Angel of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  They saved my life, Anna recalled, three years ago. By biting that Mafioso bastard, the only member of the crew of that ill-fated yacht who got ashore and had had the drop on me. But Tommy knew nothing about that, as he had not been on the island at the time; nor should he ever. So she said, ‘Not to my knowledge, Tommy. But I guess there’s always a first time.’ She watched the island emerging over the horizon. Home, she thought.

  *

  The island-studded reef that stretched south-west from Eleuthera, almost to New Providence itself, enclosed a huge area of relatively shallow water to the east; on the north-west side it fronted the North-West Bahama Passage, a broad and very deep stretch of water that was habitually used by big ships out of Fort Lauderdale.

  The several cays were separated by stretches of razor-sharp coral rock that could tear the bottom out of any boat that encountered them. Through the reef there were several narrow, mostly unmarked, passages that had to be negotiated with great care, while Fair Cay itself was surrounded by a subsidiary reef that ran some two hundred yards off the beach along the north-western shore of the island.

  It had been the home of a wealthy American eccentric before the War, and now it was the home of an even wealthier Irish eccentric. Anna had done a considerable amount of improving, which included completely refurbishing the house, adding an upper storey to the original bungalow – so the roof, now almost as high as the casuarinas that surrounded it, was visible from at sea, while her HF wireless aerial rose even above the treetops – and installing her library, a suite for her parents, and a large indoor gymnasium and firing range (she had trained every day of her adult life when not actually travelling on business).

  She had also doubled the size of the catchment area, very important as the cay’s only source of fresh water was the fortunately abundant rainfall. But, prudently, the large swimming pool she installed next to the house was salt. While some people had questioned the need for a swimming pool on a Bahamian island with its own private beach, the beach was exposed to passing fishing boats and yachts only a few hundred yards offshore (also to the odd adventurous tourist, as had apparently happened only a week ago) and Anna did like swimming in the nude.

  Now she steered the boat through the gap in the southern reef, with the confidence born of experience. Three hundred yards to the left was the narrow entrance to her dock. This small stone enclosure had been created by the previous owner, but greatly improved and strengthened by Anna. During the hurricane three years previously, Fair Girl had ridden the storm securely moored against the inner dock. Alongside this Anna now expertly guided the boat, while Tommy, having put out the fenders, stepped ashore with the mooring warps.

  On the far side of the little harbour there waited an open twenty-five-foot runabout. This Anna had given to Tommy, for taking Desirée and the gardeners back to the Bluff Settlement on North Eleuthera at weekends and also for quick trips to Spanish Wells, the nearest town of any size, situated at the head of the chain, just off the coast of North Eleuthera itself. Here Anna maintained a post-office box, and the town also contained two good supermarkets from which they could obtain day-to-day perishables such as fresh milk and bread. By creating a large vegetable garden on the cay – there already was all the fruit they could eat, and fish abounded all around them – they were virtually self-sufficient apart from the bulk-buying of items such as alcohol and fuel, which they obtained from Nassau.

  Satisfied, Anna slid down the ladder and into the saloon, slung her shoulder bag, and stepped ashore. Tommy was already on the dock, connecting the shore supply of electricity to make sure the batteries were always fully charged and the fridge (which at sea worked off the batteries) was constantly kept at the right temperature, so the boat was ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

  She walked along the dock, looking up the sloping path at the small wood of casuarina trees that shrouded the island, tall and stately, their constantly rustling leaves always audible, even when the evening breeze was hardly noticeable, though always backed by the low, constant growl of the generator. And watched the two enormous white Dogos come bounding towards her. She had chosen the Argentinian hunting dogs as her pets-cum-guard dogs for their two vital qualities: unhesitating loyalty and obedience to their owner and his or her friends, and unbridled hostility to strangers. Residents on the cay were their friends; all others, unless specifically instructed otherwise by their mistress, were enemies.

  Now they danced round her, panting with excitement; they seldom barked except when roused. She ruffled their great heads. ‘Juno! You’re putting on weight.’

