Assassin (11 page)

T
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ENGINE SPUTTERED AT FIRST,
then roared to life. It was the very same engine, circa 1942, that had powered the much-vaunted Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI, workhorse of the powerful fighter command squadrons that rose up and ultimately triumphed over the Luftwaffe in the skies over Britain. The highly modified Spitfire engine was mounted in the long nose of Hawke’s sleek silver seaplane.

It was an aircraft clearly out of her time, and the truth was Alex had designed the plane himself. Completely lacking in any formal aeronautical design skills, he had simply modeled her after one of his favorite boyhood toys. His theory about both airplane and boat design was simple. If it looked good and it looked fast, it probably was both. In a cavernous hold at the stern of
Blackhawke
were many racing machines Alex had collected over the years. There was not one vintage racing car or speedboat that did not look both good and fast.

Especially this little seaplane. She was named
Kittyhawke
in honor of Alex’s mother, an American film star before she’d married. One of his mother’s more glamourous publicity poses was painted on the port side of the fuselage. Catherine Caldwell had taken the stage name Kitty Hawke when she’d married Alex’s father, Lord Alexander Hawke. Kitty Hawke had been a hard-working actress, ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the classic Civil War saga,
Southern Belle.
It was to be the last picture she would make.

In the late seventies, Lord and Lady Hawke were murdered in the Exuma Islands. Cuban drug runners boarded their yacht,
Seahawke,
in the middle of the night. There was one eyewitness. Their seven-year-old son, Alex. Hidden by his father in a secret compartment in the yacht’s bow, the boy saw the horrific crime. Ultimately, on the island of Cuba, Alex Hawke the man would track down the killers and avenge his parents’ deaths; but the boyhood memory of that horrifying night would haunt the man forever.

“All buckled in, Constable?” Hawke asked, putting on his headphones and adjusting his lipmike. He was delighted to be back aboard
Kittyhawke
and was wearing one of his old Royal Navy flying suits, an outfit he favored whenever he took the little plane aloft. The Packard-Merlin Spitfire engine, all fifteen hundred horses, spat fire as he shoved the throttle forward and nosed his plane into the wind.

“No aerial aerobatics on the voyage up, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Congreve barked in his headset. “I know how you delight in torturing captive passengers.”

“Ah. Do I detect a wee touch of the Irish Flu this morning, Ambrose? I did think that third Drambuie at the bar last night was ill-advised. Especially after the vast quantities of Château La Tour. Frankly, I thought you’d sworn off
les vins de France.
Patriotic reasons, and all that.”

“Please,” Congreve replied, a thick frost coating the word. “Just because you have been the very model of abstemiousness for an entire twenty-four hours, I don’t see why I should be subjected to—”

“Sorry, old thing. It is your liver, after all. Not mine.”

“God save us,” Ambrose sighed and collapsed back in his seat, struggling with the wretched harness which barely accommodated his circumference. He wouldn’t admit it, to be sure, but he was actually battling a bit of a morning after. Alex eased the throttle forward, and the seaplane surged across the blue waters of Nantucket Sound and lifted off into the rosy New England dawn.

Over nightcaps in the bar at 21 Federal, Alex Hawke and Ambrose Congreve had decided to fly up to Dark Harbor, Maine, at first light.

“It’s bad, Alex,” Jack Patterson had said to him on the phone at the restaurant. “I’m on my way up to Dark Harbor right now. Evan Slade’s wife and two kids were murdered last night. Butchered. We’ve got to stop this thing. Fast, before panic sets in. Otherwise, I’m looking at a complete paralysis of America’s diplomatic corps. Meltdown, at the worst possible time.”

“That’s what they want,” Alex said. “Panic.”

“Yep. That’s why we’ve got to stop it fast.”

“I’ll be there, Tex. First thing.”

“Didn’t have the heart to ask. Thanks, Hawkeye. Sorry to interrupt your supper. I know this is a difficult time for you and—”

“See you around eight? I’ll fly the seaplane up. What’s the mooring situation up there? Any idea?”

