“You’re still quite weak, Marsham,” the doctor told him. “You’ve taken a terrible battering.” He flexed Marsh’s knee gently. “How on earth did you get this?”
Marsh shook his head. “I can’t remember,” he lied.
The doctor straightened. “Well, no matter. Our job is to fix you up and get you out here. The military police here will want to talk to you, I’m sure. Couple of days and you should be ok to leave. We’ll give you a sedative later this evening. Help you rest.”
When the doctor and nurse had left, Francesini popped his head round the door.
“Everything ok?”
Marsh smiled, “I’ll get by.”
Francesini closed the door behind him and sat down beside the bed.
“Right,” he said, “where shall we begin?
“Well, how about you tell me who you are and what it is you want,” Marsh suggested.
Francesini opened his hands apologetically. “Good idea. I’m from the United States Immigration Department,” he lied. “We thought it important to ask you a few questions, informally so to speak. That will give you a chance to get your strength up before we sit you down and take a statement.”
He made himself more comfortable. “We’re concerned, naturally, about the gunshot wound to your knee. How you got it.” He held his hand up. “No need to answer that yet. We would also like to know what happened. What we know is that you and your friend Walsh were out sailing. The boat has disappeared and you’ve turned up on your own, without your partner.”
Marsh stopped him. “How did you know I was sailing with Greg?”
“You had your wallet on you when you were pulled out of the water. Your business cards told us who you were. So, we contacted your boatyard in Freeport. Mrs. Walsh has told us that you and her husband, Greg Walsh went out sailing a couple of days ago.”
Marsh said “oh,” and laid his back on his pillow.
“Naturally she’s very distressed. So, as soon as we have the right answers, we can get you back to Freeport.” He was quiet for a while. “So, what happened?”
“We ran into something,” Marsh explained evenly. It was almost the truth.
“Where?”
Marsh almost told him then, but there was no way he could have made it from the middle of the Caribbean Sea, eight hundred miles from Cuba without help, and he didn’t feel that he could explain the truth to this man. Not yet.
“It happened a few miles offshore, just south of Jamaica. “He brought his hand up to his head. “I can’t remember much about it.” He hoped that Jamaica sounded about right because he really didn’t have a clue what landfall it was he saw from the lifeboat on board the Taliba, it was simply his own version of dead reckoning.
“What about the gunshot wound?”
Marsh shook his head. “It’s like I told you Remo; I can’t remember.”
A thoughtful expression clouded Francesini’s face. “Your partner’s death will have to be explained considering you’ve been shot. It could mean a delay before you can get back home.”
“What kind of a delay?”
Francesini shrugged. “Well, because your boat must have sunk close to Jamaican territorial waters and you got yourself shot, it could be a matter for local, Jamaican authorities. Someone will want to know what happened to Walsh. Was there a gunfight? Were you attacked by pirates? There are several possibilities of course.” He lifted his hands in an empty gesture. “The police there might want to keep you in custody for a week, minimum. They could release you on bail I suppose.”
Francesini hoped he was piling on the pressure enough to force Marsh to open up about what really happened. Because he had more of an insight into Walsh’s affairs than Marsh probably knew, he had to drag every possible gem from the man that he could.
Marsh felt he was getting into something quite messy. Because he had lied when he said the Ocean Quest had sunk just off the coast of Jamaica, he had put himself into a difficult situation. If he changed his story now, the police would probably think he was lying anyway just to save his own skin. He wondered if he would be able to stand extensive interrogation and keep coming up with the same story.
He had been lying on his back, propped up by his pillows. He struggled to sit up. Francesini leaned forward and helped him.
“So why is the immigration department interested in me?” he asked.
Francesini gave that some thought; now it was his turn to be careful. “Well,” he said eventually, “you’re on American soil at the moment. After all, it was the Coast Guard that picked you up.”
Marsh realised that his visitor hadn’t answered the question, so he decided to stall a little.
“Look, I can’t wait around for this mess to be sorted out; I’ve far too much to do.”
“Like what?”
Marsh looked at him. “Once we get over this, Helen and I, that’s Greg’s wife; sorry, widow, we still have a business to run. We have a lot of investment in our boatyard. Greg’s affairs have to be put in order. You get me home and I’ll go to the police myself. I’m certainly not going to hide from anyone.”
Francesini ignored him. “You’re financed through the bank, right?”
“Yes,” Marsh replied warily, wondering where this was going. “Usually when we take on a commission we ask the bank for a short term loan. At the moment we are have no loans and only a mortgage to service. Why do you ask?”
Once again Francesini ignored him. “So, what’s your business? Fishing trips, cruises, that kind of thing?”
Marsh laughed. “Goodness me no; we are an underwater exploration company: ‘Ocean Quest’. We take commissions from the some of the biggest institutions in the world. We do survey work for oil companies. Underwater geological surveys for construction companies. We sometimes do a commission for international magazines like the National Geographic. Our equipment is expensive to buy, expensive to run and expensive to maintain.”
“Have you been doing much work lately?” Francesini asked him.
Marsh glanced at him and shook his head. “No. Why?”
“Why not?”
Marsh didn’t answer for a while. Just lately, Walsh had been putting off some of the smaller commissions that had been coming in. At first it hadn’t bothered Marsh but soon it became something of a stand-off between the two of them. Helen had noticed the tension developing and occasionally Marsh had seen her arguing furiously with her husband.
“I don’t know why not,” Marsh replied.
“So what do you do when you don’t have any work coming in?”
Deep dives was the answer that Marsh should have said, but not for any institution. For a few weeks now, Walsh had wanted Marsh and Helen to help him on some deep water compression dives, dives that had something to do with the survey work Walsh had carried out for Hakeem Khan. He had been quite evasive about the reason why he wanted to go over work that had already been completed and paid for but often muttered something about not being convinced that their figures had been accurate and it wouldn’t do to give clients erroneous figures, particularly when they had paid handsomely.
“Oh, we do maintenance around the yard, chase up new business; that kind of thing.” It was a poor effort.
“Did you and Walsh always work on the same jobs?” Francesini asked him.
Marsh shook his head. “Why?”
“If you worked separately, would you talk to each other about your work?”
“Sometimes, but not always. It would depend on customer privilege and privacy. As long as the money rolled in, we were quite happy.” He wondered where this was going.
“Mercenaries,” Francesini said lightly.
Marsh laughed again. “Yes, you could say that. But we were never armed.”