Under Fire: (A Dan Taylor thriller) (10 page)

Dan slewed the car on the loose gravel of the car park and brought the vehicle to a halt. As they walked towards the small office, Mitch handed Dan a copy of the transcript from the security services which he’d read that morning.

‘They received the call six months ago. A chap here took a phone call from someone saying they were interested in the submarine – the local marine preservation society has been trying to raise funds to keep it in working order but is running out of money.’ He stopped while they looked across the small harbour, a cold wind blowing off the sea.

A motley collection of vessels rocked in the choppy water, leftovers from the Navy’s history, their hulls’ fenders bumping against the quayside. Dan spotted a small cruiser, a patrol boat and, lashed with ropes next to that, the black hulk of an Oberon-class submarine.

Dan stuffed his hands into his pockets and tried to ignore the earache developing from the wind buffeting his body. ‘What did the authorities do?’

Mitch shrugged. ‘Traced the call to a mobile phone. The SIM card was purchased in Soho.’ He began walking again. ‘The usual problem though – the number hasn’t been used since, so the SIM card was probably destroyed as soon as the call was made.’

Dan grunted. ‘Who are we meeting today?’

‘The guy who made the call to the security services. They’ve spoken to him and you’ve got a copy there of the transcript of that meeting. I figure it’s worth having a chat with the curator again though, see if he can remember anything else he might not have mentioned at the time. You know how people get nervous chatting to investigators – they clam up and panic because they think they’re in trouble.’

Dan nodded and led Mitch up the steps to the harbour office. He pushed open the rough weather-worn door and stepped into a surprisingly modern reception area. A polished reception desk blocked their path through to the museum, a sign proclaiming only visitors with the appropriate tickets would be granted admission through the turnstile and into the bowels of the exhibits.

The reception desk was unmanned, the piped voice of a documentary filtering through from the museum while the sounds of explosions and excited children’s voices filled the air.

While Mitch walked up to the desk and rang a small brass bell, Dan took advantage of the wait and began to pace around the room, examining the various maritime memorabilia in tall glass display cases.

The sound of footsteps approaching along wooden floorboards caught his attention, in time to see a man walking towards them. Dan tucked the transcript into his jacket pocket and wandered back to the reception desk.

The man finished wiping his oil-covered hands on a dirty rag, then held out his hand to Dan.

‘You must be the men from the Government,’ he said, smiling as he shook hands with Mitch. ‘I’m Doug Hastings, the curator of the museum. Come through here – I’ve got an office where we can talk in private.’

He turned and led the way to a small room leading off the reception area, pushed some paperwork to one side of the desk which took up most of the room and threw the oily rag onto it, then gestured to Dan and Mitch to sit in the two chairs opposite him.

‘Right gentlemen, how can I help? You said on the phone it was about the report I made to the police last year?’

‘That’s right,’ said Dan, leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbows on his knees. ‘I’ll apologise up front if we’re repeating any of the questions you’ve already answered, but that’s just the way with these things. Often there are different angles we need to explore and we can’t afford to miss anything.’

Hastings nodded. ‘That’s okay, I understand. I’m just glad it’s being taken seriously. There’s always the worry that reporting something like this is wasting your time.’

Dan shook his head and smiled. ‘It’s never a waste of time. Why don’t you tell us what happened?’

The curator leaned back in his chair. ‘Back in September, the museum’s Trust decided we had to do something to raise more funding.’ He gestured around him. ‘As you can see, we’d spent quite a bit of money on a refurbishment project which depleted the coffers, even with some help from some of the big national historical charities. It was a hard decision as it was something we’d kept on the backburner as one of our next projects, but we decided to sell our Oberon class submarine,
Oscar
. She’s been in our wet dock for the last ten years and is getting the worse for wear – if we weren’t going to get to her in the next two years, it’d be too late to do anything to stop the corrosion – so it was better to sell her on to another museum or private collector.’

‘Private collector?’ asked Mitch. ‘People actually buy those things for themselves?’

Hastings nodded smiling. ‘Think of it as big boys’ toys,’ he said. ‘I know of one bloke who had a Sherman tank sitting in his back garden until the missus gave him an ultimatum.’

‘How many enquiries did you have?’ asked Dan, steering the conversation back on track.

