Assassin ah-2 Page 10

  “A Mr. Jack Patterson from the State Department, sir.”

  Chapter Ten

  London

  SNAY BIN WAZIR AND HIS NEW BRIDE ARRIVED IN LONDON in the spring of 1986, bin Wazir’s febrile mind brimming with schemes and his coffers bulging with blood money. Elephant blood money to be blunt about it, although that chapter in his life had already been purged from the public record. Throughout the eighties and early nineties Snay bin Wazir would embark on a public relations campaign and a spending spree that eventually had all of London town in an uproar.

  At first, putting his toe in the water, he acquired a palatial penthouse flat on Park Lane, with panoramic views of Hyde Park. He hired a staff of three, two maids and a Filipino cook, for his wife, Yasmin. Then he installed Tippu Tip, the former African chieftain, as the highest-paid bodyguard cum driver in London. Tippu in turn hired a houseboy named Kim who was soon lighting the Sultan’s trademark Baghdaddy cigarettes with a heavy gold Dunhill. That was Snay’s idea of a slow build. There was nowhere to go from there but up.

  A Kuwaiti friend recommended a tailor in New Bond Street. Snay had six identical suits made, all black terry cloth. He noticed that people smiled their approval wherever he went. “Where on earth did you get that suit?” people would often ask, and Snay, now a fashion trendsetter of sorts, was happy to direct them to his newly acquired tailor.

  After a month or more of prowling the fashionable and not so-fashionable West End clubs and casinos, he bought Harpo. This trendy, upscale nightspot in Knightsbridge had a huge dance floor on the ground floor and a plush VIP casino upstairs. For a while, Snay himself was on the door every night, ingratiating himself with London’s younger upper crust and ogling the Pretty Young Things who shimmered nightly through his increasingly famous portals.

  He strode into Jack Barclay’s Rolls-Royce emporium on Berkley Square one fine morning and bought his first Roller. A gleaming aluminum-bodied 1926 Silver Ghost with a red leather interior. The vanity plate acquired at a princely sum read Ivoire. He outfitted Tippu Tip in pearl grey livery with ivory buttons. Tippu was easily the best dressed, most heavily armed private chauffeur in London.

  In one of Snay bin Wazir’s more inspired moments, he turned the door at Harpo over to Tippu. The six-foot-six chief outfitted himself in a variety of colorful matching silk turbans and loincloths every night, his massive black chest complemented by a splendid ivory skull necklace of his own design. “Ebony and ivory, Boss,” he’d said laughing, “Living in perfect harmony.”

  Almost overnight Snay bin Wazir’s rugged, mustachioed face was everywhere; between the covers of magazines and tabloids which covered such things, and smiling at you on a monthly, weekly, and, ultimately, daily basis. He had become, after a fashion, a minor celebrity, and had even earned himself a glamourous nickname, the Pasha of Knightsbridge. He knew he was destined for far greater glory, but, for the present, he was satisfied.

  Then there was the night in the late eighties when the world-famous arms dealer Attar al-Nassar himself appeared at his door, a bevy of beauties on each arm. Bin Wazir knew from the moment he first laid eyes on al-Nassar that, somehow, his life was forever changed. He ducked into the cloakroom and rang up his friend, Stilton, a rabid society newshound at the Sun. “Al-Nassar’s here,” he told Stilton. “I’ll keep him here as long as I can but you’d better hop to it.” Stilton hopped right to it. The Pasha and the reporter had developed a very successful and symbiotic relationship.

  Bin Wazir provided the diminutive and somewhat unfortunate-looking Sun journalist and his sidekick photographer with women. The Sun, which, on a good day sells around four million copies, in turn conferred celebrity status of a certain kind upon the arriviste Snay bin Wazir.

  That night, bin Wazir showered the world-famous arms dealer with attention, ushering him to the best table on the dance floor and sending over endless bottles of Crystal, compliments of the house. Stilton arrived ten minutes later, his taxi screeching to a halt outside Harpo’s crowded entrance. The giant Tippu parted the throngs and personally escorted him inside. The shots of al-Nassar and his bevy on the Harpo dance floor were splashed all over the newsstands next morning.

  The end of that splendid evening found Snay and Attar on a first-name basis, huddled in a corner banquette smoking cigars and talking politics, women, religion, and, ultimately, business.

