He felt happy and relieved to see the Bahamian sunshine flooding in through the airport windows. He was home now. He was walking with a slight limp, but the doctor had assured him that because it was little more than a flesh wound, there would be no lasting damage and he would be fine within a week or so.
A he walked through the arrival doors into the main lounge, he saw Helen in the crowd. Just the sight of her made his pulse quicken. She was searching the faces of the arriving passengers, her dark hair shimmering as she moved her head. Although Marsh had no luggage and had cleared customs before his fellow passengers, he was still caught up with those people emerging from other flights.
Suddenly her face brightened as she saw him. She thrust her hand in the air and waved furiously, then moved quickly towards the point where Marsh would come through into the main concourse. He wanted to sweep her into his arms but had to remember she had been widowed barely a week. He smiled and put his arms round her, kissing her warmly on her cheek.
Helen flung her arms around him.
“Oh, Marsh,” she said, “it’s so good to see you.”
She held him very tightly, so much so that he could feel her body pressing into him. It felt so comforting, so natural.
He pulled away and looked at her full in the face. He was aware of the general movement of people around them, most of them being met by loved ones, friends and relatives. How many, he wondered were arriving under the shadow of a death in the family?
“Helen, I don’t know what to say.”
She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t say anything.”
She turned, taking hold of his hand. “Come on,” she said, and together they walked out of the airport into the Bahamian sunshine.
It was two hours later that Marsh was through part of his rehabilitation. Helen had insisted that he came back to her villa so she could give him a meal and they could talk about the tragic events that had so swiftly overtaken them both and perhaps make up their minds what they would do.
He had enjoyed a hot bath followed by a cool shower, then a shave and a meal. It was never far from his mind that he was in Greg’s house, using Greg’s things. While he had been using the bathroom he had been constantly aware of the heady scent of Helen’s cosmetics; her soap, bath salts, talcum powder. It reminded him of the time once, years ago, when he had lived with a girl; those heady, lovely days of a golden youth.
They had finished their meal and Marsh was sipping his wine when Helen asked him what he was going to do. He didn’t want to spoil the moment by going into detail about the conversation he’d had with Francesini and Starling at the hospital, but he felt it was only fair that they, he and Helen, talked about what plans they would make about their own futures and that of the company. Whether they should continue as a partnership, sell up, that kind of thing. But first the question of what he had to do immediately had to be dealt with.
“I have to see Inspector Bain,” he told her. “No doubt he will want to question me about Greg and what happened. He is expecting me, isn’t he?”
“Tomorrow,” she told him. “He said he trusts you otherwise he would have been waiting for you at the airport.”
“I’m honoured,” he said. “Better than being wanted.”
“You are wanted,” she said suddenly. She lowered her eyes and looked into her hands. Marsh wondered if she had made a mistake: an unintentional statement. She lifted her head, her eyes looking directly at him as though she had reached a decision and was about to tell him something of great importance.
“Marsh, there’s something you should know.” She interlocked her fingers and stared down at her empty palms. “Greg and I were not really very close. Oh, I loved him once, but that was a long time ago.” She looked up and Marsh could see tears on her cheeks. “Don’t misunderstand me please, Marsh; you can’t share your life with a man and not lose something when the love dies and your life begins to break apart. And when he dies, it’s still painful. We were good friends once but lately…..” she paused, struggling to put into words what was in her mind. Marsh waited, knowing how difficult it must be for her. Helen straightened suddenly, as though summoning up the courage to carry on. Her voice softened when she spoke again.
“Marsh, when Inspector Bain told me that one of you had survived, I prayed that it was you.”
She dropped her face into her hands and burst into a flood of tears.
Marsh felt something uncanny surge through his whole body, almost like an electric shock. When Helen spoke those last words, she had been looking directly at him, saying with her eyes what lay deep in her heart. Her admission of her true feelings for him rendered him speechless, and he felt an embarrassing sense of guilt and shame that he was the one she had prayed for in such terrible circumstances.
He realised that Greg’s death had been the unkind release she had wanted and now she was ridding herself of the lie they had been living. Now he was dead and her true feelings for Marsh were out in the open. Helen would not have been callous enough to wish her husband dead, but now fate had intervened she could mourn him as a dear, lost friend and try to pick up the fragments of her shattered life.
Marsh stood up and walked round to the table to her. He put his hand on her arm and she stood and reached up to him. They held each other tightly, staying that way for some time, not moving, not saying a word. He could feel her sobbing against him and was content to let her cry.
Soon she pulled away and brushed her tears away with her hands. Then she brushed the front of Marsh’s chest in a vain effort to remove the tear stains from his shirt.
“Thank you, Marsh.” She pulled away from him and began clearing the table. “Things to do,” she said with a sigh. Then she was about to say something else when the phone rang. She stopped what she was doing and walked over to a small bureau against a wall and picked up the phone. Marsh waited while she spoke. When she put the phone down, she had a puzzled look on her face.
“That was Mac at the boatyard. There’s a man there calling himself Batista; says he would like to speak to you.”
