Page 32 of Murder Island

THE SUN WAS high and hot over the Indian Ocean. ThePrizrakwas moving south at a leisurely ten knots. No particular destination. Cal Savage’s standing orders were to keep moving, avoid shipping lanes, and always stick to international waters. He left the rest to his able navigators.

Savage was lying in a lounge chair on the balcony outside his private cabin, bare-chested, slathered in white sunscreen. He picked at an assortment of grapes and dates from a silver tray and sipped from a tall tumbler of iced tea.

“Captain!” A crew member was shouting up from the main deck. Savage slipped off his sunglasses and peered down through the railing. The young man was holding up a sat phone.

Savage waved the kid up the metal stairway to his perch. He reached out and grabbed the device, thenspoke curtly into the mouthpiece. “What?” The young man backed himself against the railing, hands clasped behind him.

Savage held the phone tight to his ear. He stood up abruptly as he took in the report from his spies.

Aaron Vail was dead. Shark attack.

“Okay,” the captain said evenly. “Then where the hell is Doc Savage?”

Missing, came the reply. No obvious remains. Location unknown.

“Sonofabitch!”

Savage grabbed the food tray and whipped it off the balcony, barely missing the young man’s head. Loose grapes and dates plopped into the ocean below. The tray hit a swell and sank out of sight.

The call disconnected.

Savage clenched his teeth. He gripped the sat phone so tight his knuckles seemed to bulge. Then he drew his arm back and heaved it into the water, too.

The young man grabbed the railing behind his back, clearly worried that he would be next. If there’s one thing the crew had learned while serving on thePrizrak, it was that the captain did not react well to bad news.

CHAPTER 38

Azov, Russia, twelve years earlier

CAL SAVAGE IV, far from being a captain, was near the end of his rope. He was sitting in a bleak, cluttered office overlooking a bustling shipyard. The sound of rivet guns reverberated from below. Sparks flared from welding torches.

Across the table from Savage sat Alek Ivanov—a large man with an outsized reputation. Banker. Bootlegger. Oligarch. He and Savage were the only two people in the room. The shipyard’s manager had obligingly found a task in the warehouse.

Outside the office window loomed the superstructure of a 220-foot yacht, still in dry dock, surrounded by scaffolding—a six-hundred-ton work in progress.

The yacht was Ivanov’s. His dream. His design. Paid for in advance.

Cal Savage had been working out of a safe house nearly, and he frequently wandered past the shipyard at night.He had admired the magnificent ship from the day its keel was laid, and his admiration had grown with each step in its construction—from shaping the hull to the delivery of the teak planks for the decks. Something about the ship called to him, and he dreamed of having it for himself, even if he’d never piloted anything bigger than a sailboat. And even if the yacht was already spoken for by one of the most powerful men in the country.

For Savage, money was no object. Through various illegal enterprises, he had already accumulated a substantial fortune. He had made offers over the years through intermediaries, raising his ante every time. But Ivanov was unreceptive. He was building the yacht for his children. That’s what Savage kept hearing. The oligarch wanted something substantial and beautiful to leave behind. A legacy.

When Ivanov had finally agreed to a face-to-face meeting, Savage polished his Russian and worked hard on his inflections. He wanted to be sure every word was clear. He realized that today was his last, best chance.

Savage knew that Ivanov had already done a background check on him and discovered that nobody in the Russian state hierarchy or secret police had ever heard of him. To the authorities, he was a total cipher. A nobody.

So be it.

He would have to rely on personal persuasion.

Ivanov puffed away vigorously on a worn meerschaum pipe. The small office was clouded with smoke, so densethat Cal found himself rubbing his eyes. Maybe a deliberate distraction on Ivanov’s part, or an intimidation tactic. Or maybe just an annoying habit.

Since Savage knew that Ivanov had warm feelings for his children, that seemed like a perfect place to start the conversation.

“This tremendous ship,” said Savage, in his well-rehearsed Russian. “You’re building it for your son and daughter?”

“Correct,” said Ivanov. “As I’ve said.”

“How old?”