by Robin James
By teatime the four of them – a disappointed Kirsty was left behind because there was no way Arsenio was going to have a woman on this deal despite her having begged him before he left, and then again, that very afternoon on the telephone – were boarding a plane in Barcelona. At six-fifteen, Arsenio picked them up at La Coruña.
It was fortunate that they carried little luggage besides jeans and T-shirts and a few special items which Hantash had picked up from a sports shop and from an underground contact of El Asesino in Barcelona, for four big, heavy men fit into a Panda as tightly as playing cards in their box.
By seven they were in an isolated holiday cottage on the banks of the wide River Allones, some seventeen kilometres from Malpica.
It was light in that part of the world in mid-July until almost nine-thirty, and encyclopaedia salesman Arsenio Cruz Conde was not planning on taking his technician to install a video machine in the Pomares’ little house near the harbour until night descended.
9
‘Oh. So it’s you again.’ Señora Pomares had opened her door just enough to see out. In the pool of light which emerged from her living-room stood Arsenio. Just behind him, a large cardboard box in his arms, was Shannon.
‘Naturally it is me, madam. I never miss an appointment,’ said Arsenio. ‘I’ve brought you your video and not one, but two tapes. And as I told you, you are under no obligation to enter into a contract. My man will install the video and – as I promised you – it is yours whether you decide to enter into a contract with us or not.’
‘There has to be a catch somewhere. It’s too good to be true,’ came a gruff voice from within, louder than that from the television, which was showing a word game called Lingo.
The fisherman’s wife opened the door wider, as at the same time she flung over her shoulder, ‘But where can there be a catch, Pepe? This man, he is going to plug the machine in and leave it with us. He can’t force us to sign a cheque, now can he?’
Arsenio put a foot in the door. ‘May we come in then, please, Mrs Pomares?’ he said, most pleasantly. ‘This won’t take more than ten minutes.’
‘Can they come in, Pepe?’ she asked.
‘But I am not turning the telly off. You know this is my favourite programme.’
‘We won’t need to turn it off, sir,’ Arsenio called out.
‘All right, come in.’
It was a typical working-class living-room, chintzy, with flowered wallpaper and a huge, walnut-coloured, glass-fronted cabinet – too big by far for the room – filled with bric-à-brac and a heavy-patterned dinner service with enough plates to feed an army. Three brightly coloured china ducks were flying across one wall, at odds with the paper, and a big, gilt-framed painting of the haloed Virgin Mary adorned another.
As Señora Pomares closed the door, Shannon was putting the cardboard box down on the lace-edged runner of the dining-room table. Opening one end, he slid his hand in. When he removed it he was holding a Smith & Wesson 459 handgun fitted with a silencer. He had passed this to Arsenio and taken another out for himself before either of the Pomares realized what was happening. The woman was the first to notice. As she screamed, Arsenio turned up the volume of the television.
The expression on the fisherman’s crumpled, weather-beaten face hardly changed. ‘We have nothing of any value,’ he said firmly. ‘Why are you doing such a thing in the home of a God-fearing man?’
‘But indeed you have something of value to us,’ Arsenio told him. ‘La Señorita Juanita.’
‘My boat? Why would you take my old boat? To you she is worthless, for I can see you are no fisherman. And where would you sell her? To me, she is my livelihood. Why do you want to take away from me my bread and my wine?’
The woman had sunk down into the chair and was quietly sobbing. She seemed to have shrunk in size, and looked even older.
‘I am not going to take your boat from you,’ said Arsenio. There was no menace in his voice; the guns provided all the intimidation necessary. ‘I am going to borrow it for a while. Providing you cooperate with me in every way I demand, you will come to no harm. Neither will your wife – or the boat.’
Arsenio approached Señora Pomares to lay a hand, from which she flinched away, on her shoulder. ‘We are not going to hurt you,’ he told her. ‘But I’m afraid we are going to have to take you away for a short while.’
