Assassin (9 page)

“Hello, Slade residence.”

“Siri, it’s Mrs. Slade.”

“Oh, hi! What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just…just wanted to check on…to check…”

“Mrs. Slade?”

“Check on the children. Are they all right?”

“Oh, yes. Sleeping like two little angels.”

“Angels,” Deirdre said and was about to hang up.

“Will your husband be coming back with you, Mrs. Slade?”

“My husband? Why do you—”

She burst out the swinging double doors and took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow. It had grown colder, and the swirling fog wrapping itself around her snapped her out of the daze of wine and words, clicking everything back into sharp focus.

Line was tied up. Cast-iron stomach. Never sick a day in her life. Nurse, pediatrics. Nurse suspended pending investigation.

She’d been staring numbly at Faye Gilchrist, her salad fork poised in mid-air, when Siri’s breezy lie turned her insides to ice.

No, Siri, the line was most definitely
not
tied up.

There were two lines running under the bay and into the house. The old one they’d had since she was a child. And then a later one Evan had had installed. If the second line rang, it was one of a small number of people they’d given the number to. It was the only line Evan used when he called from Madrid or Washington because he knew she’d pick up. That was the line they’d been on tonight. The only call she’d taken on the old one was when her sister had called from San Obispo around three that afternoon.

Line was tied up. Sorry, Mrs. Slade.

She leapt down into the Whaler and yanked the starter rope. It came to life, thank God, on the first pull. Graham was swaying on the dock above her, sloshing drink in hand, saying something ridiculous about a nightcap in his fluty Queen’s Guards accent, and she threw the lines off and twisted the throttle wide open, up on plane before she was twenty yards from the dock.

Will your husband be coming back with you, Mrs. Slade?

Fog was even worse but she kept the gas wide open, straining her ears for the tolling of Number Nine. Her heart was pounding again and she felt rivulets of moisture running down between her breasts, the fog wrapped like a cold wet cloak round her shoulders. The blood was pounding so loudly in her ears now she almost missed it. There. A muffled clang. Then, another. She waited until she judged herself to be just abeam of the buoy and then shoved the tiller hard to starboard. She was trying to shave it close, maybe gain a few seconds.

She’d shaved it too close. The bow of the little boat shuddered as it struck and then glanced off the big buoy. She was thrown forward, into the bottom of the boat, and the motor sputtered and died. Her shoulder was screaming with pain, but she climbed back up onto the wooden bench seat and yanked the cord. Shit. She tried twice more and the third time it caught. She was still cursing herself for misjudging the buoy’s location when the hazy yellow lights of the big house up on the rocks loomed before her.

She ran up the curving rock steps leading to the house. All the lights were on downstairs and nothing looked amiss, thank God. Still, she took off her heels when she got to wide steps of the verandah. The front door would be unlocked. You didn’t have to lock doors when you lived on an island. That’s why you lived on an island.

She pushed open the front door and stepped into the foyer. All the lights off upstairs. There was a fire in the library fireplace. She could hear it crackling, the flickering yellow light visible beneath the doors. One of the double mahogany doors was slightly ajar. She crossed quickly and pulled it open.

Siri was on the floor. She was sitting cross-legged on a pillow, staring into the roaring fire, the flames silhouetting her long dark hair and shoulders. Siri didn’t turn around at the sound of the door being opened.

“Siri?”

No answer.

“Siri!” She screamed it this time, loud enough to wake the dead.

“My name isn’t Siri,” the girl said in a flat monotone. She still didn’t turn around. “It’s Iris, like the flowers I brought you. Siri is just Iris spelled backwards.”

“Look at me, goddamn you, whoever you are!” Deirdre felt for the switch on the wall that turned on the big crystal chandelier, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t find it. “I said look at me!”

Siri, Iris, whatever, turned around, a white smile in the middle of her dark face. Her face, the whole front of her body looked odd. It was all black and—her fingers finally found the switch and flipped the lights on. Suddenly, the black on the girl’s face wasn’t black anymore; that was just a trick of the firelight making it look black: no, it was bright red. It was red on her arms and hands, too. Red was—

“Oh, my God, what have you done?”

She was staggering backwards against the door. Iris got to her feet, hands behind her back now, and started coming towards her. One hand was coming up and Deirdre didn’t wait to see the knife she instinctively knew was in it. But it wasn’t a knife. No, it was a…what…video camera! A blinking red eye! Filming her and—

“Get away from me! Leave me alone! I’ve got to go up and see my babies!” Deirdre turned in the doorway, stumbling through it.

