The Devil's Trinity

Chapter 9

The sun had lifted over the horizon and was flooding the Santaren Channel in a light of pure gold. The Taliba had left the Bahamas behind and was heading south west towards the open waters of the Gulf. The sea lifted gently and a fine breeze swept across the water, picking up little wavelets that tossed their heads in flecks of white surf. The gulls weaved unseen patterns around the Taliba, waiting to pick up any scraps of food that might be thrown overboard by the crew.

When Marsh had arrived on board, the Taliba had remained on station for a while before heading out towards the open sea. Marsh had been quartered in crew accommodation and given assurances that he could move freely around the ship as he needed with the exception of the sea gallery where he would need to be accompanied. He was given no explanation why.

His cabin was quite small. Marsh hadn’t expected anything else because space was always at a premium on board ship, particularly for the crew. He had a single bunk with drawers beneath it plus a tall, single wardrobe and a small, bedside locker. There was a sink up against the bulkhead, but for his own ablutions, he would have to share the communal showers in the alleyway that ran between the crew quarters.

The bed was made up for him. He lay on top of the covers for a while, reading a magazine; one of several that had been left for his use on the small table in the cabin. When he did finally succumb to drowsiness, he slept occasionally, worried about Helen and worried about his own predicament. But as the dawn light began to flood into his cabin through the porthole he decided there was little to be gained by lying in bed, so he got up and went off to find some breakfast.

One thing Marsh promised himself was to remain professional about this new turn of events. Whatever happened, it behove him to act in exactly the same way as he would if he had been working on one of his own commissions on board the Helena. It was vitally important that he kept this attitude to the forefront of his mind, because to let his concentration wander when diving in the submersible could cost him his life; and possibly that of the divers who would be working with him.

After he had eaten and completed his morning shower, Marsh went up to the bridge. It was his intention to open up a dialogue with Captain de Leon about studying charts and way points with a view to getting himself into the right frame of mind for when he began trial dives with the Challenge.

He had been chatting with the captain when the sound of the bridge squawk box cut into their conversation. It was the forward lookout.

“Bridge, there’s a Coast Guard cutter off the port side. It’s about five miles distant, four o’clock.”

Captain de Leon walked out on to the port wing of the bridge, taking a pair of binoculars with him and scanned the sea until he could see the Coast Guard ship heading towards them.

He hurried back into the bridge and picked up the telephone that connected him directly to Khan’s cabin. “Sir, this is the bridge. There’s Coast Guard cutter off the port side. They’re heading straight to us.”

Khan heard the buzz on his speakerphone and thumbed the talk switch. As soon as de Leon had finished the message, he told him to stop engines and get Malik into the sea gallery.

“Remind Malik to turn the transponder on before he lowers the device. And be sure to mark the position as we planned. Be quick,” he added.

On the bridge, de Leon ordered a crewman to get down to Malik’s cabin as he rang the engine room telegraph. Marsh watched as an obviously well-rehearsed plan swung into action. He felt the Taliba begin to slow as the engine room killed the power according to de Leon’s telegraph signal.

Marsh turned and looked out through the windows and saw the Coast Guard cutter coming towards them. Its demeanour was one of determination and it was obvious that the Taliba was their quarry. It came up in an arc behind them until it was level with them on their port side. Marsh could see the name of the cutter quite clearly. It was the Lincoln.

Below decks, Malik had hurried down into the sea gallery. He closed the watertight door behind him as he stepped into the sea gallery and pushed a button situated on one of the bulkheads. Immediately a motor burst into life and the bottom doors began to open, swinging down into the sea beneath the hull of the ship. Sea water sloughed in and ran down into the scuppers on either side of the deck.

Malik than sprinted to the end of the gallery where two nuclear bombs were stowed in a frame and locked together like a pair of conjoined twins. They were mounted on a steel pallet which was attached to a block and suspended from a running block on a gantry that spanned the open doors in the floor of the sea gallery.