She wailed. ‘Away?’ said the fisherman. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘We need some insurance, Pepe. I have to be certain that you will not double-cross us.’ He waved the pistol under the man’s nose. ‘Please get up. Take me into your kitchen.’ On the television, Ramoncín, the bright young host of Lingo, had just persuaded a pair of middle-aged contestants to go for doubling the prize of over a million pesetas they had just won. They lost the lot, and Ramoncín was being his charmingly sympathetic self while no doubt pleased to have saved the company more than two million ‘pelas’, as he called them.
The advertising break came up, the volume even louder. The Irishman turned it down now that Señora Pomares was merely quietly blubbering.
In the kitchen, Arsenio, not relishing the necessary role of scaring a couple who were almost at retirement age, said to the man, ‘Your wife does not have to be told the danger she will be in. She is going to be moved to a place where no one would think of looking for her. She is going to be well looked after, she will not be hurt in any way – that is, so long as you cooperate with us.’ He stared hard at the man, putting on his fiercest expression. ‘However, should you give us the slightest problem, she will be hurt. Do you follow me?’ The man nodded stonily. ‘And if you give us a major problem,’ Arsenio added, ‘we may be obliged to cripple her.’ He helped himself to a glass of water.
‘I shall give you no shit problem,’ said Pomares. ‘Just tell me why it is you want the use of my good boat?’
‘One moment. Come with me.’
Taking the man back into his living-room, he said to his wife, ‘When you leave here, old one, you will be making no fuss. You will go perfectly quietly. You will not be ill-treated in any way.’ He rammed the silencer under her husband’s chin. ‘Should you make an attempt to run, or to call for help, I shall . . .’ – he pointed the Smith & Wesson at Pomares’ legs – ‘first cripple him in the knee. If your resistance continues I shall . . . I shall perhaps be obliged to kill him – and you. You do understand?’
The woman’s blubbering grew louder again. Her frail shoulders were shaking as she sat hunched into a protective ball on her chair. Arsenio had it within him to feel sorry for her, but he made no room for such a sentiment.
‘Impress on her that she has to pull herself together,’ he said to the fisherman. ‘That she is to leave this house for a while – and perfectly quietly – come what may. That if you behave correctly then neither of you will be any the worse once this is over. I may even decide to compensate you for your inconvenience.’
‘Like the free video?’ said the ageing seafarer wryly.
‘We shall see.’ Arsenio’s hand went back to the woman’s shoulder, gently. ‘Tell her in your own way,’ he said to the man. ‘We don’t have all night.’
It took almost half an hour before Señora Pomares was sufficiently resigned to the fact that she was to be forcibly taken off somewhere to accept it calmly. Outwardly composed, but terrified within, she walked erectly with Shannon down her little path and ducked quietly into the passenger seat of the Panda. Shannon took a mobile telephone from the glove compartment and showed it to her. Arsenio had already displayed the telephone that had been in the cardboard box with the guns and told her that the Irishman would call if she started to make trouble – and that her husband’s kneecap would be shattered with a bullet.
She sat in the Panda, utterly silent and shrivelled, a petrified mouse, as Shannon drove them through Malpica and off on a country road towards the Rio Allones. In the little house, El Asesino opened a bottle of the fisherman’s table wine and, sharing it with him, settled d
own to watch – for the third time in his life – one of his favourite films, which Tele 5 happened to be showing that evening. It was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Clint Eastwood.
They showed up in that tiny rented car, the three big men, at two-thirty in the morning. The broad-shouldered Joseph Hantash, Felix Springer and Salim Kasar, together with Arsenio Cruz Conde, and the fisherman himself, seemed to almost fill the small living-room. They were dressed in faded T-shirts, scruffy jeans and rubber boots. Springer, being the only one of the three with a pale complexion, had turned his face dark with instant suntan oil. They had brought jeans, a faded denim shirt and rubber boots for Arsenio to change into, a large, heavy duffle bag, and a flight bag full of provisions.
A short while later, when Arsenio was ready, they left the house. Hantash locked the Panda and they all trooped quietly down, with Pepe Pomares, through dark and silent streets to the harbour.
