Those in Peril (Unlocked) (9 page)

He shook her arm roughly. ‘No more of that nonsense now!’ He led her to the far end of the salon and forced her to sit. Then he beckoned one of the masked men to come to him. Cayla looked up in astonishment when he spoke to the man in Arabic.

‘I do not want any harm to come to this woman. She is more valuable than your own miserable life. Do you understand what I am saying to you?’

‘I understand, Lord.’ The man touched his own breast in a gesture of respect.

‘Why are you speaking in that language, Rogier? Who are you? Who are these people? Where is Captain Franklin? I want to speak to him,’ Cayla pleaded.

‘That will be difficult to arrange. The captain has two bullets in his brain.’ He tapped the pistol at his side. ‘That is enough questions from you. You just wait there quietly. I will return later. I think you are beginning to learn that I must have your complete obedience.’

W
hen Rogier entered the bridge he found his uncle had the helm. Kamal was a skilled seaman who had spent his life on the oceans on everything from tiny dhows to giant oil tankers. Rogier glanced at the compass heading and saw that the
Dolphin
was on the reciprocal course to the one that Franklin had set. They were heading back the way they had come. He went to the wing of the bridge and looked back. The three attack boats were being towed along in their wake, which explained the reduced speed. Kamal was being careful not to swamp them with the
Dolphin
’s wake. Rogier went to stand beside his uncle.

‘Have you made contact with the dhow yet?’

Kamal slitted his eyes against the smoke from the hand-rolled Turkish tobacco cigarette between his lips as it spiralled upwards.

‘Not yet, but soon!’ he said.

‘The girl managed to send a message to her mother. The entire American navy and airforce will be searching for us as soon as it is light. The girl’s mother is very powerful.’

‘Everything will be taken care of before sunrise,’ Kamal assured him, and then he smiled and pointed over the bows. On the horizon dead ahead a red distress flare burst suddenly into flame, its ruddy reflection dancing along the crests of the swells. ‘There she is,’ he said with satisfaction.

The two ships came together swiftly, and when they were only a few hundred metres apart Kamal throttled back and laid the
Dolphin
across the wind and the sea, forming a breakwater for the dhow. The ancient vessel came alongside in the
Dolphin
’s lee and mooring ropes were thrown down to the men on the deck. Once she was moored securely the prisoners were transferred into her, and hustled down into the forward hold. Only Cayla was dragged struggling and weeping to Kamal’s quarters in the dhow’s deckhouse and locked in with a guard at the door.

Working swiftly a party of Arab seamen knocked open the hatch on the dhow’s stern hold. From the hold they winched up to the
Dolphin
’s deck five cargo pallets. Once they were on board the yacht the heavy canvas covers were pulled back to reveal a stack of a dozen large packages on each pallet. These were wrapped in bright yellow plastic sheeting and painted with black Chinese characters. It took three men to manhandle each crate below decks. The handlers worked gingerly, treating them with elaborate respect. The contents of each crate were thirty kilograms of Semtex H plastic explosive.

‘Hurry it up there!’ Rogier bellowed at them. ‘The detonators have not been primed. It’s quite safe to handle.’ He and Kamal followed the working party below deck, down to the
Dolphin
’s bilges, and supervised the yellow crates being packed along the length of the keel under the engine room. Rogier left Kamal to set the charges and arm the delay device, and went up to the purser’s office. Georgie Porgie was sitting on the deck with the guard standing over him.

‘Untie him!’ Rogier ordered the guard, who obediently forced the point of the bayonet on his rifle between Georgie’s wrists and cut away the nylon cable tie. The blade nicked his chubby arm.

‘The brute has cut me,’ Georgie whimpered. ‘Look! I am bleeding!’

‘Open the safe!’ Rogier ignored his complaints, and Georgie Porgie began to protest more vehemently. Rogier drew the pistol from its holster, and shot him in the leg. The bullet shattered his knee cap. The purser squealed shrilly. ‘Open the safe,’ Rogier repeated, and pointed the Tokarev at his other leg.

‘Don’t shoot me again,’ Georgie whined and dragged himself to the steel safe set into the bulkhead behind the desk. His wounded leg dragged behind him, leaving a trail of wet blood across the planking. Moaning with the pain, Georgie fiddled with the combination lock, spinning the dial back and forth. There was a click and he turned the locking handle. The safe door swung open.

‘Thank you!’ said Rogier and shot him in the head. Georgie Porgie was knocked forward onto his face and his good leg drummed spasmodically on the deck. At Rogier’s nod the guard grabbed the leg before it stopped kicking and dragged Georgie Porgie’s corpse aside. Rogier knelt in front of the open safe and sifted swiftly through the contents.

He discarded the ship’s working documents, amongst them her bills of lading and Grand Cayman registration certificate. But he selected the thick wad of the crew’s passports. His grandfather would have good use for the genuine green US and maroon EU booklets. Under the desk there was a canvas briefcase which he had noted every time he had previously been in the purser’s office. Rogier stuffed the passports into this. There were also about fifty thousand US dollars in bills of various denominations; without counting them he placed them with the passports. On the steel shelf below the cash were five blue jewellery boxes. The lid of the first one he picked up was lettered in gold: ‘Graff. London’. He snapped open the lid. The diamonds that made up the heavy necklace nestling on the white satin lining were as big as quail’s eggs and bright as sunlight on a mountain stream. Rogier knew they had once belonged to the American heiress to the Wool-worths fortune. These were what had really interested him.