Malik released the clamps holding the bombs in place and lifted the hoist controller from its stowage point. He pushed a button and the steel hawser that was attached to the pallet by an open hook, shuddered into life and lifted the bombs clear of the deck.

Malik then used the traverse button to manoeuvre them out over the open space. Once it was hovering over the opening, he lowered the pallet into the sea. He let the hoist motor run for what seemed like an eternity, but was only about ten minutes, when suddenly the hawser went slack.

Once the heavy pallet was resting on the sea bed, and the weight was no longer taken up by the steel rope, the open hook swung free. Malik immediately reversed the motor and lifted the steel rope back up into the gallery. As the hook appeared above the waterline, Malik dashed over to the button that operated the doors and rammed his thumb against it. The doors immediately closed.

The sea water stopped swamping into the gallery once the doors were shut and the last residue was sucked noisily through the scuppers by the bilge pumps.

Satisfied that the job was done, Malik left the sea gallery and made his way up to the bridge.

“Coast Guard vessel, Lincoln to motor vessel Taliba! Do you read me? Over.”

Marsh’s attention was drawn to the bridge speakerphone. He saw Captain de Leon pick it up and thumb the talk button.

“This is Captain de Leon on board the Taliba. What’s your business Lincoln?”

“We wish to board you, Taliba. Over”

“This is Taliba. State your business Lincoln. Over.”

“This is the United States Coast Guard working for Homeland Security in defence against drugs and terrorist activity. We are empowered to board and search any vessel operating within these waters. Over”

“We are not terrorists, Lincoln, and we are not carrying drugs,” came de Leon’s stern reply.

De Leon felt Khan’s presence behind him. He turned round. “They want to come aboard,” he said quietly.

Khan nodded. “We were prepared for this eventuality, Captain. We have no choice: we have to let them board us.”

“How do you want to transfer, Lincoln?” de Leon called over.

“Drop a ladder over the side. We will come over in the dinghy.”

The talking was over. The two ships parted to allow a reasonable distance between them. Marsh watched the cutter lower an inflatable craft with four sailors in it. The crew of the Taliba dropped two rope ladders over the side. Within thirty minutes of seeing the cutter, four American Coast Guard officers were boarding the Taliba.

Marsh was intensely curious like anybody would be, but was not privy to whatever was unfolding below decks. Nor would he be allowed to. De Leon had escorted the Coast Guard officers, informing them before they went searching round his ship that none of them were allowed to be unescorted.

Marsh would have given almost anything to know what the Americans were up to. He even harboured a naive wish that this was to be his and Helen’s rescue, with Khan being denounced and arrested for whatever evil practice he was involved in. But it was not to be. He remained on the bridge with Khan and Malik until the Americans appeared on deck with de Leon.

It was almost an hour after boarding the Taliba that the Americans finally disembarked and were on their way back to the cutter. The Coast Guard captain watched the Taliba pull away from them as he ordered his helmsman to set a course in the opposite direction.

When the boarding party were on board the cutter, the captain left the bridge and went down on to the deck to speak to them

“Well?” he asked.

“Nothing sir,” his bosun answered. “She’s as clean as a whistle.”

A few minutes after the boarding party left the captain, two other navy men appeared. They were wearing wet suits and had obviously been in the water. They saluted the captain.

“Well?” he asked. “Anything under there?”

They both shook their heads. “All that’s on that hull are a few barnacles and not much else. There’s certainly nothing hanging underneath her.”

He nodded, satisfied; job done. “Right, you get yourself changed and I’ll phone the admiral.”

Francesini sat opposite Inspector Bain having introduced himself and thanked him for seeing him at relatively short notice. As head of the Bahamian C.I.D., Horatio Bain had a well-appointed office within the heart of the police headquarters in Freeport. Francesini could see trappings of power, but decided it was all relative; the chief of detectives in New York would probably inhabit a far superior office and hold the rank of Captain, yet still do a similar job to the inspector here in Freeport.

