The Chimera Sanction (13 page)

‘The Vatican has received more than 1000 calls within the last five minutes’, said Sforza to Brentano. ‘Even the new circuits are overloaded. The lines are completely jammed.’

Back in his hotel room, Dulac put down the glass he was about to bring to his lips, and answered his cellphone. He recognized the number: it was Interpol’s forensics section.

‘Mr Dulac?’ said the woman’s voice.

‘Yes, Gina.’

‘The audio lab people have made a spectrogram deconstruction and analysis of the voice heard on Al Jazeera. They compared it with the—’

‘So whose voice is it, Gina?’

‘It’s not that simple. Due to the heavy masking of the voice, they had difficulty in establishing definite patterns and comparing them with known exemplars of de Ségur.’

‘Exemplars?’

‘Samples, if you prefer. Parts of speeches recorded when he was CEO of Miranda Group a few years ago. The diphthongs and inflections—’

‘Gina!’

‘Let me finish. The diphthongs and inflections show up on the
spectrogram
along with the occlusives, such as Vs and Ps, along with their
wavelength, wave amplitude and intensity. All those compare favorably with the ones on the exemplars.’

‘The point being, Gina?’

‘We have an 80% match with de Ségur’s voice. But—’

‘Good enough for me.’

Hugues de Ségur, alias Pierre de Combel, had planned to evacuate shortly after the live TV transmission. He knew that the worlds’ intelligence agencies and security forces’ super computers were already busy trying to break the firewalls, decipher the codes and hunt down the latitude-longitude coordinates of the transmission.

Amidst the flurry of preparations for departure, de Ségur was talking to the bull-necked Godefroi when suddenly Vespoli, phone in hand and looking embarrassed, entered the dining room: ‘Sir, it’s the helicopter pilot.’

‘What is it?’ said de Ségur.

‘We have a problem. The pilot had a mechanical at Saanen. He had to lease another helicopter and it has a different interior configuration.’

‘So?’

‘The stretcher doesn’t fit.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I—’

De Ségur grabbed Vespoli by the lapels of his jacket and shook him

violently. ‘It was your job to check and counter-check all of the
transportation
requirements, you numbskull.’

‘I know, sir, but—’

De Ségur released Vespoli’s jacket and calmed down. ‘Now what do we do with him?’

He turned away, thought for a moment, then faced Vespoli again. ‘Take him on the Bellerophon.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Twenty minutes later, de Ségur boarded the helicopter, destination Benghazi. Before leaving, he’d confirmed his instructions to Vespoli that he and the others would leave on the Bellerophon, a charter yacht
standing
by in the Bay of Augusta. They were to meet him the next morning in de Ségur’s desert compound near Suluq, 10 km south of Benghazi.

Vespoli, still unnerved by the confrontation with de Ségur, walked downstairs and entered Bruscetti’s room. ‘Quick, get your things. We’re leaving.’ he ordered.

‘But I have just finished—’

‘Now.’ Vespoli handed him a one-piece dark brown fatigue. ‘Here, wear this.’

Bruscetti walked to the bathroom. Moments later, he reappeared, his round belly molded tightly by the ill-fitting one-piece suit.

‘Where are you taking me?’ he said. ‘Where is His Holiness?’

Vespoli didn’t answer. He took Bruscetti firmly by the arm, and led him up the stairs and outside to the white van, its motor running. They climbed into the van and seated themselves among the other passengers. The other van was already in motion when Vespoli signaled the driver to follow it.

Thirty minutes later, Bruscetti looked out of the van’s window and saw the outline of a yacht, anchored in the bay, surrounded by a sea of setting sunlight. The van stopped alongside the pier and disgorged its clandestine cargo, while three men, their Uzis at the ready, looked
nervously
about. Vespoli led Bruscetti and the other passengers down the pier towards a small launch. Reaching it, Vespoli started to usher them aboard when Bruscetti, about to board, stopped and said: ‘I demand to know. Where are you taking me?’

‘Get in,’ ordered Vespoli, shoving Bruscetti down the launch’s narrow steps.

Falling into the launch’s wooden cockpit, Bruscetti lunged for the handrail, catching it at the last moment. He sat down on the
uncomfortable
bench, nervously looking at the two armed men sitting across from him. The launch’s motor rumbled to life and the crew cast off the lines from the pier. Five minutes later, the launch was pulling
alongside
the stern platform of the yacht. Bruscetti could see, inscribed on its stern, Bellerophon, and beneath it the name of its home port, Toulon.
He and the others took the boarding ladder up to the yacht’s main deck. Halfway up the stairs, Bruscetti heard the launch leave, turning to see it head back towards shore.

