“Yeah, whoever sent it was playing with me specifically.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. I don’t even know if it was a HIM. Whoever it was sent the teddy as a decoy so they could access this level from the aft elevator.”
“I thought you disconnected the power to the aft and forward elevators?” Veyron said.
“I did.” Elise shook her head. “It appears whoever we’re dealing with reconnected it so they could go snooping on what we’re doing up here.”
“What about the cameras?” Tom asked.
“I think that stupid song somehow blocked them for a few minutes.”
“Gloomy Sunday?” Veyron asked.
Elise shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, somehow they’ve worked out a way to make it superimpose the radio channels and some digital devices. The radios could be done easily enough, but I have no idea how they blocked the cameras. What I do know is that the cameras returned to normal immediately after the song stopped playing.”
“Weird,” Tom said.
“Sure is,” she said. “Everything about this ship is strange. What did you find down below?”
“More questions without any answers,” Tom answered.
“What did you find?” she persisted.
Tom poured himself a mug of hot coffee. “An engine room wired with carbide gas lighting and a crew room with twenty of the ship’s engineers.”
“What did the twenty people have to say?”
“Nothing,” Tom said. “They’d all been drugged.”
“That’s crazy.” Elise shook her head. “Someone downstairs is responsible for all this. Whoever came up before went back down again. That’s for certain. Any chance you missed someone?”
“No. The living quarters are basic downstairs. There’s not enough room to hide a cat let alone a person. I'm confident those twenty people are the only people below decks.”
Elise smiled. “And I’m confident no one is on the passengers' decks, which means one of those twenty drugged people must be the person we’re after.”
“So, how do we differentiate?”
Elise crossed her arms. “Let’s bring them all here — I have a few ideas how we can determine who’s faking it and who’s not.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Tom stared at the picture of the twenty supposedly drugged people in their recliner chairs he’d taken twenty minutes before and then back at the people themselves. They were all the same. No one had switched places or moved.
If one of them is faking it, they’re doing a really good job at it.
“Who do you want to start with?” Tom asked.
“This one.” Veyron reached for the handles behind the one closest to the end of the rows of chairs and began moving it.
“Why?”
Veyron heaved as he pushed the heavy man on the recliner. “No reason. He’s closest to me, that’s all. Besides, just look at him — he’s the biggest out of the lot. We’re going to have to make a separate trip for each one. No reason to risk it now. If we get sloppy and take one each we’re more likely to get attacked, but with the odds two against one, whoever we’re looking for will have no choice but to wait.”
“Until what?”
“A better chance to escape — and our job is to make sure that never happens.”
“Just stop a minute, will you?” Tom said.
“Sure, what is it?”
“You just reminded me.” Tom held his Remington shotgun to the person’s head.
“Everything okay?”
Tom smiled reassuringly. “Fine. We should search each person before we move them. If they’re faking it, they probably have a weapon.”
“Good thinking.” Veyron padded the man down in front of him. Starting at the guy’s head he worked all the way down to his feet. He checked the clothing and removed the guy’s shoes. He used zip ties to secure both ankles together and one to tie each wrist to the chair. Veyron checked his work. “I’d say that’d make it pretty hard for him to escape. Feel better?”
“Much.”
“Good. Because we’ve got another nineteen of these to go.”
Tom pressed the up button on the elevator. The door opened and he stepped inside with Veyron and their patient. He started at the man, his eyes darting between the man’s wrists and face.
Veyron looked at him. “What?”
“I don’t know. Something about this whole thing gives me the creeps. It’s like we’re waiting for one of these zombies to lash out at us.”
“Which is why we've made it so they can’t.”
The elevator stopped on the sixth deck and the doors opened. Veyron heaved to push the recliner with his sleeping giant out. “Where do you want to line them up, Elise?”
“Over here.” Elise pointed to the end of the dining room where the tables and chairs had all been removed to make a clearing. She stopped when she saw the sleeping giant of a man. “Whoa, who’s the big guy?”
“No idea. His shirt has the name Mitchel stitched into it. Of course, the clothes look tight, they might not even be his.”
“Christ, I hope he’s not our troublemaker,” Elise said. “We’d need the rocket launcher just to stop the bastard.”
Veyron patted the man on his shoulders. “He’s big, but he’ll go down with a bullet same as anyone else.”
Tom looked at Elise. “Any chance your computer system has missed something?”
“Like what?”
“Like a person running around, secretly avoiding every security camera?”
“No. There was one event where something blocked a few of the cameras while you were down stairs, but I’m confident my system is working.”
“So then… how did these people get like this?”
“You mean, where did the person go who did this to them?”
“Yes.”
“The Antarctic Solace has been searched. There are twenty-three people aboard. You, Veyron and I — and those twenty people there in front of us.” She took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled. “One of those people is responsible for abducting all the missing people on board, drugging the rest of them, and for leaving me a teddy bear in the elevator.”
“But why would he or she drug themselves?” Tom asked.
“To avoid getting caught,” she replied. “Once they discovered we had the upper hand and were approaching, he or she quickly joined the rest of the drug affected zombies to cover their tracks.”
“But they were all drugged.”
Elise shrugged. “It’s a pretty good alibi, isn’t it?”
“Now what?”
“Now we have to work out which one wants to play.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Elise tested that the man’s massive arms and legs were well tied and then read the additive label for the bag of saline. She picked up her phone and made a call to a Doctor who was the head of Intensive Care at St. George Hospital, London. She went through the doses and checked the maximum amount possible without killing a person. She then thanked the man and hung up.
Elise opened the intravenous clamp and increased the drip rate of the sedative. She looked up and saw Tom’s face. “So long as these people remain sedated I can look after them on my own until the cavalry joins us.”
“I thought you wanted to find out who was faking it?” Tom asked.
“I do. But no reason to have them conscious for that.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I’ve spoken to a friend of mine.” Elise put medical gloves on and attached a tourniquet to the guy’s other arm. “He tells me most cruise ships carry the facilities to test blood for drugs and alcohol. Date rape and illicit drug use while partying can be a problem. Most ships are well equipped with the facilities to test blood.”