Nothing happened for a moment because the name took a few moments to register. When it did Marsh felt a small shudder run down his spine.
“Julio Batista,” he said, more to himself than to Helen. “One of Khan’s divers.”
Helen still had her hand on the phone even though she had put it back in its cradle.
“Hakeem Khan?” she said. “Isn’t that the guy Greg worked for some time ago?”
He didn’t answer because his mind was racing at the implications. What could Batista want with him? He thought about Francesini, the C.I.A. and Greg, and didn’t like the answers that were popping into his mind. Then he thought about Helen and realised that any fears he might have could unsettle her if she became aware of them. So he decided to play it out; see what Batista wanted and then worry about it.
“Yes,” he said eventually. “He commissioned Greg. But we weren’t involved, remember.” His voice tailed off and his mind went on to the figures that Greg had been concerned about after the commission. He put the thought from his mind. “Well, whatever; let’s go and see what Batista wants.”
Helen began to tidy up taking the dirty dishes to the dishwasher. She spent a few minutes making sure everything was in its place, put a vase of flowers back on the table and did a quick check to make sure everything was to her satisfaction. Marsh recalled how Greg would often moan about Helen’s mania for making sure the house was tidy before they left.
They walked out of the villa and climbed into Helen’s yellow Chevrolet pick-up truck. Helen gunned the motor into life and pulled out of the driveway.
And as they left, neither of them noticed two men sitting in a black sedan watching the house.
*
Julio Batista thought the boatyard look slack; no sign of any real work being carried out. The yard was at Hawksbill Creek, right in the heart of the Freeport waterfront. The sights and sounds of the different yards, the gul
ls flying overhead, boats pulling away from their moorings, the pop-pop of marine diesels; all these were so familiar to Batista, but here at Ocean Quest’s boatyard there was an eerie, emptiness as though an invisible hand had covered the yard and shut out all the other sounds.
At the far end of the yard, at the top of a slipway, was the submersible, Helena. Batista could see someone working on the ‘neck’ of the submersible. It was the section that connected the pilot’s cockpit; a large, bubble shaped orb of tough acrylic polymer, to the forward section of the sub’s pressure hull. The cockpit gave the pilot of the submersible almost perfect, all round vision.
Batista could see no-one else in the yard. He had checked the office which was locked. He walked down to the slipway towards the submersible looking round as he covered the short distance, taking in all the sights and sound. He reached the submersible and called up to the mechanic.
The man stopped working and glanced up to see who was calling. When he saw Batista he acknowledged him. “Couple of minutes,” he said, “and I’ll be with you.”
The mechanic was actually working on the explosive collar. This was a steel ring, hinged so that it opened in order to clamp it round the neck of the submersible that separated the cockpit from the main body. It had a watertight connector that located firmly into a connecting socket when the ring was locked in place. The collar contained explosive charges. It was fitted around the ‘neck’ or thorax as Marsh often called it, and was designed to explode and sever the neck and allow the polymer cockpit to detach itself from the sub and rise to the surface in the event of an emergency.
The collar was always removed after two years, replaced with another, and returned to the manufacturer for inspection and verification. Batista waited until the mechanic had completed the refit and then told him why he was there. The man told him his boss wasn’t there but would phone the house. Would he wait? Batista said yes, he would.
It was about thirty minutes later when Batista heard the Chevrolet pick-up drive in to the yard. He had been waiting in the small reception area of the office then, reading a diving magazine. He put it down and stood up as Helen and Marsh walked in.
Helen introduced herself and Marsh, shaking hands with Batista. She thought how young and good looking he was. He was casually dressed in clothes that showed a taste for designer fashion. His hair was blond, with natural curls. He was tanned from long exposure to the sun and not from a sun bed. The overall effect was of someone of unaffected charm and warmth.
“Hallo Julio,” Marsh said, extending his hand. “Long time no see. I remember you now.”
Batista smiled and shook Marsh by the hand. “I was a lot younger then. And the weather was worse than this.”
“You don’t look much older now,” Marsh told him with a chuckle.
Batista acknowledged that, and then offered his condolences to Helen. “Your mechanic has told me what happened; such a terrible loss. I am so sorry.”
Helen thanked him and offered him a drink which he declined.
“So, what is it you want to see us about?” she asked.
“Well its Marsh I want to talk to,” he told her.
Helen glanced at Marsh who immediately saw an opportunity to cut Helen out of the conversation on the pretext that it might be something confidential. The truth was that Marsh had a bad feeling about this and didn’t want Helen to learn too much. He suggested to Batista that they talk in the office. Helen seemed to pick up on this and said she would talk to Mac about the work on the Helena, while the two men got down to the reason for Batista’s visit.
Ten minutes later, Helen saw Batista leave the office and walk out of the yard. He waved at her and disappeared through the open gates. Marsh came out of the office and walked down the yard to the slipway where Helen and Mac were in deep conversation.
“Well,” she asked when he reached her. “Do I get to know what he wanted?”
“He offered me a job,” he told her.
“And?”
