Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series)

by Andrew Towning

  “So why do you have the gun, Fiona?”

  “Well I’d have thought that even you could have worked that one out, Jake?”

  “You’ve not been doing this cloak and dagger stuff long have you?” I said, adding. “And that’s a really crap answer, by the way. I’m disappointed that you don’t trust me. No matter what you think of me personally. My only hope is that you know how shoot the thing, and more importantly, that you know when to shoot it?”

  “I can assure you, Jake, that when the time comes I know exactly what has to be done. But thank you for your concern.”

  “Um, I’m sure you do.” I said jumping down off the boat. At the heavy double doors I paused just for a second; giving her yet another opportunity to come clean about who she worked for, before pushing one of them open, and walking out into the grey daylight.

  “So what happens next, Jake?” Fiona shouted after me.

  “I really don’t know, Fiona. But I’m going to find out.” I said over my shoulder as the door swung closed behind me.

  Chapter 15

  Tuesday 12.30pm I made a call to Detective Inspector Daniel Jacobs, who was part of the Special Branch team investigating Robert Flackyard. Although not forthcoming initially, after being suitably reminded about a certain incident during our time at university together, he relented and give me what I wanted.

  “So you see, Jake, Fiona Price is part of a team investigating Robert Flackyard and Harry Caplin. When we heard that your assignment was taking you to Dorset, it was too good an opportunity to miss. But it was deemed necessary at the outset to let you think that she was sent to simply help you, sorry about that. Your Mr LevensonJones knew, of course.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “Forgive me, Daniel for being just a tad miffed about not knowing. It would have made my job a lot easier if someone had told me at the start of this assignment, but thank you for being honest with me now.” I hung up and walked back down in the pouring rain to the boathouse. Fiona looked up as I opened the door, but carried on zipping up one of the bags containing her diving equipment.

  “I think I owe you an apology,” I said.

  “Oh, no you don’t, Jake. What I said earlier? Well, it was unforgivable, the way I spoke to you and my attitude towards you. It’s me who should be apologising, not you.”

  “What - no, not that. Although I agree you were a little harsh calling me a bastard. True some of the time, but not always. It’s just that I feel professionally that we got off on the wrong foot. Look, to be truthful, Fiona, Charlie and I thought that you were sent to spy on us or something like that.”

  “Anyway, what with those photographs being stolen and various other things happening, it could only have been someone on the inside. Afraid I jumped to a conclusion about you that was quite clearly wrong. And for that, I’m truly sorry. You see, everyone else on this team was already known to each other, and then you arrived out of the blue. I then tried to run a check on you through the firm’s database, which came up with a great big zero.” Walking the length of the sleek cruiser I sat down on a pile of wooden crates that were stacked against the side of the boathouse.

  Fiona walked up towards me, running her finger along the side of the boat as she went. “Look, you don’t have to beat yourself up you know. I should never have agreed to go along with LJ’s theory that a certain person would be getting sticky fingers on this particular assignment. He specifically asked for me, wanted me here not because of my diving experience and the logbook, I’m afraid, was just another one of his smoke screens. My father and LJ go back as long as I can remember. Dad had a phone call late one evening, asking him if he had anyone in his department or someone he knew from experience, who could act, throw a tantrum or two, was a qualified open water diver and would be able to look after themselves in any situation. Well, after a considerable amount of thought, all of ten seconds, he came up with me. But I really wasn’t sent here to snoop on you or Charlie, bless him. It’s Mr Rumple that LJ is concerned about.”

  I said with surprise. “Rumple, what exactly have you got on him?”

  “So far all we know…”

  “We, who exactly is we,” I snapped at her. Just managing to suppress the sudden surge of anger rising inside me, as I remembered Rumple boasting once that he could detonate a bomb, while at the same time having a cup of tea a hundred miles away.

