The Devil's Trinity

Chapter 2

About a week before the Ocean Quest had been sunk by the freighter, Remo Francesini of the American security service, the C.I.A., had stood in the waiting room of the military hospital at Cape Canaveral in Florida. He was waiting for a doctor to take him along to an isolation ward where a young man lay sick and dying. He was deep in thought and was concerned, not for the young man but for something else that weighed much heavier on his mind.

Francesini was a big man, over six feet tall and weighed about two hundred pounds. He had always prided himself on his fitness, much of which was a result of serving in the United States Marine Corps and subsequently as a member of the Navy Seals; the covert group of specialists who usually worked behind enemy lines on operations that required courage, stealth and a philosophical attitude to whatever fate had in store for them and to whatever their masters ordered them to do. He eventually left the military to join the NYPD.

Today he was at the hospital in his capacity as head of the Mission Support Office, which was responsible for collecting and collating intelligence information and reporting directly to the Deputy Director of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, the C.I.A. at Langley in West Virginia. Francesini’s boss was Admiral James Starling and it was the admiral who had insisted that he, Remo Francesini should visit the dying man at the hospital and not one of Remo’s subordinates, which would normally have been the case.

He was the only person in the waiting room. He was wearing green coveralls, a surgeon’s cap on his head and covers over his shoes. He would normally have been smoking one of his beloved Havana cigars, but smoking was banned in all American hospitals, so he contented himself with thinking about the reasons why he was there and where he would sooner be.

It was quiet and the walls, which were almost bare, save for a couple of naval prints, seemed to reflect a melancholy that fused with his own. There was a small table in the room and a couple of chairs. There was no reading material.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the twin towers, in September, 2001 by the Muslim terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, the whole of the C.I.A. and the White House had become jumpy at the slightest hint of another terrorist operation on American soil. The bosses at the top of the pile were more nervous than their underlings because it would be their heads and jobs on the line if their departments screwed up.

And Admiral Starling was no different, except that he had the C.I.A. Director of Operations bearing down on him who in turn had to contend with the Oval Office in the White House.

The melancholy feeling that settled in Francesini’s mind was the result of a feeling of hopelessness and a fear that he could not prevent another terror attack by Al Qaeda because their attacks were so difficult to predict or detect, despite the most sophisticated technology available and the magnificent and selfless efforts of the C.I.A. agents in the field.

Home grown terrorism was another factor that troubled him and the unbelievable willingness of second and third generation Arab Americans to support their Middle Eastern cousins in their appalling acts of murder.

A sixth sense told him that what he was about to see and hopefully hear, was a warning that had dropped into their laps by sheer good fortune. But even then, Francesini hadn’t a clue just how significant the warning would prove to be; his task was to glean as much from this as was humanly possible and pray that another atrocity would be avoided.

Sadly, the melancholy in him hid his usual countenance of good humour and confidence. He had a charisma that people usually warmed to, which meant never suspecting for a minute that his worries were ably hidden and could quite easily have been their worries.

A door opened and a naval officer stepped into the room. He was dressed in a similar fashion to Francesini.

“You can see him now, sir.”

Francesini walked towards the open door. “Any improvement?” he asked the young naval officer without any real hope.

The young man shook his head. “He’ll be lucky to last another month. Try not to tax him too much.”

“Has he said anything?”

Again the shake of the head. “No, nothing of significance, but you can still try; you may get something out of him.”

Francesini nodded and followed the officer out of the room. The tap of their heels echoed round the walls of the long corridor, intruding into the silence. At the far end of the corridor, the naval officer pushed opened a pair of swing doors that opened into another passage. He stopped by the first door and beckoned Francesini, opening the door for him.

The room looked clinical and efficient. Beside the bed was an array of monitoring equipment humming quietly, interrupted rhythmically by a pulsing sound from a heart monitor. The green trace on the monitor screen looked irregular and the spikes were erratic.

He paused at the bedside and looked down at the man lying on the bed. There were two bottles hanging from a stainless steel contraption with tubes branching down to the patient’s arms. He was in his thirties. Francesini knew that from the man’s notes he had read when he had arrived at the hospital. There was an oxygen bottle beside the man’s bed, but at the moment it was not in use.