As he stood on the deck and waited, Bruscetti‘s attention was drawn to the man standing alone on the bridge above, giving instructions on the intercom. Must be the captain, he thought. Moments later came the distinct clanking sound of the anchor chain passing through the hawse pipe. Bruscetti looked at his watch: 7.45 p.m. He felt the yacht begin to move, slowly at first, then more rapidly. He looked astern and saw the coastline slowly disappear into the distance. Surrounded by a halo of cloud, the premature moon looked foreboding.

Bruscetti felt someone grab his arm from behind.

‘Come,’ said Vespoli, as he proceeded to lead him down the
companionway
. Upon reaching the level below, Vespoli turned left down the sparsely lit corridor and stopped before an open doorway.

Vespoli gestured to the empty room. ‘Your cabin. Get some rest. You’ll need it.’

Bruscetti entered and turned towards Vespoli. ‘Where are we headed? Where is His Holiness?’

Vespoli didn’t answer and closed the door in Bruscetti’s face. The doctor heard the lock click.

An hour later, Vespoli made his way up the companionway and the narrow stairs to the bridge. ‘When do we reach Benghazi?’ he asked the captain.

‘In about fourteen hours. That’s if the weather holds,’ said the short, swarthy Egyptian with the large, cocker spaniel eyes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s a Force 10 Beaufort sirocco working its way up the east coast of Tunisia. It could veer west and hit us.’

‘That’s all we need,’ said Vespoli. As navigator of a Hercules C130, he’d been tossed around like a rag doll inside its cockpit, as the plane plowed through a Force 10 Beaufort storm. He’d felt first-hand the unimaginable power of gusts of over 130 km an hour. ‘Can the Bellerophon take it?’ he said.

The captain nodded, as he continued staring ahead into the unknown.

The hotel phone rang loudly, jolting Dulac out of a heavy sleep. He groped for the receiver, and the phone fell off the night table. ‘Christ!’

‘No, Guadagni.’

Dulac replaced the phone on the table. ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’

‘Romer’s dead. They found him this morning in his room.’

‘Jesus.’

‘No signs of violence. We’ve ordered an autopsy.’

‘Who had access to his room?’

‘About 50 Swiss Guards. He slept near the barracks.’

‘Great. Just pissing great.’

‘Ah, and another thing. I’ve got that preliminary report on him. The one you ordered a week ago.’

‘On the pre-hiring investigation?’

‘Yes. You won’t believe this, but apparently he was a Cathar.’

‘What?’

‘Our source says he was registered in Sion, Switzerland, as a
practicing
Cathar.’

‘Unbelievable.’ Now sitting on the edge of the bed, Dulac absorbed the impact of the news. For the Vatican to allow the Swiss Guards, staunch Roman Catholics to a man, to be headed by a Cathar, was embarrassing, inexcusable. Someone would have to answer for the laxity. Perhaps a cardinal or two.

‘I know. As incredible as it may seem, he was in regular contact with the Cathar bishop of Switzerland, a monsignor Pierre Comtesse. Romer being head of the Swiss Guards, nobody bothered to check.’

‘Nor had anyone reason to. Up till now. Who checked his credentials when he applied for the post?’

‘That’s going to take a lot more digging.’

‘That explains why Aguar had no difficulty in getting hired, why the kidnappers knew about the ambulance being out of service, had access to the helicopter landing pad. Christ, the kidnappers had inside info on everything. Just pissing great.’

‘It all falls into place.’

‘So Aguar, dead, Romer, a Cathar, dead. De Ségur, a Cathar, very much alive. He and his bunch of hoods have killed the Pope, and we
have their lat-long fix in Sicily. What the Christ are you waiting for? De Ségur’s personal invitation?’

‘Your sarcasm I don’t need, Dulac. You didn’t let me finish. Yesterday, the Palermo police raided the villa corresponding to the latitude-
longitude
fix.’

‘And?’

‘It’s empty.’

The wind was now shearing plumes of phosphorescent foam off the mountainous wave tops. The captain glanced at the fine-featured Tunisian helmsman standing slightly ahead of him, not getting any reassurance from the worried look on the helmsman’s usually jovial face.