  “We, are the Partners of Ferran & Cardini and in particular LJ, the Serious Drugs Squad to which I am currently seconded to, and the Whitehall department for which I actually work. Now if I may continue?” I nodded my head ever so slightly.

  “As you quite rightly say, Jake, Mr Rumple is a very experienced field operative. For many years both he and Mrs Rumple along with their particular skills have been successfully used, and well paid I might add, by various intelligence agencies as well as going out on loan to other friendly Governments around the world. The CIA were always asking for them. It was decided at the highest level, however, that they were becoming too much in demand and a little too arrogant for their own good.”

  So the head of department at that time was instructed to retire them from active service, but to somewhere that HMG could, if they so required, call them back from. To cut a very long story short, they were pensioned off to your firm. Why, I hear you ask, because all of the Partners and in particular LJ still have an active involvement, as you are well aware, with HMG. That last bit comes under the Official Secrets Act, by the way.”

  “Um, well, I already knew most of that, including the last bit. But why start batting for the other team now and for what reason? Surely not just the money, would they really risk everything they have built up?” I paced up and down the side of the boathouse. Running my hands through my hair I continued. “It just doesn’t make sense, I’ve known them for many years.”

  “Rumple’s actions of late are so out of character. There must be more to this than you’re telling me.”

  I started to open the door to leave.

  “Jake, please come back inside. Look, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  I went back to the side of the cruiser, climbed the ladder onto the deck and went into the main cabin. I poured us both a large whisky. Fiona sat down and took the glass from me, gulping back the amber coloured liquid in one hit.

  I refilled her glass and sat down opposite her. “So, go on tell me the rest.”

  “Well, the department head that retired them was Edward Levenson-Jones.” She brought her right hand up as if stopping the traffic at rush hour.

  “Before you say it, yes it does get worse. The picture becomes much clearer when you know who the person is that told LJ to wield the axe on the Rumples. I’m afraid it’s none other than the right honourable Oliver Hawkworth MP. So you see why certain people have become very nervous about these two becoming loose cannons and taking some sort of revenge, as well as a large payment from Flackyard. The fact is that LJ should never have succumbed to the Partners and their devious ways, it would have been much safer to keep them away from this assignment altogether. We think that Flackyard paid someone on the inside to dig around at Ferran & Cardini.

  “Get to know about this, and well the rest is history, as they say.”

  “Hell - this whole assignment has been a shambles from the start.” I finished the whisky, not knowing whether the burning inside my stomach was the anger I still felt or the alcohol. In the end, I decided that it was the whisky and that being angry was going to achieve nothing but melancholy.

  “When are you returning to London?” I asked. My mobile phone started to ring before Fiona could reply. The call was brief and to the point. The female voice at the other end purred and stated that Mr Flackyard was holding a Champagne reception and auction in aid of local charities at his home this evening and, that he would be delighted if Miss Price and I could attend, formal black tie, starting around 8.00 p.m. After accepting the invitation on behalf of us both, I hung up.

  “Tonight,” Fiona said. “I’ll be drivin
g up tonight, back to the rat race and a normal routine again I suppose, they’ll almost certainly take me off the case now.”

  “Well, that last call was interesting. Flackyard is hosting a Champagne charity function this evening and has requested our company. So how about a few more days by the seaside – unless you have to rush off, that is?”

  “Well let me see, I do have an appointment at 9.00am sharp tomorrow, with a really boring desk job. So what do you think?”

  “You’d better phone your boss and tell him that there have been some interesting new developments with the situation down here and that your presence is still required. Don’t say anything more than that, except that a full progress report will be with Ferran & Cardini by this evening. Here, use my phone, it’s secure.”

  Fiona used my mobile phone to call her boss in London.

  “Oh, by the way, you’d better unpack your diving gear again, we’ll be going for a little swim later,” I said as I left the boathouse.