Most of his hair had fallen out and what was left hung in small, wispy clumps from his scalp. One eye was closed. The other eye was open but red and angry and weeping. He had suppurating sores on his face and neck and they continued unseen down his body to the soles of his feet.

Francesini knew the man was suffering from bone calcium deficiency, leukaemia and dysentery. He felt desperately sorry for him, not because he was dying, but because of the long and painful end to the poor man’s life.

He was dying from radiation sickness.

Francesini pulled a chair over and sat beside the bed. He studied the man for a while and wondered if he would learn anything because the poor wretch looked comatose. The dying man had been picked up somewhere along the Florida Keys, wandering aimlessly along the road. The police had been called by some concerned citizen who described the man as looking like he had been in a road accident. It was true and he had been in a sorry state even then when the police picked him up. He had no identity papers on him and did not look like an American, although that in itself was not significant. So the local authorities had put him into hospital until the immigration department could deal with him.

The poor man had lain there for several days before a retired army doctor chanced by. What the doctor saw reminded him of clinical notes he had studied in his early days as a junior army doctor. The notes were comprehensive and were of Japan after the atomic bomb. And what the sharp old medic suggested to the Pentagon sent shivers down their spines and set the alarm bells ringing all the way to the White House. The sick man was immediately transferred to the isolation wing where he was now.

“I wish you would say something,” Francesini muttered. “You’re not being much help to yourself. You came to us but you won’t say why. The doctor says you could be ok, but you need something to give you hope.” It was a lie and it rolled glibly of his tongue.

The man’s eye moved and he turned his face a little. Francesini was encouraged.

“If you have a family, we can let them know. We can bring them here for you.” He leaned forward, getting closer. “It doesn’t matter where they are; we can get them.”

The man’s lips moved as he tried to form a word. Francesini watched closely as the blistered lips trembled, the blood from the sores on his mouth was still wet. Suddenly the man’s hand reached out and grabbed Francesini’s wrist and a word tumbled out. His voice was faint and cracked. It was virtually hopeless. Francesini shook his head knowing he could do nothing for him unless he knew more.

The strength in the man’s grip ebbed away and he relaxed. Francesini took hold of his hand and held it.

“How did you get the burns?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “What are they doing? What are they up to?” Francesini didn’t even know who ‘they’ were!

The frustration threatened to tip the quiet calm into boiling emotion. He wanted to wring the truth from the man and bully him into answering his questions. But he never did; he just sat there and talked softly.

He left the room after twenty minutes, discarding his protective clothing in a bin that was outside the door. He called at the reception desk to tell them that the dying man was asleep, and would they inform the doctor that he was leaving.

It was a bright, uplifting day outside the hospital and the warm sun on his face gave Francesini a reason to feel a little better as he stepped out into the sunshine. He took a cigar from his pocket. He lit the cigar and drew in a lungful of smoke.

“Taliban,” he muttered to himself. Was that the word the dying man had been trying to say, Taliban? Muslim fanatics who used to hold the reins of power in Afghanistan?

“I thought we had thrown them out,” he muttered to himself.

Then he shook his head, blew the cigar smoke out leisurely and wondered what Admiral Starling would have to say.

Marsh shivered. He felt cold, but that didn’t concern him too much; it was a warm night and the chill would soon pass. He thought about his own situation and what he could do and how he could get out of it. The irony of it did not escape him; he made his living getting wet and avoiding death. This time he wasn’t enjoying it, neither was he getting paid!

The self-indulgence passed and despair crowded in, swarming over him as he recalled the terrifying moments surrounding Walsh’s death. It was the nature of it and the following circumstances that horrified him. He wondered if he would ever get home to Freeport in the Bahamas where they lived to report everything to the police. He thought too of Helen, Walsh’s widow, and how he would tell her. In fact, what he would tell her.

Marsh had been a partner in their underwater survey business with Walsh and his widow, Helen for a good number of years. They owned a boatyard in Freeport and also their own, underwater survey vessel. Although business had been good over the years they still struggled to pay off their short term loans and the mortgage on the yard and the submersible.