‘Everything OK?’ said the captain coolly, as the Tunisian swung the wheel to starboard, to counter the force of an oncoming wave.

‘OK. I’m OK,’ said the Tunisian nervously, overcorrecting to port.

Spews of spray were exploding off the Bellerophon’s bow, hitting the bridge’s windows with increasing regularity and force. The wipers weren’t keeping up. Instead, a greasy film of sand and saltwater was forming on the glass, reducing the Tunisian’s visibility. Now and again, he would emit a muffled curse in Arabic, leaning over to the side window to get a better view of the oncoming waves.

The captain looked at the anemometer’s dimly-lit dial directly above him. Its needle was oscillating between forty-five and fifty knots. The occasional gust would bring the needle perilously close to sixty knots.

‘It’s veering south-east,’ said the Tunisian. ‘It’s already 20 degrees off the port bow.’

‘Take her down to ten knots,’ ordered the captain.

The pounding of the waves on the vessel’s hull had awakened Vespoli in his cabin. Hearing the motors slowing, he’d dressed and rushed up the
companionway. At the top, he opened the door leading to the deck only to meet a wave hitting the side of the Bellerophon and drenching him from head to foot. He clambered up the open staircase and made his way to the bridge.

‘What’s the situation?’ he asked the captain.

‘We have a gale. And the wind is increasing.’

Vespoli looked at the current position of the Bellerophon on the
illuminated
GPS chart plotter next to the helmsman, then looked at his watch. ‘We’re over an hour behind schedule. Can’t you get more speed out of her?’ The sight of an irate de Ségur waiting for him near Suluq darkened Vespoli’s mind briefly.

‘Forget it,’ said the captain. ‘Does the yacht “Estée Lauder” mean anything to you?’

‘No. Should it?’

‘She was caught by a Force Ten storm in the Straights of Messina. She tried to go head-on through it, got hit by a wave that sheared off half the bridge.’

‘And?’

‘She went down like a rock.’

Vespoli didn’t react, looking straight ahead. With the slowing of the engines, the Bellerophon was now hobby-horseing, its bow lifting high above the water before plunging down the face of the next wave. Just then, a wave slammed into the half-inch thick window with the force of a wrecking ball. The whole bridge shook violently.

The captain grabbed the wheel from the helmsman and pulled back the throttle.

‘Get the crew up here. Check the panes for cracks,’ said the captain to the helmsman. Suddenly, a voice crackled on the intercom.

‘Captain, the lower deck has three broken ports and we’re shipping a ton of water.’

The captain glanced at the ship’s anemometer. It was locked at the maximum, 70 knots. ‘Get me Tripoli Coast Guard,’ said the captain to the radio operator behind him.

Vespoli pulled out his Glock 7 mm pistol from his jacket and put it to the radio operator’s temple. ‘Do that and those will be your last words.’

The radio operator looked wild-eyed at Vespoli and froze.

‘Are you crazy? You’re risking all our lives,’ shouted the captain. ‘The next wave can take us out.’

Vespoli had survived de Ségur’s wrath twice. De Ségur had made it very clear there would be no third time. To dock into Tripoli Harbor under Coast Guard escort would blow their cover, kill the mission and sign Vespoli’s death warrant. The risk of the Bellerophon being damaged by an out-of-phase wave paled in comparison.

‘Get your speed to 10 knots, or I will,’ said Vespoli, now aiming his Glock at the captain’s head.

‘This is madness, complete madness.’ The captain obeyed, slowly moving the throttle forward. The yacht lurched and plunged directly into the sea’s increasing fury.

At that moment, the door of the bridge opened and two Cathars entered, disheveled, and soaked.

‘Captain, everyone below is sick. Can’t we go slower?’ said the man in the wet brown shirt.

The captain looked at Vespoli and before he could answer, the
crackling
of the intercom interrupted again.

‘Captain, we’re flooding. The bilge pumps can’t handle the volume,’ said the now-desperate voice.

‘How far are we from Libya?’ said Vespoli to the captain.

‘About 30 nautical miles from Benghazi.’

‘So the waves should get smaller as we get nearer the coast.’

‘Shorter but steeper and more powerful. Like a herd of bull elephants.’

The intercom crackled to life again: ‘Captain, the engine room is half flooded. We must slow down.’

