Hawke: A Novel (50 page)

He and Vicky sat silently, side by side, staring up at the faces of the happy couple. Alex put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

He kissed her warm lips, unashamed of the tears of joy and relief that finally, after all these years, he allowed to course down his cheeks.

Pelham found the two of them sleeping on the sofa wrapped in each other’s arms. He placed the fur coverlet over them, stifled a yawn, and walked out into the hall. It was half past one and he was anxious for his warm bed.

He’d no sooner mounted the first step than he heard the sound of the bell downstairs. The front door! At this hour? Madness.

He descended to the ground floor, muttering to himself about what kind of fool would be out on a night like this, especially at this hour. The bell rang once more.

He swung the wide door open.

There was a man standing there in the pouring rain. He wore a long black cloak, buttoned closely about him. His face was hidden by a large black umbrella.

“Yes?” Pelham said, not bothering to be polite.

“Is this the home of Lord Alexander Hawke?” the man asked.

“Lord Hawke has retired for the evening. Who shall I say is calling?”

“Just give him this,” the man said, and handed Pelham a small gold medallion. The old butler looked at it in the light of the carriage lamp mounted beside the door. It was a medal of some sort, a St. George’s medallion. He turned it over. On the reverse were Alex’s initials and the date of his seventh birthday.

“What do you mean by this? What is—”

“Just give it to him,” the man said. As he turned to go, Pelham caught the barest glimpse of his face. He was astounded by what he saw.

The man’s eyes had no color. No color at all.

“I sure am glad you were able to make it down here, Mr. Hawke,” the senator said. “Mighty glad.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” Hawke said, taking another sip of the delicious whiskey. It was more like some locally grown nectar than any whiskey he’d ever tasted. It was Maker’s Mark, the senator’s favorite, and he’d brought along a bottle as a house gift.

“Little early to be drinking fine bourbon where you come from, I suppose,” the senator said.

“Oh, I’m sure the sun is over the yardarm in some formerly far-flung outpost of the British Empire, sir.”

They were seated in a pair of old rockers out on the verandah, gazing down the long allée of pecan trees in full bloom that led all the way to the levee. There were three or four sleepy bird dogs puddled on the steps. The late-afternoon air was cool and heavily scented with the arrival of spring.

Looking over the sprig of mint in his glass, Hawke was thinking he’d never seen a more beautiful place. The sun was a thin band of bright orange and scarlet, lying just along the top of the levee. Everywhere he looked, riots of color had broken out. Redbud trees grew just beyond the faded white railing, and beyond them were azaleas bursting with clouds of coral and pink blossoms. The enormous old rhododendron bushes that rose up to the second and third floors of the house were heavy with crimson blooms.

There was the hoot of a boat, somewhere out on the river.

“You know, my dear wife didn’t care much for whiskey, Mr. Hawke,” the senator said, with a tinkle of ice cubes and looking over at Hawke with a smile.

“I think a lot of women don’t, Senator.”

“I agree,” the senator said, “but Sarah, well, she had
convictions
about it. None of ’em very favorable, I might add, sir.”

“Well,” Hawke said, rocking back in his chair, “I’ve got convictions about those little tiny watercress sandwiches some ladies seem to favor.”

“Now, that’s damn well said.”

They were silent for a few moments, savoring the whiskey and the companionship of the dusky hour, and then the senator again turned toward Alex with a happy grin on his face.

“You know, I used to say that trying to sneak a second whiskey past my Sarah was like trying to sneak dawn past a rooster!”

Alex laughed and raised his glass, clinking it against the senator’s.

“That’s quite good,” Alex said. “Another quotation.”

“Son…you ever seen a bona fide Parker Sweet Sixteen?”

He picked up a double-barreled shotgun that had been leaning against one of the massive fluted columns beside his rocking chair.

“No, sir, I don’t believe I—”

“Finest upland bird gun a man could ever…” The senator stopped, overcome by emotion. “Good God almighty, Mr. Hawke, I don’t want to talk about any damn guns. What I been trying to say to you, what I been meaning to do since the minute I laid eyes on you, is to thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart, from the very bottom of my heart, for what you did.”

Alex saw there were tears welling in the old man’s eyes.

