Hawke

Hawke : A Novel

Copyright © 2003 by Theodore Bell

For my wife, Page Lee

Who let me steal so many precious hours, and filled the rest giving me hope and inspiration

Acknowledgments

I thank Sandra Blanton; the late Dr. William S. Gray; Tina Fanjul and her father, Gustavo de los Reyes; Benji Griswold; Mario Mendoza; Mary Anne Page; Jim Patterson; Larry Robins; and Robbie Taylor for their generous aid and encouragement during the writing of this book.

Especially, I am grateful to Peter Lampack for being relentless and to Emily Bestler for being Emily Bestler.

Prologue

The boy, barely seven years old, was dreaming what was to be the last completely happy dream of his life.

He was sound asleep in the top bunk of his tiny berth as images of his dog, Scoundrel, bounded across his mind. They had taken a small picnic down to the edge of the sea, just below the big house where his grandfather lived. Scoundrel was plunging again and again into the waves, retrieving the red rubber ball. But now some terrible black storm appeared to be howling in from the sea, and there was a voice calling him to come home quickly.

And then someone was grabbing his shoulder, whispering in his ear. Alex! Alex! Alex!

Yes, someone was shaking him, telling him to wake up, wake up now, even though he knew it was still nighttime, could hear the waves lapping against the hull of the sailboat, could see the blue moonlight streaming through the porthole onto his bedcovers, could hear the faint whistle of wind in the rigging of the tall mast that towered above the decks.

“Wake up, Alex, wake up!” said the voice.

He rolled over and opened his sleepy eyes. In the dim light of the tiny cabin he could see his father standing at his bedside, wearing an old gray T-shirt that said “Royal Navy.” His father’s jet-black parrot, Sniper, was perched on his shoulder. The bird was unusually quiet.

His dad had a terrible look on his face, almost scared, the boy thought, which was silly because his father wasn’t afraid of anything. He was the best, bravest man of all.

“Time to rise and shine?” the boy asked.

“Yes, it is, I’m afraid, little fellow,” his father said in a hurried, gentle whisper. “You have to get up quickly now and come with Daddy. Here, I’ll help you down.”

His father reached up with one hand to pull back his covers and help him onto the little ladder leading down from his berth. At the last moment, the boy clutched the blanket he’d had almost since birth and gripped it to his chest as he descended the ladder. Then his father picked him up in one arm and carried him out of the cabin and into the dark companionway. They turned left, and ran through the darkness toward the front of the boat, the bow it was called, his father still whispering in his ear as they ran.

“It’s going to be all right, we just have to hide you for a while and you have to be very, very quiet. Not a single noise till Daddy comes to get you, understand? Not a peep, okay?”

“Yes, Father,” the boy said, although he could feel himself growing scared now. They’d reached the end of the long corridor and his father put him down. “What’s wrong?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going up on deck to find out,” his father said, taking him by the hand. The boy, still trying to rub the sleep from his eyes with the corner of his blanket, followed his father into the small compartment all the way in the bow.

This bow compartment was too small to be of much use for anything really. So it was just piled high with coiled ropes and boxes of canned food and other supplies. There was a wooden box filled with dark bottles of “hootch,” which is what his father called the stuff he drank up on deck every night before dinner. Behind all the boxes, on the forward wall, was a door. Alex had once stacked boxes under the door and tried to pry it open, thinking it would make an excellent hiding spot. He didn’t know what was in there, but the door was always locked.

His father used a key now to open the little door.

“This is where we keep the extra anchor and mooring lines, Alex,” his father whispered. “And a few things we don’t want stolen, like Mummy’s good silverware from home. But there are other things in here, things I don’t want anyone to ever find. I’ll show you one right now.”

The locker itself was a very small V-shaped space, too small to be even called a room. From it came a smell of oily, muddy chain and ropes. The big anchor was in use, of course, holding them to the sandy bottom of a little cove.

They were in the Exumas, a chain of islands stretching south of the Bahamas, and had been mooring in a different cove every afternoon. This one was the prettiest of all. His father had shown it to him on the chart. The anchorage he was searching for was called the Luna Sea, which his dad had thought quite a clever name.

Alex pointed out that the island itself had a funny shape. “It looks like the mean old wolf,” he’d said. “The one that ate up the three little piggies.”

“Well, then, we’ll call it Big Bad Wolf Island,” his father had said.

It was a small bay of deep blue water, rimmed by a crescent of white sand. At one end of the beach was a stand of palm trees, bending and rustling in the wind. There were brilliantly colored fish swimming all around the boat. Alex, standing on the bow, dove into the water as soon as they’d anchored. His father had been teaching him the names of all the fish. He was looking for his newest favorite, the black and yellow striped ones called Sergeant-Majors.

He and his father had had a splendid evening of it until it got dark, diving off the bow, then swimming around to the ladder hanging from the stern. Mother had been waiting on deck at sunset with a big fluffy towel and, hugging him while drying him off, she’d asked him to name all the fish he’d seen.

So many beautifully colored fish in the clear water, he’d told her, it was hard to remember all their names. Triggerfish. Clownfish. Angelfish. That was the one. Did they come down from heaven? he wondered. But you could reach out and touch the Angels and they would nibble your fingers. Ticklish bites. It seemed long ago.

The boy bent forward and peered into the anchor locker, so dark in the nighttime.

“I’m not scared, Dad,” the boy said in a small voice. “Maybe I look scared, but it’s only because I’m a little sleepy.” He was looking up at his father with a serious expression on his face.

“Is everything okay? Is Mother okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine, fine,” his father whispered. “She’s hiding as well, you see, back in the stern. And keeping just as quiet as a church mouse, too. Isn’t that fun?”

“I guess so, Daddy.”

“Yes. Do you have a pocket on your pajama top? Yes, you do, don’t you? Splendid!”

His father reached up inside the locker and ran his hands along its ceiling, feeling for something. Then he had it and turned to his son.

“I want you to put this into your pocket and save it for Daddy, all right?”

His father handed him a small blue envelope with something folded up inside.

“What is it?” Alex asked.

“Why, it’s an ancient pirate treasure map, of course! So, take good care of it. Now, I want you to climb inside this little room and then I’m going to close the door and then you’ll lock it, like a game. When I come back, I’ll knock three times and that will mean it’s time for you to come out. Hurry now, upsy-daisy, in you go.”

“Yes, Father, it’s going to be fun, isn’t it?”

“Right you are. Here’s the key. I’m going to stick it into the lock on your side of the door. I want you to lock the door from the inside. And, don’t open it for anybody but Daddy, all right? Now, three knocks, remember?”

The boy crawled up inside and pulled his tattered blanket in after him, tugging it up around his chin. The chains were rough and hurt his skin through his thin pajamas. They were his favorite ones, covered with cowboys and Indians and six-shooters. He wore them every night of his life, never allowing anybody to even wash them. They would certainly get dirty now. It was hot in this place and it didn’t smell very good either.

They’d been sailing for almost two weeks now, and the child had explored every inch of the vessel, learning the names of everything. His father’s new boat, a beautiful yawl he’d christened Seahawke, was on her maiden voyage to the Bahamas and Exumas. She was almost as large as his grandfather’s ancient schooner in England, the one he kept moored at Greybeard Island: a wonderful boat called the Rambler.

“All shipshape in there, my laddie boy?” his father whispered through the opened door. “Still wearing the St. George’s medal Mummy gave you for your birthday?”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” the boy said, reaching inside his pajama top and lifting it up on its thin gold chain for his father to see. “Anchor locker officer of the day, awaiting further orders, sir!” He raised his hand to his forehead in a little salute.

His father smiled and leaned inside to kiss his son on the cheek. “I love you, Alex. Don’t you worry, Daddy will be back soon. Don’t forget, three knocks.”

“Three knocks,” the boy replied, nodding his head. “Aye, aye, sir.”

As his father started to close the door, the boy saw that he had taken something else out of the locker. It was in his hand. His gun. The one from the war days that he always kept in his bedside drawer at home in England. The gun was dangerous and he was not allowed to touch it, even though he knew where it was and had peeked at it countless times.

“What’s wrong, Dad? Please tell me,” the boy said, trying desperately to be brave and not to cry. The gun scared him more than anything did.

“Sniper heard funny noises up on deck, that’s all. He woke me up. I’m going to go up on deck and see.” His father had trained Sniper in the old pirates’ ways. The black parrot would screech or squawk in alarm whenever anyone approached or if he heard any unusual noises.

His dad smiled then and held up the gun. “Look. I’m taking my service revolver, too. Whoever it is, they’ll be dead sorry they picked out this particular boat and this particular naval officer, I’ll tell you that.”

“But who, whoever would come on our boat in the middle of the night?” the boy asked.

“I’m not sure,” the man said with a little smile. And then, just before his father closed the door, the boy heard his father say, “Maybe it’s pirates, Alex.”

Little Alex Hawke’s eyes went wide.

“Pirates,” he repeated to himself in the darkness. He dreamed, it seemed, of pirates almost every night.

“Pirates,” he whispered in the darkness, turning the key in the lock. He put the key in his pajama pocket with the map. He had a great love, and a great fear, for pirates in his little heart. They were certainly bad, murdering thieves, weren’t they? But, still, their adventures were thrilling to hear about late at night with the wind howling about the eaves of the great house overlooking the sea.

Sitting by a crackling fire on rainy nights, listening to his grandfather tell of buccaneers and their bloodthirsty deeds, was one of his life’s great joys. Grandfather seemed to know every horrific pirate story by heart. And every single one of them, he told Alex, was absolutely true.

There was one story Alex cherished above all others.

The bloody tale of the life and horrible death of little Alex Hawke’s famous ancestor, the notorious cutthroat Blackhawke himself.

Alex heard a sharp metallic noise beyond his door.

There were three small ventilation slits in the locker door, and Alex pressed his eye to one of the openings. He could see his father checking his gun, cocking it, and then starting up the steel ladder that led to a big hatch at the top. The hatch opened up on the deck, right up on the bow of the sailboat, the boy knew. When his father reached the hatch, all Alex could see were two bare feet on the middle rung. He could hear his father unscrewing the two latches and pushing the hatch cover ever so slowly open. Moonlight poured down into the compartment, and cool night air, and he knew the hatch was now open.

His father’s feet quickly disappeared up the ladder and then it was quiet for a few moments. Alex took a deep breath and sat back on his blanket. It was still very stuffy and hot in the locker, and he hoped this game wouldn’t last too long. He groped for one of the life preservers he knew was stored here and placed it close to the door where he could sit on it and see through the vents.

No pirates about. Nothing. Just the empty storage compartment outside his door, and, beyond it, the empty companionway.

Still, a thought pushed its way into Alex’s mind.

A bad thing is coming.

He sat back on his makeshift cushion, telling himself it would all be all right. He started to count his blessings, which were many, the way his mother had taught him to do each night at bedtime.

He had a wonderful, happy family.

His mother was beautiful and kind. Famous, too.

His father and grandfather were both retired military men, and later British intelligence officers. His grandfather, upon retiring from the Royal Navy, had ended his long career as one of England’s greatest spies during the Second World War.

His father, whose name he’d inherited, was a commander in the Royal Navy, a great hero. But what he did mostly, Alex thought, was roam the world looking for bad guys. Of course, he didn’t have a big battleship like other captains, but he was a pilot, after all. He was now more of a policeman, really. Tracking down pirates, most likely, Alex thought, for, surely, there were still plenty of them lurking about.

Besides, he had a real pirate treasure map right in his pocket, didn’t he?

Suddenly, there was a sound above—a muffled shout, in some foreign language. Spanish, he thought, like his nanny back in England spoke to him, and he heard his father cry out something in Spanish, too.

The boy put his ear to the door, his heart thudding in his chest. He heard more shouts and more arguing in Spanish and then a loud thump on the deck just above his head. Then footsteps running this way toward the bow and much more shouting just above the hatch.

Alex put his eye to the slot. Nothing. Suddenly, his father came tumbling down through the hatch, landing with a shuddering thud on the cabin floor not four feet from his hiding place. There was bright blood streaming from a wound on his father’s forehead!

A scream was rising up in the boy’s throat, when he saw two feet descending the ladder. Two bare feet and legs coming down the rungs, and then a long black ponytail. The man had something on his shoulder, too, a drawing of a bug? A tattooed spider, he now saw, black with a red spot on its belly.

Spiders were bad. Alex had been terrified of them ever since he’d awoken one night to find one crawling across his face. On his cheek. By his mouth. Had he not awoken, it would have crawled inside—

The man with the spider on his shoulder dropped to the floor and looked around, breathing hard. He had long, dark eyelashes, just like a girl.

“I am looking for a map, señor,” the man-girl said. “This map, this treasure you search for, belongs to my family! Every five-year-old in Cuba knows the story of the English pirate Blackhawke stealing the great treasure of de Herreras!”

The man then kicked his father in the stomach, hard enough to make him cry out and try to get to his feet.

“I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talking about, old chap,” Alex’s father said, breathing hard.

“I will tell you,” the man said, and kicked his father so hard Alex heard something crack inside his dad’s chest.

