The Pandora Box (31 page)

The Last Stand

“No one but a man can do this?”
~
Nellie Bly

Dee hurried over to take her position opposite Marion, on the other side of the companionway ladder.

“No, wait…” Marion peered out the porthole over the sink. “Wait…he’s heading for the upper deck, instead...”

A tremendous thundering sound of flapping canvas filled the air as a sail was let loose, and the boat eased back into a normal thirty-degree angle. Marion rose up with the counter top, increasing her position to an almost deadly advantage with the frying pan.

“It sounds like he released the jib sheets,” Dee whispered. “I think he’s going to try it alone.”

“No—here he comes!” Marion barely had time to whisper before Von Hayden took hold of the hatch cover and eased himself wearily down through the opening.

“Anna! What the devil are you hollering about! I—what’s this? What—” He took in the length of knotted rope trailing along the floor, then met Dee’s gaze for one split second before the sudden
thunk
of the frying pan. “Ouch.” He grasped his hooded head in his hands. He tottered.

Dee pressed down the tiny cap of the pepper spray container, and to her surprise, a fine stream hit Von Hayden square in the face as he was still reeling from the shock of having been struck with the pan. The result was immediate. He coughed, gasped, and dropped to his knees, trying to wipe the burning liquid from his face as he fought for air. In the next second, Marion brought the pan down once more, with a little more force this time, and dropped him flat. But instead of being knocked out, he simply lay on the floor writhing and moaning.

“We better just tie him up. He’s too hard to knock out!” Dee reached for the other end of the fifty-foot rope she had tied the cabin doors closed with.

“It sure isn’t like the movies.” Marion lay the pan aside, rubbed a hand over her injured arm, and then climbed down to help. “Let’s tie him to the table so he can’t move around.”

They secured his hands to one end and his feet to the other, pulling him tight until he looked trussed up and hanging from a spit. Then, just as Dee was wondering why it had suddenly gotten so quiet up forward, a gunshot rang out.

“Oh, Lord help us!” Marion’s face turned pale as another shot thudded into the teak door and then another. “She’s going to shoot her way out!”

“I don’t think she can.” Dee rose cautiously to her feet, making sure to keep behind the bulkhead and out of line with the companionway. “If it was any other kind of wood but teak, she probably could, but—”

The next shot was an unmistakable zinging of brass as the bullet crashed into a hinge. Then the creak and strain of wood, before the obvious sound of the door giving way. “Heinrich!” Anna screamed through the partial opening before lapsing into another barrage of German.

“The radio, Marion—hurry! She only has one more bullet left, and then I’m going to run up to that crack and squirt her with the pepper spray!”

“But what if it’s an eight gun? What if—”

“Hurry!” She had to raise her voice to be heard over Anna’s. “They’ll at least pick up our mayday, and—”

The gun went off again, zinging off the second hinge, but instead of breaking apart like the first one had, it held. One click of an empty chamber, then another and the clatter of the gun thrown against the door. In the same moment that Anna began to rattle the last loose hinge with both hands, Dee bent low and darted down the companionway. She positioned herself just beneath the opening
Vee
at the top where the door was hanging askew, aimed her little can, and waited for the woman’s face to appear.

“Miss Parker.” No trace of an accent. “You haven’t got a chance. In less than an hour, this boat is going to rendezvous with our—”

As soon as the disheveled blonde head leaned out, Dee pressed down on the cap and released a two second stream of liquid fire before the aerosol sputtered out and dribbled a puff of it down her own arm, enough to make Anna fall backward and gasping onto the floor of the cabin. It was also enough to make Dee’s own eyes smart and water from the vapors rising off her clothes.

She stumbled her way to the galley sink, turned on the pump, and stuck her sleeve under the faucet to dilute the potent chemicals. At the same time, Marion’s voice quavered into the microphone. “Hello, out there,
White Fox
? This is Marion Marie Bates from Portland, Or—”

An earsplitting scream rang out over Von Hayden’s low moans and Anna’s muffled sobs. The first thought Dee had was that the radio had been broken and there was water rushing in. She blinked back a blur of still-stinging tears, staggered over to Marion, and picked up the mike swinging back and forth on its cord, to see for herself. By that time her friend was standing, frozen, like Lot’s wife who had turned to salt when she looked back at a disaster.