“Well, I—”

“No, no, I don’t want to hear any of your self-deprecating nonsense. No. You found my little girl and you brought her home, just like you said you would, only—”

The senator had to stop and pull his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his old hunting jacket. He rubbed it roughly across his face and stuffed it back inside the pocket.

“Only she’s sitting out there right now in the top of that old oak tree of hers writing her new book instead of…instead of buried beneath—” The old man bent down and scratched one of his dogs behind the ears. He couldn’t continue.

“What’s her new book about?” Alex asked, trying to help the old fellow through the moment.

“Pirates, I think,” he replied, not looking up.

“Does she still not know I’m here?” Alex asked after a few moments had passed.

“ ’Course she don’t know!” the senator exclaimed. “She hasn’t got the foggiest notion I called you either. But, well, she’s been down here with me for over a month now. Not a lot to do around here and I could see on her face she was pinin’ away for you. Plain as day.”

“Did she talk about what happened, Senator?” Hawke asked.

“Well, she told me a little. I didn’t push her. She was funny. Said it was like some ride at Disney World, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean with Live Ammunition,’ she said. But she was pretty shaky when I picked her up at the airport down in N’Orleans. I still don’t know how those damn Cubans abducted her in the first place.”

“I’m still trying to put it all together, sir. She’d gone to a club the night before our picnic. She told me she spoke to a Russian at the bar that night. She’d suffered a mild concussion, you know, and she doesn’t really remember, but she may have unwittingly told him our plans for the next day. I don’t know. At any rate, the Cuban submarine I was tracking was in those waters at the time. And the Cubans at that point were trying to use Vicky to get to me. Suddenly, there was an opportunity for a kidnapping.”

“I still don’t understand how they managed to get hold of her,” the senator said. “Out in the water.”

“My guess is that they did know our plans that day. They hid in the trees on the small island just across the cut from the one I’d chosen for the picnic. They probably had us under optical surveillance, waiting for an opportunity. And when Vicky went swimming alone, they had it.”

“But you would have seen them, right, Mr. Hawke?”

“Normally, yes, but she was taken from below. Vicky was grabbed by the ankles and pulled underwater by two Cuban thugs wearing scuba gear. Apparently they called themselves Julio and Iglesias. They’re the ones she overheard bragging about the bomb being hidden in the teddy bear. Anyway, they dragged her ashore, hid her in the pines, and they were all picked up by the Cubans’ submarine later that night.”

“Did they hurt her, Mr. Hawke? Tell me the truth. Did those people harm my little girl?”

“No, sir, they did not. She was smart and brave and used her wits to stay alive. But I would say we arrived pretty much in the nick of time.”

The senator just nodded his head and took a sip of his drink. In the silver ice bucket at his elbow, there was a lovely sound as ice melted and shifted.

“Needless to say, I’m forever in your debt, sir,” he said finally, turning away.

The crickets had come alive now, and great billowing flocks of blackbirds filled the flaming skies above the oaks and elms and pecan trees.

“Times like this, I sometimes think of Tom and Huck and Jim out there on the river, Mr. Hawke. Poling their raft along the bank, looking for somewhere to tuck in safe for the night.”

“Yes,” Hawke agreed, for the first time realizing that this really was it. The real McCoy, his mother had called it. The mighty, the muddy, the one and only.

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i.

“My mother was an American,” Hawke said, gazing out at the river. “She grew up on the Mississippi, Senator. Somewhere south of here. Near New Orleans. I’ve never been here before. But I’d like to stay a few days. Maybe Vicky and I could wander down the River Road, try to find her old place. Then, maybe, spend the afternoon in New Orleans.”

“I’m sure Vicky would love that, sir.”

“Laissez les bon temps roulez,”
Hawke said.

“You speak French, Mr. Hawke?”

“Let the good times roll. It was my mother’s favorite expression. She was teaching me French. Creole patois, I guess. And then—”

“I know all about it, son.”

“Mr. Senator?” A screen door swung open and an ancient fellow in a beautiful green felt jacket with brass buttons stepped onto the verandah.

“Say hello to Horace Spain, Mr. Hawke. He’s been running the joint for the last seventy or eighty years.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hawke,” the old fellow said, stepping out through the pools of yellow light spilling from the windows. “I believe we spoke on the telephone late one evenin’. That shore was a sad time in this old place, suh.”

