Constantine Legacy (Jake Dillon Adventure Series) (9 page)

I made a call to Detective Inspector Daniel Jacobs,
who was part of the Special Branch team investigating
Robert Flackyard. Although not forthcoming initially,
after being suitably reminded about a certain incident
during our time at university together, he relented and
give me what I wanted.

“So you see, Jake, Fiona Price is part of a team
investigating Robert Flackyard and Harry Caplin. When
we heard that your assignment was taking you to Dorset,
it was too good an opportunity to miss. But it was deemed
necessary at the outset to let you think that she was sent
to simply help you, sorry about that. Your Mr LevensonJones knew, of course.”

“Of course,” I replied. “Forgive me, Daniel for
being just a tad miffed about not knowing. It would
have made my job a lot easier if someone had told me
at the start of this assignment, but thank you for being
honest with me now.” I hung up and walked back down
in the pouring rain to the boathouse. Fiona looked up as
I opened the door, but carried on zipping up one of the
bags containing her diving equipment.

“I think I owe you an apology,” I said.
“Oh, no you don’t, Jake. What I said earlier?
Well, it was unforgivable, the way I spoke to you and my
attitude towards you. It’s me who should be apologising,
not you.”
“What - no, not that. Although I agree you were a
little harsh calling me a bastard. True some of the time,
but not always. It’s just that I feel professionally that we
got off on the wrong foot. Look, to be truthful, Fiona,
Charlie and I thought that you were sent to spy on us or
something like that.”
“Anyway, what with those photographs being
stolen and various other things happening, it could only
have been someone on the inside. Afraid I jumped to a
conclusion about you that was quite clearly wrong. And
for that, I’m truly sorry. You see, everyone else on this
team was already known to each other, and then you
arrived out of the blue. I then tried to run a check on
you through the firm’s database, which came up with a
great big zero.” Walking the length of the sleek cruiser I
sat down on a pile of wooden crates that were stacked
against the side of the boathouse.
Fiona walked up towards me, running her finger
along the side of the boat as she went. “Look, you
don’t have to beat yourself up you know. I should never
have agreed to go along with LJ’s theory that a certain
person would be getting sticky fingers on this particular
assignment. He specifically asked for me, wanted me here
not because of my diving experience and the logbook,
I’m afraid, was just another one of his smoke screens.
My father and LJ go back as long as I can remember.
Dad had a phone call late one evening, asking him if
he had anyone in his department or someone he knew
from experience, who could act, throw a tantrum or
two, was a qualified open water diver and would be able
to look after themselves in any situation. Well, after a
considerable amount of thought, all of ten seconds, he
came up with me. But I really wasn’t sent here to snoop
on you or Charlie, bless him. It’s Mr Rumple that LJ is
concerned about.”
I said with surprise. “Rumple, what exactly have
you got on him?”
“So far all we know…”
“We, who exactly is we,” I snapped at her. Just
managing to suppress the sudden surge of anger rising
inside me, as I remembered Rumple boasting once that he
could detonate a bomb, while at the same time having a
cup of tea a hundred miles away.
“We, are the Partners of Ferran & Cardini and
in particular LJ, the Serious Drugs Squad to which I am
currently seconded to, and the Whitehall department for
which I actually work. Now if I may continue?” I nodded
my head ever so slightly.
“As you quite rightly say, Jake, Mr Rumple is a
very experienced field operative. For many years both
he and Mrs Rumple along with their particular skills
have been successfully used, and well paid I might add,
by various intelligence agencies as well as going out on
loan to other friendly Governments around the world.
The CIA were always asking for them. It was decided at
the highest level, however, that they were becoming too
much in demand and a little too arrogant for their own
good.”
So the head of department at that time was
instructed to retire them from active service, but to
somewhere that HMG could, if they so required, call
them back from. To cut a very long story short, they were
pensioned off to your firm. Why, I hear you ask, because
all of the Partners and in particular LJ still have an active
involvement, as you are well aware, with HMG. That last
bit comes under the Official Secrets Act, by the way.”
“Um, well, I already knew most of that, including
the last bit. But why start batting for the other team now
and for what reason? Surely not just the money, would
they really risk everything they have built up?” I paced up
and down the side of the boathouse. Running my hands
through my hair I continued. “It just doesn’t make sense,
I’ve known them for many years.”
“Rumple’s actions of late are so out of character.
There must be more to this than you’re telling me.”
I started to open the door to leave.
“Jake, please come back inside. Look, I’ll tell you
everything I know.”
I went back to the side of the cruiser, climbed the
ladder onto the deck and went into the main cabin. I
