by Ted Bell
“What colleague?”
“My subordinate officer was aboard the Star with the prisoner. He took responsibility for reacquiring the American agent in Morocco. And returning him safely from France to Hong Kong. He and I work for the Te-Wu. Chinese secret police. I hold the rank of captain.”
“Your job to stop Alex, Cap?”
“My job was to kill him. I failed. I’d say my career at this point is pretty much over. Assuming I survive, I have no idea what to do next.”
“Kill him how?”
“With this,” Jet said, and reached inside the high slit in the silk robe. She pulled out a nasty little gun she must have had strapped to the inside of her thigh.
“You going to not kill me same way you didn’t kill Alex Hawke?” Stoke asked, “Are you? Captain?”
Jet held the gun up, loosely pointed at Stokely’s left eye. Her gun hand drifted out over the rail for a second, and the pistol fell thirty feet or so to the water. It made a faint splash. More symbolism, Stoke thought, looking at her hard now.
“Jet, this may turn out to be the worst idea I ever had in my whole life. How’d you like a free trip to Germany? All expenses paid.”
“You going, too?”
“Absolutely.”
“What a pair we’d make. What makes you think I won’t betray you?”
“Observed behavior. Love makes people do crazy things. You just changed sides, girl, even though you don’t know it yet.”
Girl didn’t reply and Stoke took that as a yes.
“We got to make one stop first. Pick up your stuff aboard Valkyrie. Also, I may need to talk to my friend Admiral Bruno again. How well do you two get along?”
“Bruno has seen every one of my pictures twenty times.”
“Does he like you enough to keep his mouth shut?”
“He worships the ground I will walk on in future lifetimes.”
“Good. Call Bruno up. Be nice. Tell him you’d like to come back. Like, early this evening. Would he go for that?”
“Yes.”
“You think you could occupy his mind for twenty minutes?”
“I think I could.”
“Okay. We go soon as it’s dark. I like to swim at night.”
Half an hour after the sun went down, Jet was aboard Valkyrie, finding new and different ways to distract Bruno without letting him anywhere near her. Stoke, in his old SEAL gear, was treading water about two hundred yards from the yacht’s bow. He looked at his dive watch. Jet was down in her stateroom by now, collecting her stuff and making goo-goo eyes at fat little Bruno. She had promised Stoke she’d keep him occupied for ten minutes minimum. Stoke thought that should about do it.
He’d dropped Jet off at the starboard-side boarding float. Then he’d gunned the Zodiac out of sight of anybody paying attention on board Valkyrie, zigzagging through all the anchored yachts. He found a good spot, threw a small Danforth anchor over the side, and paid out enough line to keep the inflatable hidden behind a big Feadship. Then he slipped over the side and swam the last thousand yards about ten feet below the surface.
When he got to the huge German yacht’s bow, he dove deeper, following the hull aft a few feet, inspecting the length of it for camera placement. He saw the first one, mounted in a clear housing suspended from the keel. The lens was moving slowly toward him. The new underwater video surveillance cameras made even the old-fashioned stuff a little tricky. He counted six cameras in all, two fore and aft, two amidships on either side of the keel housing.
That was weird. There was no keel. Maybe it was retracted inside the hull.
He paused for a few seconds, memorizing the different camera cycles while running his fingers along some odd protrusions on the hull. Through-hull fittings. A hairline seam in the steel. And some kind of retracting hatch, it looked like. Big enough to drive a truck through when it was open. What the hell? He swam then, kicking hard and fast, zigzagging through the oscillating cameras, until he reached the sternmost section of the hull. Two cameras remained, outboard of the massive bronze screws.
No divers had splashed. Good sign. His Draeger rebreathing apparatus meant no bubbles were visible on the surface. So he drove his flippers harder, swam through the two aft cameras while they were still both cycling outboard, and then hung in the water off the stern and simply allowed buoyancy to take him up. He surfaced just off the wide stern platform that ran the width of the beam.
