Pirate: A Thriller

by Ted Bell

  Ambrose and Ross had cracked the case, true enough, but it was Ross Sutherland, along with Stokely Jones, who had brought the man to summary justice on a remote island in the Florida Keys.

  Congreve and his colleague had retained Yard offices in Victoria Street, but both were on semipermanent loan from Scotland Yard, enlisted in the service of Alex Hawke on an as-needed basis. It seemed to Congreve that Hawke needed him constantly, as the boy was always getting into the middle of one scrape or another.

  Ambrose, along with the Hawke family retainer, Pelham Grenville, had practically raised the child since the murder of his parents by drug pirates in the Caribbean. The boy had been just seven years old when he witnessed the murder. Congreve would never admit to it, even to himself, but his feelings toward young Hawke since their first meeting could reasonably be described as paternal.

  Ross inserted the key into the lock and swung the seamed and weathered oak door inward. He paused and looked over his shoulder before crossing the threshold. Long shadows of purple dusk fell over the quiet street. The only sound was a chattering of starlings. Stunted beeches stood on the bare soaked ground in front of a few houses. If there were neighbors here on Milk Street, they were all hidden away inside, electric fires burning in the grate, huddled round the supper table or the telly.

  “You didn’t sign that key out, did you?” Congreve asked Ross, switching on his powerful torch, and swinging it into the gloom of the front hall as he stepped inside.

  “No worries, Chief. I just borrowed the key from Evidence.”

  “Good lad,” Ambrose murmured his approval, glad as always to keep the Yard at arm’s length in these situations.

  Congreve stepped inside and flared his nostrils, processing the myriad odors of the place. Tobacco, primarily (Henry smoked like a fiend) and pungent old carpet, seldom if ever hoovered. Dusty furniture and draperies, boiled beef and cabbage and Brussels sprouts from the back of the house where the kitchen would be. There’d been a cat at one point, perhaps several, and possibly a canary if the moldy scent of soggy Hartz Mountain seed was any indication.

  Nothing surprising, really. No coppery scent of blood at any rate. No odd gases or poisonous chemicals.

  There was one thing. A scent most startling to his finely attuned olfactory organ, a very faint trace of some expensive perfume. Odd. A female visitor? Yes. Sophisticated, and of sufficient means to afford les parfums Chanel. It was the new one, he thought, not the one he loved, No. 5. No. Allure. That was it. So she was younger rather than older, fashionable, and well-heeled, to boot. Henry? She must have had the wrong house.

  Sutherland turned on his flashlight and beamed it up the narrow stairwell. Ambrose watched the beam’s ascent to the dark at the top of the stairs. The flowered stair carpet was worn and stained and gave off an unpleasant scent of age and dirt.

  There was heavy oak paneling and hideous Victorian sconces mounted on all four walls of the small foyer. He flicked the three brass toggles on the switchplate. Nothing. The electricity had been turned off. And probably the gas as well, Ambrose imagined. Most likely when the leaseholder had been informed by an MI5 agent investigating Bulling’s disappearance that his tenant was probably not returning to the premises in the foreseeable future.

  “There’s the lovely parlor,” Congreve said, swinging his flashlight’s beam to the right. By the cheery tone of his voice Sutherland could tell the clouds had at last lifted. The old bloodhound already had the scent, it seemed. “Why don’t you start in there, Ross? A good lesson in Gothic decor for you. I’ll work the kitchen down there at the rear and then we’ll go up and toss the boudoir as an ensemble. Good hunting. Bonne chance!” he said, and bounded off.

  Inspector Sutherland smiled at Congreve’s ironic French usage. Rumors were flying. Something was up with the damnable froggies and it wasn’t good. He began his inspection of the dreary sitting room knowing full well that MI5 had been there many times before him, had vacuumed and bagged and logged every microscopic particle, used black light and Luminol on the walls and furniture looking for blood spatter and done as thorough a job as was humanly possible. That, he thought with a grin, was usually where Ambrose Congreve came in. He was an inhumanly gifted forensic investigator.

