The Trade (A Hans Larsson Novel Book 2) (15 page)

W
hile
Penny placed vegetable-and-snapper kebabs on the glowing red embers, Hans
called Silvestre to ask his advice on diving on the
Rosa Negra
.

“Senhor Hans, it is no problem, but best we do it alone and
after dark, no?”

“Understood,” Hans replied, knowing their interest in the
wreck needed shielding from prying eyes, arranging a flight to São Vicente to meet
the treasure hunter the next day. He was about to ask Penny how the kebabs were
doing when his cell phone rang. It was a number he didn’t recognize.

“Hans, it’s Enrique. I have the information we spoke of. Do
you want to meet up tomorrow, or I can come to you now?”

“If you could come now, it would be appreciated.” Hans didn’t
want to waste any more time.

Within ten minutes the throaty rev of a sports car’s engine filled
the villa’s driveway. Enrique stepped out of a vintage silver Porsche, dressed
casually in three-quarter-length cargo pants, leather flip-flops and an Armani
shirt.

“Hey, Hans.” He beamed and held up an expensive bottle of wine.

“Thanks for coming this late, Enrique. You hungry?”

“Always hungry!” the CIA man replied, giving Hans a hearty
hug. “Where’s Penny?”

“All shall be revealed.” Hans smiled and ushered him through
to the patio.

“Penny!” Enrique embraced her with Latino affection. “Food, food,
food!”

They sat around a picnic bench to eat, and Enrique briefed
them on what he knew.

“Logan served four years in jail for money laundering, but
under a new provision in UK law, the Proceeds of Crime Act, he agreed to pay
back the money he had made in order to receive an early parole, only—”

“He didn’t pay back a cent,” said Hans.

“Exactly.” Enrique took a gulp of wine. “And due to the
fickle nature of the legislation, he was able to relocate to Cape Verde,
meaning it would take up too much time and money to chase him for the debt. It
seems everyone on the island knows he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, but there’s
been no firm evidence to prove it.”

“Has there been
any
evidence?” Penny asked.

“There was a child abduction allegation leveled against him
a couple of years back by the Cape Verde police after the coastguard stopped
him leaving the harbor in his million-dollar speedboat and found a local kid
aboard. Logan claimed the kid was wandering along the marina and he offered to
take him for a ride. Said he loves kids, and where’s the law against that? In
the kid’s mind he was going on a boat ride, so Logan got off scot-free.”

“Anything else?” Hans asked.

“He runs a bar called Chico’s that’s a known hangout for –
how shall we say – undesirables? And because he has no criminal record here, he’s
been able to obtain a shotgun and a pistol license. Is that enough to go on for
the time being?”

“Yeah.” Hans stared at his kebab. “I think it is, Enrique,
thanks.”

Then as an afterthought he added, “Do you happen to know if
the police got any forensics off the wreck of the
Rosa Negra
?
I’m
planning a little dive tomorrow night.”

“To protect tourism, the police will likely guard their
findings, but I’ll look into it for you.”

W
hen Hans’ plane landed in São Vicente
late the next afternoon, Silvestre was at the airport to meet him.

“Senhor Hans, good to
see you.”

Silvestre shook hands
firmly and then led Hans to the taxi rank, from where they took a cab east
along the coast road to Mindelo.

“So you’ve brought the boat from Santo Antão,” said Hans, knowing
the Portuguese lived on the archipelago’s westernmost island, less than an hour’s
cruise across the São Vicente Channel.

“Yes, the boat is here.” Silvestre took out his faithful hip
flask and passed it to the American. “I have left her in a quiet place, no? Not
even my crew knows I am here.”

“Good thinking,” said Hans. “And how’s life on Santo Antão?”

“
Tranquilo
. I buy a small place in the hills above
Porto Novo with my wife twenty years ago. When she passed, I decide to stay. It’s
a rugged island, not so much for the tourists, huh? And many more shipwrecks to
find.” Silvestre shrugged and took a slug of rum.

“You never remarried?”

“No, Hans, only to the rum.”

“Family, children?”

“We have a little girl, Francesca, but the cholera came . .
.” The old man fell silent a moment, staring at the flask as if it contained all
his memories. “Maybe some cousins in Portugal still alive, I don’t know. I have
no contact for many years.”

Hans’ respect for the treasure hunter deepened, and his
reasons for helping search for Jessica became clearer.

“
A
qui
,
por favor
,” Silvestre
told
the
cab
driver as
they
neared
the
port area.