“I wouldn’t go up there, Mrs. Slade. Definitely not a good idea,” she heard Iris say behind her.

Deirdre’s mind broke apart then. She ran for the stairs.

“Oh, my God! Oh, no! What have you done to—”

She never made it to the top of the stairs. The last thing she heard before she died was someone saying, “…like two little angels, I
told
you, Mrs. Slade.”

Chief Ellen Ainslie of the Dark Harbor Police Department and her young deputy Nikos Savalas found Mrs. Slade next morning, sprawled halfway up the main staircase, dead of multiple stab wounds. A bunch of long-stemmed blue flowers had been strewn over the corpse. Chief Ainslie bent down and looked closely at the victim’s face and the blood-caked handle of a large kitchen knife protruding from under her right shoulder.

“It’s Dee-Dee Slade, all right.”

“She’s got two little ones, doesn’t she?” Deputy Savalas said, bending down to get a closer look.

“She did have, anyway, yep,” the chief said. “Let’s go take a look.”

“Her husband’s somebody pretty important down in Washington, right?” Savalas asked. “A big-shot senator or something?”

“Ambassador to Spain,” the chief said, looking at the baby-faced young deputy with the full black moustache. He’d only been with the force three months and he’d certainly never seen anything remotely as horrific as what he was about to encounter. “Let’s go,” she said, stepping carefully over Mrs. Slade’s body and climbing the stairs up to the second floor, even though it was the very last thing on earth she wanted to do.

O
NE WEEK.
T
HAT’S ALL
H
AWKE WANTED.
A
WEEK AT SEA
would be best. The tang of salt air and the unceasing roll of the sea had never failed to rejuvenate him. Even as a boy, and now as a man, Alex Hawke was keenly attuned to both his mind and body. It went with the territory. As anyone accustomed to the fine art of living dangerously could tell you: ignore a strong signal from body or mind at your peril. Your next stop could be a backstreet morgue with a tag on your big toe.

Right now, the signals Alex Hawke was receiving were coming in loud and clear.

Listen up, old boy. You’re running on empty. Your physical, mental, and emotional systems are seriously depleted, and you damn well better see to yourself before you wander once more into the fray or rejoin any battles. Stow away your old cloak and dagger and get yourself in fighting shape; or the next fight may very well not go your way.

Vicky’s tragic death had left him both unnerved and unbalanced. Devastated. He had finally allowed himself to fall in love and had loved her truly and deeply. Her loss was a constant, keening pain; it was as if he’d been split right down the chines.

Give me a week, he’d told Stokely and Ambrose. Same thing as he’d told Conch’s head of security, Jack Patterson at DSS. His first thought was to get away somewhere on his boat,
Blackhawke,
all by himself. He’d fleetingly considered Conch’s offer of the little fishing cabin in the Keys and rejected it. Didn’t want to be beholden. So. A strict regimen of strenuous physical exercise, diet, meditation, and rest ought to do it. But, that very night, when Ambrose Congreve had called with an update from London, the two of them had hatched a much better scheme.

The idea was for Alex to get out of Washington. First he would fly up to Boston’s Logan. There, he would meet Ambrose, Stokely, and Sutherland in the first-class lounge when their BA flight from Heathrow landed. The four of them would then make the short hop over to the island of Nantucket. Alex had decided to position
Blackhawke
there for her summer mooring.

Originally, it had been part of his honeymoon plans.

But now the three men could use her as a base of operations, cruising up along the northeast coastline, dipping in and out of interesting ports. Alex could spend the days working out the kinks in the yacht’s fitness room, swimming in the ocean, running on the beach (running on soft sand always got him in shape faster than anything else) and reducing his current alcohol intake by at least half. If he could cut it entirely, fine, but Alex believed a couple of glasses of red wine didn’t hurt. Helped him sleep, actually, until the nightmares kicked in.

In the evening, they could all gather in the ship’s library and sort through the facts of Vicky’s case. They could continue the conversation over an early supper and still have Alex in bed by nine each night.

That was the plan anyway.

“We’re beginning our final descent into Logan, sir,” his captain, Charley Flynn, said over the intercom. “I’ll have you on the ground in ten minutes.”