  It was only a matter of time before Ross heard the familiar telltale exclamation from the kitchen at the rear.

  “A-ha!” came Congreve’s jubilant shout.

  Sutherland continued with his own search, turning over cushions and probing them with his fingers, tweezering the odd particle or fiber into a glassine envelope, giving Congreve time to relish and contemplate his own discovery, whatever it might be. They had their routines; they had worked side by side long enough to form them.

  Ten minutes later he heard the expected summons issued from the kitchen. “Ah, young Sutherland, would you mind joining me back here?”

  He found the Chief sitting at the kitchen table. On it were two mugs of tea and a small thin envelope made of silver mylar with a plastic zipper seal. Ambrose was drumming the fingers of his right hand upon the envelope and staring at a mustard-colored prewar ice box standing against the wall beneath the high rain-streaked windows. His mien was one of benign contemplation.

  Sutherland sat in the chair opposite and lifted the mug to his lips. It was tepid, as expected, brewed by Congreve with whatever hot water remained in the pipes. But it was welcome and he drank it down. Putting his mug on the table, he looked at Congreve and saw that the man’s gaze remained fixed on the half-century-old appliance.

  “What have you got here, sir?” he asked. Congreve turned and looked at him with his bright blue baby’s eyes.

  “An enigma,” Congreve said, rolling the end of his waxed mustache between two fingers.

  “Ah. One of those.”

  “Not an enigma, really. The Enigma. I am considering the Nazi cipher machine your Royal Navy chaps found aboard that sinking U-boat seconds before she went down. The one that saved England’s bacon. You do know how they cracked that one? Figured out the Nazi encryptions embedded in that infernal machine?”

  “Crossword puzzle geniuses, wasn’t it, sir? Psychics? Mind readers? Something like that. All gathered down at Bletchley Park, as I recall, trying to crack the code. And we did, too.”

  “It wasn’t a code, Sutherland. Codes substitute whole words. The Enigma substituted individual letters. It was a cipher machine.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “And it wasn’t British codebreakers who cracked it, the opinions of assorted dime novelists to the contrary. Polish mathematicians cracked the Enigma, Sutherland. They’d begun intercepting the German Enigma transmissions in Poland in the early twenties. Poles found mathematical techniques could attack the problem of finding the machine’s message key. By exploiting the Nazis’ cryptographic error in repeating the message key at the start of each transmission, they—”

  “Fascinating stuff indeed, sir, but—”

  “I was just thinking that perhaps one of the reasons I’ve been able to offer some assistance to Alex Hawke all these many years is our complementary skills. On my end, my absolute hatred of mathematics. I like logic well enough, but numbers, no thank you. Alex is quite good with numbers. You have to be, I suppose, to fly an airplane as well as he does. Celestial navigation or what have you.”

  “Chief—”

  “Warm, hot-blooded mysteries are what ring my bell, Sutherland. Human mysteries. Like that one over there on the floor at the base of the freezer. That puddle of water. The machine started defrosting some time during the early morning hours. So, the electricity was on until then. Just shut off this morning. Which is why your MI5 chaps missed this little silver envelope. Someone pulled the plug about, oh, six and one-half hours ago. Who? Why?”

  “You found that envelope in the freezer?”

  “I did. Inside a defrosted crown rack of lamb, to be precise. In the center of the thing, under a mess of jellied madrilene. Fairly clever of Henry, if you must give the devil his due.”
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  “Good work, sir! Let’s have a look.”

  “In due time. A man like Henry Bulling has three lives, Sutherland. Many men do, I suppose.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes. There is his public life, you know, the facade, the persona he dons every morning in his shaving mirror before sloughing off to his sad cubby at the embassy. A chimera. And then there is his private life. Much of that can be adduced by simply observing the artifacts in this house. These chairs, for instance. There is a dark, Gothic cast to that mind, isn’t there, Inspector Sutherland?”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “And then there is his third life.”

  “Yes?”

  “His secret life.”

  “You mean the envelope?”

