Prince Hunter

by Garrett Russell

  ‘I can see you’re puzzling over how the Irish Republican Army comes to be involved in a scrap so far away from our own turf. Well, that’s fair enough, too.’ He glanced back at Anaya, who nodded a regal assent.

  ‘The admiral and I first met when he was in London, naval attaché to your embassy,’ Gaffney continued. ‘You might say we went to the same church, and it wasn’t long before we discovered we had the same healthy attitude towards the pig English. And where I come from that’s enough to seal a friendship for life.’

  ‘Some years ago,’ Anaya now spoke, in carefully modulated English, ‘Mr Gaffney was forced to leave London in, shall we say, extreme circumstances. He needed somewhere to go away from Britain completely outside the usual escape routes. I was able to give it to him.’

  ‘Like all those Nazis who got out of Germany after 1945?’ Hawker scowled. ‘That’s an immigration policy Argentina can be really proud of.’

  ‘So naturally,’ Gaffney smoothly ignored the jibe, ‘as soon as I heard my old friend had taken up arms against the English, I came to see what assistance I could offer in return.’

  ‘Which brings us neatly back to the present,’ Anaya bared his teeth in a mirthless smile. ‘A band of IRA men, all trained and blooded killers, has Mrs Hawker’s quaint little English cottage under constant surveillance. They are on standby for my order, via Mr Gaffney, to destroy the contents of the cottage however they see fit. Should I command it, both your wife and daughter would be dead within the hour.’

  Hawker forced back the bile he could feel erupting in him. He stared Anaya in the eye.

  ‘You may think you can do that, but you can’t. England is not Argentina. A bunch of thugs can’t hang around a quiet village like that without raising some kind of suspicion.’

  Ayana and Gaffney shared a glance which became two cold, hard smiles.

  ‘Fox’s Cottage,’ said Ayana. ‘You know it, I think? The cottage along the road from your family’s house. I’m told it’s been empty for years.’

  ‘But not anymore,’ Gaffney hissed viciously. ‘Not since a nice bunch of Irish blokes moved in while they’re there on a building contract. The landlord loves them.’

  ‘Just as your lovely Anne told you,’ Anaya broke in. ‘You must surely remember that. It was in the third letter she sent you after she arrived.’

  Hawker bowed his head. He remembered.

  ‘Then hadn’t you better inform me what you want me to do?’

  Anaya straightened his stance. He smoothed the braided sleeves of his jacket, the military commander in total control.

  ‘I want you to tell me how to kill just one Englishman.’

  He briskly cleared a space on the table to spread out a large chart. It was a series of identification silhouettes, graphically depicting the strength of the British battle fleet.

  ‘As I said, we are already preparing to engage these ships in combat. We will give their grey-haired Admiralty quite a shock. But it is the British people who I want to shock. They are the key. They are the ones whose outcry can force the she-devil Thatcher to back down.

  ‘The British can afford to lose warships over and again for no further reason than their idiotic old-fashioned imperial pride. But what do the English people hold closest to their hearts? What is their softest spot?’

  He sprawled the contents of a fat folder across the chart. They were the covers and front pages of popular British magazines and newspapers and they all showed the royal family in one form or another: the Queen and Prince Phillip on one colour cover; the Prince and Princess of Wales on another; photographs of Princes Andrew and Edward under banner headlines such as ANDREW HEART THROB SHOCK.

  ‘That man,’ spat Anaya, jabbing a finger at Prince Andrew’s face smiling across the front page of The Sun. ‘He is how I will break the English people’s heart to fight when you, Capitán Paolo Hawker, carry out my order to assassinate their precious Prince Andrew.’

  Monday 3 May 1982

  Hawker shivered and huddled closer in his wetsuit against the cold. He was in a cell deep in the dungeons of Escuala Naval de Ingeniaria, the Naval School of Engineering, desperately trying to sleep through his discomfort.

