Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  Two women, he thought sleepily. Two men in a boat. Two submarines. The number three on the side.

  Marker jerked himself up on to his elbows. That was it! That was how they did it. He levered himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed and reached for his shorts. He thought about waking Cafell but decided there was no point.

  It was about five in the morning in Poole. He collected the keys to the boat, and walked across the sun terrace and up to the path which led to the jetty. The slimmest of crescent moons had risen in the last hour, and was throwing a thin line of yellow-cream light across the rippling water.

  He recovered the PRC 319 from the locker in which it had been stowed, and climbed on to the cabin cruiser’s roof. After getting an acknowledgement from the duty officer he applied his right index finger to the little keypad for several minutes, watching the letters slip past in the liquid crystal display. He told Colhoun what he had guessed, and suggested one possible source of confirmation. Finally, on the working assumption that he had guessed right, he asked the CO for another PRC 319, and a new, more specialized piece of equipment, to be flown out from England as soon as possible.

  He then depressed the key which transmitted the message in a single burst, carefully refolded the antenna, and packed up the small set.

  He didn’t go in immediately, preferring to sit awhile on the cabin cruiser’s roof, staring out along the narrow swathe of moonlit ocean. For the first time in several days Marker felt a sense of well-being within himself, and he was not about to waste it in sleep.

  10

  Cafell took one look at his partner and wondered what had happened. Marker had not only made breakfast – fruit juice, pancakes, waffles and coffee – but had also shaved for the first time in four days. Since his last meeting with the Arcilla woman, in fact. He even had a smile on his face.

  ‘What are you looking so cheerful about?’ Cafell asked, picking up a glass of orange juice.

  ‘Do you remember that moment on the SC1 course when they remind you that it’s an officer’s duty to have brilliant inspirations?’

  ‘No. You just made it up.’

  Marker grinned at him.

  Cafell sighed and reached for the maple syrup. ‘You’ve had one, I take it.’

  ‘Let me ask you a question. Why would someone paint a large number three on something they only have one of?’

  Cafell thought about it, his fork poised above the pancake. ‘Good question,’ he said. His eyes widened momentarily. ‘Are you suggesting they have three of them?’

  Marker smiled. ‘No. You’re looking at it the wrong way round.’

  Cafell inserted a wodge of pancake between his lips and chewed. ‘I don’t. . .’ he began to say, then his eyes widened again.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marker said. ‘They have two of them, and they both have the same number. The whole point of the number is to make anyone watching believe that they’re seeing the same submarine. As long as no one sees both submarines at once . . .’

  ‘It’s a great idea, but what proof do you have?’

  ‘Absolutely none. But it fits, doesn’t it. Who would know? There’s only the Russian who brought them out here, and he got conveniently blown away . . .’

  ‘And maybe that’s what Nick Russell saw, that evening in the marina. Maybe someone overheard him talking about it in the bar. Or maybe someone saw him under the boat – that must be where they keep the second one.’

  ‘Maybe. You remember Thunderball?’

  ‘I saw the film.’

  ‘Well, in the book – it must be in the film – the big villain’s boat has an underwater hatch. Bond nearly got eaten by a barracuda checking it out.’

  ‘Sounds familiar. But our chum Fidel would need a hell of a big hatch to take that sub of his. And if he has one then what could Russell have seen?’

  ‘Good point. I hope you’re right, because according to the master plan we need access to both subs.’

  ‘Ah,’ Cafell said, ‘the master plan. Are you going to fill me in on the details by any chance?’

  Marker looked at his watch. ‘In a bit.’ The boss should be coming through in a few minutes. I called him last night with a couple of requests.’

  ‘I see,’ Cafell said, following Marker out on to the terrace and watching as he prepared the PRC 319 for reception. ‘Did anything else happen while I was asleep?’

  ‘One of those supermodels came round to see you – I didn’t get her name. I told her you couldn’t be disturbed.’

  Cafell laughed.

  Letters started marching across the liquid crystal display.

