Bromberger rang the bell again . . . more barking and, this time, a voice. An elderly woman in a white-collared black dress was watching him from the second floor of a neighboring house. Someone, still out of view, was coming. He reread Sweetman’s message:
SHATTERED FLAG—FOR BROMBERGER
Pierce—UK investigation has produced lead requiring immediate follow-up. Burdette years loaded with controversy. Findings here have narrowed-in on death of Burdette company diver—name Renfro—R-E-N-F-R-O, killed in TOPIC offshore rig disaster. Wife—name Mary—M-A-R-Y—took life. Rig foreman subsequent victim hit and run. Surviving member Renfro family, daughter Leslie—L-E-S-L-I-E—apxm. 25 years old, left UK following parents’ deaths. Subject has history of contacts in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin. Reliable source indicates subject radical. Source further indicates subject may be residing in Malta with Ret. Navy Capt. William Roger Renfro—W-I-L-L-I-A-M R-O-G-E-R—brother of deceased diver, address North Bluff, St. Georges, Malta.
Based on Rome investigation, reviewed with you and Pitsch, Malta possibly more than coincidence. Essential you interrogate subject soonest. Would handle myself. However, Lancaster has called me on quarterdeck, returning Washington this P.M. Regards, H.S.
“I’ll be right back there; be quiet!” The voice called first to Bromberger then to the dog.
“Mr. Bromberger?”
“Pierce Bromberger. Good afternoon, Captain.”
“I do apologize for having kept you out here in this sun, and for the misconduct of Mr. Ajax.” The elderly man took a gentle swipe at the black-and-white springer spaniel sniffing at the visitor’s trousers. Captain Renfro extended his hand; it was cold, with heavy blue veins crisscrossing the bones along the frail white arm.
“Do follow me. We will have our talk on the veranda. I kept you waiting, you know”—he laughed softly, his eyes on the path ahead—“because I couldn’t find a slipper. Imagine! Do you know Malta?”
“My first visit.”
“Quite a lovely place. My home now. My wife is buried here. The gardens never looked this way while she lived . . . a shambles isn’t it?”
He paused, surveyed the half-empty flower beds, the grass in need of a cut. “This is a juniper tree. Do you know juniper?” He broke off a bit of the evergreen and gave it to the American. “Gin! That’s what juniper does so well.”
He continued toward the house. “This is a lemon, still bearing, and”—he swung his cane toward the next trunk—“a palm; you will know that one from the States.” He stopped again, bent slowly to pick up a fallen tan frond. “The one creature who causes us to keep our heads high is lovely lady wisteria.” He halted at the edge of the path, his hands planted on the cane, the hollows of his thin face folding into a deep smile. “My wife and I planted lady wisteria when we retired here in St. Georges. My wife fancied lavenders and lilacs—clothes, flowers, jewelry, scent—Lovely, isn’t she?” The lush flowers of the great vine twisted and looped across the entire front of the house looking out over the Mediterranean.
“Do have a seat, Mr. Bromberger.” Captain Renfro took the chair beside that of his visitor, studied the face. “I shan’t offer refreshments; I do not feel up to that. I do apologize, but we will have our talk. Ajax, Ajax!” The dog left Bromberger, lay down beside his master on the cool tiles of the porch.
“Captain Renfro, please do not go to any trouble. If this is inconvenient—”
“No, no. We will have our talk. As I told you this morning on the telephone, you are fortunate to find me here—to find me at all.” He nodded and smiled toward his guest, heads and hands trembling. “As I told you, I have just come from the hospital—pneumonia. I dare say, a few of the staff lost a pound or two—that is, a dollar or two—on me. But the fates would seem to have decreed another summer at St. Georges, my last command, sir—HMS Vegegarden, greens of course, and tomatoes. They love it here.” Captain Renfro drew himself straighter in the lounge chair. “Now, then, Mr. Bromberger, you have asked to talk to me about my niece, Leslie.”
“Yes.”
“And, if I sounded reluctant this morning to make our appointment it is”—the voice stopped, eyes fluttered closed, his head resting against the creaking caned back of the chair—“because there is so precious little I may tell you about dear Leslie.”