Bain ordered tea for them both and assured him that he was happy to help the CIA in any way he could and having dispensed with the niceties asked Francesini how he could help him.

Francesini wanted to explain everything he could to the big, black policeman, but he felt constrained in that much of what he knew was either guesswork, intuition or a State secret. But he did his best to accommodate the inspector’s questions and fill in as many gaps as he could. Francesini’s emphasis was on the fact that Greg Walsh had come to him, not the Bahamian authorities, because he believed the Americans might be under a terrorist threat which was to be launched from the Grand Bahamas. It was a poor lie, but there was little else Francesini could tell him, or wanted to for that matter.

While he was talking, a young police officer brought in a tray with two cups of tea, milk and sugar on the side. Bain was not only polite and reassuringly attentive but seemed a genuinely nice guy too. He put sugar into his own cup, splashed a little milk and lifted the cup to his lips. He sipped the first mouthful of tea and asked Francesini what he thought he could get from Marsh at this time that he had been unable to get when Marsh was in hospital in Miami.

“I did ask him to have a look through his partner’s papers,” Francesini admitted.

“And did he?”

Francesini shook his head. “I’ve no idea. I rang him a couple of times before I flew over here, but he’s not answering his phone.”

“There’s a good reason for that, I believe,” Bain said, putting his cup down with a degree of care. “You see, Marsh has disappeared.”

Francesini sat bolt upright in his chair. “Disappeared?”

Bain nodded and told Francesini about Helen’s kidnapping and believed that Marsh’s apparent disappearance was linked to it.

Francesini was used to knock-backs in his profession, but the speed of this development took him by surprise. He was quiet for a while as he tried to digest the implications of what the inspector had just revealed to him. And Francesini had to admit that everything had just got worse. The amazing turn of events had deepened his worry that Greg Walsh’s fears were now taking on a life of their own and running away from him.

“Do you have any idea,” he began, but his question was cut short because Bain was shaking his head already.

“We have a witness to Helen Walsh’s kidnapping, but unfortunately he can’t be relied on.”

Francesini took a cigar from a leather cigar wallet. He asked the inspector if he could smoke. Bain nodded and Francesini began the task of lighting it. Bain picked up his cup again and drank from it.

“What haven’t you told me?” Bain asked him suddenly, an expression on his face that was a mixture of enquiry and threat.

Francesini nearly choked on his cigar. “I’m sorry?”

Bain put his cup down, his action quite positive. Now he seemed to be getting down to business.

“Please do me the courtesy of not assuming that I am a little policeman on an island that has only to deal with tourists, Mister Francesini.” The expression on his face changed and Francesini could see a hardness there that belied the inspector’s urbane nature. “The CIA does not send one of their top men on a boy’s errand. You must be worried about something that you haven’t told me about. Whatever this threat is to your country, it must be more serious, and closer I would think than you are prepared to admit. And I don’t believe the threat comes from this island.”

He opened a draw in his desk and pulled out a file. Francesini watched, but said nothing. Bain laid the file on the desk in front of him and opened it.

“Does the name Mancini mean anything to you?

Francesini was stunned. He thought he had been controlling the conversation; just feeding the inspector with a little information, just sufficient to make it appear that he was treating the inspector as an equal. But now he knew how wrong he had been; the inspector had been playing him along and allowed him to stumble into a bog of his own making.

“Should it?” he asked, still clinging grimly to a sense of some dignity.

“Mister Francesini, we can either be completely frank with each other, or we can terminate this interview here and now. It’s your choice.” He opened the file and began reading.

“Harry Mancini died a few months ago. He was a retired CIA agent. His widow is a natural Bahamian; that’s why they retired here. Last week, Mancini’s widow brought some files into us that she didn’t understand, but was intuitive enough to know that they could be important.”

He tossed the file across to Francesini who took it and looked through the pages, turning them slowly. Some of it was a technical report on geological survey work, obviously carried out by Greg Walsh that was beyond Francesini’s limited knowledge. But there was a summation at the end that had Walsh’s signature at the bottom of the page. He knew then that this is what he had hoped his men would find when they had searched Marsh’s home and that of Walsh’s widow, Helen.

