“We’re going to take the boat for a moonlit sail around Nonsuch Island. Not that there’s any moonlight tonight, thank heavens.”
“Nonsuch? That dismal rock? Whatever for, dear?” she said.
“Surveillance. On that island, according to Alex Hawke, resides a well-entrenched Rastafarian criminal gang. Call themselves the Disciples of Judah. A Jamaican drug lord named King Coale runs the operation. He’s been sending his chaps around, bothering Alex. Sir David and I want to find out why. And put an early end to the practice.”
“Yes,” C said, a serious expression furrowing his high brow. “For obvious reasons, I’m not at all comfortable having Alex Hawke’s current movements a subject of interest to a criminal enterprise. Ambrose and I are going to snoop around a bit tonight and see what we can learn. It’s been a while since I’ve been out in the field, as it were.”
Diana saw the excitement at the prospect of adventure in his eyes. Who could blame him, trapped behind that desk at MI-6 year after year?
Diana plopped down into a soft tomato-red sofa and sipped her wine. “Which boat are you taking? Rumrunner? She’s by far the fastest thing in the boathouse.”
“No, no, dearest. It’s stealth we’re after tonight, not speed. We want to sail around the island, unobserved. We thought we’d take Swagman.”
The white yawl, a Hinckley Bermuda 40, was Diana’s own, a cherished gift bequeathed to her by her late father. She’d spent many childhood summers racing Swagman in Bermuda Harbour and round-the-island races. Not a few trophies at the RBYC bore her name.
“Ambrose, there’s a lot of shoal around that island, ‘skinny water,’ as Papa used to call the shallows. Are you two sure you can navigate safely at night?”
C spoke up. “That was why we hoped you’d consider joining us, Diana. No one knows those waters as well as you do. If things get interesting, we may need you at the helm to get us out of there in a hurry.”
Suddenly, seeing herself in this heroic role, it seemed to her the most marvelous idea she’d ever heard of. She leaped to her feet, splashing a bit of wine onto the tiled floor.
“What are we waiting for, then, lads?” she said with a gay laugh. “The tide’s right, and the wind’s up. Let us away, hearties!”
25
An hour later, Swagman and her jolly crew of three were ghosting along across the wide mouth to Castle Harbour. The light breeze out of the west was on their port beam, and Swagman was heeling slightly, making a good seven knots through calm seas. Diana was at the helm, nursing a mug of hot coffee, her third. She needed a clear head about her. It would be up to her to get the big yawl somehow safely inside the submerged and treacherous coral reefs that guarded any approach to Nonsuch Island.
For many years, Nonsuch had been a strictly protected nature preserve. Many, many years before that, Diana and her older brothers had sailed to the island for picnics and exploration. Forts had been built, flags raised. They’d nicknamed it Mucky-Gucky Island. As they grew older, the children and their friends spent many happy hours out there, chasing pirates, cannibals, and all manner of imagined evildoers through the jungly interior.
Tiring of that, they’d whiled away the hours diving the many wrecks littering the bottom offshore.
Nonsuch, still nothing more than a squat, rocky hump on the horizon, was just one of many small islets that formed the visible tips of the Bermuda seamount. But, because it was surrounded by razor-sharp reefs, this area made for particularly dicey going. Congreve assumed it was the reason the Disciples of Judah had chosen the forbidding locale as their base of operations. It was hardly a welcoming sight.
Bermuda was, after all, the location that had given the infamous Bermuda Triangle its name. Below Swagman’s passing keel lay the wrecks of countless sailing ships and Spanish treasure fleets. Not to mention the silent hulks of freighters, rotting on the bottom, their hulls over the decades turned a putrid shade of green. Coral teeth had ripped great slashes in their sides. All had been dispatched to the bottom by the reefs, the sudden squalls, or the carnage of war.
The Jamaicans who inhabited the island now were squatters. It was clearly posted as a nature preserve. It was a mystery to everyone why the Bermuda police seemed to look the other way. Someone had gotten to someone, of that Congreve had no doubt. But why this interest in Alex Hawke? That was the question at the front of his mind.
“Mind your heads,” Diana shouted forward. “I’m coming about!”
Ambrose and Sir David were both standing on the bow, taking turns peering at the dark silhouette of the island through a pair of high-powered binoculars Diana had brought up from below. The black hump had resolved itself somewhat, now resembling a giant comma, tapering down to the sea at either end. An old wooden dock extended out into a small cove at the center, the only sign of civilization so far.
“Dense vegetation up top,” C said, “but I do see some lights winking deep in the interior. The light seems to be concentrated at the southern end. Some kind of settlement, all right. Have a look, Constable,” he said, handing the famous Scotland Yard detective the glasses.
“Yes,” Ambrose agreed. “And a couple of nondescript fishing boats moored at the long dock on the southern tip. There to provide transport to and from the mainland, one imagines. Let’s move in a bit closer, don’t you think?”
“Diana,” Trulove called aft, “we’d like to get in a bit closer, my dear. Can you manage these reefs?”
“Say again,” she called out.
C realized his mistake and made his way toward the stern, where they wouldn’t have to shout. There might be guards posted on Nonsuch, and sound carried so clearly across open water, especially on a quiet, nearly windless night like tonight.
It was a dark night as well, no moon and few stars, but the woman at the helm knew these waters by heart, and C was not overly worried about navigation.
“All’s well?” he asked, standing atop the cabin house.
“No worries, David,” she said, as the former hero of the Falklands War stepped down into her cockpit. Diana kept one eye on the dimly lit fathometer mounted on the aft bulkhead of the low cabin house. She was on a starboard tack and still had a good twenty feet of water beneath her keel. “Do you want to circumnavigate the island, David? I think I could manage that, now that the tide is fully in.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to, dear. We can see the layout of the island pretty well from here. I’ve been examining it through the glasses. There seems to be some kind of settlement in the interior, located out there near the southern end of the island. See the lights, winking through the trees?”
“Yes. Deep-water cove just to the west of there,” Diana said, pointing toward it. “There are caves along in there, deep ones. Said to be pirate lairs back in the eighteenth century. I could get us in fairly close over there, if you wish.”
“Yes, let’s do that. What’s the shoal situation around here? Do you need to tack, or could you just fall off the wind a few degrees?”
“I can fall off to port. There’s a break in the reef right off my port bow there, known locally as the Devil’s Arsehole, pardon my French. We can slip in and out of there fairly easily. You can use the dinghy on the stern davits. It’s got a small outboard, but you should probably row. That motor’s noisy.”
“Fall off, then. And let’s extinguish all our running lights, shall we, Diana? No need to alert anyone on shore to our presence. I’ll shout a warning if Ambrose or I see any activity we don’t like. I’ve got a sidearm, but I’d rather not use it. I just want to have a quick look around.”