The Blue Ring (15 page)

"What is it?" his wife asked anxiously.

He held up a hand for silence and then said, "Yes...yes, of course."

He looked at the bedside clock. "We'll be there in half an hour." He put
the phone down and scrambled out of bed saying, "Come, Grete! Quickly.
It's Hanne...They've found her!"

Jens waited at the entrance to the clinic. He had arrived two hours earlier. The Owl
was waiting for him in the BMW. The journey had been swift and uneventful. He
saw the lights of the silver Mercedes sweep into the car park and in his mind
went over again how he would explain to the Andersens. From his files and from
the meeting he had had with them in his office several weeks earlier, he
guessed that they were strong people. Flemming Andersen had made his fortune in
heavy construction, much of it in the inhospitable terrain of Greenland. He was
a self-made man and used to adversity. His wife, Grete, had been his childhood
sweetheart and had supported him through the early, difficult years. Although
she had been distraught and had wept in his office, Jens believed she was strong
enough to face up to the truth now.

They hurried up the steps to the entrance, their eyes anxious but at the same time
hopeful. He opened the door for them and ushered them through and then into a
small waiting room. As they sat down, Grete began asking questions. One of them
was, "Why is she in this particular clinic?"

Her husband put a hand on her arm and said, "Wait, darling. Mr Jensen will explain."

Jens
did explain. He explained in detail. He kept his voice sympathetic but firm. He
told them of the ordeal their daughter had gone through. He told them of the
difficulties facing them in the weeks and maybe months ahead. He finished by
saying that she was in very good hands in the clinic, and he was sure she would
be in good hands when she was allowed home. He stressed that she had been a
totally unwilling victim and no blame could be laid on her.

At this
point the father had lifted his gaze from the carpet and said quietly,
"The only blame is for the men that abused her. Have they been arrested?"

Jens
shook his head. "They have not...and they never will be. It may not be
much satisfaction, but I can tell you that they died a violent death, and they
died knowing why. Your daughter is not the only one. She is very lucky first to
be alive and second to have such parents."

Grete
had been crying. Now she lifted her face and wiped away her tears. "Did
you kill them?" she asked.

Again,
Jens shook his head.

"No.
But I was there. I cannot tell you the story, because it would endanger the men
who rescued your daughter and who sent her home. There will be no publicity
about this. Nothing in the newspapers."

The
Andersens were silent and then Flemming asked, "The men who rescued her
and killed those animals...Can I reward them? As you know, I'm not a poor
man."

Jens looked at him and nodded solemnly.

"Yes, you can certainly reward them. When she's well again...when she is smiling,
take some photographs of her. Send them to my office. I will pass them on. That
is the reward they would want."

He stood up, went to the door, opened it and beckoned. A middle-aged man dressed
in casual jacket and trousers came in. Jens introduced him as Doctor Lars Berg,
the head of the clinic and Denmark's foremost drug rehabilitation expert. He
said, "Doctor Berg will brief you and explain the procedures. I will keep
in touch with the clinic."

He turned to go, but at the door the mother's voice stopped him. She moved to him
and put her arms around him. She was crying and trying to thank him at the same
time. He kissed her wet cheek, hugged her back and eased himself away. One of
the rare occasions when he felt total job satisfaction.

The Owl slept on the settee. Jens slept on the double bed in the bedroom. Birgitte lay
wide awake next to him. She ran her hand over his naked body. Over the black
and blue bruises. She had opened the door to them ten minutes earlier. They had
not wanted food or drink.

Just sleep. There were things she did not understand. When the other man was lying
on the settee and Jens had gone into the bedroom, he had called out, "Goodnight, Owl."

The man had raised an eyelid and said, "Goodnight, Pavlova."

She sighed and kissed a purple bruise on his left buttock. No doubt she would find
out all about it in the morning.

There was no moon. The sea was black. But Joe Tal Bahar kept the Sunseeker at a
steady twenty-eight knots across the low swell. He sat next to Michael on the
flying bridge and pointed at the radar screen.

