She might raise a fuss. To keep her calm, until it was too late, maybe one would choose a compromise route to San Remo? Slightly south, but still vaguely east?
God, I hoped I was right. “Head south-east, rather than due south. She was told they were going to San Remo, and her kidnapper won’t want to alarm her too early.”
“Are you certain?” Terry asked.
“No.”
The pilot waited, but when no further discussion was forthcoming, he stepped on to the pontoon and clambered up. I expected Terry to follow, but instead he stood away.
“You go, too,” I urged him.
“He can stay up longer without my weight,” he said. “And anyway, you’ll need me in the boat.”
“What boat?” I said, just a beat too late.
He grinned. “Bumpy’s speed-boat, that you’re planning on stealing.”
“Mycroft?”
“Sherlock, I hope you appreciate that I have kept many men out of their beds this night for you.”
“I’ll pay for their coffee. What do you have for me?”
“This is all highly preliminary, since even with my people up, that does not mean the rest of the world cooperates. However, you wanted what I could lay hands on by this hour. I begin with Gerald Murphy, who is as clean as a person can be. As is his lady wife. Rafe Ainsley, on the other hand, has friends in disreputable places, but to all appearances left his own criminality behind once he achieved some success as an artist. Which as we both know, may mean either that his energies have moved there, or that he has become better at hiding his schemes.”
“The temptation to easy money is rarely put aside entirely.”
“As you say. Your Lady de Bathe also has ties to the demi-monde, although in a very different portion of it from the artist. But then, she has had those ties since before she took to the stage. Most of her money appears to come from past investments and her husband’s allowance. Suggesting that most of her criminal acquaintances are friends rather than business associates.”
“Most of them?”
“She receives gifts. None huge, and none regular, but there have been the occasional minor cheques from Basil Zaharoff.”
“How minor?”
“The largest was £500, some two years ago. Pocket change, to that man.”
“Still.”
“As you say, and we will continue to excavate. Niko Cassavetes was an interesting type. You must know he’s dead—and I see that an English woman named Hudson was taken in for questioning. Is that…?”
“None other.”
“Did she do it?”
“No.”
“I see. Where did you come across Cassavetes?”
“Other than his lying dead on Mrs Hudson’s floor, you mean? He attached himself to the community of wealthy Americans who have taken to summering in the Riviera. Gerald Murphy among others.”
“Murphy isn’t actually wealthy, not compared to some of the names you’ve given me. He and his wife are comfortable, yes, but I’d say he’s living in France as much for the exchange rate as for the ambiance.”
“Cassavetes, Mycroft.”
“The young man didn’t leave much of a footprint, as far as financial or criminal records go. Arrested twice in Greece—for housebreaking when he was fifteen, and three years later in a bar that was raided for gambling. He was let go both times as being too small fry to bother with. A few years later, just after the War, he was picked up near Marseilles when the boat he was on ran aground and the crew tried to save the cargo. Not drugs or arms, merely luxury goods—silks and the like—so they were all given a couple of weeks behind bars and let go. However, he had been getting money from somewhere—regular cash payments into a bank account in Nice.”
“A man with a clear history of smuggling.”
“Yes. And that may tie in with another of the names you gave me: Matteo Crovetti.”
“Roommate of Niko Cassavetes, son of Mrs Hudson’s landlady. Also smuggling, I assume?”
“I don’t know yet; all I have is the name, which was caught by one of my people on a list of men picked up but not yet formally charged, sent from the Bahamas two days ago. I will know more when the offices open in Nassau.”
“Kindly let me know if the man was moving two hundred tons of Imperial gold.”
“I can’t see why one would do that through Nassau, but I shall. Which brings us to Count Yevgeny Vasilev…”
“We’re borrowing this boat,” I told Terry. “Not stealing.” My head was deep under the boat’s steering wheel—at least, I thought it was a boat. “Terry, are you sure this isn’t some kind of aquatic rocket-ship?”
“She does have an aeroplane engine.”
“Why am I not surprised? What about life-vests?”
“Under the bench.”
“Get them out. Please.”
I tried to ignore the growing crowd of onlookers, which at any minute would include a policeman. How did one short-circuit the ignition of an aeroplane motor? “Ah, here it is,” I said, and the huge engine beside my head sputtered and throbbed into life.
Terry moved some levers as I crawled backwards out of the boat’s innards. “You might want to cast us off,” he said, sounding a bit urgent. “Now.”
I scrambled to obey, my fingers somewhat distracted by the rapidly approaching uniform. The rope went slack, the motor growled, and the gathered crowd began to cheer our escape.
Terry kept our speed sedate across the harbour itself, but the moment we came up with the breakwater, he shoved the engine into action and I grabbed at the rails to keep from going overboard.
The boat was designed for speed, not comfort. Hard benches, no cabin, little muffling of the engine noise, and a minimal glass screen designed less for blocking the wind than deflecting it to keep the driver from being scooped out of the boat entirely.
I was going to regret the amount of coffee I’d drunk.
Conversation was impossible. I made my way up to the front, to check that we were headed in the same general direction as the plane, then sank down out of the wind to wrestle into the kapok vest and do some calculations.