He had seen the Taliba, the ship now alongside the freighter, in Freeport. It was shortly before Greg Walsh had agreed to work on a relatively short commission for its owner, Hakeem Khan.

Khan was a wealthy oceanographer and explorer. He was well known among oceanographers the world over. And he was well respected. Walsh had worked on that commission for a few months, but it had not involved Marsh or Helen. Marsh could never figure out why Walsh had excluded him. It hadn’t been a contentious issue really and in fact had given Marsh an opportunity to spend some free time on his own in Europe, taking in the old capital cities and doing some ski-ing and getting in après ski in the best traditions of a bachelor.

Shortly after completing the commission, Walsh had begun to act strangely and a little secretively. Marsh hadn’t realised it at first, but slowly it had generated some friction between himself and Walsh. It never reached the extent where they had fallen out over it, but it was a little difficult for Marsh and Helen to understand. Helen had tried to question her husband several times but had never been able to get anything from him.

But whatever it was that was troubling Walsh, it always seemed to go back to the work he had completed for Hakeem Khan. And Marsh was now rapidly piecing together some seemingly irrelevant parts of a jigsaw that worried him.

But the most important thing on Marsh’s mind at that moment was how to secure his own safety in what was now an extremely dangerous position.

His mind went back to the smaller of the two vessels, the Taliba. It was an Arabic word meaning ‘seeker of knowledge’. It had been operating in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of years now. Walsh told him it was operating on an oil exploration licence.

He looked up at the colossus that was the freighter, then at the Taliba. Of the two ships, he knew that the smaller craft was his only hope.

He had swum to the stern end of the Taliba and had been there for some minutes going through the useless exercise of trying to figure out exactly what the ship was doing there in the first place. He cursed himself and brought his mind back to how he was going to make best use of the opportunity that had presented itself.

Marsh knew that clambering aboard the boat would not be difficult because the crew of the Taliba all had their attention focussed on the freighter and what was apparently the preparation to transfer cargo. It was only Marsh’s weakened state that might jeopardise his attempt to climb up on to the aft deck of the Taliba.

He kicked with his legs, ignoring the pain from the bullet wound and reached up for the diving platform which had been hoisted into its stowage position. His fingers touched the framework and he grabbed and held on. Then he slowly pulled himself clear of the water. He felt a little rush of adrenalin and a sense of euphoria swept over him on this initial success, but he knew his chances of survival were still slim. He had to be careful.

Once he was on the aft deck, he lay prone and remained perfectly still. He lay like that for several minutes and allowed his pulse rate to settle, taking advantage of the brief respite he had been given.

As he lay there, Marsh could hear rather than see, the work going on at the forward end of the Taliba. It was also clear that the hatch covers were being hoisted clear on the forward deck of the freighter. Although neither ship was carrying lights, which of course was illegal, Marsh could see the flicker of torchlight on the deck of the freighter and could just about make out silhouettes of men on the wings of both ships. He could hear the gentle motion of the screws as both ships kept station.

Suddenly the winch motor on the freighter burst into life and within moments a large crate appeared as it was swung from the hatch of the freighter to the forward deck of the Taliba.

A breeze suddenly sprung up and ran like a lizard across his back. He shivered and began to cast around for somewhere to conceal himself. He needed to do it quickly while both crews were engaged in the transfer of whatever cargo it was. And the noise of the transfer was loud enough to mask any noise that Marsh made while he cast around looking for a bolt hole.

And before he went looking for that bolt hole, Marsh thought about Hakeem Khan again. Khan was a respected member of that breed of oceanographers who work in the oceans of the world, and who were never happier than when they were doing just that.

So what the hell was Khan doing here?

Hakeem Khan watched the loading dispassionately from the bridge of the Taliba. If he was nervous, he did not appear so. He stood with his legs apart and his hands locked together behind his back. He stared out of the windows of the bridge through dark eyes beneath a heavy frown. He was quite bulky, but none of it was fat because of his lifestyle at sea. Despite his apparent fitness however, Khan was not a well man.

