Flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Flowers.”
“Mr. al-Nassar. Perhaps I don’t follow you quite exactly. Could you be, please, more specific?”
“Gladiolas.”
“Ah. Of course. Gladiolas.”
“Precisely. Just the beginning. You buy day-old glads in South Africa for two dollars a stem and you sell them to rich Russian tourists in Dubai the next day for one hundred dollars a stem. You can carry twenty tons per flight. Better than printing money.”
“That sounds good.”
“One question, which I shall always regret if I do not ask it,” al-Nassar said, fingering the black terry cloth of Snay’s lapel.
“Anything, Attar.”
“Where on earth did you get that suit?”
Chapter Eleven
Dark Harbor, Maine
THE PACKARD-MERLIN 266 ENGINE SPUTTERED AT FIRST, then roared to life. It was the very same engine, circa 1942, that had powered the much-vaunted Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI, workhorse of the powerful fighter command squadrons that rose up and ultimately triumphed over the Luftwaffe in the skies over Britain. The highly modified Spitfire engine was mounted in the long nose of Hawke’s sleek silver seaplane.
It was an aircraft clearly out of her time, and the truth was Alex had designed the plane himself. Completely lacking in any formal aeronautical design skills, he had simply modeled her after one of his favorite boyhood toys. His theory about both airplane and boat design was simple. If it looked good and it looked fast, it probably was both. In a cavernous hold at the stern of Blackhawke were many racing machines Alex had collected over the years. There was not one vintage racing car or speedboat that did not look both good and fast.
Especially this little seaplane. She was named Kittyhawke in honor of Alex’s mother, an American film star before she’d married. One of his mother’s more glamourous publicity poses was painted on the port side of the fuselage. Catherine Caldwell had taken the stage name Kitty Hawke when she’d married Alex’s father, Lord Alexander Hawke. Kitty Hawke had been a hard-working actress, ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the classic Civil War saga, Southern Belle. It was to be the last picture she would make.
In the late seventies, Lord and Lady Hawke were murdered in the Exuma Islands. Cuban drug runners boarded their yacht, Seahawke, in the middle of the night. There was one eyewitness. Their seven-year-old son, Alex. Hidden by his father in a secret compartment in the yacht’s bow, the boy saw the horrific crime. Ultimately, on the island of Cuba, Alex Hawke the man would track down the killers and avenge his parents’ deaths; but the boyhood memory of that horrifying night would haunt the man forever.
“All buckled in, Constable?” Hawke asked, putting on his headphones and adjusting his lipmike. He was delighted to be back aboard Kittyhawke and was wearing one of his old Royal Navy flying suits, an outfit he favored whenever he took the little plane aloft. The Packard-Merlin Spitfire engine, all fifteen hundred horses, spat fire as he shoved the throttle forward and nosed his plane into the wind.
“No aerial aerobatics on the voyage up, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Congreve barked in his headset. “I know how you delight in torturing captive passengers.”
“Ah. Do I detect a wee touch of the Irish Flu this morning, Ambrose? I did think that third Drambuie at the bar last night was ill-advised. Especially after the vast quantities of Chateau La Tour. Frankly, I thought you’d sworn off les vins de France. Patriotic reasons, and all that.”
“Please,” Congreve replied, a thick frost coating the word. “Just because you have been the very model of abstemiousness for an entire twenty-four hours, I don’t see why I should be subjected to—”
“Sorry, old thing. It is your liver, after all. Not mine.”
“God save us,” Ambrose sighed and collapsed back in his seat, struggling with the wretched harness which barely accommodated his circumference. He wouldn’t admit it, to be sure, but he was actually battling a bit of a morning after. Alex eased the throttle forward, and the seaplane surged across the blue waters of Nantucket Sound and lifted off into the rosy New England dawn.
Over nightcaps in the bar at 21 Federal, Alex Hawke and Ambrose Congreve had decided to fly up to Dark Harbor, Maine, at first light.
“It’s bad, Alex,” Jack Patterson had said to him on the phone at the restaurant. “I’m on my way up to Dark Harbor right now. Evan Slade’s wife and two kids were murdered last night. Butchered. We’ve got to stop this thing. Fast, before panic sets in. Otherwise, I’m looking at a complete paralysis of America’s diplomatic corps. Meltdown, at the worst possible time.”
“That’s what they want,” Alex said. “Panic.”
“Yep. That’s why we’ve got to stop it fast.”
“I’ll be there, Tex. First thing.”
“Didn’t have the heart to ask. Thanks, Hawkeye. Sorry to interrupt your supper. I know this is a difficult time for you and—”
“See you around eight? I’ll fly the seaplane up. What’s the mooring situation up there? Any idea?”
“House has a long dock into deep water. Check your charts, buddy. You’ll see big old Wood Island just southwest of Dark Harbor. Pine Island lies just east of Wood. Slade family bought the whole rock back in the fifties. Only house on the island. Dock on the south end, according to the local chief of police, woman by the name of Ainslie.”
“Cheated death once again, eh, Constable?” Hawke said as they taxied toward the Slade dock. Congreve ignored him.
“I see the local constabulary has turned out to welcome us,” Congreve said. A young uniformed officer stood at the end of the dock, a coiled rope in his hand, looking uncertain about precisely what he was supposed to do with it.
“Patterson sent this fellow out to give us a hand, I imagine.”
Alex shut down the engine, unbuckled his harness, then opened the cockpit door and climbed down onto the port side pontoon. He waited a few seconds for the chap to toss him the line. “Ahoy,” he finally shouted to the young policeman, some twenty feet across the water, “Toss me that line please! She’s drifting off! I can’t get her in any closer because of the current.”
It took Officer Nikos Savalas three tries to finally toss the line within Alex’s reach.
“Third time’s the charm,” Alex shouted at the clearly embarrassed man as he bent and cleated the line off on the pontoon. Once Kittyhawke was secure, the two Englishmen climbed a winding staircase carved into the rocks. It led up to the rambling old grey-shingled house, a weathered and many-gabled structure, with a myriad of rooflines dotted with brick chimneys.
“Imagine that,” Hawke said, looking back at the Maine cop, still bent over the cleat, tying and retying the line.
“What?”
“Boy grows up in Maine, yet he has no earthly idea how to toss someone a line.”
“I noticed that,” Congreve said.
“And?”
“He obviously did not grow up in Maine.”
“Ah, logic will out,” Hawke said, smiling.
They gained the top of the steps and made their way through a thicket of fragrant spruce to open lawn.
