by Ted Bell
“Of course,” Congreve said quietly. “You would have interviewed little Alex in the course of your investigation.”
“Oh, I wasn’t the lead investigator. Far from it. But I loved that little fellow. I took some little toy or something to that hospital room every single day,” Witherspoon said. “I sat by his bed most of the time. But I wouldn’t call it investigation. Just keeping him company. Poor boy Alex, he couldn’t talk at all at first. When his grandfather got down here, well, he started to come back a little.”
“No memory of the crime, even then?”
“None at all. The first time I saw him he kept repeatin’ somethin’ over and over. Three knocks. He never would explain it, but I figured it out eventually.”
“Three knocks. What do you think it meant, Stubbs?” Congreve asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“I think it was a code. Between him and his father, I mean. See, little Alex was locked in that locker from the inside. And the key to the locker was found in Alex’s pocket.”
“So his father, probably having heard someone up on deck, had hidden him in the locker, then given him the key and told him to lock himself inside,” Ross said.
“And told him not to come out for anyone unless he heard three knocks on the door,” Congreve concluded.
“That’s just the way I saw it,” Witherspoon said. “His father, he died with his back to that door. Wasn’t any way anybody was going to get through him to that child.”
“How do you know that?” Ross asked.
“If you look closely at the photo of the bulkhead wall where the door was, you’ll see two deep holes on either side of the door. Those holes match the two knife wounds that penetrated the victim’s hands.”
“He was nailed to the wall?”
“He was crucified. As I said, the photographs reveal the name of the man responsible for the murders,” Witherspoon said.
“The method of killing then?” Congreve asked.
“Yes. You see, that kind of mutilation—the throat slit with the tongue drawn out through the opening and left hanging on the chest, for instance—”
“The infamous ‘Colombian necktie,’ ” Ross said, and Witherspoon nodded at him.
“We had a reign of terror down here, early in the seventies and into the eighties,” Witherspoon said. “Anti-British feelings in the islands. Then, anti-American. It was also the beginning of narco-terrorism. Everywhere in these islands were the narco-traffickers and sicarios, or the assassins. Most learned their trade at the foot of a vicious Colombian drug king we called el doctor.”
“And that’s the man you think is responsible for the Hawke murders?” Congreve asked.
“Yes, sir. I’m sure of it. Whoever killed Alex’s parents, he worked directly for a man named Pablo Escobar.”
“Escobar is dead, as you know, Chief,” Ross said to Congreve. “Tracked down and assassinated in Medellin in 1989 by a team of Colombian special forces. No one will admit it, of course, but there were Americans involved, Delta Force black ops.”
“So the murderers are Colombian,” Congreve said.
“No,” Witherspoon said, “I think they were Cuban.”
“Please explain,” Ross said.
“Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage. I think the killings occurred in the Exumas. That’s where Seahawke was last seen, moored in a little cove near Staniel Cay.”
Sutherland and Congreve looked at each other but said nothing.
“But the style of the thing, it was pure Colombian. So, I went down there to Staniel Cay myself,” Witherspoon said, “on a tip from a friend of mine, a young policeman down there by the name of Bajun. He said there had been three Cuban boys, brothers, who’d been working odd jobs in the Exumas. Bartenders, paid hands, fishermen, you know.”
“Yes, go on, please,” Congreve said, plainly excited.
“They attracted Bajun’s attention, he told me, because they all wore expensive gold jewelry. Colombian jewelry. He thought they were narcos killing time between drug drops, and he had his eye on them.”
“So. Not Escobar himself. But three Cubans who might have been working for him at the time,” Ross said, mulling it over. “Entirely plausible.”
“That was our thinking, me and Bajun. We dusted the murder scene for prints but our techniques were pretty primitive back then. We did find three sets of footprints, in addition to the victims’. All had bare feet. So, there were three murderers. And the three Cubans disappeared the same night that the yacht did. Never seen again.”
“What happened then?” Congreve asked, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. A chill of excitement had made him forget all about the tropic heat.
