“I wish you would say something,” Francesini muttered. “You’re not being much help to yourself. You came to us but you won’t say why. The doctor says you could be ok, but you need something to give you hope.” It was a lie and it rolled glibly of his tongue.
The man’s eye moved and he turned his face a little. Francesini was encouraged.
“If you have a family, we can let them know. We can bring them here for you.” He leaned forward, getting closer. “It doesn’t matter where they are; we can get them.”
The man’s lips moved as he tried to form a word. Francesini watched closely as the blistered lips trembled, the blood from the sores on his mouth was still wet. Suddenly the man’s hand reached out and grabbed Francesini’s wrist and a word tumbled out. His voice was faint and cracked. It was virtually hopeless. Francesini shook his head knowing he could do nothing for him unless he knew more.
The strength in the man’s grip ebbed away and he relaxed. Francesini took hold of his hand and held it.
“How did you get the burns?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “What are they doing? What are they up to?” Francesini didn’t even know who ‘they’ were!
The frustration threatened to tip the quiet calm into boiling emotion. He wanted to wring the truth from the man and bully him into answering his questions. But he never did; he just sat there and talked softly.
He left the room after twenty minutes, discarding his protective clothing in a bin that was outside the door. He called at the reception desk to tell them that the dying man was asleep, and would they inform the doctor that he was leaving.
It was a bright, uplifting day outside the hospital and the warm sun on his face gave Francesini a reason to feel a little better as he stepped out into the sunshine. He took a cigar from his pocket. He lit the cigar and drew in a lungful of smoke.
“Taliban,” he muttered to himself. Was that the word the dying man had been trying to say, Taliban? Muslim fanatics who used to hold the reins of power in Afghanistan?
“I thought we had thrown them out,” he muttered to himself.
Then he shook his head, blew the cigar smoke out leisurely and wondered what Admiral Starling would have to say.
Marsh shivered. He felt cold, but that didn’t concern him too much; it was a warm night and the chill would soon pass. He thought about his own situation and what he could do and how he could get out of it. The irony of it did not escape him; he made his living getting wet and avoiding death. This time he wasn’t enjoying it, neither was he getting paid!
The self-indulgence passed and despair crowded in, swarming over him as he recalled the terrifying moments surrounding Walsh’s death. It was the nature of it and the following circumstances that horrified him. He wondered if he would ever get home to Freeport in the Bahamas where they lived to report everything to the police. He thought too of Helen, Walsh’s widow, and how he would tell her. In fact, what he would tell her.
Marsh had been a partner in their underwater survey business with Walsh and his widow, Helen for a good number of years. They owned a boatyard in Freeport and also their own, underwater survey vessel. Although business had been good over the years they still struggled to pay off their short term loans and the mortgage on the yard and the submersible.
He had seen the Taliba, the ship now alongside the freighter, in Freeport. It was shortly before Greg Walsh had agreed to work on a relatively short commission for its owner, Hakeem Khan.
Khan was a wealthy oceanographer and explorer. He was well known among oceanographers the world over. And he was well respected. Walsh had worked on that commission for a few months, but it had not involved Marsh or Helen. Marsh could never figure out why Walsh had excluded him. It hadn’t been a contentious issue really and in fact had given Marsh an opportunity to spend some free time on his own in Europe, taking in the old capital cities and doing some ski-ing and getting in après ski in the best traditions of a bachelor.
Shortly after completing the commission, Walsh had begun to act strangely and a little secretively. Marsh hadn’t realised it at first, but slowly it had generated some friction between himself and Walsh. It never reached the extent where they had fallen out over it, but it was a little difficult for Marsh and Helen to understand. Helen had tried to question her husband several times but had never been able to get anything from him.
But whatever it was that was troubling Walsh, it always seemed to go back to the work he had completed for Hakeem Khan. And Marsh was now rapidly piecing together some seemingly irrelevant parts of a jigsaw that worried him.
But the most important thing on Marsh’s mind at that moment was how to secure his own safety in what was now an extremely dangerous position.
His mind went back to the smaller of the two vessels, the Taliba. It was an Arabic word meaning ‘seeker of knowledge’. It had been operating in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of years now. Walsh told him it was operating on an oil exploration licence.
He looked up at the colossus that was the freighter, then at the Taliba. Of the two ships, he knew that the smaller craft was his only hope.
He had swum to the stern end of the Taliba and had been there for some minutes going through the useless exercise of trying to figure out exactly what the ship was doing there in the first place. He cursed himself and brought his mind back to how he was going to make best use of the opportunity that had presented itself.
Marsh knew that clambering aboard the boat would not be difficult because the crew of the Taliba all had their attention focussed on the freighter and what was apparently the preparation to transfer cargo. It was only Marsh’s weakened state that might jeopardise his attempt to climb up on to the aft deck of the Taliba.
He kicked with his legs, ignoring the pain from the bullet wound and reached up for the diving platform which had been hoisted into its stowage position. His fingers touched the framework and he grabbed and held on. Then he slowly pulled himself clear of the water. He felt a little rush of adrenalin and a sense of euphoria swept over him on this initial success, but he knew his chances of survival were still slim. He had to be careful.
Once he was on the aft deck, he lay prone and remained perfectly still. He lay like that for several minutes and allowed his pulse rate to settle, taking advantage of the brief respite he had been given.
As he lay there, Marsh could hear rather than see, the work going on at the forward end of the Taliba. It was also clear that the hatch covers were being hoisted clear on the forward deck of the freighter. Although neither ship was carrying lights, which of course was illegal, Marsh could see the flicker of torchlight on the deck of the freighter and could just about make out silhouettes of men on the wings of both ships. He could hear the gentle motion of the screws as both ships kept station.
Suddenly the winch motor on the freighter burst into life and within moments a large crate appeared as it was swung from the hatch of the freighter to the forward deck of the Taliba.
A breeze suddenly sprung up and ran like a lizard across his back. He shivered and began to cast around for somewhere to conceal himself. He needed to do it quickly while both crews were engaged in the transfer of whatever cargo it was. And the noise of the transfer was loud enough to mask any noise that Marsh made while he cast around looking for a bolt hole.
And before he went looking for that bolt hole, Marsh thought about Hakeem Khan again. Khan was a respected member of that breed of oceanographers who work in the oceans of the world, and who were never happier than when they were doing just that.