A Death in Geneva (38 page)

“You're the bloody little bastard!” Head cursed the fat, goateed face. “Over there!” He waved the gun from Tooms to the lab table. “Both hands on the table, Tooms, spread your bloody legs!” Tooms obeyed. Head lurched behind him, jammed the pistol barrel against the base of his skull. “You're dead, you pig!”

“Goddamnit, Pau—” The pistol slapped hard across Tooms's mouth. He could taste the blood.

“You're a dead pig. Your pig's face, it doesn't understand. Keep your fat, bloody mouth shut! . . . Pig! You will understand.” He banged the pistol against the back of Tooms's head, pushed him toward the research cylinder. “Open it! It would be a waste if you died bloody ignorant!”

Tooms's hands were wet with sweat and the blood of his face. He popped the remaining band knowing what he would find. The halves of the cylinder were a snug fit. He had to hit the joint twice with the heel of his palm before it parted to reveal the professionally machined dull black and bronze of the encased explosive. “Mine! You—” The pistol cracked him again, hard against the back of his skull. He fell against a bulkhead, tried desperately to clear his mind—to stay alive.

“You're bloody right, for the first time in your criminal pig's existence, Dr. Oswald Pig Tooms. Not one mine! Three bloody mines, pig!” Tooms recoiled as Head measured him with the gun. “The tankers are dead; Starring's dead; you're dead!”

It was too enormous; too sinister. Head couldn't be lying. Tooms slowly made his way to a bunk, unsure of his life second by second. “You're nuts, Paul.” The chief scientist's face, blotched by the blows it had taken, peered at the pistol. He pushed himself into a sitting position. “A hophead—”

“Your last rites, pig; the pig's final bloody statement.”

“Hophead. I know you're on heroin, Christ!” The words broke with a deep, tearing cough. “Don't you think I've known it since we shipped. Everywhere you go, you and Tonasi smell like half of Singapore. Get out of here . . . up, over the side! I don't give a damn where. I'll say I never heard of you!”

“Enough, pig!”

Tooms heard the click, saw the pistol level at his chest. Head's eyes, tight with pain, had narrowed still further. “You're going to blow some things up now, are you, young Paul? Listen. This cylinder wasn't built for your Wild West show. Start popping off with that and
you won't get near your pet mine! . . . Right through to the Chesapeake, sonny boy, and we'll go together.”

Head had staggered closer, was almost on top of him. “No more, pig. This bullet's going straight down through your pig's body, no holes in the bloody habi—”

Tooms slammed his heel into the outside of Head's knee. The snap of the bones and cartilage carried through their violent grunts and the crack of the pistol. Tooms didn't feel the bullet rip through his thigh. As Head fell toward him, Tooms's left arm came down hard on the inside of his elbow. His right hand fought and grappled for the gun. The second shot entered beneath Head's chin and exited at the back of his skull. Head's blood splattered onto his own. Tooms pushed the corpse away and stumbled to his feet before collapsing unconscious on the deck beneath the intercom.

At 5:00 P.M., July 4, twelve noon in Washington, Paul Manikata, co-owner of the largest yacht slipways in Valletta's Marsamxett Harbor, crossed the bridge onto Manoel Island enroute to his office. He was intercepted at the door, told of the American in the market for a yacht who was waiting for him.

They shook hands; Manikata introduced himself. “I don't know if you know Malta. I've just been down the coast a bit, Birzebbuga, on Pretty Bay, part of greater Marsaxlokk Bay . . . no, I can see that you don't. One of my better customers has not yet mastered his new auxiliary diesel. Rather late now, closing time really. How may I help you?”

Pierce Bromberger held out a calling card, name only, which was accepted and given an approving examination. “I'm glad I caught up with you. My flight leaves tomorrow morning.”

“We do not have quite as many Americans as we used to. Here, sit over here, a bit more comfortable.” Bromberger moved to the tattered leather armchair facing the desk.

“We're in the business of siting our new branch office, Mr. Manikata. Malta, Monaco, Venice are all in the running.” Bromberger could see the wheels of calculation beginning to turn behind the tilted, smiling face. The search for the
Matabele
had not taken long. He had begun early that morning, strolling along the stern-to-quai yacht berths of Msida Creek, then Lazzaretto Creek and Manoel Island. It was on the
island that his casual inquiries had produced the needed response. “Yes, on the far side, big ketch, anchored off the slipways. Manikata is the one to see.” He had continued his stroll past Fort Manoel and the yacht club around to the slipways where he spotted the hull.

“Wherever we decide to put down our new roots, Mr. Manikata, I won't be content to stay ashore. Yachting is second only to women in life, and I like what I see here: good lines, and, important to me, real character. I've checked around and been told that you have the best stable in town, in the country for that matter. Is that so?”

“We have some very fine boats. Indeed, I am expecting a shipment of new Victor offshore thirty-two-foot sloops any day now.”

“You're talking glass?”

“Yes, indeed. Fiberglass hulls, teak decks—”

“Not for me, Mr. Manikata. Keep your glass. If you can make a few more minutes for me, I'd like to take a look at two or three of your yachts.”

“It's late, but, yes, of course.” The yard owner hitched his chair toward the side of the desk, pulled open a long, green metal file-box drawer, poked through a row of cards, extracting five. The American's card had been genuinely engraved. He could feel it in his fingers . . . a visit most unexpected, most welcome. Manikata led the way through the rear door of the office into the now-deserted boat yard. He shouldered a wooden ladder and headed for a venerable, deep-keeled sloop high out of the water in a boat cradle. Bromberger climbed aboard, made his way through the boat, asking questions about her history, removing a deckboard in the cabin to jab at the bottom planking with his penknife. “She's a beauty. You say you are the owner?”

