The Grey Falcon

by J. C. Williams

“How many are there?”

  “Ninety-four,” Harry told him.

  “What?”

  “Chapels and churches. In fact there are three Our Lady of Victories alone.”

  “I didn’t realize that. I guess all of my possibilities had the city Valletta listed as well,” Chad said.

  Chad stopped talking. He thought of his research that morning and his visit to the churches.

  “Oh, I was not thinking straight, Harry. Look at this.”

  Chad scrolled the pictures on his phone. He found the ledger.

  “This one. See in the ledger there were several entries from Germany. Then right below them were several, h-m-m, eight from St. Thomas. No country was listed. But, the last two from Germany, before the St. Thomas, were from Leipzig. I found a St. Thomas church in Leipzig. I knew it was in Germany, but was not sure what part. It is in northern Germany.”

  Chad Googled a map.

  “See the extent of the Ottoman Empire? As they encroached on Croatia, then Slovenia, I could understand if valuables were moved out. Vienna is a possibility. Then Vienna was threatened. From there I could understand moving them to Munich, or Prague, or Switzerland, but not all the way to Leipzig. In fact, from Slovenia, it makes as much or more sense to move them directly to Venice or Milan. So, I dismissed those entries.”

  “You think differently now?” Harry asked.

  “Maybe. As you said there are many churches with the same name. Below the eight St. Thomas entries on the list, are several from Slovenia. These had my attention. What if there was also a St. Thomas in Slovenia?”

  Harry was on it already, Googling St. Thomas in Slovenia.

  “Here is one. In Ratece, Where’s that?”

  “I got it, hang on,” Chad said getting excited. “Here it is. In the north. It’s on the border with Austria and Italy. The Ottomans did not quite reach there, but they did annex the land south of Ratece between 1520 and 1560. So, Malta was available in 1530 to harbor their valuables. Look at the date in the ledger 1533. Tell me about St. Thomas.”

  Harry read excerpts from his phone. “No date when it was built. There are records that confirm it existed in 1390. That’s just after the Battle of Kosovo, Chad. What was transferred from there?”

  Looking at the photo of the ledger, Chad said, “We need help.” He signaled the waiter.

  “I am sorry that I do not speak Maltese. Can you help me? What are these entries in English?”

  “One is vestments, one is silver chalices, one is… I don’t know the English word. It is for holding candles.”

  “Candle stick holders?” Chad said.

  “Sticks? Could be. They are this tall. Candles are set into them.” He held his hand just at his waist.

  “Does it say whether they are metal or wood?”

  “No. There is a word that means to make marks on.”

  “Carve?” Harry asked.

  “On metal,” the waiter said.

  “Maybe engraved then,” Harry concluded. “Some are metal.”

  “Anything else?” Chad asked.

  “H-m-m. Special times. Christmas, funerals, holy days.”

  “Thank you,” Chad said.

  “Where did they take them?” Harry asked.

  Chad read the entry with disappointment, “Ironically, I recognize this Maltese – Madonna ta R Val. R is for rebha, or victory. Our Lady of Victories, Valletta.”

  “But we were there,” Harry objected. “Everything was moved across the street. I don’t remember these.”

  Chad frantically scrolled his phone again. “Here. I took a picture in the underground chapel. Look at this grated door in the wall. It has the Maltese cross in iron. Just like the door to the basement. I think it’s there.”

  “Why?”

  “If you moved a sword whose identification you wanted to keep secret, why not put it in a crate with candlestick holders. Right length. Some of the holders are metal, so any clanking and heaviness makes sense.”

  “Aces, Chad.”

  “Thanks, Harry. Eat up. We have to make a stop.”

  “No dessert?” Harry lamented.

  “I’ll buy you a plate of tortes when we finish our search back in Valetta.”

  “As I said, aces, Chad. Aces.”

  Chapter 36

  “Ah, bloody hell,” Chad exclaimed after just two blocks.

  “Now you are beginning to sound like a proper Englishman,” Harry said. He stole a glance at his passenger. “What?”

