Marine F SBS

by Robin James

  Arsenio grinned flatly. ‘Tough titty,’ he said.

  Down below, Carolyn had drifted into a fitful sleep. Her sweater had rucked up over her bare belly, and Springer cast a lustful eye at her smooth, brown flesh. Just give me half a chance, he was thinking. Just half a chance.

  19

  She was called the Agincourt and her presence in Malpica harbour had drawn quite a crowd. She was a Royal Marine Offshore Patrol Boat manned by a crew of SBS commandos with some Royal Navy matelots to do the rough work, and she was at Malpica to pick up the submersibles Shark and Squid. The sheer size of her and her clean, modern lines made the fishing boats in the harbour – which included the damaged La Señorita Juanita, about to be lifted out of the water for essential repairs to her hull – look like clumsy little toys. Unlike the lost Gremlin, she was an obvious military machine, bristling with guns. There were two housings on each side of the stern of the boat, where her own submersibles were normally carried. Today, the housings were empty, her customary two little submarines left behind at Portsmouth.

  The Wessex helicopter which Major Fernandez had been using was parked on deck, while the major himself was in the control room of the ship, watching as lift lines were attached to the Shark, piloted by Corporal Bright. They had been lucky; beaching the submersibles could have damaged the props, but they had sunk into soft mud and were functioning perfectly well.

  As the Shark was being winched up, water streaming from her, a sergeant brought Fernandez the fax he had been waiting and hoping for. Having attended a funeral service at sea for the lost commandos of the Gremlin, aboard the Agincourt, with Travers Bonnington and his crew joining in from the deck of the Mirabelle alongside, the major was in the dourest of moods; the fax, from the Guardia Civil HQ in La Coruña, served to shake off a little of that gloom. The Portuguese police had found the hired BMW, parked near the entrance to Estoril harbour. It was locked, and they had not tried to open it; instead there were undercover agents keeping a close watch on it, waiting to pounce on anyone who approached the vehicle.

  Fernandez digested the welcome information, and then gave it considerable thought. Just how efficient were Portuguese plain-clothes policemen? They were dealing with highly experienced terrorists. With men possessed of the keenest of eyes as far as detecting members of the forces of law and order was concerned. It was most probable they would never approach the car again. He thought some more. Estoril harbour. Boats. El Asesino had something of a penchant for boats – the houseboat used in the attack on the House of Lords; the fishing boat from this very harbour. Both of them hijacked with their owners aboard. It seemed highly likely he may have pulled a similar stunt for the third time. But were the Portuguese police going to investigate thoroughly enough to discover if this was the case? Somehow, he doubted it.

  He winced with pain and grabbed at his back. Christ – was he killing himself? Well, he’d die in the attempt to avenge the crew of the Gremlin. The pain subsided. He made up his mind on the next course of action.

  ‘Tell the Wessex pilot to prepare for take-off,’ he told the sergeant. ‘We’re going to Portugal – as far south as Lisbon – so he should plan a refuelling stop.’

  Outside on the starboard stern, the Shark was being made fast, and Bright was crawling out of the hatch. The Squid was already having lines attached in preparation for her lift out of the water.

  Fernandez realized it was a fair distance to Estoril. He checked it on the map: almost three hundred nautical miles. Flat out, the Agincourt could be in the Lisbon area in about twelve hours. Officially, he should take orders from above to move her south, but there was no time to lose.

  ‘Tell Captain Wingfield to make tracks out of here for Estoril as soon as the other submersible’s aboard,’ he said to the sergeant as he made to leave the control room for the Wessex. Its rotor was already starting to turn. ‘Fast as she can go.’

  It was ten minutes past two.

  In London, the Home Secretary was in the depths of despair. Still no word from the kidnappers. And the goddam million-quid parcel was sitting there on his desk in front of him, taunting him, mocking him. It was now twenty-one and a half hours since he was supposed to have received telephoned instructions about what to do with the money. He had slept very little. He had not shaved. He had neglected his work. Time had passed with the speed of a bicycle being pedalled through desert sand.

