The Scorpio Illusion Read online

  “The padrone has had a good day, signora,” the man said in heavily accented English, shouting to be heard over the sound of the propellers. “Seeing you again is better than all the treatments in Miami. He sang opera while I bathed him.”

  “Can you manage things here?” asked the Baj quickly. “I have to go to him right away.”

  “What is there to manage, signora? I push the wing away and our amico silenzioso does the rest.”

  “Va bene!” Amaya raced up the stone steps, catching her breath as she reached the top. It was better not to show anxiety. The padrone dismissed anyone who displayed signs of losing control, which she had not, but the fact that her presence was known in the intelligence circles that covered the islands was a shock. She could accept the padrone’s knowing, for he had debts owed to him throughout the world of the Baaka Valley, but for a hunt to have been mounted that reached the point of recruiting the retired Hawthorne was not acceptable. Breathing deeply, Bajaratt walked up the flagstone path and yanked down the bronze handle of the door. She pushed it open, holding her place in the frame, only to see the frail figure in the wheelchair waving childishly at her from halfway across the huge stone foyer.

  “Ciao, Annie!” said the padrone, smiling weakly, and with what minor enthusiasm he could muster. “Did you have a fine day, my only daughter?”

  “I never got to the bank,” replied Bajaratt curtly, walking inside.

  “That’s regrettable. Why not? Adore you as I do, my child, I will not permit any funds to be transferred to you from my accounts. It’s far too dangerous, and my familiars in the Mediterranean can well afford to send you anything you need.”

  “I’m not concerned with the money,” said Amaya. “I can return tomorrow and get it, but what does concern me is that the Americans, the British, and the French know I’m in the islands!”

  “But of course they do, Annie! I knew you were coming; where do you think I learned that?”

  “I assumed through the Baaka financial establishment.”

  “Did I not mention the Deuxième, MI-6, even the Americans?”

  “Forgive me, padrone, but the brilliant film star in you often leads to exaggeration.”

  “Molto bene!” laughed the invalid, rasping with constricted vocal cords. “Yet not entirely true. I have Americans on a distant payroll; they informed me that there was an alert out for you down here. But what area, what island? Impossibile! No one knows what you look like, and you are a master—perhaps I should say a mistress—of different appearances. Where is the danger?”

  “Do you remember a man named Hawthorne?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course. A discredited officer of U.S. intelligence, navy, I believe, once married to a Soviet double agent. You found out who he was and engineered a meeting, then enjoyed him for a number of months while you were recovering from your wounds. You thought you might learn something from his expertise.”

  “What I learned was of little value, but he’s now back in business, hunting for Bajaratt. I ran into him this afternoon, I was with him this afternoon.”

  “How extraordinary, my daughter,” said the padrone, his watery blue eyes studying Bajaratt’s face. “And how fortunate for you. You were a very happy woman during those months, as I recall.”

  “One takes minor pleasures where one can find them, my father. He was merely an unknowing instrument of instruction should there be anything I might use.”

  “An instrument that produced music in you, perhaps?”

  “Rubbish!”

  “You sang and pranced about like the child you never were.”

  “Your cinematic memories warp your observations. My wounds were simply healing, that’s all.… He’s here, don’t you understand? He’ll go to Saba and look for me there!”

  “Oh, yes, I recall. An imaginary old French uncle, wasn’t it?”

  “He must be killed, padrone!”

  “Why didn’t you kill him this afternoon?”

  “There was no opportunity. I was seen with him, I’d have been caught.”

  “Even more extraordinary,” said the old Italian quietly. “The Baj of high regard always created her own opportunities.”

  “Stop it, my only father! Kill him!”

  “Very well, my daughter. The heart is not always resolute.… Saba, you say? It’s less than an hour in our cigarette boat.” The padrone raised his head. “Scozzi!” he cried, summoning one of his attendants.