  “I take it you’re not a religious man, Snay,” al-Nassar said mildly.

  “On the contrary,” Snay smiled. “I am a fanatic. My gods just happen to reside in a vault in Zurich.”

  Al-Nassar laughed. “Then why do you trifle in nightclubs, my friend?”

  “Have you looked carefully at the dance floor tonight, Attar?”

  “Ha. Accessories! Baubles and bangles! I will tell you a confidence, Snay. Because I find I like you, and I don’t like many people. Today, I sold more than two dozen forty-million-dollar fighter jets to the Peruvian government. Eastern European jets. Highly unreliable design.”

  “Unreliable fighter jets?”

  “Hmm. Every piece that falls off is wildly expensive. The real money will be in keeping them flying.”

  Snay, smiling, raised his flute of champagne and leaned back against the cushions. It had taken him many long years, but he realized he had finally found a role model.

  “Beautiful suit,” he told al-Nassar, eyeing the man’s exquisitely cut three-piece navy chalkstripe. “May I ask, who is your tailor?”

  “Chap at Huntsman, Savile Row,” Attar replied. “Fellow named Ronnie Bacon. I’ll ring him tomorrow if you’d like.”

  Snay nodded and said, “I was wondering, Attar…I’m sitting on some money.”

  “Yes?”

  “Not a lot. Fifty million or so. English pounds,” Snay said, holding a match to the tip of his monogrammed yellow cigarette.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t suppose you ever look for investors? At that level, I mean?”

  “I don’t, to be honest, Mr. bin Wazir,” al-Nassar said.

  “Sorry. Sorry if my question offended you, Mr. al-Nassar.”

  “A wise man never regrets the questions he asks. Only the ones he didn’t ask.”

  “This is good advice.”

  Al-Nassar tapped his temple with his index finger and said, “My gods reside up here, Snay bin Wazir. Right now, my deities have all overindulged themselves. The lowly grape clouds their normally lofty judgment. It’s late in the evening. Would you be so kind as to give me a day or so to consider your question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You’re basic raw material, Snay. Good, rough, hard stone. Don’t mind getting your hands dirty either, from what I’ve heard. I like that. A bit of polishing strictly for appearances and I might just be able to use a fellow like you.”

  “I should be honored, Mr. al-Nassar.”

  “Good. We’ll get you started. Forget ivory. Too visible. Too—messy. I’ve got one word for you, Snay. Flowers.”

  “Flowers?”

  “Flowers.”

  “Mr. al-Nassar. Perhaps I don’t follow you quite exactly. Could you be, please, more specific?”

  “Gladiolas.”

  “Ah. Of course. Gladiolas.”

  “Precisely. Just the beginning. You buy day-old glads in South Africa for two dollars a stem and you sell them to rich Russian tourists in Dubai the next day for one hundred dollars a stem. You can carry twenty tons per flight. Better than printing money.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “One question, which I shall always regret if I do not ask it,” al-Nassar said, fingering the black terry cloth of Snay’s lapel.

  “Anything, Attar.”

  “Where on earth did you get that suit?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dark Harbor, Maine

  THE PACKARD-MERLIN 266 ENGINE SPUTTERED AT FIRST, then roared to life. It was the very same engine, circa 1942, that had powered the much-vaunted Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI, workhorse of the powerful fighter co
mmand squadrons that rose up and ultimately triumphed over the Luftwaffe in the skies over Britain. The highly modified Spitfire engine was mounted in the long nose of Hawke’s sleek silver seaplane.

  It was an aircraft clearly out of her time, and the truth was Alex had designed the plane himself. Completely lacking in any formal aeronautical design skills, he had simply modeled her after one of his favorite boyhood toys. His theory about both airplane and boat design was simple. If it looked good and it looked fast, it probably was both. In a cavernous hold at the stern of Blackhawke were many racing machines Alex had collected over the years. There was not one vintage racing car or speedboat that did not look both good and fast.

  Especially this little seaplane. She was named Kittyhawke in honor of Alex’s mother, an American film star before she’d married. One of his mother’s more glamourous publicity poses was painted on the port side of the fuselage. Catherine Caldwell had taken the stage name Kitty Hawke when she’d married Alex’s father, Lord Alexander Hawke. Kitty Hawke had been a hard-working actress, ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the classic Civil War saga, Southern Belle. It was to be the last picture she would make.