“Nobody paid me no mind. I didn’t have too much credibility at that time. And we had a backlog of cases two miles long. So I went out on my own. I tried the Americans first. The CIA station chief here at the time was an acquaintance of my father’s. His name was Benjamin Hill.
“Now, Ben knew that I knew the CIA and the U.S. Army were all over Colombia. It was the worst-kept secret down here. They had the Medellin cartel under daily surveillance. But, of course, Ben couldn’t admit to anything, even though he wanted to help. Officially, the Americans were not in Colombia, so I hit a stone wall.”
“What did you do then?” asked Ross.
“Simple. I emptied my savings account and borrowed some money from my father. Then I went down to Colombia,” Witherspoon said. “I had a good description of the three brothers from Bajun. And a warrant based on the evidence we had gathered in Staniel Cay. I poked around a little. ’Bout a week. People smile in your face, shake they heads. Got nowhere. Finally, I met with the chief of police in Medellin. I showed him the police sketches I’d had done of the suspects.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Congreve said, his words tinged with excitement. “You still have those sketches?”
“Of course. Anyway, I got nowhere with that damn man. It was clear the chief down there was, like most everybody in those days, in Escobar’s pocket.”
“May I see those sketches?” Ambrose asked.
“You can have them,” Witherspoon said, taking the tattered sheaves from his folder and handing them over.
“And that was the end of it, then?” asked Congreve, studying the rough caricatures.
“Not exactly,” Witherspoon said. He stood up from his chair and gazed up into the sun-dappled branches of the Calusa tree, the empty flap of his sleeve floating in the breeze.
“That last night in Colombia after I met with the chief of police,” he said, continuing to gaze upwards, “an automobile packed with one hundred kilos of dynamite exploded right outside my hotel. The entire front of the building collapsed into the street. Six people were killed. There was a young mother and her two infant children, just entering the hotel when the bomb—all I lost was my right arm.”
“It was not your fault, Mr. Witherspoon,” Congreve said to the old man, putting a hand on his bony shoulder.
“It wasn’t?” Witherspoon said.
30
“Welcome home, m’lord,” Pelham said, swinging open the wide mahogany door at the entrance of Hawke’s new Georgetown home. He’d heard the familiar roar of Hawke’s motorcycle outside and made his way across the black-and-white checked floor of the foyer.
Hawke shut down the motorcycle and reluctantly climbed off. He loved firing up the old Norton Commando and was glad of any excuse to use it. After leaving Vicky’s office the previous afternoon, he’d had only an hour or so in his new home. In the splendor of his cerulean blue bedroom, he’d had just time enough to call his decorator Le Coney in New York, thank her for the splendid job, then hop into a shower, a dinner jacket, and then out to the garage and onto his Norton for the short sprint around to the Georgetown Club.
“Hullo, Pelham, old thing,” Hawke said, mounting the stone steps and smiling at his butler. “Glad to see you’re still among the living this morning.”
“As Alfred Lord Tennyson put it so
succinctly in his poem ‘The Brook,’ I go on forever, m’lord,” the aged butler said, with a slight bow.
Pelham Grenville had to be nearly a hundred years old. He still had a good head of thick white hair, an imperious nose, and twinkling blue eyes. He wore spotless white gloves, a cutaway jacket, striped trousers, and a stiff white tie at his throat every day of his life.
He’d spent the majority of that lifetime working for one member of the Hawke family or another. Though he was in fact a thoroughly professional butler, the family had long since ceased to think of him as a servant. He was a member of the family. He was Pelham, that charming fellow who kept successions of Hawke properties, town and country houses, well oiled. And, until they could be shipped off to Eton or Harrow or, later, Dartmouth, he also kept generations of Hawke children on the straight and narrow.
Pelham had insisted on coming over to Washington to supervise the restoration and decoration of The Oaks. Hawke didn’t have the heart to say no. With Hawke away on business, and with only the odd aging aunt or cousin dropping by for tea, there was certainly not much activity in the London house in Belgrave Square. Besides, he enjoyed Grenville’s company enormously.
