Shortly after completing the commission, Walsh had begun to act strangely and a little secretively. Marsh hadn’t realised it at first, but slowly it had generated some friction between himself and Walsh. It never reached the extent where they had fallen out over it, but it was a little difficult for Marsh and Helen to understand. Helen had tried to question her husband several times but had never been able to get anything from him.
But whatever it was that was troubling Walsh, it always seemed to go back to the work he had completed for Hakeem Khan. And Marsh was now rapidly piecing together some seemingly irrelevant parts of a jigsaw that worried him.
But the most important thing on Marsh’s mind at that moment was how to secure his own safety in what was now an extremely dangerous position.
His mind went back to the smaller of the two vessels, the Taliba. It was an Arabic word meaning ‘seeker of knowledge’. It had been operating in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of years now. Walsh told him it was operating on an oil exploration licence.
He looked up at the colossus that was the freighter, then at the Taliba. Of the two ships, he knew that the smaller craft was his only hope.
He had swum to the stern end of the Taliba and had been there for some minutes going through the useless exercise of trying to figure out exactly what the ship was doing there in the first place. He cursed himself and brought his mind back to how he was going to make best use of the opportunity that had presented itself.
Marsh knew that clambering aboard the boat would not be difficult because the crew of the Taliba all had their attention focussed on the freighter and what was apparently the preparation to transfer cargo. It was only Marsh’s weakened state that might jeopardise his attempt to climb up on to the aft deck of the Taliba.
He kicked with his legs, ignoring the pain from the bullet wound and reached up for the diving platform which had been hoisted into its stowage position. His fingers touched the framework and he grabbed and held on. Then he slowly pulled himself clear of the water. He felt a little rush of adrenalin and a sense of euphoria swept over him on this initial success, but he knew his chances of survival were still slim. He had to be careful.
Once he was on the aft deck, he lay prone and remained perfectly still. He lay like that for several minutes and allowed his pulse rate to settle, taking advantage of the brief respite he had been given.
As he lay there, Marsh could hear rather than see, the work going on at the forward end of the Taliba. It was also clear that the hatch covers were being hoisted clear on the forward deck of the freighter. Although neither ship was carrying lights, which of course was illegal, Marsh could see the flicker of torchlight on the deck of the freighter and could just about make out silhouettes of men on the wings of both ships. He could hear the gentle motion of the screws as both ships kept station.
Suddenly the winch motor on the freighter burst into life and within moments a large crate appeared as it was swung from the hatch of the freighter to the forward deck of the Taliba.
A breeze suddenly sprung up and ran like a lizard across his back. He shivered and began to cast around for somewhere to conceal himself. He needed to do it quickly while both crews were engaged in the transfer of whatever cargo it was. And the noise of the transfer was loud enough to mask any noise that Marsh made while he cast around looking for a bolt hole.
And before he went looking for that bolt hole, Marsh thought about Hakeem Khan again. Khan was a respected member of that breed of oceanographers who work in the oceans of the world, and who were never happier than when they were doing just that.
So what the hell was Khan doing here?
*
Hakeem Khan watched the loading dispassionately from the bridge of the Taliba. If he was nervous, he did not appear so. He stood with his legs apart and his hands locked together behind his back. He stared out of the windows of the bridge through dark eyes beneath a heavy frown. He was quite bulky, but none of it was fat because of his lifestyle at sea. Despite his apparent fitness however, Khan was not a well man.
He was there on the bridge because he was not disposed to letting his captain oversee the operation. Nevertheless he managed to display a detached interest. His head moved in a spontaneous nod of satisfaction as the sling, now divested of its burden, moved upwards like the long tails of a firefly. His eyes followed them until they disappeared into the darkness above the freighter. He then turned to a huge man standing beside him.
“We are in Allah’s hands now, Malik,” he said quietly.
Malik nodded his huge head. “May He be praised.”
There were two other men on the bridge with Khan and Malik: the ship’s captain, Jose Maria de Leon who was a Cuban, and the duty wheelman. Khan spoke to the captain.
“It is done. Lock it away Señor de Leon. I will be in my cabin.”
De Leon moved towards the bridge telephone but before he could pick it up, the wireless operator called through from the wireless room.
De Leon and Khan exchanged glances. De Leon stepped through into the wireless room. A few moments later he called through to Khan.
“You had better take this, sir. They have a problem.”
Khan frowned and walked into the wireless room. The captain handed him the headset which he pressed to his ear. De Leon watched intently.
“When was this?” Khan asked sharply. “And you have the body on board?”
He lifted his face upwards and shook his head in despair.
“And he has papers on him?” He listened. “His name?”
The others watched Khan as his face froze.
“Mother of God.” He looked at de Leon. “Get the cage ready.”
He threw the headset on to the radio table. “Tell them to stand by,” he ordered the wireless operator. “I’m going on board.” He turned to Malik. “You too.”
