“I don’t want to see your crew on my tail anymore. You understand me? What will happen if I do?”
Coale nodded yes and walked away, defeated.
Hawke then bent over the boy and looked into his blood-filled eyes. He spoke softly, just loud enough so the boy alone could hear him.
“It’s not about age, son, it’s about desire. You had it once and lost it. Maybe you should think hard about trying to get it back.”
“THANK YOU, ALEX,” Congreve said as they stepped outside into the cool night air. “A few more blows to the bum leg with that tire iron, and I’m afraid I’d have been totally out of commission. As it is, I think I’ll need some help getting back to the boat.”
The three Englishmen and Harry Brock had left the building full of drunken Jamaicans behind and were making their way through the dark underbrush toward the sea. Trulove and Hawke had Congreve between them, supporting his weight as they made their way across the rocky ground. Harry was at the rear, covering their retreat with the SAW.
“Are you managing all right, sir?” Hawke asked Sir David. He was huffing and puffing a bit, Congreve being no featherweight these days.
“Indeed, I think I am,” C said. “No teeth missing, just a split lip. Ambrose and I are both in far better shape than the chap you left back there on the floor. Or that fellow out there facedown on the dock. Did you see him, Alex? I demanded medical attention for him, of course. Not that there was much likelihood of it.”
“He’s dead,” Hawke said. “A man named Hoodoo.”
“You know the victim, Alex?” C asked.
“I do, sir. I know who he is, at any rate. Have you any idea what he was doing out here in the middle of the night?”
“Yes, we do,” Congreve said through his pain, speaking slowly and breathing rapidly. “He was delivering weapons to these chaps. Russian machine guns, now stowed in a locked room in the basement. Apparently, there was some disagreement about remuneration, as best we can surmise.”
“Before we were discovered, we’d been hiding under the dock as the guns were being unloaded,” C said. “We couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said, of course-even Ambrose doesn’t speak this particular Jamaican Rasta dialect-but we did hear a name. A man who may be the one selling them these weapons.”
“Who?” Hawke asked. “What name?”
“Chap named Korsakov,” Ambrose said. “Russian. Lives somewhere here on Bermuda. Ever heard of him?”
“Name rings a bell,” Hawke said. “I think that’s who’s been having me followed by the Rastas.”
“Why?”
“No idea, but I intend to find out.”
“Alex? I think you’d best put me down for a moment,” Congreve said. “I’m feeling a bit lightheaded.”
Trulove and Hawke gingerly lowered their friend so that he was seated on a soft clump of grass, his back against the smooth red bark of a gumbo limbo tree.
“Can you make it back down the hill to the dinghy, Constable?” Alex asked his oldest friend, kneeling down beside him.
“I think if I just rest a moment, yes. Should do. It’s a bit-painful, you know.”
“Breathe deeply. Try to relax. We’ll get you to a doctor as quickly as possible.” Hawke had tied his shirt round Congreve’s leg wound, cinching it tight. The blood flow appeared to have ceased. After an already long and difficult recovery, this fresh injury was a serious setback for his old friend.
“Bloody doctors. I thought I was through with them.”
“Anybody smell smoke?” Brock asked, sniffing the air.
“I do,” Trulove said. “Fire somewhere. Where’s the smoke coming from?”
“Down by the water,” Hawke said, “where you left the yawl anchored. We’d better get moving. Ambrose?”
Congreve nodded his head. Sir David and Harry Brock got Ambrose back on his feet and began to descend the steep pathway, Hawke taking the lead.
“Harry and I can take care of Ambrose. You go on ahead, Alex,” C said. “Make sure there are no more unpleasant surprises awaiting us.”
Hawke raced down the steep path and was the first to reach the clearing and the little cove where Diana had left her boat at anchor.
He was the first to see Swagman.
She was adrift and afire.
It looked like a Viking funeral. Someone had loosed her free, torched her, and trimmed her sails to carry her away.
Swagman was already well out, far beyond the reef line, running dead before the wind with all of her blazing sails flying, every last one of them burning brightly. She was lighting up the night sky, afire now from stem to stern, the orange and red flames licking out the windows of her cabin house and racing up her mainmast, and her mainsail had mostly burned clean through, falling away in flaming tatters as she sailed off ablaze toward the black horizon.
“Good Lord,” Congreve said, the three men suddenly at his side.
“Yes,” Hawke said. “Little we can do now I’m afraid.”
“The ring,” Congreve said, all of the life, all of the fight, gone out of his voice.
“What?”
“Diana’s engagement ring. The D Flawless. You told me to stow it somewhere safe until I was ready to present it to her. I wrapped it in one of my handkerchiefs and stowed it forward of the anchor locker. A little cubby hole in the bow.”
“It’s a diamond. We’ll buy her another.”
“It belonged to my mother, Alex. It’s all I have from her.”
“Then we’ll find it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Hawke said, and put a comforting arm round his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll get you in the dinghy and back to the airport. You’re going straight to hospital, and then I’ll take you home and we’ll split a bottle of rum. Sound good?”
“It does, Alex,” he said, his eyes filling with tears as he watched the beautiful old Swagman sailing for the far horizon in flames.
“Undeserved fate for a lovely old boat,” Hawke said, his eyes on her. “Diana will be devastated,” Congreve added. “Swagman will burn to the waterline and then slip beneath the waves forever.”
And his mother’s precious diamond would become just another bauble among countless jewels scattered across the sandy floor beneath the turquoise sea.
30
“Pelham?” Anastasia said, as the weathered cedar door swung inward to reveal a sweet-faced man, quite elegantly dressed in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie. He had a fringe of soft white hair and the palest blue eyes, and he held himself very erect. He did have the loveliest smile. This was Hawke’s “partner”? He had to be eighty if he was a day. In the beginning, she’d been exceedingly curious about Hawke’s roommate. Now, based on recent events, she found herself considerably more than curious.
“I’m Asia Korsakova. How do you do?”
“Very well, indeed, Madame. Won’t you come in?”
The invitation from Teakettle Cottage, surprisingly engraved on a stiff cream-colored card from Smythson of Bond Street, a good London stationer, had arrived with her mail yesterday. Her beautiful beach bum had his stationery engraved at Smythson’s? It had said “Dinner at Eight.” She was a little early, she knew, but she’d been unsure of finding her way through the maze of sandy lanes that wound through the overgrown banana groves. She knew that one of them would lead eventually to Teakettle Cottage, but which one? So here she was, at his door at a quarter to the hour.
“You may want to keep your wrap,” Pelham said. “You’ll be dining al fresco, and it’s a bit cool out on the terrace this evening.”
“Thank you, I will.”