Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) (36 page)

The black man in the kilt said, “My loyalty was always to Mr. Santal. Now it is to you, Miss Cavill—if you wish it, that is.”

“I do very much, Crispin,” Isabella told him. “Now that that's settled, we need to get into Ian's cabin.”

Crispin nodded. “In due course,” he said, “we'll change the iris and palm-print scans to yours.”

“When we have a bit more time,” Ty suggested.

“Certainly,” Crispin said, then, employing the electronic key Ian had bequeathed to him, unlocked the door.

“They'll figure out where we are soon enough. Let's hurry,” Ty said.

They were standing on a marble mosaic floor before an expanse of mahogany paneling. “Crispin?” Isabella asked, her voice conveying urgency.

He handed her the electronic key.

Flanking a small landscape by Matisse were two identical niches, each of which held one of a pair of jade owls. Isabella brought the electronic key to within an inch of the left eye of the owl on the right, and in immediate response the wall opened toward them.

“I did not know you knew,” Crispin said.

Isabella winked. “Little girls can be more observant than you might think.”

The pie-shaped section that had spun forward was the size of the compartment of a revolving door. Ty followed Isabella, squeezing into what, on closer inspection, appeared to be a lift. The air inside was cool, almost frigid.

“I'll be back,” Isabella told Crispin.

“Of that I've no doubt,” Crispin said, and smiled. No sooner had he spoken than he felt pressure in the small of his back. The man holding the pistol was as close as a dancing partner, and across the cabin now stood yet another Slav, also with his weapon withdrawn. Between them a weakened Jean-François hovered in the entrance to Ian's quarters.

“It would be a pity to have to kill him,” Jean-François said directly to Ty, then let his gaze wander quickly to Crispin and back.

“Yes,” Ty said, “I wonder how you would justify that as being for our own good.”

Jean-François snickered. “You think you are very clever, don't you?”

“I take a dim view of being kidnapped, as does your mistress.”

“What are you up to? Why are you here?”

“Let me ask you the very same question.”

“The man with the gun asks the questions. Isn't that the way it is in every film?”

“Some of us like to break the mold,” Ty said.

Jean-François nodded. In a more ominous tone, he said, “Step out of that lift, please.”

Ty raised his arm to block Isabella. “This boat will be crawling with police and with the press right behind them any minute now. Surely you understand the futility of trying to hold us.”

“Not at all,” replied Jean-François. “I have my orders.”

“Which, if I remember correctly, were to keep us safe?” Isabella said.

“To keep you
here,
” Jean-François corrected.

“Whatever's happened up to now could be written off as miscommunication,” Ty told him. “Think about it! Beyond this point it's piracy.”

“‘Beyond this point,'” Jean-François repeated with a dismissive laugh, “will lie only oblivion if I allow you off this ship. I would far prefer to take my chances in court, especially a Moroccan one, than with . . . well, never mind all that. I don't know what you are planning or how much you know, but I think it must be a great deal more than you've let on.”

“Philip will kill you when he hears what you've done,” Isabella bluffed.

“There is always that possibility, but look who's talking. When he sees the two of you in tomorrow's tabloids, somehow I don't think it will be me he'll want to kill.” The commotion on deck was growing louder. Jean-François cocked an ear toward it. “Now, I am only going to ask you this one more time,” he warned.

Ty hesitated, still restraining Isabella.

“Go!” Crispin cried out suddenly. As he did so, he placed his right leg behind the Slav who held him at gunpoint, lowered himself into a squat, grabbed his assailant's knees, then rotated his body before throwing him onto the cabin floor.

“Down!” Ty commanded in a booming voice. It was the voice of a younger man, ready to kill, unready to die. Shoving Isabella to the floor of the tiny lift, he fell into prone position, withdrawing the loaded SIG Sauer and taking aim.

Crispin had pinioned the Slav with his left knee and was now planting his right knee to the other side of the man's head in order to pinch and squeeze it, then draw out the man's arm and crack his elbow.

As the second Slav was preparing his shot, Ty fired at him but narrowly missed when his target suddenly shifted position. Immediately, the second Slav got off a single shot that grazed Crispin's left shoulder. Ty took aim a second time, counting down, in silence: one . . . two . . . three. His bullet entered between the intruder's eyes.