And he knew that it would be dynamite once it had been broken down into everyday English.

“You know what this is?” Francesini asked him tentatively.

Bain reached over and retrieved the file. “I had somebody I know, not connected with the police department, look over it for me. He told me it was too heavy for us to deal with. He said it was dangerous.”

He laid the flat of his hand on the file and stared at Francesini for a few seconds.

“It has been on my mind for a couple of days now,” he said. “And it has made me think a great deal about whom to pass it on to. I suppose I must have been waiting for a ‘trigger’, you know; for something to happen that would convince me how serious this file was.”

Francesini could understand his dilemma. “And it’s happened, right?”

Bain nodded. “It has, and I’m prepared to let you have the file; but not until we have reached a complete understanding. Do you agree?”

Just then a young officer knocked at the door and came in with a folder which he laid on Bain’s desk.

“We’ve had some luck with the fingerprints, sir.” He glanced at Francesini for a moment and was obviously not impressed with the smoke from Francesini’s cigar.

“They found a palm print and four fingerprints on the door of the pick-up truck. There were no others like it on the car. We checked the witness’s statement and it’s possible the prints belong to one of the kidnappers.

“Do we have a face?” Bain asked.

“Yes sir; Sweeting Maclean.”

Francesini thought he saw a flash of dismay cross the inspector’s face. He tried not to let it bother him. Bain nodded thoughtfully, and then he looked up at the young policeman.

“I want him tailed, but not picked up yet. Keep me informed.”

“Could that be our man?” Francesini asked when the young officer had left.

“There’s every chance,” Bain answered hopefully. “Maclean has a record as long as your arm, but he’s been quiet lately. He was mixed up in a big Obeah scandal a couple of years ago. That’s our local witchcraft,” he explained. “What you might call ‘voodoo’. He nearly went to prison for a very long time, but he got off on a technicality.”

“A good lawyer?” Francesini asked euphemistically.

Bain nodded. “Bent too.”

“What about this Maclean guy, is he a witchdoctor?”

Bain laughed. “Maclean an Obeah man? No, an Obeah man would not have got himself involved in kidnapping; too many other willing hands to do the work.”

“Like Maclean,” Francesini observed.

“Exactly!” Bain replied. “Just like Maclean.”

“So what will you do now?” he asked.

Bain almost shrugged. “We really have to let him show his hand. Perhaps lead us to where he is hiding Mrs. Walsh. If he has her of course: we’ve no proof yet.”

“Will you let me know once you have something positive, Inspector?”

Bain agreed. “Yes, as soon as we know, I’ll let you know.” He picked up Francesini’s business card and put it into a desk drawer.

“As soon as we can.” Then he picked up the folder he had been given by Mancini’s widow and handed it to Francesini.

“Here, you’d better take this.”

Francesini took it from him. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised. He was about to leave when Bain stopped him. “You haven’t finished your tea.”

Francesini smiled a broad smile. “Thanks Inspector, but no thanks; I never touch the stuff.”

Bain laughed out loud and stood up. He reached over the desk and shook Francesini by the hand. For all the presumption of the American, he decided he couldn’t help liking the man. He waited until Francesini had left his office and then opened the file the young policeman had brought in and began reading about Sweeting Maclean.

When Helen woke up, her mind held back reality for a brief moment and she could not remember where she was. A grey light filtered into the room and washed over the shapes, distorting them and making it difficult for her to recognise anything. Her side ached abominably where she had lain on the hard, concrete floor and she eased herself up in to a sitting position.

Then slowly, the horror of what had happened to her began drifting into her mind, filling in the edges and supplanting the vagaries of her first conscious thoughts. And as Helen recalled those moments of the previous day and night, so she began to feel the timbre of apprehension and fear.

