The Abigail Affair (32 page)

His aches and pains began to tell after a while. He trod water for a moment and looked back towards the beach. He was halfway to the
Amelia
. His side hurt, and his stitched hand hurt, and his ribs hurt when he breathed deeply. He turned back towards his destination, got his head down and continued at a more moderate pace. No sense in arriving exhausted.

The swim took him thirty-five minutes by the watch. He took a detour to approach the
Amelia
from the back. He knew the proper term was “stern,” but didn’t care now that he was no longer a crewman.

He completed the final few dozen strokes underwater as much as possible and arrived, now breathing heavily, by the back left-hand corner of the yacht. He swam right up to the hull. He could see all the way down the side of the yacht now. There was no sign of other human activity in the water.

The hull was perfectly white and perfectly smooth all the way down, but at the water line, there was a little green sludge. There was nothing to hold on to.

He needed to rest, and decided to go for it. He took a deep breath, submerged and swam down the hull. In a moment, he surfaced. The two jet skis bobbed in the water side by side. They provided cover. He swam around them, and grabbed the outside one. There was ribbed rubber in the foot well which he could hold on to while he got his breath back.

When his breathing was nearly back to normal and his heartbeat had stopped pounding in his ears, he pulled himself up a little and looked through the foot well of the jet ski and up to the boat bay.

No one about.

He pushed off, and swam the few strokes around the jet skis to the boat bay. There was a little boarding ladder bolted to the hull just below the sill. He climbed up until his head was level with the floor inside.

One more step up and he could see inside.

“Let me give you a hand.”

Beaky stepped out from behind the rack of wet suits. He gave Toby a big, ugly, leering grin. In his twangy South African accent, so much like Scott’s, he said, “We’ve been expecting you.”

Chapter 33

Toby debated for an instant whether to push off and swim back to the shore. But that would not help anyone. If he was on board the
Amelia
, he had a chance to do something. So, ignoring Beaky’s outstretched hand, he pulled himself up and out of the water.

“If you’d waited, I would have offered you a free ride here from the airport. Why did you shoot off?” Beaky said. A lopsided grin continued to play around his pockmarked face.

“You were following me. You had no intention of catching that London flight.”

“Give the man a cigar,” Beaky sneered in reply. “Go to the top of class for sheer genius.”

“What more do you want from me?” Toby asked. He stood in his Armani underwear and dripped on to the metal floor of the boat bay.

“You’ll see,” Beaky said. “Come up and let’s find you some clothes first. We don’t want you dripping seawater all over the expensive carpets. Go in front of me, and don’t try anything heroic. I’ve been looking forward to slapping you, and given the slightest excuse, I will do just that.” He jerked his head towards the rear of the boat bay and the way up to the higher decks.

Toby set off as directed. “Who’s on board?” he asked brightly. “Is the captain back? And the chief engineer?”

“Shut it.”

Toby padded barefoot up the spiral stairs on the now-familiar route through the bowels of the
Amelia
. When they came to the generator bay, he tried again. “Did you get the new generator installed and working?”

“I said, shut it. You’re yapping like a puppy. One more word and I’ll box your ears.”

Toby shut it. The only time Beaky’d had much to say was in Bluggo’s Warehouse when he was interrogating Toby. Obviously, that kind of situation brought out the articulate side of the man.

They rose up through the decks. It got cooler when they arrived on the guest levels with their air-conditioning. They came to the clothes storeroom. “Dry and change. One minute. No shoes.” Toby opened the door and went in. Beaky stood in the doorway.

Toby pulled down the box of towels and opened it. The stench of stale urine—his own—hit his nostrils. Quickly, he pulled a towel from underneath the soiled ones, and shut the box up again. He took off his Armani’s, dried himself and pulled on a pair of shorts. They were too small. He started to take them off again.

“For the love of God, you’re not going on a fashion shoot. Those will do. Put on a shirt and come.” Toby zipped up the shorts as much as he could, pulled on a polo shirt and turned to face Beaky, who stepped back. “Go ahead to the crew cabins. I’ll be right behind you.”