This was the area they used for launching sailboards and Jet Skis and other equipment. Empty. Except for one bald-headed guy in a white jumpsuit who emerged through a small door in the hull. The guy stepped out to the edge of the platform and whipped out his willy. What?
Oh, yeah. Drain the lizard. While the bald guy took his pee off the stern, Stoke swam a few silent strokes to the far end of the platform and pulled himself up onto the teak deck.
The guy, still with a good stream going, turned around and looked at the recently arrived monster from the Blue Lagoon. Stoke had seen VC and NVA regs in Nam simply faint dead away at the sight of him appearing suddenly in his SEAL shit on a dark night. This guy didn’t faint or do anything much at all.
“How you doing?” Stoke said, getting to his feet. “Water was getting a little warm off the stern.”
“What the—”
“Shh. I ain’t supposed to be here. Private property.”
Stoke saw the guy had a lipmike and was about to use it. He covered the distance between them in one millisecond and smothered the man’s mouth with his gloved hand. When he felt teeth biting through the rubber glove, he shut the guy down with two fingers into the neck, collapsing the carotid artery. He put one hand on the unconscious man’s chest to hold him up and quickly patted him down. He didn’t normally swim with guns, but one might come in handy tonight.
No guns on the guy. Just a glass vial of pills and some kind of weird instrument in a black metal barrel that looked like a very high-tech fountain pen. He’d seen one like it before but couldn’t place it. Stuck both items in his waterproof dive bag just for fun. He rolled the guy over the edge into the water and looked back at the narrow through-hull door. There was a keypad beside it, but he wouldn’t be needing any entry codes right now. The guy’d figured on a quick squirt so he’d left it open. Mistake.
He stepped inside and was surprised to find himself in a small elevator. He hit the lowest button and it started to move, down and forward. He imagined the thing was on an angled track, running down the keel. Good. Real good. He was very curious about this part of the boat that was so boring nobody needed to see it.
When he stepped out, he was disappointed. He hadn’t any idea of what to expect, some kind of Dr. No running around with goggles on his head, maybe, dials and big glass static lightning balls, maybe. But not nothing at all, which was what he found down in the bilges. A huge black space, empty, except for some serious hydraulic machinery. It was mounted above the keel housing that rose from the shiny steel waffle-plated decks.
Having nothing better to do, he walked over to check it out. Below the boat, underwater, he’d noticed the keel was retracted. Which made sense in such shallow water. You needed the keel down only when you were sailing. Otherwise, you kept it stowed right here, winched up inside the hull.
What didn’t make sense was that somebody would remove the keel altogether. There was just a big housing, with waves lapping down inside. The twelve-foot-high housing would keep the water out, even if she was heeled hard over. But, still. Stoke had the very strong feeling he was seeing something here that he wasn’t supposed to see. Problem being, all he saw was nothing.
The dank oily space reminded him of something he’d seen as a kid. Couldn’t place it. Then he did. The bomb bay of a B-52. There were some metal shavings on the floor, like something had been sheared off when the keel was coming out or going in. He bent and picked up a handful. That’s when the barrel-shaped thing in his pocket started clicking rapidly. What the hell?
Click-click-click-click-click.
Hell, it was a dosimeter. Measured radiation. He pulled the guard’s little glass vial out of his bag and looked at it carefully. Iodine pills. Yeah, okay, iodine. For radiation sickness. Interesting.
He’d have to ask the baron about all this interesting shit next time they got together over some cold Liebfraumilch at his secret villa up in sunny Bavaria.
His big schloss.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Gloucestershire
“YOU HAVE HIDDEN TALENTS, AMBROSE CONGREVE,” DIANA Mars said. The other guests had departed, leaving the two of them alone for a moment. She had just unwrapped his gift and they had moved outside to the stone flag terrace overlooking the parterre. Beyond the formal garden, the dusky green countryside rolled in a gentle succession of rounded hills down to the silvery ribbon of the Thames.