Hawke gave Pelham a stern look.
“Now, none of this bowing and scraping stuff to anybody over here,” Hawke said, as the butler took his overcoat. “This is America, Pelham. Land of freedom and equality.”
“Please,” Pelham sniffed. “I’ve been in service for over eighty years. I hardly need—good heavens! Look at you, m’lord, you’re all bloody.”
“Must have been someplace I ate,” Hawke said, smiling at his own little joke. “Do I have time for a quick shower?”
“Very little, I’m afraid,” Pelham said. “Madame Secretary just rang. She’s on her way.”
“Is it that bloody late?” Hawke said, looking at his shattered watch. He’d been unable to tear himself away from Vicky’s bedside and forgotten all about the time.
“I tried your mobile, but as usual it wasn’t turned on.”
“Well, yes, there’s that. I wonder if you could possibly get the secretary some tea and apologize for me, will you? I’m going to have a scrub and put on something clean.”
“Indeed, sir. Your current appearance leaves a great deal to be desired. One might use the word ‘frightening’? I’ve taken the liberty of laying out one of your favorite gray Huntsman suits,” the butler said. “And may I suggest a tie? A nice Turnbull Navy foulard should do quite nicely. After all, your guest is a personage of great—”
But Hawke was already halfway up the sweeping marble staircase, mounting the steps three at a time.
“Lord Hawke is bloodied but unbowed, I see!” the old fellow muttered under his breath.
“Indeed, I am!” Hawke shouted back over his shoulder.
Ten minutes later, he’d showered and, ignoring the wardrobe laid out by Pelham, donned a pair of faded Levis, Royal Navy T-shirt, and an old black cashmere sweater. If Conch saw him in a coat and tie, she wouldn’t recognize him.
Entering the library, he found Consuelo de los Reyes sitting by a crackling fire, sipping a can of Diet Coke through a straw, and staring at the television.
“You’re here!” Hawke said. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“I figured out how to turn this damn thing on. Hope you don’t mind.”
She was watching herself on CNN Newsbreakers. Hawke couldn’t help smiling at Conch’s television appearance and demeanor.
Very genteel. Black dress, pearls. And, Hawke noticed, a marked absence of the usual stream of four-letter words that flowed so naturally from the mouth of the American Secretary of State.
“Does that dress make me look fat?” Conch asked.
“No dress makes you look fat, Conch.”
Today, Conch had on a tight pink cashmere sweater. It was a sweater he remembered quite well. It buttoned up the back. Or unbuttoned, as the case may be. Beyond the tall crystalline windows on either side of the hearth, a snow-covered Washington basked in the brilliant morning sunlight.
“Well, you’re my first guest,” Hawke said, pulling up a chair by the fireside. “I guess since you found the house for me, by all rights it should be you.” Conch owned the house just across the street and had first shown Alex the pretty Georgian brick home he now owned.
“Good God almighty, Alex,” she said, reaching over to flip off the television and looking around. “You’ve turned the old dump into Brideshead Manor.”
“Decorators certainly captured the English Country look in this room, didn’t they?”
“Feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a goddamn Polo ad. Like Ralph’s going to walk through the door any minute and plop down amidst the chintz with a couple of springer spaniels.”
Hawke smiled. Conch’s tastes ran to bamboo, rattan, and mounted blue marlins, even in Georgetown.
“Dreadful business last night at the Georgetown Club,” he said. “I’ve just come from the hospital.”
“Hell of a fright, buster. I got a call during dinner with the president. The Georgetown Club! We’ll nail these guys, whoever they are. And then we’ll nail the sonsabitches’ balls to the walls, believe me. Tell me about it. What happened to your hand?”
“Just a salad fork through it, Conch. I was lucky.”
“And Victoria?”
“I would say that she is extremely lucky.”
“Meaning?”