Jean-François moved toward the gunman's pistol.

“Forget it,” Ty advised him.

But Jean-François pressed on.

“I told you to forget it.”

Defiant, Jean-François grabbed for the silenced SIG Sauer P220. When he had it in his grip and had begun to pivot but before he could take aim, Ty fired two fatal rounds into his chest.

“How badly were you hit?” Ty called out to Crispin.

“I've been hit worse,” Crispin answered, instinctively disparaging the sharp puncture, deeper than expected, from which blood had now begun to pulse.

“They'll get you to a doctor,” Ty said, hearing the approach of others on the stairs.

“More of a nurse's job, really,” Crispin replied, the lilt of his voice reassuring. “Wherever you're going, I'd go now if I were you.”

Ty stepped into the elevator, dragging Isabella with him. “Do you still have that key?”

She opened her palm.

“Then let's get this show on the road.”

Isabella nodded, presented the key, and at once the door swiveled closed.

“Whew,” Ty said, exhaling as the lift descended. “Now that we've saved ourselves, let's go save the world. What do you say?”

“Do you think we have a chance?”

“There's always a chance,” Ty said.

Chapter Forty-four

“This is—was—Ian's private lift,”
Isabella explained to Ty. “It operates in a high-security, fireproof shaft on its own power source. On every level its exterior door is disguised. As you might imagine, Ian liked to appear and disappear by surprise.”

“That would seem to have been entirely in character. What did Crispin mean when he said he'd ‘been hit worse'?”

“He fought in the Gulf War, with the British army. Ian met him just after that.” Isabella studied Ty. “It's pretty obvious that you've also seen combat.”

“Once a soldier, always a soldier?”

“Once a spy, always a spy?”

So smoothly and quietly did they land on
LEVEL ONE—SUB
that they were both taken by surprise when the lift stopped and a door slid rapidly upward on the opposite side of the compartment from the one by which they had entered. Beyond, in an eerily silent high-tech crypt, stretched the same woven-steel treadway Ty had encountered upon first coming aboard
Surpass
in Cap d'Antibes. At the end of it, low in her berth, sat an elliptical submarine whose pontoonlike hull had been painted in the variegated blues and greens of sea camouflage. Using touch-screen controls mounted in a nearby wall, Isabella opened the clear-domed passenger compartment at the craft's center, then followed Ty aboard. Inside were seats for six passengers, in three rows of two, and a tortoiseshell dashboard that made the interior redolent of a sports car.

“Have you done this before?” Ty asked.

“Never,” Isabella said.

“Would you like me to have a go at it?”

“I don't think that will be necessary, do you?” she replied, pointing to an LED screen on which appeared a list of commands:
PREPARE DEPARTURE, DEPARTURE, GPS WAYPOINT ORIGIN, GPS WAYPOINT DESTINATION, DEPTH, SPEED, OVERRIDE.
“This thing could be run by a child in a bath.”

“If you say so,” Ty said.

“I do. Ian wasn't mechanical. He appreciated machines but saw their role as freeing human beings like him to think about bigger things. Beyond that and the predictable masculine taste for gadgets, particularly the latest ones that no one else had or could get hold of, he wasn't interested.”

In no time the transparent roof snapped tightly back into place atop the submersible and the shadowy berth filled with enough seawater for the magnificent toy to float. When the twin hatches beneath it opened, it descended like a diving bell into the Mediterranean.

Outside, caught in the strong, conical beams of the submarine's searchlights, dolphins frolicked among a hundred other colorful varieties of fish while coral formations, anchored to the rocky seabed, flowered in bursts of vivid peach and perfect white. Algae lined the undulating floor of the ancient sea, coming ever more sharply into focus as they descended.

“Is there a phone on board?” Ty asked. “There must be.”

“I reckon,” Isabella said, and pushed the icon for a telephone in an upper corner of the touch screen. “It's got to be the same as on the tenders. When you hear a tone, just speak the number you want.”

Ty did as she instructed and a few seconds later heard Oliver's voice boom from the speaker.