“The ancient treasure, stolen by the pirate Blackhawke, señor, it belonged to my famous ancestor, Admiral Andrés Manso de Herreras. I claim my ancestor’s gold in the name of my family, señor!”

The intruder stepped over him and turned so that he was now facing Alex. He was a slender, brownish man, who wore only a filthy pair of shorts and one gold earring. He was staring calmly down at Alex’s father. He had some kind of small machine gun, too, pointed at his father’s head. His father no longer had his gun. Alex forced himself to be still, though he felt his heart would explode.

“Dónde está el mapa, Señor Hawke?” the pretty man said. “Cuántos están en el barco?”

He was about to kick Alex’s father again, but, suddenly, Sniper swooped down through the open hatch, screeching, with his claws out. The bird flew right at the man’s face, slashing his cheek and drawing bright red blood.

The man cried out and tried to bat Sniper away, but the bird kept up his attack. Alex’s father, rolling over, grabbed the intruder’s small brown foot and yanked him off balance. He went down hard. Alex heard the whoosh of air coming out of him; and then his father was upon him, going for the hand with the gun. They both grunted, rolling over twice before they slammed against the doorframe. His father pinned the man there, and slammed the hand with the gun hard on the floor.

“Either drop the gun, or I break your wrist, choose one, chica,” his old man said. It seemed his father wasn’t hurt nearly as badly as the boy had feared! One eye to the slit, Alex held his breath, praying as he never had before.

please let him be okay please let him be okay please let him be—

The gun went off then, not one shot but hundreds, it seemed, a deafening staccato filling the tiny compartment, splinters of wood and glass flying everywhere. And so much smoke Alex couldn’t even see who had the gun now, but then his father was backing toward him, pointing the gun down at the long-haired man who was slowly getting to his feet. He was holding his bare shoulder, and blood was streaming through his fingers, splashing on the floor. He hissed something at Alex’s father in Spanish, but stayed where he was.

His father, his old gray T-shirt soaked with blood, had his back pressed against Alex’s hiding place. Alex could hear him breathing heavily, strongly. Alex’s heart heaved in his chest, sheer joy filling him inside, as his father, his great hero, spoke.

“There is no goddamn map, señor,” his father said, holding out his forearm so Sniper could perch there. “How many times did I tell you up on deck? No map, no treasure, no nothing. Just me, alone on this old boat, trying like hell to have a little fun. Then you showed up. Now you get the hell off my boat, comprende? Or I’ll spatter your brains on that wall right here and now.”

“Señor, I beg you,” the man said, in good English now. “It’s all a big mistake. Listen. Was not your yacht last week down in Staniel Cay? My brother, Carlitos, he say a descendant of Blackhawke the famous pirate is down here in the Exumas, looking for the famous lost treasure of de Herreras and—”

“I got it. So you decided to smoke a little ganja and row out to a total stranger’s boat in the middle of the night, carrying a bloody machine gun, and hoping to find some nonexistent map, right?”

“Oh, no, señor, I only—”

“Shut up, please!” Alex heard his father say, pulling back on the slide that cocked the machine gun. “You’re losing a lot of blood, old chap. You need to get yourself to a doctor. Put both hands on your head and turn around, got that? Right now!”

His father moved away from the door and Alex could see the compartment again. Pressing his eye to the slit once more, he felt something warm and sticky on his face. His father’s blood. He watched the ponytailed man moving toward the door with his hands on his head. Suddenly, he stopped, and turned to Alex’s father with a horrible grin on his face.

Sniper let out a blood-curdling screech and fluttered his big black wings wildly.

“Oh, God, Kitty,” he heard his father say in words that sounded broken and full of pain.

In the doorway, two more men stood on either side of Alex’s mother. One man, tall, whose bald head was glistening with sweat, held his mother roughly by one arm. Her long blond hair was matted and wild, her pale blue eyes red, brimming with unshed tears. She was clutching the remains of her torn nightgown with her other arm, terror plain on her beautiful face. The other man was fat and had a big gold cross hanging from his neck. He had a long flat knife at Alex’s mother’s throat, right under her chin.

Sniper squawked and flared his wings angrily.

“Sniper, no!” Alex heard his father say, and the bird calmed itself and remained perched on his arm.

In the fat man’s other hand, he clutched a handful of sparkling jewels. Diamond necklaces and bracelets and the pretty thing his mother had worn in her hair the night before. A tiara. The boy had told her it made her look like a fairy queen.

“Ah, la señora, eh, the beauteous Lady Hawke, no?” the ponytailed pirate said, smiling now. He bowed from the waist. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am called Araña, the spider, but my name it is simply Manso. And these are my two brothers, Juanito and Carlos. It was mi hermano, Carlitos, who served you, dear lady, all that rum at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club.”

“Sí, I am Carlitos,” the fat young Cuban said to Alex’s mother.

“Remember me now, dear lady? We celebrated the New Year’s Eve together!”

“My brother, he is the bartender there, see?” Manso said. “He hears many things. And my brother, he tells me all about your great beauty. And how you dance up on the bar. And, of course, your husband’s search for the lost treasure of Blackhawke. A treasure, señora, that the English pirate stole from my ancestor, Andrés Manso de Herreras, the greatest Spanish privateer of them all! It is a story passed down through my family for endless generations.”

The man stepped closer to Alex’s mother and stroked her cheek. “So, please, Señora Hawke, would you be so kind as to come in and join our little fiesta?”

A small sob escaped his mother’s trembling lips. Alex saw her angry blue eyes and pale cheeks in the moonlight that was still streaming down through the opened hatch. His eyes pressed against the narrow slit, he could see that his mother was fighting desperately to hold back her tears.

She reached out to her husband. “I’m so very sorry, Alexander. So very, very sorry.”

Now the boy had tears of his own, burning his eyes. He wanted to shrink back from this, away from the door. Crawl down under the chains. Disappear back into his dreams. A little red ball, riding the crest of a breaking wave.

But he couldn’t look away. He knew his father was locked in a desperate struggle to save his mother’s life and his own. He had to be there for his father, even if he could not help him.

The fat Cuban called Carlitos said something in Spanish that caused his mother to wrench her head around and spit in the man’s face.

Then the tattooed pirate called Araña gripped the fat Cuban’s hand, the one holding the machete to his mother’s throat.

“No, Carlitos,” Araña said. “Not until she shows us the map. He won’t do it. But I can make her do it, that I can promise.”

But the fat man, anger and spittle on his face, disobeyed and drew his blade slowly across his mother’s taut skin, leaving a thin red line that instantly became a torrent of blood.

“Carlitos! You stupid fool!” the ponytailed man screamed.

Alex shrank back from the vents, clawing his way across the chains, as far as he could go into the sharp V-shaped space of the bow. He squeezed his eyes shut and stuffed the blanket into his mouth to stifle the deep sobs welling up from his throat.

There was a murderous cry from his father and fast upon that furious shrieking from Sniper and screaming voices in Spanish and English; then his father’s terrible wails made him clamp both hands to his ears to shut it out, shut it all out.

The last thing he heard was something slamming hard against the little locker door, hard enough to splinter it inward.

Bahamian fishermen found Seahawke adrift nearly thirty miles off Nassau four days later. She was dismasted, her anchor ripped from the bow by a fierce tropical storm that had roared northward up the Exuma Sound just the day before. Finding the yacht abandoned, the owner of the fishing boat and two crew boarded her. Starting at the stern, Captain Burgess McKay and his two paid men worked their way forward, shocked at the amount of destruction that had been wreaked inside the beautiful yacht. Nothing aboard had escaped someone’s fury. Nothing and no one could have escaped such blind ferocity.

At some point they noticed a faint hum coming from somewhere toward the bow of the boat. They moved slowly along the companionway, gaping at the ruinous destruction of compartments to both sides. They searched the whole of the dead and drifting yacht. Someone had taken an ax to all the pretty mahogany woodwork, all the furniture, all the beautiful fixtures. The vessel was ruined, destroyed. Bad.

In the main stateroom they found an open safe, empty. A robbery at sea, piracy, was not all that uncommon in these waters. And the yacht flew a large British Union Jack flag at her stern. That made her a likely target for the growing number of island people, all descended from slaves, who were coming to despise their former British masters.

There was still a strange hum emanating from the forward compartment. They all mistook it for a noisy generator. But when they arrived they saw that it was nothing but a lone fly batting itself again and again against the door, as if trying to get in. One crewman swatted the fly away, but it was only momentarily distracted from its efforts. They tried the knob. The door swung inward.

The first thing they saw was a blood-caked machete. Then, the bodies. The two crewmen were suddenly staggering backwards into the captain.

He prodded them forward into the compartment, but, unable to stomach the buzzing flies, the stench, and the spattered walls, they quickly scrambled up the ladder and instantly heaved their breakfasts into the sea. The captain tore off his shirt, covered his mouth and nose, and remained below. Taking a deep breath, he entered the compartment.

Two nude and mutilated bodies. One, a woman, had had her throat slashed. There were other wounds, but the captain quickly averted his eyes. The other victim was worse. It was a man, and he was pinned to the forward bulkhead wall by two stiletto daggers driven through his hands. The captain stared at the corpse in disbelief. The man had clearly been crucified. He had also been disemboweled.

There was something else on the cabin floor. A large black bird, its feathers matted with blood. The captain saw faint movement of one wing and lifted the bird in his hands. It was badly hurt but still breathing. It squawked weakly as he cradled it in his arms.

Staggering backwards through the door of the small compartment, he made the sign of the cross.

“Mother of God,” he said softly to himself.

He fell back into the corridor and collapsed against the wall. He found himself struggling for breath. It was oven-hot in the little cabin, and he turned away, headed for the stern to fill his lungs and gather himself for what he knew he must do. He had only taken two steps aft when he stopped, listening carefully.

There was another sound coming from the compartment, different from the sickening buzz of the countless black flies. It was the sound of short, sucking breaths. Human. Somehow, there was a living being in that room.

McKay filled his lungs with air and stepped once more through the door to the horror inside. It seemed impossible, but the sound of breathing seemed to be coming from the man impaled on the wall.

He went up to the hanging corpse. There was no possibility that this man was alive. Still, he could hear it. Fast, shallow breathing.

It was coming from behind the body.

Captain McKay gritted his teeth and placed the injured parrot carefully on the floor behind him. He reached up and pulled both stilettos from the palms of the dead man. He had to step back as the body fell toward him and collapsed at his feet.

On the bloody wall where the man had died was a small door. It had three small vents. There was a gaping crack down the middle, as if the man had been hurled against it with great force. The sounds were coming from behind that door. He turned the knob. Locked from the inside.

Looking around desperately, he spied the blood-caked machete propped up against the back wall. He grabbed it and quickly pried the small door open with the blade’s edge. He bent and peered inside, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the darkness. The breathing was replaced by a low, keening whimper.

There was a figure, a small child, curled into the V-shaped sides of the bow. Not moving, but breathing. Small, shallow breaths. The captain climbed up inside the locker and gathered the child to his chest. It was a young boy, plainly delirious, and he was whispering something rapidly and repeatedly. Captain McKay put his ear to the boy’s lips.

three knocks three knocks three knocks three knocks

Lifting him out, the captain was amazed the boy was still alive. It must have been days since he’d eaten, and the child was obviously dehydrated. In an instant, the captain realized that this child must surely have witnessed the murder of his parents through the three ventilation slits.

He covered the boy’s eyes with his free hand, shielding him from the sight of the two bodies, and stepped out into the companionway.

In his mind the captain could see it now. How it might have been. The crucified man had hidden the boy in the locker. And died shielding the little door, and behind it, his son.

The captain went quickly to the stern of the yacht and gently handed the boy up to a crewman aboard the fishing vessel. Then he quickly returned for the wounded bird, gathered it up, and closed the main hatch on the horror below. Once the boy was safely aboard their vessel, they left the mutilated yacht untouched. Rigging a line to her bow, they took her in tow, and Captain McKay in the pilothouse got on the radio to the Nassau Constabulary.

The poor fishermen were shocked at what the child must have witnessed and endured. He was barely alive. They prayed for him all the way back to Nassau Harbor. The captain relinquished his berth and the three men tended the boy round the clock. The black parrot, who recovered quickly, never left the boy’s side. The only thing the child could keep down was some weak tea. He didn’t speak at all, other than to whisper a strange phrase over and over during his few brief spells of consciousness.

three knocks three knocks three knocks three knocks

The fishing boat, Misty II, towed the big yacht all the way into the main dock at Nassau Harbor, where a waiting police ambulance took little Alex Hawke, along with his parents’ bodies, to the Royal St. George’s Hospital. His grandfather was contacted in England, and immediately began making arrangements with the naval secretary to bring them all home.

He then flew to Nassau and spent every day at Alex’s bedside, holding his hand, telling him stories about his dog Scoundrel’s latest adventures at home on Greybeard Island.

It would be several weeks before Alex was well enough to travel. During that period, the Nassau police investigating the crime visited the hospital, hoping to learn something, anything, about what had happened aboard the Seahawke. They quickly realized the boy, mercifully, had no memory whatsoever of the terrible events.

