by Chris Thrall
“Anything else?” Hans asked.
“He runs a bar called Chico’s that’s a known hangout for – how shall we say – undesirables? And because he has no criminal record here, he’s been able to obtain a shotgun and a pistol license. Is that enough to go on for the time being?”
“Yeah.” Hans stared at his kebab. “I think it is, Enrique, thanks.”
Then as an afterthought he added, “Do you happen to know if the police got any forensics off the wreck of the Rosa Negra? I’m planning a little dive tomorrow night.”
“To protect tourism, the police will likely guard their findings, but I’ll look into it for you.”
- 42 -
When Hans’ plane landed in São Vicente late the next afternoon, Silvestre was at the airport to meet him.
“Senhor Hans, good to see you.”
Silvestre shook hands firmly and then led Hans to the taxi rank, from where they took a cab east along the coast road to Mindelo.
“So you’ve brought the boat from Santo Antão,” said Hans, knowing the Portuguese lived on the archipelago’s westernmost island, less than an hour’s cruise across the São Vicente Channel.
“Yes, the boat is here.” Silvestre took out his faithful hip flask and passed it to the American. “I have left her in a quiet place, no? Not even my crew knows I am here.”
“Good thinking,” said Hans. “And how’s life on Santo Antão?”
“Tranquilo. I buy a small place in the hills above Porto Novo with my wife twenty years ago. When she passed, I decide to stay. It’s a rugged island, not so much for the tourists, huh? And many more shipwrecks to find.” Silvestre shrugged and took a slug of rum.
“You never remarried?”
“No, Hans, only to the rum.”
“Family, children?”
“We have a little girl, Francesca, but the cholera came . . .” The old man fell silent a moment, staring at the flask as if it contained all his memories. “Maybe some cousins in Portugal still alive, I don’t know. I have no contact for many years.”
Hans’ respect for the treasure hunter deepened, and his reasons for helping search for Jessica became clearer.
“Aqui, por favor,” Silvestre told the cabdriver as they neared the port area.
He led Hans down an alley running through shanty housing and on to a small garbage-strewn cove. A young lad sat on a rubber dinghy on the sand skimming pebbles across the scum-laden wave tops. Silvestre took a few escudos from his wallet and handed them to the boy, who grinned black teeth and scarpered. Hans climbed into the inflatable, and Silvestre pulled on the oars and headed for his boat, Outcast, anchored discreetly a few hundred yards out.
Once on board they hauled in the tender, and Silvestre fired up the twelve-liter diesel and motored into the channel, the plan being to approach Mindelo Marina in a wide arc under the cover of darkness. Silvestre would remain with the boat a quarter of a mile offshore while Hans swam on the surface to the location of the sunken trawler.
In a pile on deck sat a wetsuit, scuba gear and a steel tank with a yellow-and-green-striped band around it signifying enriched air nitrox, which would extend Hans’ bottom time and reduce the need for a lengthy decompression stop. The American began a systematic check of the equipment, looking for signs of wear and familiarizing himself with its idiosyncrasies, such as the position of the air inlet and outlet buttons on the wing-design buoyancy harness and how to operate the weight belt’s quick-release buckle, should he need to ditch it in the event of an emergency.
As darkness fell Silvestre synchronized his watch with the time on Hans’ dive computer. They would communicate over the radio built into the full-face scuba mask and aim to keep the dive to ninety minutes, with an additional thirty added on for the swim. If a problem arose, Hans would surface and make his way out to the boat by following a back bearing on his compass, since the Outcast would not be under running lights, or signal three times with his flashlight if he was in difficulty and needed picking up.
Under the glow of a waning moon, Silvestre maneuvered the dive boat into position as Hans kitted up. He considered clipping an emergency cylinder of nitrox to his harness but dismissed the idea, figuring it would prove too cumbersome should he need to enter the hull of the Rosa Negra and that it would hang down and kick up silt, ruining visibility when he inspected the seabed for evidence.
