She could not conceal the silent alarm she felt. She looked away from
him, at the light coming through the balcony doors. It was brighter
now, that strange admixture of pastel yellow and hot orange that is
peculiar to the Jamaican dawn.
“You know it concerns you. . .”
“Of course I know it. I knew it last night.” She returned her eyes to
him. “I didn’t want to admit it to myself… but I knew it. It was
all too tidy.”
“Chatellerault,” he said softly. “He’s here.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“He can’t touch you. Believe me.”
“He followed me. Oh my God…”
McAuliff got up and crossed to the bed. He sat on the edge and gently
stroked her hair. “If I thought he could harm you, I would never have
told you. I’d simply have him … removed.” Oh, Christ, thought Alex.
How easily the new words came. Would he soon be using killed, or
eliminated?
“Right from the very start, it was all programmed. I was programmed.”
She stared at the balcony, allowing his hand to caress the side of her
face, as if oblivious to it. “I should have realized; they don’t let
you go that easily.”
“Who?”
“All of them, my darling,” she answered, taking his hand, holding it to
her lips. “Whatever names you want to give them, it’s not important.
The letters, the numbers, the official-sounding nonsense … I was
warned, I can’t say I wasn’t.”
“How?” He pulled her hand down, forcing her to look at him. “How were
you warned? Who warned you?”
“In Paris one night. Barely three months ago. I’d finished the last of
my interviews at the . . . underground carnival, we called it.”
“Interpol?”
“Yes. I met a chap and his wife. In a waiting room, actually. It’s
not supposed to happen; isolation is terribly important, but someone got
their rooms mixed up. They were English. We agreed to have a late
supper together. He was a Porsche automobile dealer from Macclesfield.
He and his wife were at the end of their tethers. He’d been recruited
because his dealership-the cars, you see-were being used to transport
stolen stock certificates from European exchanges. Every time he
thought he was finished, they found reasons for him to continue-more
often than not, without telling him. It was almost three years; he was
about out of his mind. They were going to leave England. Go to Buenos
Aires.” @
“He could always say no. They couldn’t force him.”
“Don’t be naive, darling. Every name you learn is another hook, each
new method of operation you report is an additional notch in your
expertise.” Alison laughed sadly.
“You’ve traveled to the land of the informer. You’ve got a stigma all
your own.”
tell you again: Chatellerault can’t touch you.”
She paused before acknowledging his words, his anxiety.
“This may sound strange to you, Alex. I mean, I’m not a brave person-no
brimfuls of courage for me-but I have no great fear of him. The
appalling thing, the fear, i,s them.
They wouldn’t let me go. No matter the promises, the agreements, the
guarantees. They couldn’t resist. A file somewhere, or a computer, was
activated and came up with his name; automatically mine appeared in a
data bank. That was it: factor X plus factor Y, subtotal-your life is
not your own. It never stops. You live with the fear all over again.”
Alex took her by the shoulders. “There’s no law, Alison.
We can pack; we can leave.”
“My darling, my darling … You can’t. Don’t you see?
Not that way. It’s what’s behind you: the agreements, the countless
files filled with words, your words … you can’t deny them. You cross
borders, you need papers; you work, you need references. You drive a
car or take a plane or put money in a bank … They have all the
weapons. You can’t hide. Not from them.”
McAuliff let go of her and stood up. He picked up the smooth, shiny
cylinder of gas from the bedside table and looked at the printing and
the inked date of issue. He walked aimlessly to the balcony doors and
instinctively breathed deeply; there was the faint, very faint, aroma of
vanilla with the slightest trace of a spice.
Bay rum and vanilla.
Jamaica.
“You’re wrong, Alison. We don’t have to hide. For a lot of reasons, we
have to finish what we’ve started; you’re right about that. But you’re
wrong about the conclusion. It does stop. It will stop.” He turned
back to her. “Take my word for it.”
“I’d like to. I really would. I don’t see how.”
