Deciding that Sophia probably wouldn’t be forcing Chase to watch, Nina descended the stairs. A glance at another evacuation plan confirmed that she was on the lowest deck, with the engine room astern and the holds forward.

On the assumption that the engine room would be manned, she scurried in the opposite direction to check each door in turn. The first was nothing more than a storage closet full of cleaning equipment, the second a darkened laundry. Undeterred, she continued along the corridor, making her way door by door up the length of the ship almost to the bow before taking a narrow connecting passage to head back down the starboard side. Holds full of stacked and secured cardboard boxes, a walk-in freezer-

One door was locked.

She froze, as if the rattle of the door might alert somebody. But the only sound was the thrum of the engines. She tried the handle again, still with no luck, then rapped quietly on the door. “Eddie!” she said, as loudly as she dared. “Eddie, are you in there?”

Silence. Then: “Of course I’m in here, Sophia-you handcuffed me to a fucking pole!”

Nina let out a stifled gasp of delight. He was alive! “No, it’s me, it’s Nina!”

Another silence. Then Chase spoke again, voice filled with utter incredulity. “How the fuck did you get here?”

“I’ll explain later.” Remembering that one of the closets she’d checked had contained tools, Nina rushed back to it and found a crowbar. She returned to the locked hold. “Are you okay?”

“I’m bursting for a piss, but apart from that…”

“You’re fine,” Nina muttered as she stuck the end of the crowbar into the doorjamb and leaned against it, pushing hard. Wood creaked and splintered, then something inside broke and the door flew open.

Nina almost stumbled into the hold to see Chase standing near the opposite wall with his hands cuffed around a pipe. He couldn’t hide his joy at seeing her. “Bloody hell, it really is you!”

“Told you I’d come after you,” Nina said with a heartfelt smile. They embraced as best they could with the pipe between them.

Chase held up his wrists. “Okay, pop these fucking cuffs off me and we can try to sort out the bomb.”

“You know where it is?” Nina asked. Chase pointed across the room. She looked around, and took a sudden step back when she saw the bomb less than ten feet away. “Yeesh!”

“Don’t go fucking around with it-Sophia said it’s booby-trapped, and I actually think she might have been telling the truth for once.”

Nina lifted the crowbar, trying to work out the best way to get enough leverage to break the handcuff chain. “Maybe we could just throw it overboard?”

“That would be very bad for the poor fish,” Sophia said from the doorway.

Nina whipped around, brandishing the crowbar-but saw that Sophia, her hair tousled and her face slightly flushed, had a gun pointed at her. Komosa, standing beside her wearing nothing but leather trousers, was armed too, as was an older man in a white uniform. “Aw, crap.”

“I must admit, Nina, I’m even more surprised and impressed to see you here than I was to find Eddie poking around in my underwater base.” Sophia paused and looked thoughtful. “Hmm. ‘My underwater base.’ That does sound positively Bondian, doesn’t it?”

“How did you know I was here?” Nina asked, unamused.

“We picked up a distress beacon a couple of minutes ago, right behind us. The ship’s computer told us that it was one of ours-one of René’s, rather: that ridiculous submarine he wasted so much money on.”

“I dunno,” said Nina, “it turned out to be a pretty good investment. It got me here.”

“For all the good it did you,” Sophia replied. She stepped fully into the hold, Komosa following, and gestured with her gun for Nina to put down the crowbar. Nina reluctantly obeyed, then raised her hands. “As soon as we realized what it was, I knew it had to be you. No one else would be that desperate. Then one of the crew found wet footprints on the carpet in the aft lounge, so we just followed them.”

Nina sniffed. “Well done, Sherlock.” She gave Komosa a brief look and saw sweat glistening on his bare chest and piercings, then turned her attention back to Sophia’s untucked clothes. “Too bad you had to interruptus your coitus.”

“Aw, I didn’t need to know about that,” Chase complained.

Sophia smiled. “It doesn’t matter, Eddie-the end you always droned on about fighting until has finally arrived. Chain her up,” she said to Lenard, indicating Nina. He took a pair of handcuffs from a pocket and moved as if to secure her next to Chase, but Sophia spoke again. “No, away from him. Over there.” She pointed to another vertical pipe across the hold.

“Can’t we just kill them?” Komosa rumbled, clearly frustrated.

Sophia ran a hand down his chest. “Now, now, Joe. I know you’ve been looking forward to doing it, but I want the satisfaction of knowing that the very first people who’ll be killed by the bomb will be my ex-husband… and his bitch of a girlfriend.”

“You know,” said Chase, as Lenard locked Nina’s hands around the pipe, “most bitter ex-wives settle for cutting the crotch out of their ex’s suits. Not nuking a fucking city!”

“Good-bye, Eddie,” Sophia said as she turned for the door. Lenard picked up the crowbar and followed her.

Komosa waited for them to leave, then stepped forward and punched Chase hard in the face, knocking him to the deck. “My parting gift,” he said as he left.

“Are you okay?” Nina asked.

Chase spat out a gob of blood-and a tooth, the molar that had been loosened in Botswana finally knocked out. “Well, he saved me a trip to the dentist. That’s a gift worth at least two hundred dollars.”

“Oh, God,” Nina said quietly. She slumped to the floor, damp clothes clinging to her, and looked across the hold at the bomb. “She’s actually going to do it, isn’t she? She’s going to blow up New York.”

“This isn’t over yet,” said Chase. “Whatever Sophia says, this isn’t the end. There’s still time to do something. We’ve still got to fight.”

Nina rattled her handcuffs against the pipe. “Any suggestions?”

“Well…” Chase looked up at his own pipe. He had tried everything he could think of during his captivity to break free-with not even the slightest hint of success. The pipe was too solidly fixed, the cuffs too well made. “Actually, no. You?”

Nina shook her head disconsolately, then tried to move closer to Chase. He did the same, but with their arms secured, they couldn’t even get their feet to touch. “No,” Nina said, anger suddenly rising. “No, dammit, no!” She flailed her feet, desperate to make any kind of contact with him, but he was just out of reach. “Fuck!” She gave up, pulling away and curling up against the pipe, hiding her tears.

“Nina…” Chase whispered sadly. All he wanted to do right now was hold her, comfort her, but even that had been denied him.

He turned away, to the bomb. The counter ticked down relentlessly.

Less than seven hours to detonation…