The Windsor Protocol Read online

  “And has the Duke been warned of this plot?”

  Conroy managed to keep a straight face.

  “Oh, he knows something about it.”

  “And your plan is simply to go ashore at Nassau and keep a watch on any strangers coming into the islands?”

  “That’s about the size of it as it stands at the moment.” Adams shook his head again and began to chuckle softly.

  “What’s so amusing?” inquired Conroy.

  “Nothing, except that the Bahamas consists of seven hundred islands and cays, a territory covering over five thousand square miles. Not the easiest of territories for one man to keep a check on.”

  “But surely only a few of the islands are inhabited?” Conroy asked, annoyed that Adams was taking him for some kind of amateur.

  “Twenty-two, to be precise, mister.”

  “With two-fifths of the population in New Providence where Government House is situated,” Conroy pointed out. “And if anything is going to be done, it has to be done in the vicinity of Government House.”

  “Okay, Conroy. Okay. We’ll take it as it comes. But if our visitors with the sugar bag are involved in this, then I think we have plenty to worry about.”

  It was five hours before Jessie clambered into the saloon and threw herself into a seat. Oil smudged her features. She looked exhausted.

  “I need a drink, Harry,” she said.

  Conroy waited anxiously while Jessie took the bottle of beer which Adams handed her and took a long pull from it. Then she sighed.

  “So far as I can tell, we must have surprised them before they had time to dump the sugar in the gas tank. Everything seems clear. But I’m pooped.”

  Adams nodded.

  “You did okay, Jess. We’ll just have to wait up until the morning tide and then get away early. Best get your head down. You’ve done enough.”

  The girl looked troubled.

  “What they’ve done once they might try a second time, Harry,” she warned.

  “We’ll take turns at watch tonight. Conroy can take the first watch, I’ll take the middle and you can do the early morning one, Jess. We can sail about five o’clock.”

  Conroy was not reassured.

  “If it is the opposition, then these people play a little rough, skipper,” he warned.

  “Yeah? Well, so can we.”

  Adams reached over and pulled at something near a piece of panelling above his head. The wooden panel sprung open and he reached inside.

  “Know how to use this, Conroy?” he asked, laying an object on the table.

  Conroy glanced down. He picked up the metal object and turned it over in his hands before replacing it on the table.

  “Smith and Wesson Model Thirty-Nine, double action, semi-automatic pistol. I prefer the Steyr Austrian automatic so far as automatics go but I can use it.”

  Adams smiled thinly.

  “Good, because apart from a semi-automatic rifle, I only have a couple of these on board.” He glanced at his watch and stood up. “Call me at midnight.”

  Jessie turned towards the heads.

  “Me for a shower first,” she said languidly.

  Conroy picked up the Smith and Wesson and a clip of ammunition and tucked them into his jacket before climbing into the cockpit.

  “Midnight,” echoed Adams’ voice behind him.

  “Fine by me,” he replied as he settled himself in the cockpit for his watch.

  Conroy became aware of a rhythmic rising and falling and the faint slap, slap, slap of water. He raised his head from the pillow and felt the gentle motion of the cabin. Sunlight streamed through the portholes. He paused a moment to accustom himself to the new motion and swung himself from the bunk. There was no one else in the cabin.

  He went forward to wash before putting on his clothes. A glance through the porthole showed no sign of land and the sun seemed high in the sky. It must be late. He glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock. If they had slipped their moorings at five o’clock, as Adams had suggested, then they had been at sea for three hours and he had not felt a thing. Indeed, everything was a blank since just after midnight when he had called Adams to take over the watch. After that he had collapsed into a bunk and drowned in fatigue.

  Jessie was in the galley. She smiled a greeting as he entered.

  “I heard you stirring, Mister Conroy. Thought you would like fresh coffee. I guess you could use a couple of eggs.”

  “Thanks,” grunted Conroy. His mouth felt dry. “And my first name is Jimmy.”

