Skeleton Key

IN THE DARK

Night came quickly to Skeleton Key.

The sun hovered briefly on the horizon, then dipped below. At once, the clouds rolled in-first red, then mauve, silver, green and black as if all the colours in the world were being sucked into a vast melting pot. A single frigate bird soared over the mangroves, its own colours lost in the chaos behind it. The air was close. Rain hung waiting. There was going to be a storm.

The single engine Cessna Skyhawk SP circled twice before coming in to land. It was the sort of plane that would barely have been noticed, flying in this part of the world. That was why it had been chosen. If anyone had been curious enough to check the registration number printed under the wing, they would have learned that this plane belonged to a photographic company based in Jamaica. This was not true. There was no company and it was already too dark to take photographs.

There were three men in the aircraft. They were all dark skinned, wearing faded jeans and loose, open-neck shirts. The pilot had long black hair, deep brown eyes and a thin scar running down the side of his face. He had met his two passengers only that afternoon. They had introduced themselves as Carlo and Marc but he doubted these were their real names. He knew that their journey had begun a long time ago, somewhere in Eastern Europe. He knew that this short flight was the last leg. He knew what they were carrying. Already, he knew too much.

The pilot glanced down at the multifunction display in the control panel. The illuminated computer screen was warning him of the storm that was closing in. That didn’t worry him. Low clouds and rain gave him cover. The authorities were less vigilant during a storm. Even so, he was nervous. He had flown into Cuba many times, but never here. And tonight he would have preferred to have been going almost anywhere else.

Cayo Esqueleto. Skeleton Key.

There it was, stretching out before him, thirty-eight kilometres long and nine kilometres across at its widest point. The sea around it, which had been an extraordinary, brilliant blue until a few minutes ago, had suddenly darkened, as if someone had thrown a switch. Over to the west, he could make out the twinkling lights of Puerto Madre, the island’s second biggest town. The main airport was further north, outside the capital of Santiago. But that wasn’t where he was heading. He pressed on the joystick and the plane veered to the right, circling over the forests and mangrove swamps that surrounded the old, abandoned airport at the bottom end of the island.

The Cessna had been equipped with a thermal intensifier, similar to the sort used in American spy satellites. He flicked a switch and glanced at the display. A few birds appeared as tiny pinpricks of red. There were more dots pulsating in the swamp. Crocodiles or perhaps manatees. And a single dot about twenty metres from the runway. He turned to speak to the man called Carlo but there was no need. Carlo was already leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen.

Carlo nodded. There was only one man waiting for them, as agreed. Anyone hiding within a few hundred metres of the airstrip would have shown up. It was safe to land.

The pilot looked out of the window and there was the runway. It was a rough strip of land on the edge of the coast, hacked out of the jungle and running parallel with the sea. The pilot would have missed it altogether in the dying light but for the two lines of electric bulbs burning at ground level, outlining the path for the plane.

The Cessna swooped out of the sky. At the last minute it was buffeted about by a sudden, damp squall that had been sent to try the pilot’s nerve. The pilot didn’t blink and a moment later the wheels hit the ground and the plane was bouncing and shuddering along, dead centre between the two rows of lights. He was grateful they were there. The mangroves-thick bushes, half-floating on pools of stagnant water-came almost to the edge of the runway. Go even a couple of metres in the wrong direction and a wheel might snag. It would be enough to destroy the plane.

The pilot flicked switches. The engine died and the twin-bladed propellers slowed down and came to a halt. He looked out of the window. There was a jeep parked next to one of the buildings and it was here that the single man-the red dot on his screen-was waiting. He turned to his passengers.

“He’s there.”

The older of the two men nodded. Carlo was about thirty years old with black, curly hair. He hadn’t shaved. Stubble the colour of cigarette ash clung to his jaw. He turned to the other passenger. “Marc? Are you ready?”

