Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘He seem fine. He had a good day on the reef. Hit his boat on something, but he say no real damage. He just the same as ever. He still can’t play chess worth a damn.’

  ‘Do you know if he came straight here from the marina?’

  ‘Far as I know. No, wait. He phone from Suzie’s, and there was beer on his breath when he come here. He must have stop for a drink on the way.’

  Sibou couldn’t think of anything else. ‘How are you?’ she asked Missie.

  ‘I was fine until now.’

  They talked for a while about her sons, and the clinic, and Franklin’s mother’s visit, and the possible adoption. ‘You come see me again,’ Missie said, ‘with some good news, maybe. You can bring your husband if you want to. I happy to see you both, or just you. And I’ll keep my ears open for any news of Nick,’ she added as Sibou was leaving.

  On the drive back down the coast Sibou thought the matter through in her usual logical manner, and realized just how little they had to go on. There was a man missing and a smell of chloroform in his bedroom. They had no idea why anyone should want to abduct him. The whole business seemed as ludicrous as it was chilling.

  Back at the clinic she found Franklin in the canteen, nursing a can of Coke. She told him what she had found out, which wasn’t very much.

  ‘I’d better check out Suzie’s Bar,’ was his reaction.

  ‘It won’t be open until early evening.’

  ‘Do you know where the guy who runs it lives?’

  She shook her head.

  He gently squeezed the empty Coke can. ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to wait.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘It doesn’t feel right, calmly going off to teach an Emergencies class when . . . you know . . . I feel like I should be rushing around, trying to do something.’

  ‘I know. One thing that occurred to me – whoever chloroformed Nick could just as easily have killed him . . .’

  ‘Unless they wanted to kill him somewhere else.’

  ‘Why would they want to do that?’

  ‘Christ knows,’ Franklin said, angrily crushing the can. ‘Why would anyone want to kill him at all?’

  3

  Aleksandr Solayev bit down on the Bacon Mega Double Whopper and felt the extra mayo he had ordered dribbling down his fingers and on to the plastic tray. The burger tasted like heaven. He followed it with a handful of French fries, and sat there for a moment, holding the last mouthful between sticky fingers, reluctant to complete the meal. He wondered how the Soviet Union could ever have hoped to win the Cold War.

  The last mouthful went down, thrilling his taste buds, and he let the flavours linger on his tongue for a few seconds before reaching out a hand for the triple-thick strawberry shake. It was so thick that he almost pulled a lip muscle trying to suck it up through the straw.

  Three children walked past his table, all screaming at the tops of their voices. Their parents followed, apparently oblivious to the noise, and herded the whole brood out of the restaurant, across the parking lot and into a large blue Nissan Maxima. Solayev could still hear the children yelling as the car slipped down the ramp and back on to the interstate.

  He belched softly, took another draw on the straw, and examined his surroundings again. The restaurant looked as good as the food tasted. Everything was so pleasant on the eye – the printed menu above the servery, the brightly coloured furnishings, the mosaic floor . . . And all of it bathed in the bright Florida sunshine that came pouring through the panoramic windows. There was nothing drab here, nothing grey, nothing . . . like home.

  He smiled at the thought that this place was also called St Petersburg. It was a long way from the one he had been born in.

  The shake seemed easier to draw on now. He removed the plastic lid to investigate and discovered that the ice-cream around the edges was melting quicker than that in the centre. He gave the whole thing a stir, and tried again. This time less effort was required. Learning to live in America, Solayev decided, would involve the mastering of many such minor techniques.

  He began tidying up his tray, and noticed the three unused ketchup sachets. They must have given him four, he realized. Surely no one could use four. And there had been six napkins – he had counted them. Such plenty. It was incredible.

  The previous evening, in the motel outside Orlando, he had worked his way through the channels on the TV in his room. There had been cop shows, quiz shows, comedies, music, sports of every kind, people talking about God, people selling jewellery. It had reminded him of the first time his father had taken him inside the special Party shop in Leningrad – there were just too many riches to absorb in one go.

