Christopher Cartwright
Ghost Ship
Chapter One
The falling moon on the horizon shone on the only other ship in the harbor.
Its silhouette lit up against the backdrop of the medieval harbor as it drifted lazily against the natural stone breakwater. The steel ship was covered in rust. It was roughly eighty feet long with a beam of forty-five. The hull showed the outline of a fishing boat, but its rigging had long ago been removed, and its decking was now a jumbled mass of dilapidated steel. It formed a jarring contrast to the pastel colored tower homes and terraced vineyards surrounding the natural harbor along the coast of Cinque Terra.
There was no name on the vessel.
No running lights and no sound of a diesel engine running quietly. The ghost ship appeared to have just drifted into the medieval harbor, blown there by the southerly winds of the Tyrrhenian Sea or the currents of the Mediterranean Sea.
Less than fifty yards away, a man on a small wooden rowboat opened his eyes. His head hurt. He felt disoriented and hungover. He tried to blink away the haze in his memory as he searched his environment. There were pastel covered buildings in the distance, a row of colorful rowboats tied up along a jetty leading to a small sandy beach. A church tower watched over the harbor and to the other side, a masonry spiral tower, the last remnants of a medieval fortress.
None of it helped the man identify where he was or how he’d gotten there.
His head throbbed.
What the hell did I drink last night?
He touched his forehead with the palm of his left hand. There was something wet there. He blinked again. Licked his lips. It left a distinctly metallic taste in his mouth.
He frowned.
For the first time he took stock of himself.
There was blood on his face. His shirt. His arms.
He tried to swallow down the fear that was rising in his throat like bile. His head pounded with the thrum of his heart.
Where was he bleeding from?
He tried to run his hands over his body, frantically searching for the source of the blood. It was the first time he realized he was holding something in his right hand. A suitcase. That seemed odd. He made a mental note to investigate that as soon as he’d found the source of blood and managed to stem the bleeding.
After firmly patting himself down, he discovered the blood wasn’t his.
It couldn’t have been. If he’d lost that much blood, he would have been dead. No doubt about it. Still, the question remained, if it wasn’t his, then whose was it?
His chest tightened. He sat up in the rowboat, his legs knocking something in the dark as he did. He felt around in the darkness, before gripping something. It was solid, yet supple against his grip. That alarm in the back of his head started to hammer. Something wasn’t right. He traced the object down, using his hands, and came to a foot enclosed in a delicate shoe.
The person’s leg was cold and wet.
He squinted as his hands fumbled around the bottom of the rowboat. A strong scent of blood intermingled with seawater filled his nostrils and he imagined the grizzly sight beneath the shroud of darkness.
He took his hands away with revulsion.
It was a dead woman. No way was she still alive.
The rowboat turned with a light breeze. Moonlight suddenly shone on the woman’s face. A shiver of ice ran through his veins. She looked like an angel, with porcelain white skin, silver eyes, and brown hair. A pang of sadness touched him. The woman would have been quite beautiful at some time — before she had been murdered.
To the side of her forehead were two execution style bullet wounds.
He tried to bite down on the rising panic.
He needed to get off the water.
Whatever event led him to be where he was would have to wait. His more pressing need was to escape before someone linked him to the death of the young woman and get away from whoever killed her. Worse yet, he wondered whether he could have possibly been involved in her death.
A thick grimace developed across his face. The thought was too repugnant to accept. What had gone wrong? What sort of man might do this to a woman? His mind drifted steadily into a darker location; to answers that only the worst of people might one day stray.
The thought was tortuous, but he forced himself to ask the question.
Am I that sort of man?
He gritted his teeth. There would be no time to find out if someone caught him where he was. No, he needed to get out of there.
He searched for something to use to row with.
There were no oars.
He considered diving into the water to swim to the shore, but the sight of someone swimming in the harbor in the middle of the night might draw attention to himself. The breeze was slowly pushing him toward the beach.
He held his breath.
Anyone watching him from the harborside would merely see a man on a rowboat. That would be safer than making a swim for it. It sure didn’t feel safer, but it was.
He waited.
It would only take another few minutes.
He took stock of his position. He had no idea who he was, where he had come from, or why he was sitting in a rowboat with a dead — no, not just dead — murdered woman in some sort of medieval harbor. He had a suitcase, the contents of which he had no idea. Otherwise he was carrying nothing. He searched for a wallet or a cell phone — anything that might reveal some indication of who he was.
His hands stopped at a small metal handle, stashed in the groove beneath his shirt, in his lower back. He retrieved it.
And sighed heavily.
It was a Russian built Makarov semiautomatic handgun. Although how he knew that at a glance, he was terrified to find out.
Working on instincts, he opened the chamber and removed the magazine — there were two rounds missing.
“Good God!” He said out loud, his voice aghast with revulsion. “I killed her!”
The wooden rowboat stopped as its bow struck the sandy beach and sank into the shore.
He inserted the magazine into the chamber and stashed the weapon behind his back again. He reached down, picked up the suitcase again, stepped off the boat…
And froze.
A chill of fear passed over him like a shadow.
From the church, a priest fixed a powerful flashlight straight on him, and yelled, “Stop! In the name of God!”
Chapter Two
Andre Dufort’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man.
The man in the boat didn’t seem like a killer. He looked frightened and confused. Much less certain and confident than Dufort had been led to believe. For a moment he wondered whether or not he had the right man, but it was a small doubt. After all, no one would be rowing at three in the morning. Besides, he wasn’t paid to ask questions, he was paid to provide a service, for which he was uniquely qualified.
The stranger seemed trapped and panicked — making sudden and jarring movements. At this rate, the man would be lucky to reach the beach without falling in.
In contrast, Dufort was slow and precise with his movements. He had dark hair, kept well groomed, and a trim salt and pepper beard. He had a strong jaw, and defiant gray eyes. His skin was dark with a decidedly European appearance. He opened his carry bag and went through the purposeful movements of putting together the equipment of his trade.
He was perched on the crumbling rampart of the medieval castle, Castello di Vernazza, and had a clear view of the entire harbor. He stared through the scope of his Barrett Model 98B sniper rifle and tracked the man. The wind blew the small wooden rowboat to the shore, where the man quickly scrambled out.