The Scorpio Illusion (13 page)

“I can’t help you there,” said the head of naval intelligence after several moments of silence.

“I don’t expect you to.” Again there was silence.

“Are you making any progress with MI-6 and the Deuxième?” asked Stevens finally.

“Yes, as of less than an hour ago.”

“I spoke with London and Paris at the suggestion of Gillette at Central Intelligence. I’m sure you’ll want to confirm it, but since I’m closest, I’m to supply you with whatever you need.”

“I don’t have to confirm it. You’d be hanging yourself if you lied in a situation you can’t control, Captain. You’re not prone to doing that.”

“You know, Hawthorne,” said Stevens quietly, “I can put up with your shit only just so far—”

“You’ll put up with whatever I care to dish out, Henry, let’s get that straight! You’re a cog and I’m an independent contract, and don’t you forget it. I give the orders to you, you don’t give them to me, because if you try, I’ll walk away. Understood?”

A third and prolonged silence ensued before the naval intelligence chief spoke. “Do you want to give me a progress report?”

“You’re damn right I do, and I want immediate activity. I’ve got a number in Miami that has an access satellite relay to a phone here in the islands. I need the location as soon as you can get it.”

“Bajaratt?”

“It’s got to be. Here’s the number.” Tyrell recited it, requested confirmation for accuracy, gave him the airstrip number on Saba, and was about to hang up the telephone when Stevens broke in.

“Tyrell!” he said. “Our differences aside—and I mean that—can you give me any background, any fill?”

“No.”

“For Christ’s sake, why not? I’m your official liaison now, cleared, incidentally, by all your governments, and you know what that means—’a cog’ says it very well. I’ll be making heavy demands and people will want explanations.”

“Which means the inner sanctum reports are circulated, right?”

“On a maximum security basis. It’s standard, you know that.”

“Then my answer’s emphatically no. The Baaka Valley could be a ski resort as far as you’re concerned, but not to me. I’ve seen their goddamned tentacles reach out from Lebanon to Bahrain, from Geneva to Marseilles, from Stuttgart to Lockerbie. Your crowd is riddled, Henry, but you just don’t see it.… If you get anything soon, call me here on Saba; if later, reach me at the yacht club in Virgin Gorda.”

During the next hour and a half, three private aircraft flew into the Saba strip but none would consider the disheveled Hawthorne’s pleas of urgency and promises of money to fly him to Gorda. According to the radio operator, a fourth and last plane was due in approximately thirty-five minutes. After its arrival, the strip was shut down for the night.

“Does he make contact before landing?”

“Sure,
mon
, it’s dark up in the approach. If there’s any wind, I give him direction and velocity.”

“When the pilot checks in, I want to talk to him.”

“Sure,
mon
, anyt’in’ for the gov’mint.”

Forty-one anxiety-filled minutes later, the tower radio erupted. “Saba, this is incoming flight from Oranjestad, F-O-four-six-five, as scheduled. Are conditions normal?”

“Another ten minutes,
mon
, and you got
no
conditions ’cause we got rules. You’re late, F-O-five.”

“Come off it, boy, my people are good customers.”

“Not in that plane,
mon
. I don’t know you—”

“We’re a new run. I can see your lights. Repeat, is everything normal? There’s been a hell of a lot of dicey weather recently.”

“Normal,
mon
, except there’s someone here who wants to speak to you,
honkie
.”

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to—”

“This is Commander T. Hawthorne, U.S. Navy,” said Tyrell, grabbing the outdated microphone. “We have an emergency here on Saba and must appropriate your aircraft to fly me to British Virgin Gorda. The flight plan has been approved and you will be generously compensated for your time and inconvenience. How’s your fuel? We’ll get out a truck if necessary.”

“Aye, aye, sailor!” came the excited response over the loudspeaker as Hawthorne stared out the large window that reached to the ceiling and overlooked the airstrip. Then to his astonishment, the lights of the descending plane swung upward, banking to the right, getting away from Saba as fast as possible.

