The Dave Bliss Quintet (39 page)

“
Daavid
,” she pleads, but he has nowhere to go. With his hands tied he cannot break his fall.

“Quick,” he shouts to Marcia, “pull the bed over here.”

Marcia moves in slow motion and Daisy is beginning to fold, threatening to leave him stranded atop the bulkhead in the space carrying pipes and cables the length of the vessel, but the bed is fixed to the floor.

“Get the mattress,” hisses Bliss, realizing that his stomach is balanced on the only sharp piece of steel that no one bothered to round off.

Johnson's widow helps finally, and with a kick off Daisy's shoulders he vaults the bulkhead, falls from the ceiling, and lands with a thud.

“How did you get here?” asks Marcia.

“We had the winds behind us,” he answers cryptically as he looks around the cabin and sees that one of the Morgan Johnson quartet is missing. “Where's Natalia?”

Three pairs of eyes guide him to the bathroom door.

“Is she all right?”

The eyes drop. No one answers. Bliss knocks.

“She can't hear you,” says Marcia with her head down. Bliss catches on and gingerly opens the door. Natalia is still naked, and the gold-plated tub is still waterless, but now she has another problem. Bliss checks her pulse, though wonders why he bothers. He's had a career built on similarly expressionless faces and staring eyes. An empty hypodermic on the floor tells him as much as he needs to know until he can get a pathologist's confirmation. He closes the door and looks to Marcia. Her cold, empty eyes suggest she has come unglued inside.

“Do you think I won't have to live with this?” she asks into the air.

“Do you think we don't all have to live with the aftermath of what we do?” he replies, with the château's widows uppermost in his mind.

Marcia shapes up and confesses. “I was going to kill him,” she says, then realizes who she's talking to and stops herself. “Is that a crime — to want to kill someone?”

“If it was, the prisons would be overflowing.”

“But I would have done it.”

“Too late. You can't kill a dead man.”

“Jacques … dead?” queries Marcia.

“No. I thought you meant Morgan Johnson.”

“Oh, I know he's dead,” she says with little concern, and neither Johnson's widow nor his son seems particularly perturbed as she adds, “He went for a swim.”

“I hit him,” says Johnson's son, and his mother shouts, “Shuddup, Nathaniel,” a moment too late.

“You hit him?” queries Bliss.

“He killed my Pooh-pooh,” the boy starts, then begins sobbing.

“Don't take any notice. He doesn't know what he's saying,” says his mother, but Bliss isn't convinced.

“Natalia killed him,” says Marcia resolutely without looking up. “She stuck him with an overdose.”

“I killed him,” insists Nathaniel. “I hit him with a pot.”

“Whoa … wait a minute,” says Bliss, seeing the Picasso morphing into a Salvador Dali. “I thought Jacques did it.”

A heavy clunk reverberates through the vessel and announces the salvage of another amphora.

“We've got to get out of here,” says Bliss, hoping that he will eventually see the whole picture in perspective. “But how?”

He inspects the lock. It's as flimsy as the one in the other cabin.

“It'll open,” says Marcia, knowingly. “Safety … so you can't get trapped if it sinks or there's a fire.”

“A fire,” breathes Bliss and looks to the ceiling with the germ of an idea.

“Daisy,” he calls softy a few minutes later, “I'm coming back over.”

On deck, yet another amphora is rising out of the depths and is manhandled aboard by Jacques and one of the Corsicans. The davit strains under the weight, and the vessel lurches as the giant pot is dropped onto the deck. Jacques wears a worried frown as he peers over the stern rail. With twelve giant amphorae jamming the aft deck the stern has dropped in the water, and the swimming platform is completely submerged.

“
Un
,” he calls to the Corsican as he holds up a single digit, and the man begins lowering the cradle for the final time. Jacques heads into the mini-sub's control cubicle and glues his eyes to the video screen as he prepares to operate the ROV's claws to snare another pot. The second Corsican sits on the stairs to the aft cabins, with his gun and a bottle of cognac by his side, and assumes that the crescendo of hissing sounds from below is somehow connected to the work going on above. No one is on the bridge or in the engine room to see the warning lights or hear the alarms.

