The Devil's Trinity

by Michael Parker

  Starling took over then. The helicopter was tracked as far as the Iranian border but unfortunately we lost it there.”

  “So it’s inconclusive,” Francesini put in hopefully. “And it may not have been a nuke.”

  “Maybe not, but the trouble is, Remo, we can’t always deal in facts,” Ford said generously, “can we? Hard intelligence is difficult to come by at the best of times. But we do have some hard facts here. One of which is that we know a nuke has gone missing. When that happens we normally locate it fairly quickly, but I’m afraid this one has vanished into thin air.

  “Or into Iran,” Francesini said dispassionately.

  “We’re not sure Iran has it,” Starling said. “As much as they would like to have a nuclear deterrent, they’re not ready yet.” He held his hand up. “I know they are now processing pure grade uranium, and our intelligence on the ground supports their worst kept secret that they plan to manufacture a nuke soon.”

  “So you think a terrorist organisation has the nuke? And they’re backed by Iran?”

  Starling studied his deputy for some time. “No,” he said eventually. “We are confident that Iran does not have any nukes.”

  “So is it a terrorist organisation?” Francesini queried. “And do they have a nuke?”

  Starling shook his head.

  “Not one,” he answered. “Three!”

  *

  Marsh woke up. He opened his eyes and looked around the inside of the lifeboat, wondering where the hell he was. And then it dawned on him. Around him was a cocoon of heat and semi darkness. His body raged in discomfort and his skin felt like canvas stretched over a tight frame. He moved and the pain in his knee made him gasp out loud. He remembered the rifle shots and reached down to rub at the joint. It was swollen and very tender to the touch.

  His mind dragged itself from a feeling of lethargy and fed small nuggets of painful memory into his brain. Pictures opened up for him and he recalled the horrific scenes that had brought him to his present predicament. Each event played itself out like a scene from a nightmare and he sagged mentally when he realised he was still in mortal danger and he knew that he had to get off the ship.

  When Marsh had crawled into the lifeboat, it had offered sanctuary, albeit temporary. Now it was hot and airless and he knew he was in danger of dehydrating seriously. He already had a raging thirst and hunger pains shot through his belly adding to his discomfort.

  He moved and straightened his legs in an effort to find some comfort on the hard boards. The effort and subsequent flash of pain almost made him pass out. He abandoned the task and lay there gasping with his mouth open in a silent cry of pain and anguish.

  After several minutes, when he felt some strength return to him, Marsh gingerly lifted up the edge of the tarpaulin. The sunlight burst through like a brilliant flare and he was forced to close his eyes against it. He lowered the tarpaulin and kept his eyes closed for a while.

  He tried again, but this time he inched the tarpaulin up and squinted against the glare until he was able to look around and take stock of his surroundings. He could see the aft deck of the Taliba was deserted, but that did not mean there was nobody about. He looked towards mid-ships and saw a couple of the crew leaning on the ship’s rail in quiet conversation. Behind them was the superstructure of the bridge and accommodation block. There was one person on the starboard side of the bridge out on the wing, looking across the water at something.

  Marsh moved to the other side of the lifeboat and lifted the tarpaulin cover gently. He could see a scattering of islands in the distance, which was probably what the figure on the bridge was looking at. Marsh had no idea what islands they were. But this was the Caribbean and islands meant boats and pleasure craft.

  It was then that Marsh realised that the Taliba was heading towards the land.

  He began thinking ahead: should he chance it or not? He could die here on Khan’s boat or take his chances out there in the sea. Only the latter offered an extremely slim advantage, but that depended on how close to the land the Taliba would sail.

  He lowered the tarpaulin and started to think.

  To remain where he was, inside the stifling heat of the lifeboat, was not an option. If he gave himself up to the ship’s crew, he would almost certainly be killed and dumped overboard. If he waited until nightfall before leaving his hiding place he would almost certainly have drifted into unconsciousness because of serious dehydration. After considering all the alternatives, Marsh knew there was only one option: he had to get off the ship. There was no choice, he knew he couldn’t go just then; he had to wait until the ship was close enough to shore to give him a fair chance. He pulled a lifejacket from one of the lifeboat’s lockers and lay down on his back, closing his eyes and thinking how his luck was panning out. The sea had tried to claim his once, and now it might get the chance to claim him again.

  It was sometime later when Marsh woke. The heat was stifling but after looking out from beneath the tarpaulin, he could see the sun was lower in the sky and the ship was much closer to land. By his reckoning the ship was about five miles from the shore.

  He eased the tarpaulin up and slid carefully from the lifeboat. Keeping the bulk of the lifeboat between him and the bridge to avoid detection, he edged towards the ship’s rail. The pain in his knee was almost unbearable, but the thought of what might happen to him if he was caught, was even more so. He leaned over the rail and rolled forward, dropping into the sea.

  He hit the water with a smack and was immediately drawn under and spewed out into the ship’s wake, thankfully clear of the propellers. He wanted to gasp in deep draughts of air but tried to keep himself below the waterline for as long as he possibly could before surfacing.