“Bought her three months ago, none better for off-shore cruising.”

They inspected two more before Bromberger pointed to the ketch in the harbor. “There's one more I would like to see, well rigged, good hull, looks like she has a generous interior—good for entertaining.”

“The
Matabele
?” The yard owner turned from the American to put the ladder away. He needed a minute to think. That boat was supposed to have been called for. He already had had to shift the mooring. The owner, that girl, probably wouldn't mind the prospect of a premium price, with a proper commission for him. He walked out
onto one of the small finger piers with the American. “That ketch is not mine to sell, Mr. Bromberger.”

“Is the owner aboard?”

“No, no one. She's locked up, in storage so to speak.”

“Sounds promising. They might be willing to let her go. Mind if I take a look?”

The thought of the commission loomed again. “Yes, of course you may have a look around. You understand, I really must close down the office. I'll get you the key to the cabin hatch. Take the dingy over there.”

The elusive person of Leslie Renfro grew more elusive still—departed England, gone from her uncle's residence in Malta, and now, by the looks of it, gone from the
Matabele
. Bromberger worked his way through the ketch's cabins, yanking open the empty lockers, the chests, the bunk-bed drawers, running his fingers along the hidden recesses of the interior. His mind went back to Switzerland, to the fragments of the case they had in hand—to the questioning under way in Italy—to the futility of this trip to Malta. What were they extracting in Rome? Damnit, that's where he should be.

His hand stopped behind a bunk, pulled out an empty drawstring cloth sack, tobacco, Italian marking. The old captain said the boat had come from Italy. He tucked the bit of cloth back. In the cabin shadows of the approaching evening, he took the penlight from his jacket, pointed it here and there into the dark corners. The chart drawer and table were empty. He poked through the galley, aware that Manikata would soon grow impatient. The pieces of the case . . . Sweetman had seventh, eighth and ninth senses . . . now, in Malta, still nothing . . . what was missing? One of the killers was a woman. He was looking for a woman, Sweetman's lost diver's daughter. What were the odds; about four billion to one?

He flipped two brass bolts, removed the cabin stairs, and pointed his light back into the dark engine compartment . . . nothing extra, the dark gray enamel of the engine wiped clean as it should be. This daughter . . . she, they—the old captain had said there were three of them—knew what they were doing. The ketch was well-maintained. Three of them . . . Grabner and his blond Englishman . . . the GIS . . . the Prima Linea . . . blond scruffy member of the
Matabele
's crew? For Christ's sake . . . they were in Malta, how the hell many miles away from Geneva? . . . Aboard the ketch when Burdette died. Where the
hell were they now? They didn't fit. If he had found her, talked to her, he would be on his way back to Rome!

Bromberger replaced the cabin stairs, stuck his head out of the hatch, and called across the boat basin.

“She's great, really great, be back over in a second.”

He ran his light along the electrical box on the bulkhead over the toilet, raised the toilet lid. A coating of grayish mold covered the small circle of water at the base of the bowl. They had been off the ketch for sometime. He walked the length of the cabin, stopped at the open grate of the cast-iron fireplace, bits of black wood charcoal amidst the ashes. Someone keeping warm, hardly necessary this time of year, not in this part of the world.

He bent down, played his light against the back of the fire chamber. His eyes, at first, had tricked him. It wasn't a panel in the metal. It was a thin piece of wood stuffed up into the back, charred black on the side facing into the cabin, but not consumed before the fire had died . . . squared-off at one end, nail hole, broken at the other end; pine crating, the same the world over. He rolled the wood in his hands. Nothing . . . he caught the variations in the black. In searing the surface, the flames had burnt some lettering or numbering.

He twisted the wood until the penlight offered the best distinction between the blacks . . . stenciling . . . probably a company name or consignment code . . . consignment code. What he saw was immediately familiar to him, yet the reason escaped him. There were two partial lines, in fact, both half deleted, both broken by the narrow breadth of the board. The numbers, groups of two and three: above them, the perpendicular and V of a letter, two inward diagonals and what appeared to be a crossbar, another V, then a break and a repeat perpendicular and V, this time another perpendicular curving out to the right at the tip, then the broken end of the board.

N. It's an N. He continued to work through the puzzle. NAV . . . NAV . . . NAI . . . NAV . . . NAP . . . “NAV NAP!” He shouted in the cabin, “Sweet Jesus God!” He thrust the wood into his jacket pocket, too long. He wiped his hands on the nearest bunk cushion, unbuttoned two buttons and slipped the wood beneath his shirt, locked the
Matabele
's hatch, and pulled the few oars' lengths back to the yard.

“You find the ketch to your liking, Mr. Bromberger?”

“Very much. Where can I find the owner, Leslie Renfro, Mr. Manikata?”

The Maltese yard owner was amused by the American's impatience, so typical. “I'll put you in touch, sir, but it cannot be . . . how did you know her name? Of course, some identification in the cabin. It cannot be done overnight. I will have to confirm that the ketch is in fact still for sale. I have a professional obligation to check with the owner, as you will appreciate—and she and her crew are in America, your United States, Mr. Bromberger.” He chortled over the coincidence. “Yes, they left Malta at least a fortnight ago with your famous American industrialist aboard that splendid ship I had the honoring of visiting—”

Bromberger was already on the run out of the yard before Manikata had uttered “the
Towerpoint Octagon
.” He had to alert Sweetman—new players on the pitch!