  Marker acknowledged and waited for the Poole operator to send Colhoun’s reply.

  ‘Two, repeat two, submarines,’ it began, ‘missing Murmansk naval research. Fifty per cent reliable technical estimates suggest range 200 miles, subsurface max speed twenty knots. Items requested arrive Miami 18.15 hours. Contact airport FBI office Jim Brandon. Do you require reinforcements?’

  Marker gave Cafell a questioning look.

  ‘Not yet,’ the younger man decided.

  ‘Agreed,’ Marker said, and sent the appropriate reply.

  ‘So you were right,’ Cafell said, as he watched him pack up the set.

  ‘You doubted me?’

  ‘The thought did cross my mind that you’d got everything confused with some film you’d seen.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  ‘So how about telling me the master plan? I already know what my role will be – I’ll be doing the thinking, right?’

  ‘Something like that. I . . .’

  ‘Incidentally,’ Cafell went on, ‘I find those estimates hard to believe, particularly the speed. Our little beauty can hardly manage half that.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why Arcilla went to such trouble to get hold of them.’

  ‘Yeah. And there’s not much call for speed in treasure hunting . . .’ He stopped suddenly, having just remembered something. ‘What items have you requested?’ he asked Marker.

  ‘A second one of these,’ he said, tapping the radio. ‘And a tracking system . . .’

  ‘More James Bond.’

  Marker smiled. ‘Come and take a look at the map,’ he said.

  Cafell followed him down the jetty and on to the Slipstream Queen.

  ‘The way I work it out,’ Marker said, opening up the map, ‘the helicopter leaves Provo at around six-thirty in the evening – at least it has on its last two trips – picks up whatever it picks up en route and delivers it to the Tiburón Blanco sometime around eleven. The Muertos Cays are about seventy miles from here and another thirty or so from the mainland coast. At twenty knots the sub would have no trouble reaching either long before dawn.’ He looked up at Cafell. ‘So the radio’s for us, because today you’re taking the one we have to Frankie. The bugs are for Fidel’s two submarines. The idea being that when Frankie sends word that the helicopter has left Provo we take the Queen out ten miles or so and wait for a little dot to appear on our screen. And then we follow it to wherever it’s going.’

  Cafell grinned at him. ‘Now that’s what I call a master plan.’

  It was a hundred and ten miles to Miami, and Marker drove as fast as the traffic allowed, anxious that Cafell should not miss the only plane of the day to Providenciales.

  The fifty-mile section between Marathon and Key Largo, which they had only previously traversed by night, was as attractive as the Keys’ reputation claimed. Both ocean and bay were studded with pleasure boats, the motels seemed to strike the right balance between seedy nostalgia and soulless modernity, and the bright colours of the foliage blazed in the sunshine. Marker found himself thinking he would like to come back for a real holiday.

  Two-thirds of the way down Key Largo the highway took an abrupt turn to the left and headed out along a causeway towards the mainland. As the ocean receded from sight the scenery grew less interesting, with only scrub and telephone poles breaking the flat horizon.

  ‘OK,’ Cafell said. �
��Some questions. Do you know what the range of the tracking system is?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I seem to remember that it’s around thirty miles, but that may be optimistic.’

  Cafell drew a rough circle on the map which was balanced on his knees. ‘Even if you’re right, and assuming the sub will head for the US mainland rather than the Bahamas, we’ll have to narrow the angle a lot more than you suggested if we want to be certain of picking up the signal.’

  ‘OK,’ Marker said equably.

  ‘Which leads to another question. How are we planning to follow these guys, in the Queen or the Vickers?’

  ‘I think we have to play that by ear. If those estimates on the Soviet sub are even half right the Vickers is too slow to keep us in contact for more than an hour or so. And in any case, it only has a range of about seventy miles. We don’t want to strand ourselves somewhere with no way of getting back to the boat.’

  ‘Maybe one of us should stay in the boat. One man can handle those subs at a pinch.’

