Spy ah-4

by Ted Bell

  Stoke checked up and hung in the water a few seconds, just looking down it, surveying it from nose to tail. He hoped Sharkey was right about this thing because to him the damn airplane looked about as narco as you can get.

  He motioned for Sharkey to follow and swam down directly to the nose. The windows were all blown out and a school of angelfish was just swimming out of the pilot’s portside window. He saw Sharkey pointing at that window, nodding his head. Stoke flipped his fins and swam right up to peek inside.

  Boo!

  The dead pilot’s lolling head floated up right into his damn mask when he peered inside the cockpit. Stoke pulled away instinctively. The guy’s gray face was pretty messed up. Things like his nose were gone. You could see where the fishies had been having a picnic, pecking at him for a couple of days. Stoke pushed the head away from the window and stuck his own inside for a better look-see.

  Something big had taken a chunk out of the pilot’s right thigh, looked like. And his right hand was pretty much gone. Sharks, barracuda, maybe.

  But none of that was the real interesting part.

  What got Stoke’s complete attention was the fact that the dead guy was wearing a military uniform. You had to wonder what a uniformed officer was doing flying around in an unmarked relic like this. Looked like Sharkey had been right about this damn thing, Stoke was beginning to think.

  This was definitely not shaping up like any kind of drug lift. Of course, it could just be a rogue air force guy with a freelance weekend gig or—no. This didn’t feel like drugs anymore.

  He swung around and found Sharkey hovering about six feet behind him. Gave him a big thumbs up. He could see the Cuban nodding his head in excitement, see his eyes smiling inside his mask.

  Stoke, checking the shark-bit flyboy out, could just barely see military insignia, maybe a piece of a patch on the guy’s far shoulder. Could only see a little bit of it but if he could move the guy in his seat, he might be able to twist him around enough to find out where this dead cat called home. He reached inside across the guy’s chest, carefully because there was broken glass and jagged metal, and grabbed the corpse by the upper right shoulder. He pulled the man’s shoulder toward him but the guy didn’t move. Still strapped in too tight.

  He’d have to swim inside and check out the cockpit anyway.

  Stoke turned around to look for an entry point and saw Sharkey’s bright orange swim fins disappear inside a ragged opening in the fuselage aft of the former port wing. His diving buddy was one step ahead of him. There was also a big ugly mako hanging around, circling just above the fuselage opening and the big fella had that mean and hungry look. Maybe he was the one who’d enjoyed the cockpit entree earlier and was just dropping by for dessert.

  Sharkey had probably seen that big mother too, that’s why he’d ducked inside. You could hardly blame him.

  Once bitten, as the man says.

  Something else beside the shark was bothering Stoke.

  All these planes flew with a crew of two.

  So. Where the hell was the damn copilot?

  12

  LONDON

  A lex Hawke was half an hour early for his appointment with C at 85 Vauxhall Cross. He parked his fastback R-Type Continental in the underground parking. The old Locomotive, as he called it, had just turned fifty. Battered but unbeaten he thought, and, keying the lock, he stood back to gaze lovingly at her gorgeous flanks. He drove her hard and got sensual pleasure doing so. He even loved the hideous paint job, a color he referred to as elephant’s breath gray.

  He’d grabbed his umbrella for a short stroll along the Thames. He went via the riverside walk, which, mercifully, was open. It was bitter cold and still spitting rain, but the air off the river was bracing and, besides, he needed a good chilling to clear the juniper cobwebs from his brain. Damned rum. He’d better steer clear of it.

  Twilight was Hawke’s cherished time of day on the river, the hour when the plodding river traffic and headlamps streaming across the bridges acquired that misty glow. It was a scene he’d long associated with the watercolor artist he most admired, Mr. J.M.W. Turner. He walked the Embankment for ten minutes, trying to imagine why on earth C had summoned him. A pretty dark-haired passerby asked the time and he told her, realizing he’d have to hurry back.