"We
are thirty miles south of the western coast of Sicily, and we're just entering
one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Cargo vessels and tankers
heading for eastern Italy, Greece and the Middle East and Far East via the Suez
Canal."

Michael
leaned forward and looked at the screen. There were dozens of blips. "How
the hell will you pick up Frenchu's fishing boat?" he asked.

Joe
laughed. He was enjoying himself. He looked at his watch and said, "In
about fifteen minutes, Frenchu will raise a special transponder up his mast. This
radar has been adapted to recognise it."

Michael
glanced at him. "I guess it's not the first time the two of you have done
this kind of thing."

Joe
grunted in agreement. "True. But it's the first time we've handled people
not merchandise. What's the story, anyway?"

Without
hesitation, Michael said, "Joe, you'll have to ask Creasy when you next
see him...You know how it is."

"Sure,"
Joe answered cheerfully. "It's just that she seems like a nice kid, and
from the brief look I had of her she's been badly abused."

They
cruised on in silence. Away to port, Michael could see the lights of the
accommodation structure of a supertanker sitting up in the water like a small
city. He looked to his right and saw several lights. Joe was watching him.

"That's
a fishing fleet," he said, "out of Porto Palo on the southeast coast
of Sicily. They're trawling for king prawns. Usually I stop and trade a bottle
of Black Label Scotch for a box of them...but not tonight...Listen Michael, if
you need any help with that child, let me know. I don't know what's behind it,
but I guess she's on drugs. I had experience with that kind of thing in New
York. It's bloody hell getting them off it."

"I'll
let you know," Michael said. "As far as possible, Creasy wants me to
handle it myself. The main thing is that nobody finds out she's on Gozo. At
least until Creasy gets back with some decent papers."

"It's
no problem," Joe answered. He gestured at the deck below him. "Wenzu
knows how to keep his mouth shut, and so do Frenchu and his sons."

They
sped across the sea in silence for another ten minutes. Joe was not looking
ahead, nor left nor right, just at the screen set into the dashboard panel.
Abruptly he grunted, leaned forward and pointed. Among the dozens of blips another
one had appeared, brighter than the others. Joe laughed softly.

"That's
Frenchu. From that blip you'd think he was a supertanker instead of a
sixty-foot fishing boat." He watched the moving blip for a couple of
minutes and nodded. "That's him all right. He's moving south south west at
about ten knots." He punched some buttons on the computer next to the
radar, checked the screen and said, "We'll rendezvous in sixteen
minutes."

Michael
looked at his watch and asked, "Can you calculate what time Frenchu's boat
will get back to Gozo?"

Joe
punched some more buttons and said, "Assuming he cruises at twelve knots,
which he will, you'll be there at about five a.m. An hour before dawn."

"I'll
go below, then," Michael said, "and check the girl out."

He
found Wenzu sitting outside the door of the aft cabin. Michael nodded, opened
the door and went in. She was sitting half-propped up on the large double bed.
She was wearing jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked at him with
anxious eyes.

"Are
you all right?" he asked.

She
shook her head. "I feel lousy. I need some of that stuff again."

"It's
a bit early," he said, "but better now than on the other boat."

He
unlocked a drawer and took out a small box as she rolled up the right-hand
sleeve of her T-shirt.

It was
a Friday night. Colonel Mario Satta always dined alone on a Friday night. He
sat at his favourite alcove table in his favourite restaurant in Milan; he was
a man of few habits but this was one.