The man who called himself Marc could have been Carlo’s younger brother. He was barely twenty-five and although he was trying not to show it, he was scared. There was sweat on the side of his face, glowing green as it caught the light from the control panel. He reached behind him and took out a gun, a German-built 10mm Glock automatic. He checked it was loaded, then slipped it into the waistband at the back of his trousers, under his shirt.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“There is only him. There are two of us.” Carlo tried to reassure Marc. Or perhaps he was trying to reassure himself. “We’re both armed. There is nothing he can do.”

“Then let’s go.”

Carlo turned to the pilot. “Have the plane ready,” he commanded. “When we walk back, I will give you a sign.” He raised a hand, one finger and thumb forming an 0. “That is the signal that our business has been successfully concluded. Start the engine at that time. We don’t want to stay here one second longer than we have to.”

They got out of the plane. There was a thin layer of gravel on the runway which crunched beneath their combat boots as they walked round the side to the cargo door. They could feel the sullen heat in the air, the heaviness of the night sky. The island seemed to be holding its breath. Carlo reached up and opened a door. In the back of the plane was a black container, about one metre by two. With difficulty, he and Marc lowered it to the ground.

The younger man looked up. The lights on the landing strip dazzled him but he could just make out a figure standing still as a statue beside the jeep, waiting for them to approach. He hadn’t moved since the plane had landed. “Why doesn’t he come to us?” he asked.

Carlo spat and said nothing.

There were two handles, one on either side of the container. The two men carried it between them, walking awkwardly, bending over their load. It took them a long time to reach the jeep. But at last they were there. For a second time, they set the box down.

Carlo straightened up, rubbing his palms on the side of his jeans. “Good evening, General,” he said. He was speaking in English. This was not his native language. Nor was it the general’s. But it was the only language they had in common.

“Good evening.” The general did not bother with names that he knew would be false anyway. “You had no trouble getting here?”

“No trouble at all, General.”

“You have it?”

“One kilogram of weapons grade uranium. Sufficient to build a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city. I would be interested to know which city you have in mind.”

General Alexei Sarov took a step forward and the lights from the runway illuminated him. He was not a big man, yet there was something about him that radiated power and control. He still carried with him his years in the army. They could be seen in his close-cut, iron grey hair, his watchful pale blue eyes, his almost emotionless face. They were there in the very way he carried himself. He was perfectly poised; relaxed and wary at the same time. General Sarov was sixty-two years old but looked twenty years younger. He was dressed in a dark suit, a white stmt and a narrow dark blue tie. In the damp heat of the evening, his clothes should have been creased.

He should have been sweating. But to look at him, he could have just stepped out of an air-conditioned room.

He crouched down beside the container, at the same time producing a small device from his pocket. It looked like a car cigarette lighter with a dial attached. He found a socket in the side of the box and plugged the device in. Briefly, he examined the dial. He nodded. It was satisfactory.

“You have the rest of the money?” Carlo asked.

“Of course.” The general straightened up and walked over to the jeep. Carlo and Marc tensed themselves-this was the moment when he might produce a gun. But when he turned round he was holding a black leather attaché-case. He flicked the locks and opened it. The case was filled with banknotes: one hundred dollar bills neatly banded together in packets of fifty. One hundred packets in all. A total of half a million dollars. More money than Carlo had ever seen in his life.

But still not enough.

“We’ve had a problem,” Carlo said.

“Yes?” Sarov did not sound surprised.

Marc could feel the sweat as it drew a comma down the side of his neck. A mosquito was whining in his ear but he resisted the urge to slap it. This was what he had been waiting for. He was standing a few steps away, his hands hanging limply by his side. Slowly, he allowed them to creep behind him, closer to the concealed gun. He glanced at the ruined buildings. One might once have been a control tower. The other looked like a customs shed. Both of them were broken and empty, the brickwork crumbling, the windows smashed. Could there be someone hiding there? No. The thermal intensifier would have shown them. They were alone.