  “Those two men that were following us in Valletta. I think I saw them at the last corner. One of them for sure. He was talking to another man in a car.”

  “You sure?” Harry asked looking in the mirror.

  Chad didn’t answer. He turned and watched behind them. A few seconds later, Harry muttered. “A car turned after us from that street.”

  “Yeah, I see the headlights.”

  “Let’s check it out,” Harry said.

  He turned left at the next street. The headlights turned, too. Harry waited a block and turned left again. Two more blocks. Another left.

  “You think it is the same car?” Chad asked.

  “We’ll see. I’ll circle back. When I stop, I’ll tell you when to get out. Start for the restaurant, then stop, check your pockets and pull out your wallet. Then get back in quickly, but don’t act like you are in a hurry.”

  “Ok,” Chad said, thinking that Harry suddenly had lost his nervousness and wariness.

  Harry stopped. He watched the headlights behind him stop and pull over.

  “Go now.”

  Chad did as instructed. When he was back inside and the door almost closed, Harry accelerated. “Here they come. They are definitely following us,” Harry said.

  Three blocks later he made a sharp right, hardly slowing. One block and a left. Harry accelerated. He saw an alley on the right and turned again.

  “You drive like you know what you’re doing, Harry.”

  “A little bit,” Harry answered. “It’s not about outrunning them. It’s about gaining seconds then using a straightaway. Ten moves are thirty seconds, a half mile. Enough distance to be out of sight long enough to hide.”

  Harry focused on his moves through the Mellieha neighborhoods. He asked, “How did they know where we went?”

  “GPS tracker. There is probably one on the car.”

  “Really?”

  “Been there before.”

  “You’ve led an interesting life, Chad.”

  “They don’t need to close on us. They’ll know where we are.”

  “We’ll have to find a place to remove it.”

  Harry made a few more turns then found the main road to Valletta. They drove five miles in light traffic. There were headlights behind them, but they didn’t know if it was their tail. The first car behind them turned as they left the populated area and were now in the country.

  Harry floored it. “Uh, oh. This VW won’t outrun their Peugeot GT.”

  Chad looked back. Headlights were closing on them. It didn’t take long for the trackers to reach them.

  Chad’s head snapped back as they were rammed.

  “Bugger all,” Harry muttered. “Hang on.”

  Harry swerved into the other lane. The Peugeot swerved over as well. Harry swerved back, the Peugeot sped ahead and tried pulled into their car trying to knock them off the road. Metal scraped metal. Harry pushed back. Their foe accelerated getting a half-length ahead.

  “Here it comes,” Harry said.

  The Peugeot turned hard toward the VW’s front end. But, the VW wasn’t there any longer. Harry stomped on the break dropping back then swung the wheel hard skidding into a one eighty. He accelerated back the way they came. The Peugeot swerved wildly without the expected contact. It came to a stop several hundred feet later.

  “There’s a petrol station ahead. I’ll pull around back. We have only a few minutes to find the tracker,” Harry said.

  Chad found it in less than ninety seconds. He knew what to do
next. “Be right back.”

  He found his target at the gas pump, a pickup truck. There was only a driver. Chad walked to the man and leaned on the back of the truck.

  “Excuse me. I don’t speak Maltese. Can you tell me the best road to Valletta?”

  The driver stopped pumping and in rather good English pointed down the road they just came from. As he pointed, Chad reached into the bed of the truck and pressed the GPS tracker onto the bed. If the adhesive would just hold for another twenty minutes, they could get away.

  “We’re clear,” Chad said joining Harry in the VW.

  Harry looked up from the map. “I see another way back to Valletta.”

  “Good. I’ll try to think of a good story for Anton for the condition of his car. The back end looks like an accordion.”

  -----

  Sandy sat at the bar nursing a glass of wine. Already, she had rebuffed three hits. Admittedly, she told herself, I look hot. To men or women. Dickie and Popper stayed outside. One in back and one in front. Sandy carried a panic button to use if she needed help. They knew that ear microphones would be too obvious.