  Having satisfied himself that his city, despite all it had weathered recently, was still the most beautiful place he knew, he mounted the broad steps and strode through the main entrance at #85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall Cross. Crossing the gleaming lobby to the bank of lifts, one could not help but notice the architecture. The current MI-6 Headquarters was a five story, exceedingly modern affair, and was variously known in the intelligence community as Babylon-on-Thames or Legoland. It had been home to C and his several thousand colleagues since 1995.

  Hawke, no fan of most modern architecture, found that he liked the place despite his predisposition not to. He was especially looking forward to seeing the chief’s private and much ballyhooed lair.

  “Lord Hawke!” cried a lovely young woman, walking purposefully toward him across the polished granite. He thought he recognized the tall and perfectly tailored auburn-haired beauty, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name or even place her. She was a type, to be sure, the English Rose with large liquid eyes and exquisite manners.

  “How do you do? Has he sent you down for me?” Hawke said, extending his hand and shaking hers. It was surprisingly warm and for some reason triggered his memory, the name popping to the forefront. He smiled at her and turned away, slipping out of his dripping mackintosh.

  “Guinevere, isn’t it? You were last seen at Number Ten Downing working for the PM.”

  “Gwendolyn. Kind of you to remember. Yes, I’m the same Miss Guinness. My friends call me Pippa. I was one of the PM’s Garden Girls at Number Ten until this thrilling life of derring-do beckoned. I’ve been working for Sir David now, oh, a year at least, your lordship.”

  “Call me Alex, won’t you, Pippa? Don’t use the title, never have.”

  She looked at him. It was a brief appraisal, no more than three seconds, tops.

  She would find him all right looking, he supposed, at least other people seemed to think so, as far as that went.

  Alex Hawke was a strikingly handsome man, high-browed, with a sense of powerful self-control—indifference, some of his harshest critics called it. At best, it was an odd combination of latent ferocity and languid, mannered elegance. He stood a few inches north of six feet and had a full head of unruly black hair. He was well proportioned and quite fit for a man without a current exercise regime beyond sit-ups and pull-ups every morning.

  Of course, he had lost a bit of weight in the jungle and it was mercifully slow coming back on. He had that strong Hawke jaw line and a slight cleft in the middle of his determined chin. Above his narrow and imperious nose, a pair of pale, arctic blue eyes. Eyes that turned ice cold when he was troubled. Deep within the iris, flecks of dark blue burned like a welder’s torch when he was angered. The overall impression one got, however, was of resolution, tempered by boyish good humor.

  Having completed her cursory evaluation, Miss Guinness smiled.

  “Sorry. Alex it is, then. So, won’t you come along with me? We’re up on the fourth floor as you probably know.”

  “I didn’t know, actually,” Alex said, happily following her into the lift. “First time he’s invited me to the sanctum santorem.”

  “I’ll give you the penny tour later if you have time. There’s a rather contentious meeting going on in his office right now, so he’s slipped out to meet you down the hall in the Salon Privée.”

  “Salon Privée? That’s new.”

  “Sorry. Inside joke. We use the language of diplomacy around here sometimes to break the tension. It’s what he calls his private study.”

  “Splendid,” Alex said, regretting the word as soon as it came rolling out. She was young and bright and beautiful and here he was sounding like some ancient and po
mpous toff. He was curious about the appealing Miss Guinness. To rise from a Garden Girl at Number Ten Downing to C’s personal assistant at MI6 Headquarters was a dizzying leap.

  Hawke, who dreaded small talk, said, “He keeps you very busy, I imagine.”

  “Oh, yes. We never close around here.”

  “You’re his personal assistant?”

  She looked back at him before getting out of the lift. It suddenly went rather chilly inside.

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Collecting visitors in the lobby. No, we’re very egalitarian around here. I’m fetching you because I was the only one available.”

  “Ah.”

  “I hear you were tortured by Indians in the Amazon. Pity, that.”

  “Les hommes sauvages, n’est-ce pas?” Hawke said, smiling.

  She walked out, her heels clicking smartly on the granite floor and he quickly followed.

