can’t do that, Eddington,” the captain said firmly. “That sloop might not make it to port in this weather, and there’s a death under questionable circumstances involved. If they get the slightest backlash from that typhoon, they’re as good as finished.”

“But, sir―”

“We’re going for the rescue.”

Fox Wing
to
White Fox
. Hawkins requests permission to take sailing vessel
Seascape
to nearest Japanese port. Says he can make it. I can’t get them all off in one trip, and the way it’s kicking up out here, I won’t even be able to get my man back aboard if we don’t hurry. Over.

Eddington sensed he was losing control of the situation and tossed a pencil he held back onto the desk again. “Captain,” he spoke quietly to the ranking officer, “Can we talk privately? What I have to tell you, is classified.”

35

The Pandora Effect

“Some strange magic seems to rob one of all care.” ~ Nellie Bly

The captain cast him a knowing glance and then motioned him to follow with a resigned sigh. “Let me know as soon as that damage report comes in,” he said, as they left the communications room.

Eddington followed silently along the long gray corridors until they entered what was obviously a private cabin. After they were inside he handed over his identification and sank into a chair across from the desk where the captain had already seated himself.

“Just what I figured.” Captain Fergusen tossed the wallet back to Eddington. “Another one of you guys who aren’t really here.”

“What we have, Captain, is…”

“I’m well aware that national security takes precedence over everything else, Agent Eddington. Just give me what I have to know.”

“Our objective is the arrest of a Soviet agent.”

“The chaos that country’s in these days, you’d think they’d be busy with other things.”

“They’re busy, all right. Besides being a channel for U.S. military information for over twenty years, this one heads up one of the world’s most lucrative black market rings ever dreamed of. Enough to finance half a world take-over, if that’s what they were up to.”

He paused “Well, what is it? Drugs? Selling arms to crazy Arabs? What?” the captain prompted.

“To be exact, the sale of healthy human organs, sir. For transplant and experimentation.”

Captain Ferguson was quiet for a moment. “One up on the drug trade, that’s for sure,” he finally admitted.

Eddington leaned forward and rested his forearms across his knees. “Captain, we’ve spent years trying to track this guy down, only to finally find out that he was just a clever decoy for something much bigger than selling two bit military secrets to the Soviets.”

“Was he selling military secrets?”

“Yes, sir. And that’s what threw us off. That and the fact that the real culprit in this thing wasn’t him at all. It was his daughter. Anna Keller. She used her father as a front for years. When he finally found out and balked, she killed him. Just like that,” he snapped his fingers. “Her own father.”

“And that’s her on the boat out there, is it?”

“Her and a Dr. Von Hayden. He’s the master-mind behind the black market ring. With the high cost and low availability of healthy organs, I guess the hospital set-up turned out to be more lucrative all the way around.” He felt the unnerving agitation of wasting valuable time, but he pressed on. “They’ve got an elaborate organization set up, with years of experience behind them.”

Eddington sat up straight again, drummed impatient fingers on the arm of his chair, then caught himself, and quit. “They’ve already covered their tracks at the asylum, leaving absolutely no trace of evidence behind. They’ve even managed to point some pretty incriminating evidence at Parker—that’s Hawkins’s wife. She’s an investigative reporter out of Portland, Oregon, who first blew the lid off this thing.”

“So the boat we boarded this morning was the
Pandora
? I find it hard to believe my officers were that easily misled.”

“These people are masters at the art of deception. I’m telling you, sir, if we don’t catch them red-handed now, our chances of ever catching up with them would be next to nothing. Especially out of the country and with the kind of connections they have.”

Eddington sighed and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I’m not trying to be dramatic when I say they could actually spearhead the biggest wave of widespread euthanasia the world has ever seen. Something that would make the Holocaust look like child’s play.”

“Now that’s a scary thought.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know you’re not, son. You’ve just thrown me quite a curve, here.” The captain was quiet for a moment, thinking. “If these people are what you say, what makes you think they still might have Parker alive?”

“I’m hoping they still think she has information they need. But I’d feel responsible if something happened to her, because…well, like he said over the radio...I used her as bait.”

“You mean she didn’t volunteer for this duty? Don’t tell me she’s a civilian.”

“It’s a special case.”

“No case is special enough to use unsuspecting civilians as bait, Eddington. That would make us no better than the terrorists, wouldn’t it. I hope you’re going to tell me she at least knew what she was risking.”

“I haven’t been so unethical. No, sir. That’s the thing about this case, it... well, it brings the absolute worst out of people. If you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t think I do.” He reached for a silver bowled pipe that was resting in an ashtray on the desk and a blue foil pouch of tobacco to fill it with.

“This ring has been active for over fifty years. Fifty years! Can you believe that?”

Fergusen looked up from his small task and noted the unusual light in Eddington’s eyes. “I think I’m beginning to.”

“And you know how many agents have worked on this case during that time? Three hundred and twenty-two. All victims...” He leaned forward in his chair a little. “... of something I call the Pandora Effect.”

“The Pandora Effect?”

“Sort of a legendary curse. But what it really is, Captain, is greed. It’s got an ungodly, powerful pull attached to it, but it’s greed all right. Pure, unadulterated, basic greed. Does terrible things to people. No, I haven’t been unethical, sir. But I’ll admit I sort of dangled that greed out there like a carrot and used it to crack this case.” He sat back in the chair, as if he could hardly believe it himself.

The smell of the captain’s pipe smoke wafted toward him with a tantalizing aroma, and having only recently quit smoking, the temptation was almost overpowering. He reached into his pocket for a stick of gum.

“So what are we talking about here, Ed?” The captain steered him back to the facts at hand. “That gets people so worked up and...beside themselves.”

“Fifty million dollars in diamonds, that’s what we’re talking about.” He tore off the wrapper, popped the gum into his mouth, and continued to talk around it. “That’s what they’re all headed for. That little crack shot reporter stirred up the old legend again, managed to topple the hospital ring practically by accident, and has Anna Keller and Von Hayden running right along after her. The old man kept it to himself for years, until she came along. They gotta have it now. Those diamonds are the big money they’re going to need to set up somewhere else.”

“Just how did she manage to do all that? Single handed, that is.”

“By befriending
the real
Heinrich Keller, at just the right time. After he found out his daughter was blackmailing him. I think he convinced Parker to go after the diamonds for him. She didn’t know he’d get killed for it. And she didn’t know all these others would come after her if she tried.”