  “Yes. Please open it.”

  Sutherland picked the thing up with thumb and forefinger and slid the plastic zipper open.

  “It’s a DVD disc, sir. Two of them. Unmarked.”

  “Yes. That’s what it felt like to the touch. You have one of those laptop computers in your murder bag, I believe.”

  “Back in a flash, sir.”

  Ambrose sipped his tea, contemplating the enigma that was Henry Bulling, keen with anticipation as to what might be encoded on the discs. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be prize-winning dahlias.

  “Here you are, sir. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Ross inserted the first disc into the small Sony laptop, and Congreve heard the faint whir as the thing spooled up. Both men leaned forward as the screen came to life.

  “It appears to be a very large oil refinery, sir,” Sutherland said, disappointed that the image was not salacious or at the very least intriguing.

  “Go to the next one,” Ambrose said.

  “Same refinery, different angle.”

  “An infamous French refinery, Inspector. Can you zoom in on this area here? The small sign above this lorry?”

  Sutherland used the cursor to create a small shaded box on the area Congreve had indicated. Then he used the zoom to enlarge it.

  “A-ha,” Ambrose said, “the center of the storm. Our Henry may have gotten in a little over his head here. This is juicy stuff indeed. Keep clicking.”

  “I’m not with you, sir.”

  “Oil is a very hot topic these days, Sutherland. This is the famous Leuna oil refinery, built by the French and Germans in Eastern Germany. Operated by Elf Aquitaine, the largest corporation in France. Publicly owned. In reality, an extension of the French government. Leuna was at the center of a huge scandal involving the French Foreign Trade minister a few years ago. The infamous Monsieur Bonaparte.”

  “Right. Budget irregularities. Kickbacks to African countries, as I recall,” Sutherland said, excitement starting to color his voice. He continued to scroll through the disc, which contained countless scenes of pipelines, tankers, and the like.

  “That’s it. A tawdry romance involving Bonaparte and his German counterpart.”

  “That German shipbuilder. Giving African politicians cash for every barrel extracted.”

  “Ah, yes, our old friends, the French and the Germans.”

  “The new Europe,” Sutherland said, looking up at his superior.

  “Don’t forget the Iraqis,” Ambrose said. “Billions traded hands illegally. The oil-for-weapons transactions. France got oil. And cash, of course. Iraq got French Mirage fighter jets and restricted French nuclear technology and power plants. It was the biggest French scandal since the war. Now, what do you suppose our Henry is doing with pictures of French refineries in his freezer?”

  Sutherland clicked through to another photo. “Good lord.”

  “What?”

  “Look at this thing, sir. A bloody big supertanker. Never seen one half this size. Certainly has a head of steam, though.”

  “Yes, I was just noticing the size of that bow wave. Just leaving the Strait of Hormuz, it would appear. What’s her name there on the side? Can you make it out? Zoom in.”

  “The Happy Dragon, sir. Sounds more Chinese than French. She’s not putting out any smoke, sir. No visible stack at all.”

  “Nuclear? That’s an interesting notion. Let’s have a look at that second disc, shall we?” Ross said, ejecting the first and inserting the other. An image appeared, and this time he wasn’t disappointed. It was both salacious and intriguing.

  “Good heavens,” Ambrose said, looking carefully at the image. “Henry, you naughty fellow, what have you been up to?”

  Sutherland stared at the picture. It was a starkly lit amateur color photograph of some kind of fancy dress ball. Very grand, judging by the opulent interior design and a few famous faces from the tabloids. In the foreground, a very thin chap, all but naked, with shockingly bright orange hair. Plainly the infamous Cousin Henry. He was wearing some kind of choke collar. Not a few of the costumes seemed to involve leather and studded chokers.

  The other end of the leash was in the hand of an extraordinarily beautiful Oriental woman, a peroxide blonde wearing nothing but a smile, high-heeled shoes, and a black leather bustier. He clicked to another image, then another. The woman smiled back from each photo.

  “She is rather exquisite,” Sutherland said.