‘Nothing the first month – we took out some paid advertising in the usual trade press but with the economy being as it is, we received very little interest,’ explained the curator. ‘Then one of our younger volunteers suggested advertising it for sale online. Of course, we laughed at first, then realised he had a valid point – we’d reach a much bigger international market, and it helped drum up local interest too, you know – newspaper publicity, some of the collectors’ magazines…’

‘How long after offering the submarine for sale online did you get the call?’

‘About three days. I got a message through the website first, two days after placing the advert, saying there was an interested buyer who wanted to ask some more questions and that it was probably easier to do so over the phone rather than emailing. It made sense to me so I sent a message back with our number here. I got the call the next morning just after we opened.’

‘Do you still have a copy of the message?’ asked Dan.

‘I expect it’s still in the online account,’ said Hastings. ‘I’ll log on and print out a copy for you.’

‘Thanks. And the number the buyer called –was that the main museum number?’

‘No – my private office number. We didn’t want our reception area having to deal with the calls on top of everything else they do on a daily basis.’

‘I’ll need a note of that number too, please,’ said Dan. ‘Would you mind signing some paperwork to enable us to do a search on that number so we can try to trace the caller?’

‘Not at all.’

Dan pulled out a document from inside his jacket, wrote in the gaps and passed it across the desk to Hastings who quickly read it, signed it and passed it back.

‘Thanks,’ said Dan. ‘Now, what did the caller say that made you report it as suspicious?’

Hastings paused for a moment. ‘It started out innocently enough. He asked how old the submarine was, what condition it was in, how long we’d had it and what I’d suggest would need to be done to it. I explained what our plans were to preserve it and that we’d acquired it after it had been decommissioned.’

‘At what point did you become suspicious?’

A thin smile played across the curator’s lips. ‘When the caller asked how much fuel it carried, what was left after it was decommissioned, and what it’s range was. He seemed very disappointed when I told him it wasn’t seaworthy and hung up pretty quickly.’

‘Okay,’ said Dan, ‘that’s great. Let’s go back a few steps. What did the caller sound like? Did he have an accent, or something to make his voice recognisable if you heard it again?’

‘He wasn’t born here, that’s for sure. His accent sounded foreign. Kind of gruff, as if he was a smoker.’

‘Age?’

‘Hard to tell with that voice. Perhaps late forties, early fifties?’

 
‘Were there any specific words he had particular trouble with? Did he have a lisp, or roll his r’s?’

Hastings shook his head. ‘Not that I can remember, no.’

‘What about background noise? Did you notice anything that might indicate where he was calling from?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ Dan sat back in his chair, thinking, and stared at the surface of the desk. ‘I think that’s covered everything we need at the moment, Doug. Perhaps you could log into your account and print out that email for me before we leave?’

‘Sure. No problem.’ Hastings turned in his chair, pulled a keyboard towards him and logged into his computer. Minutes later, the printer next to it began whirring and spat out a single page, which the curator handed over the desk.

‘There you go.’

Dan flicked the page round to face him and looked. It was a generic email account, but one which the analysts would be able to hack into in no time. He smiled, stood up, and extended his hand to Hastings.

‘Thank you for your time,’ he said, giving the other man a card. ‘That’s got our contact details on. If you think of anything else, perhaps you’d give us a call straight away.’

‘Of course.’

‘What eventually happened to the submarine?’ asked Mitch as they were led out of the office and back through to the reception area.

Hastings smiled. ‘One of the local millionaires decided to step in and help us. Turns out his father built Oberon class boats in Greenock and he couldn’t bear the thought of one being sold for scrap or an overseas museum getting it. We’ll wait until better weather in May before making a start. Give us a year or so, you can come back and see her.’

‘We may well do that,’ grinned Dan.

Malta

Hassan glanced up from his work as a knock on his office door interrupted his thoughts.

Mustapha entered, his breath laboured as if he’d been running.

‘Yes?’ Hassan frowned.

‘With respect sir, you need to come now,’ said the bodyguard, his eyes lowered to the ground. ‘There’s a problem.’

Hassan pushed back his chair, stood, and reached for the jacket he’d slung over the back. Shrugging it over his shoulders, he began to follow Mustapha out of the room and down a naturally lit hallway through the villa. ‘What is it?’

As they stepped outside, the bodyguard stopped and turned to Hassan.

‘Mutiny, sir.’

