We came in over the sea, smoothly on to the runway. To the right was a white house surrounded by coconut palms. Goats and a couple of herons were feeding beside an old steamroller in the garden. The plane clawed to a halt as the runway ended beside the sea; the pilot seemed to be taking us for a paddle to cool down. Then he turned left to the miniature terminal building, ‘Crown Point’ in white across its green corrugated roof, and the tiny control tower with its solitary radar bowl.
‘We leave separately,’ York whispered as he moved towards the door. ‘Expect us at the Turtle Beach at nine o’clock. You’re booked in for a week.’
We’d hardly left the plane when we were grabbed by a young Tobagonian who announced that his name was Bartholomew and that he had the finest taxi on the island. As he collected our luggage I noticed York introducing Mendale to a broad-shouldered West Indian in his early thirties. They glanced in our direction but showed no sign of recognition.
Bartholomew led us to the island’s finest taxi. It was an amazing British-made Ford barely recognisable beneath a welter of extra chrome and plastic. An enormous chrome angel with orange plastic wings sat on the front while windmills, like children’s toys or anemometers, whirled round the dumpy radio aerial. ‘TOURISM BENEFITS ALL’ proclaimed a faded sticker on the rear bumper.
‘Newlyweds?’ Bartholomew asked.
We tried to look sheepish as we confirmed his guess.
‘You’ve come to the right place,’ he told us.
‘We’re sure of that.’
York hadn’t provided us with a map or told us exactly where Martines had his sanctuary so I tried to memorise the route from the airport to the hotel in case we needed it next morning. First out of the airport, right, away from the road to Pigeon Point. Past a National petrol station; Adina’s Inn; prefabricated bungalows, ‘Government housing,’ Bartholomew told us; the Bon Accord Nutrition Unit; George Street; Robert Street; the ‘Night Beat’ restaurant and bar; St Cyr Street; an enormous advert proclaiming, ‘GUINNESS, YOU KNOW IT’S GOOD’. Then left off the road to Scarborough, the island’s capital, on to Shirvan Road, between the racecourse and a coconut plantation. A narrow road through houses past the Everyday Café. There were goats in the road and coconut palms everywhere. More government housing, little grey buildings too close together.
And then away from the sea past the Mount Irvine Golf Course. There was little chance that Watkins could be playing golf but Julia pulled down her hat and I could feel the pressure of her hand on my knee.
We passed French Turtlers Private Road and the Mount Irvine beach. Beside the road an old tractor rusted away, slowly being overgrown with vegetation. ‘SLOW DEPRESSION 40 YARDS AHEAD’ a sign said, the road bending beside the sea past a beautiful sandy beach. ‘A BEER IS A CARIB’ proclaimed another sign. Black Rock Government School was followed by the town of Black Rock itself. We wound downhill through the houses, many raised above the ground on stilts, then over a bridge, round a sharp bend and there before us lay the palm trees and tennis courts of the Turtle Beach Hotel.
The hotel was strung along the beach. The rooms, in white igloo-shaped clusters of four, stretched away from the thatched bar and the central administration complex. The dining area and bar opened on to a garden of colourful flowers and bright green grass.
Our room was superbly situated, away from the central block and looking out over the Caribbean through a fringe of palms.
‘Twin beds,’ commented Julia.
‘Can’t win them all,’ I replied. ‘The place is built for Americans; they don’t believe in double beds.’
‘Well I do.’
We managed to prove it didn’t matter. When we emerged from our room the sunset was being blackened by hundreds of pelicans, diving Stuka-like at the sea, then lumbering back into the air. We watched them hanging on a wing, then spearing into the water as we strolled to the bar.
We’d finished our meal by the time York, Brasenose and Mendale arrived with the West Indian we’d seen at the airport.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Mendale boomed. ‘Bloody Navy wanted every last detail approved by London.’
York interrupted quickly, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Let’s go to your room, we can sort things out there.’
‘You haven’t met Clive Surl,’ he added as we walked across the lawn, carefully avoiding the frogs.
‘Don’t be misled by appearances,’ grinned the tall black man. ‘I’m from Birmingham. Captain York brought me to add some local colour.’
Surl’s handshake was strong and commanding. When we reached our room it was he who outlined the plan.
He jabbed his finger at the map York had unfolded. ‘Martines has a house right here, under the “R” in Black Rock. The plan’s simple. We’ve got two cars. I’ll leave you mine tonight. Just before dawn you park here,’ he pointed at the map again, ‘out of sight, and walk along the beach. Major Mendale, Captain York and Mr Brasenose will park on the Crown Point side and we’ll meet in front of the house. Our primary objective here is Griffin. I’ll have two small motorboats and we’ll use one to take Griffin out to the ship. Mr Brasenose will go with it. In no circumstances will the Navy land on the island.’
‘Too bloody worried about creating an incident,’ interjected Mendale.