  His wounded leg still hurt like blazes, but Marsh kept himself afloat while struggling into the lifejacket by treading water with his good leg. He felt refreshed by the plunge into the sea but knew it would not last long, so he turned towards the direction of the land and began swimming.

  *

  Francesini had placed the satellite photographs on his desk and was studying them when Starling walked in. When the admiral had told him that there was a chance that Al Qaeda had three nukes, Francesini asked Hamilton Ford and his sidekick, Navarro to leave the office for a while, then had what could only be described as a heated discussion with the admiral.

  Starling’s excuse was that the evidence had not been available to him until shortly before he had asked Francesini to come to his office. He apologised for the discourtesy but blamed it on Washington; always a good source at which to lay the blame.

  “What do you make of it, Remo?” the admiral asked. As he put the question, he walked over to the coffee pot that Francesini always kept hot on the bureau and poured himself a cup.

  Francesini looked up. “Well, you tell me that two nukes have gone missing within the space of three weeks and now another one. If Al Qaeda has them, how on earth can they expect to get them into America without being detected? We’ve got this country sewn up tighter than a duck’s arse.”

  “It’s a big country, Remo,” Starling offered unhelpfully as he lifted the cup to his mouth. “There are lots of ways.”

  “So tell me. They can’t fly them over and drop them from a hijacked airliner. The delivery system needed for a nuke attack is too sophisticated for a hijack operation. If they smuggle them in by road, the chances are we’ll pick them up and stop them. But if they do manage to get them into the country, the odds are they will put them where they will do the most damage, in any one of our major cities. And the technique used to explode a nuke is quite sophisticated; you can’t just leave them in the trunk of a car in a car park and blow them up. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It never does.” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. Eventually he asked Francesini about the man they had picked up dying from radiation burns. “We never came up with anything, did we?”

  Francesini sighed deeply and gathered up the photographs. “You think there might be
a connection?”

  “I’m clutching at straws, Remo. Who was he? Where did he come from? Remember, the first two bombs went missing some weeks ago. Where are they?” He didn’t expect any answers. “Tell me again about the fellow.”

  Francesini shovelled the photographs into a folder and locked them away in a filing cabinet. “He was found wandering down in the Florida Keys area. His DNA profile puts him in the Middle East, Arab origin. Aged about thirty five. Looked like he’d been in the water for some time. We couldn’t put out a missing persons enquiry because of the security implications.”

  “So he was found in the Keys,” Starling conjectured. “Obviously he’d been in the water. Did he fall from a ship? If so, where was the ship from? How many ships have been in the Gulf and the Caribbean in the last month?” He held his hand up defensively. “I know; too many to account for. It could be Cuba, Remo.”

  Francesini laughed. “Unlikely sir; we’ve got more agents there than the Castro faithful. All promised a future in the good ‘ole US of A’ after so many years of loyal service, etcetera, etcetera. We would know if Al Qaeda was in league with the Cubans, no doubt about it.”

  Starling put his cup down. “We need to know, Remo,” he said rather seriously. “I’ve got Ford and Navarro working on it, and I want you to pull out all the stops. Anything you need, anything, let me know. If Al Qaeda has those bombs, we could be in serious trouble.”

  Francesini looked at him from his chair, rocking slightly. “So could a lot of people, sir. So could a lot of people.”

  He couldn’t tell Starling what he already knew because his boss would only deal in facts, not conjecture. The only fact he had was that he had one person working on something that really was pure conjecture. But it was really too preposterous for him to reveal to Starling. His boss would probably laugh him out of the office.

  But the fact was he had that ‘preposterous’ supposition locked in his safe. A proposition brought to him in a roundabout way by the man who had died when the Ocean Quest sank, although at the moment Francesini was unaware of the man’s death.

  That man was Greg Walsh.

  *

  Marsh began to swim boldly, striking out for the land. He had waited for a while until the Taliba was far enough away to avoid being seen by anyone on board who might have seen him go overboard. Marsh was a strong swimmer but the lifejacket hindered him because he hadn’t been able put the thing on properly, so from time to time he rested up and allowed himself to drift with the current. He switched from swimming to drifting but soon realised that he was achieving very little, and the distant shoreline remained ever distant.

  He was weakening a lot quicker than he had bargained for, his strength draining from him with each stroke. The lifejacket kept slipping above his head and he had to struggle to keep it beneath his chin. Each time he struggled, he slipped under the water and would surface, coughing and spluttering, and cursing.

  Marsh could feel the battle slipping away. The shoreline never seemed to be getting any closer and all he wanted to do now was rest. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and struggled on, but he so desperately wanted to close his eyes and sleep.

  He knew the game was over; he was losing and the fight now was just to keep going until, mercifully, he would succumb and sink below the surface.

  Marsh suddenly realised that he no longer had the lifejacket. He knew it must have bobbed away when he had slipped beneath the surface. The fact that it was gone garnered a little strength for him, but it was too little, too late. He heard voices in his head and knew the end was now very close, and he slipped beneath the surface again.

  The voices disappeared and he knew there was now no hope. He had no strength, no will.

  He didn’t hear anybody dive into the water, but he was vaguely conscious of an arm going round his neck. He opened his eyes and looked into a round face. He tried to say something but the face filled his vision and something closed over his mouth. He could feel his lungs expanding under some strange force and his heart started pumping life into him as he passed out.

