8

Russell woke to find her face leaning over his in the darkness, and for a moment he thought time had taken him back to their first meeting. But on this occasion her hand was urgently shaking his shoulder. ‘I need your help,’ she said, seeing he was awake.

‘Why, what . . . ?’

‘One of the two girls is critical,’ she said.

His heart sank. ‘Not mine?’ he said stupidly.

‘No, not yours,’ she said impatiently, as he reached for his shoes. ‘That bastard Bodin’s.’

One voice in his head was thanking God that he was not responsible while another asked bitterly what difference it made. The girl didn’t care, that was for sure.

They walked briskly across the silent compound. The first hint of light seemed to be showing in the eastern sky, which meant it had to be around five-thirty. Russell wondered why she had woken him rather than one of the nurses or the vastly more experienced Calderón.

As so often, she seemed to read his mind. ‘The last time this happened we had trouble,’ she said. ‘A boy died and his brother went berserk. A guard shot and killed him. I don’t want any of the kids to know about this until they have to. So you’re my stand-in nurse.’

They reached the medical building. The girl was lying wrapped in a sheet on one of the operating tables, hooked up to an intravenous drip. Her pulse was almost non-existent.

‘Are you going to open her up again?’ Russell asked.

‘There must be internal bleeding,’ Emelisse said. ‘I’ve got no choice. Go and get scrubbed up while I watch her. And be quick.’

He was back out in a couple of minutes, but it no longer mattered. Emelisse was sitting, hands entwined above her head, on the adjacent table. Her eyes seemed cast in stone.

‘Is she dead?’ Russell said unnecessarily.

‘Yes.’ She looked at him for a second, then at the dead girl. ‘Can you go and wake Calderón,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he said doubtfully. ‘What do I tell him?’

She smiled bitterly. ‘That there’s a fresh corpse for him to harvest – what else?’

What else indeed. He hovered for a moment in the doorway, not wanting to leave her.

She was unwrapping the sheet.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. It sounded the stupidest of questions.

‘I’m going to open her up again and find out how that bastard fucked up,’ she said in a brittle conversational voice.

Russell went for Calderón. The birds were singing up a storm in the trees now, and he found the doctor already awake, reading an AMA journal and drinking a cup of freshly brewed coffee. The news of the girl’s death produced no obvious reaction, except perhaps a flicker of academic interest.

‘What was the cause of death?’ he asked, as they walked back across the compound.

‘Eme . . . Dr Alabri is finding out,’ Russell told him.

This produced a quickening of Calderón’s pace.

When they reached the operating room Emelisse was back on the adjoining table. This time Russell thought he detected a watering of the eyes. The dead girl lay open on the operating table. ‘Take a look,’ she told Calderón. ‘The bastard forgot to suture one of the arteries. Or just couldn’t be bothered.’

Calderón looked, and nodded. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said.

‘I should save your breath,’ she said. ‘He’ll probably get a bonus for donating the girl’s bones.’ And with that she strode out of the operating room, eyes blazing.

At twelve-thirty the next day they were eating lunch on the outside terrace of the Ocean View hotel. Marker watched her pick at her chicken salad, and wondered why his own appetite seemed to have deserted him. In the background he could see Franklin lurking, waiting for his signal.

That morning, after they had made love for the fourth time in ten hours, she had announced that she was flying to Miami that afternoon. She didn’t know when she would be returning to Provo. She didn’t seem to care either.

His implied dismissal had produced a multitude of conflicting emotions in Marker, uppermost of which were relief and an absurd sense of rejection. He had asked her to have lunch with him in reaction to the latter, and it was only later that he had devised the plan which he and Franklin were now about to put into operation.

She had accepted the invitation, but probably only as a convenient way of filling her time. Now, sitting there in dark glasses, she looked as unapproachable as any film star, and it was almost impossible to imagine that less than six hours earlier he had been engaged in passionately kissing almost every inch of the body encased in the tight black dress.

How could feelings so strong mean so little? Because memory was what preserved the meaning, and someone inside her had decided never to remember.

Marker stared out across the tranquil lagoon, inwardly sighed, and scratched his right ear. Almost immediately Franklin was towering over their table, eyes full of anger. He brought his face down to a position only a couple of feet from hers. ‘I know your brother kidnapped my friend,’ he told her, his voice low and menacing, ‘and I’m going to prove it if it’s the last thing I do. He may think he has important friends on Provo, but by the time I’m finished the people who live here will know exactly what he is. And all about his whore of a sister.’

‘Hey, mister,’ Marker said, getting slowly to his feet. ‘You take your mouth somewhere else.’ Tamara was silent. She seemed to be almost rigid in her chair.

