Buzzard Bay (59 page)

“Rikker, what the hell are you doing here?”

Rikker didn’t even seem to be surprised. “About time you got here. They spotted me and pinned me down, but I’m pretty sure I saw Mother getting on that boat. They took her out to the yacht out there. Now the boat’s back picking up the rest of them. They set everything inside on fire before they left,” he reported.

“Do you think they’re all gone?” Novak asked. He could see that the boat leaving the dock was a patrol boat, probably the one Sir Harry had used to leave the Crystal Palace.

“Yep, there’s no one shooting at me anymore, and I watched them get on that boat.”

Novak got on his phone, “Bring the jeep down here. They seem to have left.”

Then he called the police dispatcher and finally got through. “I need a helicopter down to Lyford Cay and send any patrol boats that are available.”

“Is this to do with the fire down there, sir?”

“Yes, and we need to check out a yacht that’s leaving here.”

“Sir Harry already informed us about all that. He said he had it under control and not to worry about it.”

“I want a helicopter down here right now,” Novak yelled into the phone.

The dispatcher sounded annoyed. “I’m sorry, sir, but you know how busy we’ve been. There’s nothing available right now, maybe in an hour or so. We’ll do our best, sir,” and he was gone.

Novak put down his phone; slowly it was sinking in. Henekie was right; without Sir Harry and Horatio to back him up, he had lost all his power.

The Nassau police had always resented Horatio being made police chief, and Novak knew they resented him for moving in and covering up Horatio’s inadequacies. Well, better he knew where he stood than making a fool of himself later.

The men had brought the jeep down to where the wire fence started. Now they were ramming the fence until it fell over, and they all went inside the compound. The prevailing breeze coming in off the water still didn’t totally dispel the intense heat; they could see there was a long garage attached to the main house with at least six cars outlined in fire. It was pretty evident that this had been a pretty posh estate, but not much would be left now.

A palm tree between them and the burning buildings burst into flame scattering everyone until they understood what it was. The men gathered around Novak. “There’s something sinister about this place. There aren’t any fire trucks, no lights coming on in the houses down the street. No one is coming out to see what’s going on. Who in hell lives here, Novak?” one of them asked.

Novak took a deep breath before he answered. “The people who live here don’t know their neighbors and don’t want to know them. The man who lives in this house is the same guy who owns that yacht out there and your boss Wilbur Smith is with him.”

“Then why are we here?” the same man asked.

Novak was saved from answering right away by the ringing of his phone. He thought it would be the police dispatcher giving him an update, instead he heard a staticy voice.

“Are you over at that fire we can see on shore?” the voice asked.

Novak was taken off guard. “Yes,” was all he answered.

“Well, stay there. I’m sending a package your way.”

Novak had a hundred questions to ask, but Henekie was gone.

“Gentlemen, that call was to tell us we might just as well stay here and secure things until they send something our way. If we go back, I know they’ll find something for us to do, so let’s rest up here till someone comes and tells us different.” They were all tired, and the men didn’t argue; it was a beautiful beach and a beautiful night. There was nothing they could do about the fire but watch it burn, so the men began finding a comfortable place to bunk in.

Novak joined Rikker who continued to pace the beach.

“Look,” he pointed, they left the boat. I can swim out to it.” Rikker had no sooner waded into the water when they saw a flash of light. The patrol boat bucked and then began turning on its side.

“Might as well relax, Rikker,” Novak told him. “Your dad and another man are out there on a boat. I have no idea what they’re going to do. I just wouldn’t want to be the guys on that yacht.”

“He shouldn’t have let her get there in the first place,” Rikker answered angrily.

“I think you’d better sit down here beside me, and I’ll tell you the story of your mother and father, Rikker. It’s pretty obvious you have no idea how every time those two were torn apart, how hard your father had to fight to get back to her. Let’s hope he can do it one more time.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

T
ORCH IT!” SIR
Harry said into the phone.

