Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “Who is the captain of this vessel?” he demanded.

  Riggiro looked the man up and down. “I am,” he said at length. “And I will register a complaint with my government about this illegal boarding. We are a legitimate research vessel on a scientific mission.”

  The officer was unimpressed. “You are diving on a wreck that is the property of the Cuban government.”

  “Not in international waters.”

  “We’ll see,” the Cuban said disdainfully. “Come with me.”

  Lenz stepped forward, but Riggiro held him back. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Down to the main deck to await the arrival of your submersible,” the Cuban said. “Where else, Capitán?”

  “We have notified our coast guard.”

  “We know that. But our business here will be finished before they arrive.” The Cuban officer stepped aside. “After you, Capitán.”

  The depth gauge approached a hundred feet. Lane had donned scuba gear including mask and fins. The water in the open well at his feet was a bright swimming pool aqua. He checked to make sure that the large dive knife was free in its sheath on his chest.

  “I see them,” Susan called down. “They’re just above us. Maybe thirty feet.”

  “Count to ten and then get out of here.”

  “I think you’re crazy.”

  Lane chuckled. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Doctor,” he said, and he stepped out into the well and started down.

  Before he cleared the Sounder’s skids, he adjusted his buoyancy control vest so that he was slightly negative, then he curled up in a fetal position as if he’d been injured, or as if he was suffering from the bends. His right hand curled around the grip of the dive knife.

  At the count of ten he heard the Sounder’s electric motors come to life, and felt the backwash from her propellers. He let his body go completely limp and he slowly tumbled in the turbulence.

  The two Cuban divers were about twenty feet above him now and to the right. They watched as the untethered Sounder headed to the north, away from the Deep Sound and the Cuban warship whose hulls loomed directly overhead.

  Lane continued to turn slowly end over end. The next time he was upright the divers were heading his way. They were about five feet apart, one of them a little above the other.

  When he was facing downward he slipped the foot-long razor-sharp knife from its sheath, and tensed, ready to spring.

  The first diver to reach him grabbed his vest and pulled him around. Moving deceptively slowly, Lane reached up and cut the diver’s air hose. The man reared back, his eyes wide in panic, but Lane held him as a shield against the other diver who realized what was happening and was bringing his spear gun to bear.

  He fired wildly, the spear embedding itself in his dead partner’s thigh. Lane cut the man’s weightbelt free and the body shot toward the surface.

  The second diver frantically tried to reload his speargun as Lane came at him. At the last moment he dropped the gun and reached for his knife, but it was too late. Lane batted the diver’s hand away and cut his air hose.

  The Cuban fought like a wild man, knowing that his only hope for survival was getting free and making it to the surface. But Lane spun him around and held him by the valve on his tank so that he couldn’t pull himself free.

  This was no innocent navy diver, Lane told himself. These bastards were working with Helmut Speyer. Thirty-five hundred feet below them seventeen men were locked forever in the wreck of the Maria. And these two had come down here to make sure that Lane and Susan did not survive.

  After a minute the diver’s struggles stopped. Lane cut the man’s weightbelt and the body shot to the surface as the first one had.

  One of the Cubans at the rail shouted something and pointed to large air bubbles coming to the surface.

  The officer with Riggiro ran over to the rail as the first diver’s body came to the surface facedown, arms and legs splayed out. He was obviously dead.

  Something was going on that the officer could not understand. First the cable winching up the submersible had gone slack, and now this. An accident?

  A second air bubble broke the surface and a minute later the body of the second diver appeared a few feet from the first. It wasn’t an accident. It was a trap.

  The officer spun around as he yanked out his pistol. “Bastardo!” He fired a shot that ricocheted off a bollard as Riggiro ducked behind the winch.

  The other men took up defensive postures and held their weapons at the ready, but they didn’t know what was going on, or who they were supposed to shoot. The two divers were dead and one of their officers had apparently gone loco.

  “Miquel,” the second officer shouted as he raced down from the bridge. “We must go. Now!”

  The cutter’s whistle shrieked, the noise rattling the glass in the Deep Sound’s bridge windows, but before the officer on deck could react, a deeper, mind-numbing roar blotted out every other sound.

  He looked up as a pair of F-14/D U.S. Navy Tomcat fighters came thundering in very low from the north, Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles attached to their wing racks.

  When the jets started their inbound turn two miles out, the Cuban warship’s whistle sounded the recall again. All of the Deep Sound’s crew and scientists had ducked out of sight, and in the water the divers’ bodies were being recovered.

  “Bastardos,” the officer muttered, holstering his pistol. He headed with his men for the boarding ladder.

  When the Cuban warship left, Lane swam over to where the tether had been lowered into the water. Susan edged the Sounder slowly into position and he attached the big hook and comms cable. Moments later the submersible started up and he rode on top with it, acutely aware that he had killed two men and that it was another thing he would have to live with for the rest of his life.