It was a warm, still night. The scent of night-flowering jasmine lay sweetly heavy in the air. Somewhere a pair of cats were fighting; apart from that, the only sound was the rushing noise of long, flat waves as they swept majestically over the beach. Overhead, a sliver of moon, smudged with barely moving wisps of cloud, hung in a brilliant bed of stars.
La Señorita Juanita, as the five men approached her, appeared as a black shadow in smooth, dark waters that reflected the stars. Nothing stirred in the harbour apart from the phoney fishermen and their genuine, if coerced, captain as they boarded the drifter. They were all being as quiet as possible as Pomares issued instructions on how to cast off the boat, and Arsenio translated them. Within fifteen minutes, the hijacked boat, its navigation lights twinkling, engines chugging, was slipping out of the waters of Malpica harbour towards the distant fishing grounds, near which, Arsenio fervently hoped, the Mirabelle, with her ten-million-pound prize, was lying at anchor.
Aboard that luxury cruiser, in bed in her private suite, the boys sleeping in an adjoining cabin, the Princess of Wales was peacefully dreaming.
10
By first light, La Señorita Juanita was surrounded by – though the intervening distances were considerable – a host of other fishing boats. They were Spanish, they were French, they were British and they were Irish – all here to fish these rich waters. It was essential that El Asesino and company appeared to be as busy and as genuine as everybody else, and to that effect they went through the arduous business of putting out the drift-nets. When that was done, Arsenio settled down within the squarish, high-built iron bridge of the boat with his binoculars trained on the Mirabelle, where breakfast was just being served.
‘I think I should like to go home soon, Mother,’ said Prince William, just turned thirteen, through a mouthful of bacon and egg.
Ten-year-old Harry gravely agreed with him; a yacht, however luxurious and well supplied with games and videos and other things to do, was too confining for growing boys. They were getting bored, missing their friends.
Diana had been expecting this to happen sooner or later. She and her hosts, it seemed, were the only ones who were not getting bored, for Carolyn had been grumping to her the previous evening; but then the daughter of the Home Secretary was a highly sexed young lady who was craving the attentions of her latest boyfriend. Diana sniffed; all this swimming, sun and relaxation had brought on a cold. Personally she could have stayed out here away from the hustle and bustle of her life – and the pestilential paparazzi – for another month at least. But she had to consider her children. Carolyn, of course, was free to leave in order to slake her sexual appetite any time she wanted, but Diana did not want the boys to travel home without their mother.
‘Well, all right,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Let’s enjoy one more day’s sunshine and then leave tomorrow.’ She glanced at her host, who was swamping a thin slice of toast with lashings of thick marmalade. ‘Is that OK with you, Travers?’ she asked.
‘My chopper’s at your service any time you want, honey,’ he drawled. ‘But we’ll be sorry to see you go. Kids seldom stay the course aboard, and I understand why.’
‘Tomorrow, then. Super,’ said Carolyn, blue eyes shining. ‘I must call David after breakfast.’
Pomares’ boat, with its long line of blue-painted cork floats stretching behind it as far as the eye could see, had been slowly drifting with a not particularly strong current all morning as its nets began to fill with fish. By eleven o’clock it was further away from the Mirabelle than suited Arsenio’s purpose and he told Pomares to start the engines and move back towards the yacht until they were just close enough to pick up any movement on her decks without binoculars.
Hantash was on watch when a small boat began to be winched down to the sea with people aboard. He picked up the binoculars and studied it until it was afloat and free.
‘This is it,’ he called out excitedly to Arsenio. ‘She’s going swimming with the boys.’
Arsenio smiled. ‘Action stations,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
She liked to dive down deep, as deep as she could go, then let herself drift to the surface, holding her breath until she was almost there, enjoying the unreal sensation of being completely and utterly cut off from the entire world while she did this, then claw herself over the side of the speedboat to stand on its prow and dive cleanly in once again. She was happily topless, a golden brown all over, a skimpy white bikini bottom her only item of clothing.
