Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Very thoughtful.’

  ‘She’s in berth F7. In the main marina at Cherbourg. You’ve got keys haven’t you? Not lost them?’

  ‘No, Tom. I’ve got my keys.’

  ‘Good. Where are you planning to go?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. I’ll check the tides and work it out from that. Be back in the Hamble within the week I should think.’

  ‘Nice. Hope the weather’s good for you. Piddled with rain half the time we were there.’

  Sam rang off. He felt better for having decided to go away. Now to find a crew. It wasn’t that he couldn’t manage the boat on his own – he’d often sailed solo – but he wanted company. Someone undemanding.

  Chrissie had never sailed with him. She’d always worried there’d be some incident or other that would make their relationship public. Not worth the risk, lover. Anyway, I’d be sea sick. The only boat they’d been on together was a Thames skiff last summer, soon after she’d returned from a two-year stay in Washington with her husband. During her time in America she’d had a really serious go at making the marriage work, she’d told him. But without any notable success. They’d found a deserted stretch of water somewhere near Goring, tied the painter to a tree root then made up for lost time among the cow parsley.

  Shit! They’d spent some good, stolen times together over the years. Later that same afternoon, he remembered, they’d rowed slowly past an isolated, half-timbered waterside cottage. I want it, she’d moaned. A gingerbread house. To be their love nest, she’d said. Somewhere to spend whole days and nights together instead of snatched hours in constant fear of discovery. It was then that he’d realised that despite the frailty of her marriage she had no intention of ending it. A husband and a lover was what she wanted.

  There had been other women during his liaison with Chrissie, particularly during her time away in America. Some he’d slept with, others he’d dated for their company. But thinking about them now, none came to mind as a potential crew for the next few days. And most of the men he knew had steady jobs from which they could never escape on weekdays. He began to resign himself to going alone. The Backgammon was an eight-year-old Moody 31 with rigging lines that ran into the cockpit to make single-handed sailing easier.

  He began to write a list of things to take. The boat was well-equipped. All he needed was clothes, a passport and some money. He pulled an almanac from the shelf in the living room to study the tide tables. He would listen to a shipping forecast and check the ferries. He was sure there was a daily sailing to Cherbourg at midday.

  Pottering around the flat getting together the things he would require felt good. Normality. It was what he needed. And there’d still be time for a pint in the pub.

  Then he pulled himself up short.

  ‘This is insane,’ he muttered to himself. ‘There’s a madman out there with a load of anthrax warheads – and I’m going bloody sailing!’

  10

  Tuesday, 1 October. Early morning.

  Iraq – the Task Two site west of Baghdad

  DEAN BURGESS’S NECK ached after a night wedged against the door of the Nissan in the least uncomfortable position he could devise. The atmosphere had become threatening overnight and this morning the inspection team had donned their UN blue hats and were keeping together in groups of no less than three.

  The first event that had cranked up tension yesterday was the empty-handed return in late afternoon of the security man whom Mustafa had sent to the village they’d passed to try to discover what was being built at this bleak desert site. Mustafa had abused him for his failure, clipping him round the head, before closeting himself in his communications vehicle for a full twenty minutes.

  When he’d emerged, he’d contrived a ludicrously artificial smile and, without a flicker of shame, announced that the building being constructed was a shelter for goats and that there had indeed been a few animal carcasses buried here earlier – victims of some unidentified sickness that had affected the villagers’ beasts. And now, with that little matter settled to everyone’s satisfaction, could they kindly call it a day and return to Baghdad before the sun went down?

  Hardcastle’s response had been curt. The site, he’d told Mustafa, was to be excavated fully. Every animal carcass they found would have to be thoroughly examined by his team, with samples being taken to the BMVC for further analysis.

  Mustafa’s artificial bonhomie had vanished as rapidly as it had appeared. Putting an angry hand over Burgess’s camera lens he’d insulted the UN team’s mothers, then accused Hardcastle of megalomania and obstructionism, threatening to lodge a protest about his behaviour with the UN in New York. Finally he’d stormed off, warning that if they didn’t leave the area voluntarily they would be forced out by the Republican Guard who were training here the next day.