After strapping a hefty diver’s knife to his left forearm and putting on his fins, he sprayed an antifogging agent inside the mask and took a compass bearing on the lights of the marina. Good to go, he shook hands with the old man and stepped off the dive lift’s aluminum footplate at the back of the boat. Following a radio check to test comms, Hans pulled the mask back down around his neck and began finning toward the wreck.
Due to exertion and the insulating effect of the neoprene, Hans found himself getting hot. He stopped kicking on several occasions to pull open the wetsuit’s neck and let seawater in to circulate and cool him down. The swim was tougher than he expected, his muscles weak and his joints aching from the month spent in the life raft. He imagined Penny shaking her head in disapproval, knowing in reality she would be the last person to suggest he didn’t dive. He smiled and finned harder.
Looming twenty yards distant was the orange buoy the police had left to mark the position of the Rosa Negra. As Hans felt a sense of relief, the noise of an outboard motor and distant laughter reverberating off the water caught his attention. A crackle came over the radio’s earpiece in the mask dangling around his neck. Hans spun around to see a yacht crew returning to the marina in high spirits, having drunk a Sundowner or two. Wishing to remain out of sight, he clamped the mask over his face and released air from his buoyancy jacket, allowing him to slip under the surface as the yacht passed overhead.
“Hans, Outcast, over.” Silvestre sounded stressed.
“Outcast, I’m okay. Descending now, over.”
Hans left it several seconds before turning on his flashlight and finning to locate the marker buoy’s tether. He followed the line down, pumping small bursts of air into his buoyancy wing to compensate for the increase in pressure and steady his descent.
The Rosa Negra lay on her side at a forty-five-degree angle in sixty feet of water. Visibility wasn’t great, but Hans could see the length of the forlorn vessel’s hull and the ragged hole where the explosion tore through its sheet metal. The wheelhouse was gone, exposing what remained of the mess deck and galley. Whoever planted the explosives certainly knew what they were doing, taking out the crew and holing the boat below the waterline to sink the evidence.
Hans reached for a pair of tweezers clipped to his harness on a recoiling lanyard spool. Silvestre had also provided a plastic container the size of a lunch box with a slit in its lid lined with fine brushes to use as an evidence collector for small objects and fine particles. Hans had it secured around his waist like a fanny pack. He picked several flakes of burnt paint from around the hole in the hull and pressed them through the slit into the container, which had now filled with water. The brushes prevented the flakes from washing out of the box. Hans then began a systematic search in increasing clockwise circles around the Rosa Negra, using gentle frog kicks so as not to disturb the sand and sediment on the sea bottom. Silvestre and Hans had considered using an underwater metal detector but eventually rejected the idea, since thousands of pieces of shrapnel littered the seabed for up to a hundred yards all around.
By Hans’ fifth circuit of the hull he hadn’t found anything of significance. He paused to check his dive computer for the umpteenth time and radio the information through to Silvestre.
There was no answer.
“Outcast . . . Outcast,” he tried again. “Will commence one more circuit of the vessel and surface, over.”
Still no response.
It was out of character for Silvestre, and Hans wondered if his position had been compromised – perhaps by the coastguard – and he’d had to move the boat.
On the final circuit
Hans spotted a fingernail-sized piece of aluminum lying on the sand. On closer inspection it looked to be a fragment from a small cylinder. Hans knew what it was immediately – the end of a detonator casing.
Pleased with his find, Hans secured the casing in the evidence box and checked his computer. He had just enough nitrox left for the required decompression stop and began his ascent, yet still no response from Silvestre on the radio.
Hovering several feet below the surface for the safety stop, Hans sensed the throb of a powerful boat engine and wondered why Silvestre had closed in to pick him up when the plan was Hans would swim back out to sea. He could tell by the reduced flow of nitrox from his regulator that it had all but run out and was glad when the three-minute decompression period was up.