  The bitch gurgled happily. Anna was always commenting on her weight, but her dinner was never reduced.

  ‘Jupiter, you old devil! I hear you’ve been terrorizing the natives, as always.’

  Another happy gurgle – they could tell if she was pleased or displeased by her tone. Then they fell into line behind her, and paused patiently as they reached a large black lump sitting in the centre of the path. Anna scooped the cat into her arms for a hug and a kiss. ‘Isis, you darling!’

  Isis spent most of her time in Anna’s bedroom – indeed, in Anna’s bed – save when she felt like a meal or a drink. She never seemed aware when Anna was leaving, or even to notice when she was away. But with that sixth sense unique to cats she always seemed to know when her mistress was coming back, although this was partly inspired by the excitement which permeated the entire house when the message summoning the boat arrived from Nassau. Now she purred loudly as Anna carried her up the path towards the woman who waited for her at the top.

  She put the cat down to embrace her mother. There were no extravagant words of greeting, just a long, intense hug; they had had to do this too often in the past. But Jane Fehrbach asked, in the soft Irish brogue she had bequeathed to her daughter, ‘Is all well?’

  ‘Now I’m home, Mama.’

  Jane sighed, and held Anna’s hand as they continued towards the house, with all three animals now following, the cat walking between the two dogs; they were her friends.

  Jane Haggerty had been a well-known investigative journalist when she was sent by her newspaper, a London daily, to Vienna in 1919 to do some articles on the horrendous situation existing there, as the erstwhile capital of a great empire had been left, like a cut flower in a vase, to dwindle, bereft of all outside sustenance, its people dropping dead in the streets of starvation.

  Tall and beautiful, like her daughter, Jane had astounded both her Irish family and her English colleagues by choosing to remain in Austria, having fallen in love with a crusading reporter named Johann Fehrbach. In May 1920, when their daughter Annaliese was born, they had married, had another child, and settled down to live as happily as they were able to in an Austria torn by economic problems and a succession of dictatorships.

  All had been swept away in the Anschluss of March 1938, when Johann, author of a series of articles denouncing Fascism, and particularly its Nazi offshoot, had been among the first arrested, along with his family; and they had all seemed destined for a terminal existence in a concentration camp, when a senior SS officer recognized the potential of his eldest daughter. There followed a long seven years of imprisonment, not harsh in itself but made almost intolerable by the assumption that their favourite child had embraced the Nazi Party. It hadn’t been until 1944, when Anna made an abortive attempt to rescue them, that they learned that for the previous five years she had actually been working for the Allies. The following year, with Clive’s help, she had been able to get them to England, and a year later to bring them to this island paradise, where they were as safe as ever before, protected by her skills and now those of her husband – skills they had seen put into devastating practice three years before, when the Mafia mounted their catastrophic attempt to invade the island.

  They had also had to get used to the fact that she was the world’s most highly skilled assassin. That had taken some assimilating, but she had been able to convince them that, except when defending herself
, and them, she killed only to order, and then only targets who her employers had convinced her were menaces to mankind and could not be dealt with by conventional means.

  But that reassuring aspect of her profession could not disguise the fact that every time she departed on one of her mysterious ventures into the outside world she was taking her life in her hands; and that, by the laws of nature and history, one day she would not come back. So every moment they could spend together was to be treasured.

  Johann’s feelings were identical to his wife’s, but whereas Jane retained her stature and had even regained much of her youthful sparkle, even if her hair was streaked with grey, Johann had aged. Although he was only fifty-eight, his snow-white hair and continuous tremble made him appear at least twenty years older. Now he also silently embraced his daughter.

  ‘I’m starving,’ said Anna. And looked past them at the large black woman standing in the doorway. ‘Desirée!’

  ‘Is good to have you back, Miss Anna.’

  ‘It’s good to be back. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘I got one big conch chowder.’

  ‘That sounds tremendous.’ She accompanied them into the house, and Johann hurried to the sideboard, where he had already opened a bottle of her favourite Veuve Clicquot. Anna sipped. ‘Aaah. I gather you had some excitement last week?’

