“You want cigars? The best Havana cigars. But at cheap, cheap price.”
“Hey, amigo. I sell you a T-shirt…”
“Muchacho! You bring your parents to my bar…”
Before he knew it, he was surrounded. Alex realized how much he must stand out in this crowd of dark, tropical people milling about in their brightly coloured shirts and straw hats. He was hot and thirsty. He looked around him for somewhere to get a drink.
And that was when he saw Turner and Troy. The two special agents were sitting at a wrought iron table in front of one of the smarter restaurants, shaded by a great vine that sprawled and tumbled over the pockmarked wall. A neon sign hung over them, advertising Montecristo cigars. They were with a man, an islander, obviously deep in conversation. All three of them had drinks. Alex moved towards them, wondering if it would be possible to hear what they were saying.
The man they were talking to looked about seventy years old and was dressed in a dark shirt, loose trousers and a beret. He was smoking a cigarette which seemed to have been pushed through his lips dragging the skin with it. His face, arms and neck were sun-beaten and withered. But as he drew closer, Alex saw the light and the strength in his eyes. Troy said something and the man laughed, picked up his glass with a hand that was all bone and threw back the contents in one. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, said something and walked away. Alex had arrived just too late to eavesdrop on the conversation. He decided to make himself known.
“Alex!” As ever, Troy didn’t look glad to see him.
“Hi, Mom.” Alex sat down without being invited. “Any chance of a drink?”
“What are you doing here?” Turner asked. Once again his mouth was a straight line. His eyes were empty. “We told you to stay at the hotel.”
“I thought this was meant to be a family holiday,” Alex said. “And anyway, I finished searching the hotel this morning. There aren’t any nuclear weapons there, in case you were wondering…”
Turner stared. Troy looked around nervously. “Keep your voice down!” she snapped, as if anyone could hear him in the din of the square.
“You lied to me,” Alex said. “Whatever the reason you’re here, you’re not just spying on General Sarov. Why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”
There was a long silence.
“What do you want to drink?” Troy asked.
Alex glanced down at Troy ’s glass. It contained a pale yellow liquid that looked good. “What have you got?” he asked.
“A mojito. It’s a local speciality. A mixture of rum, fresh lemon juice, crushed ice, soda and mint leaves.”
“That sounds fine. I’ll have the same. Without the rum.”
Turner called a waiter over and spoke briefly in Spanish. The waiter nodded and hurried away.
Meanwhile, Troy had come to a decision. “All right, Alex,” she said. “We’ll tell you what you want to know-”
“That’s against orders!” Turner interrupted.
Troy looked angrily at him. “What choice do we have? Alex obviously knows about the Game Boy.”
“The Geiger counter,” Alex said.
Troy nodded. “Yes, Alex, that’s what it is. And it’s the reason why we’re here.” She lifted her own drink and took a sip. “We didn’t want you to know this because we didn’t want to frighten you.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“We were ordered not to!” She scowled. “But… all right, since you know so much, you might as well know the rest of it. We believe there’s a nuclear device hidden on this island.”
“General Sarov…? You think he’s got a nuclear bomb?”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Turner muttered.
But this time Troy ignored him. “Something is happening, here, on Skeleton Key,” she went on. “We don’t know what it is, but if you want the truth, it actually frightens us. In a few days’ time, Boris Kiriyenko, the Russian president, is arriving for a two-week vacation. That’s not such a big deal. He knew Sarov a long time ago. They were kids together. And it’s not as if the Russians are our enemies any more.”
Alex knew all this already. It was what Blunt had told him in London.
“But recently, and quite by coincidence, Sarov came to our attention. Turner and I were investigating the Salesman. And we discovered that among all the other things he’d been selling, he’d managed to get his hands on a kilogram of weapons grade uranium, smuggled out of Eastern Europe. For what it’s worth, this is one of the biggest nightmares facing the security services today-the sale of uranium. But he’d done it-and if that wasn’t bad enough, the person he’d sold it to-”
“-was Sarov.” Alex finished the sentence.
“Yes. A plane flew into Skeleton Key and it didn’t fly out again. Sarov was there to meet it.” She paused. “And now, suddenly, we’ve got a meeting between these two men-the old general and the new president-and there may be a nuclear bomb in the picture. So you won’t be surprised to hear that there are a whole lot of worried people in Washington. That’s why we’re here.”
Alex absorbed what he was being told. Inside, he was seething. Blunt had promised him two weeks in the sun. But it looked like he’d been sent to the front line of World War Three.
“If it is a bomb, what’s Sarov planning to do with it?” Alex asked.
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here!” she snapped. Alex looked at her closely. He was amazed to see that she really was scared. She was trying not to show it but it was there, in her eyes and the tautness of her jaw.
“Our job is to find the nuclear material,” Turner said.
“With the Geiger counter.”
“Yes. We need to break into Casa de Oro and take a look around. That’s what we were talking about just now.”
“Who was he? The man you were with?”
Turner sighed. He had already said much more than he wanted to “His name is Garcia. He’s one of our assets.”
“Assets?”
“That means he works for us,” Troy explained. “We’ve been paying him over the years to keep us informed and to help us when we’re here.”
“He has a boat,” Turner continued, “and we’re going to need it because there’s only one way into the Casa de Oro-and that’s by sea. The house is built on a sort of plateau right at the tip of the island. It’s an old sugar plantation. They used to grow sugar cane there and they’ve got an old mill that’s still in full working order. Anyway, there’s only one road that reaches it and it’s narrow, with a steep drop down to the sea on both sides. There are security men and a gate. We’d never get in that way.”
“But by boat-” Alex began.
“Not by boat…” Turner hesitated, wondering if he should go on. He looked at Troy, who nodded. “We’re going to use scuba. You see, we know something that Sarov may not. There’s a way into the grounds of the villa that goes past his defences. It’s a natural fault line, a shaft inside the cliff that runs all the way from the top to the bottom.”
“You’re going to climb it?”
“There are metal rungs. Garcia’s family has been on the island for centuries and they know every inch of the coastline. He swears the ladder is still there. Three hundred years ago it was used by smugglers to get from the villa to the beach without being seen. There was a cave at the bottom. The shaft-they call it the Devil’s Chimney- runs all the way up and comes out somewhere in the garden. That’s our way in.”
“Wait a minute.” Alex was confused. “You said you were going to use scuba.”
Troy nodded. “The water level has risen all around the island and the entrance to the cave is now submerged. It’s about twenty metres underwater. But that’s great for us. Most people have forgotten the cave is even there at all. Certainly, it won’t be guarded. We swim down in scuba gear. We climb the ladder and get into the grounds. We search the villa.”
“And if you find the bomb?”
“That’s not our problem, Alex. Our work will be done.”