“This may be difficult for you to believe, but—” Alex broke off what he was saying when Pelham suddenly floated into the room.
“I’ve laid a breakfast out on the table there, m’lord,” he said. “Fruit, cereal, coffee, tea. Muffins with your favorite strawberry jam. Please ring if you need me. Otherwise I shan’t disturb you further.”
Hawke smiled as the butler withdrew, pulling the double doors closed, and said, “At any rate, I know it’s preposterous, but I think it’s possible that bomb was meant for Vicky.”
“Oh, Alex, get serious. Why in hell would anyone—”
“The bloody Cubans, perhaps. After all, that submarine was purchased by this Telaraña bunch. Could be trying to scare me away.”
“Alex, if they really wanted to, why not just kill you?”
“Too much bad publicity? I don’t know. Look, I’ll be honest. I gave those Russians a fairly rough go of it. Forced them to divulge who bought the Borzoi. They were terrified of the possible repercussions. In order to cover themselves, they’d go straight to the Cubans and tell them about my keen interest in their activities. So, I expect the new Cuban government aren’t exactly happy with me at the moment.”
“Big-time CYA.”
“Sorry?”
“Cover Your Ass. Your Russian friends are covering theirs with the Cubans,” Conch said. “That’s precisely what your little arms-dealing buddies would do. Go to the Cubans, tell their sob story, blame everything on you. Cuban Secret Service does a little backtracking and ends up in Kuwait City, where the first deal fell apart. CIA just received word that your friend Cap Adams just turned up dead. Sorry.”
“What?”
“London Metro Police found him last night in his apartment in St. John’s Wood. No apparent cause of death. Pathologists using an electron microscope detected a minute pellet of Ricin in his thigh muscle.”
“Ricin?”
“Toxic albumin found in castor beans. Remember the famous ‘Umbrella Murder’? A KGB thug with a trick umbrella assassinated an inconvenient Bulgarian named Marlgov on the Waterloo Bridge way back in ’78. Ancient history to us, but apparently not to the Cubans. Kudos to your British forensic boys for getting to the bottom of this one so quickly.”
“Kudos all around. Hope someone gets word of their brilliant success to Cap’s wife, Anne, and children in Arlington. Christ. I’ve got to call Anne.”
“Stick with Vicky a moment, Alex. What makes you think Vicky might be the target?”
“She was called to the phone by the waiter just minutes before the explosion. When she got
to the booth, there was no one on the line. Just breathing. There was a black briefcase on the floor. Thinking someone had simply forgotten it, she gave it to the waiter on her way back to the table.”
“And it exploded in his hands minutes later,” the secretary said, shaking her head. “I’ll get this info to the lead team right away.”
“Thanks.”
“Alex, the reason the president asked me to stop by this morning is Cuba. What we don’t need at State right now is another hotspot right on our doorstep. That island is coming to a fast boil. I’m going to need a little help with this one.”
“Whatever I can do. Tell me.”
“As I told you, rumors of a coup have been circulating for a while. Now, a televised speech Fidel was scheduled to make last evening was canceled at the last minute. It’s not at all like him. I’ve got a shitload of HUMINT pouring in through our Cuban desk at the Swiss embassy in Havana.”
“HUMINT?”
“Sorry. Human intelligence. State Department speak for spies. I try like hell not to talk like that, but sometimes ...”
“Castro’s had a rough go of it with Parkinson’s, you know. Relapse?”
“Possible. But we know he’d had a major recovery after the pope’s last visit. We get weekly medical reports on him from a doctor on our payroll. He’s down, but he’s not out by a long shot. Tough old bird. And every male in his family lives to be at least a hundred.”
“So. What’s next?”
“I’m going from here right back to the White House. We’ve had contingency planning for a Cuban overthrow on the books forever, as you can well imagine. We’re moving to the implementation stage right now.”
“Any news on the submarine front?”
“You bet. Here, look at these,” de los Reyes said, and handed Hawke a bright red folder full of black-and-white photographs.