“The cost of the uranium.” Carlo shrugged. “Our friend in Miami sends his apologies. But there are new security systems all over the world. Smuggling-particularly this sort of thing-has become much more difficult. And that’s meant extra expense.”

“How much extra expense?”

“A quarter of a million dollars.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate for you. General. You’re the one who has to pay.”

Sarov considered. “We had an agreement.” he said.

There was a long silence. Marc’s fingers reached out behind his back, closing around the Glock automatic. But then Sarov nodded. “I will have to raise the money,” he said.

“You can have it transferred to the same account that we used before,” Carlo said. “But I have to warn you, General. If the money hasn’t arrived in three days, the American intelligence services will be told what has happened here tonight… what you’ve just received. You may think you are safe here on this island. I can assure you, you won’t be safe any more.”

“You’re threatening me,” Sarov muttered. There was something at once calm and deadly in the way he spoke.

“It’s nothing personal,” Carlo said.

Marc produced a cloth bag. He unfolded it, then tipped the money out of the case and into the bag. The case might contain a radio transmitter. It might contain a small bomb. He left it behind.

“Good night, General,” Carlo said.

“Good night.” Sarov smiled. “I hope you enjoy the flight.”

The two men walked away. Marc could feel the money, the bundles pressing through the cloth against the side of his leg. “The man’s a fool,” he whispered, returning to his own language.

“An old man. Why were we afraid?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Carlo said. He was thinking about what the general had said: I hope you enjoy the flight. Had he been smiling when he said that?

He made the agreed signal, pressing his finger and thumb together. At once the Cessna’s engine started up.

General Sarov was still watching them. He hadn’t moved, but now his hand reached once again into his jacket pocket. His fingers closed around the radio transmitter waiting there. He had wondered if it would be necessary to kill the two men and their pilot. Personally, he would have preferred not to, even as an insurance policy. But their demands had made it necessary. He should have known they would be greedy. Given the sort of people they were, it was almost inevitable.

Back in the plane, the two men were strapping themselves into their seats while the pilot prepared for take-off. Carlo heard the engine rev up as the plane slowly began to turn. Far away, there was a low rumble of thunder. Now he wished that they had turned the plane round immediately after they had landed. It would have saved some precious seconds and he was eager to be away.

Back in the air.

I hope you enjoy the flight.

There had been no emotion whatsoever in the general’s voice. He could have meant what he was saying. But Carlo guessed he would have spoken exactly the same way if he had been passing a sentence of death.

Next to him, Marc was already counting the money, running his hands through the piles of notes. He looked back at the ruined buildings, at the waiting jeep. Would Sarov try something? What sort of resources did he have on the island? But as the plane turned in a tight circle, nothing moved. The general stayed where he was. There was nobody else in sight.

The runway lights went out.

“What the…?” The pilot swore viciously.

Marc stopped his counting. Carlo understood at once what was happening. “He’s turned the lights off,” he said. “He wants to keep us here. Can you take off without them?”

The plane had turned a half-circle so that it was facing the way it had come. The pilot stared out through the cockpit window, straining to see into the night. It was very dark now, but there was an ugly, unnatural light pulsating in the sky. He nodded. “It won’t be easy, but…”

The lights came back on again.

There they were, stretching into the distance, an arrow that pointed to freedom and an extra profit of a quarter of a million dollars. The pilot relaxed. “It must have been the storm,” he said. “It disrupted the electricity supply.”

“Just get us out of here,” Carlo muttered. “The sooner we’re in the air, the happier I’ll be.”

The pilot nodded. “Whatever you say.” He pressed down on the controls and the Cessna lumbered forward, picking up speed quickly. The runway lights blurred, guiding him forward. Carlo settled back into his seat. Marc was watching out of the window.