“Bloody hell!” Oliver exclaimed. “What the fuck happened? Where are you?”

“Twenty thousand leagues under the sea,” Ty said, “on our way to you. What do you mean, what happened?”

“You're all over Sky News, you
and
Isabella.”

Ty smiled. “Pitch me the story line.”

“No need to, really. Use your imagination.”

“Was there anything about Frost's boys?”

“They're calling them suspected pirates for the time being. Never mind. It's that kiss they're giving airtime to. Frost's thugs,
Surpass
's
crew, the Moroccan police—they're not even bit players at this point, they're extras.”

The beginnings of laughter spread across Isabella's face.

“Those paparazzi saved your bacon,” Oliver continued. “I'll say that for them. You really owe them one.”

“And how would you propose I discharge that debt?” Ty asked. “I mean, let's not give them too much credit, Ollie, when they're so easy to manipulate.”

“Anyway, the question the press is asking, and I'm sure the authorities, too, is what's become of the two of you.”

“And they can go on asking it,” Ty said. “From now on we're playing by Hollywood rules. They'll have to stay till the climax to find out what happens.”

Oliver sighed. “In the meantime I can think of one person who won't have enjoyed that kiss.”

“I'm sure he's got bigger things on his mind,” Isabella offered.

“I suppose it depends on how he weights things, darling,” Ty told her.

She started. It was the first time either of them had used that word.

“Putting myself in his position,” replied Oliver, “I'd say it's a game changer. Before it he could have had everything. Now he must make do with whatever's left, whatever's still under his control. But let's get to the point, shall we? How far out are you? I presume you're in some sort of submarine—only you would have found one of those handy—and that you're headed for Gib.”

“Correct on each count,” Ty replied. “I'll need a waypoint for surfacing. Once I have that, I'll be able to give you an ETA. We'll require relatively deep water, obviously, but that shouldn't pose much of a problem around here. And, Ollie, the less exposure the better right now. We'll both need a change of clothes.”

“I'll ring Prada.”

“And phones,” Ty added. “The goons neutralized ours. Most important, we'll need ordnance.”

“Got you,” Oliver replied. “Now, take this down. It's the waypoint for a spot just within the entrance to a cave not far beyond Europa Point. Don't worry, it's safe. Legend has it that it's depthless. Stay submerged until I give you the signal. It shouldn't be long. There will be two fishermen, SBS blokes, in a blue skiff. Don't hit them on your way up. They'll change places with you, and we'll collect you shortly thereafter.”

“What else do I need to know?” Ty asked.

“That we're in countdown mode,” Oliver replied.

“Oh, that's just great,” Ty said. “I'm breathing easier already.”

In the Range Rover that ferried them from a landing site not far from the shadowy, stalactite-filled cavern where they had transferred from
Surpass
's
submarine to the nondescript skiff, Oliver brought Ty and Isabella up to date. “Cardigan & Sons Transport,” he said, “turned out to be not so much a front as a holding company. As a result, we lost a bit of time there.”

Ty furrowed his brow. “How much time?” he inquired.

“Enough to have made the situation more difficult but not irretrievable, which is to say that we have—one—identified each of that firm's subsidiaries, and—two—sequestered all the lorries and barges, whether Cardigan's or anyone else's, into which cargo from the Claussen
Wayfarer
was offloaded. As for vetting the lot by hand and eye and other sensors, we are rather short of manpower.”

“Why?” Ty asked.

“Principally because a threat of this sort is not information one wants to share widely, but also because of—and you won't believe this, Ty—one George Kenneth.”

“The old school tie?”

“No doubt that's part of it. Another part is the tendency of men like Kenneth to overintellectualize every goddamned thing.”

“Is there any way around him?”

“None through London,” Oliver said. “I've made stabs. So has Giles. But it's a NATO op, and our boys aren't going to contravene the PM, who's not going to contravene Washington.”

“The Prime Minister could call the President,” Ty suggested.

“But who is going to call, much less persuade, the PM? You seem to think everyone at every level in government is on a first-name basis with and has the same priorities as everyone else. The truth is that the higher one goes, the less likely it becomes that that's the case. Too many people have too many contrary reasons and too much turf to protect.”