  Undeterred, Hardcastle, who’d seen such tantrums many times before, had told his team to prepare for a stake-out. They’d re-parked the vehicles at dusk so the headlights could be shone onto the excavation site, then prepared for the night with food cooked on camping gas stoves. Pierre Latour had established a watch-keeping rota to ensure there’d be no nocturnal interference with the dig. Then, as the air temperature plummeted and the clear night sky became an explosion of stars, they’d locked themselves in their vehicles to snatch what sleep they could, propped against the windows and using their backpacks as pillows.

  Unable to sleep initially, Burgess had watched Mustafa’s men also preparing for the night, some huddled in their jeeps, others in a small tent. They were like the two armies at Agincourt, he’d thought, hunkering down before battle at dawn. And, like Henry V in the Shakespeare play, uncertainty over what lay ahead had turned his own thoughts to home.

  Not because of the desire for an uxorial embrace, but because of his guilt at not wanting one. He got his highs in situations like this, poised on the rim of a major crime. The anticipation of a sensational discovery gave a shot in the arm for his spirit which no quality time with wife and children could ever replace, however much he loved them. What he was feeling here confirmed everything Carole had thrown at him, of course. It was his job that occupied his mind ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time.

  He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do about the situation. But it hurt him to the quick to know that the way he wanted to lead his life was making Carole so deeply unhappy. And the kids? They were all over him when he was at home. Nine-year-old Patty with the same freckles her mother had had as a child and seven-year-old Dean Junior’s serious, thoughtful eyes. No sign of them being disturbed by his frequent absences. No. It was Carole he had the problem with.

  Some time after midnight, all thoughts of home had been burned from his brain by headlights piercing the blackness behind them. Two large military trucks loaded with uniformed soldiers had arrived to swell the ranks of the opposition. That was been the moment when Burgess’s uneasiness about Hardcastle’s manner with the Iraqis had turned to a grudging admiration. The Englishman had stood his ground like Churchill. Refused to speak to the newcomers. Refused to open the vehicle doors even when the guns came out. Eventually the soldiers had backed off. This morning, however, the military men were still there, a menacing presence, although with no apparent orders to remove the UN team.

  The mechanical digger Hardcastle had asked for, together with a reluctant local labourer, had finally arrived at the desert site an hour after dawn. Burgess watched now as the machine, driven by a terrified Bedouin enveloped in protective suit and mask, unearthed a fourth animal carcass, a dog this time, which it dumped unceremoniously at the edge of the pit next to two cows and a goat. Major Martha Cok, the Dutch vet, had taken charge of the dig, ordering non-essential personnel to keep well away and upwind. The rest of the team had erected awnings to protect themselves from the sun while awaiting developments.

  Burgess watched through binoculars. All of a sudden he saw that something different was happening. The vet had ordered the digger driver to halt his work, and was lifting her VH
F handset to the side of her mask.

  ‘Golf, this is Sierra Two.’ Major Cok’s voice, muffled by rubber.

  ‘Sierra Two, go ahead. Golf over,’ Hardcastle responded.

  ‘I’m stopping the dig for half an hour in order to collect samples. Over.’

  ‘Understood. D’you want some boxes brought over?’

  ‘Yes. Two containers please. Sierra Two out.’

  A Ghanaian biologist working as the vet’s assistant strode over to their vehicle to kit himself up in a suit and mask so he could deliver the hermetically sealed sample cases to the area of suspected contamination.

  ‘She’ll remove parts of the innards of these beasts,’ Hardcastle explained to Burgess. ‘Bits of the lungs probably. We’ll need to get them back to Baghdad pronto so they can give them a thorough analysis in the lab.’

  Burgess looked across to where the Iraqi minders were standing, silent and watchful, in the shade of a canopy erected by the soldiers who’d arrived during the night.