  Speed was everything, for memories were short in the islands, almost always intentionally. Saba was not a usual charter stop, but Hawthorne knew it from the few times he had sailed there. Everyone on the docks in the immediate islands of Saint T. and Tortola accommodated the charter captains. It paid to do so, and Tyrell counted on that native trait.

  He hired a seaplane out of Barts and flew into the island’s modest harbor; he wanted all the cooperation he could engender. He appeared to get it, yet nothing made sense.

  No one in the marina knew an old man with a French maid. Nor had anyone seen a woman fitting the description of Dominique. How could they not know her, a tall, striking white woman who came so often to visit her uncle? It was strange; the dock boys generally knew everything that took place in the small out islands, especially on the waterfronts. Boats came in with supplies, and supplies had to be delivered, and deliveries were paid for; it was the custom of the trade to know all the roads that led to every house on such a place as Saba. On the other hand, as he and Dominique had agreed, her uncle was the “recluse of recluses,” and there was an airstrip as well as a few unpretentious stores whose fare could be augmented by provisions flown in by air. Perhaps it was enough for a frail old man and his maid.

  Tyrell walked in the blistering heat to the island’s shanty post office, only to be told by an arrogant postal clerk that “you make no sense, mon! No box for such a person or a woman who talk like a French mama.”

  That information was stranger than what he had heard at the marina. Dominique had explained years earlier that her uncle had a “rather decent” pension from his firm; the payments were sent to him every month. Again, there was the airstrip, which could provide another explanation. Mail was erratic in the minor islands; perhaps Paris sent their retired attorney his stipend by air from Martinique. It was certainly both safer and more efficient.

  Tyrell learned quickly from the postal clerk where he could hire a motorbike, Saba’s favored means of transport. It was simple; the man had several in the back for rent. All he had to do was leave a large deposit along with his driver’s license and sign a paper stating he was responsible for all repairs, to be deducted from his deposit.

  Hawthorne spent nearly three hours bouncing over the roads and through the hills, going from house to cottage to shack, invariably met by sullen residents wearing holstered firearms and protected by snarling island dogs. The exception was his last stop, a retired Anglican priest with a swollen nose and a blotched, red-veined face, his affliction obvious. Rum was immediately offered along with the opportunity to freshen up and remove the dust from his clothes and body. Both were gently declined due to the visitor’s haste, and as Tyrell questioned the disheveled elderly prelate, his anxiety was apparent.

  “I’m truly sorry to say there are no such persons on this island, young man.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” the priest had replied dreamily, yet not without subtle amusement. “Knowing my weaknesses, there are times of clarity when I feel the need to do God’s work as I used to do. Like the wandering Peter, I go from place to place, bearing the Word of God the Father. I realize that I am quite rightfully treated like an old fool, but for a while I feel somewhat cleansed, and I can assure you my wits are about me. Over the past two years since I’ve been here, I’ve visited every residence—rich and poor, black and white—once, twice, three times.… There’s no one on Saba such as you’ve described. Are you sure you won’t have a rum? It’s all I can offer, all I can afford, but I grow limes and mangoes; the
ir mingled juices go well with the Cruzan.”

  “No, thank you, Father. I’m in a hurry.”

  “I don’t think you want to thank me at all. It’s in your very strained voice.”

  “Sorry. I’m just confused.”

  “Who isn’t, young man?”

  Hawthorne returned the motorbike to the post office, received his license and one half of his deposit without arguing, and walked back down the road to the marina and his chartered seaplane.

  It was not there.

  He hastened his pace, finally breaking into a run. He had to get back to Gorda … where the hell was the plane! It had been secured to the pier; the pilot and the dock boys had assured him that it would remain in place until he returned.

  Then he saw the signs, hastily painted and nailed to posts, several spelled correctly, most not. DANGER. PYLON REPAIRS IN PROGRESS. BOATERS STAY WAY TILL DAMAGE FIXED.