One nice policeman continued to come every afternoon. He was a kind man with a big smile, and he never asked any questions. Every day he’d appear in the doorway, and he always brought some new toy along. A small bird he’d whittled or something from the straw market.

When Alex was about to be discharged from the hospital, the navy secretary at the admiralty in London sent two senior staff officers to the Bahamas to accompany the elderly Admiral Hawke and his grandson home.

The big Royal Navy plane flew from Nassau to Heathrow, refueling at Bermuda and Madeira. Alex sat with his grandfather, sleeping or holding his hand most of the way. His parents were somewhere in the back of the plane, he knew. Something bad had happened to them, he knew. Something terrible. He couldn’t remember.

They finally landed in England. A thick fog blanketed everything. They took his parents, who were in narrow metal boxes covered with flags, and put them into the back of a long black car.

The next day, more black cars took them all to a naval cemetery. It rained hard. It was very cold. Sailors fired rifles into the air. As his mother and father finally disappeared into the ground, he saw his grandfather salute. He did, too.

He couldn’t cry anymore, so he didn’t. He wanted to go home with his grandfather.

Home was on the smallest of four small islands in the English Channel, just off the coast of France. The Channel Islands, they were called. Alex’s island was named after the dense fogs that often swirled around its peaks and valleys.

Greybeard Island.

The pirate dreams finally stopped when little Alexander Hawke was about nine.

So the nights were better, and, as Alex grew, the days were never long enough. The sun always stopped before he was ready for it to disappear. He rose each morning at first light and ran down the twisting steps to the sea. Scoundrel was always right on his heels. He loved diving from the rocks into the cold water of the channel with his dog leaping in right behind him. Later, he would sit for long hours on the craggy hillside, looking out to sea, listening to the crispy sound of late-afternoon breezes in the canopy of trees above his head.

There were long weeks at sea with his grandfather aboard the Rambler. They often sailed the schooner north, off the coast of England, sometimes as far as Portsmouth before turning for home. The boy learned to hand, reef, and steer by the stars. He learned to keep one eye aloft, looking for the telltale luff of lost wind in the mainsail.

On endless sunlit days, when Alex had the helm, he would sail the boat through vast floating fields of red krill, cheering the leaping dolphins and whales as they feasted there. Minkies and Humpies, the whales were called, and he came to recognize and love them.

He was learning something new every day. His grandfather taught him the names of the stars and shells, birds and fish. How to tie a bosun’s knot. How to knot a bow tie. How to gut a fish. How to write a poem. How to cook fresh clams and mussels in seawater. How to sew a sail. How to spell Mississippi.

He even tried to learn the art of falconry, using his pet parrot, Sniper. Sniper was not interested in becoming a falcon, however, and little Alex soon gave this up. He’d learned the bird’s genealogy from his grandfather.

The bird and its descendants had been in the family for generations. Sniper’s ancestor had belonged to Alex Hawke’s ancestor, the famous pirate Blackhawke, who always kept the bird perched on his shoulder. Pirates, Alex learned, had for centuries taught the wily birds to warn them of unseen attackers. Each generation of Hawke parrots had been taught these old pirate ways and Sniper was no exception.

Alex Hawke said his prayers every night, kneeling beside his bed and always blessing his grandfather and also his mother and father in heaven. Then he climbed up into the big four-poster bed. Through the open window beyond his bed, he could see the stars shining over the black surface of the English Channel. And hear the waves crashing against the rocks far below his grandfather’s house.

He would let his sleepy eyes drift, floating over the familiar toy boats and soldiers and pictures arranged about his room.

Over his bed hung a large painting of Nelson’s flagship, Victory, her towering masts flying acres of billowing white sail. Bright pennants fluttering from the mastheads. Next to his grandfather, of course, Admiral Lord Nelson was Alex Hawke’s great boyhood hero. It was Nelson who was struck down at the moment of his greatest triumph, when the British soundly thrashed the French fleet at Trafalgar.

Hanging from a nail beneath that painting was a very old brass spyglass that had belonged to one of his ancestors who’d sailed under Nelson. A Captain Alexander Hawke himself. Alex spent long hours sitting in his open bedroom window with that battered telescope, tracking birds and ships, imagining his famous namesake doing the very same thing.

When he was twelve, he acquired his first sailing boat. A little dory his grandfather had found, moldering away in a nearby boat yard. He kept the name, even though he had no idea what it meant. He just liked the sound of it. Gin Fizz.

As he grew bigger, the island grew smaller. He dreamed of flying, he dreamed of sailing away. He dreamed of joining the Navy one day as his father had done at his very age.

As it happened, his grandfather had attended Dartmouth, and Alex was admitted there as well. He loved books, and his grades were very good. He developed a great longing to go to sea, and his grandfather made a few discreet introductions for him at the very top echelons of the Royal Navy.

He was accepted into the naval officer air corps. Soon after he won his wings, he was flying Harrier jets off aircraft carriers. Then he moved on to fighter jets. He was decorated for valor many times. He was simply good at war.

When peacetime flying no longer thrilled him, Alex joined the special forces branch of the military known as the SBS, the British equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs. He gradually became an expert in the art of blowing things up and killing people silently with a knife or one’s bare hands. These were all skills he knew he would need.

Because Alex was dreaming of pirates again. He had pirate blood in him, after all. And, as the old expression has it, it takes one to know one.

1

The Englishman looked at his unsmiling reflection in the smoky mirror behind the bar and drained the last of his pint. He’d lost count of how many he’d downed since entering the tattered old pub. It was called The Grapes, and it was one of the more respectable establishments in a rather bawdy little quarter of Mayfair known as Shepherd’s Market.

Pink and rose lights were glowing softly in many of the small windows of the narrow buildings that lined the winding lanes. Hand-lettered names could be found beside the illuminated buttons inside each of the darkened doorways. Fanny. Cecily. Vera and Bea. Their pale faces could often be seen at the window for just a moment before the shade was drawn.

He had drifted aimlessly through the narrow streets of Mayfair, having decided to walk home from dinner at the German ambassador’s residence. He’d left rather early when, after he’d downed yet another flute of champagne, it occurred to him that every single thing he’d said all evening had bored him to tears.

He’d meant to go straight home, but the miserable weather so perfectly matched the texture and color of his current state of mind that he’d decided to embrace it, dismissing his driver for the evening and electing to hoof it to Belgrave Square.

Damp. Cold. Foggy. Lowering clouds threatening rain or snow or both. Miserable. Perfect.

There was an electric fire in the coal grate of the smoky pub, and now, brooding upon his perch at the end of the bar, he looked at the thin gold Patek on his wrist. Bloody hell. It was considerably further past his bedtime than he’d imagined. Not that it mattered much. He could sleep in next morning. Had nothing on until lunch at his club at one. He tried to recall whom he was lunching with and was damned if he could.

The days had become an endless blur and, except for the constant dull ache in his heart, he would have sworn that he’d died some time ago and no one had bothered to inform him of his own passing.

The pub had thinned out quite a bit, only one or two chaps remaining at the bar and a few young foreign backpackers necking in the curves of the dark banquettes. At least there were fewer patrons to stare at him and the ones remaining had finally left him bloody well alone.

He was aware, of course, that he stood out.

He was, after all, wearing white tie and tails, and his feet were shod with black patent leather pumps. His long black opera cloak, sealskin topper, and gold-headed cane lay atop the bar. He knew he must cut quite an amusing figure at The Grapes, but he was long past caring. He signaled the barman for a check and ordered what would definitely be his last pint before heading home. Sticking twenty quid under the ashtray, he returned to his stormy thoughts.

Part of it was sheer boredom, of course, what the cursed French called ennui. He was rotting away so rapidly that it would hardly surprise him if he awoke one morning to find mildew growing on his—

“Got a match, guv?” someone suddenly said at his side. He turned to regard the newcomer and saw that there were three of them. Leather jackets, shaved heads, black jeans shoved into heavy black boots. All staring at him, sneers on their pallid faces. They looked, what was the word, itchy.

He hadn’t even seen them come in.

“Matter of fact I do,” he said, and fished his old gold Dunhill out of his waistcoat pocket. He flicked it open and lit the cigarette dangling from the lips of the grinning skinhead who was staring at him with glittering eyes.

Whatever drugs he was taking had definitely kicked in.

“Ta,” the youth said. He’d had blond hair once, but the stubby new growth was some sort of acid green.

“Pleasure,” he replied and, pocketing his lighter, returned to his pint.

“Me mates and I,” the lout continued, “we was wonderin’ about you.”

“Really? I’m not at all interesting, I assure you.”

“Yeah? Well, what we was wonderin’, me mates and me, was whether or not you were a, you know, a poofter.”

“A poofter?” he asked, putting down his pint and turning his cold blue eyes toward the sallow face and wide grin full of bad teeth.

“Yeah. A fooking flamer,” the man said, though something in the older man’s eyes made him take a step backwards.

Two well-manicured hands shot out and pinched the skinhead’s ringed earlobes cruelly.

“Poofter?” the elegant man said, smiling, twisting his fingers. “You don’t mean the sort of chap who wears earrings and dyes his hair, do you?”

This drew a laugh from the two sullen mates and brought an angry flush of color into the cheeks of the green-haired fellow.

“Nice meeting you lads,” the Englishman said, releasing the chap’s bright red ears. He stood, picked up his cloak, and shouldered into it. Then he donned his top hat, picked up the ebony cane, and turned to go.

“Wot’s at?” the green-haired boy said, blocking his way.

“Wot’s wot?” the gentleman replied in a perfect mimicry of the fellow’s accent.

“Wot you said. Wot you called me—”

“Get out of my way,” he said. “Now.”

“Make me, guv. C’mon. Give ’er a go.”

“Pleasure,” he said, and he brought the flat hard edge of his hand down on the fellow’s right shoulder with such blinding speed that the youth felt the sharp stab of pain before he even saw the hand coming.

“Christ!” he screamed in pain, staggering backwards, his shoulder blade sagging at an odd angle. “You broke me bloody—me bloody—”

“Clavicle,” the Englishman said as the fellow stumbled backwards over a barstool and collapsed to the floor.

He then stepped over the chap on his way out the door. “Good evening,” he said, tipping his hat as he strolled out the open door and onto the empty street. No one about. It was a good deal later than he’d imagined.

He walked to the next corner and paused beside a lamppost to draw out his gunmetal cigar case. He lit his cigar, listening carefully for their approach. It didn’t take long. He let them get within six feet, then whirled about to face the three thugs. The green-haired one was holding his broken collarbone, his face contorted with rage.

“Ah, my new friends,” the Englishman said, a pleasant smile on his face. “I’ve been expecting you. Now. Who wants to go first? You? You? Perhaps all of you at once?”

He waited for one of them to move and when it happened he attacked. His senses were surging back to him, and, like an animal, he rejoiced in the feeling.

He broke two noses first, then lashed out at the third chap, his right foot the blur of a scalded piston. He connected, first hearing the snap of the fibula and then the deeper crack of the tibia, the inner and larger of the two bones of the lower leg. Sadly, it was enough to take all the fight out of them, and so he turned away and headed for home. It had started to rain, a raw, cold rain, and he removed his hat and turned his face up into it, enjoying the sting of the icy drops. He reached the house in Belgrave Square, and Pelham swung the door open for him, taking his hat and cane.

“Good heavens!” the old fellow exclaimed when the man removed his cloak to reveal his blood-spattered shirtfront. “What happened, m’lord?”

“Bloody nose, I’m afraid,” he replied, mounting the broad stairs. “Two of them, in fact.”

Ten minutes later, he was in his bed, yearning for sleep and the American woman he seemed to have fallen deeply in love with, Victoria Sweet.

A few hours on, the Englishman was staring at the ringing bedside telephone and the clock with equal disbelief. “Bloody hell,” he said to himself. He picked up the phone.

“Yes?” he said, with no intention of being polite. Christ, it was barely a quarter to five in the morning.

“Hi,” said the throaty female voice at the other end, altogether too cheery for the ungodly hour.

“Good God,” he said, yawning. He’d been in a deep sleep. Having quite a pleasant dream as he remembered. Vicky was undoing her—he’d lost it.

“No, not Him. But close. It’s the brand-new secretary. First day on the job!”

“Do you have even the faintest idea what time it is over here?”

“You sound put out.”

“May I be frank?”

“Oh, don’t be mad. I’ve had the most amazing day. I’m not calling to flirt, either. It’s strictly business.”

The Englishman, fully awake now, propped himself up against the many large pillows at the head of his bed. A hard rain, now mixed with sleet, was thrashing against his tall bedroom windows. The fire, which had been casting shadows on the vaulted ceiling when he’d at last fallen asleep, was now reduced to a few glowing coals, and a damp chill pervaded the lofty chamber.

He pulled the blanket up under his chin, cradling the phone against his cheek. Another soggy January day in London was about to dawn. He was sluggish. He was bored. His limbs, his mind, his very cells, had gone soft and flaccid.

The little scuffle in the street had been a pleasant distraction, but nothing more. The Englishman was in fact a restless warrior who, for far too long now, had been “between assignments,” as the euphemism has it.