*
There was just a hint of dawn breaking on the far horizon as Marsh thought he could see movement on the bridge of the Taliba. Two figures moved hurriedly down the stairway from the bridge to the lower deck. Beyond them he saw the cage being hooked up to the derrick crane. It was a shark cage, used to allow divers to study shark behaviour in safety. The two figures stepped inside the cage and it was lifted up and swung across to the deck of the freighter. One of them looked like Khan. He didn’t recognise the second figure in the cage.
Marsh assumed this was part of the illegal business that was being conducted. Perhaps Khan was going over to the freighter to pay for whatever contraband had been delivered; for Marsh was convinced it had to be contraband of one kind or another. As the cage disappeared from Marsh’s view he pushed the thought from his mind and began to consider his own position and what he could do.
On the deck of the freighter, Khan stood over the dead body of Greg Walsh. Water still dripped from Walsh’s body, forming small, red pools on the deck of the freighter. He had been laid on his back, and in the torchlight could be clearly seen small blossoms of flowering red on his clothing. Khan stared at it.
“There was no-one else?” he asked at length.
The captain of the freighter glanced up. “No.”
Khan’s eyes just flickered towards him; then they were back on the pale, dead face.
“Why?” he muttered softly to himself. “Why were you here?”
Malik heard the whisper and sensed the urgent query in his Khan’s voice.
“Coincidence?” he offered. “A chance in a thousand?”
Khan looked at him. “We would like to think so, wouldn’t we Malik? But I fear that is not the case.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Throw him back into the sea and let his secrets go with him. The sharks will not go hungry.”
He stared at Walsh’s dead face for a little longer. Then he knelt down and placed the tip of his finger on Walsh’s chin.
“Why were you here Walsh? Why?”
He stood up and walked back to the cage in silence. Malik followed.
As they swung back over to t
he Taliba, Khan’s face was fused into a deep scowl. A small pain nagged at his chest; the familiar pain that the doctor’s had warned him about. He lifted his hand and massaged his chest.
A single doubt now lay in his mind. For the first time in many weeks it occurred to him that others might know.
*
Marsh had been transfixed by the comings and goings between the two ships, but now he knew he had little time; he had to find somewhere to conceal himself. Khan was unlikely to be on the freighter too long completing whatever business it was he was conducting; the ships would have move on soon. Certainly once Khan was back on board.
There were two lifeboats secured on their davits, one either side of the ship. Choosing the lifeboat furthest away from the freighter, and away from the direction most eyes might look, Marsh ran at a crouch towards the boat. He climbed up on to the steelwork of the davits and slipped beneath the tarpaulin covering the boat.
The darkness closed in on him as he settled down in the bottom of the lifeboat. He had no plan and didn’t know what he was going to do. He certainly had no hope of rescue. Whatever happened now would be in the hands of God.
Or in the hands of Hakeem Khan!
Chapter 3
Francesini drew heavily on the Cuban cigar and leaned back in his chair. On his desk in front of him was an open folder. It was the detail gathered on the unfortunate man he had seen in the hospital at Cape Canaveral, dying of radiation sickness. The man’s fingerprints and DNA had revealed nothing at all from an extensive search in the C.I.A. files. Neither had the check that Francesini had ordered on all suspected Taliban operatives in the United States. He had pulled the man’s file because he had been told the man was dead, and this meant he was of no further use to Francesini, except to continue worrying the life out of him.
The phone rang. He blew the smoke out of his mouth and picked up the receiver.
“Francesini.”
“Starling here. My office please Remo.” The gravelly voice had just time enough to resonate in his ear before the phone went dead. James Starling could be laconic when he wanted to be. Telephone conversations for him were always apt to be short; he preferred face to face chats.
Francesini knew the rules. He put the phone down and put his cigar in the ash tray, carefully removing the glowing ember. He then removed the files from his desk and locked them away in his safe. Satisfied that he had left nothing out on his desk, he locked the door and made his way over to Admiral Starling’s office.
The sign on the door said: Admiral J. Starling, Deputy Director (Ops). He knocked and walked in.
There were two men in the room with James Starling. Francesini recognised them immediately. One was Hamilton Ford who worked for the Directorate of Science and Technology, the department in the C.I.A. responsible for gathering external intelligence from technical resources. The other was Jimmy Navarro, a senior intelligence analyst who worked with Ford. Admiral Starling was sitting at his desk, dominating the room. He waved Francesini to a vacant chair.
“Sit down Remo. Thanks for coming over.” As if Francesini had any option. “You know Hamilton and Jimmy, so no introductions necessary,” Francesini made himself as comfortable as possible in the remaining empty chair. Starling waited until he was still.
“We have a problem, Remo. Homeland Security knows about this but I’ve asked Washington to back off until we’ve had a chance to deal with it. If we don’t, the crap’s gonna hit the fan.”
Homeland Security was the department set up by President George W. Bush shortly after the suicide attacks by the Al Qaeda fanatics on the World Trade Centre in New York, which meant different security organisations with different agendas all pulling in different directions.