  Chapter 4

  Hakeem Khan’s dark eyes moved restlessly but he saw nothing because his mind was filled with a thundering and worrying curiosity. The man they had pulled out of the water, Greg Walsh; was it a coincidence or not? Why had he been there?

  The Taliba had left Jamaica and was heading for the wide expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. The reason the ship called in at Kingston was that Khan wanted to achieve a sense of normality to any observers. It was paramount that no suspicion should fall on him or the Taliba, and it also meant the opportunity to restock with fresh produce and take on fuel.

  But now Khan was troubled because he had not been able to put the discovery of Walsh’s body out of his mind, and he was persuaded by his own fears that the sense of normality he had been hoping to achieve was already under threat.

  The broad expanse of ocean before him was now his hiding place; a great void in which to run. His hands were linked together behind his back and his bull head was thrust forward on hard, square shoulders. He was leaning forward, holding himself steady on the balls of his feet. Although Khan was a small man in height, his stature and presence dwarfed everyone around him. His dark eyebrows, almost satanic looking, added to his intimidating demeanour.

  Captain de Leon and Malik were on the bridge with him, waiting for him to continue the dialogue he had started.

  “After Walsh had worked for me on the commission in the Gulf, I had hoped he would have continued to work with us, but he pulled out for some reason.” He said nothing for a while. They waited. “Why would he show up at that precise moment?”

  “Do you think he knew something, sir?” de Leon asked.

  Khan shook his head. “Only Allah can tell us that. But we have to assume the worst. We have to assume that somehow, Walsh expected us to be there. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “Perhaps he went to the Americans,” Malik suggested.

  Khan looked at Malik. “Perhaps, but there is no point in dwelling on the imponderable,” he stated and left it at that.

  “Then I think we must assume he went to the Americans and therefore we must act accordingly,” de Leon said after a while.

  Khan agreed. “Yes, it’s the wisest course. From now on we have to remain extra vigilant.” He sighed deeply. “Captain, I want you to prepare a plan of action for the crew. If we are to assume the Americans have a suspicion of our intentions, then the crew have to be aware of their responsibilities. If we are stopped at all it will be because the Americans wish to board us, and we must not let them find what they are looking for; we must drop the device on to the sea bed.”

  “Recovery might be difficult,” de Leon admitted.

  “Nevertheless, it must be done. We can use the sea gallery.”

  The sea gallery that Khan referred to was a large chamber, about one thousand square feet in area, about ninety square metres, within the bowels of the ship that had bottom doors which opened down from the floor of the chamber. It was used for diver recovery during inclement weather. The gallery was on a level with the sea so that when the doors were open, the sea did not flood into the large chamber. It was also convenient for lowering diving bells from within the ship. As a safeguard during stormy weather, and whenever the bottom doors were open, the doors in the bulkheads were watertight, and they could not be opened when the bottom doors were in use.

  “Make provision for it,” he told the captain. “And pray to Allah that we never have to use it,” he added.

  He left the two men on the bridge and went down to his cabin. As he reached the door, he felt a sharp pain across his chest. He cursed and clutched at himself with both hands, leaning his body against the bulkhead for support. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, drawing in long, careful draughts of air. As the pain subsided he opened his cabin door and went straight to a medicine cabinet in his bathroom. He took two pills from a small bottle and swallowed them with a drink of water.

>   After about ten minutes, Khan felt a little more comfortable. He sat at his desk and looked out of the forward facing windows. He stared at the Galeazzi Tower that was clamped to the forward deck. This was a tall, domed diving bell used in all deep dives. It could be suspended up to one thousand feet below the surface of the water and used by a team of divers on a saturation dive. This requires divers to breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen to guard against nitrogen narcosis; a kind of euphoria in which a diver is unable to comprehend the physical dangers that exist at such depths. The mind hallucinates with nitrogen narcosis and the result is usually death.

  Khan stared at it, fixed securely midway between the bridge and the foc’sle head. Was it all coincidence? He asked himself. Does someone know?

  He got up from the desk and sat on the edge of his bed, removed his shoes and gave up pondering the imponderable. He settled back on the bed as the pain in his chest subsided and very soon was asleep.

  About an hour later Khan was woken by a knock on the cabin door. It was de Leon. Khan called him in.

  “We have received a reply,” de Leon began, “but I’m afraid it isn’t good news. We cannot get a pilot for the Challenger.”

  The Challenger was a deep sea diving vessel, designed for underwater survey and exploration work. It was currently at the port of Havana in Cuba undergoing some essential maintenance under the watchful eye of Khan’s chief diver, Julio Batista.

  Khan sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He ran his hand over his face. “It doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “We’re not exactly overrun with submersible pilots in this game.” He slipped his shoes on and stood up.

  “You will have to pilot her. You were going to anyway.” de Leon told him.

  Khan shot him a stern look. “You know I cannot; the risk would be too high.”

  The pain in his chest was never far away. To risk a complicated dive could put too much strain on his heart. To attempt the three dives that they needed would almost certainly end in disaster, and their plan would certainly fail.