  The sun was setting and the Deep Sound was heading back to the institute on Key Vaca. The Sounder was attached to her cradle on deck and the helicopter was secured on the pad.

  They were gathered around a big tank of fresh water on deck in which the metal box Lane had pulled from the wreck had been placed.

  Susan Hartley kept glancing at Lane as one of the technicians used an underwater saw to cut the seal holding the lid. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.

  “They would have killed both of us.”

  “How do you know?” she demanded, her voice low so that the others couldn’t hear her over the noise of the saw.

  “I just know,” Lane said. “But I’m sorry that you had to see it. If this were a perfect world, things like that would never happen. But this is not a perfect world.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said, looking away.

  The technician set the saw down and carefully eased the box open with a small pry bar. One of the others took the lid from him and set it aside.

  “Rocks,” the tech said. He took one of them out of the box and pulled it out of the water for them to see. It was about the size of a grapefruit, but flattened, its edges smooth and rounded. “Granite, maybe. River rock, I’d guess, though I’m not a geologist.” He shook his head. “One thing’s for sure, Mr. Lane, these sure aren’t diamonds.” He looked back at the box. “And another thing I’d be willing to bet money on. This box is no more than a couple of years old. It sure as hell wasn’t lying around underwater for very long.”

  “A decoy?” Riggiro asked.

  “Looks like it,” Lane said. “The problem is, what was the Cuban navy doing out here?”

  “Legitimizing your search,” Tom Hughes said on the phone ten minutes later.

  “That’s what Tony thinks, and I have to agree with both of you,” Lane said. “Send somebody out to Kalispell to take a quick look at Speyer’s ranch. If he’s still there, watch him to see what he does.”

  “How about if he’s already packed his bags and headed for the hills?”

  “If there’s nobody out there, it might be worth our while to take a quick look around. They
might have left something behind. Check with Linda Boulton, the Bureau’s SAC at Helena. She might be able to lend a hand.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “We should be back to the institute sometime in the morning.”

  “I’ll send a jet to pick you up.”

  “Good. Now let me talk to Frannie.”

  “She and Moira are out shopping for baby clothes,” Hughes said, obviously delighted. “Welcome to the club, papa.”

  10

  KALISPELL

  Helmut Speyer decided as he was placing the last of his confidential papers into his attaché case that he would miss the serenity of this place after all.

  Gloria was already down at the airstrip aboard the Gulfstream ready to leave, and there was no one else left in the compound. He took a moment to step out of his study onto the second floor veranda and drink the last of his wine. The mountains were beautiful at this time of the afternoon.

  He smiled. The operation was proceeding exactly according to his plans. The only glitch was the stupid research ship stumbling onto the Maria. His military contact in Havana had assured him that the scientists would never get near the wreck, but even that was of no real consequence, because there was nothing aboard, except for a few bodies. And there were no witnesses.

  Baumann parked the jeep in the driveway, spotted Speyer on the balcony and came up. He’d left with the ADM truck earlier today.

  “They got clear without notice?” Speyer asked, stepping back into his study.

  “Yes, sir. I followed them all the way down to Interstate Ninety, and watched them head east. There was no trouble whatsoever.”

  Speyer closed and locked the sliding door, finished his wine, and set his glass on the side table. “Excellent, and is everyone else gone?”

  “It’s just us, Herr Kapitän.”

  “A search has been made for anything that might … hinder our plans if found?”

  Baumann nodded. “All that is left are legitimate business documents.”

  “What about the confidence course and firing range? Have they been cleaned up and converted?”

  “Yes, sir. We have been fond of four-wheeling and of running dirt bikes.”

  “The barracks?”

  “It takes a large staff to run a ranch this big.”

  Speyer locked his attaché case and got his jacket from the arm of the couch. “What about Browne’s car?”

  “The explosives and weapons have been disposed of, and we dug a trench with the backhoe and buried the entire vehicle to the west of the orchard. Someone might find it if they look hard enough. But it would take a lot of time.”

  Speyer looked around his study. “For all practical purposes by the time someone does come out here to snoop around, all they will find is what we want them to find. We’re obviously away on vacation. But it’ll be just as obvious that we intend to return.”

  “I hope they hold their breath waiting,” Baumann made a little joke.

  Speyer clapped him on the shoulder. “You have done well, Ernst. Military commanders from Sparta to Berlin understood that the men keeping their armies together were their sergeants. It is no different in my little army.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Baumann said. “But there is the other problem we discussed.”

  “Konrad will clean up any lingering problems. That’s what friends are for,” Speyer made his own little joke.

  “No, sir, I meant the woman. The glider pilot who landed here. We received a possible identification this morning. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before I left with the truck.”

  Speyer looked at him with some interest. Although she’d probably been the woman in the lobby of the Grand Hotel on the morning of the shooting, they had found no evidence that their perimeter had been breached the afternoon of her landing. “Who is she?”

