A Woman Involved. John Davis Gordon
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man hung from the ironwork of Blackfriars Bridge, his arms limp by his side, the rope gouging into his neck. He was podgy and smallish, with a bristling black moustache and black, thinning hair. His eyes were bulging, and he was very dead. The police hauled him up, and when they searched through his well-cut suit, they found ten kilos of bricks in his pockets, and over fifteen thousand dollars in cash.
His name was Roberto Calvi. He had a forged passport, and he had recently been convicted of serious currency offences in Italy. He was the president of Banco Ambrosiana, financial adviser to the Vatican Bank, and he was called ‘God’s Banker’.
Grenada, Caribbean, October 1983
There were still some pockets of resistance in the jungled mountains, but the island was quiet for the first time since the war began. There was a curfew.
On the runway, an aeroplane stood ready to fly the bodies of soldiers back to America for burial. In the mortuary the coffins stood in rows, labelled, ready to go. In the dispensary, Medical Corporal Smythe was drinking Coca-Cola and surgical alcohol. His portable radio was on, but he was drunk and hardly interested in it; but then he heard something that made him pay attention:
‘It has been officially announced by the Pentagon that the number of American servicemen killed in the recent invasion of Grenada is only eighteen. Their bodies are being flown home from Grenada tonight … ’
Corporal Smythe wondered if he had heard right.
Eighteen? … But he knew there were only seventeen! He had laid the poor bastards out.
Corporal Smythe felt a flash of self-importance. He was in the news – they were talking about his job! … Millions of people across the world were being misinformed, and only he knew the Pentagon was wrong! He wanted to tell people. And he couldn’t. Then frustration turned to indignation – the goddam Pentagon had made a boo-boo …
Corporal Smythe sat there, then he got up aggressively. He opened the dispensary door, and started down the corridor.
He came to the mortuary door, and unlocked it.
There were the coffins, in three silent rows. Corporal Smythe pointed at the first one, and started to count.
He had only counted half when he realized that the radio had been right: there were six coffins in each row!
He stared. He counted again. Six times three makes eighteen …
Corporal Smythe stood there, astonished. Where had the other one come from?
He walked indignantly to the first coffin. He peered at the typewritten details fixed onto the lid.
He went down the row, reading each label. He remembered each name. Halfway down the second row he stopped.
This label he certainly did not remember … This label he was absolutely sure he had not typed!
Name: Steven M. Jackson
Sergeant, Delta Force …
Corporal Smythe was astonished.
Who had put another body in his mortuary without telling him?
If he had not been drinking surgical alcohol, perhaps Corporal Smythe might not have been so indignant; perhaps, but for the surgical alcohol, he might not have found it extraordinary that at the end of a war, in the middle of the night, another body was found and encoffined without anybody waking him to tell him; perhaps, but for the surgical alcohol, he might not have been so aggressively disappointed to find out that he was not in the news after all; but Corporal Smythe began to unscrew the coffin lid.
He stared down into the open coffin.
There was no corpse in the coffin. No Sergeant Jackson. Only sea sand.
The sun shone bright and the sea was like glass.
A launch lay at anchor near a coral reef off the Caribbean island of Grenada. A man sat on the after deck, in swimming trunks, drinking a bottle of beer. Near him lay an airtank, goggles and flippers. His name was Max Hapsburg, and he was half German with big blue eyes that were very intelligent, but his dark good looks came from his Greek mother. He was about thirty-eight, and he was known to most big bankers of the world.
He was alone on his boat at the moment. His guests and his wife were somewhere along the reef, under the water.
Anna Hapsburg did not know where the others were. She had not seen them for almost half an hour.
She swam slowly along the magnificent coral reef, fifteen feet below the surface. The sunshine shafted down onto the multitude of beautiful shapes, onto growths and flowers and animals all the colours of the rainbow: the kaleidoscope rambled, rugged and smooth, sparkling and dark, with bays and grottos, going on and on, fading into mistiness. Anna loved the reefs. She swam slowly in her underwater wonder-world, her long golden legs gently flipping, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her.
When she was about two hundred yards fhe was halfway out of throm the boat, she saw the sharks.
There were two. They were indistinct, to her right, on the surface. Her heart missed a beat and her stomach contracted; she stared at them a terrified, heart-pounding moment, then she frantically turned for the boat.
She swam desperately, resisting her screaming instinct to thrash her legs. She swam and she swam, her heart knocking, her eyes wide: she glanced back frantically, and she could not see them any more, and that was worse: she swam and swam and swam for what seemed an eternity; then she saw the keel of the launch ahead, and it seemed the sweetest sight she had ever seen. She looked back desperately over her shoulder again; then the keel was coming up, the swimming ladder gleaming. She rose, arms upstretched, and she grabbed the ladder and broke surface and she began to scramble up. She spat out the mouthpiece and gasped: ‘Sharks …’
Max got to his feet. ‘Where?’
She pointed behind her. Max saw the fins on the surface. He snapped: ‘Have you warned the others?’
She was halfway out of the water
‘No …’
‘Go and warn them! I’ll follow.’ He snatched up his flippers.
She stared at him, horrified, her hair plastered to her head. But oh God yes of course they had to warn the others … She clung to the ladder a terrified moment more, then she crossed herself and rammed the airhose back into her mouth, and she sank, with dread, back into the water.
She swam back the way she had come. And her fear was the purest she had ever known.
She did not see the sharks on the way back. Within two hundred yards she saw Bill and Janet Nicols. She signalled to them desperately, Shark … She turned back towards the boat.
The keel came into view again. They swam and they swam, hearts pounding. Anna made for the swimming ladder and grabbed it, and heaved. She scrambled up onto the sun-beaten deck. Janet came up the ladder frantically behind her. Anna grabbed her hand and heaved her onto the deck. Bill came scrambling up after her.
‘Where’s Max?’ Anna swept her eyes over the sea.
‘Here I am …’
Anna spun around. Max Hapsburg was coming out of the saloon, a grin all over his handsome face. ‘Anyone for tennis?’
She looked at him incredulously, and he burst out laughing.
‘They were dolphins! Dolphins … ’
She was absolutely shocked.
Max laughed, ‘You should have seen the