Daisy has changed cabins and now sits alongside Marcia on the bed. Bliss easily shoved her up and over the partition wall, and his face now appears atop the bulkhead.

“You'll have to help me over,” he calls, as he uses his elbows to lever himself up. A chair balanced on a table wobbles precariously beneath his hobbled feet. Daisy shuffles from the bed and reaches up to grab
him. Her wrists are bleeding as the bindings cut into the flesh, but she doesn't flinch as she hauls at his hands. Squirming and heaving, he crests the barrier and Daisy breaks his fall.

“I hope you can all swim,” says Bliss as he starts to dole out lifejackets.

“I hope we're doing the right thing,” says Johnson's widow uncertainly.

“It'll take a while,” replies Bliss, as he props a table against the bulkhead, clambers onto it, and inches himself up to peer back over into the other cabin.

On the stairs, at the end of the short corridor, the Corsican takes another swig from his bottle and listens to the growing crescendo of fizzing sounds with no more than a passing interest.

Bliss looks down at the pitiable trio in the cabin and whispers, “Now tell me again. What the hell is going on?”

Johnson's son and widow are searching for a galactic wormhole in the carpet and Marcia has suddenly contracted a dose of terminal dumbness.

“Marcia?” queries Bliss to break the silence before it builds into an explosion.

“Apparently Jacques was in it up to his neck with Morgan. Then you showed up,” she says accusingly. “I told you not to talk to Greg, but you couldn't leave it, could you. Jacques saw you.”

“In L'Offshore Club,” mutters Bliss, recalling Jacques watching from the bar next door.

“Yeah. Greg had somehow found their place under the château and wrecked the pots, so when Jacques saw you two together —”

“He thought he was being fingered.”

Now Marcia searches for a wormhole as she mutters, “So they chopped off …” Her tears give Bliss a moment to add up his thoughts.

“So it wasn't Greg working in the château's basement. And I guess the hand in the harbour was directed at me.”

“Me as well,” says Marcia, looking up. “That's why it was hard for me to tell you things. I knew what they were like. Look what Morgan did to his kid.”

“Brain damage,” says Johnson's widow, stroking her son's tears away as she livens in anger. “He was all right as a baby, but if he cried or wet himself Morgan would get angry and shake him so hard his eyes would pop.” Then she gives Marcia a scornful stare. “She was bloody welcome to him.”

“Yeah, as long as he paid your bills,” shoots back Marcia, and Bliss is thankful they're shackled.

“It was greed,” explains Marcia. “Isn't it always greed? I mean, look at us — we're bloody pathetic. Got nothing left. She's lost her husband and his money. Her kid's lost his fucking dog and if I ever hear that stupid name again —”

Nathaniel keels over and bawls at the mere mention of the deceased animal. “Pooh-Pooh … PoohPooh,” he cries.

“Oh,
merde
,” mutters Bliss.

“If only I'd listened to Greg,” Marcia snivels, then breaks down completely, sobbing, “I ruined my marriage, maimed my husband, and killed my daughter.”

And your brother-in-law, thinks Bliss, but doesn't add to her misery as he protests, “You told me Johnson wouldn't have done that to Greg.”

“Like I said, Inspector. It's amazing what greed does to you.”

Outside the cabin, on the stairs, the Corsican reaches for his bottle and is surprised to discover it has slid away from him. He pulls himself upright, but he's listing and looks at the bottle for a cause. The hissing catches his ears and he picks up his gun and edges inquisitively down the stairs. The expensively piled carpet squelches under his feet as he steps into the corridor and his face screws in confusion as he feels the wetness.

Bliss has felt the steady shift to port as well and orchestrates his ensemble at the door, with Daisy taking the lead. “OK. Unlock it quietly and get ready to hop.” Then he sticks his head over the parapet and waits.

On deck, Jacques scans the video image from the remotely operated vehicle, while the Corsican peers into the crystal water and watches as the luminously painted rover slowly snares the pot. But there's a touch of concern on his face. The surface of the water seems to be gradually creeping up the yacht's side. With the amphora hooked, Jacques pokes his head out of the cubicle and gestures for his cohort to start the davit's winch. The whining winch sends a shiver through the yacht as it strains to free the amphora from the rocks while, below deck, the watch-keeping Corsican throws his weight against the door of the empty cabin as he searches for the water source.