“What the hell is he doing?” yelled Tyrell. “What are you doing, pilot?” he repeated into the microphone. “I just told you, this is an emergency!”

There was no reply over the speaker, only silence.

“He don’ wanna land here,
mon
,” said the radio operator.

“Why not?”

“Maybe ’cause you talked to him. He say he out of Oranjestad—maybe yes, maybe no,
mon
. Maybe he fly out of Vieques, which maybe mean he fly from Cuba.”

“Son of a bitch!” Hawthorne slammed his hand on the back of a chair. “What are you people running here?”

“Don’ yell at me,
mon
. I make my reports every day but no gov’mint people ever listen. Bad planes come in here alla’ time, but nobody listen.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tye, looking at the concerned face of the black radioman. “I’ve also got another call to make. The navy will pay.” He dialed interisland to Gorda.

“Tye-Boy, where the hell are ya?” shouted Marty. “Yer supposed to be here.”

“I couldn’t—I can’t—get a plane out of Saba. I’ve been trying for damn near three hours.”

“Those minnow islands close up early.”

“I’ll survive until morning, but if I can’t get a flight then, I’ll call you to send one over.”

“No sweat.… But you got a message, Tye—”

“From a man named Stevens?”

“If he’s from Paris. The front desk called me a couple of hours ago askin’ if your charter was still here and, naturally, having talked to yer friend Cooke, I said I was takin’ all yer messages. I got it right here. It’s from Dominique, with a telephone number in Paris.”

“Give it to me!” Hawthorne grabbed a pencil from the tower desk. The mechanic from Gorda spelled out the number slowly. “One last thing,” said Hawthorne. “Hold on a minute.” Tye turned to the radio operator. “I obviously can’t get a flight out tonight, so where can I stay? It’s important.”

“If it’s that important,
mon
, you can stay here—there’s a bed in a room over there, but you won’t get no food, except plenty of coffee. My superiors will bill the
navy and take the money themselves, but you can stay here when I shut down. I’ll bring you something to eat in the morning. I arrive at six.”

“And you’ll get enough money from me to tell your superiors to pound sand!”

“That is attractive.”

“What’s the number here?” The radio operator gave it to him, and Hawthorne returned to the phone, repeating it to Marty. “If a man named Stevens—hell, if anyone calls me—give him that number, okay? And thanks.”

“Tye-Boy,” said the mechanic cautiously, “yer not into somethin’ over yer head, are you, lad?”

“I hope not,” replied Hawthorne, cutting off the line and immediately dialing the number for Paris.

“
Âllo, la maison de Couvier
,” a female voice said.

“
S’il vous plaît, la madame
,” replied Tyrell, his fluency in French adequate for the moment. “Madame Dominique, please.”

“I’m sorry, monsieur, Madame Dominique barely arrived when her husband called from Monte Carlo, insisting that she join him immediately.… As I am a confidante of the madame, may I ask if you are the man from the islands?”

“I am.”

“She instructed me to tell you that all is well, and that she will return to you as soon as she can. I praise God, monsieur. You are what she needs, what she
deserves
. I am Pauline, and you must never talk to anyone in this house but me. Shall we have a code between us in the event the madame cannot be reached?”

“I know just the one. I’ll say, ‘Saba calling.’ And tell her I don’t understand. She wasn’t
there
!”

“I’m sure there is a reason, monsieur, and I’m certain madame will explain.”

“I consider you a friend, Pauline.”

“Forever, monsieur.”

*    *    *

On his private island, the
padrone
hissed and giggled as he wheeled himself to the telephone and dialed the hotel in St. Barts, his new assistants racing behind him. “You were right, my only daughter!” he shouted into the phone after reaching the room. “He bought it! Hook, line, and sinker, as the banal Americans say. He now has a confidante in Paris by the name of Pauline!”

“Of course, my only father,” said Bajaratt over the telephone. “But I can conceive of another problem, and it disturbs me greatly.”

“What’s that, Annie? Your intuitions have proved too accurate to dismiss.”