Breaking the surface, Hans heard the roar of a boat engine and turned in time to see a gleaming white prow bearing down on him.
Wha—?
He had a problem – the paintwork on the Outcast was navy blue.
Hans exhaled sharply and with a frantic stroke of his arms sank below the surface, releasing a burst of air from his buoyancy wing to speed his descent. The draw of the propeller sucked him upwards as the boat thundered overhead, and Hans ducked his head to prevent it chopping through his skull.
Now the nitrox ran out, and he fought not to panic, dropping the regulator from his mouth and swapping to the air outlet hose on the buoyancy wing. By depressing the valve, he could suck air from the wing itself. It bought him some time, but the loss of buoyancy saw him slowly sinking.
He needed a plan and fast. It was imperative he took on his attacker right now rather than attempt a swim to the Outcast, making him a sitting duck.
Hans peeled off his mask, unclipped the buckles on the buoyancy harness and slipped out of it. Then, clutching the equipment and his flashlight, he finned hard for the surface and burst through with as much commotion as he could muster.
The speedboat came around for a second run, throttle fully open, its bow rising and propeller biting down ready to tear him to shreds. Hans left it until the last possible moment and, with another sharp exhale, sunk beneath the surface, playing the beam of his flashlight overhead. He waited until he spotted the white arrow shape of the boat’s hull slicing through the water and then thrust the jacket and cylinder upwards, rolling into a ball and clamping his hands over his head for protection. There was an audible clunk as the propeller connected with the dive cylinder, then silence as the engine stalled and the boat glided away.
Desperate to breathe, Hans broke the surface and took a deep gulp of air, watching as the boat limped off into the darkness, the erratic pitch of the engine confirming he had achieved his aim.
Hans unbuckled his weight belt and let it drop to the seafloor, then began finning out to sea using a compass back-bearing for direction. Twenty minutes later he located the Outcast, which had drifted far from the original drop-off point. He cussed, knowing this wasn’t going to be good, hauling himself on board to find Silvestre lying on his back in a pool of blood, a bullet having gone clean though his head.
Wasting no time, Hans powered up the Outcast and headed further into open water as he considered his options. He concluded there was no ballistics evidence to glean from the scene, no family of Silvestre to notify of his death, and that reporting the murder would bog him down in a lengthy police investigation. Finding Jessica was his priority, which meant he had to cover up the crime scene, sinking the Outcast and effectively burying Silvestre at sea. It was what the treasure hunter would have insisted on anyway, since Hans stood a far better chance of bringing the killer to justice than Cape Verde’s ragtag police force did.
Hans stopped the Outcast a mile out and dragged Silvestre into the pilothouse. He went below and lifted up a panel in the hold to reveal a drainage plug, which he unscrewed, before returning to the deck and bolting shut the pilothouse door. As water flooded aboard, he packed his clothes, wallet, passport and cell phone into a dry bag, then picked up his fins and jumped over the side to begin the long swim back to shore.
- 43 -
The next morning Mouthwash Man entered the corridor.
“Get into bed,” Jessica hissed to Holly, and scrambled into hers.
Mouthwash Man walked into the cell carrying a foldout wooden chair. He set it up, took off his jacket and hung it over the backrest, then sat down.
Jessica pretended to emerge from slumber, yawning, sitting up and leaning against the wall. Unusually, he didn’t give her breakfast or a pill.
“Maria, I have a question for you,” he asked softly.
Staring at her feet poking out of the blanket, Jessica wasn’t fooled by his tone. She gave a purposely timid nod.
“Do you want to live, or do you want to die?”
“Live,” she mumbled.
“Then it is like this. We have found you a new place to live and a new mother and father,” he lied. “Do you know where is England?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “I’ve been there before.”
“Good!” The man leant forward in the chair. “Now, I am going to tell you about your new home and your new family and your new school. And you will remember what I say, you understand?”
“Yes.”