  In the late seventies, Lord and Lady Hawke were murdered in the Exuma Islands. Cuban drug runners boarded their yacht, Seahawke, in the middle of the night. There was one eyewitness. Their seven-year-old son, Alex. Hidden by his father in a secret compartment in the yacht’s bow, the boy saw the horrific crime. Ultimately, on the island of Cuba, Alex Hawke the man would track down the killers and avenge his parents’ deaths; but the boyhood memory of that horrifying night would haunt the man forever.

  “All buckled in, Constable?” Hawke asked, putting on his headphones and adjusting his lipmike. He was delighted to be back aboard Kittyhawke and was wearing one of his old Royal Navy flying suits, an outfit he favored whenever he took the little plane aloft. The Packard-Merlin Spitfire engine, all fifteen hundred horses, spat fire as he shoved the throttle forward and nosed his plane into the wind.

  “No aerial aerobatics on the voyage up, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Congreve barked in his headset. “I know how you delight in torturing captive passengers.”

  “Ah. Do I detect a wee touch of the Irish Flu this morning, Ambrose? I did think that third Drambuie at the bar last night was ill-advised. Especially after the vast quantities of Château La Tour. Frankly, I thought you’d sworn off les vins de France. Patriotic reasons, and all that.”

  “Please,” Congreve replied, a thick frost coating the word. “Just because you have been the very model of abstemiousness for an entire twenty-four hours, I don’t see why I should be subjected to—”

  “Sorry, old thing. It is your liver, after all. Not mine.”

  “God save us,” Ambrose sighed and collapsed back in his seat, struggling with the wretched harness which barely accommodated his circumference. He wouldn’t admit it, to be sure, but he was actually battling a bit of a morning after. Alex eased the throttle forward, and the seaplane surged across the blue waters of Nantucket Sound and lifted off into the rosy New England dawn.

  Over nightcaps in the bar at 21 Federal, Alex Hawke and Ambrose Congreve had decided to fly up to Dark Harbor, Maine, at first light.

  “It’s bad, Alex,” Jack Patterson had said to him on the phone at the restaurant. “I’m on my way up to Dark Harbor right now. Evan Slade’s wife and two kids were murdered last night. Butchered. We’ve got to stop this thing. Fast, before panic sets in. Otherwise, I’m looking at a complete paralysis of America’s diplomatic corps. Meltdown, at the worst possible time.”

  “That’s what they want,” Alex said. “Panic.”

  “Yep. That’s why we’ve got to stop it fast.”

  “I’ll be there, Tex. First thing.”

  “Didn’t have the heart to ask. Thanks, Hawkeye. Sorry to interrupt your supper. I know this is a difficult time for you and—”

  “See you around eight? I’ll fly the seaplane up. What’s the mooring situation up there? Any idea?”

  “House has a long dock into deep water. Check your charts, buddy. You’ll see big old Wood Island just southwest of Dark Harbor. Pine Island lies just east of Wood. Slade family bought the whole rock back in the fifties. Only house on the island. Dock on the south end, according to the local chief of police, woman by the name of Ainslie.”

  “Cheated death once again, eh, Constable?” Hawke said as they taxied toward the Slade dock. Congreve ignored him.

  “I see the local constabulary has turned out to welcome us,” Congreve said. A young uniformed officer stood at the end of the dock, a coiled rope in his hand, looking uncertain about precisely what he was supposed to do with it.

  “Patterson sent this fellow out to give us a hand, I imagine.”

  Alex shut down the engine, unbuckled his harness, then opened the cockpit door and climbed down onto the port side pontoon. He waited a few seconds for the chap to toss him the line. “Ahoy,” he finally shouted to the young policeman, some twenty feet across the water, “Toss me that line please! She’s drifting off! I can’t get her in any closer because of the current.”

  It took Officer Nikos Savalas three tries to finally toss the line within Alex’s reach.

  “Third time’s the charm,” Alex shouted at the clearly embarrassed man as he bent and cleated the line off on the pontoon. Once Kittyhawke was secure, the two Englishmen climbed a winding staircase carved into the rocks. It led up to the rambling old grey-shingled house, a weathered and many-gabled structure, with a myriad of rooflines dotted with brick chimneys.

