“I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to that,” I said. “No offense, Rona, but I’m accustomed to working alone.”
“Not this time,” Hawk said. “Our first move is to get somebody aboard that cruise ship. And a single man would attract too much attention.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It so happens that the Gaviota specializes in…” here the old man found it necessary to clear his throat again, “… honeymoon cruises.”
Rona Volstedt started to smile, then quickly sobered as Hawk gave her one of those severe New England looks.
He said, “I have arranged with the Atomic Energy Commission to have Miss Volstedt assigned to AXE for the duration of this emergency. I don’t suppose it would be stretching your acting talents too far if I asked you to play the part of a honeymoon couple.”
“I think we can manage it,” I said with a straight face.
“As long as it’s in the line of duty,” Rona added, giving me a wink when Hawk wasn’t looking.
“I knew I could count on your cooperation,” Hawk said drily. “You will join the cruise tomorrow at Antigua. The Gaviota will make several ports of call in the Caribbean, sail through the Panama Canal and up the west coast of Mexico, terminating at Los Angeles. But if you haven’t uncovered the base of operations and disabled it by the time the ship gets to Panama in eight days, it will be too late. Because eight days from now, the New York bomb is scheduled to go off.”
“Short honeymoon,” I commented.
Hawk continued as if I hadn’t spoken. Tour mission is to find out where the suitcase-bombs are being put aboard the ship and backtrack to the source. There you should find Anton Zhizov, and very likely Knox Warnow. You are then on your own. I will give you whatever support I can from this end, but any large-scale operation is impossible.”
Rona and I left the old man’s office and went down one flight to Document Control. There we were provided with all the papers and photos we would need to pass as Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Hunter.
As we left AXE headquarters, Rona played it kittenish, acting for all the world like a bride-to-be.
“Don’t you think,” she said coyly, “that since our ‘marriage’ doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow, we ought to stay in two separate rooms tonight?”
“Good idea,” I said as I hailed a cab. “I’ll have to be out rather late tonight, and I wouldn’t want to wake you coming in.”
“Oh, really?” she asked with heavy sarcasm. “What’s her name?”
“Come on, darling, surely you wouldn’t begrudge me enjoying my last night as a bachelor.”
We climbed into a taxi and Rona edged as far away from me as the seat would permit. With arms folded and knees pressed tightly together, she sat frowning out the window.
I let her sulk for half a dozen blocks, then relented. “If it will make you feel any better, I’ll be at AXE headquarters tonight doing my homework.”
She turned, and fastened those Nordic blue eyes upon me. “Really?” she asked in a little-girl voice.
“Really,” I said. “I don’t mind mixing business and pleasure when one doesn’t get in the way of the other. But tonight it’s got to be all business. I want to go over everything we have on Anton Zhizov, Fyodor Gorodin, and Knox Warnow.”
Rona reached over and laid her hand lightly on my knee. “I’m sorry, Nick. I didn’t mean to be childish.”
I grinned at her. “Wouldn’t have you any other way.”
She slid next to me then, and I bent to kiss her affectionately.
Seven
A chartered plane flew us to Antigua the next morning a couple of hours before the Gaviota was due to arrive. St. Johns, the capital city of the little island, is still very British in the downtown parts. But as soon as you get out into the native quarters, you start to hear the soft, musical calypso language and see the colorful costumes the people wear, not to impress the tourists, but because they like colors.
The travel agent in Queen’s Hotel wasn’t anxious to sell us cruise tickets on the Gaviota.
“You’ve already missed the first part of the cruise,” he said, “and I’ll still have to charge you full price.”
“What do you think, dear?” I asked, bridegroom-like.
Rona ran her tongue sensually over her lips. Tm sure we’ll be able to make do with whatever there is left of the cruise.”
I winked at the travel agent. “You see how it is.”
With some reluctance he made out a couple of tickets for Mr. and Mrs. Hunter. With somewhat less reluctance, he took my money.
Rona and I strolled around a bit, window shopping and holding hands, playing the newlyweds in case anybody was looking us over. Actually, it was not at all a hard part to play.
After a while we wandered down to the docks to watch the Gaviota put in. She was sleek and white with a speedy-looking silhouette, maybe a shade under five hundred feet long. As she pulled alongside the deepwater dock, the happy honeymoon passengers were noticeably absent.
An isolated couple here and there peered smilingly over the rail, but the ship seemed to be sailing with far fewer than her capacity of four hundred passengers. Apparently the new owners were not pushing their product very hard, which was understandable, considering the other ventures they had going.
I watched the few passengers and crew members who left the ship, and the minimal on-and-off loading activity, but saw nothing suspicious and no familiar faces. True to Juan Escobar’s account, most of the crew looked more Slavic than Latin.
Rona and I boarded and located the purser. With a complete lack of enthusiasm he showed us to our stateroom, an outside room one deck below the Promenade. It was sparsely furnished with a chair, a divan, small table, dresser, and twin beds. This last seemed unusual for a honeymoon cruise, but Rona and I soon discovered that they moved easily together on rollers. The rather chilly light was provided by a fluorescent tube over the dresser mirror. I pushed the curtains aside and let some warm Caribbean sunlight stream in the porthole.
Rona crossed to stand close beside me. She said,
“Well, what would you like to do now, hubby dear?”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you what I’d like to do. However, what we are going to do first is take a walk around the ship. Business with pleasure, remember?”
“Oh, all right,” she said. “But if this honeymoon doesn’t liven up pretty soon I may go home to mother.”
I swatted her nicely rounded rear and hustled her out on deck. We strolled the decks for a couple of hours, checking out the bars, gymnasium, dining salon, theater, card room, and gift shop. The scarcity of other passengers was eerie. The honeymoon couples we did meet seemed too intent on each other to notice if anyone else was sailing with them or not. The few crewmembers we met were studiously preoccupied with their tasks, and seemed to find us invisible.
The rest of the afternoon we sat in the observation lounge sipping a couple of those fruity rum drinks while covertly watching who came on board and sizing up the luggage they carried.
At dusk nobody looking remotely like Fyodor Gorodin or Anton Zhizov had come aboard, and no strange suitcases appeared in the hands of returning passengers or crew. Meanwhile, the sweet rum drinks were sloshing uncomfortably in my stomach.
As darkness swept toward us from the Atlantic, the Gaviota gave a couple of toots on her whistle to summon any vagrant passengers back aboard, and we prepared to sail. A native steel drum band serenaded us as the ship eased away from the dock.