by Andy Lucas
‘I’m sure it’s just coincidence,’ said Sarah, though her stomach churned with sudden uncertainty.
‘Maybe. I hope so,’ smiled Pace easily. ‘But until we know for sure, I think we should tread very carefully. If someone does know what we’re really doing down here, and if they are intent on finding the gold before us, the sheer amount of bullion wouldn’t incline them to want to share. People are murdered every day for far less.’
‘It never hurts to be cautious,’ Hammond decided to concur. ‘I’m not convinced we should be worried but it might be dangerous to assume it means nothing.’
‘Exactly,’ said Pace evenly. ‘Nothing more we can do tonight. I suggest we all turn in and have a good look at this in the morning.’
‘It’s already the morning,’ groaned Sarah softly, ruffling Pace’s hair.
‘Well let’s try and have a couple more hours under the covers or we’ll be no good to anyone.’
It was a nice idea but the conversation meandered on and the sun was cresting an azure horizon before they knew it. In the end, all thoughts of a return to bed were shelved in favour of a full English cooked breakfast, served up on deck; the mouth-watering smell of fried bacon, sausage, mushrooms and tomatoes wafting and swirling in the invisible caress of a cool dawn breeze.
Down in the freezer, Lefevre’s corpse lay rigid in the darkness, never to reawaken. His mere presence aboard, however, would have made the ruthless financier’s spirit rest a little easier, as it drew the McEntire Corporation closer to where it needed to be.
Though mourned by few, his death would be avenged and a proverbial can of worms would very soon transmute into a very real Pandora’s Box.
12
There was no escaping the fact that McEntire had another huge problem on his hands. He knew full well that Hammond had made an unauthorised trip down to rendezvous with his daughter and Pace. In fact, he’d counted on it. In the few weeks since struggling through their hellish South American adventure together, Pace and Hammond had become close friends, with Hammond showing Pace more of the inner workings of the McEntire Corporation’s seedier, covert side. Both men complemented each other. Together, their skills and tenacity would prove to be a winning combination in the future, Doyle McEntire was certain.
The problem facing him this time was not one of a megalomaniac wishing to take over a country at the expense of all else. No, this time he was faced with a legitimate, successful company that was working, on the face of it, to better the human race by developing technologies designed to ease suffering in the poorer African nations. ARC was well financed and operated strictly within the letter of the law, offering jobs to local people as well as bringing in world-renowned experts to head up its key projects.
But McEntire had spent his life running a vast, credible company that also operated outside of the law in terms of supporting British interests on the world stage. Totally secret, operating freely to tackle any job that the government could never admit to ordering, its people went where they were needed and did whatever needed to be done, all under the guise of legitimate international business. Dictator toppling, assassination of underworld figures, financial destabilisation, you name it and they did it. Where MI5 and MI6 feared to tread, the McEntire Corporation did Britain’s dirtiest work. Unsung, unsupported, unknown except within the darkest international circles of similar organisations, they were accountable only to the shadowy few who issued their orders directly to Doyle McEntire himself. Over the years, he’d learned their identities but kept the information to himself – it was far safer. Governments, Prime Ministers and Cabinets came and went, but the McEntire Corporation went on.
The information McEntire had was scant at best. The diary had wound up on his desk, accompanied by a very short report suggesting that its sudden appearance needed urgent investigation. Whereabouts of any bullion needed to be traced, if possible.
The official story of the diary was that the skeletal remains of Pringle had been uncovered by a sandstorm and a local tribesman had happened upon the corpse, only to find the diary clutched in fleshless fingers. The tribesman had taken the body and diary to the nearest town where he handed it over to the police. They, in turn, had involved the British embassy and the diary had ended up being passed over to the Foreign Office, who shunted it over to the Admiralty for safe keeping.
The appearance of the diary had, however, triggered an alert in a secret historical database, situated deep within Whitehall, and the link to the missing gold had been enough for the diary to be copied and handed over to McEntire. The big issue were the references to Scorpion and the complete lack of historical information relating to a century-old secret project. His secretive controllers wanted answers.
ARC was mentioned in the report as an aside, but there was a clear question mark over any involvement it may have had with the discovery of the body, recovery of the diary and subsequent disappearance of the tribesman in question. No proof, just questions to be investigated. The report stated that ARC held a lease on the land in which the corpse was reportedly discovered, having recently completed construction of a new desalination plant there.
How that fitted in with missing gold was anybody’s guess but McEntire went about his task systematically. He had ordered detailed reports on the area to be collated and sent to his office, alongside current intelligence reports from the region. Now, carefully studying page after page of text, he brought himself up to speed.
Hours later, with a migraine threatening to blossom behind his right eye, he was about to concede defeat when an innocuous intelligence report, borrowed from the CIA by agreement, caught his eye. It detailed the sudden death of hundreds of wild animals within the lease area, currently a protected zone; all from a killer from the past, or so McEntire had thought. He was surprised to read that plague still existed, let alone that it was an accepted form of death out in the remote areas of Africa.