  All Stephen Parker-Reed knew about his daughter was that she had been hustled off a fishing boat in some backwater called Malpica, and there the trail had been lost. It was all very well for Major bloody Fernandez to say that Carolyn had been smuggled over the border into Portugal. But where was the proof of that? Nobody at all had reported actually seeing her.

  He could not get the thought out of his mind that she was dead. They had killed her and abandoned their project. It was illogical, but the dreadful idea would not budge – it was weighing him down. His haunted eyes, dark circles emphasizing the bags beneath them, kept darting from his private telephone to the brown-paper parcel, and back again. He felt he was about to go insane.

  Carolyn was, at that very moment, reading a message from a sheet of paper that Arsenio had given her, into his radio telephone. In Barcelona, Kirsty was recording it. It was short and simple, and this time El Asesino had not found it necessary for his purpose to make his prisoner appear to be terrified. Like her father, she had hardly slept in two days. She sounded quiet, subdued and utterly miserable.

  ‘Dear Papa,’ she read, ‘I have been moved. I don’t know where to. They are not feeding me, and they are giving me only water to drink. Do exactly what they tell you, Papa, because they are not going to feed me until all the money is paid.’

  Carolyn was staring through a porthole as she dictated this. They were moored perhaps a hundred metres from a sandy beach, in a small bay. There were a few other boats around. People were swimming or water-skiing; others were taking the sun on the beach.

  It seemed to be an uncrowded little holiday paradise.

  20

  By five-fifteen, Major Fernandez, his back giving him frequent, nasty twinges but not seemingly worsening, was walking into Estoril harbour. It was a superb afternoon, the sun not hot enough to be uncomfortable, a gentle breeze blowing the pennants on the boats, a tinkling and creaking in the fresh, clean-smelling air.

  The major opted not to announce his presence to the Portuguese police, deciding that such a move would probably only complicate his mission. He was not particularly interested in seeing the BMW either – that was hardly going to achieve anything. He set about strolling around the harbour, asking pertinent questions to everyone he came across who was not obviously a tourist. He could stumble by in Portuguese – it was very similar to Spanish – besides which many of the yachts in the harbour were British-owned. His size, his commanding yet polite manner, stood him in good stead. He was looking, he claimed, for his daughter, who he believed was staying on a boat there, but he did not know which one. His description of the girl was that of Carolyn Parker-Reed. Had anyone seen her; or had any boats gone out today that she might have been on?

  It was little more than an hour before he stumbled on what seemed to be what he was seeking. A Spanish couple with a small yacht near where the Miss Molly had been moored had noticed some men, with a girl who matched Carolyn’s description, go aboard early that morning. Shortly afterwards, the Miss Molly had left harbour. The couple had not paid much attention to this, for boats were always moving in and out, but they did think that the girl had not been on deck when the Englishman’s yacht left.

  Fernandez was a most thorough man. Despite feeling miscast in his role of detective, he continued for another hour with his questions until he had done a complete tour of the harbour, just in case there was any other possibility. There seemed to be none. The Miss Molly had not returned by the time he was finished, neither had her master checked her out through customs as intending to take a route leaving Portuguese waters, so she was probably not very far away
. The major could have her searched for by local police patrol boats, but he did not feel that was the way to go about it. A stealthy search was the answer, and he could initiate that by hiring a private boat. But it would be dark in a couple of hours so there was not much sense in it. Better to await the arrival of the Agincourt, sometime during the night, and set off at first light.

  When, by nightfall, the Miss Molly had failed to return to harbour, Fernandez was convinced he was right: that Carolyn was being held prisoner aboard her. A call to the Home Secretary in London added to that conviction. Parker-Reed, he learned, had had a message that Carolyn was safe and he had left his office, destination – as far as his secretary was concerned – unknown. He had taken the brown-paper parcel with him.