As she knifed into the sun-drenched waters for the third time, sinking like a stone, she failed to realize she had company other than the fish until a big, strong hand grabbed hold of her upper arm. The shock was tremendous. She thought at first that she had been seized by a shark, or a killer whale, and that she was as good as dead. Then she saw, but vaguely for she was down deep enough for the sun to be only weakly penetrating the sea, that a man had taken hold of her. A man equipped with an aqualung and breathing mask. As she struggled, another scuba diver came up on her opposite side and her other wrist was taken in a savage grip, the arm was forced behind her back in a half nelson, and a breathing mask was slipped over her head. Terrified, helpless to put up more than a token resistance, she found herself being forced flat in the water. Now facing downwards, her arms in a full nelson, the hands bent painfully up into the back of her neck, she was sandwiched between the two divers.
The men had C212 Mercury scuba-jet motors strapped to their stomachs. Felix Springer, whose career to date had included a stint as a deep-sea diver in the North Sea, was carrying an extra oxygen cylinder on his back, and it was to this that the face mask which had been thrust over the woman’s face was attached.
El Asesino, the other aggressor, had thought this operation out in most meticulous detail, down to the fact that there were large plastic bags attached to the outlets of the face masks so that there would be no tell-tale signs of bubbles streaming up to the surface.
It was the perfect snatch; perfect but for one fact, which Arsenio realized at the moment he seized the woman’s arm, a fact which filled him with fury and rage towards Hantash. Of course, he should never have let anyone else take over the surveillance. He should only, ever, trust himself in these matters. For the young woman they had captured was not Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales – it was her companion, whose name at that moment escaped him, though he remembered having seen her picture in Interviú.
Well, he thought, a madness seething within him as the scuba jets towed the three of them swiftly back in the direction of La Señorita Juanita, he had blown it and it was his stupid fault for delegating a crucial part of the operation. As soon as he had realized he did not have Diana, he also understood that the mission would be aborted whether or not he let this female go. If he did release her, his bird would be warned and would fly out of there prontissimo in the Bonnington chopper; if he did not, the area would shortly be teeming with people searching for a body.
He would have to settle for the woman they were dragging through the sea between them. So, she was not Diana and he had lost the challenge to hi
mself, the idea which had filled him with fire – but all the same she was surely excellent kidnap material.
Carolyn Parker-Reed, meanwhile, was fighting more than her terror. She had never got on with face masks and scuba diving, she’d been unable to master the special technique for breathing and, despite a plentiful supply of oxygen, she felt she was choking. Together that dreadful sensation and her fear caused her to pass out.
‘She should have come up by now,’ said Prince William as he and Prince Harry anxiously searched the water with their eyes. ‘She never stays down this long.’
‘Perhaps she swam under the yacht?’ suggested Harry. ‘Maybe she’s on the other side of it?’
‘That must be it, yes,’ William agreed. The Mirabelle was looming above them. He called out three times for his mother before she appeared at the ship’s rail.
‘What?’ exclaimed Diana at her eldest son’s question. ‘Christ!’ She sprinted around the yacht, hoping to God that she would find her friend swimming on the other side of it. When she did not, beginning to panic, she tore back until she was again above the boys. Still seeing no sign of Carolyn, she screamed, loudly enough for the entire boat to hear, ‘Help! Carolyn’s missing!’
The Princess of Wales, wearing a halter top and shorts, kicked off her shoes and plunged into the sea.
‘You ballsed up, Joe, you unbelievably stupid bastard,’ snarled Arsenio as Hantash took hold of one of the unconscious Carolyn’s forearms and Salim Kasar the other and they hauled her up into the fishing boat.
‘What?’ retorted Hantash, not comprehending. Carolyn’s chin was lolling into her chest, and her short hair, plastered to her head, was indistinguishable from that of Diana. Until she was on her back on the deck, and he removed her oxygen mask, Hantash failed to realize that she was not Lady Di. Then he said, ‘Shit, man, you got the wrong woman,’ which remark added fuel to Arsenio’s anger as he dragged himself up over the side.