“I had been advised, Captain Renfro, that your niece might be living with you. Apparently, she is not. Do you have an address . . .?”
“Really, Leslie does not have an address here, not in the usual sense. I am not certain, indeed, Mr. Bromberger, if she is in Malta. She most certainly did not visit me while I was in hospital, lest it was while I was unconscious or asleep.” He slowly brought himself forward again, struck by the implication of his last remark. “She’s a lovely girl, sir, but she has caused me sadness, a sense of frustration, you know, at being unable to do more for her. You say you’re a detective?”
“I am conducting an investigation for the U.S. Government, Captain Renfro. Our embassy will vouch for me.”
A bony hand raised from the cane to dismiss the words. “That is of no interest to me, sir. You are then aware of my niece Leslie’s tragedy?”
“The loss of her parents?”
“Quite so—far more than a loss of parents, you know. It was the harsh, quite violent end to the life in which she had flourished as a child. Her father was my younger brother. We are both Royal Navy . . . although he earned his ration far more honestly, more sweat, bravery, contribution to the Crown than I would dare to claim.
“Leslie’s father was a decorated diver in our Navy. He taught her to swim . . . in these waters. At the high point in my career, I was Chief of Staff, Flag Officer Malta, for more years than one might normally expect to serve in that post. My brother, his wife, and daughter would take their annual holiday with us each summer. We did not live in this house then, a bigger house, quite elegant official quarters.”
Captain Renfro reflected for a moment, then continued. “My wife and I had no children. My brother’s visits were special times for us, and we competed in the fuss we made over Leslie—she was a gorgeous child. When a ship of the fleet was in the Grand Harbor, her uncle would take her aboard. Of course, she was the pet as soon as she set foot on deck. Malta had a cherished place in her childhood, and in our lives. Her father, as your inquiry will have told you, retired, still a young man, and began his second life as a commercial diver. This was at the time when Great Britain had made her vast energy discoveries, very important, and he was very enthusiastic about his new career. They moved to Yarmouth, and that is where he was to die, on the job, in the collapse of the Topic Universe oil rig. You have this history?”
“The niece, your niece Leslie, came here when, Captain Renfro?”
“My brother and his wife were deeply in love, sir. Love, I have always believed, is strengthened when there is risk, physical danger present in the marriage. His death caused her to take her life, and Leslie, God bless her, arrived here unannounced within six weeks’ time.
“Mind you, Mr. Bromberger, my wife and I had journeyed to Yarmouth for both funerals, such an incredibly grim time. We had urged her to come stay with us, and we were so completely relieved when she arrived. We were ecstatic to have her with us.
“Leslie was in torment, Mr. Bromberger. She refused totally to accept the tragedy. I remember . . . so distinctly, she had chosen to keep her mother’s ring. There was no will. Apparently, it was something they had agreed on while the mother lived. Leslie chose to wear her mother’s ring as a remembrance. She would brandish it at my wife, at me, when she cried out against her loss . . . when we tried with such inadequacy to console her.
“She was a grown woman by then, of course. I should be clearer with my words. Her mother had left no will. Leslie had a small sum by way of inheritance from her father, what little my brother and his wife had set aside—not much, you will appreciate, from the Navy. She stayed with us for three or four months and then took a flat in Valletta.”
“Do you have that address, Captain?”
“Please, please. I shall tell you what little I know. Her address then is not her address now. I will guide your inquiry to the extent I can, sir, and it is for this reason—unless you prefer to end our talk—that I am relating this to you!” The old man’s face stiffened with indignation. He awaited his visitor’s reply.
“Beg your pardon, Captain Renfro. I didn’t mean to rush you.” Bromberger resisted the urge to check his watch: the captain’s pace was maddening. “It’s helpful, very helpful to have this information. Please go ahead.”
“Well . . . never mind. We saw far less of Leslie after she left our home. What we did see offered troubling suggestions of what I would describe as a change in personality. She had become a much more reserved young lady, a cooler person . . . fair enough, I suppose, given that she was now an adult on her own. But knowing her as we did, the reserve was disturbing in that I saw it more as a suppression of her rage, the bitterness she seemed unable to put behind her, almost as if it smoldered within her and could burst at any moment into flame.”
