Patriot: An Alex Hawke Novel Read online

  “I don’t.”

  “He said, ‘I discovered something about sailing at a very early age, Ben. Something about the doing of it makes people want to keep their eyes and ears open and their goddamn mouths shut. I like that.’”

  Hawke smiled. “He hated idle chitchat, all right. Always said they called it small talk for a very good reason.”

  “Yes, sir. He said sailing all alone had been his salvation as he grew older. That’s what I think he believed anyway. I know he had a wonderful family, too. Hell, everyone on this island loved him. Look at them all.”

  “But you think he would never have stopped to take someone else aboard before he headed for open water.”

  “Not unless they were drowning.”

  “Which means the killer, if there was one, had to be hiding aboard when he left the dock.”

  “Had to be. Only way.”

  “But you would have seen someone, hiding aboard, I mean.”

  “Not really, sir. All I did below that morning was clean up the galley, plug in the espresso machine, check the fuel and water, and turn the batteries on. Didn’t check the bilges, didn’t check the sail locker forward. No reason to, really. But, still. I wish to God I had.”

  “Don’t even think of laying this off on yourself, Ben.”

  “Well. I’m just sayin’, is all.”

  “When did you last check those two places?”

  “The afternoon before. One of the bilge pumps needed rewiring and I climbed down there and did that. And I’d bought some new running rigging from Foy Brown’s. I stowed it forward in the sail locker until I could get around to it. Nothing, no sign of anyone on board.”

  “But it had to be a stowaway, Ben. If you’re right about all this.”

  “Yes, sir. It did. But where was he?”

  Hawke looked away to the horizon for a moment, thinking it through.

  “Assume this is premeditated. He’s been watching his victim for some time now. Knows all his habits, his routines.”

  “Like his weekly Sunday morning sail.”

  “Exactly. So. Saturday night, early Sunday morning. Our stowaway comes aboard in the wee hours, when everyone’s asleep. Finds the boat unlocked, so he goes below. Finds room enough to hide in the sail locker up at the bow. Sleeps up forward on top of the sails and prays no one needs a reason to open that hatch before she next left the dock.”

  “That would work.”

  “Comes up on deck after she clears the harbor. Confronts his victim. Has a gun or a knife. Words are exchanged. Sees how hard it’s blowing. Sees the opportunity for an ‘accidental’ jibe. No one is around to see. He realizes on the spot that he can make the murder look like an accident.”

  Ben nodded in the affirmative. “Maybe Cam knows him. Maybe not afraid of him. The killer stands there talking in the cockpit, making Cam relax, let his guard down. Then he suddenly frees the mainsheet and puts the helm hard over. Wham! She jibes! Cam never saw that boom coming at him.”

  “Was there brain tissue found on the boom, Ben?”

  “Yes, sir, there was. Consistent with where it would have struck a man Cam’s height standing at the helm.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Looks around. Makes sure he hasn’t been seen, I guess. Leaves Cam lying there like that. Maybe dead, maybe still alive. He uncleats the main sheet, the jib sheet, lets her drift.”

  “How does he get off the boat? Water’s freezing and it’s a long swim.”

  “Has a wet suit stowed up in the sail locker and swims ashore?” Ben said.

  “Exactly.” Hawke paused, then asked, “Are you thinking a native of North Haven? Cam have any enemies at all on this island, Ben? By that I mean serious enemies.”

  “No, sir. He did not. Had a few run-ins with plumbers and caretakers, the usual disagreements over money or the quality of work over the years. But, as I say, most everybody who knew him loved him. And nobody hated him. I would have known. Everybody knows everything around here, believe me.”

  “So some guy comes over from the mainland by boat the day before. Late Saturday night, let’s say. His own boat, maybe, or a rental, or stolen in Camden Harbor. Something to check out with your friends at the local constabulary. Sails over to North Haven from Rockport or Camden. Hides his skiff somewhere along the shore for the night. Hikes out here to Cranberry Point sometime after midnight and climbs aboard the ketch. Tucks in for the night. Main hatch leading below was not locked I’d assume.”