  “Bianca Moon is her name,” Ambrose said, leaning forward to examine her more closely. “Not to be confused with her twin sister, Jet. A very senior Whitehall chap came a cropper in Bianca’s company. One of Her Majesty’s closest aides. He fell in love with her. The daughter of a high-ranking official in the Chinese PLA. A spy, in fact. Worked for something called the Te-Wu. Chinese secret police. The tabloids all called her the ‘China Doll.’ I’ve always wondered what became of her.”

  “What on earth is the China Doll doing with your cousin Henry Bulling?”

  “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” Ambrose said, his keen blue eyes sparkling with satisfaction at his little joke. It wasn’t a joke at all. He knew very well what Henry and the beautiful Chinese woman were up to and it was certainly no good.

  “Good one, sir,” Sutherland said.

  “Hmm, yes, isn’t it? It would appear the chinless wonder has given us the Chinese connection at last. Do you see that bottom portion of a large painted picture portrait in the upper right of the photo? Mostly gilt frame, but you can make out the hem of a blue silk gown and one silk-slippered foot.”

  Sutherland leaned forward, peering at the image. “Yes. You mean this section here.”

  “Hmm. A rather famous portrait, Sutherland. John Singer Sargent’s study of the great beauty of her age, Lady Cecily Mars. It still hangs in the Great Hall at Brixden House. Lady Mars’s great-granddaughter, Diana, lives in the house now, I believe.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it. A ‘stately,’ I believe. Just west of Heathrow, isn’t it? One of Britain’s more celebrated country houses, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Quite right. Bit more notorious than stately, from what I’ve heard, however. Brixden’s been the scene of many wild nights, orgies and the like, according to what one hears. Somehow, the current Lady Mars has managed to keep the whole unsightly mess out of the papers. She’s quite something, from all you hear.”

  “Have a look at this one, Chief Inspector,” Sutherland said, looking at one of the seamier photos from Henry Bulling’s private collection.

  “What is it?”

  “What are they doing with that demitasse spoon?”

  “Good heavens!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cannes

  “GET THIS MAN TO SICKBAY,” HAWKE SAID TO A YOUNG crewman, stepping from the bobbing Zodiac onto the floating dock extending from Blackhawke’s stern hangar bay. “His pulse is irregular. Malnourished. And he’s dehydrated. Check for fractures, left wrist specifically.”

  Stokely stood on the gently rolling deck with what was left of Harry Brock cradled lightly in his arms. The broken man was out cold, his head lolling against Stoke’s broad chest. Stoke was broad all over. Hawke liked to say Stoke was as big as your average-sized French armoir
e. Maybe. Stoke had seen a couple of French armoires in his day and hadn’t been all that impressed.

  “I think he’s sound asleep,” Stoke whispered, lowering Brock carefully to the waiting stretcher. “Probably had him down in the sleep-deprivation spa for a few days. Had the boy on that alfalfa diet. Shoots and leaves. You can’t help but lose weight, you on that program.”

  Hawke looked at Stokely and shook his head at the big man. Ex–Navy SEAL, ex-NYPD, Hawke couldn’t remember how many scrapes the man had bailed him out of, but each one of them had been a special moment. Beginning with that very suspicious warehouse fire in Brooklyn, when New York Detective Sergeant Stokely Jones, Jr., had carried an unconscious Alex Hawke down six flights of burning stairs. Hawke had been the victim of a kidnap gone bad. After refusing to pay his own ransom, he’d been bound by his Colombian abductors and left to die on the top floor of the deserted warehouse.

  “No worries, Skipper, we’ll take good care of him,” said one of a pair of young Aussie sickbay orderlies, stepping forward. “Ship’s surgeon is standing by, as ordered. How about yourself, sir? Nasty cut below that left eye.”

  Hawke swiped at his face with the back of his hand and was surprised to see it come away bright red. No memory of the wound.

  “Tell commo to put me through to Langley, please,” Hawke said to the nearest crewman. “The director. Secure line. Straightaway. Five minutes. I’m going to my quarters.”