Captain Renfro rocked his body in the chair, one hand on the cane, the other jutting out, cutting up and down with its crooked fingers as he catalogued the changes, clearly upset by the memory. “By then, she had begun to travel on the Continent a good amount of the time, doing what we knew not, but traveling and jotting off a very occasional post card to us here at North Bluff.
“Then, Mr. Bromberger, she returned, just before my wife died. Yes, Mr. Ajax, just before she died.” He let a hand fall, stroked one of the spaniel’s long, silky ears. “Leslie had dinner with is. She was quite shocked to see my wife, her aunt, so close to the end—much as she would be to see me now, I dare say—and she was solicitous.
“This was genuine on her part. She loved my wife and was to grieve her passing. Leslie also asked over that dinner if I would loan her a relatively small sum of money, about fifteen hundred pounds, to supplement her own savings. She wished to make an investment.
“I have told you Leslie was a good swimmer. She was extremely capable in every way on the water. My brother had raised that side of her as a son. She had now set her mind on the purchase of a yacht. She told us that she planned to start her own business here in the Maltese Islands, a charter trade, you know—tricky financially, an off-and-on, risky sort of enterprise. Never mind. I loaned her the money. I was pleased to do so, and she promised to take us for a sail around the islands, which she never did—my wife’s death, you understand.” Captain Renfro leaned further to the side, gave the dog’s head and neck a long scratch.
“These are exquisite waters in which to sail. Apparently, she had spotted a market for her chartering . . . you must excuse me, Mr. Bromberger.” He hoisted himself slowly out of the chair. “You wouldn’t feel it, I am sure, but the afternoon has brought a breeze that is chilling through me. I am going to fetch my sweater, and serve us some tea. I have an electric element. It won’t take a minute.”
He disappeared into the house, followed by the spaniel. Bromberger had known better than to ask for details of the yacht, its location. This would come when the captain saw fit to deliver . . . Christ, the weekend had slipped away. Nothing! He silently cursed Sweetman. There was a clatter of cups, followed by the old man’s call.
“Thank you. Thank you very much, indeed.” Captain Renfro sighed, laughed at himself as they took their seats again. “The Navy impressed upon me, from the first schoolboy days at Dartmouth, the importance of discovery, of being able to identify, and being willing to accept and digest new information. I have now discovered that one cannot carry a tray and, at the same time, walk with a cane. One needs either a third arm or a third leg. There are no biscuits in the house; I do apologize.”
“Perhaps I could help, Captain—any stores open around here?”
“No, no, Mr. Bromberger. I have a servant, a very faithful girl, who will be here in the morning. Mr. Ajax will have his nose in her basket. We will be fine; very thoughtful of you.” He slipped the tea.
“To continue, Leslie purchased a yacht, in Italy; I have never learned the port or the builder. She brought it to Malta, and, as I was saying, apparently she managed to make a success of it. Within a short time, less than a year, she had repaid the loan, even though I had urged her to keep the money as a gift.”
“Captain Renfro, did her charter operation have a name, an address, the yacht . . .?”
“Yes, I will surprise you here, sir. I have the answers to your questions. The address was in her name, of course, in care of the post office, Valletta. I know that because I told her I must have the information. She was still receiving a few bits of mail here—”
“Do you have any?”
“No, and I told her I had to send it on to her. Now, the name of the charter was rather formal, Renfro Research. She had an oceanographic aspect to her cruises, Renfro Research, Main Post Office, Valletta.” He carefully raised the cup to his lips, satisfied that the information had prompted the American to begin taking some notes.
The captain’s fatigue was increasingly evident. Bromberger framed his next questions hoping they would allow him to close the interview. “Captain Renfro, was your niece running this charter trade single-handedly? Did she have employees?”
“You must tell me why you are making this inquiry, Mr. Bromberger. You told me when you telephoned that you had no reason to believe Leslie is not well. I trust she is well?”
“Sir, I said I was hoping to meet your niece, that I was hoping she could help us with some information. I didn’t want to take much of your or her time, but I did want to talk to her—”
“Well, that was a mouthful of words, wasn’t it?” He turned from the American, gazed at the sea. “I must rest, Mr. Bromberger. I do hope you will excuse me.” He eased himself to his feet. “Allow me to show you to the gate.”
