“Her motives are hardly romantic, Constable. She has hired me to find out who bought that damn submarine and why. Most importantly, where the hell she’s located. They like to keep track of these things, you know.”
“Hmm. One suspects Madame Secretary’s motives are always romantic where you’re concerned. Speaking of suspects, who’s on the list of potential buyers?”
“Oh, the usual madmen and megalomaniacs, naturally. All the rogue states. North Korea. Iran. Some kind of pan-Islamic movement. The one who scares me most is Muammar Useef, the erstwhile Saudi playboy.”
“Long-range ballistic missiles bearing germs. That’s how Muammar would go. And he’s got the money and the motive.”
“And the track record, of course. Not to mention the opportunity. No question. That’s why the Yanks are taking this one so seriously,” Hawke said.
“Funny,” Congreve said. “The world seemed a much safer place when all we had to deal with was a bunch of drunken Russians stumbling around the Kremlin knocking over the samovars.”
“Yes. Praying they didn’t all wake up with hangovers and bang their bloody bums up against the wrong button,” Hawke said. He paused a moment, looking at his friend thoughtfully before he spoke.
“Actually, there’s another matter I’m pursuing down here, Ambrose. I mentioned it to you on the docks this afternoon. At the risk of being dramatic, I’m going to show you something I’ve never shown another living being. Or even a dead being for that matter.”
“Nothing too personal, one would only hope.”
“Please, Ambrose. This is quite serious.”
“Hawke!”
Sniper had squawked a warning, and Hawke knew Quick must be approaching the banquette where they were sitting. It was one of the oldest pirate tricks in the books, but it still worked. Over the years, Hawke had been working on Sniper’s vocabulary, and the bird had a surprising range of expressions.
Tommy Quick was carrying a small metal box with an electronic keypad embedded in the top. He placed it gently on the table in front of them.
“Put Sniper back in his cage, will you, Tom?” Hawke said, waving his hand before his nose. “I don’t think this Brie agrees with him. Upset stomach.” Quick held out his forearm, and the bird immediately flew from its owner’s shoulder to the steward’s outstretched arm.
Ambrose leaned forward to touch the silver box, and Hawke grabbed his hand in mid-air. “Don’t touch the box, Ambrose. It’s alarmed and will respond to my fingerprints only. Sorry.”
“A lovely box.”
“Isn’t it? Polished titanium,” Hawke said, punching in his code. The lid of the box snapped open with a hiss, then started rising slowly. Peering over the edge, Congreve saw a small scrap of blue paper, now yellowed with age. There was some kind of crude drawing and quite a bit of scribbling below the picture. Hawke punched another key, and the interior of the box was illuminated. Then a thick piece of glass lowered from the raised lid to cover the opening. It was, Congreve saw, optical glass designed to magnify the contents.
“It’s the map, Ambrose. The one I spoke of. Early eighteenth century. My grandfather gave it to me.”
“A map of what, exactly?”
“Oh, buried treasure, and all that sort of thing. My grandfather loved to tell stories of cutthroat buccaneers and bloodthirsty swashbucklers and buried booty. This map you see here belonged to one of my more infamous ancestors.”
“They were all infamous, as far as I can tell. Right down to the present day.”
“Every family has a few black sheep, I suppose. Only in my family, it was a black hawk.”
“Blackhawke, the pirate. Yes. Your great ancestral role model. I’ve always been curious about that bloody chapter in the Hawke family history. So, tell me the story for God’s sake. The barbarous Russians won’t be here for another half hour!”
“Well, if you’re really interested.”
“Hawke, you really do try my patience at times.”
“All right, all right. I’ll tell you the tale.”
11
“The pirate stared at the skulking black rat,” Alex Hawke began, and he was off.
“Last meal, Rat!” the ragged old man shouted hoarsely at the creature. “Here’s the totality of me bleeding generosity at last, down your bleeding gullet, I’m afraid.” The pirate eyed a lively morsel of weevil-infested bread and lobbed it at the oily-looking creature. The rat had backed into its favorite dank corner of the prison cell, all eyes and haunches. Man and rodent had grown quite companionable these last few months, and the proffered tidbit was quickly consumed.
The rat’s black eyes glittered as it turned away from its benefactor with nary a trace of gratitude for past favors. There then came a sound from the pirate’s throat that could have passed for a sigh, had it not been so mournful, and he collapsed back upon his pitiful rack. Wrapping a threadbare blanket around his shoulders, he lifted his gaze. One patch of sky was visible in the moldy wall opposite, and he could see the light was fading. With it went the pirate’s chances for a long and happy life.
Unlike his friend Rat, the ailing buccaneer would not be enjoying the hospitality of Newgate Prison when the sun rose next morning. The prisoner coughed and smiled grimly in spite of himself. Six months prior to his arrest and this miserable circumstance, he’d been out on the open seas of the Caribbee, his ship bursting to the gunwales with captured booty he’d relieved from a Spaniard, on a hard reach, flying up the Gulf Stream, finally to home and family after long years afloat.
They’d be coming for him shortly, he knew, for what would be his last journey. King’s men, horses, and soldiers. Coming to load him into a cart, him and a few of his miserable shipmates, and haul them all away, down Holborn Street, through the laughing, taunting crowds. This trip was known poetically as “heading west.” But every lost soul rolling out Newgate’s gilded archway for the last time knew he was eastbound. East, for the muddy banks of the Thames and Executioner’s Dock. Where waited a length of stout rope and the hangman.
“It’s old Blackhawke himself that’s cornered now, ain’t it, Rat?” he said, watching the animal scurry to the corner opposite. The man dipped his quill once more into the inkwell and returned to his unfinished letter. He coughed and shivered in the chill, damp air.
His recent trip across the icy North Atlantic, chained like a dog in the brig, and subsequent few months in this notorious pesthole of a prison had left the famous pirate captain much diminished. Once the mere sight of his flagship masthead appearing on the horizon had struck fear into every man afloat. Now Blackhawke was a figure of mockery and derision, wrongly consigned to the hangman’s noose by high-placed friends now turned lower than dogs, treacherous enemies who had betrayed him to save their own hides.
Blackhawke straightened and turned once more to his letter. Such thoughts of doom weren’t befitting a man of his stature and fame. And, besides, there was still the chance of the king’s pardon, wasn’t there? He dipped his quill, put it to the blue paper, and made a few scratches, trying to sketch in the outline of the island’s coastline. He wasn’t much used to drawing maps and figures, and it taxed him sorely.
“Now, where was that bloody rock?” he said to Rat, scratching his raggedy beard. “I remember a spiky rock standing just above the cave, looked like a ship under sail it did, but where? Here, I think,” he said, and drew it on the map.
He’d been trying to finish the letter to his wife all week, but his mind was clouded with fear, anger, and rum. The rum was courtesy of the Newgate Prison parson, who’d been smuggling it into his cell in ever more copious quantities as his days dwindled.
“See? All smugglers in some ways, ain’t we, Parson?” he’d said between sips of rum to the clergyman that very morning. Both knew it was possibly the pirate’s last drink. “Piracy! There’s a laugh! Who ain’t a pirate? It’s the way of the world they’re hanging me for! And me not even guilty! Why, I had me that letter of marque from his majesty and two French passes for all them East India ships I took, didn’t I?”