Toby went ahead. When he reached his own cabin, the one he had used most recently, Beaky said, “In you go and see your girlfriend. She needs cheering up.”

He opened the door and there was Julia.

She sat on the bunk—his bunk—with her back to him. She turned around to face him and Toby saw with horror that her lip was swollen and bloody and both eyes were blackened. Toby swung around, but the door slammed shut and he heard the key turn once, then again to deadlock the cabin from outside.

“Hi, Toby,” Julia said. He thought she tried to smile, but her lip and mouth hardly moved, they were so swollen.

All Toby could think of doing was to go to her and put his arm around her. “That’s very kind, but it does hurt,” she said in a weary voice. “They gave me a good beating. But I’m alive. And so are you. They want us both alive.”

“I’ll kill them,” Toby said. She still wore the primrose top and white shorts and looked like a tourist from a cruise ship who had been comprehensively mugged and robbed.

“How did they get you?” she asked.

“They didn’t. I got your message and I came.”

“Toby, what message? I didn’t send any message,” she said with alarm.

“You didn’t text me HELP NEEDED URGENT?”

So the message had been a lure—a trap
.

“No, Toby. Didn’t you realise it could be a ploy to get you back here?”

“Yes, that possibility did occur to me. But I came anyway. And it turned out to be true enough. You do need help.”

“Only problem is, we both need help now. But thank you for coming, Toby.” There was a moment’s silence. “That was very brave.”

“I reckoned the message could be from you. You could have found my old phone with the number taped on the back when you emptied the bins and texted me, hoping I had kept the SIM and number, which I had. But of course, Scott saw the number stuck on it too and he actually took out the SIM and gave it to me.”

Julia said in an urgent tone, “Does anyone know you’re here? Did you alert the Brits? How soon can we expect reinforcements?”

“No. No one knows I’m here. I tried to raise the alarm with my people, but all the international services are down. Smithers thinks I’m in St Lucia reading last week’s
Hello
magazine, waiting for my flight, and looking forward to a free glass of champagne at midnight. Only the couple on the beach might realise something’s happened. I left my backpack with them. They’ll know I didn’t return from my swim and may raise the alarm. Eventually. Possibly.”

“There’s a chance. But how will they know you’re on board here? And I doubt the police will give a British tourist missing for a few hours on New Year’s Eve a high priority.”

“Good point. We have to get our own message out.”

“Easier said than done now. It’s been some time since I had any covert communications capability. There’s nothing in this cabin, and of course the phone is disconnected, so don’t waste your time trying.”

“So what’s their plan, do you suppose—and what’s ours?”

“Has there been an explosion or underwater eruption near the island?” Julia talked through the corner of her mouth. Her swollen face seemed to be worse. It was getting hard to understand her.

“Yes. Off Dickson Bay. It was a nuke, wasn’t it?”

Chapter 34

“Yes. Oh my God, he wasn’t bluffing,” Julia said. “Any casualties or damage?”

“Unknown. I’ve no idea if anyone on the island even realises what it was. I studied the Cold War for A-level, so I knew.”

“You’re right, not many people know what happens when you detonate a nuclear bomb under water. Everyone thinks that a nuke always produces a mushroom cloud. An underwater explosion produces a dramatic geyser effect, but it’s all over in seconds with no visible trace. Of course, if you have a Geiger counter handy, you’ll soon know. But I doubt if there is a single one of those on this island.”

Toby got up from the bed and went to the porthole. “No way out?”

“See for yourself. It doesn’t open at all. Same with the one in the shower room.”

He turned his head. She looked dreadful. “Who did this to you? They are dead men walking.”

“Brent Haase.”

“Haase—is he the porridge-faced one with the conk who just shoved me in?”

“Yes, Toby. God, I just realised something. That paper with the waypoints on and the skulls and the doodles. It must mark the positions of the nuclear devices. Did you get away with it, and pass it on?”

“No, damn it. I lost it somewhere. Can you remember the positions?”