  She looked over the bar watching the mirror behind the bar. Prudently, she had asked Liz Benton for a more recent photo. Maggie’s old DL picture was nowhere close to what she looked like. Not now, several years later.

  An hour went by. It was still early. If they didn’t get lucky tonight, it meant more record digging and door knocking in the morning.

  It was another glass of wine and the third trip to the loo to check out the corners when Sandy spotted her in a booth with two others.

  Sandy slid in beside Maggie Biddel.

  “Maggie, how are you?”

  “Hey, what the bloody hell?” one of the booth companions said.

  “Who are you?” Maggie asked, not ready to dismiss the newcomer before she checked her out. “How do you know my name? We met, luv?”

  “No. I’m Sandy.” She turned to the other two. “Could you give us a moment?”

  “I don’t think so,” booth girl number one said. “We were having a nice time without you. We’d prefer to keep it that way.”

  The threat was not disguised. Sandy reached into a pocket and withdrew her warrant card. They saw the crest on the holder. Both girls left.

  “Copper, eh? What am I supposed to have done?”

  “Have you done something?”

  “I done nowt.”

  “Good. Then come with me. There are a couple detectives who have some questions.”

  Sandy slid out of the booth and noticed Maggie’s eyes move toward the back door. “Don’t even think about it, Maggie. We have the front and back covered.”

  With a light hold of Maggie’s elbow, Sandy steered her out the front door.

  A hand grabbed Sandy’s arm. She whirled, using her forearm to push hard into the woman’s neck.

  “Hey,” the woman shrieked. “I was just going to say, don’t be a stranger. Bollocks.” The woman walked away.

  Sandy caught up with Maggie at the door. She saw Dickie out front and then she called Popper.

  They all climbed in Popper’s unit.

  “Maggie, we need to find Baywater,” Popper told her.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Don’t jerk us around,” Dickie warned.

  Sandy played good cop. “We know that he knows you, Maggie. We have his phone records. You’ve been talking.” This was a bluff.

  “What’s he done? He says he didn’t do nowt. He never grassed no one either.”

  “He has information that will help us,” Dickie explained. “You can help him out.”

  “How’s that?” Maggie asked.

  Sandy picked it up. “Maggie, there are people who are after him. He needs our help. We can protect him.”

  “Who’s after him?” she asked quickly. Then she added, “He doesn’t need any help.”

  Dickie was gruff. “Maggie, there’s a man that Alfred had been working with. Name of Best. He’s in a hospital. Beaten up. Finger chopped off.”

  Maggie was visibly concerned but she still resisted. “Alfie is okay. Don’t your lot worry about him. He’s a new name and a new place.”

  Sandy watched Maggie’s eyes. She saw a glimmer of doubt.

  “Maggie, he isn’t gone yet is he? He’s still in Liverpool. Look, you’re worried. We aren’t going to arrest him. He’ll be free to move on if he wants.”

  Maggie made a decision. “Gus is going to take him across?”

  “Gus?” Popper asked. “Who’s that?”

  “Angus. Angus Cattrel. He runs a boat.”

  Higgins left the car pulling out his phone.

  “Maggie,” Sandy said. “You did the right thing. We’re going to hold onto you for a bit.”

  Higgins returned. “I have a unit coming to take Maggie to the station. I have an address and info on Cattrel. Let’s go meet the man.”

  Chapter 37

  The rain, the impending darkness, and the yellowish light from the sparse streetlamps along the dock created a misty world for the three police officers. All three wore slickers. Dickie and Popper had their hoods pulled up. Sandy’s hood was down but she protected herself with an umbrella that she insisted on to protect the designer jeans, new shoes, and top that she bought special this afternoon to slip into Nesbo’s. She told her companions she didn’t want to hear any comments about a typical woman. I wield a very un-woman like baton, she warned. Dickie confirmed it.

  “I don’t see any lights on his boat,” Popper said to Sandy and Dickie. Boat after boat was docked at the marina, half were backed in and half pulled in forward. Cattrel’s was backed in.

  “Our second miss,” Sandy commented. “Perhaps we should go back to his flat and wait there?”

