Diamondhead

by Patrick Robinson

  And her diesels were not complaining. Mack could hear them throbbing, sweet and steady, as they drove her forward, and Mack eased their task by slicing the bow head-on into the waves, splitting them asunder wherever he could. After an hour of pitching his wits against the weather, Mack flicked on the sonar and tried to work the section that gauges speed over the ocean floor rather than across the surface. But it was too complicated when he was trying to hold course in these conditions, so he gave up and kept going.

  This southeasterly course would bring him to the northern edge of the Channel Islands, close to the island of Alderney, and from there he would change course suddenly, coming 60 degrees right and cutting through the dark seaway east of Guernsey. There was nothing quite so baffling for pursuers than a sudden course change in the dead of night. Mack knew also that periodic stretches of land like these big British islands can play havoc with radar.

  The GPS showed Alderney was fifty miles away, two and a half hours. It was eleven thirty. He ran his finger south to the French coast to a little place called Val André and muttered, “That’ll do for me.”

  By midnight, Fred Carter was cold, bloody cold. His first mate, Tom, was colder, and they were still a mile and a half from the Devon coast. That was the bad news. The good news was they had plainly been spotted by a three-thousand-ton freighter heading east and now coming directly toward them. Twenty minutes later they were on board, wrapped in blankets, still shivering but drinking hot cocoa with a dash of brandy. A couple of young crewmen were sitting with them, astounded at their story.

  “Piracy on the high seas, right here off the English coast? That’s unbelievable.”

  “I mean it’s like being up the fucking Amazon or somewhere,” said Fred. “And he was a big bastard, bearded, foreigner.”

  “Strong as a bear,” added Tom.

  “Shut up,” said Fred. “I’m telling it.”

  “I’ll let the skipper know,” said one of the crewmen. “We have to report this. You can’t have a bloke like that running around loose.”

  “And what about my boat?” raged Fred. “I mean, Christ, what’s going to happen about that?”

  “It’s well insured, right, Fred?” said Tom.

  “Yes, but that’s not the point. No one wants their trawler loose in the English Channel, being driven around by a fucking madman.”

  “I’ll see the boss,” said the crewman. “You’re out of Brixham, right? And I shouldn’t worry—the coast guard will find him. You can’t hide a sixty-five-foot fishing boat.”

  “He could scuttle it,” said Tom unhelpfully.

  “Shut up,” said Fred.

  This is the freighter Solent Queen out of Southampton calling Brixham harbor master.

  Copy that. Brixham harbor master receiving.

  We’re at position 50.12 North 3.35 West. Reporting we just picked up Brixham trawler skipper Fred Carter and his first mate, Thomas Jelbert. Their boat Eagle has been hijacked by a pirate who threw them both overboard.

  Teddy Rickard had been a resident of Brixham all his life. An extrawlerman, he was fifty-two years old and had been harbor master for fifteen of them. Yet never had he heard anything even remotely as wild as that.

  Please repeat. Did you say hijacked? Pirate? Fred and Tom overboard?

  Solent Queen repeat. Fred Carter and Tom Jelbert rescued from the sea. The Brixham trawler Eagle has been hijacked, and is now missing. We’re heading into Brixham to bring them home.

  Anyone have the trawler’s last known?

  Fred Carter says about one mile south of here, two hours ago.

  That’s 50.12 North 3.35 West, correct?

  Correct. Solent Queen ETA Brixham one hour.

  Copy that, and thank you, Solent Queen. I’m calling the coast guard right now. Over.

  The coast guard station at Dartmouth was as astonished as the harbor master at this apparent piracy on the high seas. At first they thought it was a joke. But there was nothing amusing about two Brixham trawlermen being thrown overboard and a British fishing boat in the hands of a criminal. They put out an all-stations alert, and they sent an urgent e-mail to the French coast guard at Cherbourg, the gist of it being that a black-bearded foreign pirate had hijacked the Brixham trawler Eagle and appeared to be heading their way. The e-mail added that only the prompt action of the crew of Solent Queen had saved the lives of Mr. Fred Carter and Tom Jelbert, Eagle’s two-man crew, who had both been thrown overboard.

  With the possibility of a dangerous criminal about to enter France, it was a matter of pure routine. Cherbourg Coast Guard Station automatically sent a copy of the e-mail through to Brittany Police Headquarters in Rennes. The police chief, Pierre Savary, a short, tough-looking, stocky character, balding, midforties, was still at his desk sipping espresso so strong the spoon would almost stand up.

  The light on the computer screen immediately began to flash, and Pierre touched a button on his own keyboard to pull up the message. He read it with great interest, because earlier that day he had had lunch at the home of Henri Foche, not with the great man himself, but with his security men, Marcel and Raymond. The purpose of the meeting was to review the protection surrounding the next president. Henri Foche was without question the biggest and most important issue in the life of Pierre Savary. If anything happened to Rennes’s most celebrated citizen, there was absolutely no question, Pierre Savary would be blamed.