‘Her brother kidnapped my friend,’ Franklin repeated belligerently, speaking louder this time. ‘Or killed him.’

Marker looked across at her, as if inviting a denial.

She just shook her head and looked down.

‘If you’re so sure, then take it to the police,’ Marker said curtly. There weren’t many people on the terrace, but they were all looking in his direction. ‘Now get the fuck out of here.’

Franklin looked at him, as if wondering whether to knock him over. ‘Her brother has the police in his pocket. And she’s probably had them all in her knickers.’ He turned back to her. ‘You tell him,’ he hissed.

She said nothing.

‘You enjoy bullying women?’ Marker asked, but the big man was already walking away through the tables.

Marker pulled his chair closer to her and sat down. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked gently.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. A lone tear welled up in her right eye. ‘I want to leave,’ she said suddenly, and reached for her handbag.

‘I’ll come to the airport with you,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, almost violently. ‘I don’t want you to. Leave me alone.’

There was nothing he could do. She walked briskly off the terrace, her heels clicking on the stone, every eye following her. Marker watched her go, and then went in search of Franklin and Cafell. He found them in a dark corner of the bar, and took a pint over to join them.

‘No joy,’ he said, ‘If she does know anything she’s either too scared or too loyal or too crazy to tell anyone. The whole business has been a fucking waste of time.’

‘With the emphasis on fucking,’ Cafell added slyly.

Marker didn’t laugh.

‘But we have found out something,’ Cafell went on, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket.

‘What’s that?’ Marker asked hopefully.

‘It’s some intelligence from the Yanks. The helicopter touched down on the floating helipad next to friend Arcilla’s boat at 22.58, and lifted off again at 00.24 hours. You said the helicopter arrived back here at around 03.30, which would figure. It’s a 520-mile trip, and the 365F Dauphin has a cruising speed of about 184mph. So around three hours for the journey.’

‘So?’

‘Don’t you see. We watched the damn thing leave before you went off to meet the lady. At 18.30.’

‘It took four and a half hours to get there and only three to get back . . .’

‘Deduction – they must have put down somewhere else. And not for fuel: the Dauphin has an operational range of 547 miles, fully loaded.’

Marker and Franklin looked at him.

‘Why would someone supplying a treasure hunt do that?’ Cafell insisted. ‘They’re either stopping to pick something up or drop something off. And since you didn’t find anything at the villa, the odds are they’re picking something up.’

‘From where?’

Cafell pulled a tattered map from his hip pocket and spread it out in front of them. ‘That’s an interesting question.’

‘Give us an interesting answer.’

‘OK. Half the Bahamas are between here and the Cal Say Bank, and there’s Cuba too.’ He pointed them out on the map. ‘A stopover on either wouldn’t be much of a detour. Of course, Cuba guards its airspace pretty thoroughly, but who knows what connections Arcilla might have there. Castro had one of his own generals shot a few years ago for involvement in the drug trade.’ Cafell looked up. ‘But I don’t think so. My money’s on here,’ he added, plonking a finger down on the map.

‘Haiti?’ Marker and Franklin exclaimed in unison. ‘Why?’ Marker asked.

‘It’s just a hunch. Maybe they’re smuggling voodoo dolls.’

‘OK,’ Marker agreed. ‘But let’s assume it’s drugs. The chopper leaves here, picks them up – maybe in Haiti, maybe somewhere else – and then delivers them to the Tiburón Blanco along with the supplies.’

‘It’s a perfect cover,’ Franklin murmured.

‘And that would explain why they do the resup at night,’ Marker added. ‘If anyone did challenge them they could always dump the drugs in the sea and have a perfectly legitimate reason for being in the area.’

‘And they must be using the submarine for the last leg of the journey,’ Franklin interjected. ‘From what I hear the US Coast Guard and Navy have made it pretty hard for smugglers to gain entry by air or sea. On the surface, that is. Arcilla obviously had the bright idea of going in underwater.’

‘You mean, while the submarine’s supposed to be down below Arcilla’s boat looking for treasure it’s really running a shuttle service to Florida?’ Cafell asked sceptically. ‘You’d think the Americans would have twigged the possibility of something like that when they checked out Arcilla’s boat.’

‘Maybe our allies have a blind spot,’ Marker suggested without much conviction. ‘But if they weren’t using the submarine, then how . . .? There’s only one way to find out,’ he said, ‘and that’s to check out the boat ourselves.’

‘Makes sense,’ Cafell agreed.

Franklin looked first at his watch and then at the others. ‘I guess this is where I’m sent back to work?’