Which is why the single word business had crackled like lightning around his languishing synapses and stirred his lazy blood.

“You mentioned something about business,” he said.

“Are you disappointed? Tell the truth. You were hoping it was phone sex. I could hear it in your voice.”

“Your voice does sound rather—never mind. Smoky. I thought you’d stopped smoking.”

“I’m trying to quit. I’m going hot turkey.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s the opposite of cold turkey. You fire up your first one the second you wake up and then smoke as many as you possibly can before you go to sleep at night.”

“Sounds brilliant. Well. You said business. Tell me.”

“First, you have to know something. This is not my idea. Your pal the president asked for you specifically. I’m telling you that just in case you’ve got too much on your plate already.”

“All right.”

“It’s not me who’s asking. It’s him.”

“Doesn’t matter to me who it is. My plate, dear girl, is as clean as your proverbial American whistle.”

“You have no idea how glad they’ll be to hear that over at Casa Blanca.”

“All right. I’m no longer annoyed. I’m awake. Razor sharp. Tell me.”

“Your MI6 picked this up, tossed the ball to us. CIA has checked it out and it’s serious. Confirmed through the captured Al Qaeda commander, Abu Subeida.”

‘The Gatekeeper.”

“Yes. Ever heard of something called Project Boomerang?”

“Hmm. I do seem to remember that. Some kind of wildly experimental submarine program. The Soviets were building a prototype at the Komsomolsk yard. Tail end of the Cold War. Never got it operational as I recall. Is that it?”

“Exactly. The Russians called it the Borzoi. They’d gotten their hands on a lot of our stealth technology. And they’d also developed some of their own. Plus a three-foot-thick coating of sonar- and radar-absorptive material, advanced fuel-cell technology, and a virtually silent propulsion system. The sub carries forty of their SS-N-20 SLBMs. Long-range Sturgeon ballistic missiles.”

“Carries? As in present tense?”

“Yes.”

“Christ.”

“The thing is huge. Shaped like a boomerang, hence the name. Two airfoil-shaped hulls join at the bow to form a V shape, twenty missile silos on each hull. Virtually invisible to detection. When she’s running submerged at speed, a single conning tower at the bow is retracted entirely within the hull.”

“An underwater flying wing.”

“Yes. An invisible underwater flying wing. At least three times faster than anything either of us has got.”

“Bloody hell. They actually got one up and running?”

“They built two.”

“Yes?”

“We can only account for one.”

“What do our new best friends have to say about that?”

“Moscow says it was stolen.”

“Security never being their strong point.”

“Exactly. They say they have no idea where it is. The theory both at Defense and here at State is that one sub has probably been sold. The president would like you to find out who sold it. And more importantly, who bought it. And when.”

“Consider it done,” the Englishman said, springing from his bed and grabbing his robe from the back of a chair.

“We could have phone sex now if you’d like,” the woman said.

“I wouldn’t even dream of taking advantage of you at a moment like this, darling.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Go back to sleep. Good night, baby.”

“Good night.”

“I love you, Alex,” the woman said.

But the Englishman’s heart was in another place entirely, and he had no reply to that.

“Good night,” he repeated softly, and replaced the receiver. He had told her that their relationship was over. And that he was very much in love with another woman. No matter what he said, or how frequently, however, it didn’t seem to take.

He stood up, stretched, and pushed the bell that would alert Pelham down in the kitchen that he’d be having an early breakfast. Then he dropped to the floor by his bed, did his customary thirty push-ups and fifty sit-ups, followed by the rest of his exercise program. Muscles aflame, he then headed for the shower.

Under the scalding water, Alexander Hawke was surprised to find himself singing at the top of his lungs.

An old Beatles tune.

“Here Comes the Sun.”

2

The sun was still brutal as the slender white launch arrived at Staniel Cay. It was precisely three o’clock in the afternoon.

At the helm, a man wearing a crisp white uniform reversed the twin Hamilton whisperjet thrusters, boiling the water at the stern. The long slim vessel slowed instantly, gliding to a stop alongside the dock. The tide was out, but a long ladder hung nearly down to the launch’s portside gunwales.

The launch was all gleaming brass and highly varnished mahogany. There was such spit-and-polish perfection about her that she seemed too pristine for this remote backwater of the Exumas; it was as if some alien, otherworldly craft had landed.

Two crewmen, dressed identically in starched white shirts and shorts, climbed quickly up the ladder onto the dock and secured the bow, stern, and spring lines. One crewman posted himself by the ladder to aid disembarking passengers. The other, who was also discreetly but heavily armed, cast a keen eye over the deserted docks. Satisfied nothing was amiss, he caught the helmsman’s eye and made a slashing motion across his throat.

The helmsman killed the twin engines and, minus their throaty rumble, the sleepy harbor fell silent once more. The only sound, save the cries of the whirling gulls and terns, was the crack of the large English Union Jack, snapping in a smart breeze on its staff at the rear of the launch.

There were only two passengers aboard, both Englishmen. Standing in the stern of the launch, they were chatting amiably, shielding their eyes against the glare of the Caribbean sun. The taller and younger of the two was a man in his late thirties named Alexander Hawke. He stood something over six feet, but was so lean that he seemed taller. He had thick black hair, piercing blue eyes, a long thin nose, and a prominent square chin that gave him an air of resolution and determination.

It had been scarcely more than a month since Hawke had received the early-morning phone call from Washington. Now, on a blistering afternoon in February, the Englishman scanned the tiny marina with an expression of intense curiosity. He then turned to his companion, Ambrose Congreve, smiling.

“This is where they shot the film Thunderball,” Hawke said, a somewhat bemused look in his eyes. “Did you know that, Ambrose?”

“What’s that?”

“Sorry. I’d forgotten. You’d never set foot inside a cinema unless it was a John Wayne picture. Thunderball was a James Bond film. Sean Connery. My favorite, actually.”

Hawke’s companion was a shortish, rounded man in his late fifties. He had a pair of deceptively sentimental blue eyes set in a baby’s face, a face partially obscured behind a colossal moustache. He heaved a deep sigh and mopped his brow with one of his trademark monogrammed linen handkerchiefs.

“I prefer John Wayne to James Bond simply because the Duke did less talking and more shooting,” Congreve sniffed.

“Yes, but Bond—”

“Excuse me, Alex. But, do you really think we ought to be standing out here in the blazing sun discussing ancient heroes of the cinema? Your two agents are sure to be waiting for you on shore.”

“Giving you a little local color, that’s all, Constable,” Hawke said, smiling.

“Well, I don’t need any local color. What I need is liquid refreshment. Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

“You are a bit cranky, aren’t you? You need a nap is what you need.”

“Oh, rubbish! What I need,” Congreve said, “is an enormous fruity rum concoction or vast quantities of very cold beer.”

“You can’t drink, Constable, you’re on duty.”

“I would hardly call meeting with a pair of real estate agents duty.”

“Did I say real estate agents? Ah. I may have misspoken.”

Ambrose just shook his head and said, “You never misspeak, Alex.”

Ambrose Congreve, Hawke’s oldest and closest friend, had, to his parents’ chagrin, begun his career in law enforcement as a bobby on the streets of London. He’d studied Greek and Latin at Cambridge and had thoroughly distinguished himself in modern languages as well. But his true love was reading the tales of his two heroes. The dashing detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. And, of course, that Homeric figure, the incandescent Holmes.

He didn’t want to teach Greek. He wanted a life of derring-do. He didn’t want chalk on his fingers; he wanted to be a copper.

Early on in his new career, he’d shown a preternatural aptitude for investigation. His almost eerie ability to link seemingly trivial details helped him solve one famous case after another. He’d eventually risen to chief of New Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department. Unofficially retired from the CID now, he still maintained close ties with the Special Branch at the Yard. Still, he detested the nickname “Constable,” which is why Hawke enjoyed using it so frequently.

“My sole reason for accompanying you on this afternoon’s excursion,” Inspector Congreve said, “is that I envision a chilled adult beverage awaiting me in some disreputable saloon. I might even order the one thing your great hero did manage to get right—a properly shaken martini.”

“If you had any sense, Ambrose, you’d stop drinking so much and stop smoking that damnable pipe. Wasn’t a six-shooter got the Duke carted up Boot Hill, you know. It was a herd of unfiltered Camels.”

Congreve heaved an audible sigh and removed the old tweed cap from his head. He ran his fingers through his sparse thatch of chestnut brown hair.

Bloody hell, he thought, here was one mystery solved anyway. The precise latitude and longitudinal location where the phrase “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” had originated. He’d been absolutely barmy to go along with Hawke’s scheme. It was hot as Hades in these godforsaken islands. The obvious notion of removing his woolen bow tie or mismatched tweed jacket and waistcoat never occurred to Congreve.

Notoriously indifferent to his own wardrobe, Ambrose seldom noticed whether his suit trousers and jackets matched and his socks were frequently opposing colors. Wearing clothes appropriate for the season or the weather would simply never occur to him. Ian Baker-Soames, his tailor at Anderson & Sheppard, Savile Row, London, had long ago resigned himself to Congreve’s sartorial eccentricities.

Rara avis, the tailors whispered whenever Ambrose Congreve strode through the hallowed portals of A&S. If he had acquired the reputation of a rare bird, he was blissfully unaware of that distinction.

Hawke was still willfully ignoring his mutterings and pleas, going on and on with his geology lecture.

“That little atoll over there,” Hawke said, continuing despite his audience’s cool reaction. “It’s called Thunderball because of a small blowhole at the top. Bloody thing bellows like thundering gods when the sea blows in hard out of the west.”

“Most exciting, I’m sure,” Congreve said with a yawn.

“Isn’t it?”

“Quite.”

“Hullo, Tommy!” Hawke said suddenly, calling up to the young blond crewman standing guard on the dock. “You might take a quick stroll down the dock and see if our new friends have arrived. Won’t be hard to spot. Bad suits, bad haircuts, and bad neckties. Anything odd catches your eye, give me a quick call on the walkie-talkie.”

“Aye, sir!” Tommy Quick said, and took off down the docks at a run.

“You see, Ambrose,” Hawke said, continuing his dissertation, “Thunderball is completely hollow inside. The sea surges inside, forces the air out the top. Boom! Hear it for miles around, apparently.”

“A true geologic wonder. You’ll forgive me if I don’t hurl my cap into the air and prance about on the tips of my toes?”

“Yes,” Hawke said, too caught up in his enthusiasm to acknowledge the sarcasm. “I swam inside the thing early this morning. Certain aspects of its geology should make it an ideal spot for negotiating with a pair of arms dealers. You’ve got your bathing trunks with you, I assume? We’re going to take these bloody Russians on a little undersea adventure.”

“Arms dealers? Russians? You plainly led me to believe we were meeting some real estate agents.”

“Did I say that? Last-minute change of plans, I’m afraid,” Hawke said, scrambling up the ladder. “It’s cloak-and-dagger time again, old boy. Come along, Ambrose, the Russians are coming!”

Congreve was busy contemplating the shadowy movements of an especially large shark. He leaned over the rail and watched the fish patrolling the clear waters directly beneath the stern of the launch. Going for a swim? Is that what Hawke had said? Congreve considered all forms of athletic endeavor save golf to be sheer barbarism. He heaved what could only be called a wistful sigh. His idea of heaven was puttering and putting around his beloved Sunningdale links just outside London. There, at least, the fiercest creatures one was likely to encounter were surly caddies with apocalyptic hangovers or the odd dyspeptic chipmunk.

He had a standing foursome at Sunningdale, every Saturday morning, rain or shine. Been teeing it up for nearly a quarter of a century. To Ambrose’s great chagrin, he was the only member of his foursome never to have achieved a hole in one. It had become a lifelong obsession. He was hellbent on doing it one day, and—

“That’s a nurse shark, Ambrose,” Hawke shouted from above, interrupting his reverie. “Stop staring at him, you’ll scare the poor bastard to death.”

Congreve looked up and saw Hawke standing next to Quick at the top of the ladder. Hawke said, “Come along, will you? According to Tommy, we’ve still got a few minutes to stroll the docks before the Russkies arrive.”

Congreve grunted something and started wheezing his way up the ladder. He joined Hawke on the dock, pausing to catch his breath.

It was a pretty little cove, really. Four houses perched on stilts just beyond the docks, each one painted a more brilliant pastel shade than its neighbor. Brightly colored fishing boats bobbed on their moorings in waters too many shades of blue to count. Rather fetching, to be honest.

One rainy afternoon in January, about a month earlier, there’d been a long liquid lunch at White’s, Hawke’s club in London. It was there Hawke had first broached the notion of this little Caribbean cruise. Congreve was ambivalent at first.

“I don’t know. How long a voyage do you envision?” he asked. “As Holmes put it so well, ‘My prolonged absence tends to generate too much unhealthy excitement amongst the criminal classes.’”

But Hawke wouldn’t take no for an answer and finally got Congreve to agree. After all, it meant an escape from the cold drizzle of midwinter London. Not to mention his tiny Special Branch office in Westminster. A few weeks of “sun, sightseeing, and a bit of shopping” was how the jaunt had been ladled up, and Congreve signed on.

