chapter 28
The Secheron marina was alive with Friday night activity, partiers and diners out walking up and down the giant pier. Alex followed the bright lights, his tux dripping wet, scanning for his next move. He was running out of time.
On the water, down the rippling black surface of the lake, Alex made out a large craft, a cruise ship that would have been small at sea but was massive for even a long lake like Geneva. He could see the lights up and down its body. That was the cruise ship Allimarc. His friends were there, and Alex was on a dock with nothing but seafood and martinis at hand.
He needed a boat, something with power, but the clanging of the lines against the poles along the marina taunted him with nothing but sailboats. That would be nice any other day, even if he could remember the knots, but it wouldn’t do now. Then he reached a watercraft rental shop, long lines of Jet Skis and Sea-Doos tied up. Closed?
No, maybe not—he heard keys jingling at a side door of a shack between two thin jetties where the craft were unlocked and rented. A man in white pants with a black T-shirt was locking up. Alex could rent one.
Alex started to move toward the man, reaching into his pockets for his wallet. But of course it was gone, because Nothing. Could ever be. Easy.
Beg for a Sea-Doo?
An attractive girl in a yachting cap came around the shack and put her arm on the rental manager, a girlfriend, probably. She was eager to get up the big pier to the restaurant.
“Hey!” Alex shouted, but the guy didn’t hear him over the wind coming off the lake.
Just then another sound came, the chugging of one last craft, a yellow WaveRunner, with a pair of university-age kids on it, drunk and whipping wildly as they brought the craft toward the jetty. They were late, obviously.
The rental manager was talking to his girl and Alex ran up the pier, out to the edge, sliding on his slick shoes to a stop at the end of the thin pier. He waved at the pair.
“Had enough?” Alex shouted in French, smiling like an idiot. Come on. Give your WaveRunner to the nice boy in the tuxedo.
They came to a stop by the pier. “Don’t we have to take it all the way?” the boy answered.
“No, no, it’s okay,” Alex said. He gestured for them to come alongside the ladder that went down from the end of the jetty. He dared to glance back at the manager, who had now stopped making time with the girl and was turning his attention up the jetty.
Alex offered his hand and the guy grabbed it, merrily climbing the ladder. He started shouting about what a great time he’d had, or something, all of it fast and Italian and Alex wasn’t listening because he was reaching his hand for the girl. She grabbed it, laughed and shrieked, and fell back.
“Come on,” he called as genially as he could. Come on, for the love of all that’s holy, get your drunk ass off the WaveRunner.
She took his hand once more and put a bare foot on the ladder. For a second he thought she was going to lose it again but she climbed this time, and as she found herself on the dock, Alex heard the manager calling. “Attendez!”
Alex jumped on the craft, feeling it slosh down into the water with his weight. He twisted the throttle and stood still.
It was off. The guy had taken out the key when he climbed off.
The manager was coming fast now.
“Hey, I need the key!” Alex shouted to the Italian, who looked confused for a second, with good reason. Alex waved his hand at the manager, then pointed at the enormous blue float in the guy’s hand. Hanging off the float was a telephone cord and a large metal ignition key. “I gotta take it to him, gimme the key!”
The guy jauntily saluted and tossed Alex the key as the manager arrived, running full bore. Alex slapped the key into the ignition and turned it, feeling the motor rev to life, churning in the water.
“Don’t worry,” he shouted as he gunned the engine. Alex looked back as the jetty shrank in the distance, the manager’s wails of protest disappearing in the wind. Water was roaring up from the rear of the watercraft, and he picked up speed, standing tall and leaning forward, the craft bouncing high on the waves.
Soon the darkness of the water gave way to a crazy quilt of colored reflection. Ahead of him loomed the massive waterborne hulk where Ultravox was ready to make his final move.