Marker grinned. ‘And your mother. It’s been a pleasure working with you – that was some performance you gave us out there on the terrace.’

‘You can nominate me for the SBS Oscars when you get home.’ He downed the remaining half inch of beer. ‘Don’t get me wrong – I like what I do here,’ Franklin said, ‘but occasionally I miss the rush – know what I mean?’

Marker just nodded.

‘And if you need any jobs done around here you know where I am.’

‘Thanks,’ Marker said. ‘And if I were you I’d watch your back for a while. I don’t think Arcilla is the kind of man who likes being bad-mouthed in public. And to judge by her reaction today I should guess the relationship between the two of them is probably borderline pathological. And we don’t want a phone call saying you’ve disappeared leaving only a whiff of chloroform in the air.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Franklin said. ‘I got too much to lose these days.’ He gave them a final smile and strode out of the dark bar, disappearing into the sunlight outside.

‘Nice guy,’ Cafell murmured.

‘Yep.’ And a happy one, Marker thought. Franklin had told them that morning that he and Sibou had passed the first hurdle in being accepted as adoptive parents.

‘I think it’s time we reported in,’ Cafell said.

They drove back along the coast to the Coconut Cove. Marker extracted the PRC 319 radio from his luggage and put it on the table. ‘So what do we need to tell them?’ he asked, reminding himself that their activities to date hardly came under the heading of standard procedure.

‘A description of the foreplay,’ Cafell suggested.

Marker smiled, but the memories that came to mind were not comforting.

‘Just tell them what we have,’ Cafell said. ‘Or what we suspect. A chopper based here is picking up contraband and delivering it to Arcilla’s boat. As far as we know the contraband never touches British soil. OK?’

‘Right.’

‘We need to investigate the boat. And for that we need a boat of our own – one that’s capable of carrying a submersible. And probably US permission to fish in their waters, so to speak.’ He looked at Marker. ‘Why don’t you just let me take care of it?’

Marker grinned at him, picked up the radio and walked outside. He had already earmarked the patch of bare ground in front of the coconut palm grove as a perfect spot. It was only visible from the direction of the beach, and that was empty save for one couple soaking up the sun a hundred yards away.

He hunkered down on the sandy ground and arranged the two tuning antennae, pointing them up into the north-eastern sky and searching out the correct frequency. Then he unfolded the tiny keypad, typed out his identification code, and used the burst-transmission facility to send it. After receiving an acknowledgement he typed out his report and sent it, ending with a request for further instructions at 09.00 hours the following morning.

That should give Colhoun plenty of time, he thought, packing up the set once more. Time to persuade the Foreign Office that the operation should continue despite the slightness of the Provo connection, time to persuade the Admiralty to cough up a submersible, and maybe even time to enlist American help. Not too much help, though. He and Cafell didn’t want bit parts in a SEAL operation.

Lieutenant-Colonel Neil Colhoun had just reached home when the phone rang with the news of Marker’s transmission. He listened as the duty officer read it to him, then asked him to go over it again, slowly, as he took notes. Ten minutes later, attempting to decipher his own writing in the ‘office’ he and Jenny shared, he reached the familiar conclusion that it was time they got a fax machine.

Two things struck him immediately. One, if Marker and Cafell were right in their suppositions then the British connection, though negligible, was also vital. Two, they were no nearer to discovering the current location of Nick Russell or the reason for his disappearance.

The importance of a third point occurred to him. Arcilla’s treasure hunt was taking place in international waters. Even if anyone argued with Britain’s right to board his boat in search of a missing national, no one would be in a position to do anything about it.

He sat there for a few more moments, rehearsing the arguments he was about to make, and then dialled the first of two London numbers.

Fidel Arcilla leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. It was gone five in the evening, and he had spent most of a long day on the telephone. The slew of real-estate deals and political courtesy calls had all been necessary, but the excitement such activity had once generated in his breast had long since vanished. Making money was just too easy these days, and Arcilla increasingly found himself drawn into ventures that were unusual and uncertain enough to provide him with the challenge his older concerns lacked.

The article he had just finished reading in National Geographic was a clear case in point. He smiled to himself and picked up the internal phone. ‘Juan, come up for a moment,’ he said in Spanish.

His secretary came through the door a few seconds later. ‘Read that,’ Arcilla told him, passing over the article.

Juan Lozano sat down in the leather sofa, crossed his legs and began reading. He was a thin, handsome Cuban in his early forties, the son of first-generation exiles. His brain was almost as quick as Arcilla’s, but he feared he lacked the same imagination.