“What—is it broken? What’s—”

“Look at that!” Marion’s voice was little more than a raspy whisper as she pointed to the barometer hanging on the wall. “It’s stuck over as far as it can go on that little peg, and it says hurricane! Oh, what else—what else! Even if they hear us, we could—”

Dee felt a chilling fear wash over her, but still couldn’t see clear enough to focus on it. “Anything short of a hurricane…” she murmured the words out loud, remembering. “She can take anything short of a—”

“Acknowledge
Pandora
, this is
White Fox
,” the radio suddenly crackled loud and clear into their chaos. “Reverse your heading. Repeat. Reverse your heading. You are running up on the tail of Typhoon Hikari. Stand by for—” The message was cut off by a familiar voice. “Dee, is that you? This is Eddington—what’s your situation there? Over.”

“We have Dr. Von Hayden and the head nurse from Wyngate in custody!” she shouted back into the receiver. “But Marion and I are alone. Hawkins and Starr were—’ She let go of the button because she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“Hold on, Dee,” Eddington’s voice was reassuring. “Major Hawkins and Henry Starr are alive and en route for the Japanese coast in a disabled vessel. Now, if you girls can reverse your heading and hold on,
White Fox
can intercept at... oh, one hundred. Over.”

A relief close to delirium swept over Dee, and she slumped down onto the floor.

“They’re alive!” Marion cried. “Did you hear that, Dee? They’re—” She grabbed the mike, herself, pressed down the button and hollered, “What time exactly is that, Mr. Eddington! So we know how long we have to hold out! Over!”

“One o’clock in the morning, Ms. Bates, and it sure is good to hear from you, ma’am. I don’t know how you two managed, but we can talk when you get here. And keep the radio on this time, girls. One more loss of contact could cause a nervous breakdown around here.
White Fox
out.”

Buoyed by each other and the news that Hawk and Starr were alive, Dee quickly dressed in warm clothes and foul weather gear. Since Marion couldn’t get hers out of the forward cabin, she borrowed from Dee and they climbed onto
Pandora’s
wet, windblown decks. After weeks at sea, they knew what had to be done and how to do it.

There was no room for mistakes. Not if they were going to get the boat turned around fast enough to outrun a typhoon. Which would be a tricky undertaking in such heavy weather, all by itself. Their prospects looked more than daunting, and without a shadow of doubt, there was only one possible way they could succeed…There would have to be angels helping.

39

Inheritance

“We were afraid that you were dead…”
~
Nellie Bly

It was pitch dark, in considerably calmer waters, when
Pandora
was finally boarded by duty officers. This time Eddington and Reynolds were among them, to arrest the notorious suspects, who looked anything but dangerous after their unusual confinements. Their eyes were swollen shut, and Anna Keller―with hair tumbled down and clothes askew—looked all of her sixty-two years.

Dee and Marion were so exhausted, they gathered a few of their things and gladly exchanged places with four able-bodied seamen who would finish taking the yacht to the nearest Japanese harbor. It was nearly two in the morning by the time the women finally traded the cold rolling decks of
Pandora
for the longer, slower, more gradual roll of the USS
White Fox
.

While Reynolds settled the prisoners in the ship’s brig, Eddington led Marion and Dee to the officers’ dining room, where sandwiches and hot coffee were waiting. Since neither of them had eaten for twenty-four hours, they were starved. With faces flushed and eyes bright from coming into the warm room after so many hours in the cold, they piled their few bags in a corner and removed heavy jackets before sitting.

“That was a fine piece of work, ladies,” Eddington said with a genuine show of relief at having finally recovered his entire flock of decoys without casualty. “Shoot, with a little push and some training, I could probably get you gals jobs at the agency.”

“No thanks,” Marion demurred. “I’m relegating myself back to the rank of grandmother.”

“Have you heard from Hawk?” Dee asked him. “And how did Starr manage—”

“I don’t know any details. We’re not in radio contact.” Eddington took half a ham sandwich from a plate that was piled high. “But we’ll hear from them as soon as they reach the coast. About two or three days.”