  “Do we have any known associates or frequented pubs?” Dickie grumbled. “A pub would be a better place to wait.”

  Popper shielded a paper with notes, reading with the help of a flashlight. “I have a couple leads. Our lads have him down as a just a blip in the smuggling world. He runs a charter fishing boat, sometimes a little sightseeing. He’s suspected of sneaking people to the Republic.”

  Dickie and Sandy knew this meant the Republic of Ireland not Northern Ireland. No passport stamping was required from the UK to the Republic making it easy to escape from the UK through the Republic to other countries.

  They stood next to Cattrel’s boat, Angie’s Mystic. A faded metal sign was fixed to the top of the cabin advertising fishing, sightseeing, and ferrying.

  “Wonder who Angie is?” Sandy mused.

  Detective Constable Tom ”Popper” Higgins looked intently into the boat at the motor housing.

  “Careful, Popper, we don’t have a warrant,” Dickie warned.

  “Not a problem,” he said. “I’m not going to enter. I think I have a way to bring Cattrel to us. I spent a part of my youth mating on one of these. For the shoestring business he operates, he has quite the electronic protection. Follow my torch.”

  Popper pointed out electronic detectors around the cabin doors, the starter switch, and particularly at the motor shroud.

  “See that box?” he asked, pointing the flashlight to a shiny metal box next to the motor. “That has circuits to the motor. It’s set up like a home alarm system. You open the door and you have maybe twenty seconds to put in a code.”

  “And, if you don’t have a code?” Sandy asked seeing where this was going.

  “We may hear a bloody loud siren,” Popper said walking to the next boat and stepping onto its deck.

  He returned with a long gaff.

  “Or, knowing our pal Gus’s side business,” Popper began, as he used the gaff to pry open the metal box, “he has it set on a silent alarm.”

  In the opened metal box, a blinking light counted down from twenty.

  “Does this go to a security office or the police?” Dickie asked.

  “I suspect it goes only to Gus,” Popper said. “He’ll be here shortly. “I suggest one of us wait
here beside his boat. Someone who does not seem so threatening.” He looked at Sandy.

  “Oh, right. I see what you’re thinking, Popper. The little lady won’t be a threat to Mr. Cattrel when he comes storming down to see who is breaking into his boat.”

  Wisely, Dickie and Popper said nothing and climbed into the next boat, hiding on the steps leading from the deck to the lower level.

  -----

  Sandy paced the dock. She saw the headlights of a van pull into the parking area. She stopped and waited for Cattrel.

  He walked down the dock wary at first seeing someone near his boat. He didn’t expect that. He assumed either someone saw the alarm and left, or was successful in taking Angie’s Mystic. The second surprise was that the person waiting was an attractive woman, holding an umbrella and dressed very fashionably.

  Sandy measured Cattrel. Everything looked average. Average height. Average build. Average age, as best she could tell under his rain slicker. He stopped fifteen feet away from her. She noticed his balance. Weight evenly spread to both legs. Posture over the balls of his feet. Did this come from his boating life or was he a footballer. She wanted to know, in case she needed to chase him. Cattrel was behind the boat that hid her companions. They wouldn’t get to him before he ran.

  “Mr. Cattrel?” she asked softly.

  Involuntarily, he stepped closer to hear.

  “What?” he asked. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here.”

  Cattrel glanced at his motor housing and the alarm box. Sandy stole a look at her companions inching their way out of hiding.

  “Are you Angus Cattrel?” she asked in her best flirty voice.

  The mixed signals of theft, threat, and tease put Cattrel off balance.

  “I’m Gus Cattrel. I’ll ask again. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  Sandy stepped toward his boat. He followed. Dickie stepped onto the dock.

  “I was passing by and saw this alarm. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Cattrel eyed her suspiciously, yet quietly.

  “Well why don’t you step aboard. We can go below. It’s dryer there, we can take off these slickers, and take a better look at you.”

  Sandy answered. “I don’t think so , Gus. I’d just like to talk. Out here is fine.”