The difference here, or so the report maintained, was that plague normally took a dozen animals a year nowadays, and rarely any human beings due to the advent of modern antibiotics. In this case, not only had a reputed six hundred and twenty animals perished, but an entire village within the infected area had been wiped out, at the cost of two hundred lives. The really frightening fact was that they had all died so fast, with the report concluding the ancient disease must have mutated into a far stronger strain than had ever been seen before.
Tests were being run on the corpses of animal and human victims alike by government scientists but, in the meantime, the whole matter was being hushed up while they raced to find some answers. The report recommended monitoring and covert acquirement of infected tissue samples for testing in the US. It was dated yesterday.
An involuntary shiver ran down McEntire’s spine as he read about the agonising, torturous death that awaited the afflicted.
On a positive note, the report suggested that it was probably a tragic freak of nature; a set of specific events linked to a small geographical area that was unlikely to be repeated. After all, such a virulent, drug-resistant form had never been encountered before, anywhere in the world.
But McEntire wasn’t one for coincidences, especially when he pulled up a detailed computerised map of Namibia and noted that the area of infection was very close to the new ARC desalination plant, about twenty miles north and a few miles inland from the coast.
A seed of suspicion began to germinate in his mind and his tired fingers flew across the keyboard in front of him with the fluidity any copy-typists would have envied. He had gleaned all he could from the paper reports and now needed to delve into cyberspace for further answers. McEntire had access to pretty much any information he wanted, pulling up secret databases and protected files with impunity. He soon found what he was after. Planning applications by ARC; a couple of years old now, for three further desalination plants and a dozen large solar power plants, all to be built within the leased area.
The first raft of applications had been flatly refused, with
a note on the file that only the existing desalination plant had been approved due to a local need for fresh water overriding the protected status of the area. One plant would solve water issues for the entire region and also allow the ARC to export large quantities to nearby countries, making it a profitable commercial venture, leaving both parties satisfied. At the time of approval, the note stated, it had been made clear that no further development would be allowed.
That hadn’t stopped ARC from appealing twice, with a final attempt at persuading the government itself to step in and grant the permission. This time, agreeing financial terms was the only impediment, but approval had been granted, in principle.
So, McEntire thought, sipping at a cold cup of coffee absently, the company had planned to make a huge investment along the Skeleton Coast and doubtless recoup their investment a hundred times over by selling fresh water and almost limitless electricity to an energy-starving world. It was a sound business plan, with no obvious losers except maybe the wildlife and habitat. But how did that link to the missing gold? And could ARC logically have any link to a lethally potent new strain of a known, historical disease? The pieces didn’t fit but it was enough for him to release the bloodhounds.
Just for a moment he hesitated. Sarah was out there too, he knew. Pace and Hammond were a formidable team and could take care of themselves if need be but did he really want to put his own flesh and blood in harm’s way again?
Then he remembered what a reputable, international outfit ARC was and relaxed. This wasn’t a risky situation. He might even be completely wrong, he decided, and a series of unfortunate coincidences might just have him barking up the wrong tree. No, the risk was minimal.
Doyle McEntire picked up the phone and dialled the satellite phone number for his daughter, knowing that the signal would be clear and strong, even to the far flung edges of civilization.
13
The lunchtime telephone call completely threw Sarah McEntire. She was already stressed by the discovery of the floating body and trying very hard to forget that they had a corpse aboard.
When her father heard about the mysterious body, he nearly changed his mind about asking Pace and Hammond to do some digging into the ARC operations along the Skeleton Coast but finally decided that it was likely to be just another coincidence, albeit an upsetting one for his daughter. He, himself, had seen far too many dead bodies over the years to be phased by them.
When she came off the phone, and found the two men, both dressed only in swimming shorts, chatting over a cold glass of iced tea by the stern railing, she told them about her father’s concerns.
‘Seems likely that it’s nothing,’ said Hammond. ‘Companies have to invest in their ideas or go under. So, this ARC leased a bit of land cheaply and is going to make a fortune from selling clean water and energy. Most people would applaud it. And they got knocked back on plans to build more plants, so put some pressure on the government, which has finally caved in and let them have their way, as long as the price is right.’
Pace agreed. ‘That’s just good business. This is the perfect environment for their needs. I don’t see a problem.’
‘Do you think ARC has anything to do with the body we found?’ asked Sarah.
‘No,’ soothed Pace gently, ‘big businesses don’t get involved in killing people, that’s just for the movies and the imaginations of fiction writers.’
‘James is right,’ concurred Hammond quickly. ‘This isn’t the Amazon. Cathera is dead and gone. Not everyone is like him.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Sarah.
‘Look, your father wants us to do a little sniffing around to check out a possible coincidence, that’s all. We are down here anyway, so at least it will give us something else to think about while we get to grips with lost gold and a long-lost scientific base that was up to no good way back nearly a century ago.’
For Pace, the chance to do something a bit more practical offered a relief from the mystery at hand. He would never have admitted it to Sarah but he instinctively knew that the dead man had been the victim of foul play. The body had been too fresh for the incident to have taken place many miles away, or very long before they had spotted it in the swells.