  Meanwhile, no matter that the entire police force of both Portugal and Spain were now on alert for him, Arsenio had travelled the way he always did. Using one of his perfectly developed aliases, he boarded a plane in Lisbon and flew to Barcelona, arriving at seven o’clock that evening. Kirsty was there to meet him, and at first she failed to recognize him because of his neat little grey-dyed moustache and the absence of beard. Also, he appeared drawn, older.

  ‘He’s going to follow instructions?’ he asked her in the taxi.

  ‘Oh, for sure,’ she said. ‘You can’t believe the relief in the poor sod’s voice when he knew his daughter was still alive.’ She was getting bored with hanging around, pleased to see her lover.

  ‘Good.’ That’s the way he wanted it. Still, there was absolutely no guarantee that Parker-Reed was not going to try something tricky; he had, after all, direct access to some of the finest police in the world – and a daughter was one thing, but five million pounds, however much you adored her, quite another.

  In the flat in Las Ramblas, Kirsty prepared Arsenio his first civilized meal in nearly three days. With lovemaking at the forefront of her mind, she coaxed him early to bed – not a difficult task. But he was exhausted. She tried the one act which never failed to arouse him, but it had the opposite effect. El Asesino dropped into a deep sleep while being fellated – for the first time in his life.

  21

  La Sagrada Familia, dominating the otherwise unprepossessing, rather dreary square named after its designer, Antonio Gaudí, has variously been seen as a magnificent folly, a misplaced piece of Disneyland, or a masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture. Constructed almost seventy years ago, the church’s main shell was unfinished at the time of Gaudí’s death, in 1926, and has remained the subject of municipal alterations, of public rows, and a centre of touristic interest ever since. It was still unfinished, parts of its interior still being worked on, when it attracted Arsenio’s attention.

  El Asesino had decided that La Sagrada Familia ideally suited his purpose for the first drop, for three reasons. First, there was a small park in front of its entrance from which all movements in, out and around it could be easily observed. Second, there were some areas under construction inside where a flight bag might be concealed for a brief period. Lastly, there was a way out – not a public one but usable – at the back, where there ought to have been a small garden but where there was a clutter of builders’ materials instead.

  He had finally made it with Kirsty, but not until they woke up the next morning, and now, as he approached the Plaza Gaudí, he was feeling refreshed, totally alert and ready for any eventuality.

  The Home Secretary, he calculated, would be on his way from a different direction, in a taxi, at that very moment. Arsenio had covered the twenty-odd blocks north-west from Las Ramblas on foot. Parker-Reed’s first instruction, from Kirsty the previous day, was that on arrival at Barcelona airport early that morning, he should take a cab into the city centre, where he was to pick up an envelope waiting in his name for him behind the Bar Central, in the Gran Via. That envelope had contained a plan of the interior of La Sagrada Familia and instructions to deposit his parcel in a corner where some works were being carried out. The parcel was to be in a plain brown flight bag, he was to make sure he was not being observed by any tourist or official before dropping the bag behind a particular tarpaulin – and then he was to leave the church immediately. Should he not leave, the pick-up would not be made and his daughter’s agony would be prolonged.

  Arsenio, as he lingered at a kiosk in front of the park on the other side of the road from the entrance to the church, taking his time about buying postcards, presented a curious sight. Wearing flower-patterned cotton shorts, sandals with blue socks, a flashy shirt, a panama hat, a camera with powerful telescopic lens around his neck and a luminous yellow rucksack on his back, he resembled a particularly tasteless example of the American tourist. His strategy was a simple one; a man drawing so much attention to himself would hardly be the one waiting to pick up a million-pound ransom. The unusual precaution was in case Parker-Reed had clandestine company.

  And the Home Secretary did have company – in spades.