During
the meal he would think over the events of the preceding week, and map out
plans for the coming one. He did not look like a colonel in the carabinieri. He
looked like a successful grand prix driver or an avant garde playwright or the
owner of a television company. His clothes were a master tailor's dream. The
dark grey double-breasted suit had the faintest black pinstripe; it had been
tailored by Huntsman's of Savile Row. His cream silk shirt had come, like all
his others, from a small shirtmaker in Como. His maroon silk tie was by Armani.
His kid leather shoes were made from his personal 'last' at his cobbler's in
Rome. His face caught attention, especially from women. It was not
conventionally handsome, but his deep-set dark eyes and slightly aquiline nose
gave him an air of both authority and mystery. He came from a wealthy and
somewhat aristocratic family, which his mother dominated. She could never
understand why, with her wealth and connections, her younger son had chosen to
become what, in her eyes, was a mere policeman, even though he constantly
pointed out that he was in the carabinieri and the youngest colonel in that
corps. She would simply sniff and remark that, no matter how beautiful his
uniform, he was still a policeman. Her elder son had studied medicine and gone
on to become one of Italy's most eminent surgeons. Even that did not satisfy
his mother. She referred to him as an over-educated butcher. She would have
preferred her sons to go into commerce, industry or politics. She would also have
preferred them to be married to prominent, acceptable socialites from the right
sort of family. Instead, her elder son had married a nurse from Bologna, no
less, and Mario seemed to have endless affairs with nubile young actresses. She
despaired of her sons but she loved them both, and the love was returned.

Colonel
Mario Satta had made his reputation by deep research into the workings of the
Italian Mafia. Over a period of years and with the help of his dedicated
assistant, Bellu, he had built up dossiers on every major family. It had been
at first rewarding and then frustrating and then heartbreaking. His dossiers
had been used by the senior prosecuting magistrates in Palermo and elsewhere.
One by one he had seen those magistrates and their bodyguards shot or bombed as
they closed in on the quarries that he had identified. They were brave and good
men, and he had been unable to help beyond passing on his information. Politics
and corruption and a combination of both had always protected the killers. Finally,
in frustration, he had requested a transfer and a few months earlier had been
assigned to the department which investigated political corruption in Italy's
northern industrial heartland. He had taken Bellu with him and, although they
had only been at work a few months, many politicians were already looking
nervously over their shoulders.

Colonel
Mario Satta's three main passions in life were good food, beautiful women, and
backgammon. More or less in that order. For him, the perfect evening was a meal
in a fine and intimate restaurant, or else at his apartment, prepared by
himself, together with a beautiful woman and afterwards several games of
backgammon which of course he must win followed by a satisfying session in bed.
But on this night he dined alone with the added anticipation of a date with a
beautiful woman on Sunday night. She was not an actress but a television
presenter with titian hair.

He had
ordered one of his favourite meals: a special antipasto followed by cappon
magro. For the dessert he had spoiled himself and ordered his favourite gelato
di tutti frutti. He was always conscious of his waistline but indulged himself
on Friday nights. He had just finished the cappon magro together with the last
of the Barolo, which was of course a little heavy, but a nice contrast to the
dessert which was coming. He looked up as the restaurant door opened and slowly
lowered his glass to the table. He saw the man's gaze sweep the restaurant and
alight on him. The man wove his way through the tables towards him. He had a
curious walk; light, but as if the outsides of his feet touched the ground
first. Slowly, the Colonel rose to his feet and moved around the table. Some of
the other diners stopped eating to watch. They saw the Colonel embrace the man warmly
and kiss him on both cheeks. No one, not even the maitre d' or the waiters had
ever seen Colonel Mario Satta do that before. The men sat down and looked at
each other across the table. The maitre d' hovered a couple of metres behind
the newcomer.

"Have you eaten?" Satta asked.

Creasy shook his head. "I had a sandwich on the plane, a couple of hours ago."

Satta nodded to the maitre d', who moved forward. Without being asked, the Colonel
ordered for Creasy: spaghetti alle vongole, to be followed by osso buco. He
told the maitre d' to hold his dessert and then bring a double portion when the
osso buco was finished. He also ordered another bottle of Barolo.

Creasy smiled as the maitre d' hurried away.

"You don't forget much, Mario."

The Italian grinned. "That was the last meal you ordered at the Cardarelli Hospital
the night before your funeral."

Creasy nodded at the memory, and asked, "How is your brother?"

"He is well, but, as always, works too hard."