  He had listened with immense interest to Marcel and Raymond, in particular to the suggestion that there may be an attempt on Foche’s life. And that it may come from England. And now we have a violent criminal, in a stolen fishing boat, crossing the Channel from England in the small hours of a dark and stormy night. If Pierre Savary missed that, and anything befell the legendary Gaullist leader, Rennes would be looking for a new police chief, and he, Pierre, would spend the rest of his life in disgrace. He glanced at his watch, shuddered, and dialed Marcel’s cell phone.

  Foche’s security chief answered on the first ring, and Chief Savary did not procrastinate. “Get down to headquarters right away, mon ami. It’s important.”

  Marcel, who slept in a downstairs bedroom at Foche’s house, flew out of bed, dressed, and hurried through the drawing room into the wide hall. There was an armed night guard on the door these days, and Marcel snapped as he went by, “I’m with Chief Savary. Call if you need me.”

  He gunned the Mercedes through the dark streets and was with the police chief inside of five minutes. And there he was shown the e-mail from Cherbourg. Marcel read it thoughtfully, and then said quietly, “You were right to call, Pierre. God knows where this man is, or who he is. But we’re expecting some kind of attack, emanating from England. And this man might be heading for the coast of Brittany. We need to stay on this until he is caught, right?”

  “Those are my thoughts,” replied Pierre. “I’ll put in a call to the coast guard, check for developments. Meanwhile, I’ll tell them to keep us posted, blow by blow, until they find the trawler.”

  “Where’s that last known position?”

  “It happened just off the coast of Devon a few hours ago. And no one’s certain which way that trawler is headed.”

  “Shall we stay here until they do?”

  “I think so. Because this might be a real problem. They’ll hang me if anything happens to Monsieur Foche.”

  “What do you think they’ll do to me, award me a medal?”

  0200. English Channel 49.39 North 2.20 West

  Eagle’s GPS put Mack Bedford four miles west of Alderney. The radio that had been silent all night suddenly crackled into life:Alderney Coast Guard here. Alderney Coast Guard. Marine navigation four miles to our west making course one-three-five—repeat one-three-five—please identify yourself.

  Mack immediately hit the transmission switch and without hesitation called out in response:This is the fishing boat Tantrum out of Plymouth, England, bound for the port of Saint-Malo. We suffered satellite and radio transmission difficulties in the storm. Will rep
ort harbor master Saint-Malo on arrival. Wave band nine-three dead . . . over.

  Mack switched off the radio, and instantly made his course change coming right sixty degrees. He flashed on the GPS screen and checked he would run somewhere between the island of Guernsey and tiny Sark, which were lonely waters at this time of night.

  The wind had died, and the sea was calmer. Sheltered by the big island he would make all of 20 knots through here, running toward the coast of Brittany, every yard of the way. Course: one-nine-five, sou’sou’west.

  The Alderney Coast Guard had received a signal from Cherbourg that a hunt was forming for the missing British trawler. But they accepted that Tantrum out of Plymouth was having radio difficulties and would berth in Saint-Malo within three hours. Nonetheless, they reported the radar sighting on the coast guard link, confirming the presence of the Plymouth-based British fishing boat and requesting a confirmation from the Saint-Malo harbor master when it arrived at around five o’clock.

  Cherbourg was more interested, having been given a very strong warning from the head of the Brittany police that anything, repeat anything, pertaining to an unknown boat in the sea-lanes approaching Brittany was to be treated with the utmost diligence.

  Coast Guard Cherbourg instructed the little station at Alderney to get on the case. But two hours later they had been unsuccessful in making contact. The young officer trying to reach Mack Bedford by radio was obliged to observe, “Of course she won’t answer—her radio is up the ’chute; she already told us that.”

  And now Eagle was out of radar range, as Mack Bedford drove her farther south, comprehensively “wooded” by the little island of Hern. All she needed to do was move swiftly down the nine-mile channel between St. Peter Port, Guernsey, and the island of Sark. At which point Mack faced a sixty-mile straight run across the Gulf of Saint-Malo in open water all the way, then down into the deep V of Saint-Brieuc Bay. And there was not a whole lot anyone could do about it, since there was not an active French Coast Guard boat within a hundred miles. And, anyway, it was still pitch black, and Mack Bedford was still without running lights, and he was still transmitting nothing. The coast guard no longer knew his course, and, better yet, no one knew whether the mysterious radar “paint” that appeared on the Alderney screen was Eagle or not.

  The weather worsened as the trawler came out of the protection of the islands, and once more Eagle was pitching and rolling, but still pushing along, throttles open, making 20 knots or just below.

  By this time, Teddy Rickard had made out a much more detailed signal, which he fed to the coast guard station at Dartmouth, and now at 0300 this latest intelligence went on the international link, and immediately Cherbourg Station began transmitting urgently: All stations alert . . . North coast Dieppe, Gulf of Saint-Malo to Saint-Pol-de-Léon. Searching for British fishing trawler Eagle, dark-red, sixty-five-foot hull, black lettering. Maybe running under false identity as Tantrum out of Plymouth.