  ‘At a pinch, maybe. I’d rather we were both in the same boat – literally – when we get to wherever it is we’re going. It’ll give us more flexibility.’

  ‘You mean you want to jump out and have fun while I keep the motor running for you.’

  Marker smiled.

  ‘What about our gracious hosts?’ Cafell asked. ‘Do we tell them anything? They’re likely to be pissed off if we don’t.’

  ‘Only if they find out. And anyway, as of this moment we still don’t know that the trail will end on US soil.’

  ‘Right,’ Cafell agreed, as Marker sped past a camper in a no-passing section, ‘and in the meantime at least you’re giving their car a thorough test drive.’

  They reached the airport with fifteen minutes to spare, and Cafell went straight through the international departures gate, carrying only the PRC 319 in a plastic bag. Marker checked the time of his partner’s return from Provo and visited the British Airways desk for an update on the flight from London. It had taken off on time from Heathrow.

  He went back out to the car and sat behind the wheel, wondering how best to spend the next six and a half hours. He would rather have done Cafell’s job, but after the staged confrontation at the Ocean View hotel it didn’t seem sensible for him to have any more contact with Worrell Franklin than was necessary.

  ‘So go and see Miami,’ he murmured to himself. At least he wasn’t in a hire car, so the chances of being taken for a tourist and shot had to be better than fifty-fifty.

  He followed the signs for Downtown out of the airport and found himself driving down an eight-lane freeway towards the usual clump of high-rise towers. Marker had been to America twice before – for a whole summer as a sixteen-year-old, when his parents were touring with a Shakespearian company, and for a couple of weeks in California with Penny about halfway through their eight-year marriage. There was a lot he had liked, and a lot that he hadn’t. Sharing a concrete ribbon with a bunch of people who talked into their car phones as they swapped lanes at high speed came into the latter category. So did the idea of naming the damn thing the Dolphin Expressway. No dolphin of Marker’s acquaintance would have been seen dead on it.

  The clump of towers was appreciably nearer when an exit sign for Little Havana caught his attention. That was where Arcilla hung out when he was in Miami, which seemed to be most of the time. Marker took the ramp and dipped into his memory for the address which had been mentioned in the American briefing report. Calle Ocho, he remembered. Eighth Street. There hadn’t been a number.

  The street wasn’t hard to find. He drove slowly down it, staring out at the thronging pavements and impressive buildings. Little Havana was an apt enough name – it certainly bore no resemblance to any part of America that Marker had seen before. Several of the buildings clearly dated from the art deco era, but over this Anglo-Saxon skeleton the Cuban exile community had draped their own flesh and blood. The faces were all black or Hispanic, the atmosphere an aggressive blend of Mediterranean and Caribbean. The signs all seemed to be in Spanish. In fact the only English word Marker could see was ‘burger’.

  A car pulling out into the traffic directly in front of him opened up a parking bay. He pulled over, inserted a couple of quarters in the meter, and walked on in the same direction until he found a coffee bar with tables by the window. He bought a cup of coffee just to get a seat, and found it was the most delicious he had ever tasted. He ordered another, this time with a roast beef sandwich, and sat there watching the Cuban-American world go by.

  He was looking at the woman for a couple of seconds before he realized it was her. She had come out of a building on the other side of the street, and had stood outside the glass doors while the man with her finished saying something to someone inside.

  She was wearing a short, primrose-coloured dress, a wide-brimmed hat of the same shade, and brown thong sandals. Marker felt an involuntary spasm in his groin as he looked at her.

  He concentrated on the man. The photo they had seen at Poole hadn’t really done Arcilla justice. Though the face looked much the same he looked taller than Marker had imagined. And there was an air of confidence about the man which no photograph could reproduce. The clothes were both well chosen and beautifully cut. Crockett and Tubbs would have been proud to wear them.