The bow was now rising clear of the water, and then submerging completely under tons of deadly water. The whole ship shuddered
violently
on every impact.

‘Slow her to 8 knots,’ Vespoli ordered.

‘That’s not enough! We must reduce to minimum steerage,’ said the captain. Between torrents of water lashing at the bridge’s windows, Vespoli would catch a glimpse of the Bellerophon’s bow rising up the steep cliffs of water, coming to a halt on the crests, then accelerating down the waves’ backsides. The intercom crackled again: ‘Captain, both generators have shorted out. We’re on battery power only.’

Suddenly, a large cross-wave hit the Bellerophon on her port quarter
and she started heeling in a continuous, sickening roll. Vespoli grabbed the handrail over his head with his free hand, still pointing his Glock at the captain. The yacht veered to starboard, exposing its port flank broadside to the waves’ fury. The captain flung the wheel hard to port and shoved the throttle full forward, in a desperate attempt to bring the bow back, perpendicular to the waves.

‘Come on. Come on, you can do it,’ coaxed the captain. The Bellerophon shuddered as she slowly righted herself and struggled back onto her course.

There was a moment of relief, and the captain reduced speed again. Vespoli relaxed his grip on the overhead metal handhold.

The Bellerophon‘s hobby-horseing had assumed a steady rhythm, when suddenly Vespoli sensed an eerie darkness invading the bridge. ‘What the…?’ said the captain.

Vespoli looked up and saw it: ‘Mother of God!’

The enormous rogue wave, three times the size of any previous wave, started to engulf the ship’s bow, the mountain of falling water
obliterating
the morning light.

The men on the bridge stood paralyzed, hypnotized by the onslaught of the incoming monster.

‘Hold on,’ yelled the captain.

Those were the last words Vespoli ever heard.

The wave hit the bridge with the force of a freight train, shattering windows and sending missiles of broken glass through wood and flesh. Men were sent flying onto the steel-paneled rear wall of the bridge, hitting its protruding beams with their arms, torsos and heads, their broken bodies collapsing onto the floor. Water gushed through the
windowless
ports, flooding the bridge. The few men who had survived the impact were trying to escape the torrent, their screams muffled by the inrush of water. Minutes later, the bridge lay half-submerged, filled with bloodied bodies and drowning men.

Then, the Bellerophon began a slow, inexorable roll to starboard. Her fate seemed sealed when suddenly, as if by held by a giant hand, her rolling stopped. The yacht lay on its side, wallowing in the waves like a mortally wounded whale. Below, suffocating men were fighting to get out from the rapidly flooding entrails of the ship. Then, an out-of-sync wave hit without mercy, submerging the bow under tons of water. The
doomed ship began its inescapable descent, sinking slowly at first, then quickly, as the bow dove steeper, deeper into the abyss.

Below in his cabin, Bruscetti was thrown across the room onto the small commode of the stateroom. He tried to regain his balance, only to fall down on the lopsided floor. The water was gushing in under the doorsill. He clambered towards the door, fighting the inrush of water. He grabbed the door handle and pulled himself up, working the door handle frantically until finally it broke off. He grabbed the bottom of the door and tried pulling. It was no use. ‘Help! Help me,’ he yelled. He pounded desperately on the door, to no avail. Finally, the water pressure burst the wooden door off its hinges and Bruscetti was thrown clear across the cabin, the door crushing his chest and pinning him against the wall. As he tried in vain to free himself, the water level quickly reached neck-level. He tried to breathe but choked, again and again, his body’s autonomous reflex attempting in vain to expulse the deadly liquid. As his lungs filled with water, he began to feel dizzy. Now he could barely see the cabin lights, flickering in the increasing obscurity. The cabin was almost fully submerged, when the door finally released its deadly grip and fell slowly to the floor. By now, Bruscetti’s world had swung ninety degrees: he was standing nearly fully submerged on one of the cabin’s walls, the doorway was now horizontal and completely submerged, and the edge of the water was lapping at his chin. I must try now! For Maria. He took a last gulp of air, ducked underwater and began swimming towards the cabin’s doorway. He was halfway out the doorway and trying to resurface when he felt his clothing catch on something. He looked down: he’d caught a loop of his fatigue around the leg of an overturned chair. He pulled hard to free himself, only to tighten the loop around the chair’s leg. He panicked, letting out the precious air from his searing lungs. He choked and swallowed more water. There was no more air. He pulled desperately one more time, as his lungs burst with pain. Nothing. It was useless. He was caught. He swallowed again.

