He couldn’t have been more than seven when he had first seen the film. Now, staring down at the boat, he had an almost overwhelming feeling that he had lost something, and that there was no way he would ever get it back. This might be the real African Queen in one way, but in another it was no more than an echo of the real thing. The film’s final scene on the German boat flashed through his mind, and then his marriage to Penny on that rainy day in Dorchester.
He turned away from the boat. ‘Let’s eat,’ he told the waiting Cafell.
Russell lay awake, listening to the steady hum of the air-conditioner and the random song of the cicadas. It was gone three in the morning, and the excess of booze which had put him out like a light had refused to leave him in this blissful state. His mouth felt like someone had filled it with sand, but he couldn’t persuade his legs to go and fetch him a long, non-alcoholic drink.
He was feeling sorry for himself. And sorry for himself that he was feeling sorry for himself.
A racking cough erupted in his throat, and finally forced him up off the bed and into the kitchen. He took the half jug of fresh mango juice out of the fridge and drank straight from it. It was far too sweet, but it soothed his throat. Russell wiped his lips with the back of his hand and sat down in the nearest chair.
Another month of this, he thought, and I’ll be drinking as much as that bastard Bodin. And probably forgetting to suture some kid’s artery.
There was no getting round it – he had to get out of this place. Up until the previous Friday he had been doing a fair job of convincing himself that he had a duty to stay and help Emelisse. An attempted escape, he had kept telling himself, would be selfish as well as dangerous.
The girl’s death had not destroyed the argument, but it had certainly weakened it. If he could get away, and expose this place for what it was, there would be an outcry. It wouldn’t matter a damn how many influential friends Joutard had in Port au Prince – someone would close him down. And there would be no more teenagers dying on Bodin’s operating table.
That was the optimistic view. Russell took another swig of the mango juice, and stared at the wall. A pessimist might predict that Joutard would react to the threat of imminent closure by liquidating all his human assets in one fell swoop. And become the first millionaire bone salesman.
Russell looked at the floor. He couldn’t make a break for it without offering to take her along, even though he was ninety-nine per cent certain she would refuse. ‘No, make that a hundred per cent,’ he murmured out loud. She couldn’t leave her orphans to the mercy of Joutard, Calderón and Bodin.
So how could he? ‘Self-preservation,’ he told the floor. If he didn’t escape, then sooner or later he was going to die here. And so, in all likelihood, were the others. If for some reason the boom came down on the enterprise there was no way Joutard was going to be handing out fat redundancy cheques and gold watches for devoted service. In fact the logical way to close this business down was to sell off first the patients and then the doctors, organ by organ, bone by bone. Two birds with one scalpel – they would be making money out of destroying evidence.
No, he was going to get out, or at least have a shot at it. But he wouldn’t tell her yet, not until he was ready.
Next morning the Slipstream Queen was already twenty miles south of the Keys when the appointed time for the transmission from Poole arrived. This was deliberate on Marker’s part – being out on the ocean, away from prying ears, would make it possible to conduct a normal conversation with the CO.
In fact there was not much to say. Colhoun approved of their plan of action, such as it was. ‘The next step will be the tricky one,’ he advised, ‘depending of course on whether you find out anything. If you do, then one of the most difficult decisions we’ll have to take is how much to tell the Americans.’
Cafell raised an eyebrow, but Marker immediately knew what he meant. ‘Russell’s just a name to them,’ he agreed.
‘Exactly. Assuming he’s alive, I want you to have at least one stab at getting him out of the firing-line before our friends go in with all guns blazing.’
‘Agreed, though at the moment I have my doubts as to whether we will find out anything.’
‘Take it as it comes,’ Colhoun said tritely. ‘The “famous frigate”, by the way, will be waiting for you tonight, from 19.00 hours, at . . .’ He reeled off a series of nautical coordinates, which Cafell took down. ‘That’s about thirty miles west of our friend’s treasure hunt,’ he added. ‘They have a submersible for you, an electric torpedo, a couple of Kleppers, and the guns you asked for. And they’re not going to wander far in the next week or so, just in case . . .’
‘Our own frigate on call,’ Cafell murmured to himself.
After the connection had been broken, he and Marker studied the relevant chart once more. A cross marked the location of the Tiburón Blanco. The question was where they should drop their own anchor.
‘If we’re pretending to be fishermen then almost anywhere will do,’ Cafell said, ‘but if we’re in the diving business, then we should be somewhere above the edge of this reef.’ He ran a finger along the undersea contour line.
‘Fishing’s a better idea,’ Marker said. ‘If they see us in diving suits they may start looking for us under their boat.’
‘OK, then it’s just a matter of how far off we want to be.’
‘Far enough not to make them suspicious, close enough to be able to see something. A mile sound too far?’
‘Slightly. Those binoculars aren’t that good. Make it a thousand yards.’
‘We don’t need to check their nose-picking style.’
‘We don’t know what we want to check. If we’re as careful as the Yanks must have been we’ll end up with what they got – which was nothing.’
Marker grimaced. ‘Maybe there’s nothing to get. But OK, a thousand yards. Which direction?’