  “Okay, Jimmy. Come and sit down. Coffee’s on the table.”

  He passed through into the saloon. Sliding into a seat, he reached for the coffee pot and poured the steaming black liquid into a cup. Conroy sipped slowly at his coffee. It was scalding. He grimaced and set it down to cool.

  Moments later Jessie was placing a plate with two eggs and some bread on the table before him.

  She moved into the seat opposite him, reaching for a packet of Chesterfields on the table and lighting one.

  “You were dead to. the world,” she observed. “I guess you didn’t even hear us slip away this morning.”

  Conroy grunted through a mouthful of egg and swallowed.

  “I still had some catching up to do with my sleep. It was a long journey here…” He paused and grinned. “Or rather to Miami, as I’m not sure where here is.”

  “Straits of Florida. We are heading due east towards the Bimini Islands. We’ll soon be out of US territorial waters.”

  “Bimini Islands?”

  “Part of the Bahamas about sixty miles off the Florida coast. We’ll come in between South Bimini and North Cat Cay.”

  “Are the islands populated?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “There’s a few people on North Bimini. Not many. The islands are mainly deserted. That’s why Harry is heading that way. They are out of the way of the main routes. In the old days, Juan Ponce de Leon, the conqueror of Puerto Rico, spent years trying to find them because the Caribs used to tell the story that the islands contained a miraculous ‘Fountain of Youth’. Even today some of the older folks on the islands, when they fall sick, will make the journey to South Bimini because they claim the waters there can heal them.”

  Conroy tucked into his eggs.

  “I didn’t think there were any Caribs left?” he commented.

  Jessie nodded her head in agreement.

  “Not one. The Spanish, Portuguese, French and the English all helped to destroy them. One time some forty thousands were rounded up and transported to work in the mines of Hispaniola when Ovando was governor. He persuaded them to go on board his ships on the pretext that they were being taken to visit their dead relatives.”

  Conroy stared at her wondering whether she was pulling his leg.

  The girl saw his look of doubt and warmed to her theme.

  “The Caribs believed that when people died they simply all went, by mysterious means, to another island to the south. It was easy for Ovando to pretend that his big ships were able to make the journey to the land of the dead. No Carib that went on the journey ever came back. The native populations of the islands were all gone by the middle of the last century.”

  “Jess! Conroy!”

  From the deck above they heard Adams suddenly shout in alarm. Jess went scurrying up the companion-way into the cockpit with Conroy at her heels.

  “What is it?” cried the girl, her attitude now one of total alertness.

  “On the starboard bow, coming up fast. It’s a US Coastguard cutter.”

  Conroy saw the white water streaming from the bows of the approaching vessel, saw the “Stars and Stripes” cracking at the jackstaff.

  “Jess, make sure the pistols are stowed safely in case they make a search and bring up the ship’s papers. Conroy, do you have your passport and documents to support that you are an English businessman and taking a vacation here? Can we tell them that you’ve hired this boat for a fishing cruise?”

&
nbsp; Conroy nodded, turning without a word to get the documents from his case. He returned with his UK passport and placed it with the leather wallet Jess had brought up.

  The US Coastguard cutter was very near now.

  “The passport is under my own name,” Conroy explained hurriedly. “James Conroy, representing Baker and Company, agricultural machinery importers of Gloucester. I’ve been in the US for two weeks and am now taking a fishing holiday. I hired your boat yesterday. That’s my cover.”

  “Okay,” grunted Adams as the cutter turned on a parallel course so that it could ease alongside.

  “Why would they be stopping us?” Conroy asked, his eyes scanning the approaching vessel.

  “Plenty of smuggling in these parts. Maybe they are stopping us for no reason except for the hell of it,” Adams commented dryly. “Maybe they were just bored and needed the exercise.”

  “Ahoy, Eleuthera!” came a hail from the cutter. An officer was leaning over the bridge rail with a megaphone. “This is the US coastguard. Please heave to for boarding.”