  “Her name might be Frances Shipley. Our contact in the Bureau fingerprint section was a little vague because we managed to get only a partial print off the glider canopy while she was here at the house. But if he got that right, then she worked for British Intelligence until last year.”

  This news was totally unexpected and it took Speyer momentarily aback. “Whatever she came looking for, she couldn’t have found it. She wasn’t here long enough. Was there any connection between her and Browne?”

  “None that we can come up with so far.”

  “She might have been working for the Germans,” Speyer said. “No matter, though. In ten minutes we’ll be gone from here forever. And by next week, perhaps sooner, we’ll be completely out of their reach.”

  NEW YORK

  It was 2:00 A.M. when the Gulfstream touched down at La Guardia Airport. They’d managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight, and even Gloria, who had stayed off the booze, managed to nod off. This would be the last flight in or out for the night.

  “You know what to do for us in Washington,” Speyer told his wife. “I’ll join you and the others sometime tomorrow.”

  “Do you want me to send the plane back for you?” she asked. She was like an actress playing an earnest part in a bad movie.

  “Send it to Miami. If anybody is looking for us, that’ll throw them off in the wrong direction.”

  “What about the crew?”

  “Ted knows what to do,” Speyer said. “Don’t worry about that part. Your job is to make sure that the safe house is ready for us.”

  She reached up and touched his lips with her fingertips. “We’re almost finished with this, aren’t we, darling?”

  “Soon.”

  “All this running around and uncertainty is very hard on my nerves. I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. We need a little fun in our lives again, like the old days in Hollywood.”

  Speyer smiled although he didn’t mean it. He’d had just about enough of her to last a lifetime. “It’s only a matter of a few days now, Liebchen, you’ll see.”

  Baumann came to the door of the plane. “I have the car,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t run into any trouble. Just stay put,” Speyer told his wife.

  “Anything could happen—”

  “Do as I say.”

  The Japanese cargo vessel Akai Maru was tied up to the Brooklyn docks below Red Hook. Speyer and Baumann arrived in the rental Mercedes E320 a little before 3:00 A.M., the deadest hour for traffic in the entire five boroughs. They parked just outside the security gate. Speyer called the ship’s captain, Shintaro Kato.

  “You are on time, Mr. Speyer,” the captain said. He’d been waiting for the call. “Do you have the remainder of the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. In five minutes you may proceed through the gate onto the dock. My first officer and I will meet you in front of the warehouse directly across from my ship. It is thirty-seven B.”

  “What about customs?”

  “The package has already been cleared. Be there in five minutes.” The captain hung up.

  “All he wants is his money and we’ll get it,” Speyer told Baumann.

  “I don’t trust the bastard.”

  Speyer chuckled. “You don’t trust anybody. The good captain neither knows nor cares what’s inside the box. He’s just interested in getting paid.”

  Baumann started to object, but Speyer held him off.

  “If Kato had wanted to double-cross us, he could have taken our money when he picked us up after the Maria went down, killed us and let our bodies go down with the captain’s gig instead of taking us to Miami. The only reason he took a chance bringing the box here to New York and clearing it through customs was for the second half of his money. He’s not going to do anything to jeopardize his position now.”

  Baumann held his silence. He was glum.

  “The next twenty-four hours will be the most difficult. After that we’ll really be on our way.”

  The security guard raised the barrier to let them through without asking to see their passes. Baumann drove down the lane between warehouses, across three sets
of railroad tracks, beneath the legs of a gigantic crane, and onto the docks. There were a lot of lights and activity at a couple of ships farther up the quay, but here the night was quiet. The Akai Maru had already been unloaded, and was waiting for clearance before leaving.

  The service doors to warehouse 37B were slightly ajar. Baumann parked the Mercedes in the deeper shadows on the south side of the big building and they went the rest of the way on foot.

  “Did you bring a weapon?” Speyer asked.

  “Naturally.”

  “Good. But don’t even think about using it except as a last resort. All Kato wants is the money.” Speyer raised the small leather bag he carried. It contained one hundred thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills.

  “If he sticks with the plan, he’ll get no trouble,” Baumann said menacingly. “If not, I’ll kill him.”

  The captain and first mate were waiting for them in the darkness just inside the service doors. Kato was typical of many Japanese, short and slightly built. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and was dressed all in black. His mate was huge, built like a sumo wrestler, with a permanent scowl etched on his broad features. He, too, was dressed in black.

  “Where is it?” Speyer demanded.

  “Inside,” Kato said. “Did you bring the money?”

  Speyer held up the leather bag. Kato reached for it, but Speyer pulled it back. “Let me see the package first. An even trade.”

  The first officer, whose name they never learned, looked as if he was ready to tear them apart. Baumann was to the left of Speyer and half a step back. He would have only a moment to draw his gun and fire if the big Japanese started to make a move.

  But Kato smiled. “Of course. It is business,” he said. “Just this way, gentlemen.”