  “Never. There’s one other option. He takes the ferry from Rockport the afternoon before. Brings his car aboard. Or leaves it at the mainland ferry station. Either way.”

  “You’re right. We’ve established opportunity. So all we need is a motive.”

  “I suspect you’d know a lot more than me about that kind of thing, sir.”

  “I suspect I would, too, Ben. If I don’t, CIA director Brick Kelly sure does. Thank you for coming to me. It was the right thing to do. Does Cam’s wife know anything about your suspicions?”

  “No, sir, she does not. I would never have disturbed her grief with what might still be a whole lot of nothing. You are the one and only person I have discussed any of this with.”

  “I may need your help here on the island, Ben. I’ll talk to the director after the funeral.”

  “Anything at all. I loved the old guy, sir.”

  “Look, Ben, I’m flying back to Bermuda first thing tomorrow morning. But if Director Kelly and I both conclude that you’re onto something here, I’d like you stick around North Haven as long as you can. Just in case we have any follow-up questions for the sheriff or other things we’d like you to look into. When do you have to be back at New Haven?”

  “I guess I’m pretty much free now, until fall term starts I mean, sir. Since Cam had no sons who’d cared for sailing, he left me his boat. I think I’ll sail her up to the coast of Nova Scotia. He always took her up there in August and—sorry. Still pretty shook up, sir.”

  “Understandable. I’ll talk to Director Kelly tonight. If he concurs, you’re working for the CIA now, Mr. Sparhawk. Just temporarily, of course.”

  “Yes, sir!” Ben Sparhawk said with a smile. For a second, Hawke was afraid he was going to salute.

  “Don’t get too excited, Ben; you don’t get the secret decoder ring just yet.”

  CHAPTER 12

  After the service, Hawke told Brick Kelly they needed to talk. Something that couldn’t wait until next morning, when Hawke was giving the director a lift down to Washington in his plane. He’d drop him off at Andrews Air Force Base before heading back to Bermuda.

  The night of the funeral, the two old friends walked in light rain down into town from the Hooker place. They were quiet, admiring the lights just coming on in the little village of North Haven, the old boatyards, and the casino before climbing the hill to the Nebo Lodge. The inn overlooked the sailboats swinging on their moorings in the tranquil sunset harbor. Hawke saw the familiar white picket fence with the hand-carved sign on the gate, NEBO LODGE. Inside was the only restaurant on the island and it was a damn good one.

  They ate in the bar. Every face Hawke saw there that night he’d seen earlier at Hook’s funeral. None of the lobstermen or their families paid the slightest mind to the two off-islanders talking quietly at a corner table. Hawke had discreetly given the hostess a substantial gratuity to ensure no one was seated near them.

  Their drinks came and Brick solemnly raised his glass of amber whiskey, no ice.

  “To Hook,” the Virginian said. “None finer, and many a damn sight worse.”

  “We loved you, Hooker,” Hawke said simply and downed his rum.

  “We sure as hell did,” Brick said and signaled the waitress for another round.

  He looked at Hawke, glad of his company. It had been far too long since they’d been able to spend a quiet evening together in a place like this. Something they used to do all the time. Just bullshit each other and drink. Small talk would come later tonight, thoug
h; they had real business to discuss first.

  “Well? You said you had something to tell me,” Brick said. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  The tall and lanky Virginian settled back with his chair tilted toward the window, his curly red hair aflame in the sunset’s last rays, his sea-blue eyes alight. Brick had always had an old-fashioned, almost Jeffersonian air about him that Hawke found both admirable and fine in a man of his stature and accomplishment. He even looked a good deal like old Tom Jefferson, to some people, with his reddish-blond hair.

  Hawke said, “And you said you had something you wanted to tell me. You first.”

  Brick Kelly laughed.