  The cell was no more than a metre and a half long, its width a few centimetres less. There were no windows, no bars, only the massive plate steel door that dominated one end wall. The door was as featureless as the rest of the cell. It had no inside handle, no window or sliding panel except for a peep hole no bigger than Hawker’s thumb. There was no bed, nor furniture of any type, so Hawker was forced to lie diagonally on the rough concrete floor to stretch out.

  There was also no light. Hawker had learned the detail of the room by feel, and by the brief glimpse he was able to snatch before the guards had slammed the door behind him.

  They had brought him here on Anaya’s direct orders, Anaya in a furious rage, the veins standing proud on his temples as he had let his temper take him over again.

  He and Hawker had reached a stalemate.

  Hawker had no doubts that the threat to Anne and Elizabeth was real. Gaffney seemed eager to send the order, to prove his men’s efficiency, yet he curbed his desire, with an obvious exercise of self discipline, to support Anaya’s strategy. In fact, Hawker had noticed the Irishman’s eyes sparkle with fiery Celtic menace every time Anaya repeated the command he saw as being so simple – kill Prince Andrew. He knew where Anaya’s crazy inspiration had come from.

  And crazy it was, as Hawker had tried to reason with them constantly. Even Grivas had given him tacit support, with a quiet withdrawal from any discussion.

  Anaya would not be convinced that Hawker could not single one man out of a ship’s company of 1,200, surrounded by a hostile task force, and destroy him in a way which would show the world he was the deliberate target.

  ‘You know how the Royal Navy and its Fleet Air Arm work. You even know Invincible. And more importantly, you know how the Anglos think,’ he had said over and over, until his temper broke and he swung into another rage.

  That had been seven hours ago. The luminous hands on Hawker’s waterproof Rolex watch showed it now close to 0100 Monday morning.

  A sudden rasping sound echoed through the steel plate of the door. Hawker closed his eyes against the sudden flood of harsh fluorescent light as the door swung open and two armed guards stepped through.

  It wasn’t until they had him out of the cell and stumbling down the narrow corridor that his eyes had adjusted to the light enough to recognise Grivas at the head of the guard.

  ‘Your presence is again required,’ he said, and then in English: ‘Listen, Paul. I want you to know I had no knowledge of that Irish bastard being involved with this. I knew nothing of the plan to use your wife and daughter so cruelly.’

  ‘I suppose you’d just shoot them and torture me into submission instead,’ Hawker replied in loud Spanish.

  The guards looked hard at him. Grivas hissed urgently then, still in English:

  ‘Please, Paul. I am putting my neck on the line to say this. Whatever you may think of my actions in war, I am not a killer of women and children.’

  ‘Then go to sea. Wage war against the British like a real naval officer.’

  Grivas frowned. ‘If only I could.’

  They marched the rest of the way in silence. Grivas looked genuinely disturbed, and Hawker knew he was holding something back. As they ascended the stairs from the basement levels, they encountered a surprising level of traffic in the corridors. Ratings scurried in and out of offices with despatches and charts. Officers bawled urgent orders. Phones were shrilling on every floor. The whole building was charged with the same nervous energy as a ship at battle stations.

  The chaos increased as they approached Anaya’s office. This was obviously his headquarters, and something was equally obviously going wrong.

  Anaya was alone in the room. He was speaking on the telephone when they entered, speaking in a hushed, humble tone so low that Hawker could not hear anything more
than an unintelligible mumble. He looked ten years older than he had appeared in this same room only seven hours before. His face was grey and creased, his eyes sunken and lifeless.

  The old man rang off and turned slowly to face Hawker and Grivas. They had left the armed guard outside the door.

  ‘Have you told him?’ he asked Grivas.

  The younger officer, still dressed in the same incongruously casual sports clothes, gave an involuntary snap to attention and shook his head.

  ‘Then tell him!’ Anaya barked.

  ‘The General Belgrano,’ Grivas turned to Hawker. ‘She is gone. Sunk by torpedoes from a British submarine …’

  ‘A skulking sneak attack outside their own declared combat zone!’ The outburst brought a little colour back to Anaya’s face. A trace of fire flashed in his eyes, then as quickly faded. He sank down into one of the brown leather chairs.