  Like the Florida women. All those young girls in shorts. He had a better idea now of what dogs on heat felt like. Well, now that he had all the money at last, some female companionship was one of the things uppermost in his mind. Once he was down in the Keys his new life could begin in earnest.

  But not Key West, he reminded himself. At first he had thought the guy was kidding him – a town full of queers! – but someone else had confirmed the story. And looked at him strangely. There were some things about America he would have a hard time accepting. And this unhealthy tolerance of perverts was definitely one of them.

  His straw gurgled and struck air. Solayev thought about ordering another shake, his third of the day, but one glance at his waistline dissuaded him. It was partly the light summer clothes, he thought: in Murmansk everyone had needed to dress like a bear, and he had hardly noticed the growing paunch.

  But it was also about being forty-five. He had to be careful of his diet now – there was no point in striking it this lucky and then immediately keeling over with a coronary.

  He carried his tray to the disposal bin, tipped its contents away, and looked around for someone to say goodbye to. But the woman he had spoken to earlier was gone. He remembered the feeling in the motel room, the sense that the room was too big for just him, and that watching TV was something you did with others. The old Russian habits would die hard, he thought.

  He walked out to the car, carrying the brown leather attaché case, and climbed in behind the wheel. He placed the case on the seat beside him and opened it, not so much to check that the money was still in it – the case had never been out of his sight – but simply to enjoy the view. A quarter of a million dollars looked back at him.

  He smiled to himself, re-locked the case, placed it on the floor behind his seat, and started the Toyota’s engine. The two years he had spent as a naval attaché in Cuba in the early eighties had certainly paid off, albeit in a way that he would never have imagined in his wildest dreams. Back then Raul Ochoa had always behaved as if the sun shone out of Fidel Castro’s arse, and in between chatting up girls at Havana’s tourist hotels the two of them had argued about the relative merits of the Cuban and Soviet roads to socialism.

  Solayev snorted with amusement as he pulled out on to the interstate and headed south out of St Petersburg. The collapse of the Soviet Union had been the first of several big surprises in recent years, but all the others had paled before the sudden appearance of Raul Ochoa at his apartment in Murmansk. Ochoa had not only known the details of the small submarine research programme he had been running, but had also been able to confirm the rumours of the programme’s imminent cancellation. Solayev was apparently about to join the rapidly swelling ranks of the post-Soviet unemployed.

  But not necessarily, Ochoa had told him. Solayev’s government might not want his submarines, but the Cuban knew someone who did. Not his own government, with whom he had come to a reluctant parting of the ideological ways, but a private businessman.

  Ochoa also had a plan for getting both Solayev and the submarines out of Russia. There would be a $250,000 fee for facilitating the export process and instructing the new owners in how to use the craft, and then Solayev could begin a new life in the West. What did he have to lose?

  Quite a lot, if the new crime-busting KGB had caught him, but the whole plan had gone like clockwork. In Yel
tsin’s Russia a few dollars bought a lot of silence.

  He was driving out on to what looked like an endless causeway. ‘The Sunshine Skyway’, a plaque announced. Ahead of him the concrete roadway swept across the bay in a graceful curve on its line of cylindrical pilings. A couple of miles away, somewhere close to the midpoint, a strange-looking bridge reared up against the blue sky.

  This is America, he thought. This was something that had been built by people who had confidence in themselves and the world. It was like something out of a science fiction novel. As he neared the bridge it became apparent that it comprised two huge stanchions, which rose soaring out of the centre of the highway, and from which were suspended two vast triangular fans of suspension cable.

  The genius of simplicity, Solayev thought, and with all the beauty which that implied. He wanted to stop, but as usual there was nowhere to pull over, so he drove on down the causeway, hoping to find somewhere from which to take a photograph.

  He had just sighted the lay-by up ahead when a car cut across in front of him and slowed, siren wailing and red light flashing.

