“Indeed.”
“I warned her against a precipitate marriage, but the young can be very headstrong.” Kassouli paused, and I noted this first betrayal of a crack in the perfect image he had presented of his daughter. He looked hard at me. “What do you think of Bannister?”
“I really don’t know him well.”
“He is a weak man, a despicable man, Captain. I take no pleasure in thus describing one of your countrymen, but it is true. He was unfaithful to my daughter, he made her unhappy, and yet she persisted in offering him the love and loyalty which one would have expected from a girl of her sweet disposition.”
There was confusion here. A sweet girl? But headstrong and wilful too? There was no time to pursue the confusion, even if I had wanted to, for Kassouli turned on me with a direct challenge. “Do you believe my daughter was murdered, Captain Sandman?” I sensed Jill-Beth and the crippled son waiting expectantly for my answer. I knew what answer they wanted, but I was wedded to the truth and the truth was all I would offer. “I don’t know how Nadeznha died.”
The truth was not enough. I saw Yassir Kassouli’s right hand clenching in spasms and I wondered if I had angered him. The son made a hissing noise and Jill-Beth stiffened. I was among believers, and I had dared to express disbelief.
Yet if Kassouli was angry, his voice did not betray it. “I only have two children, Captain Sandman. My son you see, my daughter you will never see.”
The grief was suddenly palpable. I hurt for this man, but I could not offer him what he wanted—agreement that his beloved daughter had been murdered. Perhaps she had been, but there was no proof.
I was prepared to admit that it was unlikely that Nadeznha Bannister had been unharnessed in a stiff sea, I could even say that it was possible she had been pushed overboard, but such lukewarm support was of no use to Yassir Kassouli. I was in the presence of an enormous grief; the grief of a man who could buy half the world, but could not control the death of a child he had loved.
“It was murder,” Kassouli said to me now, “but it was the perfect murder. That means it cannot be proved.”
I opened my mouth to speak, found I had nothing to say, so closed it again.
“But just because a murder is perfect,” Kassouli said, “does not mean that it should go unavenged.”
I needed to move, for the sofa’s rich comfort and the man’s heavy gaze were becoming oppressive. I stood and limped to the room’s far end where I pretended to stare at a model of a supertanker. She was called the Kerak. It struck me, as I stared at the striking kestrel on her single smokestack, that despite Kassouli’s Mediterranean birth he had one very American trait; he believed in perfection. The Mayflower had brought that belief in her baggage, and the dream had never been lost. To Americans Utopia is always possible; it will only take a little more effort and a little more goodwill. But a large part of Yassir Kassouli’s dream had died in the North Atlantic, in nearly two thousand fathoms of cold water. I turned. “You need proof,” I said firmly.
He shook his head. “I need your help, Captain. Why else do you think I brought you here?”
“I—”
He cut me off. “Bannister has asked you to navigate for him?”
“I’ve refused him.”
Kassouli ignored the words. “I will pay you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Captain Sandman, if, on the return leg of the St Pierre, you navigate the Wildtrack on a course that I will provide you.”
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The sum hung in the air like a monstrous temptation. It spelt freedom from everything; it would give Sycorax and me the chance to sail till the seas ran dry.
Kassouli mistook my hesitation. “I do assure you, Captain, that your life, and the lives of the Wildtrack’s crew, will be entirely safe.” I did not doubt it, but I noted how one man’s name was excepted from that promise of mercy; Bannister’s. I’d known Kassouli was Bannister’s enemy, now I saw that the American would not be content until his enemy was utterly and totally destroyed. Something primeval, almost tribal, was at work here. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, and now a life for a life.
I still had not answered. Kassouli picked up the framed photograph and turned it so I could stare into the dead girl’s face. “Can you imagine the pure terror of her last moments, Captain?” He paused, though no answer was needed, then he sighed. “Now Nadeznha is among the caballi.”
He had said the word very softly. I waited for an explanation, but none came. “The caballi? ” I prompted him.
“The souls of the young dead, the untimely dead.” Kassouli’s voice was very matter of fact, almost casual. “They roam the world, Captain, seeking the consolation of justice. Who, but their families, can provide such solace?”
I said nothing. My father had often told me that the very rich, having conquered this world, set out to conquer the next, which was why spiritualist frauds so often found patrons among practical men and women whose dour talents had made vast fortunes. Kassouli, having failed to convince me with the science of meteorology and oceanography, had retreated to the claptrap of the ghost world.
But neither ghosts, nor weather charts, nor even two hundred and fifty thousand dollars could make me accept. I needed the money, God knows how Sycorax and I needed the money, but there was an old-fashioned dream, as old as the dream that was carried in the Mayflower, and it was called honour. There was no proof that Bannister had done murder, and till that proof was found there could be no punishment. I shook my head. “I’m not your man, sir. I’ve already told Bannister I’m not sailing with him.”
“But that decision could be reversed?”
I shrugged. “It won’t be.”
He half smiled, as though he had expected the refusal, then carefully replaced the silver-framed family portrait. “You are a patriot, Captain?”
The question surprised me. “Yes, sir.”
“Then you should know that I have given myself one year to avenge my daughter’s death. So far, Captain, I have tried to achieve that satisfaction through conventional means. I pleaded with your government to re-open the inquest, I went on my knees to them!
They have refused. Very well. What your government will not do, I will do. But I need the help of one Englishman, and that is you.
Miss Kirov assures me you are a brave and resourceful young man.” I looked at Jill-Beth, but she gave no sign of recognition. “But you have no proof,” I protested to the father.
Kassouli was long past that argument. “If no Englishman will help me, Captain, then I will wash my hands of your country. I don’t flatter myself that I can bring Great Britain to its knees, as I went on my knees to Great Britain, but I will withdraw all my investments out of your country and I will use my influence, which is not negligible, to deter others from investing in your economy.
Do you understand me?”
I understood him. It was blackmail on an enormous scale; so enormous that it defied belief. My face must have reflected that incredulity, for Kassouli raised his voice. “Every cent of every investment I have in Britain will be withdrawn. I will become an enemy of your country, Captain Sandman. Whenever it will be in my power to do it harm, that harm will be done. And when I die, I will charge my son to continue the enmity.”
Charles Kassouli, under the thrall of his father’s powerful voice, nodded.