“Yes, I’m sure it was,” Hawke said, shaking his hand. “A very sad time.”

“Mr. Senator? What time we fixin’ to have supper this evenin’? Miss Vicky run off without saying nothing to nobody, and Cook, she fit to be tied what with us havin’ company coming in all the way from England and all.”

“You getting hungry?” the senator asked Alex. “I hope you like honey-fried chicken, black-eyed peas, dirty rice, and hush puppies.”

“Senator, I’m so hungry right now I could eat a watercress sandwich.”

“Now that’s hungry, sir, that’s mighty hungry.”

The senator picked up his silver-headed cane and rose slowly to his feet. He stood for a moment or two, gazing out beyond the long row of trees to the river. There was a big oak tree atop the levee, with three huge branches starkly silhouetted against the evening sky.

It was, Hawke knew, the Trinity Oak. The place where Vicky felt closest to God.

“Well, hell, son,” he said. “What do you say we mosey on down to the river and fetch that little gal home to supper? What do you say about that?”

“You’re teed up too high.”

“Sorry?”

“Your ball is teed up too high. That’s why you’ve been popping them up in the air like Ping-Pong balls,” Ambrose Congreve said.

“Ah, that’s it, then. Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

“Nothing more?”

“Not a thing.”

“You’re quite finished with your tutorial?” Sutherland asked.

“Quite.”

“Good,” Sutherland said, and swung his seven iron. The ball rose cleanly and majestically from the tee, soared over the treacherous patch of ocean and bunkers that guarded the green, and landed softly about three feet shy of the pin. An easy birdie.

“Hmm,” Congreve said. He coughed, saying something that might or might not have been “Jolly good.”

“Always take the cookies when they’re passed,” Sutherland said, stepping aside. “A lucky shot.”

Congreve strolled up to the tee box and stood gazing at the tiny patch of green some hundred and sixty yards away. A late-afternoon fog had rolled in from the ocean, making an already difficult hole even more challenging. To his right was the dense thicket of a palm grove and sea-grape. On his left, waves broke upon the shoreline of jagged coral that gave the world-famous golf course its name.
Dientes de Perro.

The Teeth of the Dog.

“Oh. Did I tell you I received a postcard from Stokely this morning?” Congreve asked Sutherland, bending to tee up his ball. Having witnessed his opponent’s brilliant shot, he now seemed in no hurry to take his own.

“I don’t believe you did. Where was it from?”

“He’s vacationing in Martinique. Most amusing thing. It seems he’s been decorated.”

“Decorated? By whom?”

“Fidel Castro, of all people.”

“No.”

“It’s true. He received a mysterious package in the post last week.”

“Yes?” Sutherland asked, trying not to sound impatient. They were fast losing light with still a few good holes to play.

“It seems he got a very grand medal of some sort. The Cuban equivalent of the
Legion d’Honneur.”

“Ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

“Most extraordinary.”

“Chief, I believe it’s your shot,” Sutherland said, when he could stand it no longer.

“One doesn’t rush a delicate par three, Sutherland.”

Congreve hitched up his woolen plus fours, which, Sutherland imagined, must be brutally hot in this heat, and addressed his ball.

He then swung the club—and watched in horror as his ball hooked sharply to his left, careened off the jagged coral, and disappeared over the top of the rocks.

“Rotten luck,” Sutherland said. “Hit another.”

“Oh, I think I can find that one,” Congreve said. “Dead low tide. I might just have a shot off the beach.”

Sutherland watched his colleague disappear down through a small opening in the coral that led to the sea. There was barely room enough for someone of Congreve’s girth to slip through. Sutherland looked at his watch. At the rate they were playing, and with this fog and storm front moving in, it was unlikely they’d finish this farewell match.

It was their last day here at La Romana, on the north coast of the Dominican Republic.

The golf, Sutherland had to admit, had been brilliant. The course was exquisite, the weather had been superb. Even Congreve’s eccentricities on the golf course had been more amusing than distracting.

The treasure hunt, however, had been more than disappointing. Using a copy of Blackhawke’s map, they’d located the
Boca de Chavon
River the very first day and their hopes had been sky high. Caves much like the ones described in Blackhawke’s own hand abounded along the treacherous coast.