  “So, Pippa,” Hawke said, struggling to keep up with her pace, “what exactly do you do here?”

  “I’m Senior Analyst, Latin American Affairs. It was my field of study at Cambridge.”

  “Ah. Fascinating.”

  “WELL,HERE we are, then,” Pippa said, leading the way. They had left the granite behind and quickly covered the distance down a thickly carpeted hallway. He certainly didn’t miss the drab Ministry-of-Works green corridors of the old Headquarters. The darkly paneled walls here were hung with lovely nineteenth-century marine art, Hawke noticed, some older Thomas Butterfields scattered amongst the Samuel Walters and the newer Geoff Hunts. He considered commenting on his own meager collection and then decided against. Surely he’d inflicted enough damage already.

  Pippa opened one of a pair of double doors and gave him an encouraging smile. “Go right in, Mr. Hawke, he’ll be with you momentarily. He’s on with his wife.”

  She smiled again, it was a warmish smile, practiced, and then she left him, pulling the door firmly closed behind her. Only now did it come back to him. Yes. Gwendolyn. He and Congreve had been going up the cantilevered stairs at No. 10 Downing behind her, both of them relishing the sight of Miss Guinness’s spectacular ascent. Seamed stockings, as he recalled…yes. Quite a girl.

  Sir David Trulove, his face half in shadow, was seated at a small crescent desk. A brass reading lamp with a green glass shade created a pool of light on the red leather top. He was on the telephone and waved Hawke into an armchair by the fire. Hawke sat, and used the few found moments to take in the inner sanctum of the Chief of British Intelligence. It was a far cry from the old digs at Century House, a short stroll from the Lambeth North Underground, but still uninspired.

  C’s small room was finished in gleaming Bermuda cedar panels. All the lamps, paintings, and fixtures were nautical. Above the fire was a not very good portrait of Admiral Lord Nelson wearing the Order of the Nile given him by the Sultan of Turkey. Nelson, Hawke’s hero since boyhood, was also clearly a favorite of C’s. In the famous picture, Hawke knew, the decoration was worn incorrectly, having been sewn on by Nelson’s manservant upside down. Hawke decided he would be ill advised to point out this irregularity to his boss.

  There was, atop the mantel, a glass-encased model of Sir David’s last command, the HMS Yarmouth. Hawke, like everyone in the Navy, knew her history. She’d had a narrow escape, down in the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina.

  Two days after the British nuclear submarine Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, Sir David’s Yarmouth, along with another destroyer, the Sheffield, had joined the fray in the Falklands. Both destroyers had been ordered forward to provide a “picket” far from the British carriers. A squadron of Argentine Dassault Super Etendards from the ARA attacked the British fleet. The Sheffield, mortally wounded by an Exocet missile strike, had sunk while under tow by Admiral Trulove’s Yarmouth.

  Trulove’s destroyer had also been fired upon, but Yarmouth had deployed chaff and the missile had missed. It was common knowledge that the tragic loss of the Sheffield, finally abandoned as an official war grave, still played upon Sir David’s mind. He was convinced the Argentine junta’s decision to go to war over the Falkland Islands had been capricious and an act of outright political convenience. Nearly a thousand British boys had been killed or wounded because an unpopular regime had found it expedient to start a war.

  “Lord Alexander Hawke,” Sir David said, replacing the receiver and getting to his feet. “How very good of you to come.”

  “Not at all,” Hawke said, rising to shake the man’s hand. “Very good to see you again.” He’d forgotten just what an imposing figure Trulove was when he rose to his full height. He was a good inch taller than Alex, very trim, with a full head of white hair and enormous bushy eyebrows sprouting over his shrewd gray-blue eyes and hawkish nose. Most MI6 chiefs are recognized with a title only upon completing their tour of duty. Trulove had enjoyed enormous success in a private sector career that followed the Navy. This had led to an early knighthood, long before he’d been lured into the spy game.

  “You look a bit thin,” Trulove said, looking him up and down. “No Pelham to look after you in the jungle, Alex?”

  “Jolly mingy rations out there, I must say.”

