“Where is he now?” Starling asked.
“On the Taliba somewhere in the south Santaren Channel, about a hundred miles off the Florida coast.”
“And you’re keeping an eye on him.” It was a statement. Francesini said nothing.
Starling got up from the desk and walked over to the far side of the office. He picked up a coffee percolator and poured himself a cup. He set the percolator down and drank thoughtfully from the cup, his mind somewhere in the Santaren Channel. Francesini knew what his boss was like and knew he would be fired up inside, damning Greg Walsh to hell for being so correct about client confidentiality, and damning Khan to hell even though there was nothing at all to pin on Khan. Yet!
Starling put the cup down.
“Remo, I’m going to take this to the President. We’ve got to board the Taliba and check it out. But it will have to be done very carefully.”
“What if the President says no?” Francesini asked.
“If he says no, we’ll do it anyway. All I have to lose is my job.”
When Helen pulled up outside her villa, she hadn’t given a great deal of thought to Marsh’s refusal to work with Batista. It wasn’t a prime consideration at the moment, and she felt much happier at the prospect of having him around for some time to come. She knew that they both understood the need to move on with the business, but there were certain legal considerations to deal with before they could begin to re-establish themselves in the unique, dangerous and compelling world of oceanography.
She opened the front door, stepped inside the hall and tossed her car keys on to a small, side table. They landed next to a small vase of fresh flowers. She turned her head a little as Marsh followed her in. The thoughts that flowed through her mind were rather mixed, but she knew she had to put them aside and begin the task of reaching decisions that would affect both her and Marsh.
She walked through the lounge and into the American style kitchen.
“Drink?” she called out, peering into the tall refrigerator.
“Coke will do thanks.”
Helen poured a couple of cokes on ice and placed them on the breakfast bar.
Then she stopped and stared at the wall opposite with a strange expression on her face.
Marsh looked at her quizzically. “What’s up?”
Helen was looking beyond him, her eyes fixed on something in the room. He turned but there was nothing he could see. Nothing obvious anyway.
“What is it?” He looked back at her. “What’s up?”
Helen pointed. “That picture.”
He turned and looked in the direction she was pointing. On the far wall was a framed photograph of their yacht, Ocean Quest. It had been taken shortly after the yacht had been delivered to the yard about two years earlier.
“What about it?”
“It’s straight,” she told him.
“What do you mean, it’s straight? It’s supposed to be.”
Helen walked round the breakfast bar and crossed the room. She stopped by the picture.
“This picture never hangs straight, Marsh. Every morning I straighten it and by the end of the day it’s crooked again. I used to nag Greg about it. He promised to straighten it out for me.”
“So? Perhaps you got lucky this time.”
She said nothing but began looking around the room. Then she walked across to a desk beneath a window that had panoramic views of the harbour. She began opening the drawers, one at a time, and carefully searching through them.
As she walked past the small table on which she had tossed her car keys, she stopped.
“The flowers,” she said, “I never position them that way.”
Then she walked out of the room and Marsh followed.
She was rummaging through her bathroom cabinet when he reached her.
“Helen, what’s happened?”
“Bastards!” was all she said as she brushed past him and went into the bedroom.
Again Marsh followed her and watched as she went through the drawers in her dressing table.
“Have you been robbed?” He asked eventually.
She straightened and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” she replied with a puzzled expression on her face. “But I’m pretty sure someone has searched the house.”
He frowned. “How do you know?”
“I know, Marsh,” she said sharply. “That picture is never straight. I never set my flowers the way they are now. Someone has been searching for something and they have been very professional at it. Well, almost.”
She walked past him and went back into the lounge.
“I know it, Marsh,” she said as he reappeared. “I know it.”
“Helen,” he said quietly. “If you’re right, then whoever did this will probably have searched my place too.”
“I am right, Marsh.” Her voice was controlled now; not so tense. “Believe me, I know I am right. But why? What do I have that can be of any interest to….” She didn’t know how to complete the question. “Well, to whoever has been here?”
Marsh began to feel a little unsettled. Unseen forces were entering into their lives and he didn’t like the feel of it one bit.
“I’d better go,” he said quietly. “I’ll need your car.”
Helen nodded towards the keys on the small table, but said nothing. Marsh left her standing there, albeit reluctantly, picked up the keys and went outside. He climbed into the pick-up truck, gunned the motor into life and roared out of the drive.
The President of the United States sat behind his desk, known as the Resolute desk because it was crafted from the ancient timbers of the old, British warship H.M.S. Resolute. He was in the Oval Office of the White House, his National Security Adviser and Chief of Staff were sitting at opposite ends. They were facing Admiral Hal Maycock, Chief of Defence Staff at the Pentagon, Admiral Dan Gutteridge, Operations Commandant for the United States Coast Guard, James Starling and Remo Francesini. There was an atmosphere of absolute intensity right there in the political heart of America, and if anyone of them was at all fazed by the assorted company, it had to be Francesini, because these men were gathered here on the strength of his unbending belief that there could be a draconian threat from a terrorist organisation that he had not been able to positively identify and all based on the fears of a dead man and one word from a foreigner dying from radiation sickness.
“Where’s the Taliba now?” the President asked.
“She’s in the Santaren Channel, Mister President,” Starling answered.
“You’re sitting on it?”
“Yes sir. We have her on satellite observation and Strategic Air Command is over flying as well.”
“What do we know of her owner,” he glanced at a notepad, “Hakeem Khan?”
“Top man, Mister President,” Francesini answered. “Clean as a whistle. Been involved with some of the best names in oceanography for many years. He has worked with most of the top institutions here and in Europe.”
“Nationality?”
“He was born in Saudi Arabia. Place called Khamis Mushayt. Little town in the south west of the country. No political leanings. Considered almost Western in his thinking because of his long association with organisations in the West. Very wealthy man, self-made. Sort of man you would be quite happy to invite to the White House, Mister President.”
The President looked at his National Security Adviser. “What do you think, Jack?”
Jack Corby studied the backs of his hands for a moment. “Seems to me, Mister President that we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. We could lift this Mister Khan and take him away to Guantanamo for questioning, but we’d get so much flak from the international community, particularly the Arabs, we’d have to let him go. If we leave him alone, and he is up to something, and that’s a big ‘if’, we could be in serious trouble. We could get the Coast Guard to run a check on the Taliba under the pretext of drugs. After all, we’re doing it all the time. But probably most important is to get someone who’s working with him to tell us what’s happening.” He turned his hands up in an empty gesture. “But how the hell do we get on the inside? What do we know of his crew, their allegiances? What kind of persuasion can we use? After all, if they’re all terrorists, and fanatical too, we would be wasting our time.”