  Adams, with a sigh, eased back the throttles.

  “Another quarter of a mile and we would have been outside of their jurisdiction.”

  The vessel settled down in the water, the engines idling. With expert precision, the cutter’s helmsman gentled his vessel alongside so that it touched the Eleuthera with little more than a soft nudge. Conroy could see the white-uniformed sailors at the stern, holding Ml carbines at the ready across their chest. On the for’ard and on the stern decks were mounted two heavy-calibre machine-guns, manned and ready.

  A lithe-looking young officer swung himself over the rail with practised ease followed by two sailors wearing sidearms.

  “‘Morning skipper,” greeted the young man. Conroy thought that he could hardly be out of his ‘teens. His cap was set back on his head, showing close cropped fair hair. He had a pleasant boyish smile. He glanced towards the Bermudan flag at the jackstaff. “You’re sailing under a British registration?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Adams nodded.

  “Last port of call?”

  “Miami.”

  The young man carried a clip board and began to make a few notes.

  “Heading?”

  “The Bahamas. Taking Mister Conroy here for a fishing trip. We’re under hire to him.”

  The young officer glanced at Conroy.

  “Nationality?”

  “British,” replied Conroy.

  “Where did you hire this vessel?”

  “In Miami.”

  “How long have you been in the US?”

  “Two weeks.”

  The young man pursed his lips.

  “Okay, skipper. Let’s see your documents and yours, too, Mister Conroy.”

  The coastguard took several minutes examining the ship’s papers and Conroy’s travel documents.

  He suddenly frowned and glanced at Conroy.

  “Where and when did you enter the States, Mister Conroy?”

  Conroy hesitated. Suddenly he knew his error. In changing passports he had forgotten that there was no entry stamp against his visa. Damn! He thought rapidly.

  “About two weeks ago. A Saturday, I think. Er, it was a place on the Canadian border.” Conroy had once been brief on unauthorised crossing points on the Canadian/US border. He tried to dredge up the name of an obscure crossing where the authorities might be more careless. “Cornwall, Ontario.” He vaguely remembered that the crossing lay through a Mohawk Indian reservation whose territory sprawled across the border and where it was difficult to check on people moving from one territory to another. The Mohawks did not need any documents to pass across their reservation.

  The corner of the coastguard’s mouth turned down. He seemed to know the place.

  “I see. Did you present your passport?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “I guess they thought you were a Canuck.”

  The young man caught Conroy’s puzzled expression.

  “A Canadian,” he explained. “They don’t need passports. But you should have had it stamped. Do you plan to re-enter the States? If so, you’d better make sure you have an entry stamp.”

  He swung round abruptly and smiled at Adams.

  “Sorry to hold you up, skipper. You can go ahead.”

  Adams gave an answering grin.

  “Anything wrong, mister?”

  “Smugglers. Keeping us on our toes. Have a good fishing trip.”

  He waved his hand and swung back to the cutter, followed by his men.

  Adams eased the throttles forward and swung the Eleuthera away from the Coastguard vessel.

  “That was a near thing with the passport, Conroy. That guy could have made a deal of trouble.”

  Conroy grimaced awkwardly.

  “Sorry about that.”

  Adams didn’t answer, he was swinging the yacht towards the distant haze of land which was the low coastline of North and South Bimini.

  Conroy stretched luxuriously in the morning sun as the Eleuthera seemed to glide effortlessly over the calm blue waters. There was a sense of unreality about the peaceful brightness of the day, the warming rays of the sun and the plaintive gulls wheeling around the masthead. It was hard to imagine that, on the other side of the ocean, people were locked in deadly combat. Death and destruction was raining down on the airfields of southern England. An army of a quarter of a million soldiers, the elite of the German Wehrmacht, were waiting to cross the English Channel. And here he was sunning himself in the quiet waters of the Bahamas.

  Jess smiled at him as she passed by to the engine room.