“Their headquarters are temporarily at the yacht club in British Virgin Gorda—what have they received from MI-6? Or even American intelligence?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Send an
animale
from Miami or Puerto Rico. Find out who they have there—and what they have there.”

“It is done, my child.”

It was four o’clock in the morning when the telephone pierced the silence of the deserted control tower. Hawthorne rolled off the short bed in panic, blinking his eyes, trying to orient himself, and rushed through the open door to the telephone on the desk.

“Yes?” he cried. “Who is it?” he said rapidly, shaking his head to throw off the sleep.

“Stevens, you bastard,” said the intelligence officer from Washington. “I’ve been at this for damn near six hours, and someday you’d better explain to my wife—who for reasons I’ll never understand happens to like you—that I’ve been working for you and not out tripping the light fantastic with a nonexistent girlfriend.”

“Anyone who uses the phrase tripping the light fantastic hasn’t a thing to worry about. What have you got?”

“To begin with, everything’s so buried, it would take an archaeologist to sort it out. That number in Miami is unlisted, naturally—”

“I hope that wasn’t a problem for you,” broke in Tyrell sarcastically.

Stevens ignored him. “It’s billed to a popular restaurant on Collins Avenue called Wellington’s, only the owner doesn’t know a thing about it because he’s never gotten a bill. He offered up the accounting firm that does his bookkeeping and pays his bills for verification.”

“The line can be traced; it’s called installation.”

“Oh, it was traced all right. To a voice-activated machine on a yacht in Miami harbor. The owner’s a Brazilian, currently unreachable in Brazil.”

“That
lupo
wasn’t talking to a machine!” insisted Hawthorne. “There was someone at the other end.”

“I don’t doubt it. How often have you and I monitored a drop or a pay phone during an operational time span? That someone on the yacht was told to be there when your
lupo
called.”

“So you didn’t get anything.”

“I didn’t say that,” Stevens corrected him. “We called in the electronic whiz kids with their voodoo equipment. I’m told they tore that machine apart like Swiss watchmakers, factoring it with several hundred programs, and came up with what they call a satellite laser search.”

“What does all that mean?”

“It means they came up with map coordinates based on probable satellite transmissions. They’ve narrowed down the reception areas to roughly a hundred-plus square miles between the Anegada Passage and Nevis.”

“That’s meaningless!”

“Not exactly. Number one, that yacht is now under
constant surveillance. Whoever goes near it will be taken in and broken—chemically or otherwise.”

“What’s number two?”

“Less effective, I’m afraid,” answered Stevens. “We’ve got a smaller version of an AWAC at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa, Florida. It can pick up satellite transmissions, but the transmissions have to be active in order to pinpoint the reception dishes. We’re sending it out.”

“So they’ll shut down on both sides, all transmissions!”

“That’s what we’re counting on.
Somebody’s
going to check on that yacht, that machine. They
have
to. We’ve short-circuited it, so someone’s got to come down and find out what’s wrong and retrieve any messages received. It’s foolproof, Tye. They don’t know we found it, and the second anybody approaches that boat, we’ve got him.”

“Something’s wrong,” said Hawthorne. “Something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is.”

The last light of the descending moon passed over the Miami skyline as dawn broke over the eastern horizon. A telescopic video camera was trained on the yacht in the marina, every image projected on a screen in a warehouse two hundred yards away on the waterfront. Three agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation successively kept their eyes open, taking turns at a table where a red telephone with a single black button would instantly connect them to both the CIA and naval intelligence in Washington.

“This is bullshit,” said the agent on watch as he got up from his chair to answer the door. “The pizza’s here and I’m not picking up the whole tab.” His two companions opened their eyes in their chairs, yawning as the door was opened.

The gunfire from the single automatic weapon was
absolute and lethal. In less than four seconds the three agents were slaughtered, sprawled across the floor, their blood-soaked bodies riddled. And on the television screen the yacht in the harbor exploded, the sharp, jagged flames drawn to the Miami skies.

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