“Well, it’s just a study,” Congreve said of the watercolor he’d fussed over endlessly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s quite good. In fact, it’s perfectly lovely. What is prettier than a crabapple in bloom?”
It was dusk, and thin veiled fingers of fog slid over the distant river and into the black trees that crowded the banks. She had surprised him with the invitation to late tea at Brixden House. Called out of the blue, she did, as he was sitting by his solitary library window thinking abstract thoughts and staring at the phone. For some reason, just at that very moment, he realized he had been thinking of Diana Mars. Yes, he certainly had been, he thought as he picked up the telephone and heard her voice.
It was one of those odd little chip shots to the green that the universe is capable of making now and then.
Ambrose had accepted the invitation immediately, realizing just how badly he wanted to see Diana before he left for New York. All business, of course—he needed to apprise her of Scotland Yard’s latest thinking in the missing butler case. Sutherland had just given him a new report. But also, he wanted to give her the picture he’d painted of the crabapple that stood outside his kitchen. He’d asked Mrs. Purvis to wrap it in some old Christmas paper he kept folded for just such emergencies. She’d done it, but she hadn’t seemed too thrilled about it, for some reason. Women were such curious creatures.
Vexing.
“Ambrose Congreve,” Diana had said when they were still standing in her parlor by the window. She’d just opened the picture and she was tracing his signature at the bottom of the watercolor with her delicate white finger. “The name sounds like some sweet old soul in a floppy hat out tending his rosebushes on a rainy spring morning.”
“It does?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder, shall we step outside for some air?” asked Ambrose, who desperately needed some himself. This floppy-hatted cove she imagined was hardly the robust picture he wished her to have of him. He’d just have to throw more color into the next picture. Perhaps an action scene. A trout rising or a salmon leaping. That might do it.
They moved a bit farther out across the flagstones, near the ornately carved balustrade that overlooked the darkening woods below.
“I have a garden, you know, Diana. Oh, nothing like this, of course. A few dahlias. I’ll be at Chelsea this year. With a hybrid I’ve got high hopes for. If I could only think of a name for it.”
Damn it. He was only digging his hole deeper. What on earth was wrong with him?
“I’ve heard your house is charming, Ambrose.” She took his hand and squeezed it briefly before letting go. It sent such a shock rocketing through the system that numbness started traveling up his arm. He scrambled for a reply before the charge could fry his brain completely.
“Really?” he managed to croak out before his jaw could lock up. “From whom?”
“Oh, friends of friends. Friends who know you.”
“Really? Who—?”
Ambrose had started to ask which friends and then hesitated. He felt a strange wave, a heady mixture of flattery and confusion wash over him. She was asking around about him, was she? And she was bold enough to admit it. He plowed ahead, willing himself to stay on his feet. He would look ridiculous staggering over to the stone ledge and tumbling arse-over-teakettle into the boxwoods below.
“I say, Diana. You’ve been an awfully good sport about all this China Doll business. And now that Sutherland and I are off to New York for a week or so, I wonder—are you quite sure you don’t want my chaps from the Yard on the property any longer? Sutherland would be delighted with the assignment. I worry about you, to tell the truth. Out here in the country, all alone.”
Diana patted his arm in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.
“All alone? Hardly. One of the blessings my dear husband left me with is hot and cold running servants. Besides, I think you’ve scared them off, whoever they were. At the window that night. I don’t think they were expecting anyone to shoot back.”
“Well, I’m not at all sure that is the case. There has been a subsequent incident, which I shall describe to you in some detail. I wonder, has any staff seen hide or hair of your former butler? Oakshott?”
“Not since Scotland Yard was here to question everyone. Poof. I never even had the pleasure of firing him. Why?”
“It seems that last night someone tried to kill my dear friend Alex Hawke.”
“Lord Hawke? I don’t know him, certainly, but…how?”
“A woman. Talked her way into his house. Some ruse or other about car trouble. Pulled a gun and shot him at point-blank range. She missed, but it was a close thing. He was wounded.”