He led Hans down an alley running through
shanty housing and on to a small garbage-strewn cove. A young lad sat on a
rubber dinghy on the sand skimming pebbles across the scum-laden wave tops.
Silvestre took a few escudos from his wallet and handed them to the boy, who
grinned black teeth and scarpered. Hans climbed into the inflatable, and
Silvestre pulled on the oars and headed for his boat,
Outcast
,
anchored discreetly a few hundred yards out.

Once on board they hauled in the tender, and
Silvestre fired up the twelve-liter diesel and motored into the channel, the
plan being to approach Mindelo Marina in a wide arc under the cover of darkness.
Silvestre would remain with the boat a quarter of a mile offshore while Hans
swam on the surface to the location of the sunken trawler.

In a pile on deck sat a wetsuit, scuba gear
and a steel tank with a
yellow-and-green-striped band around it
signifying enriched air nitrox, which would extend Hans’ bottom time and reduce
the need for a lengthy decompression stop. The American began a systematic
check of the equipment, looking for signs of wear and familiarizing himself
with its idiosyncrasies, such as the position of the air inlet and outlet
buttons on the wing-design buoyancy harness and how to operate the weight belt’s
quick-release buckle, should he need to ditch it in the event of an emergency.

As darkness fell Silvestre synchronized his watch with the
time on Hans’ dive computer. They would communicate over the radio built into
the full-face scuba mask and aim to keep the dive to ninety minutes, with an
additional thirty added on for the swim. If a problem arose, Hans would surface
and make his way out to the boat by following a back bearing on his compass, since
the
Outcast
would not be under running lights, or signal three times
with his flashlight if he was in difficulty and needed picking up.

Under the glow of a waning moon, Silvestre maneuvered the
dive boat into position as Hans kitted up. He considered clipping an emergency
cylinder of nitrox to his harness but dismissed the idea, figuring it would
prove too cumbersome should he need to enter the hull of the
Rosa Negra
and that it would hang down and kick up silt, ruining visibility when he
inspected the seabed for evidence.

After strapping a hefty diver’s knife to his left forearm
and putting on his fins, he sprayed an antifogging agent inside the mask and
took a compass bearing on the lights of the marina. Good to go, he shook hands
with the old man and stepped off the dive lift’s aluminum footplate at the back
of the boat. Following a radio check to test comms, Hans pulled the mask back
down around his neck and began finning toward the wreck.

Due to exertion and the insulating effect of the neoprene,
Hans found himself getting hot. He stopped kicking on several occasions to pull
open the wetsuit’s neck and let seawater in to circulate and cool him down. The
swim was tougher than he expected, his muscles weak and his joints aching from
the month spent in the life raft. He imagined Penny shaking her head in
disapproval, knowing in reality she would be the last person to suggest he didn’t
dive. He smiled and finned harder.

Looming twenty yards distant was the orange buoy the police
had left to mark the position of the
Rosa Negra
. As Hans felt a sense of
relief, the noise of an outboard motor and distant laughter reverberating off
the water caught his attention. A crackle came over the radio’s earpiece in the
mask dangling around his neck. Hans spun around to see a yacht crew returning
to the marina in high spirits, having drunk a Sundowner or two. Wishing to
remain out of sight, he clamped the mask over his face and released air from
his buoyancy jacket, allowing him to slip under the surface as the yacht passed
overhead.

“Hans,
Outcast
, over.” Silvestre sounded stressed.

“
Outcast
, I’m okay. Descending now, over.”

Hans left it several seconds before turning on his
flashlight and finning to locate the marker buoy’s tether. He followed the line
down, pumping small bursts of air into his buoyancy wing to compensate for the increase
in pressure and steady his descent.

The
Rosa Negra
lay on her side at a forty-five-degree
angle in sixty feet of water. Visibility wasn’t great, but Hans could see the
length of the forlorn vessel’s hull and the ragged hole where the explosion
tore through its sheet metal. The wheelhouse was gone, exposing what remained
of the mess deck and galley. Whoever planted the explosives certainly knew what
they were doing, taking out the crew and holing the boat below the waterline to
sink the evidence.

Hans reached for a pair of tweezers clipped to his harness on
a recoiling lanyard spool. Silvestre had also provided a plastic container the
size of a lunch box with a slit in its lid lined with fine brushes to use as an
evidence collector for small objects and fine particles. Hans had it secured
around his waist like a fanny pack. He picked several flakes of burnt paint
from around the hole in the hull and pressed them through the slit into the
container, which had now filled with water. The brushes prevented the flakes
from washing out of the box. Hans then began a systematic search in increasing
clockwise circles around the
Rosa Negra
, using gentle frog kicks so as
not to disturb the sand and sediment on the sea bottom. Silvestre and Hans had considered
using an underwater metal detector but eventually rejected the idea, since thousands
of pieces of shrapnel littered the seabed for up to a hundred yards all around.