“All buckled in, young Pelham?” Alex asked the aged fellow seated just across the aisle. Pelham Grenville, upon learning of Alex’s impending voyage, had insisted on tagging along. He said he’d been caring for Alex since the boy had been in diapers and he wasn’t about to stop now. What the old family retainer didn’t say was that he felt Alex needed looking after more than ever. Vicky’s murder had taken a terrible toll.

An hour later, they were all on Nantucket Island, aboard
Blackhawke.
Because of the yacht’s enormous size, she was anchored outside the entrance to Nantucket Harbor. The harbor could not safely accommodate her gleaming black, two hundred forty foot–long hull. Unwittingly, Hawke had provided the island with a new tourist attraction. Every few hours, the Steamship Authority’s large ferries would arrive from Hyannis and Wood’s Hole, loaded to the gunwales with day-trippers. Everyone crowded the upper deck, staring in wonder at the huge yacht now anchored just opposite the harbor mouth.

She was bigger than most ferries.

Having stowed their gear in their respective staterooms, showered and changed, the four friends had all reconvened in the ship’s paneled library. By the time they assembled, Congreve had already turned
Blackhawke
’s beautiful library into a veritable War Room.

Ambrose had erected four large wooden easels, two on either side of the fireplace. Each easel held a large pad of blank white paper. Three were blank anyway. Ambrose was now standing before the fourth creating a handwritten list of every one of Hawke’s known enemies with a fat black Magic Marker. It was a long list, Alex saw, dismayed but not surprised, as Congreve kept adding names. At this rate he was going to fill up all four pads.

“I say, Constable,” Alex said, “Your little list there is certainly warming the cockles of my heart. When you’ve completed this impressive catalogue of ‘Fiends and Villains Who Want Hawke Dead,’ perhaps we could do one consisting of ‘Friends & Acquaintances Who Find Him Rather Chummy.’ Just for fun, right, Sniper?”

“Damnifiknow! Hellificare!”
the parrot Sniper squawked, somewhat in agreement.

Hawke had cared for the large Black Hyacinth macaw now perched on his shoulder since childhood. Brazilian macaws can live to the ripe old age of 110 years, but Sniper was a vibrant 75. Her plumage, despite her “black” appellation, was still a glossy ultramarine blue. An old Hawke family tradition, allegedly begun by his notorious ancestor, the pirate Blackhawke himself, was to use trained parrots as protection. Any unseen threat, and Sniper would instantly squawk out a warning. She also had a salty vocabulary, courtesy of Hawke’s grandfather.

“Friends? Delighted to,” Congreve said, scribbling away furiously, his back still turned towards them. “
That
certainly shouldn’t take long,” he added, earning a chuckle from Stokely and Sutherland.

Alex smiled. It was amazing how many enemies one could acquire during one brief decade in the service of two rather obvious notions like freedom and democracy.

There were individuals, corporations, and even a section of entire nations on Congreve’s burgeoning Enemies Register. Some, Alex found hardly surprising. Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Kashmir. Okay. But, Canada? Liechtenstein? Sweden? He’d have to ask Congreve about that lot later. At any rate, the idea was to vet out every name on the list and eliminate as many as possible. Those who remained would comprise a new list.

Suspects.

“Very comprehensive list, Constable,” Hawke said. “My compliments to the author.”

“Thank you, but that would be you, dear boy.”

“May I add one?” asked Hawke.

“Certainly.”

“Cuba.”

“Hmm. Cuba.”

“Yes. I left a lot of ruffled feathers down there on my most recent visit. A bloodless
coup d’état
that turned a bit bloody.”

“Anybody who was anybody in that rebel army was dead by the time we left,” Stokely said. “Still, we might have missed a couple.”

“Indeed, Alex,” Congreve said, adding the name
Cuba.
“Stupid of me not to think of it.”

“Not at all,” Hawke said. “Stoke’s right. We killed most of the terrorist bastards when we took out that bloody rat’s nest at
Telaraña.
Still, a precious few could have escaped. Chaps hoping I’ve celebrated my last birthday.”

“Motive?” Congreve said, asking his favorite question.

“We can safely rule out love or lucre,” Hawke said. “That leaves loathing and, of course, lust.”

“Yeah. Maybe somebody down there had himself a little crush on Vicky?” Stoke asked, and a silence fell over the room. “You know, when the rebels held her captive?”

“A crime of passion?” Sutherland asked. “A spurned lover?”