  As I stepped outside, the wind and rain gave no sign of relenting. Going straight up to my room I spent the next hour at my laptop, putting together a progress report on the developments relating to Robert Flackyard. I added that Fiona had come clean, telling me that we’d been working for the same side all the time! After emailing LJ, I saved the report to disk and erased it from the hard drive. This done I phoned Sam ‘the car wash’. He answered after two or three rings with a cheerful hello, surprised that I was calling him. Where was he? At Robert Flackyard’s home cleaning all of his flash cars? His boss had called him and said that he had been personally asked for, that there was going to be a glitzy party and charity auction there tonight and one of Mr Flackyard’s Aston Martins would be sold off to the highest bidder. So he was to stay there all day and polish every one of them.

  “OK, now listen very carefully, I want you to make a note of everyone coming and going, get their registration numbers if possible. If Caplin in particular turns up or anyone else arrives throughout the day, immediately text me their name on this number. If Flackyard leaves also let me know, and remember to write down times.”

  My thoughts were racing as I finished talking. What a stroke of luck that our young observer should be in exactly the right place at the right time. Or was it?

  Mrs Rumple was no where to be found. A note on the kitchen notice board read, gone into town – back by 6.30pm. The time was now 2.30pm, leaving just four hours to relocate the fifty deadly opium packages.

  Chapter 16

  Tuesday 3.00pm Take the English Channel on a cold and miserable day and keep a brisk wind striking across it from the Northeast. Put a luxury cruiser somewhere between the heaving waves with the swell on its starboard quarter, and into it put two crew standing clad in wetsuits when there should have been at least four.

  The swell was enough to tip us down in the valleys between the waves at an alarming angle. To the Southwest I watched the coastline come into view from each wave crest. A surreal scene with clouds as black as coal, low and menacing. Brilliant shafts of sunlight, highlighting across sea and land like static and streaks of phosphorescence. These weren’t ideal conditions to dive in, but at least the weather was, for our sake, keeping the sunshine sailors at home and only a handful of hardened thrill seekers out in these conditions.

  I was already feeling the constriction of the tight fitting wetsuit and began to wonder whether it had been such a good idea to put it on back in the boathouse, especially as we wouldn’t be diving for another half an hour? Fiona carried out the last minute checks on all of the dive equipment, and weighted down each one of the five bags containing the opium packages with lead we had found tucked in a corner of the garage. When absolutely satisfied that each one was secure, a nylon rope was used to tie them all together in a continuous chain.

  Our heading was to a point about one mile out from Old Harry rocks to the wreck of a WWII German submarine, sunk during the last war. An ocean-going U-boat as I remembered was a very large piece of machinery, over six hundred tons and two hundred feet in length. Making it the ideal hiding place for the five sacks that we had to conceal, each containing ten of the small waxy bales of raw opium.

  The story of the U-boat was often enthusiastically told by some of the older locals, who could recall the event. It went something along the lines of that the submarine had surfaced at night to off load a crack unit of SS commandos, a British destroyer was lying in wait and had sunk her. She went down in forty meters of water with all hands lost. Afterwards the Ministry of Defence had the bodies removed and buried in unmarked graves, in village churchyards around the Dorset countryside. The whole affair was then covered up so as not to fuel speculation about a possible German invasion. Their official notice stated that the destroyer was simply firing her guns after a routine re-fit.

  I pushed a button and the anchor chain slid out from its housing and into the foaming water below. At one hundred and five feet it stopped. I left the engines ticking over to hold us in position and went down to the dive platform, where Fiona was waiting.

  The howl of the wind and driving rain was deafening after the relative calm of the bridge, and even the steady drone of the large diesel engines was lost.

  With each wave the boat lurched up into the air, but we somehow managed to put on our oxygen tanks, fins and masks without being swept over board.

  I lowered the sacks into the water one at a time while Fiona took care of the high-powered underwater lanterns that we would need inside the U-boat.

  I tapped her on the shoulder and shouted, “We have thirty minutes maximum down there. Follow me and stay close.”