As a result of lying on the hard floor the aches and pains began to surface as consciousness returned. Her side was numb and elsewhere she could feel stiffness and pain. She moved to one side, turning on to her knees and then stood upright. Then she remembered that something in the room had scared the hell out of her the night before, and the awful smell that seemed to seep into every pore of her body.

She scanned the room with her eyes only, not moving her head or the rest of her body, trying to identify the shapes that were beginning to take on a life as the light brightened, seeping in through the cracks in the door and through two very small, dirty windows. There was a table and a couple of chairs in the room, some cages and small boxes. She turned round, looking behind her and saw more cages. Some were hanging precariously from the walls.

She looked round for the door and moved towards it, placing each foot carefully in front of the other, edging towards the door until she could lean her back up against it, and watched the dawn lift the grey curtain and bring light into her strange prison.

It wasn’t long before Helen was able to discern some movement in the cages. There were animals in them but she was unable to see what kind and she continued to watch with a mixture of fascination and fear. Then the truth came to her and she realised she was almost certainly in a place belonging to an Obeah man.

In the normal world outside, Helen had no reason to believe in or fear the witchcraft of the islands, but she understood the mortal dread it could instil into native Bahamians. Helen was Bahamian too, but she was white and considered her European origins to be a sufficient defence against the voodoo magic. But now she was surrounded by it and felt threatened.

The light from outside was brightening through the two small windows which were set high in opposite walls. They were not barred but hanging beneath them were more cages containing rats and lizards. She could hear snuffling noises made by the rats. Helen had thought briefly about pushing the few sticks of furniture up against the wall and trying to get out through the one of the windows. But the thought of those rats and lizards made her flesh crawl.

As the light improved she could see brightly coloured masks hanging from hooks on the walls. Their distorted faces stared at her and seemed to mock her. There were chanting sticks and costumes, vicious looking knobkerries and several animal skins. She could see dead chicken carcasses bloated with maggots and could hear the buzz of flies. One wall was splattered with blood above a wooden butcher’s table and huge cockroaches scurried leisurely over the blood and dead flesh. A meat axe had been driven into the wooden top, its blade stained black with dried blood.

She looked away and saw something scurry along the wall against the floor, its black fur shining wet. She closed her eyes and felt the sting of tears. Her skin began to prickle as if a thousand needles were jabbing at her. The noise of the buzzing flies seemed to grow with an added intensity as they moved over the carcasses and the blood.

Finally the awful smell of decay and animal excreta, violence and death tore into her nostrils until she could stand it no longer. She flung herself at the door, tearing and beating at it, begging to be let out.

Sweeting Maclean could hear Helen’s screams as he ambled across the yard to the hut where he had thrown her the night before. There was no hurry in his leisurely pace; he felt good and he knew he was going to make a lot of money out of this one.

He reached the door, unlocked it and pulled it open. Helen literally fell into his arms screaming and sobbing. She pushed herself away suddenly when she realised whose arms she was in. Maclean smiled and grabbed a handful of Helen’s hair. He twisted it spitefully, bringing her to her knees. Then he back heeled the door shut and brought his face close to Helen’s.

“You be a good girl missy and I won’t hurt you.”

Helen’s face was drawn back in pain. “Oh please, “she cried, “you’re hurting me.”

Maclean pulled her to her feet and loosened his grip on her hair. “We’re going into the house now missy; got to keep you clean and fed.” He pushed her forward, still holding on to her hair and led her over the rough ground to the house.

Sweeting’s place, if indeed it was his, was little more than a single story dwelling, badly in need of a coat of paint and some tender, loving care. But in its location, fairly remote from what Helen could see, it was unlikely to attract more than just a cursory glance from the man who was now propelling her towards it.

Once inside, Helen was allowed to use the bathroom. Maclean told her she had thirty minutes. There was nothing inside the bathroom that Helen could have used to help her escape. As soon as she realised this, she used the time to luxuriate beneath a hot shower and wash the stench and feel of the hut from her body, and tried to forget the pain and torment she had been subjected to.