‘Orchids?’ Lozano said, looking up with a smile.

‘There is a market.’

‘I can see that. When people are prepared to pay $10,000 for one rare flower . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It’s incredible.’

‘It’s logical. This is why I give contributions to the environmentalists. Every time they pronounce a species endangered the value of a live specimen goes through the roof. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an orchid or a parrot.’

‘You’re interested in parrots as well?’

‘No, just orchids. There’s something classy about orchids.’

‘You want me to look into it.’

‘Yes. Find out who the players are, and whether the market is as good as the magazine says. Journalists have been known to exaggerate,’ he added wryly.

‘If you want a real challenge, how about whale smuggling?’

‘One day.’

Lozano left, and Arcilla got to his feet. That was enough for one day – there was no point in being a millionaire and working yourself to death.

He walked through into the bedroom and took off the tie he habitually wore for work, even in his own home. He examined himself in the full-length mirror, and saw much the same man he had seen for fifteen years. He was thirty-five now, and things would soon begin to change – his jawline would slacken, and his shiny black hair would begin to thin. Neither was an appealing prospect.

There was always cosmetic surgery. And there were good political reasons for spending money on the preservation of a youthful image. Look at the Kennedys, he told himself. Neither of them had been as good-looking as he was. It couldn’t be many more years now before Castro was finally swept away, and then he would need every card he had to reach the top of the pile.

He walked across to the glass doors which led out to the roof garden. Carmen was stretched out in her bikini beside the pool, reading some romantic junk. He wondered why he didn’t like clever women – it was not as though he had ever felt threatened by their intelligence. His sister had been clever as a child, but she didn’t have the temperament to feed her intelligence, to make use of it. She was arriving that evening, he remembered.

Carmen’s body reminded him of Tamara’s. Not that he had seen his sister fully naked for many years. In the year before they had sent him to prison, when he had been sixteen years old and she nearly thirteen, they had enjoyed sex together quite often, but once they were both safe in America she had never let him touch her again. He had accepted it, though sometimes he wondered why. Maybe it had been his age, but there had been an intensity about the times with her which he had rarely found again.

Carmen, on the other hand . . .

‘Jefe, Freddie is on the line from Provo.’

Arcilla walked back into the office, picked up the phone, and listened to what Bartholomew had to tell him, a look of faint amusement on his face.

‘Do you want me to teach the man a lesson?’ Bartholomew asked.

‘No. Not yet, anyway.’ Arcilla had just heard the door slam downstairs. It was probably Tamara. ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he said, and put the phone down.

He went downstairs. Tamara was pouring herself a drink in his den, having already turned on the TV. He turned it off again.

She sat down in the massage chair her brother used to relax himself.

‘I’ve just had Freddie on the phone,’ he said. ‘What did the man say to you?’

She looked at him coldly. ‘You promised me,’ she said. ‘Nothing on Provo,’ you said. ‘Nothing.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, but it couldn’t be avoided. It was a one-off, I promise. Now tell me what he said.’

‘He said you kidnapped his friend. Or killed him. Did you?’

‘He’s working for me now. Is that all?’

She smiled. ‘And he called me a whore.’

Arcilla’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who was the man you were with?’ he asked.

‘One of my tricks,’ she said.

‘Tamara!’

‘Except that you’re the only one who has ever paid me,’ she added.

Arcilla couldn’t decide whether to hit her or try and offer comfort, so he did neither. ‘Who was he?’ he asked again.

She shrugged. ‘An Englishman.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Marker.’

‘Is that his family name or his given name?’

‘I don’t know. I never asked.’

‘I don’t expect you know much about him, do you?’

She smiled at him. ‘No, I don’t.’

He sighed. ‘How long are you staying this time?’ he asked.

‘A few days, a few weeks . . .’

‘I’ll see you at dinner,’ Arcilla said, and went off in search of Lozano. The secretary was in his office, tidying his desk. Arcilla told him what had happened on Provo.

‘The man was just spouting off,’ Lozano said quietly. ‘His friend has vanished, and there’s nothing he can do about it. If you take any action against him that will only add weight to his accusations.’

It was what Arcilla had already decided. ‘I agree,’ he said, walking across to the open window. Two storeys beneath him Calle Ocho, the main business street of Miami’s Little Havana, was already lit up against the night. He remembered seeing the street for the first time, a few days after his arrival from Cuba, and thinking he had found paradise.

‘But?’ Lozano was asking.

His secretary knew him well. There was something not quite right about this business with Tamara. ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing.’ He looked down at the street again, smiling to himself.

Marker and Cafell had an early-morning swim, took breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and got back to their cabin in time to set up the PRC 319 for the expected transmission from Poole.

