Hawke

The admiral raised his pistol once more, his countenance aflame with righteous anger. The crew waited in silence for their death sentence, every eye focused on the finger that would squeeze the trigger.

A tall, thin man emerged from the shadows, shot out his hand, and gripped the admiral’s wrist.

“Give me the gun, Carlitos,” the man said quietly, and the admiral, eyes blazing, did as he was told.

It was the man the crew had been whispering about during the entire voyage. The man who seldom left his cabin and never spoke. The new Cuban head of state security. Rodrigo del Rio.

The man with no eyes.

38

Alex Hawke sat on the edge of his bed, smoking a cigar and staring at the black telephone. There was a half-empty bottle of scotch whiskey beside the phone.

He shook his head and tried to clear it. This morning, he had awoken in this very bed in the rapturous state of a man in the midst of a love affair. Now he felt as if he had been broken into infinitely small pieces, starting with his heart.

The Bahamian Air-Sea Rescue Teams had called off the search after twelve hours. Hawke, having failed in his pleas to get them to continue, had stayed aloft in his seaplane for another few hours, sweeping in low grid patterns over the empty moonlit waters. Finally, just after midnight, he’d landed in the lagoon and taxied up to the ramp at Blackhawke’s stern.

Ambrose and Stoke had been standing there, waiting for him. They started to say something, but Hawke interrupted.

“How?” he said, staring at them angrily, for that’s what he felt now, anger superseding his sadness. “How could one man be so bloody stupid as to allow anyone to swim out into that bloody current? Without a warning? Not a word! How? Answer me!”

Ambrose and Stoke reached out to him but he brushed past them. He paused and turned to face them.

“Here’s the bloody answer! I might as well have drowned her with my own hands! What’s the difference? Murder is murder!”

He climbed four flights of stairs and went straight to his stateroom, where he had remained. He called the bridge and told the captain to call him on the direct line if there was any news. Then he turned off the main phone and opened a bottle of whiskey.

In that way, he had spent an hour or so, drinking and staring at the phone to the bridge, willing it to ring. It didn’t. There had been many knocks at his door and he’d ignored them all. At some point, Ambrose had slipped an envelope under his door but he’d ignored that as well.

Somehow, later, he heard the ship’s bell chiming. Four bells. Two o’clock in the morning. Alex rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Two A.M., which would make it maybe midnight in Louisiana.

He picked up the half-empty scotch bottle and climbed the stairway leading up one deck, making his way along the companionway to Vicky’s stateroom. Save the low thrumming of generators, the ship was dead quiet. There were a few crewmen about, armed, looking out over the rails to sea. They kept the underwater floodlights on all night now, and monitored the video cameras installed below the waterline twenty-four hours a day.

There was a man out there somewhere who clearly wanted to kill him. Little did that man know his target was already dead.

Her room was just the way she’d left it, hats, blouses, scarves, bathing suits, straw hats, all strewn about the bed. He sat down amongst these things, not quite sure why he’d come here. Unable to stop himself, he picked up her pillow and pressed it to his face. The scent of her perfume, of course, still lingered there.

God.

Then, through eyes blurred with tears, he saw the address book on her nightstand and remembered why he had come here. He opened the book to S and didn’t find what he was looking for. He turned to D and there it was.

Daddy. And a 225 area code. Louisiana.

Even the sight of her handwriting in the address book was unbearable. When he thumbed through its pages, a small envelope fell out. It had his name on it. It wasn’t sealed.

Inside were two tiny photographs. The ones that had been inside his mother’s locket. Then he remembered. She’d vowed to wear the locket always. She must have removed the pictures that morning, not wanting to harm them, realizing they’d be going for a swim on the island.

He remembered the golden locket hanging from her neck, suspended between their bodies, swinging to and fro in the rhythms they were creating, the two of them there on the sand beside the ripples of pale blue waters that lapped the sand. And the swift dark blue waters farther out.

He uttered the one oath he’d always considered himself too much of a gentleman to say and reached for the receiver. He began punching in the number he’d found in the book. He lost track of the number of times the phone rang before anyone picked it up.

“Hello?” a sleepy Southern voice finally said.

“Is this Seven Oaks plantation? LaRoche, Louisiana?” he asked.

“Yes, suh, shore is.”

“This is Alexander Hawke calling. I’d like to speak to Senator Harley Sweet, please.”

“Might be asleep out on the porch, suh. Too hot to sleep indoors, but the senator, he’s not a believer in air-conditioning.”

“I’m sorry to disturb him, but would you please tell him it’s extremely important?”

“Well, if you say so, suh, I surely will do that. Will you hold the phone? I’ll go see if I can rouse him up.”

Alex waited, rubbing his eyes, staring at the framed picture of Vicky and him on her nightstand. They had their arms around each other, standing beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park. When the deep voice suddenly came on the line, it startled him.

“This is Harley Sweet.”

“Senator, we’ve never met. This is Alexander Hawke calling.”

“Alex Hawke! Well, it’s mighty fine to finally hear your voice, son. I’ve been hearing an awful lot about you from my little girl.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Senator. I’m afraid I have some horrible news. There’s been an accident.”

“What do you mean? Is Vicky hurt?”

“Senator, I’m afraid Vicky has been lost.”

There was a long silence, and Alex just held the phone to his ear, numb, staring at her face in the picture.

“Lost? You mean dead? Tell me exactly what happened, Mr. Hawke.”

“We, uh, we went for a picnic this afternoon on a small island. Just Vicky and I.”

“Vicky is my only child, sir.”

“I know that, Senator. I must tell you that I’d far rather be dead myself than giving you this news.”

“Go on, son. Tell me about it.”

“We had a small lunch. After we’d eaten, we both fell asleep on the beach. When I awoke, I didn’t see her. I thought perhaps she’d gone off exploring the island. I didn’t see her swimming, so I looked up and down the beach. I—”

“Please continue, Mr. Hawke. I’m sure this is difficult for you.”

“Sorry, sir. I heard a faint cry coming from the sea. There is a deep cha

“Yes?”

“I could see her. It was Victoria. She was almost two thirds of the way to the other island. I could see that the, uh, current had her. The riptide.”

“What did you do, Mr. Hawke?”

“I swam for her, of course. I tried to keep her in sight. It’s a riptide that runs to the open sea. It was moving very swiftly.”

“You were unable to reach her?”

“I’m a good swimmer. I swam as hard as I could. She was calling to me, saying no, telling me to go back, I think. She might have realized it was useless at that point. I—”

“You gave up.”

“No, sir, I did not. I swam out into the rip. When I looked up, I realized that for every ten yards I was gaining, the tide was opening the gap between us by thirty or forty yards, maybe more.”