  A drab, sea-green tour bus which had to be at least thirty years old, battered and listing slightly to one side, rounded a corner; incredibly, it bore Polish number-plates. It pulled to a wheezy stop, blocking off Arsenio’s view of the huge, square, glass-panelled doors of the church. The cantilevered, grey stone-columned portico loomed up forty metres above the roof of the bus, framing, high over the doors, immense, modernistic statues of saints, one on his knees with a cross on his back (or was that supposed to be Christ?). Christ on the cross, thin and dramatic, was on a ledge above them. Higher still, soaring to the heavens, but with a huge crane in the background between them, were four slim and elegant, oddly decorated turrets with holes and bumps in them, and orange and green triangular designs towards their tips which looked like lollipops with balls stuck all around them and crosses on their faces.

  The bus disgorged its passengers – as dowdy in appearance as Arsenio was flashy – and creaked off on its way to find an official parking place. Paying for his postcards, Arsenio stiffened. Two things had happened at the same time. A taxi had pulled up and the man who was getting out of it and paying, tall and stooping, was Stephen Parker-Reed; he was carrying a brown flight bag. Another man, who had been sitting on a bench near the kiosk, reading, folded his newspaper and stood. His head was moving around as if he were idly glancing about him while deciding what to do next, but there was something about the slight jerkiness of that movement which suggested that his eyes were holding still on something – and that that something was a somebody: the Home Secretary as he walked up the steps to the doors of La Sagrada Familia. Arsenio went on red alert. Policeman. He glanced around. Not the only one, either: the gardener pruning a tree behind him in the park – something seemed to be not quite right about him; and there was another man pushing a refuse cart who just did not have the look of a street cleaner.

  Arsenio’s eyes swept the balconies to the left and right of the park. There was a man standing on one of them, leaning over its edge. Well, he might simply be a man on a balcony, watching the world go by below him. Or he might be a man on a balcony with a gun.

  Parker-Reed vanished through the doors of the church. Arsenio’s eyes were everywhere but on him. He lit a Camel. He had, in fact, managed not to smoke for more than twenty-four hours; now he lit the cigarette, hardly aware of what he was doing.

  The Home Secretary, totally uncharacteristically for a man who was perfectly at home with heads of state and royalty, felt nervous as a kitten crossing a busy road. He was unhappy about this stake-out. He just wanted to leave the money where instructed and follow instructions for the next drop as soon as possible. But he had his obligation to Interpol, who were backing him up in any way possible. And, as head of the Home Office – the government department responsible for law and order – he was obliged to cooperate in every way possible to bring the murderer of a ship’s complement of SBS commandos to justice.

  He had been assured that nothing at all would be done to jeopardize Carolyn’s life, and that if the man going to pick up the money turned out to be Arsenio,
they would merely follow him to try to discover her whereabouts. Only if it was someone else would they move in to make an arrest and put the sort of pressure on the kidnapper to break him. Nevertheless, Parker-Reed was in mortal fear for his daughter’s safety.

  From the kiosk, El Asesino watched as the man who had been on the bench – thickset and wearing jeans, trainers and a yellow T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Real Madrid’ – walked briskly up the steps and into the church. Over the T-shirt the man had on a loose-fitting, black cotton waistcoat. Arsenio caught a glimpse of a brown strap through the back of the waistcoat’s armhole as it jumped on his big shoulders. That confirmed his suspicions. The character was tooled up; he was a cop, for sure.

  Walking up the steps at a leisurely pace, Arsenio stopped twice to pretend to take photographs. On the top step, he swung round, flicked the barely smoked Camel away, and pretended to take more shots from there. The gardener, he observed, was actually only making the motions of clipping twigs off the orange tree, while the street sweeper was leaning on his hand cart, smoking, watching the front of the church. The man on the balcony was still there and from his raised position – the steps went up four metres – Arsenio saw the shape of what could very well be a rifle lying at his feet. He smiled tightly to himself as he entered the lofty, slight gloom of the interior of La Sagrada Familia. No way these clowns were going to outwit him.

  The church was bustling with tourists, but not so packed that Arsenio could not see across the vast entrance area to the place where the Home Secretary was to leave the bag. Parker-Reed was most unlikely to make a mistake about the spot, for there was a stone statue of a saint to its left, and it was roped off with red-and-white-striped plastic tape.