  From Castro’s version of borstal to this must have been a hell of a long journey, Marker thought. He remembered a history teacher at school arguing that most of humanity’s woes could be traced to the widening gap between a caveman’s emotions and modern man’s ability to transform his environment. Mankind was still swinging a blunt club, only nowadays it was big enough to pulverize an entire rainforest.

  And maybe the same principle held true for Arcilla and his sister. Between their Cuban origins and the world they now moved in there was no natural meeting ground. Something somewhere had been bound to get warped.

  They were walking away. Marker slid off his stool and left the cafe intent on pursuit, but before he had gone ten yards the couple disappeared through the door of a restaurant on the other side of the street. For a moment he felt disappointed, but as he thought about it the full stupidity of trying to follow them became apparent. If she had recognized him there would have been no way he could have explained his presence in Little Havana. At best their whole cover would have been blown; at worst he would have been bundled into a convenient alleyway, killed, and thrown in a skip.

  In fact, coming to the area had been a mistake in itself. He was letting his cock do the thinking, rather than his brain. Feeling more than a little disappointed with himself, Marker walked quickly back to his car and took the first road heading east.

  He spent the rest of his allotted hours behaving like a conventional tourist, taking a leisurely stroll through the art deco splendours of Miami Beach before taking a siesta on the beach itself. The evening rush hour was worse than he had expected, and the British Airways flight had already arrived when he finally reached the airport. Cafell was waiting for him in the agreed bar, and reported no problems in delivering the radio to Franklin. The ex-SAS man, according to Cafell, had ‘looked like Fergie with a new toe to suck’. And he would be watching for helicopter departures from Arcilla’s villa each evening until further notice.

  The next job was to find the FBI office, which proved surprisingly simple. Agent Brandon, an enormous man dressed in white from head to foot, was expecting them, the bulky package prominent on his desk. Though obviously irritated by the fact that no one had considered it necessary to burden him with knowledge of what it contained, he signed the package over to them with no more than the usual surliness which Marker had come to expect from American law enforcers.

  They carried it down to the subterranean parking lot and inspected the contents. The PRC 319 looked identical to the one Cafell had just delivered, the tracking system much as Marker remembered it from the technical aids workshop he had attended a couple of years before. He was relieved to see that Poole had included instruc
tions for its use.

  They drove south once more, this time with Cafell at the wheel. ‘Are we going out in the Queen tonight?’ he asked, as they crossed the bridge on to Key Largo.

  ‘I’d say no,’ Marker said. ‘The first helicopter flight we know about was on a Thursday, and so was the second. It might just be coincidence . . . but if we assume the next one will be this coming Thursday, then tomorrow night seems a better bet for what we have to do. I’d like to be out all day, and give them the chance to get used to us being around. Sneaking up on them in the dark is more likely to make them wonder what the fuck we’re doing.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder that myself,’ Cafell murmured.

  It was just after two in the morning, and the compound on Tortuga seemed fast asleep. Russell was squatting underneath the trees outside his bungalow window, letting his eyes get accustomed to the dark. He could make out the silhouette of a guard standing in the ramshackle tower beside the gates, and there might well be sentries patrolling the outside of the perimeter wall, but within the compound no one seemed to be stirring.

  He put his fingers into the dirt and scraped them across his face for camouflage, wishing he had remembered to do this properly before he came out. Well, there was no time now. He started making his way towards the building which housed Joutard’s office, not using the path but setting a course which maximized the time spent in the darker shadows cast by the scattered palms.

  Outside the barracks which housed the male orphans several were curled up on mattresses. They looked younger in sleep, Russell thought, and told himself to stop being sentimental.

  The HQ building was almost directly in front of him now, the bare light-bulb glowing above the doors. Another light was glowing in the outer office where the night guard was stationed. The man was not in sight, but he was probably sitting at his desk, either dozing or reading one of the soft-porn cartoon books which were so popular among his colleagues.

  Russell continued on his way, using the barracks on his left to shield him from the guard tower as he circled around to the back of the office. From that position he advanced along its side to the right-front corner and squatted on his haunches in the shadows to wait.