“Congratulations, Marsh, a fine job.”
Marsh was not interested in Khan’s gratuitous praise and wanted nothing other than to get the job finished and get back to a normal life; if that would ever be possible. He was about to say something when a member of the crew came up to Khan and told him that Captain de Leon wanted to see him urgently on the bridge. Khan acknowledged the crewman and turned to Marsh.
“We’ll debrief when Batista and Zienkovitch are ready,” he said to Marsh and walked away.
Chapter 13
De Leon was in his day cabin behind the bridge when Khan walked in. The ship’s captain had a concerned look on his face. Khan looked a little ruffled from his exertions walking from his cabin up on to the bridge against the wind which was freshening.
“We have just received a call from Romulus,” he told Khan. “The police are on to that fool Maclean; the safe-house where he had the woman has been raided by the police.”
Khan’s dark eyebrows lifted and he tilted his head slightly, a questioning look on his face. “What about the woman?”
De Leon nodded. “Well, thankfully Maclean still has her. He managed to escape; took her with him.”
Khan sat down and sighed deeply; he could have done without this new development. He looked up at de Leon, deep disappointment and anger clouded his face. “Where are they?”
De Leon shook his head and held his hands out in an empty gesture. “We don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Romulus doesn’t know where they’ve gone.”
Khan hissed through closed teeth and thumped his hand gently on the table in a tapping rhythm. “Why do we suffer such fools?”
It wasn’t a question that needed answering. De Leon knew that their operation depended upon loyalty, efficiency, dedication and security. With any one of these jeopardised, the whole plan could collapse, taking them all with it. Unfortunately it was sometimes necessary to enlist the help of people who were, to put it bluntly, mercenaries; loyal only to themselves and the money they were receiving. Sweeting Maclean fell easily into this category.
Suddenly Khan stirred as though he had come to a decision. “Nothing changes,” he declared. “Marsh still believes we have the girl, which I assume we do, so he’ll still co-operate. We’ll send Malik; he can dispose of Maclean and bring the girl back here.” He stood up. “Contact Romulus, find out where they are and let Malik know.”
He turned as if he was about to leave the bridge, then stopped.
“By the way, it was a successful dive. Thank you Captain. We will debrief once Batista and Zienkovitch have finished decompressing.”
With that he walked out of the cabin and left Captain de Leon with the task of arranging the demise of one Sweeting Maclean.
Francesini stared at the clock in his office; it was four o’clock in the morning. Less than an hour earlier he had called James Starling and told him about the recent turn of events. Starling was not too pleased at being woken at such an early hour to be told that their operation was going belly-up. He told Francesini to meet him at C.I.A. headquarters before flying out to Freeport.
He was smoking a cigar; something he rarely did at such an early hour in the morning, but he had given in to a degree of fatalism, and broke one of his own rules. It was something he usually abhorred in his agents or anyone who worked for his department; giving in to maudlin self-pity. The curl of blue smoke drifted up from the cigar without a sign of tremor, which pleased Francesini because there were times when he thought he was going to break out in a cold sweat over the prospect of conceding defeat in this case.
What bugged Francesini most was that he wasn’t in complete control of all the elements involved in the kidnapping of Helen Walsh, Marsh’s disappearance and the unfathomable actions of Hakeem Khan. Much of his investigation relied on what he considered to be provincial policing in the form of the Freeport Constabulary.
There was a sharp knock on the door and Admiral Starling walked in. There was no preamble. He shut the door and sat down opposite Francesini.
“OK Remo, what do you have for me?”
Francesini began as best he could by outlining the events following the kidnapping, despite Admiral Starling knowing most of them anyway, and brought him up to date with the local police department tailing and losing Sweeting Maclean, and then the subsequent discovery that Maclean had access to a safe house. It beggared belief in Francesini’s opinion that the Bahamian authorities had no knowledge of this bolt hole.
“Inspector Bain had planned to lay siege to the safe-house until he could negotiate something with this Maclean guy,” he told Starling. “Then all hell broke loose and Inspector Bain gets wounded and another of his officers gets killed.” He put the cigar to his mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke. Blowing it out steadily, he looked across the desk at Starling. “This Maclean guy sounds dangerous.”
“Anybody with a machine gun can be dangerous, Remo,” Starling reminded him. “But it takes brains to be really dangerous and that’s the domain of the man at the top.”
“Khan?”
Starling shrugged. “If we could positively link him with Maclean, then, yes. But why are they holding Greg Walsh’s widow?”
“It must be leverage,” Francesini suggested. “They have Marsh on board the Taliba so perhaps they need something from him.”
“Like what?” Starling asked. “He’s not a nuclear scientist, he’s an engineer; and engineers they do not need.”
“He’s an underwater specialist: an oceanographer,” Francesini replied lightly. “That’s what Khan is involved in; has been all his working life. Like Marsh, in fact. Perhaps Marsh is working for Khan. And perhaps he really was involved in the murder Greg Walsh.”
Starling’s eyebrows collapsed into an unbroken line. “I think you’re being frivolous now, Remo.”
Francesini accepted the put down remark from his boss. “I’m sorry sir; I guess I’m getting apprehensive. There are too many unanswered questions to which I don’t have the answers.”
Starling chuckled. “No, you get apprehensive when the President makes it quite clear he hasn’t forgotten the meeting we had the other day. He wants a personal update from me before the Secretary of State flies out to Dubai for a Middle East conference.”
“When is that?” Francesini’s coughed and cleared his throat. He lifted up his cup and took a mouthful of the coffee which was now quite cold.
“Day after tomorrow.”
Francesini put the cup down. It was contrived to look like the act of a condemned man. “You want my resignation now, sir?”
Starling’s hand came down on the desk like a ton of bricks, startling Francesini.
“I’ve told you once already not to be so damned frivolous!” he bellowed.
“But what the hell sir,” Francesini flung back at him, “these damn politicians go pussyfooting round each other’s conference tables promising détente and all the other crap, glad handing and acting like the best of pals when truth to tell they are dealing with a bunch of mavericks and crooks most of the time and haven’t the guts to tell them.”
“Calm down.”
Francesini calmed down. “I’m sorry sir.”
Starling leaned forward. “That’s the second time you’ve apologised in less than a minute, Remo. When you have to do that to an admiral it could be your career on the line.” Then he leaned back into his leather chair. “But I’ve got more respect for you and I’m not about to take any notice of your outburst because I agree with you anyway. So what we’ve got to do is come up with some ideas and what we intend to do about Mister Khan and finding some way of stopping him. We need facts and balls. You get off to Freeport and come up with the facts. Let me know what you have and I’ll come up with the balls to make the decisions.”