  ‘My flagship and 300, perhaps 400, of my brave men. All gone.’ He sat, dull and lifeless for a few heartbeats, then the fire flashed through his eyes again. ‘And worst of all, I have to hear it from that dog Dozo.’

  ‘Our flotilla was maintaining radio silence,’ Grivas said quietly to Hawker. ‘We were out of touch with them from yesterday morning. They were attacked – we think by Tigerfish from a nuclear submarine – at 1600 local time yesterday.’

  ‘They have my sympathy,’ said Hawker evenly. ‘I have had a similar recent experience.’

  Grivas let it pass. ‘In the chaos of the sinking and subsequent rescue operation, our commanders wisely stayed off the air. The rest of the fleet picked up 650 survivors from Belgrano’s lifeboats, then steamed straight for our coastline. Naval command knew nothing of it until the Air Force in Rio Gallegos intercepted a British radio transmission.’

  ‘Lami Dozo paid me the courtesy of telling me himself,’ Anaya said to the ceiling. ‘After he had called Galtieri. I am commanded to withdraw my fleet until we have a Junta meeting this morning. Dozo is flying up from Gallegos, gloating over my castration.’

  Hawker could well appreciate the desperation of Anaya’s situation. He was well known in the ranks as the hawk of the Junta, the man behind the hostilities with Chile over the Beagle Channel, the prime mover in this confrontation with Britain. But now the nuclear hunter/killer subs would keep him bottled up in his harbours, powerless to act. Whatever happened from now on in the South Atlantic, the glory would go only to Dozo’s aircraft and Galtieri’s army of occupation.

  Anaya brought his gaze directly down to Hawker.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, you must help me. You yourself predicted the bloodbath if the British marines confront those boys digging in to the Malvinas now.’

  He pressed his palms together in subconscious supplication. ‘It’s the only way I … we … can come out of it with honour.’

  ‘By killing a prince?’

  ‘One life! One life, for hundreds, perhaps thousands.’

  ‘And if I can’t?’

  ‘That possibility does not exist,’ said Anaya flatly.

  ‘Your entire fleet is stranded in harbour. You and I both know the Junta’s order is a convenient excuse. You dare not move for fear of another sub pouncing the moment you poke a ship’s bow out into blue water.’

  Hawker paused to be sure his words had hit their mark.

  ‘So how do you expect me to attack this British prince among all his sailors? Swim?’

  ‘A small force can penetrate where a battle group would fear to venture,’ Anaya drew himself up to a stance almost befitting an admiral. ‘You can have my entire air arm at your disposal. Or whatever else you need.’

  His shoulders slumped as the high-ranking haughtiness he had struggled up to slid away like a sinking ship.

  ‘Hawker, you will think of a way.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Anaya’s mood switched again, as suddenly and savagely and irrationally as before.

  ‘You will die yourself, slowly and painfully. And the last thing you see in your wretched life will be moving pictures of your wife and little girl in agony. You will see this, I guarantee, because you will have no eyelids to close, no way to not see what Gaffney’s men do to them.’

  ‘What are you paying that bastard with? Bombs to blow up more innocent children with?’ Hawker hissed, holding himself tightly in check against launching a sledgehammer blow to Anaya’s throat. He knew he could kill the old man before Grivas realised it was happening, before the guards could be called in to reduce him to the pulp he fully knew they would. But he also knew that he would condemn Anne and Elizabeth to certain and sudden death as soon as Gaffney heard about it.

  He held Anaya’s eyes in an icy gaze, but he knew he was defeated.

  ‘Enough,’ said Anaya after a beat that seemed like an eternity. He turned his attention back to the scattered papers on the table.

  ‘You have 24 hours.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘A few more, 30 to be precise. I require your plan to present to Galtieri and Dozo when the Junta meets tomorrow morning.’

  He motioned for Grivas to call in the guards and take Hawker away as if nothing had happened.

  Tuesday 4 May 1982

  Hawker ran over the plan in his mind one more time. It must have been the twentieth time he’d worked through it, and he was now satisfied that it could not be improved. There were flaws, certainly. They were due to the circumstances. But overall, with that little bit of luck Hawker knew to be an essential ingredient of any military adventure, he was sure he could make this plan succeed.