‘Thank you, Mrs Hazel Bannock,’ he said with a smile. ‘However, I doubt that the Flowers of Islam will see fit to send you a formal receipt.’ He knew what the other jewellery boxes contained, so he did not waste time opening them but dropped them all into the briefcase. He nodded to the Arab guard and they went up the companionway to the main deck at a run. His uncle Kamal was waiting for him by the rail. Rogier handed him the briefcase. ‘Take good care of this, my honoured uncle.’

‘Where are you going?’ Kamal demanded as he turned back to the companionway.

‘There is one more thing I have to do before we leave.’

‘You have very little time. The delay on the fuses has only an hour and forty-five minutes to run,’ Kamal warned him.

‘Time enough,’ Rogier replied. He leaned over the rail and whistled shrilly. Three of his men whom he had delegated to the duty looked up at him. Each of them carried a specially constructed packing case which Rogier had asked his grandfather to send to him. He beckoned to the men and they came up the side of the
Dolphin
with the cases. Rogier led them down to Cayla’s deserted suite. He moved quickly into the main cabin and stood in front of the large Gauguin oil painting. As always he found the bright colours pleasing but the depiction of a naked female body offended his pious sensibilities. Nonetheless he lifted the painting down from its hooks and laid it face down on the bed. He had brought a folding knife with him expressly for this purpose and he used the blade to lever loose the ornate gold-leaf frame. He discarded the frame and left the painting lying face upwards on the bed. He hurried through into the owner’s private dining room, took Monet’s water lilies painting down from the facing bulkhead, and laid it on the dining table to remove the frame. As he worked he mulled over the fact that the previous year a similar picture had sold at auction for £98.5 million sterling. Then he went to Van Gogh’s
The River at Arles
that hung on the side bulkhead. He took it down and then laid it beside the Monet. He prised off the frame, and wasted a few moments admiring these two marvellous works. His grandfather was no connoisseur of the arts, but when Rogier told him the value of these three pieces he would be flabbergasted and delighted by this unexpected addition to his war chest. All this time the men with the packing cases had been watching him with expressions of complete mystification.

Each packing case had been made to the exact size of a particular painting. Rogier had downloaded the dimensions from an arts catalogue on the internet. He packed the Gauguin into its case, and with relief found that his grandfather’s carpenters had done a good job, for it fitted precisely. The other two paintings were equally snug in their own containers. He closed all three and ordered his men to take them up to the main deck. By the time Rogier got back up there Kamal was acutely agitated.

‘What took you so long, Adam? The timer on the detonator cannot be cancelled or reset. We must hurry!’ They swung down into the dhow and as Kamal gave the order to cast off, Rogier supervised the stowage of the three cases in the forward hold. Kamal put the dhow on an easterly heading and bore away at her best speed. Rogier stood with his uncle beside the massive wooden tiller and stared back over the stern.

‘It is a great pity that we could not have taken the vessel as well as the girl. Its value is enormous,’ Rogier mused.

‘What is the value of fifty years in an American prison?’ Kamal asked. ‘That’s all the payment you would get if you were stupid enough to try to keep it.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘Another seven minutes,’ he said. When it came it was a single tremendous blast, the night sky lit as though by the sunrise. Seconds later the shock wave from the explosion swept over the dhow, flapping the canvas of her sail and pressing in against Rogier’s eardrums for a painful instant. Then the glow faded away and the darkness descended once again.

‘Let the infidel try to find her now,’ Kamal said with satisfaction.

‘How many days’ sailing to Ras el Mandeb?’ Rogier asked. ‘Six, is it?’

‘Longer,’ said Kamal. ‘We cannot set a direct course. We must get well inshore of the Kenyan coast, and merge with the other small shipping.’

D
eep snow on the Farnborough runway in England had delayed her for thirty-six hours, so it had taken Hazel almost four days to return from Abu Zara to the States, but even then she had not headed for her principal home in Houston. She had come directly to Washington DC.

Henry Bannock had always maintained a large, old-fashioned apartment on East Capitol Street overlooking Lincoln Park. It was not the most salubrious section of the city but Henry had liked to be close to the seat of power whenever the Senate was in session. For the same reason Hazel had kept the apartment after his death, but she had renovated it entirely. It was an ideal position from which she could launch an assault on the Administration. Ever since her arrival she had bullied and pestered Senator Reynolds from Texas and the staff at the White House. She had already been granted a short meeting with the President, who had promised her that he would take a personal interest in the search for the
Dolphin
and her daughter. Bannock Oil had been a major contributor to his campaign funds. Despite her left-wing leanings Hazel always believed in two-way bets, so she made large contributions to both Republicans and Democrats for just such an eventuality, and now Hazel was calling in all her markers.

An Airforce Colonel Peter Roberts from the Presidential staff was unofficially assigned to be her liaison officer during the crisis, and even Hazel had to admit that he had performed sterling service in difficult circumstances.