The Spanish Hawk (1969) (11 page)

“I suppose not.”

Again they were silent. The magnificent landscape stretched away on all sides; a few white clouds floated around, but no rain threatened. Somewhere a gardener was singing at his work, and the song mingled with the faint sounding of water tumbling over rocks. Fletcher reflected
that Conrad Denning had it made: with all this, why should he take the risk of sticking his fingers into the revolutionary pie? Why was he not content with what he had? But some men were never content.

“Is Denning married?” he asked.

Leonora turned her head lazily. “Divorced.”

“Any children?”

“I believe the wife has custody of them.”

“Have you met her?”

“No.”

“So he has no family ties?”

“None at all, as far as I know. He’s not exactly the family man type. Too many other interests.”

“And he could lose everything.”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“If Clayton Rodgers ever gets to hear of what his dear cousin is doing, that’ll be the end of it.”

“How should he get to hear about it?”

“How did he get to hear about the boat? How did he get to hear about the photographs? Somebody must be feeding him information; somebody who’s in the know. Somewhere in the ranks there’s an informer. Have you thought about that?”

She frowned. “Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“And have you come up with anything? How many people knew about the Spanish Hawk operation?”

“I don’t know. Quite a number, I imagine.”

“Including you?”

She looked startled. “Are you suggesting I might have been the informer?”

“No,” Fletcher said. “What motive would you have for betraying your friends?”

But the thought had crossed his mind, nevertheless; because money was always a pretty good motive in any language, if there was enough of it.

It seemed as if she had been thinking along somewhat parallel lines, for a moment or two later she said musingly: “Though if it comes to the point just about anyone can be bought if the price is right. It’s all a question of finding the right price.”

“Well, it looks as though they found the right price for someone,” Fletcher said. And he was wondering just how safe he was at Denning’s place after all; how safe he was going to be diving from Denning’s boat to take more pictures of the wreck; how safe he was anywhere with this lot. Because whoever had passed the information regarding the
Halcón
Español
and the
Freedom
press might even now be passing more information—with his name mixed up in it.

“What are you thinking about now?” Leonora asked.

“Hatchet men,” Fletcher said.

Denning returned in the middle of the afternoon. He looked cheerful, like a man who feels that things are running his way. Fletcher wished that he himself had been feeling half as cheerful as Denning looked, and he felt resentful about it. Denning had the aqualung in the boot of the Aston Martin, and showed it to Fletcher.

“I hope it will be all right.”

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t be,” Fletcher said. “As long as they haven’t put chlorine in the cylinders.”

Denning must have detected a note of sourness. “You don’t appear to have slept too well.”

“I haven’t slept at all. I listened to a long story instead. It was pretty sordid in places.”

“You’ve been talking to Leonora?”

“Yes.”

“And now you know it all?”

“And I don’t like it.”

“You’re not being asked to like it.” Denning’s voice had hardened slightly and he seemed a shade less genial. “Just do the job, that’s all.”

“And after?”

“We’ll have to think about that, won’t we?”

“I have thought about it.”

“And?”

“And I want a boat to take me off the island.”

“Where do you propose to go?”

“I’m not much bothered. Anywhere in the Caribbean from which I can get a flight or a sea passage back to England.”

“We’ll have to see about that.”

“Yes,” Fletcher said, “you see about it. And don’t take too long seeing about it, either, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of being taken home in a coffin.”

Denning gave a laugh; he seemed to think it was a good joke. Fletcher was damned if he could see anything funny in it, so maybe he was standing in the wrong place.

“Well,” Denning said, “I’m sure we shall be able to work something out. But tomorrow we have another problem on our minds. Tomorrow you have a bit of underwater
photography to do. I expect you’re looking forward to it.”

“Like a man looks forward to having both legs amputated.”

Denning laughed again. Fletcher thought he had never met anyone with such a warped sense of humour.

They rose early and drove to the village before daybreak. It was still not light when they went on board the boat and eased it out of its berth. Denning himself had arranged for it to be refuelled the previous day and the tanks were full. A few minutes later they had cleared the harbour and were heading east.

It was too good a start—no snags, no hitches, no inquisitive officials, no policemen, nothing. Fletcher could not believe that the whole operation would go as smoothly as this. It was simply too good to last.

Lawrence again was at the helm. Fletcher was sitting on one side of the cockpit and King was hunched up on the opposite side, looking cold. The air was fresh and cool, and the sea was calm. The boat was running smoothly at an easy speed and Lawrence was not pushing it; there was plenty of time.

Leonora had driven them down to the harbour and Fletcher had sat beside her in the front of the car. They had talked off and on, and he had asked her how Denning was going to spend the day.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Does it matter?”

Fletcher could see no reason why she should have come
with them; any one of them could have driven the Ford, and they could have parked it where they had left it before. It meant an extra journey, because she would have to come and meet them when they returned; but perhaps she liked driving.

“No,” he said; “it doesn’t matter. He can just sit around at Mission Control and wait for the boys to come back. Nice for him.”

She gave him a quick glance. “You don’t like Conrad, do you?”