Shopping?

Congreve had hardly been able to imagine what Hawke would want to buy in these godforsaken Bahamian backwaters. An island or two, perhaps? Of course, that was long before he’d learned Hawke was meeting not with real estate agents, but with arms dealers. Congreve looked at Hawke, who’d suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and gone stone silent.

“I’ve been in this harbor before, you know, Ambrose,” Hawke said, his eyes going somewhere else, getting very hard for a moment. “A long time ago. I was just a boy, of course. Barely seven years old. I really can’t remember much else, though.”

“Is that why you chose these particular islands for the meeting?”

“I don’t know,” Hawke said. “It’s odd. It was this mission that brought me here. Obviously. Still, I do feel drawn to the place. I’ve been having these peculiar dreams about these islands that—” He paused and looked away, unwilling or unable to continue.

“At any rate,” he finally said, “I’ve brought along a map. Had it since childhood. A map of a treasure that might be buried somewhere in this neck of the Caribbean. But, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure it’s the map that’s making me feel—feel like I’m on the verge of something here, Ambrose.”

“Yes?”

“I have no idea what it is,” Hawke said, looking at his friend with helpless eyes. “I just know somehow the map may be a part of the thing.”

“Shrouded in mystery is the term, I believe,” Congreve said, looking closely at his friend.

“Hmm. Yes,” Alex replied, staring at some imaginary point on the horizon. “Shrouded.”

Then he shrugged off whatever feelings he was having and said, “Anyway, it’s as good a place to meet these dodgy bastards as any other, I suppose.”

Constable Congreve put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and squeezed. He had been expecting this moment. Dreading it, actually.

Like many people, Ambrose knew the awful story of the murder of Hawke’s parents. Not from Hawke, certainly, who, in all these years, had never acknowledged the murders to a soul. Hawke had, Ambrose was sure, completely erased the tragedy from his conscious mind. At the very least, the horrific memories were submerged so deeply in his subconscious, Ambrose wondered if they’d ever resurface.

But in a large leather satchel Ambrose carried everywhere were certain CID files. Files whose existence was known only to Constable Congreve. A cold case for decades, the Hawke murders remained an unsolved double homicide that, without Congreve’s determination and commitment, would be moldering away somewhere in the Yard. In the dimly lit cemetery where they kept all the dead files buried.

Of course he’d never dared to raise the subject with Hawke. For his friend’s sake, such gruesome memories were clearly better left unstirred. But the murders, Congreve knew, had occurred somewhere in these islands. Quite possibly in these very waters, in fact. He couldn’t help but wonder if something, a particular sight or a sound, might trigger Hawke’s memory.

Now, Hawke’s odd expression as he gazed out over the harbor set Ambrose to wondering. What if all Hawke’s deeply submerged memories started to surface sooner rather than later? Pop up, exploding to the surface like some ancient underwater buoys whose unseen tethers have finally rotted and suddenly snapped? And if that happened, where would it all lead?

For a moment, it looked as if Alex might say something more; but then his eyes flickered and blinked and it was all gone, flown from his face in an instant. Hawke smiled at his friend.

“I’ll tell you one thing true, Ambrose Congreve.”

“Yes?”

“Everything in this world happens in the blink of an eye. Never forget that. Everything.”

3

Gomez, bruised and bleeding, emerged from the gloom of the ancient and crumbling hospital with just two things on his mind. Sex. And murder. Not necessarily in that order, either.

At least the rain had stopped. The broad tiled steps of the Hospital Calixto García were steaming under the wicked sun. Christ. The light made him squint as he walked down the slippery wet steps to the palmy courtyard, which was full of old soldiers in wheelchairs who had just rolled outside the former military hospital for a little air. It wasn’t all that great out here, but it sure beat the hell out of inside.

He saw the neon glow of the tiny bar where he’d had breakfast across the Avenida de la Universidad. He could really use a couple of cold ones about now. Like, about twelve should do it.

“I’m not having a good day,” he said to some old broad who was staring at his bloody mouth as he went through the wrought-iron gates. “Okay with you?”

He walked out into the sweltering street beyond, cupping his hand to the side of his mouth. Hurt like hell.

Taxi? Not when you need one. Lots of Flying Pigeon Chinese bicycles, but very few cars. He’d heard gasoline rations were down to three liters a month. Most of the cars he saw had red tags. Government cars. Hard times in the old hometown, baby. After five minutes he started to walk in the direction of the Malecón that ringed the bay. At least he could get his bearings there. Figure out where the hell he was going.

After the stink of sick people, now he had the stink of the streets up his nose. It was like somebody whipped up a big batch of what, sugar cane juice, motor oil, and rotten mangos. Popped that pudding in the oven at five hundred. Yum, that does smell good.

Oh, and sprinkle with sweat. Lots of sweat. Had these people never heard of Ban Roll-on? And stir in some of the stinky perfume the little jineteras wore who followed him everywhere, that’d be good, too.

Hookers, they were everywhere, and cops, too, cracking down on the hookers. It was like cracking down on roaches. They were in the woodwork.

There were two kinds of cops, he’d found out the hard way. The “tourist cops” who were okay, merely a pain in the ass. But the other ones, the ones with the berets, the national police, they were definitely not okay. You even look at them funny they whack you with a baton or haul your ass to jail.

But even they couldn’t stop the jineteras. Talk about a kid in a candy store. He’d landed in hooker heaven. There were crowds of them outside his hotel, morning, noon, and night. There had been a bunch waiting when he came out of the little family-owned paladar where he’d had lunch the day before.

Christ. He couldn’t shake ’em. It was like, despite his guayabera and his chinos, he had “American Sailor” tattooed on his goddamn forehead. He wondered if this was how movie stars felt. Or Elvis. Not that he especially minded being chased by hookers everywhere he went. That was the only good part of this whole two-day pass. The bad part, the really bad part, had been the last two hours at his dying mother’s bedside listening to her scream.

She had cancer of the gut. Bad. Now, you would think that the quote unquote best hospital in Havana would have some kind of painkillers for her. Let her die with some kind of goddamn peace and dignity. He had certainly been wiring her doctor enough money under the table to take special care of her.

Pain management, they called it, every time he called the hospital to check on her. All they could do at this stage, one doctor had said to him. Pain management, señor.

Yeah, well, that doctor had zoomed right to the top of Gomez’s personal shit list. A true chartbuster.

What had he given her for the pain today? Or yesterday? Or the whole last month as far as he could tell? Nada. Zippo. Not even one teensy little baby aspirin. No, the United States government had taken care of that department with their stupid embargo on food and medicine. Still, they had to do something for her.

Finally, he’d pitched a complete shitfit with the doctors and nurses. They told him it wasn’t their fault. Blamed it all on America. He’d nearly beat that doctor’s brains out before they all pulled him off the guy. Some gorilla orderly had whacked his head on the floor and split his lip. The coppery taste of blood was still in his mouth and he bent over and spit his bloody saliva in the gutter.

Jesus H. Christ, was that a tooth going down the drain? He felt around inside his mouth with his tongue. Yes indeedy, one tooth missing. Okay, now he was getting major league pissed off.

That’s why he was now on his way over to the Swiss embassy. Kick some serious butt. Open a big can of whupass on somebody. The head nurse said they had an American desk there. A desk? She said she meant there were some American officials there, even though it was the Swiss embassy.

Make sense? No, but what the hell. Nothing in Cuba made sense anymore. Anyway, he was going to go over there to find one of those little bureaucratic dipshits and rip his goddamn head off.

Murder. That was the ultimate pain management.

That was the plan. First, kick some ass. Next, go get some ass. He bought a tourist map and some condoms from a street vendor. He paid one dollar American (nobody took pesos, only greenbacks) and located the embassy on the map. Only eight blocks. He’d hotfoot it over there and pound a few more heads.

Problem was, he found out when he finally got there, the damn embassy was closed. He banged on the door for ten minutes before he realized it was Sunday. Weren’t embassies supposed to be open seven days a week? Like 7-Eleven? What if he had an emergency? Which, by the way, he did. He needed some medicine. He was an American citizen. Hell, he was military. U.S. friggin’ Navy.

Not that the Navy could give a rat’s ass, either. He’d spent the last three nights in the Guantánamo brig for breaking into the base dispensary at three in the morning. He’d copped some morphine and Dilaudid and was just easing out the jimmied back door when the MPs nailed him. The fact that he was stealing medicine for his dying mother didn’t even register.

Tell it to somebody who gives a shit, the MP who busted him had said.

He was sitting on the embassy steps drinking one of his little airplane Stolis and trying to figure out his next move when the weird chick appeared. Blond hair, cut short. Green eyes and big red lips and tits out to here. Christmas in July. Tank top and some kind of black spandex thing that stopped way above her knees. Yellow high heels. That clinched it.

He’d definitely died and gone to prostitute paradise.

The girl stopped and looked at him, lounging there on the steps of the Swiss embassy, Mr. Casual. Weird, but she looked familiar. She had these slanty Chinese eyes, but she didn’t look all that Chinese. Her skin was the color of one of those three-dollar mocha lattes at Starbucks.

Couldn’t tell if she was a working girl or not, more he looked at her. She had this gold collar thing around her neck that looked real. Had a little gold ring hanging down at the front. Hooker jewelry? Hell, they were all working girls, weren’t they? One way or another when you got right down to it, everybody and everything was for sale around here.

Amazingly enough, she climbed up the steps and banged on the door. He let her rap it a few times, then said, “It’s closed. Sunday.”

“What?” she said in English. All attitude this chick.

“You want a mink coat?”

She flipped him the finger and said something that didn’t sound too encouraging.

“How about we start with a big pitcher of sangria over at the Floridita?”

She stopped again, thought about it, turned around. She was checking him out. He yawned and stretched his legs out, cool as a Popsicle.

“Americano, huh?”

“Home of the brave, baby.”

“Yeah, right, Ernesto Junior here wants to buy me sangria at El Floridita, Papa’s favorite saloon. You’re just another Hemingway sucker, chico.”

“A who sucker?”

“Never mind. What happened to your lip?”

“You should see the other guy,” he said, liking how fast it came out.

“Yeah, that doctor. You broke his jaw. You’re the one who caused all that trouble at the hospital, right?”

He looked at her.

“You were there? I thought I’d seen you before.”

“My sister is head nurse there. She’s the one who told you about the embassy.”

“So you—like, what, followed me over here?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, chico. I had some business at the embassy, too—something to deliver for my brother.” She pulled a manila envelope out of her shoulder bag.

“Stick it under the door,” Gomez said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s full of money.”

“Oh,” he said, thinking, definitely not a working girl delivering cash to an embassy.

“So, adios,” she said, sticking the envelope back in her bag. He wondered how much money was in there. He could grab it and run. The Malecón was only a block away. He could melt into the crowds. Could she catch him wearing those bright yellow fuck-me shoes? I don’t think so.

“Hey, wait a minute, baby! Where you going?”

“Back to work.”

“You work on Sunday? Christ.”

“My brother has a club. I work there.”

“Yeah, what do you do?”

“Whatever it takes.”

“Hey, that sounds good. Can I come?”

“It’s very exclusive. Members only.”

“I could join.”

She laughed so hard it pissed him off.

“You think I can’t afford it?”

“I know you can’t afford it. It’s the most expensive club in Havana. On the other hand—”

“What?”

“My brother might like you.”

“Why’s that?”

“He likes guys who like to beat the shit out of other guys. They’re always useful.”

Five seconds after she put two fingers in her mouth and blew the loudest whistle he’d ever heard, the biggest, blackest Chrysler Imperial on earth pulled up in front of the embassy. The driver, some muscleman in a black T-shirt, reached over and swung the door open for her. She hopped in the front, leaned over, and gave the guy a big kiss.

Gomez didn’t see her sliding over for him up front so he climbed in the back. The car was mint, like just off the showroom floor. Even had that smell.

“What year is this?” Gomez asked as the guy took off down the narrow street.

“Fifty-nine,” the guy said, and turned around and smiled at him. Big gold tooth up front. “Está bueno, no?”

“This is my cousin Santos,” the chick said, squeezing the back of the guy’s neck. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Gomez.”

“I’m Ling-Ling,” she said.

“Ling-Ling,” Gomez said, liking the sound of it. “You know how Chinese people name their kids?” he asked. “They throw all their silverware up in the air and name the kids after the sound it makes when it hits the floor. Ling-Ling, huh? Sounds like a salad fork.”

Nobody said another word until they pulled up in front of a big wooden gate set in a high pink wall. Gomez had been following their route on his map. They’d driven all along the Malecón with the Castillo del Morro on his far right, looking like an ocean liner entering the stormy harbor. Big rollers came in from the Atlantic, crashing over the seawall at Punta Brava, the spray misting the Chrysler’s windshield.

Now they were in the shady El Vedado section where all the big old houses were. Most of them built sometime before 1959 B.C. Before Castro.

Gomez and the chick climbed out.

“Hasta mañana,” her cousin said, slapping his meaty brown hand on the door a couple of times. Guy must have been wearing ten gold bracelets. Gomez watched the Imperial slide off into a tunnel of green branches hanging dark and heavy, brushing the top of the car as it slid away.