Hassan managed to disguise his shocked intake of breath by clearing his throat. He gestured to Mustapha to lead the way, and the two men walked through the long grass and scrubby plants, across the property towards the cliffs. Hassan could hear the crash of the waves below, in between laboured breaths as he kept up with the long gait of his bodyguard.

As they crossed the wasted grass, six figures could be seen standing a little way from the cliff’s edge. One man, of average height and slight build reminiscent of undernourishment as a child, stood slightly apart from the others, his arms folded across his chest, his shoulders sagging and his gaze solemnly contemplating his feet.

Hassan stopped a few metres from the group and let Mustapha continue while he quietly caught his breath and took stock of the situation. It didn’t look promising. He strode over to Ivanov who stood facing the lone man, his fists clenched by his side, jaw set, glaring at the other man.

Hassan stood next the submarine captain. ‘Explain,’ he said quietly.

Ivanov breathed out, which seemed to expel some of the man’s tension. ‘He has changed his mind,’ he replied softly.

‘A little late.’

‘Indeed.’

‘The money?’

‘Sent to his mother. Gone.’

‘I see.’ Hassan rubbed his chin and began to pace around the small group. A whiff of a nervous fart emanated from one of the men and Hassan wrinkled his nose in disgust, turning into the sea breeze to clear his nostrils.

‘Ivanov, I was
clear
in my instructions for this crew, was I not?’

‘You were, sir.’

Hassan nodded. ‘I thought so.’ He reached the man then looked away, out to sea. The mixed blues of the sky and water sparkled in the early morning sun. He turned and walked back to Ivanov. ‘Where did you find him?’

‘At the quayside at Valletta, trying to bribe someone to take him to Sicily.’

Hassan shook his head and fingered his moustache. ‘You know,’ he said, waggling his finger at Ivanov. ‘I really cannot abide betrayal.’ In two strides, he was in front of the would-be deserter, glaring at the young man. ‘I take it personally.’

He stepped back and frowned as the man pissed himself, the liquid turning to a faint steam in the cool morning air. The other four crew members shuffled their feet awkwardly, and avoided meeting Hassan’s gaze.

Hassan glanced over his shoulder at Ivanov. ‘Can you do it with one less?’

The man in front of him whimpered.

‘We’ll give it our best shot.’

Hassan nodded. ‘Good enough.’ He turned to the remaining four crew members. ‘When the Romans ruled this part of the world, they found a
very
effective way of dealing with failure, desertion and mutiny,’ he said, beginning to pace around the group once more. ‘They called it
decimation
. One hundred men under a centurion. One in every ten of those one hundred men beaten to death by nine of their colleagues. A very effective lesson I feel, even if we are a little short on resources.’

He turned back to the young man who was visibly shaking as he looked up from under a fringe of hair at Hassan, nervously licking his lips. Mustapha placed a hand on his shoulder, preventing him from running.

‘Kill him,’ said Hassan. ‘Or die.’

The man let out a cry as his crew mates descended on him, their fists pummelling his kidneys, face and stomach. An audible crunch preceded an ear-splitting scream as the man’s arm was stomped under a boot, before Ivanov pulled his men off the young man and hauled him to his feet. In one swift motion, the captain dragged the man to the edge of the cliff.

Hassan followed, making sure he kept well clear of the man’s flailing limbs.

As they reached the edge, Ivanov looked over his shoulder at Hassan, an eyebrow raised.

Hassan nodded, his eyes gleaming.

‘This is your own doing,’ Ivanov snarled, then loosened his grip.

The man screamed as he was launched over the edge of the cliff, the sound echoing in the cry of the gulls wheeling overhead.

Hassan walked carefully to the cliff’s edge, and watched the body spiral through the air before it bounced off the jagged rocks below, into the churning water.

The man’s face and an arm appeared briefly as he thrashed in the angry surf, then a moment later he disappeared under the waves.

Hassan turned carefully and walked back to the four remaining crew members. Blood covered their knuckles and had splashed across their clothes, while their faces remained ashen with shock, their eyes wide.

Hassan waited until Ivanov and Mustapha had joined him and noted with relish the look of shock on their faces.

‘There will be no more desertion, no more talk of mutiny,’ said Hassan, his words barely audible over the waves crashing below. ‘You were employed to do a job. Now get on with it,’ he growled, and walked back towards the villa, pulling his jacket tighter around him against the cold morning breeze.