  “All right, if that’s how you want to be. There was a message waiting for me upstairs in my room after the funeral. The deputy director at Langley. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Remember I told you one of my guys who died recently was a guy named Harding Torrance? He was the chief of station in Paris. A lifer. Old friend of the Houston oil crowd, Bush 41 appointee.”

  “I remember him, yeah. Cowboyish, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, well, let me explain what more we’ve learned.”

  “Okay.”

  “Died with his boots on, apparently. In a suite at the Hotel Bristol in Paris. He was with a woman, married, whom he’d just met in the hotel bar. Her room; she was a registered guest. You should know that this was not unusual behavior on his part. Torrance considered himself quite the swordsman. Neither here nor there, he never let it interfere with his work. He saved a lot of innocent lives in the aftermath of 9/11.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Coronary. Big-time. Massive. Happened in the sack. According to his inamorata, they were having some kind of kinky sex when the event occurred. She immediately called for the house doctor and administered CPR, but it was too late. Apparently her husband walked in while she was still nude and attempting mouth-to-mouth on the victim, but that’s only hearsay. One of my guys on the scene, you know how they are.”

  “Foul play?”

  “The gendarmes have already called it. Natural causes.”

  “No sign of succinylcholine in his bloodstream? Or that new disappearing heart attack dart?”

  “I ordered an autopsy. Nada on the drugs, so far. No denatured poisons, and no sign of a dart entry.”

  “Dart leaves a mark? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, a tiny red dot on the skin. Easy to miss. Goes away quickly though.”

  “So? Clean?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I still don’t like the timing, but yeah, I guess he just had a heart attack brought on by excessive sexual exertion. Happens all the time. I guess.”

  “You guess? You never guess. What’s wrong, Brick?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe nothing. My guys found heart meds in his pocket. This coronary was no surprise attack. Nitro pills and beta-blockers in his pocket? We checked. He’s under the care of the top cardiac specialist in Paris. He feels a heart attack coming on, he immediately tells the woman to call his doctor and to go get his damn pills, right? Like, right now?”

  “Anybody ask the woman that question about that?”

  “They will tomorrow morning. I’m having her brought in. So that’s my latest tale of woe. Let’s order some dinner and you tell me yours.”

  Hawke told Kelly everything Ben Sparhawk had said about Cam’s death while they waited for their food.

  Hawke waited a beat and said, “Can you connect any dots, Brick? Between these two guys and the other ones?”

  Brick took a bite of his steak and said, “Not yet. But I’m on it, don’t worry. I’ll call your Bermuda number end of the day tomorrow if I get any hits.”

  THE RAIN HAD STOPPED.

  After dinner, Hawke and Brick walked back up to the Hooker place, taking the main road along the harbor. It was a full moon, bright and white and big in the sky. Each man knew what the other was thinking. There was no need of talking about it.

  Finally, as they turned into the long Hooker drive, Brick stopped and looked at his friend.

  “What’s your gut telling you, Alex?” Brick said. “Right this minute.”

  “Torrance and Cam dying within a couple of months of each other is no coincidence. That you’ve got a rogue agent running around the planet systematically killing your own guys.”

  “Yeah. That’s where I come out, too.”

  “Let me find him for you, Brick.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s my problem, not yours. My agency. My people getting killed. God knows, MI6 has got enough of its own problems these days. That intel meltdown in Syria, for starters.”

  “This guy, whoever he is, killed my friend Cam, Brick. That makes him my problem, too.”

  “You’re serious. You want to take this on?”

  “I do.”

  “You even have time to do this?”

  “I’ve got another two weeks before C wants me to mysteriously appear in a Damascus souk, looking to purchase some bargain-rate sarin gas.”

  Brick looked at him and they started climbing the hill.