“Well, this is it,” Ling-Ling said, pushing a button in the wall and waving up at one of the video cameras.

“What’s the club called?” Gomez asked as the heavy doors started to swing inward.

“The Mao-Mao Club.”

They stepped through the gates, and Gomez said, “This isn’t a club, it’s a jungle.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? We have every kind of bird and animal. Even jaguars and leopards.”

“No kidding,” Gomez said, trying not to sound scared. He seemed to remember somebody getting eaten by a leopard in a movie.

After five minutes of ducking under trees and climbing over banyan roots that had buckled the old walkway, they came to another gate. This time, the gate swung open automatically into a courtyard and there was a little Chinese guy standing there in red silk pajamas. He had a silver tray in his hand with some kind of drink in a tall silver cup.

“Every new guest receives one,” Ling-Ling said. “It’s called Poison. Try it.”

“I love poison,” Gomez said, and took a sip. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life.

“You make this stuff?” he asked the Chinaman. The little fellow giggled and scurried away. Probably doesn’t speak a word of English, Gomez thought, hardly surprised.

“This way,” Ling-Ling said. “My brother is probably at the bar in the casino.”

They walked around a pool about half the size of a football field that had a huge splashing fountain in the middle of it. The fountain had some guy with a giant pitchfork riding in some kind of Roman chariot pulled by a bunch of dolphins and whales. Guy had his arm around this mermaid. Biggest damn mermaid tits you ever saw. Solid gold? Had to be.

Gomez heard a shriek and saw a girl climb out of the pool, naked, and watched her get chased by this old fat guy into one of the cabanas that lined both sides of the pool. The girl was wearing the same kind of gold collar around her neck as Ling-Ling.

He noticed that a lot of the cabanas were occupied and most of them had the thick striped curtains closed. He also saw more beautiful girls wearing gold collars at the far end of the pool. He took another swig of his drink and tried not to stare too hard.

At the far end of a wide grassy strip lined with a double row of tall palms stood a big pink building with white shutters that had to be four stories high. Could have been a hotel at one time. Or some dictator’s house.

“I like this club,” Gomez said, following Ling-Ling into the cool shade of the main house.

She stopped and looked at him. “There is one rule,” she said. “There are many famous people here. If you recognize someone, you don’t look at them or speak to them. Okay?”

“Got it,” Gomez said, searching the faces at the roulette tables for someone he recognized. He saw one cat looked a lot like Bruce Willis, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure because of the dark glasses.

They found her brother sitting at the far end of the long mahogany bar, talking quietly to some guy with a long black ponytail. “Ciao, Manso,” her brother said to him, and the ponytailed guy immediately stood up and turned away.

“Rodrigo,” Ling-Ling said. “This is Señor Gomez. He is someone I thought you would like to meet.”

Rodrigo stood and stuck out his hand to Gomez. Manso, the ponytailed guy he’d been talking to, wandered off through the casino. Probably famous, because he was careful not to show his face. Swishy walk, Gomez thought, watching the guy. Gay bar? No way. Too much stuff running around bare-ass naked.

“Buenas tardes,” the man said. “A cordial welcome to Club Mao-Mao.” Smooth as silk, man.

Still, Gomez almost lost it.

The man’s eyes were completely colorless.

There was the normal white part. And then, in the middle, where the color usually is, they were totally transparent. Like the guy had a pair of clear marbles in his eye sockets.

“Do I frighten you, señor? Sorry. I sometimes have that effect on strangers.”

“No. I just—”

The guy was a piece of work all right. Tall and thin and movie-star handsome. Dressed in a white linen suit with a pale blue silk shirt. Thin gold chain around his neck. Had the same mocha latte skin as his sister. Same peroxide blond hair, too. But those eyes were out of some horror movie.

“What do you do, Señor Gomez?” Rodrigo asked. “If I may ask?”

“United States Navy. I’m a sailor. Stationed over at Guantánamo.”

“So, what brings you to our ancient capital?”

“A two-day pass. My mother, she’s, uh, in the hospital. She’s dying. Stomach cancer.”

“You are cubano, no?”

“Yes. My mother stayed here when my father took me from Mariel Harbor to Miami in eighty-one. He died last year at Dade County. Prostrate cancer.”

“Prostate.”

“What?”

“I believe the word is prostate, señor. In any case, I’m sorry to hear of his passing. Won’t you have another drink?” He signaled the bartender and another silver cup arrived.

“Thank you,” Gomez said. “These are great.” He was already feeling the first one, but what the hell. Stuff was frigging delicious.

“You had an unfortunate experience at the hospital, I understand,” Rodrigo said.

“Yeah, this goddamn American embargo. My mother is in such pain that—wait a minute, how’d you know about the hospital?”

“My sister. We talk on the phone all the time. You are opposed to the American policy?”

“You could say that.”

“The americanos try to punish Cuba but they only hurt women and children. Do you like to gamble, Señor Gomez? Blackjack? Baccarat? Chemin de fer?”

“Twenty-one,” Gomez said. “Is that the same as Blackjack?”

“Exactamente,” Rodrigo said. He opened a white marble box that was sitting on the bar. It was full of chips, one hundred–, five hundred–, one thousand–dollar chips. He counted out ten one thousand–dollar chips and stacked them in front of Gomez.

“Compliments of the house,” he said, flashing a big white smile. “Ling-Ling, would you introduce Señor Gomez to our head croupier? Make sure he’s well taken care of at the tables, darling.”

“Of course,” Ling-Ling said. “Won’t you come with me, Señor Gomez?”

“Love it,” Gomez said. “And, could I, uh, get one more of these poison things?”

Gomez followed Ling-Ling’s sashaying little spandex butt out toward the casino floor, thinking, have I absolutely died and gone to heaven here or what?

“Jack!” he said, passing a guy in a very sharp sharkskin suit who was rolling the bones. Guy had to be Nicholson. He recognized the haircut and shades from People magazine. “My man, what’s up?”

“Jesus Christ,” Ling-Ling hissed at him. “Didn’t you hear what I fucking told you?”

“Yeah, right. Sorry.”

Chick was pissed. All right, we can deal with that. How many times in his life is a guy going to rub elbows with Jack Goddamn Nicholson? A little slack here, Ling-Ling, please.

“Autograph out of the question, I guess,” he said, following her through the maze of tables.

“You got a pen?” the chick says, giving him a look over the shoulder. “I’ll autograph your dick if there’s enough space to write on.”

“Hey, ease up. I said I was sorry.”

“Here’s your table, sailor boy. This is Francisco. He will take care of you. Okay? Bonne chance. Ciao. Whatever.”

The chick started to walk away. He grabbed her arm.

“Hey. Question. What’s with your brother’s eyes?” Gomez asked her. “You don’t mind me asking.”

She turned and stared at him.

“My brother was imprisoned for twelve years,” Ling-Ling said. “He was kept in a small room with no light. None. No natural. No artificial. The lack of light just leaches all the color out.”

“Man. So, how did he get out? Seems to be doing okay now, I mean.”

“He said that if they’d let him out for just one day he would do anything. Literally anything they asked. They gave him something to do that was extremely—unpleasant. He was permanently released the following day. Now my brother and I are together again.”

He didn’t know where he was when he came to, but he was pretty damn sure that it wasn’t Hugh Hefner’s bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.

He was sitting in a hard wooden chair in a room with no other furniture. Nothing on the floors or the walls. Not even windows. His hands were duct-taped to the arms of the chair, his ankles bound to the chair’s legs. He didn’t know how long he had sat there with his head pounding before he heard a door open behind him.

“Ah, Señor Gomez,” he heard a familiar voice say. It was, what was his name, Rodrigo. “Did you have a nice siesta? You’ve slept for almost twenty-four hours.”

“What’s the—what’s the deal here? I thought you, uh, that you—” His tongue felt way too big for his mouth.

“The deal is this, Señor Gomez. You owe the Mao-Mao Club one hundred thousand dollars.”

The guy pulled out a piece of paper and held it in front of Gomez’s face. He tried to focus but everything was out of whack.

“There is the ten thousand I extended you as a courtesy. When you exhausted that, you indebted yourself to the house for another hundred thousand. At the bottom is your signature. I am forgiving you the ten, because it was a gift.”

“What’s the, uh, what do you—”

“You have exactly one week to repay. You must understand that I am not one who forgives his debtors as they forgive him.”

“I can’t…I don’t…how will I get the money?”

“That is hardly my concern, señor. Now, turn your left palm upwards.”

The man pulled a pair of nasty-looking silver scissors from his pocket and snipped the blades a couple of times.

“Hey, wait! What are you—”

“Two associates of mine will contact you in a few days. Tell you where to bring the money. I’m going to mark you now so that they will recognize you. Turn your left palm upwards, please.”

“I can’t…please…the tape is too tight.”

“Here, let me help you.”

Rodrigo slashed the tape that bound Gomez’s wrist, flipped his hand over, and crushed his left wrist to the arm of the chair.

“Hey, you can’t—”

Rodrigo looked into Gomez’s face with his two colorless eyes as he slashed the sailor’s palm with the scissors blade. Gomez saw all the bright red blood spattering this guy Rodrigo’s white linen suit, and the lights went out again.

For a while, Gomez thought the angry red letters carved into his hand were WW. After a couple of days, he realized maybe he was looking at the letters upside down.

Maybe it was MM instead of WW.

Mickey Mouse? Marilyn Monroe?

The Mao-Mao Club?

Yeah.

Maybe it meant he was a member.

4

The Staniel Cay Yacht Club baked beneath a torpid afternoon sun. The old haunt had been built in the late forties, sometime just after the war and prior to the time in the fifties when, in Hawke’s view anyway, a vast majority of the world’s architects had gone completely off the rails.

The pink-hued British Colonial–style clubhouse had the faded façade and the boozy, sunburnt charm of a timeworn playboy. Little of the former glamour remained but, underneath it all, Hawke saw as he strode toward it down the long dock, good bones.

Still, to call it a yacht club was stretching things a bit.

Yachts? Certainly a few serious sport-fishing boats showed up from time to time, especially when the marlin were running. Most of the time, however, there were just small fishing gigs and dories bobbing in the clear blue waters around the docks.

It was a club only in that its membership shared a common partiality to lethal rum beverages, ice-cold Kalik beer, and fishing lies of an order of magnitude seldom found outside these parts of the Caribbean. The “president” of the club was whoever was sober enough to remain standing when the bar closed.

The faded club rules, mimeographed and tacked above the bar, stated that it was absolutely forbidden to sleep on the horseshoe bar. Still, in the very early morning, it was not uncommon to find a few members dozing peacefully atop it.

Suffice it to say, one didn’t stroll through these aged portals expecting limbo nights, cocktails with tiny umbrellas, or the quaint melody of “Yellowbird” wafting through the palms. Perhaps the club had seen better days. Perhaps, worse.

The music on the club’s PA system consisted of either reggae in the evenings, or, as now, scratchy recordings of early American bluesmen such as Son House or Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Amen Lillywhite, the club’s chief bartender, was all smiles when Hawke and Congreve walked in. He was an ancient blackbird of a man, tall and bare-chested with golden hoop earrings. His enormous white grin and a necklace of shark’s teeth had been a primary attraction at the club since the night it opened.

“Welcome, welcome, gentlemen!” he boomed. “What can I get for you two young fellows?”

“Two ice-cold beers would be lovely,” Congreve said.

News both good and bad traveled fast in Staniel Cay. Amen, presiding at his horseshoe bar, was at the very epicenter of information flow on the small island. News of the launch moored at the end of the dock reached his ears seconds after its arrival. His excitement grew when he learned the name Blackhawke was scribed in gold leaf on the launch’s transom. The famous yacht had arrived almost a week earlier, mooring in the deeper water offshore. This was the first time her launch had ventured into Staniel Cay.

It was dark and cool inside the bar where Hawke and Congreve stood waiting for the Russians. The two agents had finally arrived, but remained out on the docks, having a frightful row. Meanwhile, the two Englishmen, each sipping from a cold bottle of Kalik, were gazing up at a wall covered with faded snapshots, a kaleidoscopic jumble of sunny days and rum-soaked nights.

There was an eclectic mix of locals, charter skippers, international boat bums, rich American or British yachtsmen, and even a surprising number of movie stars. Everyone posing with his or her arms around Amen. Amen’s appearance changed with the passing decades, but he was the only constant.

“I’d say there are only three ways of getting one’s picture up on this wall, Constable,” Hawke said. “No doubt you have arrived at a similar conclusion, you being the famous bloodhound, after all?”

“Better hound than hare,” Congreve replied, rubbing his chin and perusing the photographs. “I would say that there are actually four.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got to be rich, famous, or an alcoholic,” Ambrose declared.

“And the fourth?” Hawke asked, delighted.

“All of the above, of course.”

“Precisely,” Hawke said, looking at his friend with an admiring smile. “Ambrose Congreve, Scotland Yard’s own Demon of Deduction,” Hawke added.

Alex then looked out toward the docks, frowning. The Russians were still there, shouting. Arguing about just how much money they might gouge out of the rich Englishman, Hawke imagined. Bloody hell, he hated waiting.