  Conroy found the girl very attractive and stirred uneasily. There had been plenty of women in his life, usually short affairs because he never let himself get into a close relationship. Not after Rebecca. Only once had he been “in love”, or what he would deem as that condition and that had been in Germany when he had been studying there in his late twenties. She had been small, dark and vivacious. She was named Rebecca Wolfman and she was Jewish.

  There was no dramatic scene when the relationship came to an end. Just a letter through the post telling Conroy that she could not continue the relationship because of what was happening to her family. Conroy had received the letter on September 22, 1935, a week after Hitler had issued a series of laws which deprived all Jews of the right of German citizenship. Rebecca had written that she intended to work to help alleviate the distress of her people in whatever way she could. Perhaps, one day, when the insanity had stopped, she could think about other, more personal, things.

  It had been on the day that Nazi troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland, March 7, 1936, that Conroy learnt that Rebecca Wolfman had been executed for crimes against the Reich. There had been no further details except that the execution was carried out at a place called Oranienburg, just outside Berlin. It was a special camp which Goring had ordered set up in 1933 and which he had later told foreign newspaper correspondents was a centre for re-educating political malcontents. The news had left Conroy with an emotional coldness and a great hatred for Nazi philosophy.

  He had only once before experienced a similar coldness. He had been thirteen years old and called out of his classroom by the headmaster of the school at which he was a boarder. The headmaster stood ill-at-ease by his desk. In a corner of the room was Conroy’s elderly cousin, Lord Glandore, also still and tight lipped. It was the headmaster who had told him of the death of his parents in a motoring accident. He stood feeling only disbelief while Glandore assured him that he could continue at the school and Glandore would, as executor, look after him. Glandore was true to his word. Conroy continued at boarding school and was farmed out to friends and distant relatives during the vacations. But no one filled the emotional vacuum left by the death of his parents. His childhood became isolated and lonely. His subsequent affairs at university and afterwards had been passionless liaisons with little joy in them.

  That was until he had met Rebecca. />
  To be emotionally deprived twice in a lifetime was too much for him. Since Rebecca’s death he had sheathed himself in steel and dedicated himself to the work for which Grand and Dunnett had recruited him. As an assassin, he had excelled, for he felt little emotion against taking the life of those who personified his great hate. To Conroy, the struggle against Fascism was a simple moral choice. Good versus evil. There were no halfway choices. Fascism was an evil which had to be stamped out as one would destroy a plague of vermin.

  But here he was, warm, comfortable, thousands of miles away from Europe. It seemed curious and, in a strange sort of way, he felt that he was not exactly pulling his weight. Even though he knew that the situation regarding the Windsors was one which could have deadly consequences, he could not bring himself to fully believe that the Germans were so earnest that they would waste time and manpower in such a plot. Nor could he believe that the Duke would seriously consider such a betrayal of his own family as well as his country. It was surely too fanciful?

  “Beer?”

  Adams’ gruff voice brought him out of his reverie.

  “No thanks,” he replied. He found it astonishing how people in this part of the world continually sipped cold beer, no matter the time of day. Then he asked: “Where are we?”

  Adams stretched out a hand.

  “See those black dots off our port side?”

  Conroy squinted across the shimmering ocean vista.

  “Yes. I see them.”

  “Those are North Cat Cay Islands. Our position is due south of the Bimini Islands.”

  A movement caught Conroy’s eye.

  “One of your islands seems to be moving, skipper.”

  Adams followed his gaze. Frowning, he raised a pair of tough Zeiss binoculars and adjusted them.

  “It’s a powerful looking motor cruiser, heading this way.”

  “The coastguards again?”

  “No. We are in Bahamian waters. This is British jurisdiction.”

  “Then perhaps it’s a Royal Naval vessel?”

  “There’s no markings, no flag at the jack…”

  The staccato stuttering of a machine-gun caused Conroy to automatically throw himself down below the rim of the cockpit.