“We have some satellite imagery here of the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. It was taken three weeks ago. Jimmy will fill you in.” He nodded at Navarro.
Starling’s office was a reflection of the man. It had the air of efficiency and durability about it. There was a photograph of him with President Clinton. The admiral was in full uniform in the picture, taller than the President. It flattered the President more than it did the admiral. Starling was a former U.S. Navy pilot and an unspoken legend in military intelligence. So much so that he was practically ambushed into taking up a position with the C.I.A. The framed picture hung on the wall behind his desk.
There were two computers in the room plus a whiteboard on the wall next to a pull down screen. There was a projector positioned conveniently for projection on to the screen, although Francesini had known the admiral to use the blank wall.
The desk around which they were all sitting was almost certainly older than Starling although the rest of the furniture was more in keeping with the image of the C.I.A. There were no ash trays, much to Francesini’s dismay.
Navarro passed two satellite photographs across the desk to Francesini. He then got up from his chair and stood behind him, looking over his shoulder.
“These were taken by our Quickbird satellite. Resolution is down to five hundred yards. What you see are heat transmissions and on board, computer enhanced images. They were taken at two o’clock in the morning. The sky was slightly overcast but with a full moon it gave us a good picture.”
Francesini looked at the grainy images, in black and white. It was reasonably clear that what he was looking at was a collection of vehicles. There were probably about thirty men around them. He handed the photographs back to Navarro.
“Why don’t you tell me what it is I’m really looking at?” he suggested.
Navarro took the photographs back and put them on the desk in front of his chair. He didn’t sit down.
“We had a report from the British who have an SAS team in the area,” he explained. “There has been some unusual activity lately, which they have been monitoring. We asked them to because we had some intelligence from a reasonably reliable source,” he added unnecessarily. “We checked on it and came up with this.”
He pulled photograph from a folder and handed it to Francesini.
“About one hundred miles north, in Uzbekistan, we picked up this convoy of trucks. Small stuff really, but it was heading south.” The photographs showed the convoy quite clearly, although the resolution was not the same as the Quickbird satellite imagery. “Interestingly, there was another convoy coming up from the south, in Afghanistan, about the same size.” He pulled another photograph.
Francesini gave the pictures the once over. “An exchange of weapons perhaps?” he suggested. “A consignment of drugs?”
“Well of course we know that those are possible options,” Navarro said. “But with the intelligence we received, we think it may have been an exchange of weapons.”
“What kind of weapons?” Francesini asked carefully.
James Starling leaned forward, his fingers interlocked. Navarro saw the admiral lean forward and resumed his seat.
“You will recall, Remo,” the admiral began, “that the intelligence we have gathered thus far, both human and satellite, makes it pretty certain that a nuclear bomb has been shipped out of the Ukraine?”
Francesini felt his jaw stiffen and his teeth clenched together. He had an uncomfortable feeling about the outcome of this conversation because the admiral’s demeanour indicated that he was building up to something more sinister. And Francesini had already made an assumption that scared the living daylights out of him, particularly with the information he had but had not yet shared with Admiral Starling.
He looked sharply at the admiral. He knew that his field of responsibility included any foreign intelligence on nuclear hardware and nuclear capability of potentially unstable regimes.
Francesini picked up on the admiral’s words. “Pretty certain is right, sir. There’s always that ten per cent which is intuitive guesswork.” He pointed at the satellite photographs. “And without human intelligence we’ve no idea what’s in those trucks.”
Ford spoke up then, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re right, Remo, bu
t we do know that the Ukrainians are selling off their nukes. Sure, they deny it; blame it on the Mafia, but there are a lot of wealthy politicians in what is a relatively poor country with no productive infrastructure.”
Francesini grinned. “There are wealthy politicians in ours, but not through selling nukes. Trouble is, Hamilton, the terrorists need delivery systems, and there are none of those in Afghanistan or Iran. So I don’t suppose for one minute that the Taliban or Al Qaeda have suddenly found that they are capable of launching a nuclear attack against the West.”
Ford went on, nonplussed. “An exchange was made at the border, but they didn’t load anything into the southern convoy. According to the SAS team on the ground and our Quickbird imagery, a helicopter arrived, a transfer was made and the convoys dispersed.”
Francesini sat forward, the warning signals screaming inside his head. “So what was the second convoy for? And which way did the helicopter go?”
Ford pushed another satellite photo across the desk. He tapped it with his finger. “The second convoy, we believe was delivering some of the pay-off; probably a consignment of drugs. Part payment no doubt for the nuke. As for the helicopter it was tracked on a south west heading.”
Francesini pictured the map in his mind. “Towards Iran?”
Ford nodded but didn’t take his eyes off Francesini. There was silence for a while. Francesini was conscious of the three men looking at him. It was his remit to have his finger on the nuclear pulse, so to speak; or the nuclear intentions of unstable regimes anyway.
“Why do I think that’s not it? That there’s more to come?” Francesini asked no-one in particular.
The Devil's Trinity Page 3