“What the devil is keeping those two? And what are they going on about anyway?” Hawke asked. “Are we having this bloody meeting or are we not?”

“I’ve been eavesdropping. They’re fighting over a woman. Grigory came back to their boat last night and found Nikolai having a go at someone Grigory fancied. Not being very nice to her either, apparently. Someone named Gloria. A local girl from what I can make out.”

“Your Russian seems sound enough.”

“Flawless.”

“Here’s the thing. Go tell those bastards I’m walking out of here in fifteen seconds.”

“Right-ho,” Congreve said, and pushed through the screen doors and out into the sun.

Hawke looked around the ancient saloon. Every arched wall was festooned with fishing nets, buoys, giant mounted marlin and sailfish, conch shells, shark jaws, and endless strings of Christmas lights. Somehow, he thought to himself, it all worked.

Two or three “members” were seated at the bar, wholly absorbed in some kind of dice game, paying scant attention to Hawke or anyone else. The tables were all empty. Lunch crowd gone, cocktail crowd not yet arrived. Good.

The two crewmen from Hawke’s launch had scouted the yacht club yesterday and proclaimed it ideal. Now, both armed, they had stationed themselves none too discreetly on either side of the club’s front door.

The younger of the two, ex–U.S. Army sharpshooter Tommy Quick, was happily tossing fried bacon rinds into the waters surrounding the docks. In the gin-clear water, Tom could see literally dozens of large nurse and bull and sand sharks cruising over the white sandy bottom, instantly rising to snap up his treats as quickly as they hit the surface.

Hawke had met Sergeant Thomas Quick at the U.S. Army’s Sniper School at Fort Hood. Hawke had audited a course there one summer and successfully recruited the Army’s #1 sniper. Quick could easily see that working for Alex Hawke would be a far more exciting and lucrative career than anything the U.S. Army offered.

The world knew Hawke as one of the world’s most powerful businessmen and head of a massive conglomeration of diversified industries. A very select group of people knew that he frequently did highly secret freelance work for the governments of the United States and Great Britain.

Since joining Hawke, Inc., Quick had bought gold mines in South Africa, been in a room deep in the Kremlin while Hawke chatted with the Russian defense minister, and spent a long night helping Hawke attach limpet mines to the hulls of ships full of illegal weapons sitting in the bay off Bahrain. On the first anniversary of his employment, Quick had given Hawke a gift that the man still wore, an Army Sniper School T-shirt that read:

You Can Run But You’ll Only Die Tired!

The older crewman, Ross Sutherland, who was actually on permanent loan to Hawke from the Yard’s Special Branch, kept one eye on the two bickering Russians and one hand inside his shirt, lightly gripping the nine-millimeter Glock he always wore strapped under his arm. These Russians didn’t look like much, but, in his years spent protecting Hawke, he’d learned the hard way never to go by appearances.

Sutherland was a man who’d think nothing of laying down his life for Alex Hawke. One night, in a makeshift prison some thirty miles south of Baghdad, Hawke had almost died saving Sutherland’s life. Somehow, Hawke managed to get the two of them safely out of the Iraqi hellhole where they’d been held for over two weeks after a SAM-7 brought their Tomcat fighter down. Ross had no memory of the escape. He’d literally been beaten senseless by the Iraqi guards.

Both men had been brutally mistreated, especially Sutherland. If they had not escaped that night, Hawke knew it was doubtful Ross could survive another day’s “interrogation.” As it happened, Hawke had killed two guards with his bare hands and they’d fled south across the desert, using the stars for navigation.

Ross had barely survived their endless trek across the scorching sands. For days and nights on end, Hawke had carried Sutherland on his back before an American tank command finally stumbled upon them. By this point, they were wandering in circles, staggering blindly up and down the endless sea of dunes.

The Russians continued their tiresome squabbling and Ross knew Hawke must have been getting impatient. Idly, he flicked the Glock’s safety up and down beneath his shirt. Not that Sutherland was expecting trouble. The night before, he’d reread the Russians’ dossiers. They were both former Black Sea Fleet officers. Both had originally served at the sub base at Vladivostok. They’d been classmates at the academy and were surviving the end of the Cold War by peddling what remained of the Soviet navy.

Ross allowed himself a smile at the sight of Congreve barging into the middle of the heated argument, barking at them in Russian. After a moment of stunned silence, the two nodded their heads. Ross opened the screen door and the two men meekly followed his colleague from Scotland Yard back inside.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Hawke asked when they’d all been seated. “Refreshments? Vodka, I’d imagine. Get everyone in a festive mood.” He signaled to a waitress lingering in the doorway to the kitchen.

“I think perhaps beer might be a better choice,” Congreve said, giving Alex a meaningful kick to the shin under the table. Hawke understood immediately that the Russians’ vodka quota for the day had already been met and nodded his head.

Ambrose was yammering away with the Russkies, so Hawke leaned back in his chair and took their measure.

These two legionnaires of the former evil empire were bleary-eyed and a sickly gray beneath their suntanned exteriors. The heavy one had salt-and-pepper hair, cut short in the old Soviet military style. Steel-rimmed glasses completed the look. Long, greasy dark hair, tied loosely at the back, a pair of shiny black marbles for eyes, and a rather uncooperative black beard on the other chap. He bore, Hawke observed, an uncanny resemblance to the notorious Russian “Mad Monk,” Rasputin.

Unlike the woolen suits Hawke had pictured them wearing, they were casually dressed in bathing suits, sandals, and sport shirts depicting multicolored billfish leaping gaily about.

Looking at them, Hawke felt a twinge of pity. At one time, these two cold warriors had surely been formidable men, accustomed to a sense of purpose, power, and command. Now they had a dissolute air about them, stemming no doubt from too much sun, too much rum, too little self-respect. It was more than a little humbling, Hawke imagined, to be peddling the arsenal of your once vaingloriously evil empire.

“Well,” Hawke said, suddenly restless. “I’m Alexander Hawke. My esteemed colleague, Mr. Ambrose Congreve, whom you’ve met, will be handling the translations. Ambrose, you have the floor.”

As Congreve translated this bit, the waitress approached Hawke. Her flashing eyes and body language indicated that she was not in the best of moods. Surprising, since he’d heard so much about the sunny disposition of the people in these islands. This singular exception to that rule presented herself at the table.

“Hello,” Hawke said, though his smile went unreturned. “Four Kaliks should do it, thanks.” Blackhawke’s crew drank nothing but the local Bahamian beer, and that was good enough for Alex. The girl nodded grimly and headed for the bar. Her walk did lovely things to the back of her shift.

Congreve coughed discreetly to get Hawke’s attention.

“May I present Mr. Nikolai Golgolkin and Mr. Grigory Bolkonski,” Congreve said to Hawke. “Golgolkin, the Russian bear with the steel glasses, seems to be the one in charge. The chap on the left, who is a dead ringer for Rasputin, is a former submarine designer and weapons expert from the Severodvinsk shipyard on the Kola Peninsula. Both are very pleased to meet the famous Hawke.”

The little “mad monk” didn’t seem all that pleased. He turned his black eyes on Congreve, anger suffusing his face. He’d clearly heard the Rasputin reference and was not amused.

“Lovely,” Hawke said, smiling.

“They apologize for their rudeness in keeping you waiting and beg forgiveness. It seems they are uncomfortable having this discussion in such a public place, but they have brought a gift. Vodka.”

“They certainly have a gift for drinking the stuff, judging by appearances,” Hawke said.

Golgolkin produced a small, rectangular red velvet box, which he placed in front of Hawke. Hawke opened it and smiled. It was Moskoya Private Label. Quite rare. Bloody marvelous stuff after a few hours in the freezer.

“Very kind,” Hawke said, looking from one Russian to the other. “A most generous gift. Let’s get to it. According to our mutual Syrian friend in Abu Kamal, they will have a portfolio of their wares with them, correct?”

Congreve began translating and soon they were all chattering again in what was, to Hawke’s ear, still a most unlovely language.

The waitress arrived with a tray and placed a sweating bottle of Kalik in front of each man. Her angry eyes avoided those of the two Russians and her volcanic mood sent tremors to her fingers as she served them. Such a pretty girl, Hawke thought. Pity she was so unhappy.

As she handed Hawke his beer, he couldn’t help but notice the rough red abrasions around each of her wrists. A quick glance down at her bare feet and ankles revealed that they, too, were red and raw. This poor girl had recently been abused, and badly.

“What is your name?” Hawke whispered to the girl, taking her gently by the hand.

“Gloria,” she replied, her eyes downcast.

“Gloria,” he repeated, remembering it as the name of the woman Congreve had heard the Russians arguing over. “Yes, I might have guessed that.”

5

It was hard for Hawke to conceal his unbridled loathing for the two Russians. To think, just moments before, he’d actually been feeling sorry for these two sodden degenerates. Make that godless Commie sodden degenerates. In Alex’s world there was right. And there was wrong. And there were no shades of gray.

The kind of work Alex Hawke did, covert assignments for both the British and American governments, often meant dealing with cretins like these two. But Hawke was a man who loved his life’s calling deeply and passionately. He relished each and every assignment. Now, after the long, restless hiatus that had been January, he looked forward to this one with keen anticipation.

He stared at the two men sitting across from him. According to everything he’d learned from Cap Adams, the CIA station agent in Kuwait City, they were a pair of heartless pirates, perverse enough to make their fortunes selling weapons of mass destruction to the world’s terrorists. He’d gathered sufficient information from enough sources to suggest that these two just might be the ones to lead him to the disappearing Borzoi submarine. After that, he planned to put these two parasites out of business. Permanently.

Congreve said something briefly in Russian, and Golgolkin pulled a faded red leather folder from his satchel, pushing it toward Hawke. Embossed in gold on the cover was the old Soviet symbol itself, the hammer and sickle.

“Suggestion,” Hawke said, tapping the symbol with his finger. “You boys ought to find yourselves a new logo. When somebody’s sickle has been hammered as badly as yours has been, it’s time to move on.”

As Congreve translated this bit to the puzzled Russians, Hawke perused a stack of glossy eight-by-ten photos until a certain item caught his eye. It was a huge jet-powered hovercraft, capable of carrying at least sixty or seventy soldiers. Or, Hawke thought, passengers. He separated the photo from the stack and placed it on the table.

Hawke owned a handsome castle in Scotland. It was on a lovely rugged island in the Hebrides and he’d gotten his chum Faldo to build one of the most gorgeous links golf courses in all of Britain on it. Hawke was a terrible golfer, but his love of the game remained undiminished.

He didn’t get to use the Scotland property as much as he’d intended and was now thinking of converting it into a small hotel. This hovercraft would make a splendid way of transporting guests to and fro. The fact that it was ex-Soviet would only add to the cachet.

“How fast?” he asked.

Rasputin muttered something and Congreve translated, “On a calm day, flat, no wind, in excess of sixty knots.”

Hawke said nothing and continued to look through the pile of photos. It was an amazing assortment of weapons and military craft. Scud missiles and missile launchers, helicopter gunships, high-speed attack boats; indeed, just about everything except what Hawke was really interested in. He returned the photos to the folder, slid the red leather case across the table, and stood up.

“Well,” Hawke said, “you’ve piqued my interest. I’d like you to join me aboard the launch. We’ll continue this discussion at a more private location.”

The Russians were instantly all smiles, positively giddy at the sudden prospect of a major sale, and happy to go someplace less public. Getting to their feet, they extended their hands as if to seal some bargain already agreed to. Hawke ignored them and turned to Congreve.

“Ambrose, be so kind as to escort these two characters out to the launch. I’ll linger here a moment and take care of our tab.”

“So, this is what you meant by ‘shopping,’ eh?” Congreve leaned to whisper in Hawke’s ear. “You might have mentioned it sooner, and I could have had this pair of cads thoroughly checked out.”

“No need to bother you with it. I had Sutherland do it, before we left London. I told you, Ambrose, this is a holiday. Relax, get some sun, have a bit of fun. You’ve been quite morose since your Maggie died.”

Congreve looked away, sadness overtaking him.

“Mags was a fine old hound. I had a dog once,” Hawke said. “Scoundrel. I loved that dog so much, it frightened me to watch him grow old, knowing that he would die one day.”

“It’s so awful when they do,” Congreve replied. “But they do die. And then you are alone.” The older man turned away, squared up his shoulders, and hustled the two arms dealers out through the screen doors and into the afternoon sun.

I’ve always been alone, Hawke thought, looking after him. Always.

Hawke shook off the feeling and walked over to the bar. He took one of the many empty stools, smiled at the bartender, and said, “Lovely day for it, isn’t it?”

“The Lord has indeed blessed us once more, sir,” the bartender said with his big white smile. He stuck out his hand. “My name, sir, is Amen Lillywhite. Please call me Amen. We are honored to have you here at the club, Commander Blackhawke.”

Hawke nodded and took the man’s scrawny mahogany hand and shook it. “Rum, please, Amen. Neat. Gosling’s Black Seal 151 if you’ve got the stuff.”

“Not much call for it, but I do, sir!” he said. “Let me find it.”