“Am I supposed to like him?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

He wondered, with a sudden stab of jealousy, whether there was anything between Denning and her. She had been living for quite a while in his house, so there had been ample opportunity. And Denning was a handsome devil, no doubt about that; mature certainly, but nevertheless handsome; the kind of man a girl half his age might very well fall for. So had she fallen for him? Though he had asked her whether she was in love with Matthew King, he hesitated to ask a similar question in this instance. And why? Because he feared what the answer might be? Maybe, damn it. Yes; maybe so.

She must have sensed that something was wrong. “What’s on your mind?” she asked. “Is it the job? Is that what’s bothering you?”

“You bet it’s bothering me,” he said. “It scares me sick.”

“The diving?”

“No, not that. I do that for fun.”

“What is it, then?”

“I keep thinking when the thing’s done there may be a reception committee waiting for us.”

“That’s crazy. Nobody knows—”

“Nobody knew about the boat coming from Cuba. Remember?”

“That was different.”

“You mean there were more people in the secret?”

“Yes.”

“Okay; so this time there aren’t so many. But as long as you just have two people in a secret, it isn’t a secret any

more.”

“You really do worry too much,” she said.

“Yes, maybe I do,” Fletcher agreed. But he had a feeling that now he was not alone; perhaps he had her worrying too.

She had helped them get the gear on board and had watched as the boat moved out of the berth. Fletcher’s last sight of her was a lone figure standing under the lamp on the board-walk; looking somehow a little forlorn and dejected, he thought. But he could think of no reason why she should have been; unless she had been thinking about what he had said. And wondering.

When it grew light they were already out of sight of land. Lawrence altered course a few points to the southward and kept the boat going at the same steady rate of knots, since there was no need for haste; they would be at the right place soon enough.

King said: “You got the camera all fixed up ready?”

“I’ve got it fixed up,” Fletcher said.

“Soon be there now.”

Fletcher grunted.

“Anybody like some coffee?” King asked. He had brought a big vacuum flask and sandwiches.

They all had coffee. The sandwiches had chicken and ham in them. Fletcher ate two. Physically he felt better for the snack; mentally he was in the same depressed state. It grew steadily warmer as the sun rose; the sea gleamed as though the surface had been strewn with silver plates; an oil-tanker, made small by distance, appeared to be utterly motionless on the skyline, but a little later when Fletcher looked for it, it had vanished.

The rocky islet appeared out of the haze ahead, gradually becoming clearer. To the east of it was another, smaller object. Fletcher was the first to spot it.

“There’s a boat.”

“Damn!” King said.

Fletcher did not care for the look of it; the other boat seemed to be just about at the place where the wreck was, a short way to the east of the islet. It was as though it had been waiting for them.

“I think we’re in trouble.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Lawrence said. “Just because there’s a boat don’t mean it has to have anything to do with us.”

“It’s a bit of a coincidence it should be right there. Wouldn’t you say it was? It doesn’t seem to be moving.”

“How can you tell? It’s too far away.”

King picked up a pair of powerful binoculars, focused them on the other boat and studied it intently for a while. Then he handed the binoculars to Fletcher.

“Take a look.”

Fletcher put the binoculars to his eyes and the distance separating the two boats seemed to contract miraculously.
The one ahead appeared to be a large motor-launch and he could see some men moving about on board. And then he saw a sudden flurry of foam at the stern, and he half expected the launch to turn about and start heading towards them; but it did not. In fact, it appeared to be heading in the opposite direction, the white break of water at the bows indicating that it was building up a good turn of speed.

“They’re going away.”

“You see,” Lawrence said. “There wasn’t nothing to worry about. They’re not interested in us.”

“So I was wrong. But they might have been.”

Lawrence did not contradict him, and he guessed that the man had had his own misgivings, even though he might not have confessed to any. He had a feeling that all three of them were relieved to see the launch heading away from them.

Lawrence reduced speed to allow it to get well clear, and by the time they reached the area where the wreck was submerged it had vanished into the haze on the southern horizon. There was now not another boat in sight, and things still could not have been going more smoothly.

“We’re going to be lucky,” King said. “I feel it in my bones. We sure are going to be lucky.”

Fletcher touched wood; there was plenty of it within reach. He still did not trust that luck to last. When had it ever done so?

They had got the bearings almost dead accurate. When he had swum down through those ten fathoms of clear sea-water he could see the stern of the ship ahead of him, and
that old four-inch breech-loader which had fired its last round so many years ago. The gun was mounted on a platform above the poop, a kind of metallic mushroom growth springing out of the deck; the barrel, at right angles to the line of the masts, was a thick finger pointing at the ocean bed, as though directing the attention to some object lying there; the breech was closed, just as the last Number Two of the gun crew had left it; the elevating and training wheels were motionless and would remain so perhaps for ever.

Fletcher swam towards the ship and stopped at the stern, one hand resting lightly on the taffrail. Utter silence; utter stillness; even the fishes seemed to have deserted the wreck for the moment. Fletcher could not see the boat from that position; the
Halcón
Español
was hidden by the midships superstructure; but he knew it was there, less than a ship’s length away, waiting for him to come to it.