“No. I remember noting the top one was near Antilla. That fits with the first explosion. The other positions were within a few hundred miles of here. I thought they were rendezvous points. I should have taken the paper from you. That mistake could have cost many lives.”

“Why? Fill me in. I need to know what’s been going on.”

“Get me a glass of water and I’ll brief you. I don’t know how long we have before they come back for us.”

Toby went to fetch water for both of them from the tiny adjoining shower room. He almost tripped over a cardboard box on the floor. It was labelled “Salt. Iodised. Produce of Engeland.”

“The cocaine!” he exclaimed. “What’s it doing in here?”

“When Smithers alerted me that the boarding party was coming over from the
Surrey,
I scooted down to the chill room, deep-cleaned the shelves and moved the box up here. It would have been embarrassing if the boarding party had found it. The safest place was here. They moved all your kit into this cabin after the murder.”

“It was embarrassing for me when it wasn’t where I said.”

“I can imagine,” she said wryly. “You’ve survived worse than that, though, these last few days.”

Toby gave the box a kick for good measure, remembering just in time to use his good foot. Then he got the water.

“Cheers,” he said.

“
Novym Godom
!” she replied, with an attempt at a grin. “Happy New Year, everybody. Not.”

“I forgot you spoke fluent Russian. Now, please start at the beginning. Who are you really, Julia, and why are you here? Smithers said you were DEA. Presumably not quite true?”

“No, that’s my cover for the benefit of the Brits. I’m actually CIA.”

“And your name isn’t Julia?”

“It’s spelled with a ’Y’ really, but let’s stick with Julia. It’s easier.” She sighed. “It was all under control until yesterday. I just didn’t see this coming. Nor did anyone else, I guess. I shouldn’t beat myself up.”

“No need. Who’s-his-face did that for you already.”

“Haase.” She rose unsteadily from the bunk, took a step forward and stumbled. Toby rushed forward to catch her. She was quite light in his arms. Her blonde hair was properly messed up now, not salon-mussed with a comb and a hairdryer. Toby saw it was matted with dried blood. They’d hit her on the head at some point. She still looked desirable to Toby, though, despite the disfiguring injuries. And, God, she was brave.

He would protect her.

He would get them both out of this.

He must.

He guided her back to the bunk, pulled a pillow from under the coverlet with his free hand, propped it against the cabin wall and guided her head back against it. “I suggest you lie still and concentrate on briefing me. As you said, time is probably not on our side. We may have only minutes. It’s not good news that they have put us in here together and let us talk to each other. It suggests our usefulness will be very limited.”

“I agree,” Julia said. “Ominous.”

“So. Shoot.”

She paused for a moment as if wondering where to start.

“I’ll go back to the beginning and give you a précis as quickly as I can. When Putin started hounding and harassing the oligarchs, Krigov took his loot to Tsazakhstan and set up shop with the president of that country, Gorgy Mendeshev. Krigov brokered deals to give US and British oil firms access to the huge untapped oilfields in the Kuba region. He had to make massive payoffs to Mendeshev, of course.

“We—the CIA—realised that he was dragging international oil and gas companies into a web of corruption even worse than in Kazakhstan. Some Democrat senators were tipped off, and next thing we knew, the FBI arrested Krigov and got his visa revoked.

“Krigov was under house arrest for a time. He fell out with Mendeshev and refused to go on paying him the US $40 million a month he was demanding. You see, Krigov’s biggest source of funds had dried up with his arrest.”

Toby’s felt his jaw drop. “Forty million dollars
a month?
We should all have gone into politics.”

Julia smiled as best she could. “Or oil. Preferably both. You’re dead right. It’s mind-boggling money. Anyway, Krigov was soon up on corruption charges, but he got bail in the sum of $15 million. He jumped it the next day, unsurprisingly, and was quickly away and out of US jurisdiction. He secretly decided to freeze out Mendeshev, got into bed with Afghan heroin producers, and used his plants and engineering background to set up in precursor chemicals too.”

“Acetic whatsit.”

“Acetic anhydride, exactly. I see you’ve had some briefing already.”