  Solayev looked at his speedometer. Perhaps he had been a bit over the limit, but only a bit. Still, what did a twenty-five-dollar fine matter to him?

  The police car pulled over into the lay-by and Solayev followed. A flicker of doubt passed through his mind, but was quelled by the sight of the uniformed officers emerging from the car. And in any case, cars seemed to be going past all the time.

  Both officers seemed to be Hispanic. One leant nonchalantly against the bonnet of the Toyota while the other asked for his driver’s licence.

  ‘Was I going too fast?’ Solayev asked, his Russian accent still strong.

  The officer continued looking at the licence, as if it fascinated him.

  ‘Es claro,’ the other man said.

  The officer returned the Russian’s licence, and pulled the gun from his holster. The last thing Solayev saw was the man’s brown finger clenching on the trigger.

  It was just after six when Franklin arrived at Suzie’s Bar, and Jimmy Durham was still in the process of opening up for the evening.

  ‘Mr Worrell, sir,’ Jimmy greeted him sardonically. ‘Don’t anyone in that clinic of yours know that alcohol is bad for you?’

  ‘Only in large doses. Give me a Pils.’

  Jimmy retrieved a bottle from the refrigerator. ‘Hot day,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘They’re all hot,’ Franklin said. He might have been born in Jamaica, but he had left for England before he could walk or talk, and contrary to white public opinion, black people were no more imbued with a tolerance of extreme heat than they were with natural rhythm.

  ‘The trick is to sleep by day,’ Jimmy confided, drawing a circle with the drops of beer on the bar.

  ‘Right. Was Nick in here yesterday?’

  ‘Yep. Not for long, though. Why – you checking up on your employees?’

  ‘He’s gone missing.’

  Jimmy’s doodling finger came to a stop. ‘What – really missing?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Franklin was reluctant to go into the business of the chloroform, though he had little doubt the story would be all over the island before too many more hours had gone by. ‘Did he talk to anyone in here last night?’

  ‘Only me. He was asking about that boat moored next to his – can’t remember the name. The one Fidel Arcilla owns.’

  ‘What was he asking?’

  ‘Just that. Who owned it. Oh, and he said something about a submarine . . .’

  ‘A submarine?’

  ‘A small one. You know, the kind they use for treasure hunting. And research. One of those.’

  ‘This Arcilla involved in treasure hunting?’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  ‘But Nick didn’t know about him?’

  ‘Nope. I told him about the man’s sister. She picks up tourists for a living, screws each one every which way for a few days and then goes back for another.’

  Franklin raised an eyebrow. ‘And where do they live?’

  ‘The restored plantation villa at the end of Long Bay – the last one you come to on the road. Or the first one on the path from the Caicos Marina. But the man’s hardly ever there – spends his time in Miami, they tell me. Just his sister giving it away like there was no tomorrow.’

  Franklin grimaced. ‘Is that all?’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘Yep. Total Recall is my second name. Second and third names, I suppose.’

  Franklin took a last satisfying swig from the bottle of Pils, thanked his informant, and walked back across to the minivan. Once behind the wheel he sighed loudly, ran a hand through his hair, and started up the engine. A few minutes later he was pulling on to the track which led down to the Caicos Marina, and listening to the minivan’s suspension beginning to complain. It was only a four-mile walk, he decided. And the evening breeze was beginning to blow.

  His long strides ate up the ground, and not much more than forty minutes had gone by when he walked down the final slope to the channel’s edge. He and Nick had often gone out diving together in the early days – Nick the teacher and he the pupil – and Franklin knew where the Foxy Lady was berthed.

  But it was fully dark now, the moon yet to rise, and he had to strain his eyes to be sure he had found the right boat. Having done so, the first thing he noticed was the absence of the boat Nick had mentioned to Jimmy. On one side of the Foxy Lady a small yacht was tied, one of its sail cords tapping against an aluminium boom in the breeze. On the other side were two empty berths. Arcilla’s boat had gone. Treasure hunting, maybe. With Nick on board, maybe.