Cafell thought about it. ‘South is the obvious bet – between them and the sun. But . . .’
‘To anyone with a suspicious mind that’ll look a bit too calculated.’
‘Yeah. West is the next best bet.’
‘Let’s go with that.’ Marker straightened and yawned.
‘I’ll get the tub moving again,’ said Cafell, moving across to the controls. ‘Why don’t you make us some more coffee?’ he added over his shoulder.
Marker eyed his partner’s bare back, bare legs, and the hideous Bermuda shorts which filled the space in between. It was as if some deranged fashion designer had finally found the secret of how to use every clashing fluorescent colour known to man in a few square inches of cloth.
‘You do look the part,’ Marker admitted.
‘The dashing captain or the keen fisherman?’
‘The rich prat.’
The sun was almost at its zenith when they had their first sighting of the Tiburón Blanco, a dot on the distant horizon, in the gap between the thin lines which marked the two Muertos Cays. The two boats were not alone on the ocean: doing a slow 360-degree turn in the stern, Marker counted twelve others visible to the naked eye. True, most of them were in motion, but at least three seemed to be anchored for one reason or another in the shallow waters of the Cay Sal Bank. Establishing a presence within sight of Arcilla’s boat would not seem as automatically suspicious as they had feared it would.
Cafell took the boat slowly towards the position they had decided on, as if he was engaged in looking for the perfect spot. As they approached the more westerly of the two small and barren cays the water grew increasingly clear. Even so, Marker, leaning over the side of the boat as part of the same pantomime, could not make out the bottom. The slope beneath them was steep.
It was, Marker admitted to himself, a good spot for treasure hunting. A wreck that had somehow been snagged near the top of this undersea slope would only recently, with the advances in underwater research technology, have become accessible. Maybe Arcilla really had found a fortune in gold.
As Cafell cut the eng
ines he went forward to lower the anchor, and cast a casual glance over the flat blue sea towards the distant Tiburón Blanco. No doubt someone on board Arcilla’s boat had been watching them ever since they hove into view. And now it was clear that they were staying for a while the observation would become all the more intense.
‘If we’re not diving today we can have a beer,’ he told Cafell.
His partner obliged, returning from the galley with a couple of bottles. The two men settled into canvas seats in the shade of the awning and appreciatively sipped at the ice-cold beers. Marker had his back to the other boat, Cafell his profile.
‘Let’s hope they don’t have a telescopic microphone,’ Marker muttered.
‘So what’s the next step?’ Cafell asked.
‘We fish for a while. Then you can head indoors and start taking a closer look at them. After half an hour you can come back out with a couple of microwaved meals, as if you’ve been cooking.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
They finished the beers, collected two more cans, and set themselves up in the stern with the simplest fishing rods they could find among the boat’s ample supply. Cafell had not fished for many years, and his enthusiasm for the sport was not much greater than Marker’s, who had never held a rod in his life.
The fish didn’t seem to realize this, and each man caught a sizeable specimen within the first half hour. They threw them contemptuously back into the sea, had another apparent can of beer – Cafell filled two empties with water – and laughed uproariously at non-existent jokes. A couple of bikini-clad beauties, Marker thought, would have completed the impression they were trying to create.
Cafell got up to go inside, and, with a theatrical drunken stumble, disappeared from view. He walked through the lounge area and into the galley, where the steam vent had been chosen as the best available observation point. He collected the sheet of gauze veil from the table, and wrapped it around the telescope. This would remove the chances of tell-tale reflective flash with hardly any hindrance to his vision. Kneeling on the counter, he made himself as comfortable as possible and applied the telescope to one of the vent’s narrow apertures.
At first he could see only empty sea and sky, but a slight shift to the left brought the Tiburón Blanco into view. It more than filled the telescope’s field of vision, and Cafell could read the name painted on the bow without difficulty. Behind it, the floating helipad hardly seemed to move in the water.
The boat itself was big, but its lines were graceful enough. Examining it from bow to stern, Cafell counted five men in view, all of whom looked Hispanic. Two of them, one wearing a captain’s cap, were talking together in the enclosed bridge; another two, both wearing diving suits but bareheaded, were sitting in the stern taking it easy. Beside them, but not apparently part of their conversation, another man sat with a pair of binoculars around his neck and a shoulder holster draped loosely across one shoulder. As Cafell examined him, the man picked up the binoculars and took a cursory look across the water at the Slipstream Queen.
Cafell froze, but if the man had seen anything significant he gave no sign of it. He let the binoculars dangle once more against his matted chest and lit a cigarette.
This scene remained basically unchanged for the next half hour, and Cafell was about to abandon the observation for lunch when a flurry of movement in the water below the other boat caught his eye. Almost immediately a long, dark shape rose up into view – the submarine.
It was about twenty feet long, and cylindrical. Two bulbous growths had been added: one where the conning-tower on a larger submarine might have been, the other at what was presumably the bow end. This was divided into two large convex windows, which gave the whole craft an insect-like air. There were also large windows in the flanks, through which Cafell could see movement.