  ‘Would-be trespassers,’ Johann said. ‘The dogs saw them off.’

  The animals had followed them into the house, but while Isis had headed immediately for the stairs leading up to Anna’s bedroom, the dogs were sitting together, panting. Anna stroked their heads, ‘Good dogs! Well done!’

  ‘Any mail?’

  ‘One. From the postmark, I’d say it’s from Stattler.’

  He gave her the envelope, and she sat down to slit it open and study the contents, which covered several sheets of paper, most of them filled with figures, while her parents watched her somewhat anxiously. Paul Stattler was the CIA accountant who had looked after her money for the past six years. ‘Problems?’ Johann ventured.

  ‘On the contrary. All the transfers have been made to the banks I designated and are now entirely in my hands, and Clive’s, of course. Stattler’s not happy, needless to say. None of them are. But . . . it’s done.’

  ‘You don’t mean they’ve agreed?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Yes, albeit reluctantly.’

  ‘That has got to be the best news we’ve ever heard,’ Johann said, and refilled their glasses.

  ‘There is a small caveat.’

  Both her parents lowered their glasses and looked at her.

  ‘One last job,’ Anna explained.

  ‘One last pound of flesh,’ Jane said bitterly.

  ‘It’s something only I can do.’

  ‘Don’t they always say that?’

  ‘In this case, it’s probably true. One last job, and then I’m out.’

  ‘Oh, Anna! When?’

  ‘I leave next Wednesday. I assume there’s been no word from Clive?’

  Johann shook his head.

  ‘Well, if he’s not back before then, you’ll have to tell him.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about him? He’s been gone almost a month.’

  ‘Of course I worry about him, Mama. But I know he can take care of himself, just as he knows I can take care of myself. I also know that were anything to happen to him, Billy would let me know immediately. So, no news is always good news.’

  Jane sighed. While she understood that her daughter’s totally confident, pragmatic approach to life was principally responsible for her survival, it was still terrifying.

  ‘Now,’ Anna went on, ‘I may well be away for a little while this time. Entirely because the job may take a couple of weeks to set up. So don’t worry about it, but . . .’ She opened her shoulder bag and took out the cheque. ‘I’ll leave this in my desk. You’ll see that it’s dated the third of March.’

  Johann frowned. ‘That’s a month.’

  ‘Yes.’ Anna handed it to him to study ‘You’ll see that it’s certified, so it’s quite safe. Now, I’d like you to give that to Clive, should he arrive back before I do. But either way, if I’m not back, he or you must go to Nassau on the third of March and deposit it in the account.’

  ‘A hundred thousand dollars,’ Johann mused. ‘This must be a very big job.’

  ‘Call it a golden handshake.’ She smiled at them, brightly. ‘Let’s eat.’

  *

  As always, Anna slept soundly, the more so as she was in her own bed, with Isis curled in her arms. But also, as always when at home, she was up at dawn, going down to the gym to exercise vigorously for half an hour. She would then indulge in a little firearms practice, activating the switch that had a succession of man-sized targets moving across the far wall, some twenty yards away; this wall was heavily padded, both to protect the stonework and to obviate the risk of a ricochet.

  Having put on her earmuffs, Anna faced the opposite wall, counted ten, turned, and opened fire. After emptying the magazine, she took off the muffs, switched off the power, ejected the magazine, laid the empty pistol on the table, to be cleaned and oiled later, and went forward. Each target had a neat hole in the centre of the forehead. She remembered the first time she had ever fired a pistol on a range like this. Then the target had been a living man, and an SS officer had been standing beside her. She could still recall the feeling of utter sickness, both physical and mental, as she realized what she was required to do. Nor had it been the slightest bit alleviated by the assurance that her victim was a condemned felon, doomed in any event to die, by slow hanging, if she did not kill him, and that he would far rather a quick and clean end.