Maclean gave her breakfast after that. It was cold but Helen was starving and enjoyed every morsel. She noticed that her kidnapper kept looking at her. It troubled Helen because she knew exactly what was going through his mind. She tried, not very successfully to ignore his lustful stares and enjoy the frugal meal he had put before her.

While she ate, she kept wondering in the back of her mind where the other kidnapper was and what they planned to do with her. She decided there was nobody else in the house, so she tried talking to Maclean, but he said very little. What did bother Helen as well was the way in which he kept smiling at her.

When Helen had finished eating, Maclean took her into a bedroom.

“You got a choice missy,” he said, once they were in there. “You be good and you can stay in here. You be bad and you go back there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Helen knew where he meant; he didn’t have to be specific.

“I would prefer to stay here if I have to,” she told him.

Maclean smiled and Helen felt a chill run through her. He placed his hand on the back of her neck and began rubbing it gently.

“We’re gonna be together quite a while missy,” he said softly.

Helen tried to move her head away from him but he tightened his grip. He moved his other hand up to her breast. Helen gasped as he squeezed it.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please don’t.”

“It’s a pretty dress,” he said and pulled her closer to him. “Pretty little titties.” He held her tight and ran his hand down the back of her dress, popping each button until the dress fell open. Helen felt powerless in his frightening embrace. Then he relaxed and pulled the dress from her. Her breasts seemed to erupt from the material and she could see the fire burning in his eyes as he looked at her semi naked body. His mouth opened and the saliva on his tongue moistened his lips as an atavistic urge gripped him.

Helen screamed and slashed her fingernails across his face. It stopped him but only for a few seconds. Then suddenly he picked her up and threw her on the bed. Holding her down with one hand he curled his fingers into the line of her silk briefs. He pulled them from her and Helen was powerless to stop him. She bucked wildly and Maclean seemed to become mesmerised by the sight of her open legs. The dark flash of her groin meant sensual pleasure to him and it drove him into a frenzy. He groped at the buckle of his trouser belt and fumbled madly as he straddled her and reached into the opening of his trousers. Helen fought wildly, but Maclean was too strong for her. She screamed for him to stop when suddenly a voice broke through her cries.

“Maclean!”

He stopped as the voice called a second time. He held that pose for a moment, one hand pushing down on Helen’s chest, the other inside the opening of his trousers. He turned his head away and listened again as the voice came a third time. For a moment Helen thought he was too hyped up to stop and would rape her before going outside to see who was calling him.

But suddenly he relaxed and got off the bed and tidied himself up.

“Get your clothes on,” he ordered Helen, and left the room, locking the door behind him.

Helen crawled from the bed and gathered her clothes up, blinking the tears from her eyes. They ran down her cheeks and on to her naked body. The question she had asked herself earlier about the other man, the other kidnapper was answered; it was almost certainly the person who had called for Maclean.

She finished dressing and sat on the bed, trying to compose herself, but her fingers trembled violently as she tried to calm herself down. Her kidnapper had made his intentions very clear and she knew it was only a matter of time before he returned to finish what he had started. A violent shudder ran through her body and she began to feel quite unclean.

Maclean soon returned and told her to get up. He grabbed her hair again and dragged her out of the house and across the yard to the hut. He opened the door of the vile shack and pushed her in.

“I have to go away for a couple of hours missy.” He stood in the doorway like a mountain, his chest still heaving with the tormented desire he had for her. “When I come back I’m gonna finish what I started.”

“You can’t,” Helen shouted at him. “When they release me you’ll be wanted for rape as well.”

Maclean looked at her in an odd way. “Release?” he echoed. “What makes you think we are gonna release you missy? My orders are to keep you here until everything is finished. They don’t want you then; you’re dead meat.” He laughed. “And while you’re here, we’re gonna get to know each other real well. Real well missy.”

He kept laughing and slammed the door shut, leaving Helen staring at the door and wishing she was already dead.