“An old infantry game. Do unto others before they can do unto you. The
Hammonds and the Interpols of this world use us because we’re afraid. We
know what they can do to what we think are our well-ordered lives.
That’s legitimate; they’re bastards. And they’ll admit it. But have
you ever thought about the magnitude of disaster we can cause them?
That’s also legitimate, because we can be bastards, too.
We’ll play this out-with armed guards on all our flanks.
And when we’re finished, we’ll be finished. With them.”
Charles Whitehall sat in the chair, the tiny glass of Pemod on the table
beside him. It was six o’clock in the morning; he had not been to bed.
There was no point in trying to sleep; sleep would not come.
Two days on the island and the sores of a decade ago were disturbed. He
had not expected it; he had expected to control everything. Not be
controlled.
His enemy now was not the enemy-enemies-he had waited ten years to
fight: the rulers in Kingston; worse, perhaps, the radicals like Barak
Moore. It was a new enemy, every bit @s despicable, and infinitely more
powerful, because it had the means to control his beloved Jamaica.
Control by corruption; ultimately own … by possession.
He had lied to Alexander McAuliff. In Savanna-la-Mar, Chatellerault
openly admitted that he was part of the Trelawny Parish conspiracy.
British Intelligence was right.
The marquis’s wealth was intrinsic to the development of the raw acreage
on the north coast and in the Cock Pit, and he intended to see that his
investment was protected.
Charles Whitehall was his first line of protection, and if Charles
Whitehall failed, he would be destroyed. It was as simple as that.
Chatellerault was not the least obscure about it. He had sat opposite
him and smiled his thin Gallic smile and recited the facts-and names of
the covert network Whitehall had developed on the island over the past
decade.
He had capped his narrative with the most damaging information of all:
the timetable and the methods Charles and his political party expected
to follow on their road to power in Kingston.
The establishment of a military dictatorship with one, nonmilitary
leader to whom all were subservient-the Praetorian of Jamaica was the
title, Charles Whitehall the man.
If Kingston knew these things . . . well, Kingston would react.
But Chatellerault made it clear that their individual objectives were
not necessarily in conflict. There were areasphilosophical, political,
financial-in which their interests might easily be merged. But first
came the activity on the north coast. That was immediate; it was the
springboard to everything else.
The marquis did not name his partners-Whitehall got the distinct
impression that Chatellerault was not entirely sure who they all
were-but it was manifestly clear that he did not trust them. On one
level he seemed to question motives, on another it was a matter of
abilities. He spoke briefly about previous interference and/or
bungling, but did not dwell on the facts.
The facts obviously concerned the first survey.
What had happened?
Was the Halidon responsible?
Was the Halidon capable of interference?
Did the Halidon really exist?
The Halidon.
He would have to analyze the anthropologist Piersall’s papers; separate
a foreigner’s exotic fantasies from island reality. There was a time,
many years ago, when the Rastafarians were symbols of African terror,
before they were revealed to be children stoned on grass with mud-caked
hair and a collective desire to avoid work. And there were the
Pocomanians, with their bearded high priests inserting the sexual orgy
into the abstract generosities of the Christian ethic: a socioreligious
excuse for promiscuity. Or the Anansi sects-inheritors of the
long-forgotten Ashanti belief in the cunning of the spider, on which all
progress in life was patterned.
There were so many. So often metaphysically paranoid; so fragmented, so
obscure.
Was the Halidon-Hollydawn-any different?
At this juncture, for Charles Whitehall it didn’t really matter. What
mattered was his own survival and the survival of his plans. His aims
would be accomplished by keeping Chatellerault at bay and infiltrating
the structure of Chatellerault’s financial hierarchy.
And working with his first enemy, Barak Moore.
Working with both enemies.
Jamaica’s enemies.
James Ferguson fumbled for the light switch on the bedside lamp. His
thrusts caused an ashtray and a glass to collide, sending both crashing