Steam-turned-diesel yachts like the Bella Ragazza might cruise at around sixteen knots, unless they were in a hurry. It had left the harbour roughly ninety minutes ago which, if they sailed directly, would have them dropping anchor in San Remo about now. If they were actually heading to San Remo. But if they intended to maintain a pleasant façade until they’d got away from the bustle of coastal traffic (and yes, this was perilously near to a guess) then they would genially take their breakfast and drink their champagne in the morning sun until there were no ships nearby to see their actions.
I could not help feeling that they were approaching their moment of action.
Compare this progress to that of the sea-plane. I imagine it went more slowly than the average aeroplane, because of the drag of the pontoons, so…what? Around sixty knots?
Work into this a third variable: us. It was hard to judge our speed, but the other day, Terry had bragged of reaching 45 knots at one point. Our current speed, which felt like a hundred or more over the swells, was probably 35 or 40. Calculating speed times, the time travelled, with three separate trajectories to coordinate…
Terry interrupted my maths exercise with a gesture at the boat’s wooden dash, the far side of which seemed to be a locker of some kind. I got it open, and found an odd assortment of equipment: ropes, two plaid travelling rugs, three pair of sun-glasses, half a dozen sun-hats, a Very pistol for shooting flares, three unopened packets of cigarettes, four chocolate bars, two bottles of mineral water, and a large pair of binoculars.
Figuring it was the last that Terry had been suggesting, I pulled them out. He nodded, so I took them over to the passenger bench, buttoning away my spectacles.
I tried to brace mys
elf against the slap and bounce of the hull on waves. The plane couldn’t be too far in front of us yet, could it? But it seemed a long time before the shape of it dashed across my view. I fought to steady the lenses, and found the wings—yes.
Thumbs-up to Terry, and an extended arm to point out the course correction.
In minutes, the white speck was beyond the reach of the powerful lenses. Which would not have mattered, except that our course correction had brought us closer to the line being followed by an Italy-bound steamer.
Terry moved the throttle up a little. A minute later, he moved it more. He was fighting to keep the wheel under control with the slaps, but the steamer was inexorable, and large. Then larger. Then looming. The throttle gauge was pressed to the end. Terry and I crouched beneath the wind, holding our breath, as if removing those tiny interferences might help us slip across the ship’s bow without having to change path. The rust-speckled hull grew. Its disbelieving crew lined up along the rails. Its horn blared hugely…
I slapped Terry’s shoulder at the same instant his arms were yanking the wheel to lay us over on our side, our prow aimed just after the worst of their turbulence.
When we hit their bow-wave, we took to the air. Terry, bless the man, was experienced enough to cut the throttle and keep the engine from surging itself to pieces—but when we came down, I was sent flying at last, tumbling to a halt against the back transom. I squawked, and tasted blood. Terry looked behind him to make sure I was still on board—but I was amazed to see him grinning like a lunatic.
I rubbed my head, checked that my glasses hadn’t come to grief, and retrieved the binoculars—all while seated on the decking, since Terry kept us heading through the leaping white waves. The steamer laid on a long, disapproving blast of the horn, while her sailors trotted across the decks to look down at us on their other side. Terry raised an insouciant hand to them, breasted the other bow-waves with a shade less drama, and then set us back on to our course.
Or as near as we could figure to where our course had been.
I decided to stay where I was against the back corner, and raised the field glasses to the clear blue skies. The engine noise climbed again. After a minute, Terry turned around, raising his eyebrows in consultation. Is this the right angle?
All I could do was shrug. It had been hard enough to guess when our former straight line would cross that of the plane, but after a kink and a delay, all one could go by was the compass.
I scanned the blue sky. No wings, no white speck. Wait—there…? No, it had only one pair of wings. And another bird there, and a cloud…
Some faint noise came to my assaulted ears. I pulled away from the lenses and saw Terry’s mouth open in a shout. Having caught my attention, he turned to point at a spot some twenty degrees away from where I had been looking. I lifted the glasses, searched, saw it dart rapidly through my field of vision—aha.
Double wings, gleaming white, tilted, to catch the sun. The flash of it had caught Terry’s eye.
Johnny Perez was circling his plane. But had he run out of petrol, or…?
I held my breath. The wings held their angle, coming around, and I waited for them to flatten out for a run to shore.
No!
I snatched away the glasses and held up a thumb. Terry gave an inaudible whoop of triumph, and turned to adjust the wheel.
Closer and closer we flew. Soon, we could see the aquatic tableau, first with the lenses, then with the naked eye: two hundred feet of spectacular, three-decked yacht, flags flying from its two empty masts, smoke trailing from its single funnel, with several boats nearly as big as the one I was in hanging at the back. Its bowsprit, fitted not with sails but decorative banners, thrust proudly out over the blue sea.