  “Sit down, sit down, please, Alex. Will you have anything, dear fellow? Whisky? Rum?”

  “Nothing, thank you, sir. I was just filling my daily alcohol quota when you rang.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. So. Our old friend Chief Inspector Congreve is considering marriage. That’s bloody marvelous. About time he settled down with a good woman. How is dear Diana?”

  “You knew? But I just found out myself not four hours ago.”

  “Ah. Well, good news travels fast,” C said, and his sharp eyes twinkled. You always had the feeling the man was checking your pulse for irregularities, like a bloody telepathic physician.

  “Give Ambrose my warmest congratulations, will you?”

  “Indeed, sir,” Alex smiled, trying to imagine who on earth could possibly have overheard his luncheon conversation with Ambrose at Black’s. Surely there weren’t microphones in the salt cellars at the venerable sanctuary?

  “Alex, I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted what was no doubt a most convivial occasion,” Trulove said, and all traces of jollity had fled from his face.

  “How can I help you, sir?”

  C pulled an ancient gold timepiece from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it impatiently.

  “I’ll get right to it, Alex. We found a hired lorry parked at Heathrow yesterday afternoon. Terminal 4. Abandoned for at least a week at short-term parking. Hidden under a tarp in the back were a thousand pounds of high explosives on a very sophisticated timer. We found the cache less than a quarter of an hour prior to intended detonation.”

  “Good lord.”

  “One certainly hopes. We’re keeping this from the public for the time being. In the meantime, we’re making good progress. There were three men in the truck and we got a fairly good look at them on the security cameras. We’ll catch them. Soon I hope.”

  “Al-Qaeda? Or, another case of local boys?”

  “Neither of the above. Certainly not AQ, although they may have their fingers in it. We’ll see. Here’s the thing. We learned about this only through an amazing sequence of events involving a chap named Zimmermann. Name mean anything to you?”

  “Can’t say it does, sir.”

  “German diplomat. He’s Germany’s ex-ambassador to Brazil. Or, was. He may be dead now.”

  “Dead?”

  “We know where he is. A New Scotland Yard operator received an urgent call yesterday morning. She passed it to my office and we subsequently found the Heathrow fireworks. An anonymous tip. Something made her keep the caller on the line long enough to put a trace on that call. It was made from a hospital bed in Tunbridge Wells. I supposed you’d call it a deathbed confession.”

  “The man saved countless lives.”

  “Indeed he did. He is gravely ill. Poisoned, his doctors think. Someone t
ried to kill him. Perhaps he’s someone whom they knew had a change of heart and was planning to give up the Heathrow bombing. He’s still in hospital, at least he was as of two hours ago. Tunbridge Wells Hospice, a private one in Kent. Do you know it?”

  “Indeed. But, sir, if you know where he is—”

  “Alex, I’m sure you of all people will understand. I can’t be seen as involved in the thing. The Americans, who are at this very moment climbing the walls in my office down the hall, were running this fellow Zimmermann in some Mexico City operation. There’s a fresh crisis brewing down Mexico way, and the German is somehow involved. That’s all I can tell you. I can’t touch this man but I won’t give him up to the Americans until you’ve had a chat with him first. Do you follow?”

  “I think so. I just don’t—”

  “I would very much appreciate it if you would go out and see him first thing in the morning.”

  “Jolly good.”

  “There’s one more wrinkle. He refuses to speak.”

  “Makes chatting difficult.”

  “Indeed. That’s why I strongly suggest you take Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve along for the ride. He was a language scholar at Cambridge, if memory serves?

  “He was.”

  “Yes, I thought so. Any number of languages, I seem to recall.”

  “All of them as far as I can make out,” Hawke smiled.

  “Good, good. This chap refuses to speak anything but German. None of my own valiant charges seem up to the task. Besides, we could use the Chief Inspector’s brain on this thing.”

  “I’ll make sure he brings it along.”

  “But, Alex, please use assumed names when you interview the man. I don’t want this coming back to MI6 under any circumstances. All clear?”