  All he needed now was to convince Anaya.

  He was in his cell waiting for the guard to open the door. They must come any minute now: it was 0900 Tuesday morning.

  This cell was different from the one they had dumped him in on Sunday night. It was bigger, big enough for an iron framed bed to be fixed along the wall. In the opposite corner a small pit had been shaped into the concrete floor. It was an open drain, raised high enough with a rough concrete rim to serve as a toilet. There had once been a tap over the drain. The only evidence of its existence now was a jagged stump of brass pipe jutting from the wall a metre above the pit. Now the only water available in the cell was in a cracked grey plastic bucket, which the guards filled once a day. Hawker had quickly learned that with so little water for drinking, washing and flushing the pit, you don’t use it for flushing. It was a lesson that previous occupants had obviously learned well. The fetid smell of stale urine and excreta filled the small, closed space. The pit was stained and encrusted a dirty brown, and in the darkness of the night, Hawker could hear the scuttling of cockroaches amplified by the hollow pipe.

  There was nothing else in the cell, except the greasy grey blanket that covered the bed. Any suppleness and texture the rough wool may have once displayed had long been choked by layers of grime that were now caked hard to a smooth surface. One corner of the blanket was stained stiff with rusty patches of blood.

  The cell’s greatest luxury was light. A small barred window set high in the wall opposite the door allowed enough light in to make day a gloomy contrast with the pitch black of night.

  The window must have faced north east because Hawker could warm himself in the dusty shaft of early light that slanted through the window directly to the opposite wall.

  He was warming himself now, more comfortable and relaxed, despite the squalor of his surroundings, than he had been since being abducted. He was dressed in faded denim jeans, a thickly tightknit Breton fisherman’s pullover with a snug crew neck, and a comfortably old pair of Sperry Topsider deck moccasins over thick cotton socks.

  The clothes fitted him well because they were his own. Grivas had arrived with them halfway through Monday.

  ‘Mere routine,’ he said as Hawker eagerly tore off his now foul-smelling wetsuit and slipped gratefully into the clothes. ‘I went to your office at the marina this morning. Told your man Luis some good cock and bull story about meeting you on Sunday, and a boat at Mar del Plata you’d gone to look at urgently for
me.’

  ‘He’s no fool,’ Hawker had said.

  ‘Perhaps not. However, I could drop enough names from your past to establish a convincing association. And in any case, he will be closely observed from now on. Routine procedure.’

  What Grivas did not add was that Hawker’s office phone was tapped, and that Luis would encounter impossible technical difficulties in placing any international calls. Especially calls to England.

  ‘And how will you explain my mysterious absence for the duration of this mission?’

  ‘So, you will go through with it? You have a workable plan?’

  ‘I suppose that’s why you’re really here,’ Hawker had answered. ‘My comfort is no more than an excuse. Anaya sent you to fish for information.’

  ‘I am no spy!’ Grivas had bristled. ‘My concern is purely personal. It is a magnificent objective, a brilliant strategy, to stop a war and retain our rightful territory by killing just one man. But one I know as well as you to be impossible to achieve.’

  ‘That’s why I have a better idea,’ Hawker had replied. ‘One that will need your help to convince Anaya of its merits.’

  Grivas had left Hawker, no wiser to the plan he was formulating, but pledged to support it. Hawker had managed to convince him, without details, by the sheer weight of his own conviction, for there was no doubt in his own mind that he must go through with it. In Anaya’s state of mind anything less than complete cooperation would be as good as unleashing the IRA killers onto Anne and Elizabeth, regardless of any consequences for himself.

  He shuddered at the thought of it. Anne, so strong in a crisis, his pillar of support in the dark days when he resigned from the only career he had known, now in more danger than she could ever imagine. And utterly innocent. And Elizabeth, beautiful innocent Lizzie, who would be unable to comprehend the danger even if he were able to try explaining it to her. So young, so fragile, so precious.