He shook his head. “I turned it down.”
*
Francesini looked across his desk at James Starling. His boss stared back from beneath a deep frown, the mechanics of what Francesini had put to him slowly locking into place. The sunlight filtered through the Venetian blinds, and the sounds of everyday normality could just be heard penetrating the double glazed windows.
The reality outside the glass was what the CIA swore to protect. The reality inside the room was the truth of how hard and dangerous that protection was to come by. While lunatics and terrorists, mad-hats and wicked regimes threatened the freedoms America had fought for so often in the past, men like Starling and Francesini, and their subordinates, toiled ceaselessly to keep the American dream safe and alive.
And Starling was still trying to come to terms not so much with what Francesini had said, but with what he hadn’t said.
“Let me get this straight, Remo,” Starling said, shifting his position in the chair. His finger jabbed the air as he mentally ticked off the step by step account of Francesini’s dissertation.
“This guy Greg Walsh, who you never knew and who came your way through the retired CIA agent, Mancini in the Bahamas, gets worried about some survey details he has been commissioned to provide, but has nothing to back it up except something based on his own knowledge, gut feeling and hearsay.” Francesini nodded; it was about right. Starling continued. “He was commissioned by someone he wouldn’t name at first because of client confidentiality, although he would have done if you’d taken it further at the time. Correct?” Francesini nodded again.
“Walsh is talking about oil exploration in the Florida Narrows, right?” Again the nod from the other side of the desk. “And he talks about explosive drilling? Like drilling through bedrock, shoving in some sticks of dynamite and blowing the rock up. Makes it easier to drill, right?”
“Something like that,” Francesini said at last.
“But we’re not talking about the side of a mountain, are we? We’re talking about the sea bed. So why are we worried? We know it happens; these are new drilling techniques.” He leaned forward, putting his elbow on the desk and held his hand up, like he was offering a bowl to Francesini. “But you’re worried, aren’t you Remo? Not because of Greg Walsh’s figures, the gut feeling and the hearsay bit, but because of that guy who ended up in hospital dying of radiation sickness.” Francesini said nothing this time, so Starling encouraged him. “Don’t leave me in limbo Remo, remind me.”
Francesini had been smoking a cigar, but for a while it had burned quietly in the ashtray on his desk. He picked it up and drew heavily on it. Starling frowned, he disapproved of smoking but believed Francesini could do what he wanted in his own office. Although he had to admit to himself that the cigars his subordinate chose to smoke had quite a pleasant smell to them.
“We understand Walsh’s concerns,” Francesini began, “more now than we did when he first came to us. He had nothing to substantiate his worries really. His logic was sound but difficult to accept. Sticks of dynamite didn’t come into his reckoning at all, but something bigger and more deadly.” He lifted his hands in a throw away motion. “But what could we do? He wouldn’t tell us who his client was until we agreed to get heavily involved and to keep his name out of it, which we couldn’t. Then we found that guy dying of radiation sickness, and the only word he spoke was ‘Taliba’.”
“The name of the yacht belonging to Hakeem Khan,” Starling added for him.
Francesini nodded. “Quite. We know two nukes have already disappeared and now a third one has been spirited out of the Ukraine. I’ve been putting two and two together and I don’t like what I’m coming up with.”
“Have you run a check on Khan?”
“I did. He appears to be beyond corruption. He’s a well-respected oceanographer among his peer group and apparently very good at his job. He doesn’t come across as a political extremist, quite the opposite in fact; he’s as clean as a whistle.”
“Where is
he now?” Starling asked.
“On the Taliba somewhere in the south Santaren Channel, about a hundred miles off the Florida coast.”
“And you’re keeping an eye on him.” It was a statement. Francesini said nothing.
Starling got up from the desk and walked over to the far side of the office. He picked up a coffee percolator and poured himself a cup. He set the percolator down and drank thoughtfully from the cup, his mind somewhere in the Santaren Channel. Francesini knew what his boss was like and knew he would be fired up inside, damning Greg Walsh to hell for being so correct about client confidentiality, and damning Khan to hell even though there was nothing at all to pin on Khan. Yet!
Starling put the cup down.
“Remo, I’m going to take this to the President. We’ve got to board the Taliba and check it out. But it will have to be done very carefully.”
“What if the President says no?” Francesini asked.
“If he says no, we’ll do it anyway. All I have to lose is my job.”
*
When Helen pulled up outside her villa, she hadn’t given a great deal of thought to Marsh’s refusal to work with Batista. It wasn’t a prime consideration at the moment, and she felt much happier at the prospect of having him around for some time to come. She knew that they both understood the need to move on with the business, but there were certain legal considerations to deal with before they could begin to re-establish themselves in the unique, dangerous and compelling world of oceanography.
She opened the front door, stepped inside the hall and tossed her car keys on to a small, side table. They landed next to a small vase of fresh flowers. She turned her head a little as Marsh followed her in. The thoughts that flowed through her mind were rather mixed, but she knew she had to put them aside and begin the task of reaching decisions that would affect both her and Marsh.
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