“Do you have any idea who she was?”
“Yes. Chinese, actually. Perhaps the twin sister of a woman he met in the South of France. I think it was our friend Bianca Moon paid him a visit.”
“Not really?”
“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense,” Congreve said, tamping down some fresh Peterson’s blend into his bowl. “I believe our Bianca and her sister and Mr. Oakshott are somehow complicit in the attempts on my life and Hawke’s. All working in tandem, as it were.” He was on his own turf now, the solid platform of an investigation, and feeling much less dizzy. He fired up the meerschaum and tried to appear stern and reflective. Floppy hat, indeed.
“What do you really think, Chief Inspector?” Diana asked, after a few long moments had passed. “About all this nonsense?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. Would you like to stroll down to the river? There’s still enough light left in the sky to walk down and return before dark.”
“Lovely idea,” she said, looking up. Her eyes were dewy in the fading light.
He got yet another high-voltage shock when he lightly took her hand as they descended the slippery stone steps to the parterre. It was as if she had electrical currents surging through her veins instead of blood like any normal woman. He took a deep breath and hung on, trying to get both of them to the bottom of the mossy steps without breaking any bones. What on earth had gotten into him lately? Buying that yellow Morgan and racing around the glen like a lad on a bender. Not to mention these positively electrifying feelings where Diana Mars was concerned.
It was all most peculiar, he thought, strolling by her side.
Midlife crisis? He supposed he was old enough. Diet? Mrs. Purvis was trying to make him go organic. Lately, she’d been serving something called “free range chicken.” Here, he had drawn the line. “Mrs. Purvis,” he told her quite sternly, “if a man wishes to eat chicken, do you think he would wish to consume a chicken that has recently been, as you tell me, ‘ranging free’? Some wild capon, capering about over hill and dale, wholly unsupervised? No! I think not, Mrs. Purvis! If Ambrose Congreve is to eat chicken, he bloody well wants to know where his chicken has been! Every minute of every day!”
Eating contaminated chickens, then? Or had he simply lost his mind? Perhaps he should consult one of those top brain specialists while he was in New York. Yes. A wise move before he went completely off the rails. And another thing. He had to see to Diana’s protection whilst he was gone. He’d speak to S
utherland about it, put that worthy fellow in charge of looking after her.
The ornamental garden was laid out in a formal pattern marked with low evergreen hedges of razor-sharp boxwoods. Now, the loamy beds they bordered were empty, but freshly turned earth indicated the gardeners had been preparing to fill them with annuals. They strolled through the maze of hedges and emerged on the slope that led down to the Thames. The gauzy yellow disc of the sun hung in a banded purplish haze above the horizon.
The view was quite beautiful, and Ambrose stole a glance at Diana. She caught him looking and cut her eyes away. He noticed, however, that she did not remove her hand from his as they walked down toward the river. Miraculously, he found his vocal cords still reasonably operational and he continued his narrative in clear, bell-like tones.
“To continue, Diana. As you well know, I was running a spy at the French embassy. My cousin. He turns out to have been a double agent, working for the Chinese. He disappears without a trace. We learn that a Chinese woman of your acquaintance, assuredly involved in espionage, is responsible. Within that same approximate time frame, Alex Hawke snatches an American agent from a Chinese vessel moored in French territorial waters. And then—good lord, what’s the matter with that man?”
“What man?”
“Down there, on the path.”
A large man was making his way toward them, loping up the hillside pathway and calling out to them, his hands cupped around his mouth. His shouted words were lost in the wind. But Ambrose believed he had clearly made out the word “drowned.”
“It’s my head gardener, Pordage. Poor old soul, he’ll have a heart attack running up this hill.”
“Diana, listen,” Congreve said, wanting to shield her from the once seen, never forgotten sight and smell of a submerged corpse, “there’s some kind of trouble down there. I’ll run down and meet Pordage. Perhaps you should go back up and notify the—”
She’d kicked off her shoes and was flying down the hill toward the river ahead of him.