A magnificent vessel, being buzzed by a large gnat. A gnat, moreover, that was not satisfied with merely circling around it, but was doing stunts. One pass was so low, the plane disappeared completely behind the yacht before climbing, straight up, higher and higher. Then high in the heavens, it seemed to stall. The white dot paused, teetered, its nose tipping and pulling it down, and it was falling, plummeting, straight down to plunge into the waves—only to catch at the last instant and skim the very tops of the waves, vanishing from us again, behind the yacht’s hull. At the far side, it rose, circled around, then flipped over to perform an alarmingly wobbly pass upside-down—at which point débris exploded from the plane to flutter down across waves and boat-deck alike. White feathers: sheets of paper. As if the pilot had been hired to strafe a single boat with adverts for the Juan-les-Pins casino.
It was a perfectly brilliant series of distractions. And keeping his aerobatic routine on the far side of the yacht had allowed us to approach from the west unnoticed. Now, however, he came around again off the yacht’s stern and returned, performing a series of barrel rolls that brought him what felt like inches from our own speeding boat—and, more to the point, caused his audience to cross the wide deck of the yacht, back at the aft end: there seemed to be only two.
When Mrs Hudson appeared, I thought I might weep with gratitude. She saw us, and I could tell that she knew in an instant what we were: her rescue.
The man took longer to catch on. Through the glasses I could see his precise beard bristling with irritation at this idiotic barn-stormer whose antics were cutting into a neatly planned day of murder. He glanced at us, looked back up at the plane, then seemed to realise that we were heading straight at him. We were near enough now that I could see his expression through the lenses—and see his hand going to the pocket of his jacket.
“He has a gun,” I shouted at Terry. “Don’t get any clo—” Our deck heeled over, settling again only when we were on a path parallel to the big hull, but distant enough that only freak luck would land a bullet in us.
Plenty close enough for those on the yacht to see me. Both of Count Vasilev’s hands were in view, and empty of weapons, but the nobleman radiated befuddlement as he tried to figure out what I was doing here. His head tipped, as if listening to something Mrs Hudson was saying, then he whipped around to stare at her.
He shot us another glance, then reached for her arm—but both of her hands were locked on the rail. Her spine was straight and her chin up as she spoke to him again.
I could hear it, as clearly as if I stood on the deck beside them. If they see you drag me off, you will never be able to claim I died by accident.
His hand dropped. He took a step away. If I’d been seeing this on a screen, its caption would have read, The Count thinks furiously.
After a moment, he glanced upward. I did the same, and realised that the sky was empty. Off in the distance, white wings retreated towards Monaco.
We were alone. I gave Terry a sure smile, both for his sake and for those on the Bella Ragazza. Perhaps our presence, and our apparent confidence, would drive the Count back to port, where he could don an affronted face. Why had we interrupted his pleasant day out on the water, how dare I interfere, how dare I accuse…?
But if he simply kept sailing, what could I do? Our fuel would run out long before theirs. I had exactly no chance of manoeuvring to the side of the yacht and storming up its gangway unnoticed. At this speed, I doubted Terry could even bring us alongside.
I studied Mrs Hudson, straight-backed and implacable along the railings. Her hair, tossing in the breeze, was the only uncontrolled thing about her. She looked precisely as she had that day, being driven away from Sussex: certain, calm, indomitable. She looked ready to stand there forever.
I wished she had a fur coat on, rather than a light wrap.
A few minutes later, one of the men I had seen in the deckhouse came down to talk to his employer. The Russian gestured forcibly in our direction, his every motion bearing the caption, The Count gives orders. But the crewman seemed less than enthusiastic about following them. He watched us, he listened, and he did not shake his head—but neither did
he snap out an obedient salute. After several minutes as the target of aristocratic fury, the sailor drew himself up with an air of delivering bad news, and spoke. I watched the pantomime through the glasses. At the end of it, the Count was cold, the sailor was apologetic, and I was somewhat reassured.
However, when the man returned to the deckhouse, the yacht changed direction, abandoning any pretense of an innocent day’s outing. But the wheel was not swung very sharply, and when Terry shifted our own heading to match, the other did not attempt to run us down.
“I don’t think the crew is going to actively participate in trying to kill us off,” I shouted at Terry.
“Jolly good! Er, why?”
“Perhaps they don’t actually work for Count Vasilev? The ship is leased to Basil Zaharoff—the captain may have decided that there is a line between allowing their employer’s guest to commit a crime, and being active participants.”
“Bit like hiring a taxi driver to wait while you rob a bank, isn’t it?”
“Nothing to do with me, Your Honour, he just flagged me down.”
“Here’s to fine lines,” he said, holding up an invisible glass.
The man with the beard saw the gesture, but he had regained control now. He disappeared for a moment, then returned, dragging a chair. He went off again, and this time came back carrying a small table with something shiny on it. He sat down, reached towards the shiny object, and picked out a champagne bottle.
When his glass was full, he returned the bottle to its bucket, raised the glass in our direction with a mocking salute, and sat back in his chair to drink it.
Again, I could follow his thoughts. Once night fell, what would prohibit an elderly woman from taking an accidental tumble over the side? Sooner or later, we would run out of fuel, and fall behind too far to hear the sound of cries and a splash.
In the meantime, Mrs Hudson remained at the rail, spine undaunted, chin resolute, one hand firmly grasping the shiny brass.
Stand-off. For now.
Riviera Gold Page 26