Someone else was looking for the gold. Maybe the unfortunate corpse had rubbed someone up the wrong way or perhaps it had even been a warning for them, deliberately dumped so they would find it.
‘Sarah, any chance of a couple of beers?’ grinned Hammond, putting on his best, pitiful face, as he held out a drained glass of tea. ‘Iced tea doesn’t quite do it for me’
‘Too refined for you?’ she laughed, taking his glass. ‘I was just about to whip up some sandwiches anyway. Is tuna okay boys?’ Both nodded and she disappeared inside.
Once she was safely out of the way, Hammond grew serious and shot Pace a stern look. Pace caught the look and returned it evenly.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Max. You’re thinking that this company we’ve been asked to check out is bound to be tied up with our friend down below.’
‘Don’t forget, I’ve been in the McEntire Corporation for years now and I know nothing comes Doyle McEntire’s way unless it’s serious. Why else would we be asked to nose around, if not because we can do it without raising suspicion?’
‘But what do we have to tie ARC to the body?’
‘Not a damned thing, at the moment.’
‘Well, I guess we’d better find a way of introducing ourselves while we’re down here.’
‘That’s easy,’ said Hammond. ‘The McEntire Corporation has legitimate business all over the world. We don’t currently focus commercially on solar or desalination but we are a market leader in research and development for the technologies involved.’
‘We are?’ asked Pace, surprised. He still struggled to accept that the McEntire Corporation actually operated, and continued to grow, as a massive international business. Since he’d been introduced to its core, secret function, that was the only way he could view it.
‘Of course. I bet you anything you like that some of the technology that ARC is using in its desalination plant was developed by us. We don’t manufacture the equipment of course, that’s outsourced for a healthy profit.
‘They don’t have a solar operation up and running here yet,’ Pace added. ‘Remember that the permissions have only just been approved. It will take time to build the solar farms and collecting towers. That leaves the desalination plant.’
‘Sure,’ he nodded. ’I’ll give McEntire a quick ring and get the PR people to set up a field visit. Any company that uses our technology will want to keep us sweet. I’m sure they’ll welcome us with open arms.’
‘Great, you get onto that while I stay on the lost submarine. If there are going to be complications down here, then the sooner we find the wreck, if we can, the better.’
‘I don’t know about you but I’m not doing anything until I’ve had my sandwich and a beer.’
The sun was high overhead and the endless blue sky lent a wonderful sense of idyllic isolation. They had backed right off from the coast a few hours earlier, to make sure they didn’t give away their planned search area to any possible prying eyes. Despite being twelve miles from land, they still had less than eighty feet of water beneath them; so clear that they could make out shapes on the bottom when they stared over the rail long enough.
‘How about we give the food a miss for an hour or so,’ suggested Pace suddenly. He could feel the sweat beading on his skin and decided that now was as good a time as any to get in some diving practise. ‘Time for a swim?’
Hammond loved to dive, and had been doing so for most of his adult life, so couldn’t help but break out into a broad grin. In a moment, he forgot his stomach and shot off to inform the captain that they would be staying at anchor for at least another two hours. Then he pulled out two scuba tanks from the ship’s supply locker, along with flippers, full face masks and weight belts. He even grabbed up a couple of diving knives, fitted snugly i
nside ankle-holsters. It always paid to be careful, he thought.
Pace found Sarah down in the sumptuous guest galley, proficiently creating a delicious sandwich filling by mixing tinned tuna, mayonnaise, chopped spring onion, diced red sweet pepper and sweetcorn together, finishing by adding a dash of black pepper, salt and paprika. She looked rightly proud of her creation as she stepped back from the counter and turned to him.
‘It’s nearly ready,’ she laughed. ‘You must learn patience, James.’
‘Being patient was never a strong trait of mine,’ he sighed, pulling her to him in a lightning motion that prevented any hope of her resisting, not that Sarah had any intention of resisting him.
‘I noticed,’ she chuckled.
‘Whatever you’ve heard, it’s all a pack of lies,’ he protested weakly. ‘I’m innocent, honestly.’
‘Far from innocent,’ she shot back.
A cough from the door announced Hammond’s arrival. ‘If you two lovebirds could save it for the bedroom, I’d appreciate it.’
Seeing both of them in the galley told Sarah that Pace had not just dropped in for a pre-lunch cuddle.
‘Go on then,’ she started, ‘I’m waiting.’
‘Max and I were just going to get a bit of diving time in while we’re anchored up. You know that I have very little underwater time. This is the ideal opportunity for my friend here to play teacher.’
‘True, he is pretty awful at the moment,’ said Hammond, feigning severity. ‘If we do need to get wet during this trip, better that he gets a few hours in with me first.’
‘Sounds sensible,’ Sarah agreed. ‘How long?’
‘Only an hour,’ Pace said. ‘Be back before you know it.’
Waving them out of the galley, she sent them on their way, deciding to have a luxurious bath while they went swimming.
Ten minutes later, Sarah eased herself down into a vast, warm bath overflowing with vanilla-scented bubbles, down in their staterooms. Over the side, Pace and Hammond entered a far deeper bath.