poured us both a large whisky. Fiona sat down and took
the glass from me, gulping back the amber coloured
liquid in one hit.
I refilled her glass and sat down opposite her. “So,
go on tell me the rest.”
“Well, the department head that retired them was
Edward Levenson-Jones.” She brought her right hand up
as if stopping the traffic at rush hour.
“Before you say it, yes it does get worse. The
picture becomes much clearer when you know who the
person is that told LJ to wield the axe on the Rumples.
I’m afraid it’s none other than the right honourable Oliver
Hawkworth MP. So you see why certain people have
become very nervous about these two becoming loose
cannons and taking some sort of revenge, as well as a
large payment from Flackyard. The fact is that LJ should
never have succumbed to the Partners and their devious
ways, it would have been much safer to keep them away
from this assignment altogether. We think that Flackyard
paid someone on the inside to dig around at Ferran &
Cardini.
“Get to know about this, and well the rest is
history, as they say.”
“Hell - this whole assignment has been a shambles
from the start.” I finished the whisky, not knowing
whether the burning inside my stomach was the anger I
still felt or the alcohol. In the end, I decided that it was
the whisky and that being angry was going to achieve
nothing but melancholy.
“When are you returning to London?” I asked. My
mobile phone started to ring before Fiona could reply.
The call was brief and to the point. The female voice at
the other end purred and stated that Mr Flackyard was
holding a Champagne reception and auction in aid of
local charities at his home this evening and, that he would
be delighted if Miss Price and I could attend, formal
black tie, starting around 8.00 p.m. After accepting the
invitation on behalf of us both, I hung up.
“Tonight,” Fiona said. “I’ll be driving up tonight,
back to the rat race and a normal routine again I suppose,
they’ll almost certainly take me off the case now.”
“Well, that last call was interesting. Flackyard is
hosting a Champagne charity function this evening and
has requested our company. So how about a few more
days by the seaside – unless you have to rush off, that is?”
“Well let me see, I do have an appointment at
9.00am sharp tomorrow, with a really boring desk job.
So what do you think?”
“You’d better phone your boss and tell him that
there have been some interesting new developments with
the situation down here and that your presence is still
required. Don’t say anything more than that, except that
a full progress report will be with Ferran & Cardini by
this evening. Here, use my phone, it’s secure.”
Fiona used my mobile phone to call her boss in
London.
“Oh, by the way, you’d better unpack your diving
gear again, we’ll be going for a little swim later,” I said as
I left the boathouse.
As I stepped outside, the wind and rain gave no
sign of relenting. Going straight up to my room I spent
the next hour at my laptop, putting together a progress
report on the developments relating to Robert Flackyard.
I added that Fiona had come clean, telling me that
we’d been working for the same side all the time! After
emailing LJ, I saved the report to disk and erased it from
the hard drive. This done I phoned Sam ‘the car wash’.
He answered after two or three rings with a cheerful
hello, surprised that I was calling him. Where was he? At
Robert Flackyard’s home cleaning all of his flash cars? His
boss had called him and said that he had been personally
asked for, that there was going to be a glitzy party and
charity auction there tonight and one of Mr Flackyard’s
Aston Martins would be sold off to the highest bidder. So
he was to stay there all day and polish every one of them.
“OK, now listen very carefully, I want you to make
a note of everyone coming and going, get their registration
numbers if possible. If Caplin in particular turns up or
anyone else arrives throughout the day, immediately text
me their name on this number. If Flackyard leaves also let
me know, and remember to write down times.”
My thoughts were racing as I finished talking.
What a stroke of luck that our young observer should be
in exactly the right place at the right time. Or was it?
Mrs Rumple was no where to be found. A note
on the kitchen notice board read, gone into town – back
by 6.30pm. The time was now 2.30pm, leaving just four
hours to relocate the fifty deadly opium packages.

Take the English Channel on a cold and miserable
day and keep a brisk wind striking across it from the
Northeast. Put a luxury cruiser somewhere between the
heaving waves with the swell on its starboard quarter,
and into it put two crew standing clad in wetsuits when
there should have been at least four.

The swell was enough to tip us down in the valleys
between the waves at an alarming angle. To the Southwest
I watched the coastline come into view from each wave
crest. A surreal scene with clouds as black as coal, low and
menacing. Brilliant shafts of sunlight, highlighting across
sea and land like static and streaks of phosphorescence.
These weren’t ideal conditions to dive in, but at least the
weather was, for our sake, keeping the sunshine sailors at
home and only a handful of hardened thrill seekers out in
these conditions.