‘Right. If we can grab the men who stole Griffin as well we will do so and put them on the Minerva. Above all we don’t want any bodies lying around for the locals to find so if there are any they go into the sea.’
‘What’s the opposition?’
‘Gadd and Budermann as you know, and two or three local people. One, from his accent, is Jamaican. We haven’t identified him but it probably doesn’t matter because he went over to Trinidad tonight on the last plane. The other two are Trinidadians. Both with criminal records. They were mixed up with Black Power but apparently not for political reasons. They’re used as guards. If they’re awake they’ll be armed with Colt Commando submachine guns, not much good for hand to hand combat. We should be able to get that close before they know we’re around. There are no dogs. I’ve left a pair of silenced nine millimetre Brownings and knives in the boot of my car for you.’
‘What about Martines himself?’
‘We don’t have to worry about him. He was carried off the plane looking like death warmed up. And Watkins should be safely in his hotel. We’ll worry about him afterwards.’
We discussed the plan for another thirty minutes. Surl drew a sketch of our target. Martines had a fair-sized place with no other habitations within earshot. There was no wall surrounding it and there should be no difficulty getting into the house. The problem was that we didn’t have long to find Griffin once we got in there. Brasenose insisted that we had to locate Griffin even if that meant staying in the house while HMS Minerva steamed away. He would take it home by air, he said, hoping to get out of the country before the local authorities discovered that anything was amiss. Providing the raid passed off quietly, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Surl gave me the keys to his car before leaving. Julia and I retired to bed, prepared for an early rise.
It was still dark next morning when we parked the car a few yards from the row of palm trees lining the beach. We made the rendezvous in front of the house with five minutes to spare after checking that there were no guards lurking in the grounds on our side of the house. Mendale and York were already there.
‘All clear?’
‘Yes. No sign of anybody.’
‘Check the front,’ Mendale ordered.
Cautiously I made my way round the house. Beside the front door there was a dim, very small, pinkish light that occasionally glowed bright red: the end of a cigarette. As I returned to the other three we were joined by Surl and Brasenose, rowing ashore, the noise of their oars completely lost in the sounds of the sea.
‘There’s a man at the front,’ I reported.
‘OK. You and Clive take him out. We’ll go in through the back exactly two minutes from now.’
It took us less than a minute to move around to the front of the house, Surl moving ahead in total silence. We knelt about fifteen yards from the house, beneath a palm. There was no sign of the guard.
‘Perhaps he’s gone inside,’ I whispered.
‘No, I see him. To the left, sitting down.’
I strained my eyes but still couldn’t see anything.
‘Should be easy,’ Surl continued. ‘Keep along the wall of the house below window level. Just follow me. Leave it to the Marines as they say. OK, twenty-five seconds.’
He glanced at the dial of his luminous watch.
‘Now.’ He disappeared, without a sound. I prepared to follow and froze as a light flashed in front of me. But it was just the guard lighting another cigarette, exactly where Surl said he was. It was one of the two Trinidadians. We were almost on top of him before he noticed us. He suddenly swung around, rising from his chair, but too late. Two quick blows from Surl and he was out cold.
The front door was unlocked. Without a word we entered. There was no light, but Surl moved surefootedly towards the back of the house, with me at his heels clutching my Browning automatic. Julia, Mendale, Brasenose and York were standing by a doorway, York with a torch in his hand.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. The guard’s unconscious.’
‘So’s the other one. He was asleep in there.’ York pointed his torch into a small bedroom. ‘Let’s get upstairs. Julia, you stay in here in case one of these two wakes up or a neighbour drops in for a friendly chat.’
The rest of us followed Surl, me on his heels, Mendale and Brasenose behind, and York bringing up the rear, carefully screening the beam of his torch. The upstairs were arranged on an ‘L’ pattern, with the stairs in the apex. Surl pointed at the nearest door and tried the knob. It opened silently.
The shutters on the two windows hadn’t been closed and the first, feint light of dawn crept over the horizon and stole into the room. Gadd lay on a huge double bed, shirtless but still wearing trousers and socks. He must have been half awake for as Surl reached him he lashed out wildly, knocking an almost empty whisky bottle and a lamp on to the marble floor. The sound of the crash seemed to echo through the house. Before he could do anything else Surl jabbed his knife towards Gadd’s throat.
‘Easy man. You ain’t going anywhere.’
Gadd glared at him and said nothing. Surl pulled him up, not too gently. ‘Now you just lead us to friend Budermann’s room.
Gadd staggered out of the room, pausing at the sight of the rest of us. Then he pushed past me into the other arm of the ‘L’ and stood outside the door nearest to the stairs.