Four of the five men on deck were now looking down over the side, while the fifth had resumed scanning the Slipstream Queen through his binoculars. A hatch swung open in the top of the bulb on the roof, and a man in a diving suit clambered out through it, swung himself down on to the rungs welded into the side of the boat alongside, and climbed aboard. Another man followed him.
The central bulb had to be a small escape hatch, Cafell figured. Hence the diving suits. It was hard to imagine a craft better suited to treasure hunting.
Its two crewmen had disappeared inside the Tiburón Blanco, as had the two who had been relaxing. Even the man with the binoculars had vanished. They were all having lunch, Cafell guessed. He clambered down, found a couple of packets to microwave, and went back to the hatchway leading out to the deck. ‘Come and take a look,’ he said.
Marker followed him through to the galley, lifted himself up on to the counter and examined boat and submarine through the telescope. He was as impressed by both as Cafell had been. ‘I’d like to get a closer look at that submarine,’ he said. There were no markings to indicate its Soviet origin – only an outsize number three between the two observation windows on the side.
Nick Russell must have had a much closer view of it in the marina on Provo. But what could he have seen to provoke his own kidnapping?
The microwave pinged to announce lunch. The two men sat either side of the tiny table staring at the little plastic trays containing portions of Chicken Mediterranean on wild rice, carrots and broccoli, and raspberry cobbler. Cafell’s cobbler had oozed into the chicken compartment during the cooking process.
It didn’t taste bad. It hardly tasted at all.
Marker slid his tray into the rubbish container. ‘At least there’s no washing up,’ he said. ‘What do you think about paying them a visit?’
‘An announced visit?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What excuse are we going to use? That we want to borrow some sugar?’
‘I’ve heard worse.’
Cafell switched tack. ‘What’s the purpose of the exercise? What are you hoping to find out?’
Marker shrugged. ‘No idea. Something. Anything.’ He leant forward, arms on the table. ‘At least we’ll get some idea of who we’re dealing with. If they really are treasure hunting
‘They’ll be paranoid as hell. The guy watching us through the binoculars was carrying a gun . . .’
‘Suspicious.’
‘Not really. If they think they’re sitting on millions in gold bullion, then they would be idiots not to lay on some sort of protection for themselves, wouldn’t they?’
‘Yeah, OK. You don’t like the idea?’
‘Not a lot. Whatever excuse we make, it’s going to look like we’re snooping.’
‘If we went and introduced ourselves then at least they would know it wasn’t the US Coast Guard watching them.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
Marker sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just getting itchy.’
‘I know what you mean. We’d better get back outside.’
They spent the afternoon alternating fishing with sleeping, keeping both a casual watch and an occasional telescopic eye on the Tiburón Blanco. The second crew took the submarine back down soon after two, and reappeared three and a half hours later, by which time the sun was falling rapidly towards the western horizon.
The two SBS men upped anchor and set a course towards it. An hour later, as the last light of the day hung like a luminous curtain across the western horizon, they made first visual contact with Her Majesty’s frigate Argyll.
Half an hour later Marker was climbing up the rope ladder that had been thrown down to him. The captain greeted him warmly and offered the hospitality of the mess, which Marker declined on grounds of security. The shorter the rendezvous was, the less chance it would be observed.
The Type 23 frigate’s winch was already lowering the Vickers Pisces submersible, and in the calm sea it only took a few minutes to attach the tow-line from the Slipstream Queen. The electric torpedo and Kleppers followed, straight on to the cabin cruiser’s stern deck. All that remained was the transfer of one large c
anvas bag, the contents of which Marker checked through in front of the captain. The two MP5s with extra ammo were there, and the two harpoon guns. But no stun grenades.
‘We don’t have much need of them out here,’ the captain told him.
‘Let’s hope not,’ Marker said equably.
The bag was lowered to Cafell in the cabin cruiser below.
‘Good hunting,’ the captain said, as Marker swung himself back over the side. ‘And one day perhaps you can let me know what it was all about.’
Marker grinned and disappeared from sight.
Three hours later they were tying up the Slipstream Queen at the Key Vaca dock, having already manoeuvred the Vickers submersible around to the shore side of the jetty arm. Though hardly hidden from prying eyes, it could not be seen from either the open sea or the adjoining properties.
The two men felt both exhausted and vaguely depressed. They might have all the equipment they had asked for, but what were they going to do with it? The day’s observation of the Arcilla boat had yielded no new information, and no plan had come to mind which might offer more. If the worst came to the worst they could always invite themselves aboard the Tiburón Blanco and see what happened, but such a tactic seemed unlikely to succeed, likely to be dangerous.
‘It might look better in the morning,’ Cafell said. ‘I’m going to bed.’
Marker stayed up another half hour watching a soap on TV, and then reluctantly followed suit. But sleep wouldn’t come, and he found himself drifting almost helplessly through angry memories of the last few days of his marriage. How long was this going to go on, he asked himself. Until he found someone else? Certainly after he slept with someone else – Tamara had been proof of that. He had never enjoyed such powerful sex in his life, and yet Penny seemed to loom even larger in his mind. He felt like an animal in a trap, whose struggles to break free only increased the pain.
Marine C SBS Page 14