  With that we clambered down the dive ladder on the port side, instead of going off the stern, so as to stay away from the propellers. I snapped the mouthpiece between my teeth and pulled the mask into place. The coldness of the water bit to the bone as I lowered myself in.

  I jack-knifed through the opaque water. Beneath the heaving surface the sea was green and without dimension. A white explosion of microscopic bubbles raced to my feet as I swam down towards the great hulk of the submarine. Fiona swam close to my side, the powerful lamps already having to light our way as we went deeper. All was calm and soft. The water, no longer green but purple, was motionless as we swam down. To my right, Fiona was cleaving a phosphorescent wake, and as she descended I watched her turn a graceful somersault and touch her feet on the bottom with scarcely a movement of silt. My own clumsy effort at this ended with dirty clouds of silt and weed rising around my fins.

  I let the sacks drop to the sea floor; Fiona handed me one of the lanterns, and as my eyes became adjusted to the purple darkness one vast portion of the seabed grew darker than the rest. The huge potbelly of the sunken submarine loomed over us. I clipped the lamp onto my tank harness and retrieved the end of the rope that coupled the sacks together. I then gave Fiona a hook-like motion with my free hand and climbed an invisible ladder on to the foredeck. We swam past the smooth convex swell of the main tanks.

  Here and there sections of the original paintwork were still in remarkably good condition. In spite of the slight list it was easy to imagine that this was a fully manned U-boat of the German Kreigsmarine, resting momentarily on the bottom before resuming a war mission.

  We passed around and over the conning tower, and in the glow of our lanterns we could just make out the silhouette of the open hatch. The fuzzy glow of the lamps suddenly became sharp discs, as we dropped lightly on to the conning tower platform. The soft paintwork shed its skin under my hand, the flakes spinning upward like perverse seeds.

  Holding the side of the conning-tower ladder with one hand I controlled my drop into the small oval room beneath. I shone the bright lamp around the interior. White circles flashed from the walls as the glass-faced gauges reflected the light back. My lamp shone up through to the hatch above my head, and Fiona’s outline was just visible as she waited on the platform outside. I signalled her to lower the sacks down. This didn’t take long as we had left them al
l tied together. Once the last one was inside, Fiona joined me in the cramped control room. Moving carefully we kept to the port side of the cluttered interior, passing the huge wheel of the hydroplane controls. The starboard side was choked with remnants of bedding, bunks and seaweed.

  Above me, broken piping hung like strange stalactites, while the remains of chairs and wooden stools danced against the ceiling. I tried to imagine the final scene in this little space, crowded like a rush hour tube train, all those years ago. I half walked, half swam past broken crates, which a long time ago had held provisions.

  My breathing became difficult. One bottle was empty. I switched to the full bottle and breathing recommenced.

  Fiona’s lamp was moving around in front of me through the next bulkhead door. I moved on, noticing the pressure hull – well over an inch thick and able to withstand water pressures at over five hundred feet, I tapped it and the metal vibrated with a clang. The far side of the bulkhead was the torpedo stowage compartment. It was cavernous; the floor lay some ten feet below us down a ladder. On either side was rack after rack of inert torpedoes, greasy and silver like Cuban cigar tubes. We dragged the five sacks over the railing and descended to the deck below. Since coming to rest on the seabed much silt had been washed gently through the torpedo stowage compartment by year after year of tidal activity. After a little searching, I found what I was looking for, covered in silt and weed. A few inches away from my feet was a flat, rectangular slab. The silt flurried around as I ran my gloved fingers along the edge to define its outline. Taking my knife I managed to insert the tip under one corner. Eventually it shifted and we were able to lift it all the way up.

  Shining my lamp down into the black hole, I motioned to Fiona to hand me the first sack, I lowered it, then the next and the next until they were all inside the chamber secured by the rope onto a hook.

  Before replacing the steel plate. I took a small magnetic charge of the type that we’d used on the Gin Fizz, and attached it to the side of the chamber.