Pirate (9 page)

Hawke thumbed the radio mike.

“Blackhawke, Blackhawke,
Chopstick’s under attack…repeat…under…
attack
…we are taking evasive measures…copy?”

“Skipper!”
Blackhawke
’s fire-control officer replied, “we’re not believing this, sir. I think they—yeah, they are launching! Get out of there!”

“She just
launched,”
Hawke said, disbelief palpable in his voice. They were off the coast of France, for God’s sake. He yanked the wheel once more hard to starboard. “A surface missile! Are they all bloody insane around here?”

“Can you lose it, sir?” Quick asked, eyeing the screen in utter disbelief. He clenched his shoulder and staggered every time they went off a wave and exploded through a wall of water. The big props dug in once more and they shot forward.

“I don’t know—depends—if it’s heat- or radar-guided and—you know what, to hell with this…
Blackhawke
! Talk to me!”

“Roger that, Skipper,” came the cool voice of the crewman manning the ship’s fire-control and commo operations center. “Missile has no active radar…it is heat-seeking…we, uh, we have lock-on with the attacking vessel…they, uh, the attacking vessel not responding to repeated verbal warnings, sir.”

“Who the hell are they?” Hawke demanded, curving an impossibly tight right turn.

“Refuses to identify herself, over. Visual ident impossible in this thick stuff, sir.”

“Are these outboards hot enough to pull that missile in?”

“Maybe not…it’s going to be close—hard left now!”

Hawke looked back at Stokely and the rescued American holding on for dear life in the stern of the Zodiac. He needed to get Harry Brock to safety. He’d do what he had to do. He put the damn thing halfway up on its side the turn was so tight.

The missile passed harmlessly not ten feet aft of his stern.

“Blackhawke,
sink the attacking vessel. Fire when ready.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper. We confirm that.
Blackhawke
is launching—”

“I cannot believe this shit!” Stokely shouted. “Man, we—nobody shoots a damn missile at a little rubber boat!”

The Zodiac was lifted upward on a roiling mound of water by the massive explosion aboard the attacking boat. The soupy grey fog surrounding them instantly became an incandescent orange and the shockwave nearly ripped the four men from the small inflatable.

Whoever had had the nerve to shoot at him no longer existed.

The sea-skimming Boeing Harpoon AGM 84-E missile fired at Hawke’s command by
Blackhawke
was carrying nearly five hundred pounds of Destex high explosive in its warhead. The Harpoon unerringly found its target. Seven of the attacking vessel’s crewmen were killed in the initial explosion, two drowned, and one died from severe burns some hours later in a Cannes hospital. The ship burned for twenty minutes before she rolled and went to the bottom.

If you even glanced at the papers next morning, although it hardly seemed possible given the events of the first few years of the twenty-first century, the world seemed to have slipped its moorings yet again.

Somehow, a French vessel had been sunk off Cannes. Hawke would later learn she was
L’Audacieuse,
No. 491, a type P40 attack cutter on patrol for the French navy.
L’Audacieuse,
it was claimed in an appearance by the French Foreign Trade minister, Luca Bonaparte, was on routine patrol off the port of Cannes, when, without provocation, she was deliberately and viciously fired upon and sunk with all hands by a British vessel believed to be in private hands.

If you paid much attention to the screaming headlines in French newspapers or the endless state-run France Inter Radio or France 2 television reports, you would believe that France and England were on the brink of war over the incident.

At the center of this new international storm, a certain captain of British industry named Alexander Hawke.

AMBROSE STOOD IN THE COLD RAIN ON THE GLISTENING
pavement. Traffic on Lambeth Palace Road, just outside the south entrance to St. Thomas’s Hospital, was heavy. He was waiting for Inspector Ross Sutherland to appear. The man was a good ten minutes late and Congreve, who had spent the last four hours sitting by the comatose Mrs. Purvis’s bedside in a dreary wing of St. Thomas’s Hospital, was not in the sunniest of moods. He was about to step from the curb and hail a taxicab when the dark-green Mini Cooper appeared, careening around the corner at a high rate of speed and skidding to a stop one foot from the curb.