“It’s done,” his man said back to him, “everything’s on fire. This old timber is going up like a matchbox.”

“Good, I want nothing left. Who do you think the people are out front?” Sir Harry asked.

“Don’t know. They didn’t shoot back so if it is the police, they aren’t well armed.”

“We’re headed for the patrol boat now. We’ll be aboard in a few minutes,” his man told him.

ir Harry turned to his captain and pointed to a chart. “Here’s where we’re going. About here, you’ll see the lights of a ship. Call me and I’ll tell you what to do from there. Until then, I’ll be in the stateroom, and I don’t want to be disturbed.” Sir Harry started down the stairs with Wilbur Smith close at his heels.

“I thought we were taking what we had and getting the hell out, Harry? What’s this we’re still going out to Smyskin’s yacht?”

“The trouble with you, Wilbur, is you think too small. Do you think I brought those two women along just so you could fuck them? They are our ticket to the billion. Smyskin’s yacht is just sitting there, expecting us to come aboard. That’s why I brought my men along. We hit them and hit them hard before they know what happened, Wilbur. I not only want the billion, I want his yacht too.” Sir Harry stopped on the stairs, “You’d look pretty good in this yacht, wouldn’t you, Wilbur?”

A look of comprehension came into Wilbur’s eyes. “Okay, but what about the banker from the states? He’ll know something is up.”

ir Harry turned and continued down the stairs. “You also worry too much, Wilbur. All he wants is the cash we promised him to make this deal work, and I’ve got that with me in a suitcase.”

ir Harry had kept Lena and July apart for the simple reason that he didn’t want them messing each other up in a catfight and then having to present themselves in front of the American banker. He had them both brought into the stateroom and placed across the table from each other. “It’s pretty obvious you two don’t like each other, but I need you to behave yourselves until you do a little business for me. If you do as you’re asked, then there’ll be no consequences, and we’ll all go on our way.”

“So what is it, Harry? We go out to Smyskin’s yacht, have a little party, fuck Smyskin and his brother, and everybody goes home happy,” July asked sarcastically.

Lena laughed, “Good guess, but no cigar. Your husband put a billion dollars of Smyskin’s money in your account in the states, and now you have to sign some papers so he can get it back.

“ I’m sure you had nothing to do with this,” July fired back.

“Sure, I helped him do it,” Lena answered her.

“Ladies, ladies, this is exactly what I didn’t want,” Sir Harry warned them.

“For your information, both the Smyskins were killed last night, so that leaves you all off the hook, but in return, I want that money turned over to me.” Both Lena and July sat quietly digesting this turn of events, so Sir Harry carried on. “Mr. Green has to sign too, so we are flying him out to meet us. Once the papers are signed, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” The two women were not paying any attention to Sir Harry; their attention was on each other.

“So you and Bob stole a billion dollars and planned to run away together.”

Lena lit a cigarette then she responded. “You don’t like me much since I fucked your husband, do you?”

Everyone in the room expected July to go over the table after Lena, but she fooled them all by sitting back in her chair. “If that’s what he wants, then he can fucking well have you.”

Lena’s response was also unexpected. “Oh, I’m not what he wants, July.”

“He wasn’t presented to me as your husband, not that that would have stopped me because I like men, and they enjoy me. Your husband was different. I once accused him of being gay because no matter what I did, I could never seduce him. After a while, I just decided he was too wrapped up in himself to let me in, but now that I’ve seen who my competition is, I understand why.”

“Nice try, Lena, that makes me feel a lot better about you two stealing money together.” It was obvious July didn’t trust her. “Someone was trying to steal that money from me, July. I needed a foreign account to hide it in, and your husband happened to have one. Inadvertently, I think that account saved his life because the Smyskins needed him to get the money back.” Lena took a drag from her cigarette giving July some time to take this all in.