  “Two weeks isn’t a long time to find a seasoned operative who’s gone to ground without a trace. But, listen, Alex. Hell, I won’t stop you from looking. Nobody is better at this than you. Just tell me what you need.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. This is obviously not an MI6 operation. And C at MI6 will pitch a fit if he finds out I’ve gone freelance. So I need somebody attached to this op at Langley. Files on every possible disaffected agent who had ties to multiple victims for starters. Active and inactive. Send everything to Bermuda. I’ll get Ambrose Congreve on this with me. He’s there in Bermuda now, as luck would have it.”

  “Your very own ‘weapon of mass deduction.’ If he can’t solve this, no one can.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Brick said, never breaking his stride but taking a deep breath and staring up at the blazing moon. “I’m really going to miss Hook, that old bastard, won’t you, Alex?”

  “I sure as hell will. But I’ll feel a whole lot better when I catch the sonofabitch who bloody killed him, I can tell you that bloody much.”

  “Easy,” Brick said. “Easy there, old compadre.”

  “Who the hell, I ask you, would ever want to murder a fine old gentleman like Hook?”

  “Go find out, Alex. Whoever he is, he needs killing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ambrose will have every shred of evidence we can pull together within forty-eight hours. Give him three or four days to analyze his findings and come up with something.”

  “Sooner the better. Tell him he’s got two days.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Teakettle Cottage, Bermuda

  It didn’t take Congreve all that long to get his evidential ducks in a row.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” Pelham said, a day and a half later.

  “Not at all, Pelham.”

  “It’s Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve here to see you, sir,” Pelham said, edging farther out into the sunshine. “A matter of some urgency, apparently.”

  It was a brilliant blue Bermuda day, but towering embankments of purple cloud were stacking up out over the Atlantic. Storm front moving due east. Hawke put down the book he was reading, a wonderful novel called The Sea, by John Banville. It made him want to read every single word the man had ever written.

  “Thank you, Pelham. Won’t you show him out?”

  “Indeed, I shall, m’lord.”

  “Offer him a bit of refreshment, will you, please?”

  “But of course, my lord.”

  Pelham withdrew soundlessly back into the shadows of the house. Pelham never “moved” anywhere. The old soul seemed always to shimmer from here to somewhere.

  Hawke smiled as he watched the old fellow disappear.

  These stilted conversational formalities had not been necessary for years. But it was something Hawke and his octogenarian valet and friend Pelham Grenvil
le found so amusing they continued the charade, much in the spirit of that show on the telly, Downton Abbey. Both men found an odd comfort in their hoary Victorian manners and exchanges. It was a secret code they shared; and the fact that an outside observer would find them old-fashioned and ridiculous made their small secret all the more enjoyable.

  Moments later, Ambrose Congreve walked out onto the terrace at Teakettle Cottage with a wide smile on his face. He was wearing a three-piece white linen suit with a navy blue bow tie knotted at his neck and a floppy straw planter’s hat on his head, a vision only Tennessee Williams might have conjured up. He was even dabbing at his forehead with a white linen handkerchief as Big Daddy might have done in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  Congreve had been busy. He had spent the last two days in his home office at Shadowlands, sifting through mobile intercepts, e-mails, old dossiers, photographs, all the reams of material Brick Kelly had forwarded from Langley. And, judging by appearances this morning, the famous criminalist had come up with the goods.

  “Oh, hullo, Ambrose,” Hawke said, raising his sunglasses onto his forehead. “Pray, why are you in such a diabolically good humor this morning?”

  “Does it show?”

  “Not much. Just the feathers on your chin. You look like you’ve been sitting off somewhere in a dark corner eating canaries all morning.”

  Congreve waved the ridiculous comment away and sat down on the nearest rattan chair. He carried a lot of weight around the waterline and was always glad of a sit.

  “Alex, pay attention. This is serious. You don’t by any chance remember someone, a former CIA officer by the name of Artemis Payne, do you?”

  Hawke looked up.

  “Who did you say?”

  “Payne. Artemis Payne.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I assure you that I am not, Alex, joking.”

  Hawke scratched his chin, realizing he’d forgotten to shave. Bermuda did that to you. Turned a man brown and hairy and hungover.