“Who’s he?” asked Bourne, looking at the man on his left. “A doctor,” answered Marie’s brother. “He’s staying at the inn and he’s a friend of mine. I was a patient of his in—”
“I think we should be circumspect here,” interrupted the Canadian doctor firmly. “You asked for my help and my confidence, John, and I give both gladly, but considering the nature of the events and the fact that your brother-in-law won’t be under my professional care, let’s dispense with my name.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Doctor,” added Jason, wincing, then suddenly snapping his head up, his eyes wide in an admixture of pleading and panic. “Ishmael! He’s dead—I killed him!”
“He isn’t and you didn’t,” said St. Jacques calmly. “He’s a goddamned mess but he’s not dead. He’s one tough kid, like his father, and he’ll make it. We’re flying him to the hospital in Martinique.”
“Christ, he was a corpse!”
“He was savagely beaten,” explained the doctor. “Both arms were broken, along with multiple lacerations, contusions, I suspect internal injuries and a severe concussion. However, as John accurately described the young man, he’s one tough kid.”
“I want the best for him.”
“Those were my orders.”
“Good.” Bourne moved his eyes to the doctor. “How damaged am I?”
“Without X rays or seeing how you move—symptomatically, as it were—I can only give you a cursory judgment.”
“Do that.”
“Outside of the wound, I’d say primarily traumatic shock.”
“Forget it. That’s not allowed.”
“Who says?” said the doctor, smiling kindly.
“I do and I’m not trying to be funny. The body, not the head. I’ll be the judge of the head.”
“Is he a native?” asked the doctor, looking at the owner of Tranquility Inn. “A white but older Ishmael? I’ll tell you he’s not a physician.”
“Answer him, please.”
“All right. The bullet passed through the left side of your neck, missing by millimeters several vital spots that would certainly have rendered you voiceless and probably dead. I’ve bathed the wound and sutured it. You’ll have difficulty moving your head for a while, but that’s only a superficial opinion of the damage.”
“In short words, I’ve got a very stiff neck, but if I can walk … well, I can walk.”
“In shorter words, that’s about it.”
“It was the flare that did it, after all,” said Jason softly, carefully moving his neck back over the pillow. “It blinded him just enough.”
“What?” St. Jacques leaned over the bed.
“Never mind. … Let’s see how well I walk—symptomatically, that is.” Bourne slid off the bed, swinging his legs cautiously to the floor, shaking his head at his brother-in-law, who started to help him. “No thanks, Bro. This has got to be me on me.” He stood up, the inhibiting bandage around his throat progressively becoming more uncomfortable. He stepped forward, pained by the bruises on his thighs, but they were bruises—they were minor. A hot bath would reduce the pain, and medication, extra-strength aspirin and liniment, would permit more normal mobility. It was the goddamned dressing around his neck; it not only choked him but forced him to move his shoulders in order to look in any direction. … Still, he considered, he was far less incapacitated than he might have been—for a man of his age. Damn. “Can we loosen this necklace, Doctor? It’s strangling me.”
“A bit, not much. You don’t want to risk rupturing those sutures.”
“What about an Ace bandage? It gives.”
“Too much for a neck wound. You’d forget about it.”
“I promise not to.”
“You’re very amusing.”
“I don’t feel remotely amusing.”
“It’s your neck.”
“It certainly is. Can you get one, Johnny?”
“Doctor?” St. Jacques looked at the physician.
“I don’t think we can stop him.”
“I’ll send someone to the pro shop.”
“Excuse me, Doctor,” said Bourne as Marie’s brother went to the telephone. “I want to ask Johnny a few questions and I’m not sure you want to hear them.”
“I’ve heard more than I care to already. I’ll wait in the other room.” The doctor crossed to the door and let himself out.
While St. Jacques talked on the phone, Jason moved about the room raising and lowering his arms and shaking his hands to check the functioning of his motor controls. He crouched, then rose to his feet four times in succession, each movement faster than the previous one. He had to be ready—he had to be!