  ‘They sure look nervous as hell this morning,’ he whispered.

  ‘They certainly are,’ Hardcastle concurred, his head covered with an oversized blue floppy hat that gave him the appearance of an eccentric archaeologist.

  ‘But I can’t figure out whether they’re scared because they know what’s buried down there, or because they don’t know,’ Burgess added.

  ‘My thoughts precisely,’ Hardcastle concurred. ‘One thing I am certain of is that we’re on to something.’

  ‘No chance that village plague story could be true?’ Burgess queried. ‘Anthrax is endemic in cattle.’

  ‘Oh, come on! You saw Mustafa’s face last night,’ Hardcastle spluttered. ‘Not even he thought we’d swallow that load of old cobblers. No. My guess is he doesn’t know what’s down there because his superiors haven’t seen fit to tell him.’

  ‘But surely he’d have been told by now?’ Burgess protested.

  ‘Not necessarily. You see, Saddam may have split his weapons people into small cells. One group making the stuff, another testing it, with neither group knowing the identity of the other one. Like with his security people. There are several agencies as I told you yesterday, plus the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard – those, by the way, are the boys who showed up last night. Saddam tends to wheel them out when he’s expecting trouble.’

  ‘You reckon Saddam himself is being kept informed about what’s going on here?’

  ‘Nothing important happens in this country without his knowing about it. And my guess is, the reason these security people are so jumpy this morning is they’re scared as hell we will find something incriminating here and they’ll get the chop for failing to conceal it.’

  They turned their glasses back towards the pit which had grown to an area some twenty metres by ten, scooped out to a depth of one or two metres. Sand and stones had been dumped in a mound to one side, with the animal carcasses laid out on the other. The mechanical digger stood idle in front of it, its driver huddled in the cab waiting for instructions, its jib as motionless as a stone giraffe.

  Fifteen minutes later the vet and her assistant had finished their incisions on the dead animals and carried the sample containers back towards their vehicle, stopping at a point some distance away where they’d left decontamination equipment. They sprayed a bleach solution over each other’s protective suits and the boxes. Then they continued to their vehicle and locked the containers in a sealed cabinet.

  ‘My God!’ Martha Cok gasped as she finally joined Burgess and Hardcastle, pulling off her gloves and mask to reveal a bright red face dripping with perspiration. ‘Working in such conditions . . . terrible. Terrible.’

  ‘What can you tell us?’ Hardcastle pressed.

  ‘A little, only. It’s too soon. But it’s strange. The burning is quite superficial. Like they planned to destroy the cadavers by fire, then changed their minds and buried them instead. There’s nothing visible that tells me what they died of. The carcasses are several days, maybe weeks dead.’

  ‘And the deaths couldn’t be natural?’ Burgess checked.

  ‘Most unlikely. I can tell you already that it wasn’t cutaneous anthrax. That’s the most common endemic type in cattle. No sign of the pustules and rings of blisters you get with that. The lung sections I’ve taken may show something when we do the full analysis at the BMVC. If the inside of the lungs is a mass of haemorrhages it could point to pulmonary anthrax or botulinum toxin. But confirmation of anthrax would come if we found live organisms in the tissue. We’ll probably be able to work it out with the equipment we have at the BMVC.’

  ‘How soon to get a definitive answer?’ Hardcastle asked.

  ‘By tomorrow morning, I hope,’ she answered cautiously.

  ‘Good,’ Hardcastle whispered. ‘The sooner the better.’ He turned to Burgess and lifted one eyebrow.

  Burgess remembered what Hardcastle had told him in Bahrain about the British SIS report of a weaponised biological device having been smuggled out of Iraq. If true, it was just conceivable that this patch of sand had been the weapon’s proving ground and these animals the first of its many thousands of potential victims.

  The digger had started work again under the watchful eye of Martha’s Ghanaian assistant. As the spoil fell from the scoop, the cascade of debris was examined through binoculars by the weapons specialists on the UNSCOM team, searching for metal objects.