“House has a long dock into deep water. Check your charts, buddy. You’ll see big old Wood Island just southwest of Dark Harbor. Pine Island lies just east of Wood. Slade family bought the whole rock back in the fifties. Only house on the island. Dock on the south end, according to the local chief of police, woman by the name of Ainslie.”

“Cheated death once again, eh, Constable?” Hawke said as they taxied toward the Slade dock. Congreve ignored him.

“I see the local constabulary has turned out to welcome us,” Congreve said. A young uniformed officer stood at the end of the dock, a coiled rope in his hand, looking uncertain about precisely what he was supposed to do with it.

“Patterson sent this fellow out to give us a hand, I imagine.”

Alex shut down the engine, unbuckled his harness, then opened the cockpit door and climbed down onto the port side pontoon. He waited a few seconds for the chap to toss him the line. “Ahoy,” he finally shouted to the young policeman, some twenty feet across the water, “Toss me that line please! She’s drifting off! I can’t get her in any closer because of the current.”

It took Officer Nikos Savalas three tries to finally toss the line within Alex’s reach.

“Third time’s the charm,” Alex shouted at the clearly embarrassed man as he bent and cleated the line off on the pontoon. Once
Kittyhawke
was secure, the two Englishmen climbed a winding staircase carved into the rocks. It led up to the rambling old grey-shingled house, a weathered and many-gabled structure, with a myriad of rooflines dotted with brick chimneys.

“Imagine that,” Hawke said, looking back at the Maine cop, still bent over the cleat, tying and retying the line.

“What?”

“Boy grows up in Maine, yet he has no earthly idea how to toss someone a line.”

“I noticed that,” Congreve said.

“And?”

“He obviously did not grow up in Maine.”

“Ah, logic will out,” Hawke said, smiling.

They gained the top of the steps and made their way through a thicket of fragrant spruce to open lawn. Hawke saw his old friend Patterson sprawled on the steps of a wide covered verandah. He was smoking a cigarette cupped in his hand against the fresh breeze, talking to a young blonde woman wearing the same uniform as the young salt down on the dock. The badge pinned to her blue blouse told Alex this was Chief Ainslie of the Dark Harbor PD.

“How ’bout that, old Hawkeye himself,” Patterson said, getting to his feet and grinning at the tall Englishman. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, son.”

Ten years earlier, Patterson had been flying a single-engine Cessna that had gone down deep in the Peruvian jungle. Shining Path guerillas had shot everyone who’d survived the crash except Patterson. Alex Hawke and Stokely Jones had finally found him, delirious and barely alive. The guerillas never knew what hit them. Hawke had somehow found a way into the impenetrable rainforest, rescued Patterson, and found a way out.

The grateful Texan had given Alex the nickname Hawkeye, not after the famous television series character as many would later assume, but after the great Indian scout of the same name, the man immortalized as the last of the Mohicans.

Tex Patterson was a big man, a shock of grey hair on his head, but with a youthful linebacker’s build under a perfectly tailored navy blue suit. Crisp white shirt, and dark tie knotted at the throat. The standard DSS uniform, slightly modified by the big white Stetson on his head and the shiny black Tony Lama cowboy boots on his feet. And, the small enamelled pin on his lapel.

Under his left arm, in a custom leather holster, hung the “Peacemaker,” a long-barreled Colt .45 six-shooter, circa 1870. Never without his “shootin’ iron,” because, as Patterson was fond of reminding you, “God made man; Sam Colt made ’em equal.”

“Hi, Tex,” Hawke said.

“Howdy, Alex. Awful good to see you again,” Patterson said, squeezing his hand. “Can’t tell you how much I ’preciate you jumping in on this thing, partner. ’Course, I know Conch leaned on you a bit. She’s good at that. This pretty lady right over here is Chief Ellen Ainslie. First officer on the scene. Done a helluva good job keeping a lid on this, so far.”

Hawke smiled at the police chief. “Chief Ainslie, how do you do, I’m Alexander Hawke.”