Sutherland club-raced the thing weekends out at Goodwood and Aintree and the car still had a large number 8 stuck to the side of the door. Ambrose had never in his life imagined owning a car, but he thought of buying one at that very moment. A dark blue Bentley Saloon, prewar, with walnut picnic trays that folded down in the rear. Yes. It would look lovely parked in the gravel drive at Heart’s Ease. He could motor out to Sunningdale for his Saturday foursome or to Henley on Sundays, pack a basket, a chilled bottle of good—

The numbered passenger door flew open and Congreve bent himself down and over, contorting his comfortably large corpus so that it miraculously folded inside the rolling deathtrap. His umbrella was another matter. It refused to collapse without a Herculean effort and snapped shut only after a pinched thumb and a few well-chosen words from its owner. Only then did Ambrose pull the door shut, find what comfort he could by adjusting the rake of the barebones racing seat, and acknowledge Ross Sutherland’s presence behind the wheel.

“He stoops to conquer,” Ambrose said with a wry smile, strapping himself in. He’d learned long ago that complaining to Sutherland about his beloved Mini was air he could save for more fruitful use elsewhere. Ross murmured something vaguely apologetic, noisily engaged first gear, and accelerated at an astounding rate of speed until he was able to insert the damnable machine into an invisible hole in the stream of traffic humming along Lambeth Road. Congreve ran his fingers through his damp thatch of chestnut hair, heaved a sigh of relief at getting out of the rain, and pulled his briar pipe from an inside pocket of his sodden tweeds.

“Sorry I’m late, sir,” Sutherland said, eyeing his superior out of the corner of his eye. “A holy fuss at the Yard and I couldn’t duck out until quarter past.”

“Late? Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Congreve was packing his bowl with Peterson’s Irish. His voice was flat. “I assumed I was early.”

“Well,” Sutherland said, shifting gears, his bright tone suggesting a change of mood and subject as well, “how is dear Mrs. Purvis getting along, sir?”

“Expected to recover fully, thank God.”

“What are the doctors saying, sir?”

“The bullet nicked her heart.”

“Good lord.”

“Left ventricle. She was extremely lucky. A centimeter northeast and she’d be bound for glory.”

“I’m so—sorry, Chief. I know how fond of her you are. Whoever did this—”

“Bastards.”

“Plural?”

“I may be wrong.”

Sutherland knew better than to even chance a reply to that one. Congreve was seldom wrong, but never in doubt. After ten minutes in heavy South East London traffic, they were making quite good time motoring south along the Albert Embankment. The clouds had lifted, forming a clearly defined purplish grey line beneath which lay a band of orange sky. The sun had dipped below the visible horizon and the Thames was bathed in a red glow, a long black barge chugging slowly downstream toward Greenwich. Eventually Congreve said, “Next turning. That’s it, right here. Moreton Street. It’s a shortcut.”

A few minutes later they pulled to a stop in front of Henry Bulling’s former home at Number 12, Milk Street. Large puddles of standing water dotted the street and the downpour had eased, replaced by a vaporous rain, cold and invasive. The house itself was a halfheartedly mock Tudor wedged between an ugly rash of modern bungalows and two-story boxes of variegated flesh-toned brick. Ambrose had been subconsciously hoping the Bulling residence would surprise him with a cheery, pleasant facade. It did not.

He still felt a twinge of guilt at his good fortune in the matter of Aunt Augusta’s will.

“Do you have the key?” Ambrose asked as they mounted the wooden steps. A few soggy copies of the
Times
and the
Daily Mirror
lay against the entrance. Congreve noted that the most recent edition was five days prior. Who had canceled service?

