‘John, John. Calm down there, lad,’ Gaffney cut him off with authority. ‘There’ll be time enough for detail. But you’re right on the paperwork,’ he shot an accusing glance at Hawker. ‘If the capitán here wants to leave at sparrow fart tomorrow, you and I have a good day’s work ahead of us now. And here was I thinking we’d have time to go to the races this afternoon.’
‘Call your bookmaker and make your bets by phone,’ said Hawker, then added, ‘you seem to be able to control just about anything by phone.’ And he caught the glint of reaction in both Gaffney’s and Grivas’ eyes.
‘Punta de Este it is then,’ said Sullivan, apparently without noticing nor understanding the point of that brief exchange. For an executive officer, Gaffney was clearly keeping a lot of information away from him. ‘Where do we meet?’
‘Club Nautico de Playa Brava. We’re going sailing. Do you think your friend Kreuzer will be up to it?’
‘He’ll be there,’ replied Sullivan.
‘Even if I have to carry the bastard aboard,’ growled O’Hara, as if it wouldn’t be the first time.
The coffee arrived, its heavy toasted aroma spreading like a balm through Hawker’s body as the waiter poured it into their cups. Then came the meat, still sizzling from the open fire of the parrilla, and a separate platter of large fried eggs.
They all fell to eating with silent intent, and it was as good as Hawker had tasted in his imagination.
Sunday 9 May 1982
Punta del Este is the Riviera of South America. That’s according to the tourist guides. According to Hawker, there was no comparison. Punta del Este leaves the French Riviera far behind for natural beauty and even sophistication.
At the height of the season, say the New Year holiday, Punta de Este has a more attractive expanse of bare and exquisitely brown feminine flesh than the whole of the Côte d’Azur from Marseille to the Italian border. Trim little Porteño secretaries from Buenos Aires flock here in their thousands, determined to spend their inflation-swollen pay packets on having the time of their lives. They spread out on the beaches literally cheek to cheek with beautiful local Uruguayan mujers and dark-skinned Brazilianas who have come south to escape the extremes of the tropical summer.
And where there’s so much honey there are bees. Playboys from all over the continent roll in hoping to play high at the casinos and score on the sand.
The marinas overflow with sparkling white yachts and glittering floating gin palaces. Not as grand and lavish as the ships that clog Monaco harbour, perhaps, but Punta del Este is also delightfully free of gauche American and German tourists.
All of this was now behind it for the year. The season had finished a month or so earlier. The smaller hotels and restaurants had closed for the winter, their doors and windows boarded tightly up. The larger hotels would be running with skeleton staffs. The wind had long since swept the last traces of all those stunning young bodies from the soft sand of the beaches.
The Punta del Este that Hawker saw this morning was nonetheless as attractive as he always remembered it. They had arrived here in the Bertram the evening before. The crewman had taken control of the boat for the 100 kilometre run eastward along the coast from Montevideo while Grivas and Hawker had slept below.
They had cruised for most of the afternoon, arriving at Playa Brava in the early darkness. The crewman roused Hawker, as arranged, to guide him into the marina where they snugged the boat at a visitor’s berth and went ashore in search of a meal. They ate a surprisingly good paella at a hotel near the beach in almost complete silence. The crewman sat sullenly at a slightly respectful distance from what he regarded as the two officers. It occurred to Hawker that he had not yet bothered to even ask the man’s name. He still didn’t bother, nor care. He hardly spoke to Grivas, either. And when he did he made sure of using English to leave the crewman further out of the loop.
There was nothing to say. The plan was underway, now was the vacuum in any soldier’s life between decision and action. Hawker preferred to concentrate on the richness of the seafood in saffron rice before him. The chorritos, Uruguayan mussels, were plump and full of salty flavour, making a fine contrast with the white meat of big South Atlantic squid and spicy pink camarones, the shrimp that swarm in the estuary of the Plata.
They slept aboard the Bertram again until the sun coming over the hills heralded a clear new day, piercing through the forward portholes to wake Hawker from a sound sleep in the V bunk buried deep in the bow of the Bertram.