  Suddenly the engine cut. Burgess looked up to see the digger driver jump down onto the sand and back away from the pit, jamming the mask to his face. He turned and ran towards the security men huddled under their canopy. The last of the dust stirred up by the machine swirled away like tumbleweed.

  ‘Christ! Now what’s he uncovered?’ hissed Hardcastle. They pulled their masks on and hurried over to the pit.

  ‘Not too close,’ Martha warned. Unlike them she had on her full protective suit and went ahead towards the widening hole in the ground.

  Burgess switched on the camera and swung it round in a wide pan. He spotted Mustafa and one of the green uniformed Special Republican Guards marching towards the excavation.

  They reached the rim simultaneously. Martha Cok was down in the pit and raised an arm to warn them not to come closer.

  ‘Heavens!’ Hardcastle grunted. ‘Oh Lord!’

  Dean Burgess zoomed in to the half-buried creature the vet was standing next to. The camera pulled focus automatically. No cow, goat or dog this time. Although half obscured by sand, a swatch of red checked material was visible. Material that had once been a shirt. Inside it was the blackened, swollen torso of a man.

  11

  Late p.m.

  Cyprus

  PIER FOUR OF Limassol port was abuzz with activity. Flatbed trailers queued to take up position beneath one of the two huge hoists unloading forty-foot containers from the deck of the recently arrived Gibraltar-registered vessel. She’d been late docking because of bad weather near Rhodes and was due out again that same evening, heading back for Piraeus. The ship’s crew were in a hurry to get the job done, as were the dock workers, truck drivers and customs men.

  The container from Ilychevsk that was bound for Haifa and whose administrative document described its contents as defective fruit and vegetable juices was scheduled to break its journey here in Limassol for a couple of days, until another ship arrived to take it on the last part of its circuitous route back to Israel.

  The container’s papers had been processed without comment in the port office. Rather than pay for storage on one of the port’s huge quays, the shipping agent handling the cargo had gone for a cheaper option, moving it to a bonded yard on the edge of Limassol town. It was a routine process that raised not a single eyebrow.

  The truck carrying the container on its short journey to the storage yard stopped at the exit gates. The driver handed in his pink release paper and the vehicle was waved through. The bonded warehouse was less than five minutes’ drive away. Inside the secure compound a giant forklift
raised the container from the flatbed trailer and carried it into the warehouse building itself, setting it down in an area well away from the rest of the transiting cargoes. The container was on its own, in splendid isolation – except for one other identically sized box which had arrived a few hours earlier from Haifa.

  It was the end of the working day for the yard. No more cargoes due in or out until the following morning. The workforce gathered up their lunch-boxes and jackets and made for the gate. From now until dawn a night-watchman would be the only human presence at the yard. And if anyone were to ask him in the next few days about the duty period which lay ahead, he would report that nothing unusual had occurred.

  Seventy kilometres to the east of this Limassol container yard a much-delayed charter flight from Odessa landed at Larnaca airport with a full manifest of Ukrainian tourists on board, all of them frustrated and annoyed by the late start to their long-anticipated vacation. They filed through passport control to the baggage hall, grumbling that they should have been here six hours ago and that it would be dark before they reached their hotels and apartments.

  Four men pushed their way through the throng waiting by the carousels, each carrying holdalls containing all they would need for their short time on the island. The men, who had the demeanour of skilled manual workers, were travelling as a group but took care not to make it look that way as they passed through the customs barrier into the arrivals hall.

  Once outside in the open they stopped to get their bearings, then one by one crossed the service road to the car park as they’d been instructed to do. The man waiting to meet them was heavy-set and had a scar on his left cheek. He stood beside the Toyota minibus he’d rented in Limassol, waiting for the men to find him.

  ‘This is a bad situation,’ he cursed as they piled into the vehicle. ‘An hour ago they told me the flight had been postponed until tomorrow. I shit myself, I tell you.’

  He swung himself into the driving seat and propelled the vehicle towards the exit and on to the road for Limassol.