  For God’s sake, it was nearly six o’clock in the evening, the waters darkening, the visibility underneath as opaque as night because of the lengthening shadows of the Caribbean sun. No one repaired pylons under those conditions; a pier could collapse, burying a scuba metal-man under its weight without the light filtering down from above to warn him. Tyrell ran through the demarcation line to the single machine shop far to the right of the extended dock, its conveyor rail and heavy winches leading down to the water. There was no one inside. It was crazy! Men working underwater at this hour without backups, without oxygen and medical equipment in case of an accident? He raced out of the shop and down to the beach that led to the steps of the pier, aware that a cloud cover blurred the rays of the setting sun. How could anyone work this way? He had repaired hulls under similar conditions, but only with backups and lines held by those above, prepared to yank him up in an emergency. He climbed the steps and cautiously walked out on the pier. The clouds intercepted the sun, darker clouds now, rain clouds.

  His first instinct was to raise the metal-men, and with the authority of the military officer he had been, to yell at everyone and tell them how stupid they were, then dismiss them for the night.

  His authority diminished with each step he took; there were no lines, no bubbles in the darkened water. There was no one on the pier or beneath it. The marina was deserted.

  Suddenly, the dock’s floodlights atop aluminum poles switched on, the beams blinding. Then an ice-cold slice in his left shoulder was accompanied by a loud gunshot; he gripped the wound and plunged over the pier into the water, hearing a staccato volley of gunfire as he dove beneath the surface. For reasons he could never explain, he let his panic guide him. He swam underwater as long as his breath would permit to the nearest yacht he could recall. He surfaced twice, only his face, to inflate his lungs, and proceeded until he felt the hard wood of a boat’s hull. He surfaced again in its deepest water line, breathed again, and swam under to the other side. He raised himself on the gunwale and looked over at the pier, now half in blurred, streaked sunlight, half under the glare of floodlights. His two would-be killers were crouching at the end of the dock, peering into the water.

  “Suo sangue!” yelled one.

  “Non basta!” roared the other, leaping into a motor-driven skiff and starting the engine, instructing his associate to release the line and jump in, his lupo at the ready. They crisscrossed the small harbor, an AK-47 and the shotgun of the wolf in their hands.

  Hawthorne slithered over the gunwale of the yacht he had reached and found what he expected to find in nylon straps near the fishing tender—a simple scaling knife. He slipped back over the side and into the water; his shoes having disappeared, he removed his trousers, trying to remember where they sank, should he survive. He then wriggled his tan guayabera jacket loose, oddly thinking that Geoffrey Cooke would have to pay for his money, his papers, and his lost apparel. He swam into the darker waters, again suddenly aware that the driver of the small boat held a powerful flashlight which he kept roving over the sundown waters. Tyrell dove deep in the path of the skiff until he heard the motor above him.

  Timing his moves, Hawthorne lunged to the surface directly behind the skiff and grabbed the pivoting metal casing of the engine, his head to the side, his hand in shadows, preventing the rudder from turning. Furious, and confused by the fact that the motor did not respond to his commands, the skipper leaned over the stern less than a foot above the wake. His eyes bulged at the sight of Tyrell’s hand as if it were some monstrous tentacle from the deep. Before he could scream, Hawthorne plunged the blade of the scaling knife into the killer’s neck, Tye’s left hand surging up, gripping his would-be assassin’s throat so that no sound emerged that carried above the engine. He yanked the corpse over the stern into the water, and carefully moving the propeller to far starboard, climbed into the killer’s seat as the man in front obsessively moved his flashlight back and forth, scouring the watery path ahead. Hawthorne grabbed the AK-47 and spoke clearly.

  “The waves splash a lot at this hour and the motor’s pretty loud. I suggest you put down your weapon or join your friend. You, too, would make a nice tenderloin for our sharks. They’re really benevolent creatures; they prefer what’s already dead.”

  “Che còsa? Impossibile!”

  “That’s what we’re going to talk about,” said Tyrell, heading out to sea.

  5

  Darkness descended; the water was calm, the moon barely visible through the cloud cover as the small skiff bobbed up and down with the rhythm of the gentle ocean swells. The remaining killer sat nervously on the tiny seat at the bow, blinking his eyes and pulling up his hands under the glare of the powerful flashlight.