‘Go on in,’ Surl commanded. As Gadd turned the door handle there was the sound of a door opening behind us. We all spun around. In the beam of York’s torch stood Watkins, emerging from the room next to Gadd’s. York was the more surprised. Before he could do anything the nine millimetre Steyr pistol in Watkins’ hand spat flame and noise and lead and York’s torch tumbled to the floor as he was whipped back against the stairs and fell headfirst towards Julia. Watkins ducked back but before I could register what was happening my eardrums were blasted again and Gadd rocketed into me, a stream of submachine gun fire continuing to smash into his inert body through Budermann’s door.
Chest high, I registered. Budermann was firing chest high. And then Surl’s feet were smashing against the door above the handle and I was into the room on my belly as the door opened.
Budermann was standing by the bed, naked except for his pants. Before he could lower his aim I fired and missed but Surl didn’t and Budermann crumpled on to the bed.
Watkins had disappeared but Mendale was after him. ‘Find Martines,’ he shouted in my direction as he and Brasenose raced towards the end of the corridor.
Martines was in the first room I entered but he wasn’t going to cause any problems. I didn’t need to feel his ice-cold wrist to realise he was dead. He at least had died peacefully.
‘Heart attack,’ Julia said, joining me. ‘Come on.’
Mendale had disappeared down the backstairs and out towards the beach. We raced after him. As we approached the sea a motorboat started up. We emerged through the palms to see Watkins dressed in his pyjamas standing at the boat’s helm incongruously waving a briefcase. Mendale and Brasenose stood guns drawn about twenty-five or thirty feet away from him.
‘No closer,’ shouted Watkins, ‘or Griffin’s gone.’
I realised that with his free hand he was holding a hand grenade beside the briefcase. Where on earth had that come from?
Brasenose was clearly trying to reason with him.
‘You’ll never be able to hide. Give me Griffin and we’ll come to an arrangement.’
Suddenly Watkins’ shirt front erupted in red as Mendale pumped one, two, three shots into a three-inch circle centred on his heart. Almost instantaneously there was a shattering explosion and the briefcase disintegrated along with most of Watkins and the boat.
There was a moment of total silence. I noticed Surl carrying the wounded York towards the other boat. Nothing else moved.
Brasenose was the first to recover. ‘You fool! We could have taken him. Griffin’s gone.’
He gave Mendale an evil look, turned on his heel and marched off across the sand. Mendale slowly followed him. Nobody looked back.
When we returned to the house Mendale had revived one of the Trinidadians and was giving him a lesson in survival.
‘You’d better hope nobody heard all the noise,’ Mendale was saying. ‘If the police find those bodies you’re going to have a hard job explaining what happened. Now you and your friend dig a big pit and bury them. Or even better bundle them up into a fridge or something and dump it way out to sea. Got that?’
The man said nothing. Dropping his Colt automatic into its Hardy-Cooper spring shoulder holster Mendale announced that it was time for the Navy to take him home. ‘We’ll drop what’s left of comrade Watkins en route, death in the line of duty and all that.’ He turned to Surl. ‘Clive, you clean up things at the house we rented and get off the island by the first plane.’
Mendale collected all the guns as casually as if he were out buying bread. We walked back to the remaining boat with him. A few pieces of wreckage were the only signs that another boat had been here moments earlier. York was lying in the boat and Mendale placed a surprisingly gentle hand on York’s wrist. ‘Not as bad as I’d feared,’ he said, ‘let’s get him out to the ship. Thomas, you and Julia ditch the car and leave the keys inside. Stay at the hotel for the rest of the week and act like tourists. Keep an eye on what’s happening here but don’t arouse any suspicions. OK?’
We both nodded.
‘What about Justin Brasenose?’ Julia asked.
‘Don’t worry about him, he’ll calm down. This is good news for the Americans. They don’t want the physical Interrogator back, they’ve probably made another prototype already, they just wanted to make sure the Russians didn’t get hold of it. I should imagine Justin is halfway to the airport and is already composing a report demonstrating that despite the DIS making a mess of everything, due to his own heroic efforts he was able to stop the Griffin Interrogator falling into Russian hands.’
Julia and I returned to the car as the little boat chugged out towards the Leander class frigate now visible to the west.
We left the car a good mile from the hotel and walked back along the beach, hand in hand, too shattered to talk.
The sea beat gently on to the sand. A copper-rumped hummingbird hung in front of a bush, bobbing its brilliant green head and curved beak at the dew-covered flowers. The sun cast palm tree-shaped shadows across our path.
The operation had been a success, but the patient died. We had lost the Griffin Interrogator.
It was as if Julia had been reading my thoughts. ‘It’s in Portland,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘The Griffin Interrogator. It’s at the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, Portland. My uncle had the Navy mock up an imitation. I swapped it for the real one at The Drake after we grabbed Kardosov. That’s what Budermann took off you in Chicago. I told Mendale before we went into the villa.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘Trust has to be earned. It takes time, like love.’
Julia was right. It took me nearly three years to convince her to marry me.