Alex shook hands with her and introduced both Patterson and Ainslie to Congreve. The attractive blonde chief of police shook Ambrose’s hand, sizing him up, clearly surprised to find the legendary Scotland Yard man up in this remote corner of Maine. There had been any number of surprises in Dark Harbor recently. Alex could see dark blue Suburbans parked along the road, and the house was already crawling with DSS agents.

Patterson placed his hand on Hawke’s shoulder.

“There are four big old rocking chairs at the other end of the verandah, overlooking the sound,” Patterson said. “Why don’t we just let my guys get on with business uninterrupted for awhile, then we’ll mosey inside. Chief Ainslie was kind enough to bring along a big thermos of hot coffee. Let’s jes’ go around to those rockers, and she’ll fill you in on what we know so far?”

“Sounds good,” Alex said.

Once they were settled, the local chief of police did most of the talking. Alex sat back in his rocker, listening to the chief, and admiring the pretty little cove filled with sturdy-looking lobster boats, and small gaff-rigged sloops, and catboats riding at their moorings. The fresh tang of pine and spruce and the iodine smack of salt air filled his nostrils. Most of the early morning fog had burned off, and it occurred to Alex that this beautiful spot was about as unlikely a setting for a grisly murder as one could ask for.

No place is safe anymore.
That was his thought when the pretty police chief interrupted his unsettling reverie.

“Should I give them the long version or the short version?” Chief Ainslie asked, looking at Patterson.

“Short,” he replied. “You’ll find these two gentlemen very adept at asking pertinent questions.” She nodded.

“Cause of all three deaths was exsanguination due to multiple stab wounds. The babysitter did it,” Ainslie said, in the most matter-of-fact way she could manage. “Fifteen years old, this kid. She used a butcher knife from the Slades’ own kitchen. Killed the two children in their beds, then waited for Mrs. Slade to return from a dinner over to the Yacht Club. Got her on the stairs. Left it, the knife, right under Mrs. Slade’s body, didn’t even bother to wipe it down.”

“Same number of stab wounds to each body?” Congreve asked.

“Yes,” Ainslie replied, a look of surprise in her eyes. “How did you know…there were fourteen. Does that mean anything?”

“It might, Chief Ainslie. Or, it might not. But everything means something, as you know. Now, Mrs. Slade knew this particular babysitter, did she?” Congreve asked, lighting up his pipe. “Local girl?”

“No. Siri, that is her name, she was substituting for the usual babysitter, who is my niece. A junior at the high school here named Millie. Millicent McCullough.”

Ambrose said, “Your niece, the sick girl? What does she have to say about all this?”

“I haven’t been able to speak with her, unfortunately. Missing. Last seen in the high school gymnasium. She was injected with a tainted vaccine and was last seen heading for home, ill. High fever, nausea, vomiting. Two children have already died from that vaccine, Inspector Congreve. Many are in the hospital.”

“Horrible. Your niece is missing?”

“We have every man we can spare looking for her.”

“I see. Who administered this vaccine, Chief?” Alex asked.

“A woman who moved here about six months ago. Enis Adjelis. She was posing as a nurse from our hospital, Mr. Hawke. The principal immediately called the hospital when the children became ill. Hospital had no record of her. We’ve learned she was the mother of the girl who murdered the Slade family.”

“You have anyone in custody?” asked Ambrose. “Any apprehensions?”

“I wish. They all vanished. The whole Adjelis family. Siri, the babysitter, the mother, and the father, who was a flight mechanic over to the airport. I dispatched Deputy Savalas and two squad cars directly to their apartment after the bodies were discovered. Not a trace of them.”

“Who found the bodies?

“Millie’s grandfather, my dad, Amos McCullough. Millie’s parents were killed in an automobile accident and she lives with Amos. Most nights Millie babysat the Slade children. Dad would bring her out here to the island in his lobster boat. Then come pick her up at the designated time. He arrived a few minutes after midnight to pick up Millie’s friend, Siri. Mrs. Slade’s Boston Whaler wasn’t tied up at the dock like it normally would be. Which was strange since she was never late.”

“She was early,” Hawke said. “I would imagine.”