I was already feeling the constriction of the tight
fitting wetsuit and began to wonder whether it had been
such a good idea to put it on back in the boathouse,
especially as we wouldn’t be diving for another half an
hour? Fiona carried out the last minute checks on all of
the dive equipment, and weighted down each one of the
five bags containing the opium packages with lead we had
found tucked in a corner of the garage. When absolutely
satisfied that each one was secure, a nylon rope was used
to tie them all together in a continuous chain.

Our heading was to a point about one mile out
from Old Harry rocks to the wreck of a WWII German
submarine, sunk during the last war. An ocean-going
U-boat as I remembered was a very large piece of
machinery, over six hundred tons and two hundred feet
in length. Making it the ideal hiding place for the five
sacks that we had to conceal, each containing ten of the
small waxy bales of raw opium.

The story of the U-boat was often enthusiastically
told by some of the older locals, who could recall the
event. It went something along the lines of that the
submarine had surfaced at night to off load a crack unit
of SS commandos, a British destroyer was lying in wait
and had sunk her. She went down in forty meters of water
with all hands lost. Afterwards the Ministry of Defence
had the bodies removed and buried in unmarked graves,
in village churchyards around the Dorset countryside.
The whole affair was then covered up so as not to fuel
speculation about a possible German invasion. Their
official notice stated that the destroyer was simply firing
her guns after a routine re-fit.

I pushed a button and the anchor chain slid out
from its housing and into the foaming water below. At
one hundred and five feet it stopped. I left the engines
ticking over to hold us in position and went down to the
dive platform, where Fiona was waiting.

The howl of the wind and driving rain was
deafening after the relative calm of the bridge, and even
the steady drone of the large diesel engines was lost.

With each wave the boat lurched up into the air,
but we somehow managed to put on our oxygen tanks,
fins and masks without being swept over board.

I lowered the sacks into the water one at a time
while Fiona took care of the high-powered underwater
lanterns that we would need inside the U-boat.

I tapped her on the shoulder and shouted, “We
have thirty minutes maximum down there. Follow me
and stay close.”

With that we clambered down the dive ladder
on the port side, instead of going off the stern, so as to
stay away from the propellers. I snapped the mouthpiece
between my teeth and pulled the mask into place. The
coldness of the water bit to the bone as I lowered myself
in.

I jack-knifed through the opaque water. Beneath
the heaving surface the sea was green and without
dimension. A white explosion of microscopic bubbles
raced to my feet as I swam down towards the great hulk of
the submarine. Fiona swam close to my side, the powerful
lamps already having to light our way as we went deeper.
All was calm and soft. The water, no longer green but
purple, was motionless as we swam down. To my right,
Fiona was cleaving a phosphorescent wake, and as she
descended I watched her turn a graceful somersault and
touch her feet on the bottom with scarcely a movement
of silt. My own clumsy effort at this ended with dirty
clouds of silt and weed rising around my fins.

I let the sacks drop to the sea floor; Fiona handed
me one of the lanterns, and as my eyes became adjusted to
the purple darkness one vast portion of the seabed grew
darker than the rest. The huge potbelly of the sunken
submarine loomed over us. I clipped the lamp onto my
tank harness and retrieved the end of the rope that coupled
the sacks together. I then gave Fiona a hook-like motion
with my free hand and climbed an invisible ladder on to
the foredeck. We swam past the smooth convex swell of
the main tanks.

Here and there sections of the original paintwork
were still in remarkably good condition. In spite of the
slight list it was easy to imagine that this was a fully
manned U-boat of the German Kreigsmarine, resting
momentarily on the bottom before resuming a war
mission.

We passed around and over the conning tower, and
in the glow of our lanterns we could just make out the
silhouette of the open hatch. The fuzzy glow of the lamps
suddenly became sharp discs, as we dropped lightly on
to the conning tower platform. The soft paintwork shed
its skin under my hand, the flakes spinning upward like
perverse seeds.

Holding the side of the conning-tower ladder with
one hand I controlled my drop into the small oval room
beneath. I shone the bright lamp around the interior. White
circles flashed from the walls as the glass-faced gauges
reflected the light back. My lamp shone up through to the
hatch above my head, and Fiona’s outline was just visible
as she waited on the platform outside. I signalled her to
lower the sacks down. This didn’t take long as we had left
them all tied together. Once the last one was inside, Fiona
joined me in the cramped control room. Moving carefully
we kept to the port side of the cluttered interior, passing
the huge wheel of the hydroplane controls. The starboard
side was choked with remnants of bedding, bunks and
seaweed.

Above me, broken piping hung like strange
stalactites, while the remains of chairs and wooden stools
danced against the ceiling. I tried to imagine the final
scene in this little space, crowded like a rush hour tube
train, all those years ago. I half walked, half swam past
broken crates, which a long time ago had held provisions.