Slowly, inexorably Bruscetti felt a feeling of abandon overtake his will to survive, giving way to a sense of resignation and peace. As the lights flickered erratically underwater in the corridor, the last thing Bruscetti saw was a white blur, being carried away by the water. The blur was struggling in slow-motion, trying to surface. It looked like an angel.

Then, darkness fell.

In the Libyan Desert, the earliest warning of a sirocco comes invariably too late. Awakened in the middle of the night by the eerie whistling sound of the wind, de Ségur had ordered the Berbers to barricade the doors of the house, and secure the Alouette helicopter by tying it down with sisal ropes anchored to small stones. When the 150 km-an-hour wind hit the helicopter, it ripped the ropes free in minutes. Flogging wildly about like sails in a storm, the loose ropes eventually flipped the helicopter onto its side like a toy in a sandbox.

Two hours later the wind finally abated, and one of the Berbers had to crawl through a window to remove the pile of sand blocking the front door. De Ségur stepped outside, looking forlornly at the remnants of the Alouette: the helicopter lay half-buried in sand, two of its blades badly bent. The force of the wind had blown off the jet motor’s intake cover, letting in large amounts of sand. De Ségur was looking at the useless piece of wreckage when his satellite phone rang.

‘Yes?’

‘Sir, there’s still no sign of the Bellerophon.’ De Ségur recognized Antoine’s voice. ‘She should have been here an hour and a half ago.’

‘Any radio contact?’ said de Ségur.

‘Nothing. We tried hailing them on channel 76 and emergency channel 16. They must have been hit by the sirocco. It went through here about two hours ago. There’s big damage to the docks. Three fishing trawlers were sunk here in Quaminis Bay.’

‘Give them another hour, and then get back here,’ said de Ségur to Antoine, the van’s driver. ‘We’ve got to make other plans.’

De Ségur returned inside to face the eight Cathars seated in the small, stuffy room: ‘They’re almost two hours late. The sirocco must have hit them.’

‘Mr de Ségur, we looked outside,’ said a young Cathar. ‘Is the helicopter…?’

‘Finished.’

The young man was silent, waiting for de Ségur to continue.

‘We still have the vans,’ said de Ségur as he sat down, absorbing the air of disquiet on the Cathars’ faces. For the first time, he felt their
confidence
in him wavering.

‘Sir, the Bellerophon. Could it have altered course to another port?’ asked the burly Frenchman in the brown desert shirt.

‘Vespoli would’ve contacted us,’ said de Ségur.

‘Their radios could be temporarily out of order,’ said a bespectacled, bald man.

‘Not all of them,’ said de Ségur.

Jean Gaspard, treading water, half dazed and coughing out a lungful of salt water, looked desperately for floating debris from the Bellerophon. Waiting for a wave to pass, he pivoted on himself and searched the horizon. Nothing. Another wave caught him off guard and he
swallowed
more water. He knew that every time he did, he was getting a little closer to drowning. He turned again slowly, careful to keep his timing and to inhale only when on top of a wave. Again, nothing. Desperation was setting in. He had to find something, anything that could help him float. He pivoted one more half turn, and saw it: a couple of hundred yards away. First an orange blur between each passing wave. He focused and waited for the next wave. He rose with it. Yes. A life raft! He suddenly felt a surge of elation. He started
swimming
vigorously towards the raft. After a dozen strokes, he realized he wasn’t closing the distance. It seemed the wind and waves were pushing it at a slight angle away from him. He realized he had to aim not at the raft but in front of it. If he swam quickly, he could still intercept it. He knew he had but one try before the raft would sail away. He swam forcefully towards the raft, marshaling every bit of energy, when suddenly a wave flipped the raft onto its side. The raft began to sail away more quickly. Gaspard swam furiously, fear and adrenaline his only fuel. He was catching it. His arms and lungs seared with pain but he kept hitting the water with rapid, purposeful strokes. A few more yards. He was there. With a last, desperate lunge, he grabbed the rubber tubing of the raft’s side. As he tried to right the raft, his hand slipped, and a wave pushed the raft out of reach. Exhausted, his arms heavy with lactic acid, he swam after it, but another wave pushed the raft further away. In a matter of seconds, it was twenty feet away. He’d used up his last bit of strength. He had nothing left. It was no use. The raft was gone.