  “Put your hands down,” ordered Hawthorne.

  “The light is blinding me. Take it away!”

  “Actually, that could be a blessing, blindness, I mean, if you force me only to wound you before shoving you over the side.”

  “Che còsa?”

  “We all have to die. Sometimes I think it’s the quality of death, not the event that counts.”

  “What are you saying, signore …?”

  “You’re going to tell me what I want to know or you’re shark meat. If you’re blind, you won’t see the great white’s row of pointed teeth before it chops you in half. The big fish are luminous, you know, seen clearly in dark water. Look! Over there, the dorsal fin! He must be an eighteen-footer; this is the season, you realize that, don’t you? Why do you think there are shark-fishing contests throughout the islands at this time of year?”

  “I know nothing of such things!”

  “Then you don’t get the local papers, but then, why should you? They don’t carry much news from Sicily.”

  “Somehow you don’t strike me as a papal nuncio; they probably shoot better.… Come on, paisan, get in the real world—or get in the water with blood oozing out of your shoulder, as some is coming out of mine, and play games with our circling big fish whose jaws are larger than a third of its body.”

  The capo’s head spun from side to side, his blinking eyes wide, his hands again trying to shield the light as he studied the water on both sides of the small boat. “I cannot see!”

  “He’s right behind you. Turn around and you’ll spot it.”

  “In the name of Christ, do not do this!”

  “Why did you try to kill me?”

  “Orders!”

  “From whom?” The assassin did not answer. “It’s your death, not mine,” said Tyrell, cocking the AK-47. “I’ll chop off your left shoulder; the blood will spread quicker that way, like bleeding chum. Of course, the great whites like to nibble—hors d’oeuvres before the main meal.” Hawthorne squeezed the trigger, the explosions filling the night as he sprayed the water to the right of the Mafia capo.

  “Stop!.… Stop in the holy name of Jesus!”

  “Wow, you guys get religion quickly.” Hawthorne fired again, the volley ear-shattering, several bullets grazing the left shoulder of the mafioso.

  “Per piacere! Please, I beg you!”

  “My dors
al-finned friend down there is hungry. Why should I deny him?”

  “You … you have heard of a valley …?” the killer choked, searching for words, obviously, in panic, recalling other words he had heard before. “From far away, across the sea!”

  “I’ve heard of the Baaka Valley,” said Tyrell in a monotone. “It’s across the Mediterranean. So?”

  “That’s where the orders come from, signore.”

  “Who’s the relay? Who gave you those orders?”

  “They come from Miami, what else can I tell you? I don’t know the capi!”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know, signore.”

  “Bajaratt!” roared Hawthorne, seeing what he wanted to see in the capo’s wide eyes. “It is Bajaratt, isn’t it?”

  “Sì, sì, I have heard the name. Nothing more.”

  “From the Baaka?”

  “Please, signore! I am merely a soldato, what do you want from me?”

  “How did you find me? Did you follow a woman named Dominique Montaigne?”

  “Non capisco, I do not know that name.”

  “Liar!” Again Tyrell fired the AK-47, but no longer penetrating the capo’s shoulder, experience dictating his strategy with a terrified underling.

  “I swear!” screamed the capo subordinate. “Others, also, have been looking for you.”

  “Because they know I’m looking for this Bajaratt.”

  “Whatever leads to you leads to you, signore.”

  “Apparently it does,” said Tye, turning the boat around.

  “I will not be killed …?” The would-be assassin closed his eyes in prayer as Hawthorne swung the beam of the powerful flashlight away from his face. “I will not be fed to the sharks?”

  “Can you swim?” asked Tye, ignoring the question.

  “Naturalmente,” answered the capo, “but not in these waters, especially as I am bleeding.”

  “How good a swimmer are you?”

  “I am a Siciliano from Messina. As a boy I dove for coins thrown by the tourists from the ships.”