Commander? Hawke was amazed. Commander had been his rank when, after a successful career, he’d retired from the Navy. Hardly anyone used it anymore.

And Blackhawke? Who knew how that had gotten started? No one, save perhaps Congreve, knew that Alex was indeed a direct descendant of the famous pirate. Perhaps it was a creation of the idiotic society reporters in London who relentlessly followed his every move and romantic misadventure. “Blackhawke’s Latest Bird Flies the Coop” was typical of the tabloid coverage he’d endured.

And there were more than a few captains of industry around the world who, having been broadsided by a Hawke hostile takeover, considered him somewhat piratical. In any event, the swashbuckling sobriquet had stuck, and it amused Hawke no end. He and Congreve alone knew that there was a very real Blackhawke perched atop the uppermost branches of the Hawke family tree.

“An honor to serve you,” Lillywhite said, placing a healthy tumbler of rum on the bar before him.

“I only drink on two occasions. When I’m alone or with somebody, Amen,” Hawke said, taking a sip of the dark liquid. “Will you join me in a glass?”

Amen smiled and shook his head.

“Haven’t had a drop since my first day here, near to fifty years now. Good Lord surrounds me with temptation, sees what I do. I sometimes imagine myself at the pearly gates. And maybe the Lord might say, ‘You’ve had a long trip, Amen. Would you like a drink?’”

Alex laughed and said, “I was wondering. Those pictures over there on that wall. How far do they go back?”

“’Bout fifty years or so, sir,” Amen said. “To the club’s most early days, I think, right after the war. I started working here, let me see, in forty-nine.” Hawke nodded silently, gazing at the wall. Strange, but he found himself studying the jumble of old photographs with solemn intensity. Almost as if he expected to find an old friend or relative amongst the countless strangers.

He caught Gloria’s eye. She had been standing at the window, watching Congreve and the two Russians stroll down the dock. She walked over, keeping her eyes on the floor, and handed him the handwritten chit. Hawke didn’t even look at it. He took her hand and pressed a folded hundred-pound note into it. He caught her gaze and held it.

“I don’t know what happened to you last night. But I’m the one who invited those two men to your island and so I feel responsible. I promise you this. They will never, ever bother you again.”

She looked up at him with gleaming eyes. “You’ll keep them away?”

“Actually, I plan to put them away,” Hawke said with a smile. “Now, you take care of yourself. Cut some fresh aloe and rub it into those abrasions.”

“I will,” she said, not looking up into his eyes.

Hawke paused once more before the wall of photographs on his way to the door. Spying a tiny Polaroid amidst the jumble, he found himself unthinkingly reaching up and plucking it from the wall. Without even looking at it, he stuck it in the breast pocket of his shirt, then walked out into the heat of the tropical sun.

At the end of the dock, the launch’s powerful twin engines rumbled in the somnolent afternoon. Congreve had raised the hydraulic engine hatch cover and was busy showing off the twin supercharged Rolls-Royce power plants to the Russians. Rasputin had climbed down into the engine room for a closer look.

“Giving away the latest of Her Majesty’s technology for free, eh, Constable?” Hawke said, looking down from the dock. Congreve guiltily pushed a button, and the big hatch cover started to close with a hydraulic hiss. The sight of the Russian scrambling out in the nick of time delighted Hawke.

“Everything shipshape?” Hawke asked Tommy Quick after he’d climbed down the ladder and stepped aboard.

“Aye, Skipper,” Quick said. “I’ve got snorkels, fins, and masks for everybody. Tide’s full in now, so the entrance to the grotto is submerged. About six feet below the surface. A few sharks milling about in the vicinity, but I shouldn’t worry about them, sir.”

“I shouldn’t worry about them either, Tommy, if, like you, I were remaining aboard the launch,” Hawke replied.

“Sorry, sir, I only meant—”

“Relax, Tom,” Hawke said, smiling. “Just a bad joke. Why is everyone so bloody touchy lately? Even that aged party Congreve. Somebody pour a wee dram of rum down his gullet for this epic voyage, please? And let’s shove off, shall we? It’s getting late.”

Hawke turned to the Russians now seated in the stern. “You chaps ever done any snorkeling? Great fun. You’re going to love it. Everybody all buckled in?”

Hawke relieved his helmsman and leaned on the twin-chromed throttles. In a second, the launch was up on a plane and screaming out of the Staniel Cay Marina, bound straight for Thunderball Island.

“Look back there, Ambrose,” Hawke shouted, pointing at the two fellows huddled behind them in the stern. “Not the hardy outdoors type, are they? No wonder they lost the stomach for the bloody Cold War.”

Congreve looked back at them. And, indeed, they’d both gone pale as ghosts.

“White Russians, I’d say, by the looks of them,” Congreve said, and Hawke couldn’t help laughing.

6

Petty Officer Third Class Rafael Eduardo Gomez, United States Navy, Guantánamo, had the shakes so badly he had to duck into a bar. He ordered a double brandy, beer back, and downed the jigger of brandy in two gulps. Which was perfectly okay except that it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet and he had the most important meeting of his life in fifteen minutes.

But the brandy calmed his nerves all right. Yes, sir, it did! He swallowed the ice-cold beer in one long, Adam’s apple–bobbing gulp and slammed the empty mug down on the bar. Yes! Breakfast of champions.

It was the last day of his family emergency leave from Gitmo. He’d wangled this second leave by using his mother’s death in Havana. Said he had to go to Miami to tie up some important family business. At the last minute, he decided it’d be a good idea to take his family. Make a little holiday out of the thing. Quality time, his wife, Rita, called it. Time to get Rita off his ass for a couple of days, anyway.

It had been raining in Miami for forty-eight straight hours. So, since it was sunny today, he was supposed to be taking Rita and their two daughters to South Beach this morning. He’d promised, she’d reminded him.

“Something has come up,” he told Rita in the kitchen of his Aunt Nina’s apartment in Little Havana.

“Like what?” Rita said.

“Like something,” he replied. “A business deal. I can’t talk about it. It’s an idea my cousin Pablito has. We could make a lot of money, baby.”

“Your cousin, he just got out of jail last week! He misses prison so much already? You know, honey, maybe your cousin, he’s not into crime for the money! Maybe he likes—”

“What you saying? You saying my beloved cousin, he is a—”

That’s when he’d lost it. Slapped her hard enough to hurt. So much for quality time. She was still yelling at him when he slammed the kitchen door behind him and made a beeline over to Calle Ocho. It was the main street of Miami’s Cuban barrio. The two men he was meeting had told him to be at the San Cristóbal Café at eight sharp.

He walked in at one minute before, feeling good now, feeling the glow, baby. There was one old guy sitting at the counter sipping a café con leche and watching the waitress’s short skirt hike up as she bent over to fill an ice bucket; otherwise, the bodega was empty. So he was here first, which was good.

Basic military training. Do a little recon. Get the lay of the land. He was tempted to take a seat at the counter and recon the waitress bending over the ice machine. Incredible booty on this bitch and—no. This breakfast is strictly business, he had to remind himself. He took a seat at a table by the window where he could keep an eye on the door. He wanted to check out these two dudes before they checked him out.

He pulled out the folded Miami Herald he’d been told to bring and set it on the table open to the sports section, just like the guy had said. Frigging Dolphins. What were they, fourth in the division? Ever since Marino had retired—a large black shadow fell across his paper.

“Señor Gomez?” a big tall guy in a white guayabera said. Christ, he hadn’t even seen them walk in. So much for his recon and surveillance plan.

“That’s my name,” he said, trying to pull off a cocky grin but not too sure he had it working just right. Maybe the double brandy hadn’t been such a good idea. His teeth felt funny.

“Are you a Dolphin fan, señor?” asked the second guy, who was shorter than the first guy but way wider. This one was carrying a suitcase, a beat-up old gray Samsonite. Amazingly enough, it looked exactly like his own suitcase. Exactly. The guy put it on the floor very carefully and looked at Gomez, waiting for an answer.

Both of them badass, he could gather that much pretty quickly. Gooey hair. Big black sunglasses, heavy gold chains, Rolex watches with diamonds, all that Scarface shit.

“I used to be,” he said, trying to get it exactly right. “But now I root for the Yankees.”

The two Cuban badasses smiled and sat down across from him, and he knew he’d nailed the goddamn secret password thing. Nailed it. When you’re good, you’re good, that’s all there is to it.

“Your left hand. Show me,” Wideload said.

Gomez turned his palm up and showed him the two initials carved into his hand. Guy didn’t say anything, just nodded to the other guy.

“What does that stand for, anyway?” Gomez asked. “The MM? Is that Mao-Mao? Or is it, like, WW?”

They both looked at him like he was crazy.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and let us ask the questions, okay?” Wideload said. “We ask the questions. You answer the questions. Got that?”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. I was just wondering, you know, what it stood for. You guys have names, by any chance? Just curious.”

“Guy simply don’t understand English,” Wideload said, shaking his head.

“No. He speaks English okay. But he got the attention span of a fuckin’ moquito,” the tall guy said.

“Hey, wait a goddamn second,” Gomez said. “I don’t—”

“Shut up and listen. Okay?”

“Okay. Hey, I’m all ears.”

“That’s good. You want to do business? Shut your mouth for five seconds. It was us who spoke to you on the phone. I’m Julio. He’s Iglesias,” Tallboy said.

“Man,” Gomez said, slapping the table, “you guys are good. Code names and everything!”

“You believe this guy?” the tall one said.

“It’s not code, okay? Our names really are Julio and Iglesias,” the white guayabera said.

“Fine,” Gomez said, bobbing his head up and down. “Cool. Julio. Iglesias. Whatever. I’m down with that.”

“Give me a look at your newspaper,” Wideload said. Major Cuban accents here. Two heavy-duty hombres just off the boat from La Habana. A blind man could see that.

“All yours,” Gomez said, and slid the paper over to the guy.

The guy opened to the page where Gomez had stashed all the ID they’d asked for. His Navy papers, Florida driver’s license, Social Security. While one guy checked his ID, the other guy called the waitress over and ordered them all café con leches. Not that he’d do it, this was a business meeting, but a cold one at this point would really hit the spot.

She bent over to hand them all menus and gave everybody a perfect photo op of her lacy push-up Wonder Bra. Gomez almost came out of his seat. Perfect goddamn wonder breasts! Christ Jesus, he thought, how come this place was so empty? Forget the food, this waitress’s knockers alone ought to be packing them in. He was watching her rumba her ass on back to the kitchen when Wideload brought him back to reality.

“We were both saddened to hear of your mother’s passing,” the Cuban guy said, picking something out of his teeth with a gold toothpick.

“Yeah? How’d you know about that?” Gomez said. “Rodrigo tell you?”

“You’re smart, you never say that name again, señor. You’re not smart…well…”

Gomez just nodded, looking from one to the other, making sure they knew that he got the picture.

“Rodrigo?” he said, grinning. “Who the hell is Rodrigo?”

“You just said it again, asshole,” Wideload said. “Twice.”

“Hey, I was just—”

“How about you shut the fuck up while we finish looking at your papers, okay?”

It was just after he got back to the base after the little episode at the Mao-Mao Club that he’d gotten the phone call from these two guys. Before he left Havana, he’d gone back to the hospital and said his goodbyes to his mother. She was still wailing in pain when he’d walked out the door. He’d immediately split for Gitmo.

His mother died an hour after he left the hospital, Rita told him when he walked in the door.

Headed home to Gitmo he’d been sad and pissed about his hand, which stung like crazy, but what he really was, goddammit, was scared shitless about coming up with a hundred large. On the other hand, what could they do? Way he had it figured, if he never left the base, how could they get to him? Fact was, it didn’t take long.

They’d called his house at the base. Late the same night he got home from Havana. He’d been sitting in the kitchen drinking Budweiser tallboys. Crying some, thinking about his mom. The kids were asleep and his wife was upstairs watching some stupid movie. Two Cuban guys on the phone. They wanted to know did he have the money and when he’d be coming to Miami next to visit his Aunt Nina.

Some truly unbelievable shit, man.

They’d known her name, where she lived, everything. They said they’d heard a lot of good things about him and they wanted to hook up with him somewhere. Soon. Before his deadline ran out.

He told them right up front he didn’t have the money. Didn’t see any way of getting it in a week. Could he, maybe, get an extension? He had friends in Miami. He’d done a little dealing before he joined the Navy. Maybe he could work something out with some of his old pals. Seeing Rodrigo’s colorless eyes as he said it. Getting that really sick feeling in his stomach.

Like he really had a chance to score a hundred large in three days. Make that three lifetimes.

Then, a miracle. The more they talked the more he began to understand that they weren’t going to whack him for a chickenshit hundred G’s, after all! No, they had some kind of weird-assed business proposition for him! A deal that would not only erase the unfortunate debt he had gotten into in Havana, but a deal that would make him rich!

They said they wanted to meet up in Miami. They were sure he would find they had a proposition that would interest him greatly.

“Yeah, how greatly?” he’d asked the guy on the phone. He’d heard of these phone scams before. These guys sounded legit, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Is one million dollars greatly enough?” the guy said.