  “Imagine that,” Hawke said, looking back at the Maine cop, still bent over the cleat, tying and retying the line.

  “What?”

  “Boy grows up in Maine, yet he has no earthly idea how to toss someone a line.”

  “I noticed that,” Congreve said.

  “And?”

  “He obviously did not grow up in Maine.”

  “Ah, logic will out,” Hawke said, smiling.

  They gained the top of the steps and made their way through a thicket of fragrant spruce to open lawn. Hawke saw his old friend Patterson sprawled on the steps of a wide covered verandah. He was smoking a cigarette cupped in his hand against the fresh breeze, talking to a young blonde woman wearing the same uniform as the young salt down on the dock. The badge pinned to her blue blouse told Alex this was Chief Ainslie of the Dark Harbor PD.

  “How ’bout that, old Hawkeye himself,” Patterson said, getting to his feet and grinning at the tall Englishman. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, son.”

  Ten years earlier, Patterson had been flying a single-engine Cessna that had gone down deep in the Peruvian jungle. Shining Path guerillas had shot everyone who’d survived the crash except Patterson. Alex Hawke and Stokely Jones had finally found him, delirious and barely alive. The guerillas never knew what hit them. Hawke had somehow found a way into the impenetrable rainforest, rescued Patterson, and found a way out.

  The grateful Texan had given Alex the nickname Hawkeye, not after the famous television series character as many would later assume, but after the great Indian scout of the same name, the man immortalized as the last of the Mohicans.

  Tex Patterson was a big man, a shock of grey hair on his head, but with a youthful linebacker’s build under a perfectly tailored navy blue suit. Crisp white shirt, and dark tie knotted at the throat. The standard DSS uniform, slightly modified by the big white Stetson on his head and the shiny black Tony Lama cowboy boots on his feet. And, the small enamelled pin on his lapel.

  Under his left arm, in a custom leather holster, hung the “Peacemaker,” a long-barreled Colt .45 six-shooter, circa 1870. Never without his “shootin’ iron,” because, as Patterson was fond of reminding you, “God made man; Sam Colt made ’em equal.”

  “Hi, Tex,” Hawke said.

  “Howdy, Alex. Awful good to see you again,” Patterson said, squeezing his hand. “Can’t tell you how much I ’preciate you jumping in
on this thing, partner. ’Course, I know Conch leaned on you a bit. She’s good at that. This pretty lady right over here is Chief Ellen Ainslie. First officer on the scene. Done a helluva good job keeping a lid on this, so far.”

  Hawke smiled at the police chief. “Chief Ainslie, how do you do, I’m Alexander Hawke.”

  Alex shook hands with her and introduced both Patterson and Ainslie to Congreve. The attractive blonde chief of police shook Ambrose’s hand, sizing him up, clearly surprised to find the legendary Scotland Yard man up in this remote corner of Maine. There had been any number of surprises in Dark Harbor recently. Alex could see dark blue Suburbans parked along the road, and the house was already crawling with DSS agents.

  Patterson placed his hand on Hawke’s shoulder.

  “There are four big old rocking chairs at the other end of the verandah, overlooking the sound,” Patterson said. “Why don’t we just let my guys get on with business uninterrupted for awhile, then we’ll mosey inside. Chief Ainslie was kind enough to bring along a big thermos of hot coffee. Let’s jes’ go around to those rockers, and she’ll fill you in on what we know so far?”

  “Sounds good,” Alex said.

  Once they were settled, the local chief of police did most of the talking. Alex sat back in his rocker, listening to the chief, and admiring the pretty little cove filled with sturdy-looking lobster boats, and small gaff-rigged sloops, and catboats riding at their moorings. The fresh tang of pine and spruce and the iodine smack of salt air filled his nostrils. Most of the early morning fog had burned off, and it occurred to Alex that this beautiful spot was about as unlikely a setting for a grisly murder as one could ask for.

  No place is safe anymore. That was his thought when the pretty police chief interrupted his unsettling reverie.

  “Should I give them the long version or the short version?” Chief Ainslie asked, looking at Patterson.

  “Short,” he replied. “You’ll find these two gentlemen very adept at asking pertinent questions.” She nodded.