“There’s something else you should know. There is no way Harry here can let us go alive once we sign the paper. We will sign because you and Mr. Green won’t be able to stand seeing each other tortured and I can’t stand pain, so our only bargaining tool is to ask to make our demise quick,” Lena said calmly.

“Now ladies, let’s not be so morbid. Of course I’ll let you go, just do as I ask, and everything will be all right.”

July looked over at Sir Harry, “I can usually pick a man apart and put him back together pretty quickly, but you seem to have somehow gotten under my radar. How does a man like you end up here and is that ‘Sir’ like the rest of you, not real?”

ir Harry chuckled, “You are right, July, not much of me that you see is real, but I’ll tell you what is real. All I can remember before I was fourteen was never having enough to eat. It was the end of World War II, and Italy was in a shambles. Somehow my mother found enough money to put me on a train to Germany. The Americans were pouring money in, and there was lots of work. I got off the train in Germany with no food, no money, and didn’t speak a word of German. Of course one of the stipulations to working there was that you had to speak some German.

Luckily, I met some Italian kids singing on the steps in front of their building. I could play the guitar a little bit, so soon we became friends. They gave me a crash course in German that night, and somehow I stumbled through an interview the next morning and by that afternoon was working on a factory floor.

Within a few months I was a foreman, and the next year I moved into the office. It was a large pharmaceutical company, and along the way a drug had been developed that could keep people going for long periods of time without rest. It was a derivative made from nose spray. The Nazis had used it at the end of the war to compensate for a shortage of labor, and of course it was highly illegal to use in most companies.

It just so happened that Japan had a chronic shortage of labor after the war. They came to our company to see if such a drug was available. I was sent to Japan to open a lab so the company could send me the legal ingredients, and I turned it into what the factory floors needed. Every morning, the workers would take their daily shot of stimulant and work long hours.

This lasted into the early sixties. The only way it was detected was from the odor it left on the workers’ breath, and the Japanese were forced to ban it. I bought the lab and moved it to Hong Kong. There was still a market for the drug in North and South Korea and in Hong Kong. No one cared what was in anything as long as you made money and gave the right people some of it.

The South Korean market dried up in the early seventies, but by then I was making lots of drugs, mostly with an opium base and dealing with people both buying and selling all over Asia. I had a lavish lifestyle and everything I could possibly want until a member of the British Narcotics Division showed up at my back door one evening.

o I became a double agent, turning in all kinds of agents and dealers all across Asia and parts of Eastern Europe. When the British deemed it too hot for me to stay in Hong Kong, they gave me a new identity and pensioned me off in England. I had no intention of trying to live off a small pension, not after what I was used to, so I took my memoirs to a member of Parliament. He got my story published, and I became famous.

The crown and state wanted to reward me for my services, so suddenly my birth certificate was found in Hong Kong and I was knighted. The trouble was that I had now created a logistical nightmare for the Department of Foreign Affairs. Anyone in the drug business anywhere in the world knew there was a big reward on my head. Luckily right at that time, the CIA was looking for someone with enough experience to broker a deal between El Presidente, the main drug lord in Colombia, and the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States. So the British gave me a body makeover that made me look twenty years younger and sent me off to the Bahamas.”

The girls thought Sir Harry was going to stop there, but he only hesitated and then continued on. “There was no other way the government could control the amount of cocaine coming into the States, so they wanted El Presidente to agree to a quota. In return, they would allow him relatively free access to the American market.

This worked well for quite a few years. The CIA was happy with my work and gave me all the money I needed to get a new government elected in the Bahamas. It won on an anti-corruption platform, but really it was just new corrupt politicians who were much more pro-American. Over time, I became the most powerful man in the Bahamas and the beauty of it was everyone thought I was some mythical character called the Referee, but all good things must come to an end.

Drug lords in South America became tired of the quotas and began shipping across the Mexican border. At first we tried to help the Americans, but they trained Hispanics to fight in their wars. When these guys came home, there wasn’t much for them, so they joined the Mexican cartels, and soon the cartels had a trained army fighting for them. We gave up and got out. The cocaine was coming across the border like the snow you see drifting on the Canadian prairies.