‘Proceed investigation of Arcilla boat,’ the message proper began, once Marker acknowledged he was receiving. ‘American help in pipeline. Will RV Miami Airport, off 14.30 departure Providenciales. Tickets waiting at airport. Stated requirement en route from Belize, ETA Florida Straits noon Sunday. Offshore rendezvous necessary. Good luck.’

Marker acknowledged once more, and the operator in Poole signed off.

‘The old man’s been busy,’ he said.

‘Good job too,’ Cafell said. ‘So far all I’ve done is take a holiday. It’s been nice, but . . .’

‘I get the drift,’ Marker said. All he had done was tangle up his own emotions. ‘I don’t know about you but I fancy a couple of hours on the reef before we leave.’

‘Suits me.’

They took their hired boat out one last time, but instead of exploring the reef they decided, on the recommendation of the marina boss, to visit one of the new wrecks, an eighty-foot cargo carrier which had gone down in sixty feet of water less than ten years before. It had been several years since Marker had explored a wreck, but the experience was much the same as it had ever been. Some men find mountain scenery reminds them of how unimportant their own lives are; Marker felt the same way about underwater wrecks. They were nearly always strangely haunting, as if the sea, having once reasserted its power over those who had been foolish enough to challenge it, had draped the sunken craft with living things in an effort to make it feel more at home.

Marker returned to the surface, feeling more at peace with the world than he had going down.

They returned the boat to the marina, packed and ate lunch in the hotel restaurant, then drove up to the car-hire firm, where Marker managed to convince the owner to collect his car from the airport in return for a small bonus. Once there they picked up their tickets, and Marker read a two-day-old New York Times while Cafell ploughed happily on through his Tom Clancy novel.

The flight was uneventful and on time. At Miami Airport they hadn’t yet reached Immigration when an Afro-American naval lieutenant pulled them to one side, confirmed who they were from their passports, and told them to accompany him. Several empty corridors, a flight of steps and a ride across the tarmac later, they arrived beside a waiting McDonnell Douglas OH-6A ‘Cayuse’ helicopter. The officer handed Marker an envelope.

‘These are your hotel reservations for tonight . . .’ he began.

‘Where?’ Marker asked. ‘Where are we going?’

The American looked at him blankly, then laughed. ‘Don’t you know? Key West. End of the line. Like I said, these are your hotel reservations. Tomorrow morning at eleven someone will collect you from your rooms and take you to a meeting with Vice-Admiral Baskin. OK?’

Marker put the envelope in his pocket. ‘OK. Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’

The pilot was waiting in the cockpit, and they seemed to be in the air before they were settled in their seats.

The flight took less than an hour. First they passed over an endless grid of suburbs, then a vast expanse of bare grassland in which stands of trees stood out like islands. And then they were out across the ocean, with the hundred-mile chain of the Florida Keys marching along to their left, the serene waters of Florida Bay directly beneath them.

The Cayuse touched down on the Key West helipad shortly before five in the afternoon, only thirty yards or so from the car which was waiting to take them to their hotel. As they drove across the island towards the old town area the streets became increasingly distinctive, with beautiful old clapboard houses peeking out from behind an abundance of gorgeous tropical vegetation.

A couple of men walking hand in hand reminded Marker that much of the town’s recent notoriety rested on the size of its gay population.

Rather disappointingly, their hotel turned out to be a modern six-storey concrete block wedged between the old town centre and the Coast Guard base. Both were visible from their fourth-storey balcony, as was a crowd of apparent revellers on the sea-front promenade almost directly beneath them. Marker asked the navy driver, who had helped them with the diving gear, what was going on.

‘It’s just the sunset,’ he explained.

‘The sunset?’ Marker asked disbelievingly. The sun was indeed setting, but presumably it did that every night.

‘It’s a local thing,’ the driver explained. ‘Every evening people gather to watch it down there. Locals, tourists, everyone. When I was first posted here I thought they must be nuts. But when you think about it, it’s kind of a cool idea.’

Marker and Cafell looked at each other.

‘When in Rome,’ the driver said. ‘Anyway, I’ll be back at nine in the morning, OK?’

‘Sure, thanks.’

‘So shall we go join the sun-worshippers?’ Cafell asked once the driver was gone.

‘Of course.’

They took the lift down and joined the throng, most of whom seemed to be sipping or gulping cocktails. The sunset was certainly spectacular, and when the last slice of brilliance slipped behind a distant island the crowd burst into applause.

Marker found himself thinking about Tamara Arcilla, and the smell of her hair in his face.