“It would be helpful if I could telephone a taxi.”
“Yes, yes. I keep a card with the numbers. The telephone is in the front hall.”
The cab ordered, they walked slowly from the house. “You asked about Leslie’s crew?”
“Yes Captain; did she have people working for her?”
“I didn’t approve, you know. She took me for a drive one day, down to the yacht basin to have a look. She was a young lady, unmarried, living afloat—with two men!” The captain stopped on the path and turned to his visitor to share this information.
“Did you know them? Were they friends of your niece?”
“Know them? Hardly. And I didn’t wish to, Mr. Bromberger. But Leslie would have none of my counsel. We were on the quay admiring the yacht, a ketch, very able in appearance, when they came upon us the one time I met them.” He stopped again. Took Bromberger’s arm in the grip of his hand. “They were scruffy! . . . .”
“What nationality, Captain? English-speaking, can you describe them?”
“One was, after a fashion—a dirty man, unshaven, scruffy blond beard.”
“The other?”
“Lord knows, a Maltese by the looks of him. She would have none of my counsel. Here we are, Mr. Bromberger. I will say goodbye and wish you well in your inquiry. If the yacht is still in Malta, you should find her in the main basin.”
Bromberger took the cold hand. “You’ve been a help, Captain. Thanks for your time. Get well. Looks like you are going to have some gardening to do.”
Yes, indeed. Thank you.”
The American visitor turned as he stepped through the gate. “What was the name of the ketch, your niece’s yacht?”
“Dear me, yes. I should have told you that. Matabele.” He spelled it; his visitor jotted it down. “A most peculiar name for the yacht, you know. The Matabele were called the vanishing people, Zulu in origin, whose sole business was war.”
Captain Renfro followed his visitor’s descent to the road, gave the gate latch a testing jiggle. “Now, Mr. Ajax. It’s going on your suppertime.” The spaniel stayed at the old man’s side, the stub of a t
ail wagging in response to the words. They made their way back to the house, pausing for a moment at the front to contemplate the wisteria.
Chapter 15
Leslie Renfro sat motionless, repulsed by Starring’s touch. He stood behind her in the catamaran’s ornate dining room, hands on her shoulders, announcing that she would accompany him to the White House on the Fourth of July. She listened, incredulous that she had not known of his plans. Their strategy had called for him to be on the catamaran until July 5. During the crossing from Malta, his schedule had shown the fifth.
Her eyes shot to Tooms. He had said the fifth. His face was locked in a drunken smile. She felt the secretary, Sullivan, observing her from the far end of the table. She met her eyes, forced her to break off the encounter with a dab at her plate.
It was late evening. Starring had held them, insisting on a celebration to mark the majestic appearance of the Towerpoint Partner, the mirror ceremony for her sistership Mayan on the Fourth, the launching of the expedition. She was exhausted. She looked around her. Head’s face was waxy with fatigue. Her mind ached. She argued briefly against the plan, but Starring would have none of it—this would be the most important Fourth of July ever.
“George the Third would still have given it a pretty low rating, maybe one out of ten.” Tooms gurgled to himself, enjoying his joke, held his glass up for the stewards.
“You need some sleep, Oats; we all do.” Starring was at the stairway. “Sullivan, what time do we depart?”
“Noon, tomorrow, sir. Your meeting is at two P.M.”
“Excellent. Give Miss Renfro the details. She will be with you at the hotel. A splendid day, my friends. You have done us proud.”
At 3:00 A.M., Tonasi’s voice was a low, doped snarl, dismissing her doubts. “The next one’s loaded with gas. She’s loaded; we’ll boil the fish! You hit that son of a bitch. You kill him; you’re the important one, Les. Kill him; watch yourself—Paulo . . .?” He tugged on the blond beard, shrugged off Head’s punch to his injured arm. “Paulo will be like a mother to me, Les. We’ll be in Copenhagen. You take care of yourself. You’re the good hunter, the leader—Copenhagen—we’ll be there.” He left them, walked slowly to his cabin, lobbed the packet she had given him on his bunk, and collapsed asleep.
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