“Two or three days on that broken boat? In all this bad weather?”

“Can’t they be rescued?” Dee pressed.

“They refused assistance so we could come after you,” Eddington replied. “But if anyone could make it, they could. That Hawkins is a world class sailor. Pretty resourceful,” he added on a more positive note.

“He told us he was just a cruising bum, Mr. Eddington,” Marion clarified. “They’re going to need help.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, but anyone who can sail a forty-foot yacht singlehanded around the world is no bum. Especially a retired medical examiner. They don’t just give those kinds of credentials away. What sort of a story was he feeding you girls?”

“Nothing compared to the one all this seems to have brought on,” Dee accused. “Were you responsible for having him reinstated, Mr. Eddington?”

“I did that because I knew it was the only way he’d cooperate. When I realized what you all were headed into, I had to do something fast. Shoot, I’d end up with my head on a block if I lost four civilians. I knew I could count on him, though.”

“How did you know?” Dee asked.

“Because of his past record. He’s one of those beyond-the-call-of-duty types. If they can’t carry out orders the way they’re told, they’ll find some other way to get it done. Earned himself a medal about eleven years ago.”

“Doing what?”

“Details are classified.” Then seeing the look of disappointment on Dee’s face, he added, “but since you’re his wife, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give you a general idea. He participated in a rescue of a downed American aircraft in a...questionable area. Commanding officer was wounded, and he performed emergency surgery in the field. Saved his life. Then got everybody out, alive.” He smiled at the look of admiration in her eyes. “You got yourself a hero, Miss Dee.”

“Well I’m just…flabbergasted!” Marion marveled.

“How long will he have to stay reinstated?” Dee asked. “Will it delay our search for the diamonds?”

Eddington set his half-eaten sandwich aside with an uncomfortable sigh. “I have a lot of explaining to do, here. Might take a little time. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather get some rest and talk in the morning?”

“I’d rather talk now.” Dee felt a slow apprehension at the thought that he had painted a glowing picture of Hawk as a prelude to announcing he had been lost at sea.

“You ever been turkey hunting, Dee?”

“Turkey hunting?”

“First, you walk out in the woods where you think the turkeys are, and―”

“Mr. Eddington, I fail to see what this has to do with—”

“Give me a minute now, I’m getting to it.” He was wearing a dark, Navy issue sweater, and he pushed up the sleeves before leaning his forearms on the table. “You go out where the turkeys are, hide behind a log, and make a sound like another turkey. Pretty soon, a real one comes by to check things out, and…” He made a gesture like he was sighting down the barrel of a rifle. “Bam! You got yourself a turkey. Now there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m gonna come right out and admit I used you to get the turkeys. But no one was as surprised as me when I looked down my sights and saw a couple of vultures sitting there, instead.”

“But I thought you were after Keller all along,” Dee said.

“Keller. But Keller turned out to be a sophisticated network of extortionists that were two steps ahead of me and right on your tail. You were playing into their hands, and I had no way to call you back in―or even warn you—because Hawkins didn’t have his radio on! My backup plan didn’t work out.”

“You mean reinstating him?”

“That reinstatement isn’t official. I just haven’t had a chance to tell him, yet.”

“But he was reinstated before we even connected with that other boat!”

“Shoot, that was just a message I had relayed a couple days before. Ren and I were stuck out on an aircraft carrier, because of the weather, when everything started coming down.” He picked up his sandwich again. “You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull even to get out here. By the time I did,
White Fox
had already let
Pandora
slip through their hands.”

“Well, it wasn’t as if you didn’t try to talk us out of it in San Francisco.” Dee took a contemplative sip of the strong black coffee she was holding onto just to take the chill off her nearly frozen hands. “I don’t think you could have said anything to change our minds about it anyway. We were sort of... spellbound.”

“There is one thing I could have said.” Eddington took a deep breath and looked her right in the eye. “There are no diamonds out there, Dee. Not in Siberia anyway.”

“What?”

Marion’s mouth dropped open. “You mean you let us walk right into that trap for…for nothing?”