“Aye, here you are, sir,” Sutherland said, putting his murder bag down on the peeling floorboards and fishing the marked evidence envelope containing the key out of his pocket. Sutherland, sans the pleasant Highland burr, was a dead spit for an American. A former Royal Navy aviator, Hawke’s wingman during the first Gulf War in fact, Ross had the fresh crew-cut looks and brisk bonhomie one generally associates with England’s cousins across the sea. He’d turned into a fine copper, however, and the two men had notched a few successes together. Most recently, they had succeeded in identifying the murderer of Alex Hawke’s bride, the late Victoria Sweet. That foul murder, a grotesque act of vengeance, had occurred on the steps of the chapel as the beautiful bride had emerged into the sunlight. It still rankled, it still hurt.

Ambrose and Ross had cracked the case, true enough, but it was Ross Sutherland, along with Stokely Jones, who had brought the man to summary justice on a remote island in the Florida Keys.

Congreve and his colleague had retained Yard offices in Victoria Street, but both were on semipermanent loan from Scotland Yard, enlisted in the service of Alex Hawke on an as-needed basis. It seemed to Congreve that Hawke needed him constantly, as the boy was always getting into the middle of one scrape or another.

Ambrose, along with the Hawke family retainer, Pelham Grenville, had practically raised the child since the murder of his parents by drug pirates in the Caribbean. The boy had been just seven years old when he witnessed the murder. Congreve would never admit to it, even to himself, but his feelings toward young Hawke since their first meeting could reasonably be described as paternal.

Ross inserted the key into the lock and swung the seamed and weathered oak door inward. He paused and looked over his shoulder before crossing the threshold. Long shadows of purple dusk fell over the quiet street. The only sound was a chattering of starlings. Stunted beeches stood on the bare soaked ground in front of a few houses. If there were neighbors here on Milk Street, they were all hidden away inside, electric fires burning in the grate, huddled round the supper table or the telly.

“You didn’t sign that key out, did you?” Congreve asked Ross, switching on his powerful torch, and swinging it into the gloom of the front hall as he stepped inside.

“No worries, Chief. I just borrowed the key from Evidence.”

“Good lad,” Ambrose murmured his approval, glad as always to keep the Yard at arm’s length in these situations.

Congreve stepped inside and flared his nostrils, processing the myriad odors of the place. Tobacco, primarily (Henry smoked like a fiend) and pungent old carpet, seldom if ever hoovered. Dusty furniture and draperies, boiled beef and cabbage and Brussels sprouts from the back of the house where the kitchen would be. There’d been a cat at one point, perhaps several, and possibly a canary if the moldy scent of soggy Hartz Mountain seed was any indication.

Nothing surprising, really. No coppery scent of blood at any rate. No odd gases or poisonous chemicals.

There was one thing. A scent most startling to his finely attuned olfactory organ, a very faint trace of some expensive perfume. Odd. A female visitor? Yes. Sophisticated, and of sufficient means to afford
les parfums Chanel.
It was the new one, he thought, not the one he loved, No. 5. No. Allure. That was it. So she was younger rather than older, fashionable, and well-heeled, to boot. Henry? She must have had the wrong house.

Sutherland turned on his flashlight and beamed it up the narrow stairwell. Ambrose watched the beam’s ascent to the dark at the top of the stairs. The flowered stair carpet was worn and stained and gave off an unpleasant scent of age and dirt.

There was heavy oak paneling and hideous Victorian sconces mounted on all four walls of the small foyer. He flicked the three brass toggles on the switchplate. Nothing. The electricity had been turned off. And probably the gas as well, Ambrose imagined. Most likely when the leaseholder had been informed by an MI5 agent investigating Bulling’s disappearance that his tenant was probably not returning to the premises in the foreseeable future.

“There’s the lovely parlor,” Congreve said, swinging his flashlight’s beam to the right. By the cheery tone of his voice Sutherland could tell the clouds had at last lifted. The old bloodhound already had the scent, it seemed. “Why don’t you start in there, Ross? A good lesson in Gothic decor for you. I’ll work the kitchen down there at the rear and then we’ll go up and toss the boudoir as an
ensemble.
Good hunting.
Bonne chance!”
he said, and bounded off.