And then, seconds before the wheels left the ground, the plane suddenly lurched. The whole world twisted as a giant, invisible hand seized hold of it and wrenched it sideways. The Cessna had been travelling at one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. It came to a grinding halt in a matter of seconds, the deceleration throwing all three men forward in their seats. If they hadn’t been belted in, they would have been hurled out of the front window-or what was left of the shattered glass. At the same time there was a series of ear-shattering crashes as something whipped into the fuselage. One of the wings had dipped down and the propeller was torn off, spinning into the night. Suddenly the plane was still, resting tilted on one side.

For a moment, nobody moved inside the cabin. The plane’s engines rattled and stopped. Then Marc pulled himself up in his seat. “What happened?” he screamed. “What happened?” He had bitten his tongue. Blood trickled down his chin. The bag was still open and money had spilled into his lap.

“I don’t understand…” The pilot was too dazed to speak.

“You left the runway!” Carlo’s face was twisted with shock and anger.

“I didn’t!”

“There!” Marc was pointing at something and Carlo followed his quivering finger. The door on the underside of the plane had buckled. Black water was seeping in underneath, forming a pool around their feet.

There was another rumble of thunder, closer this time.

“He did this!” the pilot said.

“What did he do?” Carlo demanded.

“He moved the runway!”

It had been a simple trick. As the plane had turned, Sarov had switched off the lights on the runway using the radio transmitter in his pocket. For a moment, the pilot had been disoriented, lost in the darkness. Then the plane had finished its turn and the lights had come back on. But what he hadn’t known, what he wouldn’t have been able to see, was that it was a second set of lights that had been activated-and that these ran off at an angle, leaving the safety of the runway and continuing over the surface of the swamp.

“He led us into the mangroves,” the pilot said.

Now Carlo understood what had happened to the plane. The moment its wheels touched the water, its fate had been sealed. Without solid ground beneath it, the plane had become bogged down and toppled over. Swamp water was even now pouring in as they slowly sank beneath the surface. The branches of the mangrove trees that had almost torn the plane apart surrounded them, bars of a living prison.

“What are we going to do?” Marc demanded, and suddenly he was sounding like a child. “We’re going to drown!”

“We can get out!” Carlo had suffered whiplash injuries in the collision. He moved one arm painfully, unfastening his seat-belt.

“We shouldn’t have tried to cheat him!” Marc cried. “You knew what he was. You were told-

“Shut up!” Carlo had a gun of his own. He pulled it out of the holster underneath his shirt and balanced it on his knee. “We’ll get out of here and we’ll deal with him. And then somehow we’ll find a way off this damn island.”

“There’s something…” the pilot began.

Something had moved outside.

“What is it?” Marc whispered.

“Shhh!” Carlo half stood up, his body filling the cramped space of the cabin. The plane tilted again, settling further into the swamp. He lost his balance then steadied himself. He reached out, past the pilot, as if he was going to climb out of the broken front window.

Something huge and horrible lunged towards him, blocking out what little light there was in the night sky. Carlo screamed as it threw itself head first into the plane and onto him. There was a glint of white and a dreadful grunting sound. The other men were screaming too.

General Sarov stood watching. It wasn’t raining yet but the water was heavy in the air. There was a flash of lightning that seemed to cross the sky almost in slow motion, relishing its journey. In that moment, he saw the Cessna on its side, half-buried in the swamp. There were now half a dozen crocodiles swarming all over it. The largest of them had dived head first into the cockpit. Only its tail was visible, thrashing about as it gorged itself.

He reached down and lifted up the black container. Although it had taken two men to carry it to him, it seemed to weigh nothing in his hands. He placed it in the jeep, then stood back. He allowed himself the rare privilege of a smile and felt it, briefly, on his lips. Tomorrow, when the crocodiles had finished their meal, he would send in his field workers-the macheteros-to recover the banknotes. Not that the money was important. He was the owner of one kilogram of weapons grade uranium. As Carlo had said, he now had the power to destroy a small city.

But Sarov had no intention of destroying a city.

His target was the entire world.