“It’ll only be a few minutes,” said the brother-in-law, hanging up the phone. “Pritchard will have to go down and open the shop. He’ll bring different sizes of tape.”
“Thanks.” Bourne stopped moving and stood in place. “Who was the man I shot, Johnny? He fell through the curtains in that archway, but I couldn’t see his face.”
“No one I know, and I thought I knew every white man in these islands who could afford an expensive suit. He must have been a tourist—a tourist on assignment … for the Jackal. Naturally, there wasn’t any identification. Henry’s shipped him off to ’Serrat.”
“How many here know what’s going on?”
“Outside of the staff, there are only fourteen guests, and no one’s got a clue. I’ve sealed off the chapel—the word is storm damage. And even those who have to know something—like the doctor and the two guys from Toronto—they don’t know the whole story, just pieces, and they’re friends. I trust them. The others are heavy into island rum.”
“What about the gunshots at the chapel?”
“What about the loudest and lousiest steel band in the islands? Also, you were a thousand feet away in the woods. … Look, David, most everyone’s left but some diehards who wouldn’t stay here if they weren’t old Canadian buddies showing me loyalty, and a few casuals who’d probably take a vacation in Teheran. What can I tell you except that the bar is doing a hell of a business.”
“It’s like a mystifying charade,” murmured Bourne, again carefully arching his neck and staring at the ceiling. “Figures in silhouette playing out disconnected, violent events behind white screens, nothing really making sense, everything’s whatever you want it to be.”
“That’s a little much for me, Professor. What’s your point?”
“Terrorists aren’t born, Johnny, they’re made, schooled in a curriculum you won’t find in any academic catalog. Leaving aside the reasons why they are what they are—which can range from a justifiable cause to the psychopathic megalomania of a Jackal—you keep the charades going because they’re playing out their own.”
“So?” St. Jacques frowned in bewilderment.
“So you control your players, telling them what to act out but not why.”
“That’s what we’re doing here and that’s what Henry’s doing out on the water all around Tranquility.”
“Is he? Are we?”
“Hell, yes.”
“I thought I was too, but I was wrong. I overestimated a big clever kid doing a simple, harmless job and underestimated a humble, frightened priest who took thirty pieces of silver.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ishmael and Brother Samuel. Samuel must have witnessed the torture of a child through the eyes of Torquemada.”
“Turkey who?”
“The point is we don’t really know the players. The guards, for instance, the ones you brought to the chapel—”
“I’m not a fool, David,” protested St. Jacques, interrupting. “When you called for us to surround the place, I took a small liberty and chose two men, the only two I would choose, figuring a pair of Uzis made up for the absence of one man and the four points of the compass. They’re my head boys and former Royal Commandos; they’re in charge of all the security here and, like Henry, I trust them.”
“Henry? He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
“He’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s the best in the islands.”
“And the Crown governor?”
“He’s just an ass.”
“Does Henry know that?”
“Sure, he does. He didn’t get to be a brigadier on his looks, potbelly and all. He’s not only a good soldier, he’s a good administrator. He covers for a lot around here.”
“And you’re certain he hasn’t been in touch with the CG.”
“He told me he’d let me know before he reached the pompous idiot and I believe him.”
“I sincerely hope you’re right—because that pompous idiot is the Jackal’s contact in Montserrat.”
“What? I don’t believe it!”
“Believe. It’s confirmed.”
“It’s incredible!”
“No, it’s not. It’s the way of the Jackal. He finds vulnerability and he recruits it, buys it. There are very few in the gray areas beyond his ability to purchase them.”
Stunned, St. Jacques wandered aimlessly to the balcony doors coming to terms with the unbelievable. “I suppose it answers a question a lot of us have asked ourselves. The governor’s old-line landed gentry with a brother high up in the Foreign Office who’s close to the prime minister. Why at his age was he sent out here, or, maybe more to the point, why did he accept it? You’d think he’d settle for nothing less than Bermuda or the British Virgins. Plymouth can be a stepping-stone, not a final post.”