“
You
could call the President,” Isabella told Ty.

Ty smiled. “What do you think?” he asked Oliver.

“Off the top of my head, I'd say that the odds are rather slim. Ten to one the call would be redirected to George Kenneth.”

“In which case,” Ty said, “we'd be back where we started.”

“Pretty much, but with Kenneth pissed at us,” Oliver countered, “and on a much higher state of alert.”

Ty paused. “Why would that matter? Surely at the end of the day we have the same objectives.”

“Up to a point,” agreed Oliver, his voice all at once contemplative. “We want to find the warheads; so does he. But suppose that somewhere in his heart of hearts George Kenneth really believes that that's a lost cause. And suppose he's further concluded that no amount of extra resources, given the people and material available, could possibly affect that outcome. Drift down from the firmament for a minute and think like a courtier, Ty, like a bureaucrat! Mightn't he prefer us to fail on our own without ever bringing his boss or, God forbid,
him
into it?”

Oliver paused as Ty absorbed what his friend had said.

“Hear me out,” Oliver resumed. “They could cut us loose. We wouldn't be the first. After that they could start over. For all we know, they may already be doing that.”

Ty laughed. “This, in a nutshell,” he told Isabella, “explains my change of career. Come to think of it, I'll bet you miss the jewelry business, don't you?”

“Not really,” she said. “How many women get the chance to stand in the very spot where the Fates forced Hercules to hold up the world only to have to do the same thing all over again?”

Ty reached for her hand and held it. “You're the first one I've heard of,” he told her softly. Then, returning his attention to Oliver, he asked, “Where is Philip at this moment?”

“In Ian's office—
his
office now—as best we know.”

“How can you not be sure of something like that?”

“You've never been to Ian's office, or to Giles Cotton's, have you? If you had, you'd understand. Have you ever wondered what kind of rock the famous Rock of Gibraltar really is? It's limestone, completely unlike any of the landscape that surrounds it. Do you know why? Because limestone is formed from sea creatures that have died, dried and solidified. The peak of the Rock was once a seabed. Think about that. And from there to the base, as far under the surface of the Med as you can go, it is shot through with caves and tunnels. Well, not all of the tunnels are natural, mind you. Over the last two centuries, ever since the Great Siege in 1782 when Spain and France sought to recapture the Rock from us whilst we were otherwise distracted by the Rebellion of the Colonies, men have excavated ever more elaborate ones, not only for HQs but for barracks and hospitals and simple warehousing. Most of all, especially in the upper reaches and outcroppings, these galleries were the sites of gun emplacements. What strategic positions they commanded! There are extensive maps of them in the Garrison Library and elsewhere, but there are also an infinite number of passages that are not recorded on any plan. Like one of those ghostly castles in horror films, Gib is riddled with dark and secret corridors. So when a man, in this case Frost, enters the mountain at one point, then stops at another within it, to anyone on the outside it remains far from certain he's still there, or from which point he will eventually emerge.”

“Another reason we're stretched thin?” Ty suggested.

“Sure,” Oliver agreed. “There aren't enough forces in the army, navy and police to plug every hole and monitor every crevice in the Rock of Gibraltar. But we have to operate on the assumption that Frost will conduct himself in the manner of a man who is above suspicion, come and go naturally, do as little as possible to draw attention to himself. That's the impression he will wish to give. Where we
are
stretched thin is, first of all, in our capacity to carry out the necessary searches of cargoes received from the
Wayfarer,
although by now it may be too late to mobilize any more support we might receive in time to make a difference. Secondly, and far more distressingly, we are hampered by your government's unwillingness to employ the sort of financial sorcery it is more than capable of doing.”

“I take it you're talking about diverting funds,” Ty interjected.

“Yes, and in very complicated ways, such as making them disappear from those accounts where they ought to be and appear in those where they ought not to be,” Oliver said. “What worries me is that if Washington should, in even the slightest way, loosen the noose we've begun to tighten around Philip Frost's neck, he'll sense that and slip through it.”

“I have an idea,” Ty said.

“Let's hear it,” Oliver told him.

“Not quite yet. Let's get to where we're going first, think things through calmly. Then, maybe, I'll give it a try.”