Pedroza made them stand against the back wall of the storage room.
'No gold,' he said.
'No gold,' agreed Jimmy.
Claire just looked at him. Her bottom lip quivered.
'Plenty of bedding,' said Pedroza, nodding at the shelves.' Useful for muffling the sound of a gun.' Jimmy swallowed. 'You think you're very clever, don't you? Your great plan! Jab me with a needle, kill me, eh?'
'No,' said Jimmy, 'just put you to sleep.'
'So you say. Yet for some reason, the drugs don't work. Why do you think?'
'I don't know,' said Jimmy.
Pedroza reached down and plucked the syringe out of his left leg, then hurled it suddenly towards them. Claire let out a scream as it embedded itself in the wall just by her left ear.
Pedroza laughed. 'I'll show you.' He closed his free hand into a fist and punched himself in the leg. It sounded — hard, yet hollow. 'This leg is wooden. Lost it when I was a boy.' He moved to the other leg and kcnocked it as well. He pulled his trousers up a fraction to show a couple of centimetres of swarthy skin. 'This leg is flesh and bone. You picked the wrong leg, little children. So now I must kill you.'
'Why?' Jimmy asked weakly.
'Because you are my enemy. And because of you I killed fifteen people.'
'Me?'
'Both of you.'
'I don't under—' Jimmy began, but Claire cut him off sharply.
'The people in the freezer.'
Pedroza nodded. 'I was smuggling them to a new life in America. Their relatives were to pay me once I delivered them safely, but then you two stuck your noses in. If the Captain found them then I'd lose my job and go to prison — but they'd still get to America. That wasn't fair, was it?'
'What did you do to them?' Claire asked.
'I told them I'd managed to get them cabins, but that I had to take them one by one to avoid being discovered. So I threw them overboard, one at a time. Not pleasant, but essential.'
'You are . . . evil . . .' Claire whispered.
'All your fault.'
'No,' said Claire, 'no . . .'
'And now that I've told you, it is time for you to die as well.'
Pedroza raised his gun.
'Would it help if we said sorry?' Jimmy asked.
'No!'
'Is there anything we can do?'
'No!'
Jimmy had a sudden, desperate, last thought. 'Please — just wait a minute . . . It's important . . . listen to me . . . My granda used to tell me this story . . .'
Pedroza s brow furrowed. 'I do not wish to—'
But Jimmy continued right on, '. . . about this gang leader who caught two of his enemies. He was going to shoot them both, but then he realized that if he did that, there'd be no one to spread the word about what he'd done. So he just killed one of them . . . and let the other one go, and he told everyone he knew about how tough and ruthless this gang leader was, and nobody ever dared tell on him or challenge him again.'
Claire was staring at him, wide-eyed and incredulous. 'Is that supposed to help?'
'Well, I just thought, if one of us survives it's better than neither of us sur—'
'Quiet!' They both looked back to Pedroza. 'It's a good story. And wise. Fortunately I am already feared by everyone on the Titanic, and once we have refuelled I will kill everyone who does not support me. You two have been particularly troublesome, so I'm giving you the privilege of being killed first. So . . . which of you would like to die first?'
Claire glared at him. 'You are a cruel and horrible man. I hope you burn in hell.'
Jimmy knew what she was doing — she wanted to be killed first, as if it might somehow give him a better chance.
He wasn't having that. He nodded at Pedroza. 'You're not only cruel and horrible, you've got one leg missing, and the other one looks pretty crap.'
Claire wasn't going to be beaten. 'You're a violent, vicious, ugly little man and your children will be vicious and ugly . . .'
Jimmy cut in with: 'Your scrambled eggs taste like shit and everyone laughs at your cooking behind your—'
'ENOUGH!'
They fell silent.
'You die!' He pointed the gun at Claire and squeezed the trigger.
Without really knowing why, Jimmy hurled himself at Claire, shoving her out of the way just as the gun exploded. The bullet thumped into his chest. There wasn't time to register pain, hear Claire scream or even to have a final thought about McDonald's. Everything just went black.