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of pruning shears. Then, grabbing her hand, he forced her to stretch out a finger, clamping it between the blades of the vicious tool. “Now, your new father, he is called David – David Dennis. If you give him any problem, he will cut off your fingers one at a time like this.”
He clenched the grips just enough for the blades to pierce Jessica’s skin, making her scream.
“Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh.” The little girl nodded in terror.
“And if you do not remember what I tell you, then I will cut off your fingers, then your ears, then your nose. Do you understand, Maria Dennis?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
David Dennis was the alias on the many forged passports of the fixer – a man connected to the dark syndicates making up Europe’s extensive pedophile network. The fixer adopted a common English surname because it was easy for children he trafficked to spell and remember. It was the surname on Jessica’s expensive fake passport, and they would travel under the guise she was his daughter. The fixer always invested in top-quality documentation, costing a considerable amount of money and taking time to prepare, a precaution that had saved him from a lengthy jail term on numerous occasions. He only dealt in English-speaking white children fitting with the cover story of a Brit or American holidaying in Europe with his child.
“Maria Dennis” wasn’t destined for England, though. A high-speed launch would take her and the fixer north to the Canaries, liaising offshore with a crew from Algeciras in southern Spain. From there the fixer intended to travel overland, exploiting Europe’s nonexistent borders to deliver the kid to a pedophile gang in Belgium.
The fixer provided kidnappers with an identity the child needed to remember. If a child in his possession couldn’t recall these details instantly, the fixer would see to it the kidnappers didn’t receive payment. However, this was only a part of the reason Mouthwash went heavy on the brainwashing – he also enjoyed inflicting pain.
“What is your father’s name?” he demanded.
“David Dennis,” Jessica replied without hesitation, imagining the moment her papa would burst through the door and bust this guy’s head.
“What’s your name?”
“Maria Dennis.”
“Okay. Dennis is spelled—”
Mouthwash Man’s cell phone rang. He groped in the inside pocket of the jacket draped over the chair and retrieved it. “Ola . . . Sí, sí. . . Luego, luego.”
He replaced the phone and resumed the lesson. “Okay, Maria, Dennis is spelled d, e, n, n, i, s. Spell it for me.”
“D, e, n, n, i, s.”
“Say ‘My name is Maria Dennis, and my father is called David.’”
Jessica obliged.
And so the indoctrination continued, four times a day every day, Jessica suffering torture and food deprivation when she got the details wrong.
- 44 -
“You need some sleep,” said Penny, peeling back the duvet.
“Agreed,” said Hans, exhausted from his swim.
“Lights off?”
“Yeah.” Hans’ phone rang. “Odysseus, what you got for me?”
“The names from Hertz’s booking system. Dumb administrator still hasn’t found the backdoor I programed into their database when I infiltrated them four years ago. Hell, I coulda dumped fifty thousand credit card numbers and sold ’em on the black market for a fortune.”
“And risked more jail time,” Hans reminded the young reprobate. “So shoot.”
“The rental agency has two E-Class Mercedes, both rented out at the time in question. One to a David Segal, a forty-seven-year-old Portuguese national. I done some digging, and he’s senior safety inspector for the Sana hotel chain. Flew business class from Lisbon two days earlier.”
Despite his fatigued state, Hans managed a smile. There wasn’t much Jonah couldn’t dig up when he set his mind to it.
“The other was to an Emmanuelle Viton, a thirty-six-year-old French businesswoman, who, going by her Facebook, is on vacation with her mom.”
“Did you background-check Segal and Viton?”
“Yes, Orion.” Jonah let out an audible Aspergic tut. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Anything?”
“No, they’re both on the level. Besides, they’re foreign nationals with no significant connection to the islands.”
Hans wondered if one of them may have lent the car to someone else but knew he was clutching at straws. It meant the vehicle that tailed him couldn’t have been a rental – least not from Hertz, as the yellow license plate tag may have suggested.