It creates nothing but problems, and all the money needed to fix the problems is shipped back across the border. I don’t know how much longer that can go on, but we didn’t want to find out, so except for the Miami market, we moved our markets to Europe and the Middle East where quality brings top dollar.

This pissed my partner in the CIA right off. His cut was now getting very small, so he decided that if he could get rid of El Presidente, he could then move in and control the Colombian market. You know how the elaborate plan he hatched turned out, don’t you, July? I had to come out of semiretirement to get a new CIA man and get El Presidente’s son to leave Harvard and take over the family business in Colombia, but Harvard doesn’t teach you how to fight in the trenches these days. They are more into the philosophy of ‘trust me, I’ll look after your money’ theory that seems to be popular these days. Jon Smyskin just didn’t have what it takes to survive in this business, so now Wilbur and I are getting out and taking whatever he left behind.”

“I guess that tells me pretty well all I need to know, Sir Harry. You are capable of anything and that tells me Lena’s right. We’re a loose end you need to tie up,” July told him.

ir Harry looked at July. “You and your husband have been a thorn in my side for a long time. We arranged for you people to come to the farm on Andros because we needed the airstrip opened back up. We figured you’d last a couple of years and then be gone, but you wouldn’t quit. We offered money. We even tried to starve you out, but for some reason you kept hanging on. Finally, we got you so desperate you went on a wild goose chase looking for money, and we were able to hang a false narcotics charge on your husband.

Then it wasn’t me, but we think Waddell sanctioned a hit on your husband up in Canada. Somehow he survived and made his way back to the Bahamas. Again his luck held out because my CIA partner decided he needed him to help entice El Presidente out of Colombia.

Of course both you and Bob were expendable when the exercise was over, but somehow you were among the only ones that survived. I have a soft spot for you, July, and I thought your husband was pretty well fucked. I bought El Presidente’s yacht and gave the proceeds to you because the stipulation was that you had to spend the money in the Bahamas. When I heard you wanted to buy the old Andros Hotel, I thought perfect, I can keep an eye on you there. I went to Gator and convinced him to sell the hotel to you. I remember telling him that he’d get a renovated hotel back in a couple of years, and the Greens would be the perfect ones to run it for him.

Instead you turned the place into one of the finest hotels in the islands and look at Lena here. All her life she gave men what they wanted, but given a chance, she turned that into what men needed and became a very rich woman.

No, I won’t kill you, July, but your family is another matter. And I might as well tell you right now you cannot go back to your hotel because I promised it back to Old Man Gator.

Lena is a different situation. She has no family, but take away her beloved computers and rich men and force her to live like Jon Smyskin had planned for her, abject poverty. I’m pretty sure in time she’d take her own life.”

At this point, the captain came in and whispered something in Sir Harry’s ear.

“Excuse me,” he said to the women and left the stateroom.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but there’s a Henekie on the phone. He says he’s going to blow up the ship unless you talk to him.”

ir Harry had to stop and think for a moment. He fell back on his old MI5 training manual, ‘Find your adversaries’ weakness and build on it’. Trouble was, he was sure Henekie had read the same book.

“Hello, Henekie,” Sir Harry said into the phone. “I thought Lena was just trying to scare us when she said you were still alive. Guess I should have paid more attention to her. What is it you want?”

“Hello Sir Harry, what I want is Lena.”

“Well, you can have her when I’m done with her, and what the hell’s this threat that you’re going to blow us out of the water?”

“You remember that explosion in Nassau a while back they attributed to a missile? I have that same missile launcher aimed at your yacht. I suggest you stop your boat now because in about fifteen minutes, you’ll be out in open water where it gets too rough for us to get a good shot,” Henekie told Sir Harry. “If you keep going, I’m going to have to pull the trigger, Lena or no Lena.