  This is Cherbourg. Repeat, Coast Guard Cherbourg. English fishing trawler Eagle running under illegal master. Big, black-bearded male. Caucasian. May be dangerous. Hijacked Eagle off English county Devon.

  All coast guard boarding parties to be fully armed. Alert all coast guard vessels in your area. Last known position Tantrum: 49.39 North 2.20 West—four miles west of Alderney. Course and speed unknown.

  That kind of signal from the normally restrained and careful coast guard operations on both sides of the Channel sends an electric shock through the service. And right now sleeping officers were being awakened and told to head to the jetties.

  To Pierre Savary and Marcel, who were both wide awake and looking at the police computer screen in Rennes, however, it sent a tremor well up the Richter scale. These two had, of course, more to lose than anyone else. Except for Henri Foche.

  Chief Savary hit the open line to the coast guard station at Cherbourg and demanded some fast answers, which he did not get. The duty officer told him they had every available man on the case, and there were three possibilities in their area: (1) a fishing boat apparently headed for Saint-Malo, (2) another heading for the same coastline but more westerly, and (3) a small freighter that may have switched course to Le Havre. Even with helicopters it was a vast area to search in darkness. If Chief Savary could just be patient, they’d have a far better idea how to proceed when the sun came up and boats could be seen.

  With something less than good humor, Chief Savary put down the phone. “It seems to me,” he said, “the two fishing boats are our concern. If there’s some kind of murderer on the freighter going into Le Havre, that’s Normandy’s problem, not ours. But if he’s in one of those fucking trawlers and he really is after Henri Foche, we’d better start moving.”

  “Well, we can’t do anything from Rennes, that’s for sure. This place is so far from the ocean, half the population has never even seen it.” At this time of night, with sheeting rain and high winds, the forty-five miles up to the northern shore seemed a hell of a long way to Henri Foche’s number-one bodyguard.

  “Marcel,” said Pierre, “I think you should round up Raymond, get into the car, and get up to the coast. Because that’s where this bastard is going to show. By the time you arrive it’ll be four thirty, and the coast guard will be tracking both boats inshore. Why not go for somewhere like Ploubalay? That way you can double back to Saint-Malo or head more west.”

  “And what do we do if they catch the guy, or we catch him?”

  “In the interests of French justice I’d be inclined to act fast, with as little fuss as possible. The way we usually do in operations of this kind where there may be some embarrassment to people of grand stature. Remember, he’s foreign, and if we stay legal there’ll be enough red tape to throttle a stud bull.”

  “Pierre, you can leave it to us. If he lands that boat, he won’t get five meters. Because there is only one fact that matters: Foche lives in Brittany, and anyone who wants to assassinate him is coming to Brittany. That narrows it down to the fishing boats. We’ll stay in touch.”

  Marcel hurried out of the police department and once more hit the road, bound for the apartment block where Raymond lived. He called his cohort on his cell phone, and the two of them were on the road in ten minutes, both armed with the powerful French Special Forces handgun, the Sig Sauer 9mm. Chief Savary’s wishes were clear to both of them.

  0500 48.42 North 2.31 West

  The storm had veered inshore, and Eagle ran on south through the dark. The sea was now choppy, but without those long, rolling swells. Mack switched on his radar only in ten-second bursts, just to check he was not yet being tracked by the coast guard. Right now he was eight miles offshore, just north of the great jutting headland of Sables d’Or les Pin.

  He flashed on his depth finder and saw one hundred meters below the keel. He wanted to move in closer to the land because the backdrop would confuse coast guard radar. And he’d already chosen his spot to come ashore, the little town of Val André, about six miles southwest of Sables d’Or. He thus had about fourteen miles to make landfall and an hour to do it before six o’clock when the sun would be above the eastern horizon. Mack knew he was too late to land in darkness, but he wanted the cloak of the night to shield him for as long as possible.

  What he did not know was that at four thirty, three coast guard boats, one from Cherbourg and two from Saint-Malo, had cleared the jetties and were out there searching for Eagle, reporting in with signals that were relayed to Pierre Savary in Rennes, and onward to Marcel and Raymond.

  Thus far, one of them had located the suspect fishing boat heading into Saint-Malo itself and had discovered only that the perfectly legal Spanish crew had switched off the radio and were listening to flamenco. Their boat was not named Tantrum; it was La Mancha. The master was a slim five-foot-six baldheaded fisherman of some sixty-eight summers. No, La Mancha had not been hijacked, but she was low on fuel.

  Those were very moderate events for Lieutenant Commander Bedford because he was by now the only suspe
ct, and deep in his combat-trained soul he guessed there might be some kind of a dragnet closing in on him. But in his mind he knew there had been no other way. He could not possibly have risked coming through a French airport or ferry port with a portable Austrian sniper rifle in his metal toolbox. That would have been suicide. So therefore he had to land in France anonymously, bringing his rifle with him. He could not have hired a boat because everyone in Brixham would have known. He could not have stolen a boat, because it would have been reported missing about three minutes after he left. And he could not have purchased a boat because of the rigid British rules about registration. A car was one thing, a boat, from a working, gossipy seaport, quite another.