  Franklin clambered aboard the Foxy Lady in search of clues.

  He found none. The local ocean charts had been generously augmented with felt-tip, but the markings seemed nothing more than a record of Nick’s reef explorations. The small cabin below was locked, but Franklin felt no scruples about breaking in. After all there was no need for any damage – picking locks was one of the few skills he had learned before joining the army, from the least reputable of the five uncles on his mother’s side of the family.

  But there was nothing inside the cabin either. An old Walkman with a Doors tape in it, a couple of private-eye paperbacks, a copy of Teach Yourself Chess and a book of tropical fish, and Nick’s diving gear.

  Franklin re-locked the door, climbed back on to dry land and walked up to the marina office. The man in charge was closing up. He hadn’t seen Nick since the previous morning. And the big boat – he seemed reluctant to mention the owner’s name – had left before sunrise that morning. Headed west, he’d been told; aiming to do some treasure hunting with their submarine on the Cay Sal Bank.

  Franklin thanked him and walked slowly back down towards Nick’s boat, wondering what to do next. Then abruptly he reversed course and walked back up to where the footbridge crossed the channel beside the marina office. On the far side he struck off up the path which ran around the headland towards Long Bay.

  He had only been walking ten minutes when he rounded a bend and saw the old plantation house, perched on a slight rise above the beach. There were lights burning in several windows, but he could see no movement.

  There were two single-storey buildings behind the main two-storey house, and the property as a whole was surrounded by a high wall, along the top of which Franklin could just make out the glint of razor wire. The only break in these perimeter defences was a pair of colonial-style gates, adorned with post-colonial video surveillance equipment.

  The plantation house had verandas on three sides of each storey, and as Franklin watched a woman came out through a door on to the upper deck and stood at the railing, looking out to sea. She seemed to be wearing a T-shirt and tight trousers, but as Franklin soon discovered, the trousers were only in his imagination. As she flicked on the lighter for her cigarette, he could see that she was naked from the waist down.

  The flare died away, and he stood there staring at the distant silhouette, thinking that a pa
inter or photographer would find it hard to come up with a purer image of loneliness.

  * * *

  Nick Russell’s watch, which he had forgotten to take off in his drunken stupor the previous night, told him it was seven forty-five. The lack of light from the small window high in the wall told him it was evening. Assuming he hadn’t been out for two days, it was the evening after the one he had spent with Missie.

  He forced himself into a sitting position, and had the distinct feeling his brain was slopping around inside his head. He held his head in his hands and took several deep breaths.

  He was still sitting in that position when the key clicked in the door. He looked up suddenly, hoping to see Emelisse Alabri again, and felt his head swim. When his eyes cleared he found a black man standing over him, a gun sticking out of his waistband.

  If I was compos mentis, Russell thought, the man would be without the gun by now. But he wasn’t. And there would probably be other chances to indulge in empty heroics later.

  He grinned, and even that seemed to conjure up a desire for sleep.

  ‘You walk?’ the man asked in English with a marked French accent.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Russell said mildly. ‘Are we going for a stroll?’

  The man smiled. ‘Something like that. The commandant wants to see you.’

  ‘I’ll be home all evening.’

  The man grasped Russell roughly under the arm and pulled him to his feet. His brain rocked to and fro, and settled down once more. Maybe he was getting the hang of it.

  ‘Enough joking,’ the man was saying.

  It seemed like good advice. Russell tried a couple of paces and found he could just about walk. The man prodded him in the direction of the door.

  Outside he found a short passageway. To the right were more doors, to the left an opening on to the outside world. The man prodded him again, towards the latter.

  He emerged from the doorway into a world not that dissimilar to the ones Hieronymus Bosch had painted several centuries before. It was a darkness split by fires, full of reeling shadows, with hanging bodies swaying in the breeze. Bosch had never made movies, but if he had ever needed a soundtrack then the ominous, overlapping rhythms of different drummers would probably have been just what the doctor ordered.