Punta del Este is a place of contrast. It is a slim peninsula, the ultimate tip of land where the mighty Rio de la Plata meets the mightier Atlantic Ocean. In the stillness of the morning, from where they sat on unruffled water in the calm crook of the Playa beach, Hawker could hear the thunder of ocean surf crashing on the other side. There was a good track he knew through a small patch of forest which would take him to the eastern side. He sat up in his bunk with the impetuous thought of a run across to see the sun rising over the surf. Then he remembered the other two men sleeping in the main cabin close by, and the handgun one of them had under his pillow, and he knew it was out of the question. At least he could console himself with a walk on the dock.
He stepped through to the main cabin, pulling on a faded old windcheater against the morning chill. The crewman stirred as Hawker moved past towards the door at the aft end of the cabin.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he grunted.
‘For a walk on the dock,’ Hawker made no attempt to keep his voice down, just as he had made no attempt to slip quietly through the cabin. It was time they woke up anyway. ‘I want to check the Sleipnir.’
‘The what?’ mumbled the crewman. He sat up groggily, rasping his hand across the rough dark stubble that covered his face. God help his wife, thought Hawker, if he wakes up looking like this every morning.
‘The Sleipnir, she’s a boat. The reason we came to this place. You can see part of her topsides from here,’ Hawker said, pointing to one of the masts in a forest of aluminium that shone gold in the dawn light.
‘Let him go,’ Grivas murmured from the depths of his sleeping bag. ‘You can keep an eye on him. If he moves off the dock call me. I can radio Gaffney. We have a pre-arranged channel which he has monitored constantly.’ This last was in English, targeted at Hawker alone, then back in Spanish, ‘And get some coffee on the stove, on the double!’
Hawker stepped up to the dock as the crewman busied himself at the small galley bench in a corner of the Bertram’s cabin. He could feel the man’s nervous gaze on his back all the way down the main arm of the marina until he stopped at a berth where a trim fibreglass sloop floated neatly on its own reflection in the water.
The Sleipnir was 39 feet long from stem to stern, 28 feet on the waterline. The dimensions, however, that mattered to Hawker were her beam and depth from cabin top to keel. Each had to be below 10 feet for the purpose he had in mind and Sleipnir’s nine feet six inches on one dimension and eight feet eleven on the other were perfect. She had the slim and aesthetically athletic shape of all pedigreed ocean racers before the rule bending of the late 70s turned them into the broad-beamed tubs of today. Hawker estimated this boat to be about 12 years old. She was beginning to show her age in the pale powdery surface that dulled the gel coat finish of her topsides and betrayed many seasons under the bleaching tropical sun. Parts of her brightwork, the lifeline stanchions and pulpit around the arrow-like bow, were also tarnished from years of exposure to the corroding air of the oceans, but her winches were protected by stout and fairly new blue canvas covers. So was the mainsail, furled on the boom. The sheets and running tackle had no such luck. They appeared faded and almost brittle and were in all likelihood suffering from incipient rot to such a degree that they’d fail in a more than moderate breeze. But none of this mattered as long as the gear could survive long enough to cross the Plata. Hawker gave one of the ropes an exploratory tug and confirmed his anticipation that it would.
On the medieval
shield shape of the yacht’s transom, in carved teak letters also faded and cracked by the sun and salt, stood her name, Sleipnir, and under that in weather beaten black paint was her home port: Douglas, Isle of Man. Yet ironically, she was in a way in home waters here, because Hawker knew she was designed by Germán Frers, the renowned Argentine naval architect, and constructed with thick layers of glass fibre at a boatyard in Cornwall.
She had sailed a few seasons in the Irish Sea and then, with several feet chopped off the top of her mast to bring the high aspect ratio racing rig down to more manageable proportions, she had been converted for cruising. Several years later, after reaching across the North Atlantic and beating around the Caribbean under a succession of British owners, she had come down the South American coast. Her last owner, an American better endowed with dreams than the stamina to live them through, had abandoned his plans of a westbound circumnavigation in a South Atlantic gale a year or two ago. He limped into the first haven he found in the refuge of the Plata and flew home to Florida within days, leaving his boat for sale in the hands of a local broker.