And the dead men waiting, too.

And suddenly he had no wish to go to it or to them. What would they be like now? Bloated, repulsive, horrifying. Was he to photograph such things? He felt cold, as if the thought had chilled his blood. Why should he do it? What good would it do? Suppose he returned to the surface and reported that he had been unable to find the ship. What could they do? They could not prove that he was lying.

Still he waited there with his hand on the rail, and still the fishes had not returned to the ship. And gradually, insidiously, there crept over him a sense of impending disaster. Something was about to happen; he was sure of it. And perhaps the fishes had also felt that premonition; perhaps that was why they had gone. So he would take an
example from them and would go too; would get away from that place where evil seemed to be lying in wait like a dreaded spectre.

He took his hand off the taffrail and was about to thrust away from the poop when it happened. The entire ship trembled and moved, as though the long sleep had ended and now she would lift herself off the bed of the sea, rise to the surface and go steaming on as she had done throughout those early years of the century. But it was no more than a spasm; the movement was not sustained, and she subsided again while a mass of debris that had exploded from the region of the foredeck—pieces of timber, iron, wire-rope, brass and copper, all mixed up with sediment from the ocean floor—rose like a dark and awful cloud.

Fletcher stared at it, not moving, petrified by the sight. He had had that premonition of something about to happen, but he had not dreamed that it would be this. And now he knew for what purpose the launch had been there: divers had been down from it to fix the charge and the timing device; and they must have just completed the task when the second boat hove in sight. That was why they had gone away so quickly; their work had been finished and they had no further reason for hanging around.

These thoughts flitted through his mind in the instant when the explosion occurred, and a moment later he was caught by the pressure of water and it was as though an invisible, irresistible force were carrying him away. He made no attempt to resist it, but allowed himself to be thrust forward until the pressure eased. Then he swam back to the ship and looked at the damage.

They had made a thorough job of it: the boat had disintegrated and there was nothing now that could have
been identified as part of it; the
Halcón
Español
no longer existed. As to the bodies, there were objects here and there which might have been parts of a man, but soon they would be gone and there would be nothing; nothing at all to give evidence of the killing that had taken place; nothing that would be worth the expenditure of one millimetre of photographic film.

The ship had sustained some more damage to go with that meted out by the torpedo so many years ago, but this extra injury was of no importance; a sunken vessel could be sunk no deeper. She had stirred for a moment and that was all; now she would lie once again undisturbed, and the fishes would come back to dart and flicker between the holds and superstructure while time stood still. He turned away from the wreckage and began to swim towards the surface.

He could tell by their faces that they knew something had gone wrong. They helped him to climb on board; they helped him to get rid of the mask and the cylinders and the camera.

It was King who asked the question that must have been in the minds of both.

“What happened?”

He told them. They were not surprised; the explosion had been noticeable on the surface; pieces of flotsam had come up and were floating around the boat.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” King said. “You were so long coming up, we began to think—”

“That I’d copped it? If I’d gone in straightaway I should have done. But I hung back, not liking it. That’s what saved me—blue funk.”

“I’m glad it did.” King grinned at him. “We’d have hated to lose you.”

“I’d have hated it too.”

“So they decided to destroy the evidence,” King said. “Well, it was to be expected. It was the easiest way. We were just too late; we should have come yesterday.”

“If we’d come yesterday,” Fletcher said, “maybe they would have been here yesterday instead.”

King gave him a quick glance. “You’re saying they were warned? That they knew what we planned?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a coincidence, isn’t it? Like I said before. And me, I just don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Well, well,” King said; “now we have got something to think about.”

It was Lawrence who broke in then. “Think about it on the way back. I say we better get the hell outa here right now.”

“Okay; let’s go.”

Fletcher had been looking towards the islet. Now he suddenly pointed.

“Look there!”

“Hell!” Lawrence said.

A motor-launch had come into view and was approaching rapidly. Until then it had been hidden by the islet, but now it had come out into the open and was heading directly for the smaller boat.

“The bastards!” King said. “They came back.”

It was possible. It could have been the launch they had seen going away as they approached. It could have gone out of sight, then changed direction, made a detour, and returned under cover of the islet. On the other hand, this might be a different launch, one that had been lurking there
all the time. Either way, it made no difference; the odds were a hundred to one that it was not approaching simply to pass the time of day.

“Get this thing moving,” King said urgently.

Lawrence needed no goading; he was already trying to start the engine and was having trouble. It was a fine time for the engine to turn temperamental. The launch was whittling away the distance between the two boats with every moment that passed.

“For God’s sake,” King said, “what’s wrong with it?” He was edgy, reminding Fletcher of the way he had been that first evening of their acquaintance in the Treasure Ship. Perhaps he had had reason to be edgy then; he certainly had reason now. “For God’s sake, Lawrence!”

Lawrence snarled something back at him that was about as obscene as you could get in half a dozen words, and he sounded edgy too. The engine gave a brief splutter and died again.