By Hans’ fifth circuit of the hull he hadn’t found anything
of significance. He paused to check his dive computer for the umpteenth time
and radio the information through to Silvestre.

There was no answer.

“
Outcast
. . .
Outcast
,” he tried again. “Will
commence one more circuit of the vessel and surface, over.”

Still no response.

It was out of character for Silvestre, and Hans wondered if
his position had been compromised – perhaps by the coastguard – and he’d had to
move the boat.

On the final circuit Hans spotted a fingernail-sized piece
of aluminum lying on the sand. On closer inspection it looked to be a fragment
from a small cylinder. Hans knew what it was immediately – the end of a
detonator casing.

Pleased with his find, Hans secured the casing in the evidence
box and checked his computer. He had just enough nitrox left for the required decompression
stop and began his ascent, yet still no response from Silvestre on the radio.

Hovering several feet below the surface for the safety stop,
Hans sensed the throb of a powerful boat engine and wondered why Silvestre had
closed in to pick him up when the plan was Hans would swim back out to sea. He
could tell by the reduced flow of nitrox from his regulator that it had all but
run out and was glad when the three-minute decompression period was up.

Breaking the surface, Hans heard the roar of a boat engine
and turned in time to see a gleaming white prow bearing down on him.

Wha—?

He had a problem – the paintwork on the
Outcast
was
navy blue.

Hans exhaled sharply and with a frantic stroke of his arms
sank below the surface, releasing a burst of air from his buoyancy wing to
speed his descent. The draw of the propeller sucked him upwards as the boat thundered
overhead, and Hans ducked his head to prevent it chopping through his skull.

Now the nitrox ran out, and he fought not to panic, dropping
the regulator from his mouth and swapping to the air outlet hose on the
buoyancy wing. By depressing the valve, he could suck air from the wing itself.
It bought him some time, but the loss of buoyancy saw him slowly sinking.

He needed a plan and fast. It was imperative he took on his
attacker right now rather than attempt a swim to the
Outcast
, making him
a sitting duck.

Hans peeled off his mask, unclipped the buckles on the buoyancy
harness and slipped out of it. Then, clutching the equipment and his flashlight,
he finned hard for the surface and burst through with as much commotion as he
could muster.

The speedboat came around for a second run, throttle fully
open, its bow rising and propeller biting down ready to tear him to shreds. Hans
left it until the last possible moment and, with another sharp exhale, sunk beneath
the surface, playing the beam of his flashlight overhead. He waited until he spotted
the white arrow shape of the boat’s hull slicing through the water and then
thrust the jacket and cylinder upwards, rolling into a ball and clamping his
hands over his head for protection. There was an audible clunk as the propeller
connected with the dive cylinder, then silence as the engine stalled and the
boat glided away.

Desperate to breathe, Hans broke the surface and took a deep
gulp of air, watching as the boat limped off into the darkness, the erratic
pitch of the engine confirming he had achieved his aim.

Hans unbuckled his weight belt and let it drop to the
seafloor, then began finning out to sea using a compass back-bearing for
direction. Twenty minutes later he located the
Outcast
, which had
drifted far from the original drop-off point. He cussed, knowing this wasn’t going
to be good, hauling himself on board to find Silvestre lying on his back in a
pool of blood, a bullet having gone clean though his head.

Wasting no time, Hans powered up the
Outcast
and
headed further into open water as he considered his options. He concluded there
was no ballistics evidence to glean from the scene, no family of Silvestre to
notify of his death, and that reporting the murder would bog him down in a lengthy
police investigation. Finding Jessica was his priority, which meant he had to
cover up the crime scene, sinking the
Outcast
and effectively burying
Silvestre at sea. It was what the treasure hunter would have insisted on anyway,
since Hans stood a far better chance of bringing the killer to justice than
Cape Verde’s ragtag police force did.

Hans stopped the
Outcast
a mile out and dragged
Silvestre into the pilothouse. He went below and lifted up a panel in the hold
to reveal a drainage plug, which he unscrewed, before returning to the deck and
bolting shut the pilothouse door. As water flooded aboard, he packed his
clothes, wallet, passport and cell phone into a dry bag, then picked up his fins
and jumped over the side to begin the long swim back to shore.