police, Diana. She was in this country to kill the two remaining witnesses in this old homicide Ambrose was working on. Ambrose screwed up her plans. She was looking for revenge, maybe.”
“He told me about the confession. At the Ferris wheel.”
“Yeah. Weird case. We’re about to charge the president of France with murder.”
“A delicate political situation.”
“Yeah. With an indelicate solution.”
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“Well. The Chinese put this guy Bonaparte in power. They’d like him to stay there. He’s promised them a million barrels a day of oil from Oman. And that’s just for starters. We’ve got other plans for him. I want to introduce him to Old Sparky.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s the electric chair, as we call it.”
“Ah,” she said.
“You didn’t see the news this morning?”
“No.”
“French troops are preparing to come ashore in Oman. They claim the sultan of Oman invited them. Put down some kind of insurrection. It’s total bullshit. But the Chinese are backing them up.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“That’s the big one. The United States and Britain are giving the French forty-eight hours to withdraw their troops. The French refuse.”
“Now what?”
“China needs the oil. She’s ready to go to war over this.”
“Good heavens.”
“Hullo?”
Ambrose’s voice was so weak he barely made himself heard. His eyelids were fluttering and he was trying in vain to lift his head from the pillow.
“Darling,” Diana said, taking his hand, “Look who’s come to see you.”
“Alex? Alex Hawke?” Congreve said, struggling to sit up.
“Lay back, dear. It’s all right. It’s not Alex. It’s Captain Mariucci come to see you! Isn’t that nice?”
Ambrose’s voice was ragged. “I had—had a dream. An awful dream. Something…bad happened. Something terrible happened to Alex. The most horrible thing! I—I must help—help him…”
Diana rang for the nurse.
“I’ll give him your granddaughter’s card, Captain. Thanks so much for coming.”
Mariucci put on his hat and went to the door.
“Take good care of him, Diana.”
“Perhaps that’s exactly why I met him, Captain.”
Chapter Fifty-four
Masara Island, Oman
THE DUNGEON WAS A FOUL, EVIL-SMELLING PLACE. THE nether regions of Fort Mahoud appeared to have escaped any attempt at modernization. No electricity, certainly. The minimal light was provided by large guttering candles in wrought-iron brackets every few feet. Below in the darkness, a beating of tiny wings: bats. Small gutters on either side of the stone stairway ran with what could only be raw sewage.
Hawke and Stokely descended the worn steps side by side behind the major. Six heavily armed French mercenaries wearing kepis clumped heavily down the steps behind the three men.
“Sorry about the stinking mess down here,” the major said. “We left this part pretty much as we found it.” He spoke with a kindly solicitude that was both pleasant and infuriating.
“Captain Jones and I were just admiring it,” Hawke said, unable to stop himself. “The Chinese enjoy a well- deserved reputation for their unique ways with hygiene.”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Major Tang said, “Fate has finally brought you and me together, Lord Hawke. Your timing is quite good. The sultan is preparing to address the Omani people. It occurs to me that you and Captain Jones should also address the citizens of your respective countries. Seeing one’s countryman on his knees begging for his life has enormous propaganda value, as I’m sure you know. The sultan’s temporary quarters are just at the end of this passageway. Mind your step.”
“Can we step on the rats?” Stoke said.
The Chinese major stopped in midstride and whipped around to confront his two prisoners, one hand on his holstered sidearm.
“It is I who shall make the waves, gentlemen. We’ll see soon enough if you can walk on them,” he said.
“Full of piss and vinegar, ain’t he?” Stoke said to Hawke. “Mostly piss.”
Two well-armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers stood on either side of the heavy oak door. They stiffened in salute as soon as Tang was visible in the guttering light. The major checked and returned the salute. One of the guards unbolted the door and pulled it wide. Hawke was surprised at the sudden gust of cool sea air that greeted him as they stepped inside. It wasn’t a cell at all, but a large hangarlike space hollowed out of rock and open to the sea.
Major Tang was having a quiet word with one of the uniformed French Foreign Legion officers and a group of casually dressed civilians standing just inside the door. They were all speaking French in low tones, arguing about something. Hawke edged nearer the wide arched opening to the sky. He could see a glint of moonlight on the water far below. He estimated they were perhaps a hundred feet above the sea.
The sky was dark with no hint of dawn. The cave’s interior glistened in the light of torches, the iron sconces and a heavy chandelier providing the illumination. The barrel of the ceiling disappeared into darkness above and the candles cast long, medieval shadows on the stone walls and floor.
A long, narrow-gauge rail track led from where Hawke stood all the way to the lip of the cave mouth. Hawke could see it now, could imagine what this odd space had been. A large gun, massive, had once been in place here, standing guard over the southern approach to the Strait of Hormuz. Judging from the size of the heavy iron tracks, this space could well have been the emplacement originally built to accommodate the Nazi V-3 Supergun.
Hawke had seen plans for just such a mammoth gun in the British Imperial War Museum. A British agent in a bombed-out munitions factory had discovered the plans in late 1945 and turned them over to MI5. The V stood for “Vengeance.” The barrel was reported to have been over three feet wide and more than one hundred yards long. Such a weapon, updated, could easily fire a nuclear-tipped projectile many hundreds of miles. Rumor had it that Saddam had been trying to replicate the V-3 just before the first Gulf War, building a massive gun called “Baby Babylon.”
The 512-foot-long gun had been installed at Jabal Hamrayn, a mountain ninety miles north of Baghdad. It was capable of firing a six-hundred-kilogram projectile to a range of one thousand kilometers. The allied forces conquering Iraq had never found it.
Hawke had a sudden flash. The massive O-rings that the Star of Shanghai had been loading that night at Cannes. He remembered glancing inside one, thinking nothing of it. But the thing had been rifled. Each ring was to be a section of the five-hundred-foot-long barrel. The Star would have been stopping at Oman on her trip to Shanghai. To deliver the missing Babylon Supergun for the Chinese to install here on Masara Island. With that gun emplaced in this location, they could do what military men had longed to do for centuries: exert total control over the Strait of Hormuz.
It made sense. Perhaps the Chinese garrisoned here at Fort Mahoud were planning on taking up where Hitler and Saddam had left off.
There were further surprises.
To Hawke’s left, a man was seated at a plain wooden desk. His head and shoulders were completely hidden under a canvas hood spotted with ominous dark stains. The sultan, Hawke thought, surely. On the stone floor in front of the desk, kneeling, hands bound behind his back, another hooded man. Sitting casually on the edge of the