That was how Hawker knew of the Sleipnir. The Playa Brava agent had listed her with his office at the beginning of last summer. At US$30,000 they both knew she was optimistically overpriced, but the Uruguayan was picking up a caretaker fee of $150 a month, paid regularly in solid US currency. He was in no hurry to sell as long as his far distant gringo client continued to pay, so there was more than a little regret in his voice when Hawker had called him a few days ago – with Grivas listening to every word – to announce that he had a cash buyer. No negotiation, no names, no paperwork and he’d be over to pay in cash and personally pick up the boat. The Uruguayan understood perfectly.
Grivas had the money, three hundred crisp green US$100 notes, in a briefcase in a locker aboard the Bertram. He had helped Hawker to convince Anaya the expenditure was worth it because Hawker had convinced him the boat was close to perfect for the plan. The size was right. The condition of the hull and fittings was fit for purpose. And most importantly of all, the American, with some kind of misguided sense of heritage, had never changed her port of registration. Sleipnir of Isle of Man was still a British vessel.
By the time the crew arrived for the mid-morning rendezvous Grivas had arranged with Gaffney, Hawker had paid the broker, opened the boat up to air two years of mustiness out of the interior, drained and refilled the fuel and water tanks. He could have had Grivas’ crewman help him to load some provisions and bend the headsail on the forestay in preparation for the trip across to Buenos Aires, but he thought it was time the Irishmen did some work.
They arrived in Gaffney’s green Mercedes driven by Sean/Juan and Hawker felt pity for them. The road from Montevideo twists and writhes its way along the coast for most of its 130 kilometres. With a reasonably sane driver, it can be two hours of coastal cruising. With Sean/Juan it would be an hour and a half of tortured terror.
O’Hara was in the front. Linda was in the back sandwiched between Sullivan and Kreuzer, who looked sheepish.
‘Where’s your friend Gaffney?’ Hawker called as they stepped and stretched out of the car. He still had Sleipnir tied up at the fuelling dock, conveniently adjacent to the car parking zone.
‘He’s not coming,’ Sullivan called back. ‘Still has a bit to do on that paperwork you needed.’ Then dropping his tone as he came over and crouched close to where Hawker was coiling the fuel line, ‘The bloody passports are an almighty pain in the arse. He needs another couple of days to get all the stamps in order if you insist on that much detail.’
Anaya, through Grivas, had contracted this whole operation out to Gaffney. They were relying on his resources, no matter how shady, to supply passports for everyone stamped with a succession of entry and exit visas for a list of ports Hawker had given them. He had plotted an imaginary route for the yacht that had them leaving England two years ago, sailing via the Canary Islands to Cape Town in South Africa, then long stays in Perth and Sydney in Australia and finally Auckland in New Zealand. It roughly followed the wake of the old wool clippers, the kind of quixotic cruising adventure that Hawker estimated a Royal Navy officer would accept without too much question. He had already begun a ship’s log in his own handwriting, adapting details from the logs of Chichester and some of the Whitbread Round-the-World racers. It would not stand up to forensic scrutiny, Hawker knew, but he was gambling that the log with passports as supporting documents would be taken at face value, even in the suspicious atmosphere of a warship in hostile waters.
‘The detail is essential to the mission,’ he said, ‘down to the last date, as discussed.’ He had earlier conceded a relaxation in his original brief to embrace a hurriedly concocted fiction of Kreuzer joining the crew in Sydney, which would at least simplify the demands in a doctored German passport. ‘I would have thought this kind of thing is all in a day’s work for you gangsters.’
‘So it is,’ Sullivan let the closing jibe slide and won a point in Hawker’s estimation for doing so. ‘But going around the bloody world is more than a one day job. And we’re doing it for five names, remember, including yours and whichever one of us you decide will be just a waste of bloody time and hard work. Gaffney wants Grivas to call him.’ He started off down the dock to where Grivas lounged in the aft cockpit of the Bertram.