Following the old pirate’s instructions to the letter, and using a hired motorboat, they’d combed this part of the coastline ten times over and come up empty. Since many of the cave mouths were constantly underwater, even at low tide, Sutherland had the task of getting Congreve comfortable with snorkeling. After a couple of dives, he seemed to actually enjoy it. The two men had explored some of the more promising caves many times over, only to come up empty-handed.

Each evening after dinner Congreve would take his leave, while Sutherland remained in the company of the ladies in the bar at Casa de Campo. Using oil lanterns, spades, and pickaxes, Ambrose, who, unlike Sutherland, seemed to have limitless patience and energy, would dig all night. And still the man had been on the first tee at eight sharp every single morning.

Sutherland had to admire Congreve’s bulldog tenacity. The man had entered countless caverns and crevasses, and spent many hours in the tireless, frustrating, and physically demanding search. He was never without a folding entrenching tool that fit in his pocket. Pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, the man was constantly digging. Sutherland stuck with him. But the words “pipe dreams” had begun to flicker across Sutherland’s consciousness more times than he would ever admit to Congreve.

He looked again at his watch. The man had been gone a good ten minutes. Five minutes was the maximum one was allowed to search for a lost ball. Congreve, however, would rather do anything than take a penalty stroke for a lost ball and tee up a fresh one.

Nothing to do but go fetch him.

Sutherland slipped through the opening in the coral and emerged into a small crescent-shaped grotto, white sand ringing the gently lapping opalescent blue water.

Somehow, they’d missed this tiny cove. It was invisible from the sea.

He immediately saw Congreve’s seven iron leaning against the jagged coral beside a small opening in the rock.

At that moment, the sun dipped below the thick purplish band of clouds that lay along the horizon. It sent brilliant shafts of gold streaking across the water and into the crooked mouth of the cave. What had been a dark hole in the rock was now lit up like a tube station.

Sutherland ducked inside and took three or four steps forward. The walls of the cave were tinged a brilliant gold by the sunlight streaming in.

“Hullo,” he shouted, cupping his hands round his mouth. “Where have you got to, Chief? If your ball’s in here, it’s clearly unplayable!”

A voice came back to him from deep inside the cave.

“Sutherland!” he heard the voice say. “Come here! You must have a look at this!”

Ross Sutherland dropped the golf club still in his hand and ran forward to find his friend. He was at the rear of the cave, and Sutherland was astounded to see him kneeling next to his golf ball in a shallow pit. Remarkable. Could his ball have ricocheted off the walls of the little coral cove outside and found its way back here? Was it physically possible? Ross had seen golf balls do stranger things.

But Congreve was paying no attention to his ball. He was digging furiously with his portable entrenching tool. He stopped and looked up at Sutherland, his face beaming in the golden light.

“Here’s our first victim, Sutherland,” he said. “I’m now looking for the second chap.”

“Victim?” Ross asked.

Congreve picked up an oddly shaped whitish object and scraped off some of the wet sand that still clung to it.

“Murder victim, actually. One half of a double homicide. A cold case for some three hundred years. The other half has to be somewhere in the immediate vicinity. Here, take a look.”

He tossed the object to Sutherland, who turned it in his hands. It was a human skull.

“Good Lord,” Sutherland said as a tiny scorpion crawled out of one gaping eye socket.

“Turn it over. Severe skull fracture, as you will see. Blunt instrument, obviously. A blow to the back of the head. Never saw it coming, poor chap. He and his mate were leaning over with their lanterns, staring at the hundred-odd bags of gold lying at the bottom of the hole, this hole, when the pirate Blackhawke swung his mighty spade.”

“Absolutely astonishing, Inspector!” Sutherland exclaimed, and turned to go. “I’m off, then!”

“I say, old boy,” Congreve said, “where the devil do you think you’re going with my evidence?”

“Back to the hotel to retrieve all of our torches and shovels, of course! I’m also going to put in a call to Alex Hawke. Tell him that after all these years you’ve finally managed it.”

“Managed what?”

Sutherland laughed. “Why, your most cherished dream, Inspector. A hole in one!”