Inspector Sutherland smiled at Congreve’s ironic French usage. Rumors were flying. Something was up with the damnable froggies and it wasn’t good. He began his inspection of the dreary sitting room knowing full well that MI5 had been there many times before him, had vacuumed and bagged and logged every microscopic particle, used black light and Luminol on the walls and furniture looking for blood spatter and done as thorough a job as was humanly possible. That, he thought with a grin, was usually where Ambrose Congreve came in. He was an inhumanly gifted forensic investigator.

It was only a matter of time before Ross heard the familiar telltale exclamation from the kitchen at the rear.

“A-ha!” came Congreve’s jubilant shout.

Sutherland continued with his own search, turning over cushions and probing them with his fingers, tweezering the odd particle or fiber into a glassine envelope, giving Congreve time to relish and contemplate his own discovery, whatever it might be. They had their routines; they had worked side by side long enough to form them.

Ten minutes later he heard the expected summons issued from the kitchen. “Ah, young Sutherland, would you mind joining me back here?”

He found the Chief sitting at the kitchen table. On it were two mugs of tea and a small thin envelope made of silver mylar with a plastic zipper seal. Ambrose was drumming the fingers of his right hand upon the envelope and staring at a mustard-colored prewar ice box standing against the wall beneath the high rain-streaked windows. His mien was one of benign contemplation.

Sutherland sat in the chair opposite and lifted the mug to his lips. It was tepid, as expected, brewed by Congreve with whatever hot water remained in the pipes. But it was welcome and he drank it down. Putting his mug on the table, he looked at Congreve and saw that the man’s gaze remained fixed on the half-century-old appliance.

“What have you got here, sir?” he asked. Congreve turned and looked at him with his bright blue baby’s eyes.

“An enigma,” Congreve said, rolling the end of his waxed mustache between two fingers.

“Ah. One of those.”

“Not
an
enigma, really. The Enigma. I am considering the Nazi cipher machine your Royal Navy chaps found aboard that sinking U-boat seconds before she went down. The one that saved England’s bacon. You do know how they cracked that one? Figured out the Nazi encryptions embedded in that infernal machine?”

“Crossword puzzle geniuses, wasn’t it, sir? Psychics? Mind readers? Something like that. All gathered down at Bletchley Park, as I recall, trying to crack the code. And we did, too.”

“It wasn’t a code, Sutherland. Codes substitute whole words. The Enigma substituted individual letters. It was a cipher machine.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“And it wasn’t British codebreakers who cracked it, the opinions of assorted dime novelists to the contrary. Polish mathematicians cracked the Enigma, Sutherland. They’d begun intercepting the German Enigma transmissions in Poland in the early twenties. Poles found mathematical techniques could attack the problem of finding the machine’s message key. By exploiting the Nazis’ cryptographic error in repeating the message key at the start of each transmission, they—”

“Fascinating stuff indeed, sir, but—”

“I was just thinking that perhaps one of the reasons I’ve been able to offer some assistance to Alex Hawke all these many years is our complementary skills. On my end, my absolute hatred of mathematics. I like logic well enough, but numbers, no thank you. Alex is quite good with numbers. You have to be, I suppose, to fly an airplane as well as he does. Celestial navigation or what have you.”

“Chief—”

“Warm, hot-blooded mysteries are what ring my bell, Sutherland. Human mysteries. Like that one over there on the floor at the base of the freezer. That puddle of water. The machine started defrosting some time during the early morning hours. So, the electricity was on until then. Just shut off this morning. Which is why your MI5 chaps missed this little silver envelope. Someone pulled the plug about, oh, six and one-half hours ago. Who? Why?”

“You found that envelope in the freezer?”

“I did. Inside a defrosted crown rack of lamb, to be precise. In the center of the thing, under a mess of jellied madrilene. Fairly clever of Henry, if you must give the devil his due.”