Linda bounced down to the dockside, looking over the yacht with an experienced and enthusiastic eye.
‘Morning, Paul. Good boat. I’ll get the boys to start loading our gear aboard,’ her voice bubbled with excitement as she sniffed the sea air. ‘I can’t tell you how good it will be to go sailing again. But then, you probably know.’
She was dressed for the occasion in a thick blue woollen Fairisle pattern pullover and a pair of white square-cut cotton shorts. She wore blue Topsiders with white ankle socks and from where Hawker crouched at the fuel line, she presented a fine display of leg. She was still athletic and slim in the thighs, with a surprisingly good tan for a complexion so fair. In a way she looked a lot like Anne.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ Hawker stood up to look her in the eyes. ‘We’re only going as far as BA on this trip. I’m taking three only beyond there, and I have to tell you you’re on the bottom of the selection list.’
‘Because I’m a woman?’ She flared like a tabby cat, the copper red of her hair seeming to deepen as her cheeks flushed hot with anger. ‘Because I was once a good screw? Let me tell you, buster, I can handle myself as well as any of those meatheads I came here with. Better! You take away my chance to go on this mission for a piss-poor reason like that and I’ll …’
‘Linda, you don’t even have the faintest idea of what you want to get yourself into.’
‘I know it’s important to the cause my man died for. That’s enough. I don’t give a God damn what we have to do or what your cause is.’
‘I don’t have a cause,’ he said simply.
‘Then what in the hell are you doing here?’
‘You’ll find that out only if you’re in the three. After there’s no going back for anyone.’
‘Believe me, Paul,’ she was now calm and cold. ‘I don’t want to go back.’
She turned and barked an order in Spanish that had Sean/Juan jumping to unlock the Mercedes boot and then she was snapping at O’Hara and Kreuzer like a dog at the heels of a pair of reluctant oxen.
They carried bundles of duffel bags from car to boat without a word. O’Hara was in the sullen funk Hawker now recognised as his normal setting. Kreuzer carefully avoided coming near Hawker and turned quickly away from any eye contact, despite sunglasses so dark that they rendered his eyes invisible.
Grivas and Sullivan walked over to the public phone booth by the wall of the yacht club. What they had to discuss with Gaffney was too sensitive for open air waves.
Hawker called to Kreuzer and O’Hara, now aboard Sleipnir stowing the bags.
‘Get the Number One genoa on deck and bent on to the stay and be quick about it.’ He said
no more. Now he would start to find out how good they really were.
He got Linda to help him stow a few victuals. Not much, some eggs and meat in the ice box, some vegetables and fruit, bread, milk and coffee. Enough for one or two days.
They were ready to go by the time Grivas and Sullivan walked back to the dock.
Kreuzer had shown he knew his way around a foredeck. He and O’Hara had efficiently brought the sail through the fore hatch and had it sitting in a neat long roll along the port rail, sheeted and ready to be hoisted.
‘We’ll go today as planned,’ Grivas announced from the edge of the dock. ‘I can arrange a diplomatic courier to pick up the documents when Gaffney has them ready. None of you need passports now in any case because you will never officially be in Argentina.’
If he was fishing for a reaction, he got it. Kreuzer, O’Hara and Linda all tensed slightly but all too visibly. It was their first solid hint of the league of the game they were getting into.
Grivas continued, ‘As an officer of the Argentine Navy I am honour bound to warn you that the mission Capitán Hawker plans to lead is a military operation of the highest risk. You would be operating for my government as, what is the word? Mercenaries. But I must also warn you that we offer you no military protection. We will deny all knowledge of you if we must.’
He paused to be sure they each digested his words.
‘That is as much as I can tell you now. I understand that you have volunteered for this within your own organisation. I have discussed the matter with Mr Gaffney, and he agrees that you should be allowed the final right to withdraw at this point. This I now offer for your consideration between now and when we cast off. From that moment you are and will be irrevocably committed.’
The effect was like an electric shock. Hawker was as amazed as anyone else because the explicit agreement between Anaya and Gaffney was complete secrecy until after the team was set. Too late now.
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