He was there on the bridge because he was not disposed to letting his captain oversee the operation. Nevertheless he managed to display a detached interest. His head moved in a spontaneous nod of satisfaction as the sling, now divested of its burden, moved upwards like the long tails of a firefly. His eyes followed them until they disappeared into the darkness above the freighter. He then turned to a huge man standing beside him.

“We are in Allah’s hands now, Malik,” he said quietly.

Malik nodded his huge head. “May He be praised.”

There were two other men on the bridge with Khan and Malik: the ship’s captain, Jose Maria de Leon who was a Cuban, and the duty wheelman. Khan spoke to the captain.

“It is done. Lock it away Señor de Leon. I will be in my cabin.”

De Leon moved towards the bridge telephone but before he could pick it up, the wireless operator called through from the wireless room.

De Leon and Khan exchanged glances. De Leon stepped through into the wireless room. A few moments later he called through to Khan.

“You had better take this, sir. They have a problem.”

Khan frowned and walked into the wireless room. The captain handed him the headset which he pressed to his ear. De Leon watched intently.

“When was this?” Khan asked sharply. “And you have the body on board?”

He lifted his face upwards and shook his head in despair.

“And he has papers on him?” He listened. “His name?”

The others watched Khan as his face froze.

“Mother of God.” He looked at de Leon. “Get the cage ready.”

He threw the headset on to the radio table. “Tell them to stand by,” he ordered the wireless operator. “I’m going on board.” He turned to Malik. “You too.”

There was just a hint of dawn breaking on the far horizon as Marsh thought he could see movement on the bridge of the Taliba. Two figures moved hurriedly down the stairway from the bridge to the lower deck. Beyond them he saw the cage being hooked up to the derrick crane. It was a shark cage, used to allow divers to study shark behaviour in safety. The two figures stepped inside the cage and it was lifted up and swung across to the deck of the freighter. One of them looked like Khan. He didn’t recognise the second figure in the cage.

Marsh assumed this was part of the illegal business that was being conducted. Perhaps Khan was going over to the freighter to pay for whatever contraband had been delivered; for Marsh was convinced it had to be contraband of one kind or another. As the cage disappeared from Marsh’s view he pushed the thought from his mind and began to consider his own position and what he could do.

On the deck of the freighter, Khan stood over the dead body of Greg Walsh. Water still dripped from Walsh’s body, forming small, red pools on the deck of the freighter. He had been laid on his back, and in the torchlight could be clearly seen small blossoms of flowering red on his clothing. Khan stared at it.

“There was no-one else?” he asked at length.

The captain of the freighter glanced up. “No.”

Khan’s eyes just flickered towards him; then they were back on the pale, dead face.

“Why?” he muttered softly to himself. “Why were you here?”

Malik heard the whisper and sensed the urgent query in his Khan’s voice.

“Coincidence?” he offered. “A chance in a thousand?”

Khan looked at him. “We would like to think so, wouldn’t we Malik? But I fear that is not the case.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Throw him back into the sea and let his secrets go with him. The sharks will not go hungry.”

He stared at Walsh’s dead face for a little longer. Then he knelt down and placed the tip of his finger on Walsh’s chin.

“Why were you here Walsh? Why?”

He stood up and walked back to the cage in silence. Malik followed.

As they swung back over to the Taliba, Khan’s face was fused into a deep scowl. A small pain nagged at his chest; the familiar pain that the doctor’s had warned him about. He lifted his hand and massaged his chest.

A single doubt now lay in his mind. For the first time in many weeks it occurred to him that others might know.

Marsh had been transfixed by the comings and goings between the two ships, but now he knew he had little time; he had to find somewhere to conceal himself. Khan was unlikely to be on the freighter too long completing whatever business it was he was conducting; the ships would have move on soon. Certainly once Khan was back on board.

There were two lifeboats secured on their davits, one either side of the ship. Choosing the lifeboat furthest away from the freighter, and away from the direction most eyes might look, Marsh ran at a crouch towards the boat. He climbed up on to the steelwork of the davits and slipped beneath the tarpaulin covering the boat.

The darkness closed in on him as he settled down in the bottom of the lifeboat. He had no plan and didn’t know what he was going to do. He certainly had no hope of rescue. Whatever happened now would be in the hands of God.

Or in the hands of Hakeem Khan!