My breathing became difficult. One bottle
was empty. I switched to the full bottle and breathing
recommenced.

Fiona’s lamp was moving around in front of me
through the next bulkhead door. I moved on, noticing
the pressure hull – well over an inch thick and able to
withstand water pressures at over five hundred feet, I
tapped it and the metal vibrated with a clang. The far side
of the bulkhead was the torpedo stowage compartment.
It was cavernous; the floor lay some ten feet below us
down a ladder. On either side was rack after rack of inert
torpedoes, greasy and silver like Cuban cigar tubes. We
dragged the five sacks over the railing and descended to
the deck below. Since coming to rest on the seabed much
silt had been washed gently through the torpedo stowage
compartment by year after year of tidal activity. After a
little searching, I found what I was looking for, covered
in silt and weed. A few inches away from my feet was a
flat, rectangular slab. The silt flurried around as I ran my
gloved fingers along the edge to define its outline. Taking
my knife I managed to insert the tip under one corner.
Eventually it shifted and we were able to lift it all the way
up.

Shining my lamp down into the black hole, I
motioned to Fiona to hand me the first sack, I lowered it,
then the next and the next until they were all inside the
chamber secured by the rope onto a hook.

Before replacing the steel plate. I took a small
magnetic charge of the type that we’d used on the Gin
Fizz, and attached it to the side of the chamber.

Once it was securely in place, I armed the device
by setting the switch to remote, and the next second a red
light started to glow brightly through the gloom of the
murky waters inside the dark access pit.

Satisfied that everything was as we’d found it. I ran
a forefinger across my throat and pointed upwards. Fiona
nodded and swam off back to the bulkhead. We retraced
our route, going out through the conning tower hatch
and over the 37mm gun platforms: the ocean seemed
vast after the U-boat interior. Staying together we floated
easily through the dark water, using only our feet to
propel us. As we neared the surface the hull of the cruiser
became visible. Our heads broke through the ocean top;
wind ripped into my face like a blunt blade.

The splash of the waves broke the silence and the
cold biting into my head and shoulders made me suddenly
aware of how frozen my body was in spite of the thickness
of the wetsuit. Fiona kept a safe distance away from the
boat, which swung and lurched on its anchor chain, the
engines just barely holding their own against the swell.

After one failed attempt at reaching the dive ladder,
I managed to grab hold of it, just as a wave struck lifting
the boat into the air. Once I was safely aboard, Fiona
followed shortly afterwards.

The warmth inside the cabin and a large brandy
were welcome after the numbing coldness outside. I felt a
lot happier now that the opium was safely hidden away
one mile out and one hundred and five feet down on the
seabed of the English Channel. It would take us an hour
to get back to the boathouse, with time to spare before
either of the Rumples returned to the house, if in fact they
did return?

“How long have you known that the U-boat was
down there, Jake,” Fiona stood next to me, a blanket
wrapped around her shoulders, at the helm.

“So that’s what you’ve been pondering about. Well
it was one of the first wrecks I ever dived on, but it seems
like a long time ago. You see, that particular U-boat is
not favoured by sport divers as it’s still got about seven
live torpedoes on board and after sixty years or so they’re
probably a little bit unstable.” I adjusted our course
passing a fully laden container ship on our port side.
Fiona was looking at me in disbelief, evidently horrified
by the thought of having dived into a Second World War
German submarine still having live explosives aboard.

“Well, for a start the wreck doesn’t officially exist
– remember? It was a pure fluke that I discovered her all
those years ago. But that area is not favoured by anyone,
and that includes the Ministry of Defence as the current
is very strong this far out in the channel. Also the sub’s
in quite deep water and a good mile out from the coast,
and therefore it was deemed as non-dangerous by the
authorities at the time.”

“Anyway, one of the biggest problems was that at
the end of the war the Germans were experimenting with
many different types of firing mechanisms or ‘triggers’.
There were acoustics, magnetic and electric eye. It was
not uncommon for a boat as highly developed as that
to have a mixed bag of weapons on board. But we were
never really in any danger, I’ve swum through that sub
many times, and as long as you don’t disturb the racks
holding the torpedoes there’s no chance of a detonation.
Of course, that isn’t the case anymore.”

I held up the remote detonator in my left hand.
“This is the remote control for that explosive charge
down there, I’m going to re-route the command to our
mobile phones. That way either of one of us can destroy
the opium by simply pressing nine and then send.
Understood?”

Fiona nodded and then said. “No wonder you hid
the opium there, it’s got to be the last place on earth that
anyone would go – even if they did know about it. So
what happens now Jake.”