“Three knocks. What do you think it meant, Stubbs?” Congreve asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“I think it was a code. Between him and his father, I mean. See, little Alex was locked in that locker from the inside. And the key to the locker was found in Alex’s pocket.”
“So his father, probably having heard someone up on deck, had hidden him in the locker, then given him the key and told him to lock himself inside,” Ross said.
“And told him not to come out for anyone unless he heard three knocks on the door,” Congreve concluded.
“That’s just the way I saw it,” Witherspoon said. “His father, he died with his back to that door. Wasn’t any way anybody was going to get through him to that child.”
“How do you know that?” Ross asked.
“If you look closely at the photo of the bulkhead wall where the door was, you’ll see two deep holes on either side of the door. Those holes match the two knife wounds that penetrated the victim’s hands.”
“He was nailed to the wall?”
“He was crucified. As I said, the photographs reveal the name of the man responsible for the murders,” Witherspoon said.
“The method of killing then?” Congreve asked.
“Yes. You see, that kind of mutilation—the throat slit with the tongue drawn out through the opening and left hanging on the chest, for instance—”
“The infamous ‘Colombian necktie,’” Ross said, and Witherspoon nodded at him.
“We had a reign of terror down here, early in the seventies and into the eighties,” Witherspoon said. “Anti-British feelings in the islands. Then, anti-American. It was also the beginning of narco-terrorism. Everywhere in these islands were the narco-traffickers and sicarios, or the assassins. Most learned their trade at the foot of a vicious Colombian drug king we called el doctor.”
“And that’s the man you think is responsible for the Hawke murders?” Congreve asked.
“Yes, sir. I’m sure of it. Whoever killed Alex’s parents, he worked directly for a man named Pablo Escobar.”
“Escobar is dead, as you know, Chief,” Ross said to Congreve. “Tracked down and assassinated in Medellín in 1989 by a team of Colombian special forces. No one will admit it, of course, but there were Americans involved, Delta Force black ops.”
“So the murderers are Colombian,” Congreve said.
“No,” Witherspoon said, “I think they were Cuban.”
“Please explain,” Ross said.
“Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage. I think the killings occurred in the Exumas. That’s where Seahawke was last seen, moored in a little cove near Staniel Cay.”
Sutherland and Congreve looked at each other but said nothing.
“But the style of the thing, it was pure Colombian. So, I went down there to Staniel Cay myself,” Witherspoon said, “on a tip from a friend of mine, a young policeman down there by the name of Bajun. He said there had been three Cuban boys, brothers, who’d been working odd jobs in the Exumas. Bartenders, paid hands, fishermen, you know.”
“Yes, go on, please,” Congreve said, plainly excited.
“They attracted Bajun’s attention, he told me, because they all wore expensive gold jewelry. Colombian jewelry. He thought they were narcos killing time between drug drops, and he had his eye on them.”
“So. Not Escobar himself. But three Cubans who might have been working for him at the time,” Ross said, mulling it over. “Entirely plausible.”
“That was our thinking, me and Bajun. We dusted the murder scene for prints but our techniques were pretty primitive back then. We did find three sets of footprints, in addition to the victims’. All had bare feet. So, there were three murderers. And the three Cubans disappeared the same night that the yacht did. Never seen again.”
“What happened then?” Congreve asked, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. A chill of excitement had made him forget all about the tropic heat.
“Nobody paid me no mind. I didn’t have too much credibility at that time. And we had a backlog of cases two miles long. So I went out on my own. I tried the Americans first. The CIA station chief here at the time was an acquaintance of my father’s. His name was Benjamin Hill.
“Now, Ben knew that I knew the CIA and the U.S. Army were all over Colombia. It was the worst-kept secret down here. They had the Medellín cartel under daily surveillance. But, of course, Ben couldn’t admit to anything, even though he wanted to help. Officially, the Americans were not in Colombia, so I hit a stone wall.”
“What did you do then?” asked Ross.
“Simple. I emptied my savings account and borrowed some money from my father. Then I went down to Colombia,” Witherspoon said. “I had a good description of the three brothers from Bajun. And a warrant based on the evidence we had gathered in Staniel Cay. I poked around a little. ’Bout a week. People smile in your face, shake they heads. Got nowhere. Finally, I met with the chief of police in Medellín. I showed him the police sketches I’d had done of the suspects.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Congreve said, his words tinged with excitement. “You still have those sketches?”
“Of course. Anyway, I got nowhere with that damn man. It was clear the chief down there was, like most everybody in those days, in Escobar’s pocket.”
“May I see those sketches?” Ambrose asked.
“You can have them,” Witherspoon said, taking the tattered sheaves from his folder and handing them over.
“And that was the end of it, then?” asked Congreve, studying the rough caricatures.
“Not exactly,” Witherspoon said. He stood up from his chair and gazed up into the sun-dappled branches of the Calusa tree, the empty flap of his sleeve floating in the breeze.
“That last night in Colombia after I met with the chief of police,” he said, continuing to gaze upwards, “an automobile packed with one hundred kilos of dynamite exploded right outside my hotel. The entire front of the building collapsed into the street. Six people were killed. There was a young mother and her two infant children, just entering the hotel when the bomb—all I lost was my right arm.”
“It was not your fault, Mr. Witherspoon,” Congreve said to the old man, putting a hand on his bony shoulder.
“It wasn’t?” Witherspoon said.
30
“Welcome home, m’lord,” Pelham said, swinging open the wide mahogany door at the entrance of Hawke’s new Georgetown home. He’d heard the familiar roar of Hawke’s motorcycle outside and made his way across the black-and-white checked floor of the foyer.
Hawke shut down the motorcycle and reluctantly climbed off. He loved firing up the old Norton Commando and was glad of any excuse to use it. After leaving Vicky’s office the previous afternoon, he’d had only an hour or so in his new home. In the splendor of his cerulean blue bedroom, he’d had just time enough to call his decorator Le Coney in New York, thank her for the splendid job, then hop into a shower, a dinner jacket, and then out to the garage and onto his Norton for the short sprint around to the Georgetown Club.
“Hullo, Pelham, old thing,” Hawke said, mounting the stone steps and smiling at his butler. “Glad to see you’re still among the living this morning.”
“As Alfred Lord Tennyson put it so succinctly in his poem ‘The Brook,’ I go on forever, m’lord,” the aged butler said, with a slight bow.
Pelham Grenville had to be nearly a hundred years old. He still had a good head of thick white hair, an imperious nose, and twinkling blue eyes. He wore spotless white gloves, a cutaway jacket, striped trousers, and a stiff white tie at his throat every day of his life.