“Go! Go! Go!” shouts Bliss to the assault party and turns back in time to see the Corsican struggling into the room against a flood tide.

“Up here,” yells Bliss, taunting the man. “I'm up here, look.” The Corsican spins with his gun readied and is showered by an icy blast of water pouring out of
the fire sprinkler system. “Here … here,” persists Bliss, keeping the man's attention off the corridor behind him. Water is flooding out of the bathroom, pouring from the ceiling and lapping at the opened window as the Corsican fights against the stream to get a bead on Bliss.

Bliss pops up and down like a fairground target, calling, “Hey … hey … hey …” Then Daisy throws herself bodily at the gunman and bowls him over. Marcia and the others leap aboard and pin the big man to the sopping floor.

“Get his gun,” yells Bliss from his perch, and Daisy kneels on his neck until Johnson's widow manages to wrestle the weapon free.

“Shoot him if you have to,” Bliss calls as he flings himself off the table and hops to the door.

Two minutes later the amphora is nearing the surface. Jacques too has noticed the rising sea level on the port side and checks the horizon. Just the weight of the amphora, he assumes, and concentrates concernedly as the huge concretion breaks the surface. As the barnacleencrusted pot swings inboard, Jacques turns to follow it and finds himself peering at a pistol.

“Put your hands up,” says Bliss, and the winchman hits the wrong button in surprise and drops the amphora. The giant pot shatters on the deck, and Bliss and his posse stand with mouths agape.

Jacques shrugs. “
Bof
. So now you know.”

But Bliss still hasn't caught on. The amphora's scattered contents glint golden in the midday sun. Treasure, certainly; gold and jewels, without a doubt; but this is so unexpected that he's beginning to wonder if he really has wandered into a movie. Then Marcia steps forward and picks up a glittering diamond necklace. “It is
the missing Nazi treasure,” she explains without a note of surprise.

“Nazi ...” breathes Bliss, but gets no further as he realizes that something is happening. “Quick, get off,” he yells as the vessel slowly heels.

“Ahoy there, Captain Jones to the rescue,” calls a welcome voice, as the
Mystère
's skipper edges his ski boat into the cove and finds them floundering in the water. “What's this,” he chuckles, “the John Smith five?”

“Not you ...” starts Bliss, then counts the bobbing heads as he looks around: Daisy, Marcia, Jacques, Nathanial Johnson, and his mother. But the Corsican crewmen are missing. “There should be a septet,” he says, and seconds later the duo appear on deck, jump overboard, and head for the rocks, just as the yacht rolls. Bliss turns back to the
Mystère
's launch. Jacques is trying to scramble aboard. He takes aim and calls, “Jacques … women and children first.”

“But I cannot swim.”

“Good — now get off or I'll blast you off.”

The Frenchman still clings on. Bliss takes two strokes and sticks the gun to his head. “I said off.”

“I can't swim.”

“You should have thought of that before you became a fisherman.”

Jones is hauling Marcia aboard when the blast of Bliss's gun ricochets around the cove like a cannon. A thousand gulls take off with a communal shriek, Nathaniel Johnson lets out a yell that curdles the air, then Bliss lowers the gun a notch, back to Jacques's head, and counts. “
Un
…
deux
…
trois
.” Jacques lets go and dog-paddles frantically as Bliss passes the gun to
Jones, saying, “Keep him at bay, Captain, I'm coming aboard. Great timing, by the way.”

“I was beginning to think you'd got lost. Anyway I was ready for lunch.”

With the weight off its stern, the
Sea-Quester
's upturned hull rides high in the water as the survivors skim back to the
Mystère
. Jacques slumps, deflated, in the retrieved dinghy that is being dragged behind the ski boat.

With the gun still trained on Jacques, Bliss questions Marcia.

“How do you know it's Nazi treasure?”

“Morgan told us yesterday — told us we'd all be rich if we kept quiet. He and Jacques had been working on the pot scam for a couple of years. He didn't know Jacques was a cop; just thought he'd got lucky when he found someone who knew a secret place where the pots could be made.”

“But where did zhe
trésor
come from?” asks Daisy, still stunned by the multi-million-dollar hoard that is now back at the bottom of the cove.