  But any temptation to refuse had been ended by the fate of the girl immediately before her – who had refused, and promptly been stripped naked to be flogged until blood was running down her legs, before being removed to spend the rest of her probably short life in an SS brothel. Even more compelling had been the knowledge that apart from what might happen to her, her parents and her sister would suffer even more horrifying fates.

  She had been just eighteen years old, and in that instant she had had to make the decision that turned her from an innocent schoolgirl into . . . An angel from hell? Or the devil incarnate?

  But it was going to end. After fifteen bloodstained years. She went to the hollow space behind the wall to take down the used targets and replace them from the stack of cut-outs stored beside the range, reflecting as she did so that retirement was going to bring its own problems. While her speed and accuracy enabled her to be economic of ammunition in the field, the constant practice required to maintain that speed and accuracy involved a profligate expenditure of cartridges. Whenever necessary in the past, she had merely informed her employers that her stock of ammunition needed replenishment, and it was done. When she was working for the SD, replacement magazines for her Luger had been supplied by the SS armoury; more recently, those for the Walther, as well as spare targets, had been provided by Petersen, the CIA agent in Miami, with no questions asked, and picked up by Fair Girl. She had a fair stock of each left, just as she had more than a hundred rounds each of scatter and solid shot for the riot gun; but obviously her source was about to dry up. Even Clive, while he might be able to keep up her supply, would have difficulty importing large amounts of ammunition into the Bahamas.

  And then she smiled, as she realized that she was guilty of tunnel vision. Surely, once she was retired, her expenditure of both cartridges and targets should dwindle, although she had no intention of allowing her skills to do so? And in any event, now that she had her immunity to travel in the States as she chose, she could replenish her stocks herself; few American armaments retailers had scruples about selling as much arms and ammunition as anyone wished to buy.

  *

  She closed the gymnasium and went upstairs. The dogs were waiting for her on the veranda. The gym was soundproofed, but they knew she was up, and they also knew her routine when she was home. Now they joined
her in the pool, for several minutes of vigorous swimming, up and down. Next, it was to the outside shower to wash off the salt, to suffer which they stood patiently while Anna directed the jet to every part of their bodies, to make sure no potentially itchy spots were left; then they rolled on the grass beside the pool while she rinsed her hair.

  Satisfied, she went back to her bedroom, put on a pair of shorts and a loose shirt, tied her wet hair in a bandanna, thrust her bare feet into flip-flops, and joined her parents for a sumptuous breakfast. She left all housekeeping details to Jane and Desirée; there was always ample cash in the house for their shopping trips to Spanish Wells.

  Then it was time for her inspection. First of all she made sure all the screens were proofed; this was necessary because, while the fine mesh kept out mosquitoes and other flying insects, it was ineffective against the far more numerous sand flies, and so required regular painting over with repellent. Then, accompanied by the dogs, she walked round the flower garden that bordered the poolside lawn. Because of the sparse soil and occasionally destructive rainfall, flowers were the most difficult things to grow on the cay, but there were massed banks of colourful oleander and flamboyant, surrounded by hibiscus hedges. Although these plants’ multicoloured blooms died every night, Desirée kept the house vases filled, and fresh flowers were always there next morning.

  Leaving the garden she went to the power house, a hundred yards from the main building, sandals crunching on the pine needles dropped from the casuarinas – which could be murderous to bare feet, although the dogs did not seem bothered.

  There were two 25 kilowatt generators in the little shed, one working, the other silent. Tommy alternated them to make sure they were both always in perfect condition, as they needed to be to sustain the island – not only the lights, but the various water pumps, both fresh and salt (all the toilets operated on salt water), and the giant freezer in the house, and they had to supply power to the other houses, and down the hill to the dock. When she acquired the island, the power had been carried by overhead cables, which had been extremely vulnerable to strong winds, and to certain failure in the event of a hurricane. So she had had Tommy and the gardeners bury them all, to render the supply invulnerable as long as the generators worked, a big task but one which had proved its worth: during the 1949 hurricane there had been no failure.