“Well,” Ambrose said after a few more long moments, “I can see by the expressions on your faces you’ve all had enough excitement for one evening, gentlemen.” He capped the marker. “We shall attack the thing with vigor on the morrow.”

“Yes, Constable,” Hawke said, rising from his leather armchair. “This little exercise has been most uplifting. At any moment I may burst into song. Do you never tire of all this bloody spadework, Ambrose, beavering away morning, noon, and night?”

“On the contrary,” Congreve said. “You remember, to be sure, what Holmes said to Watson in the very first chapter of
The Sign of Four?
”

“Sorry,” Hawke replied, “Seems to have slipped my mind at the moment. Mind you, keen, alert, and up on my toes as I am, I’ve not yet got round to memorizing the complete works of Conan Doyle.”

He was rewarded with a wan smile from Congreve.

“ ‘The pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers is my highest reward,’ ” Congreve said, relighting his pipe for the umpteenth time, a rather self-satisfied little smile on his lips.

“Ah,” Alex said smiling. “My highest reward at this moment would be a medium rare center-cut filet mignon and a single glass of good Napa Valley claret.”

“Excellent idea,” Ambrose said, expelling a puff of blue-grey smoke. “I do hope no one minds. Since we’ll be steaming out of this lovely harbor soon, I’ve booked reservations ashore at a delightful restaurant I discovered during my wanderings about town. Dinner will be at seven sharp. Shall we all tidy up a bit and meet up on deck at the stern? Fantail Lounge at six? Quick cocktail and then a ten- or fifteen-minute stroll to the restaurant. Jackets and ties would be appropriate, I should think.”

Alex had to smile. He loved it when Ambrose took charge of things. He so delighted in doing it and it was amusing to watch the world-famous detective in the role of the mother hen, shepherding the little brood about, clucking about this and that.

Hawke found Nantucket town itself to be completely charming. Sitting under the stars on
Blackhawke
’s uppermost deck during the drinks hour, he had been delighted with the harbor and the picturesque town beyond, especially the many white church spires rising into the deepening indigo of the evening sky.

He imagined all those late eighteenth-century churches filled to bursting every Sunday morning; women and children praying for the great whale fleets to return safely, bearing husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers back from perilous voyages to the South Pacific. Voyages sometimes lasted four or even five years.

Lovely eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture lined every street and Alex was pleased to see that, somehow, the island fathers had managed to keep the horrors of modern architecture completely at bay. Real candles were burning in the windows of many houses and you could sense lush rose gardens blooming behind the picket fences and sharply tailored hedgerows. Some streets in the town were gaslit and paved with heavy cobblestones. Stones, Congreve told him, that had once been the ballast in the holds of the first ships bringing settlers across the Atlantic.

“I rather like this island, Ambrose,” Hawke remarked, turning up the collar of his yellow slicker as they headed towards the center of town. “Although I seem to like all islands. Something to do with being born on one, I suppose.”

A fine spring rain was falling. The brick-paved street glistened with soft yellow light from many windows; hazily lit doorways peeked out here and there from behind thick bowers of white roses. Alex and Ambrose had fallen behind their companions, having lingered to admire en route the forthright simplicity of a particular house or a garden trellis.

“Yes,” Congreve said, inhaling the sweet damp air, “It’s quite lovely in a haunting way, isn’t it? Too much money here now, I’m afraid, but not enough to drive the ghosts away.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the past is stronger than the present. Here on this island, at least. You see that rather imposing building over there? The Greek Revival temple?”

“I was just admiring it. The public library, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. The Athenaeum. I paid them a visit this afternoon. Fascinating. Full of beautiful whaling ship models and scrimshaw and such.”

“No books?”

“Of course, books. Melville, you may remember, was a whaler himself. He visited Nantucket with his father-in-law, an itinerant minister. Whilst here, he met with Captain George Pollard of the
Essex.
The tale of the great white whale is based on the true story of the whaler
Essex.
Rammed by a massive leviathan and went down with all hands save a few. Survivors resorted to cannibalism after a month or so drifting on the open seas; drove them all quite mad.”

Congreve expelled a billowing trail of smoke and caught his friend’s glance, saw his sad eyes return for an instant to the pleats of previous smiles. But Alex looked away, saying nothing. The two had paused on the steps of a lovely church to admire one of the grander captain’s houses across the way.

“Listen,” Hawke said, peering into the darkened doorway. Inside the candle-lit chapel, a choir was practicing a lovely song of prayer for ancient mariners—