cases, a Rolleiflex camera, and a number of other things of lesser
value-but not inexpensive. The captain’s deputy wrote as rapidly as he
could on a notepad as Alex rattled off the “missing” items. Twice he
asked for spellings; once the point of his pencil broke. It was a
harried few minutes.
After the interview was over, the captain and his deputy shook hands
with the American geologist and thanked him for his cooperation.
McAuliff watched them get into the police car and waved a friendly
good-bye as the vehicle sped out of the parking lot through the gates.
A quarter of a mile down the road, the captain braked the patrol car to
a stop. He spoke quietly to his deputy.
“Go back through the woods to the beach, mon. Find out who he is with,
who comes to see him.”
The deputy removed his visor cap and the creased khaki shirt of his
uniform with the yellow insignias of his rank, and reached into the back
for a green T-shirt. He slipped it over his head and got out of the
car. He stood on the tarred pavement, unbuckled his belt, and slid his
holster off the leather strip. He handed it through the window to the
captain.
The captain reached down below the dashboard and pulled out a rumpled
black baseball cap that was discolored with age and human sweat. He
gave it to his deputy and laughed.
“We all look alike, mon. Aren’t you the fella who alla time sell
cocoruru?”
“Alla time John Crow, mon. Mongoose him not.”
The deputy grinned and started toward the woods beyond the bank of the
pavement, where there was a rusty, torn wire fence. It was the
demarcation of the Bengal Court property.
The patrol car roared off down the road. The prefect captain of the
Falmouth police was in a hurry. He had to drive to Halfinoon Bay and
meet a seaplane that was flying in from Kingston.
Charles Whitehall stood in the tall grass on a ridge overlooking the
road from Priory-on-the-Sea. Under his arm was the black archive case,
clamped shut and held together with three-inch strips of adhesive. It
was shortly after twelve noon, and McAuliff would be driving up the road
soon.
Alone, Charles had insisted on it. That is, he had insisted before he
had heard McAuliff s words-spoken curtly, defensively-that Barak Moore
was dead.
Bramwell Moore, schoolboy churn from so many years ago in
Savanna-la-Mar, dead from Jamaican bullets.
Jamaican bullets.
Jamaican police bullets. That was better. In adding the
establishmentarian, there was a touch of compassionate logic-a
contradiction in terms, thought Whitehall; logic was neither good nor
evil, merely logic. Still, words defined logic and words could be
interpreted thus the mendacity of all official statistics: self-serving
logic.
His mind was wandering and he was annoyed with himself. Barak had
known, as he knew, that they were not playing chicken-in-de-kitchen any
longer. There was no bandanna-headed mother wielding a straw broom,
chasing child and fowl out into the yard, laughing and scolding
simultaneously. This was a different sort of insurgence.
Bandanna-headed mothers were replaced by visor-capped men of the state;
straw brooms became highpowered rifles. The chickens were ideas . . .
far more deadly to the uniformed servants of the state than the loose
feathers were to the bandanna-headed servants of the family.
Barak dead.
It seemed incredible. Yet not without its positive effect.
Barak had not understood the problems of their island; therefore, he had
not understood the proper solutions.
Barak’s solutions were decades away.
First there had to be strength. The many led by a very strong, militant
few.
Perhaps one.
In the downhill distance there was a billow of dust; a station wagon was
traveling much too fast over the old dirt road.
McAuliff was anxious too.
Charles stared back across the field to the entrance drive of the house.
He had requested that his Drax Hall host be absent between the hours of
twelve and three. No explanations were given, and no questions asked.
A messiah had returned. That was enough.
“Here it is,” said McAuliff, standing in front of Whitehall in the cool
toolshed, holding the smaller archive case in his left hand. “But
before you start fiddling around, I want a couple of things clear.”
Charles Whitehall stared at the American. “Conditions are superfluous.
We both know what must be done.”
“What’s not superfluous,” countered Alex, “is that you understand
there’ll be no … unilateral decisions. This isn’t your private war,
Charley-mon.”
“Are you trying to sound like Barak?”
“Let’s say I’m looking after his interests. And mine.”
“Yours I can comprehend. Why his? They’re not compatible, you know.”
“They’re not even connected.”
“So why concern yourself?” Whitehall shifted his eyes to the archive
case. He realized that his breathing had become audible; his anxiety
was showing, and again he was annoyed with himself. “Let me have that,
please.”
“You asked me a question. I’m going to answer it first,” replied
McAuliff. “I don’t trust you, Charley. You’ll use anyone. Anything.
Your kind always does. You make pacts and agreements with anything that
moves, and you do it very well. You’re so flexible you meet yourself
around corners. But all the time it’s Sturm und Drang, and I’m not much
for that.”
“Oh, I see. You subscribe to Barak’s canefield paratroopers. The chaos
of the Fidelisti, where the corporals spit and chew cigars and rape the
generals’ daughters so society is balanced. Three-year plans and
five-year plans and crude uneducated bullies managing the affairs of
state. Into disaster, I might add. Don’t be a fool, McAuliff. You’re
better than that.”
“Cut it out, Charley. You’re not on a podium addressing your chiefs of
staff,” said Alex wearily. “I don’t believe in that oversimplification
any more than I believe in your two plus-two solutions. Pull in your
hardware. I’m still the head of this survey. I can fire you in a
minute. Very publicly.
Now, that might not get you off the island, but your situation won’t be
the same.”
“What guarantee do I have that you won’t force me out?”
“Not much of one. You’ll just have to take my word that I want those
bastards off my back as badly as you do. For entirely different
reasons.”
“Somehow I think you’re lying.”
“I wouldn’t gamble on that.”
Whitehall searched McAuliff s eyes. “I won’t. I said this conversation
was superfluous, and it is. Your conditions are accepted because of
what must be done…. Now, may I have that case, please?”
Sam Tucker sat on the terrace, alternately reading the newspaper and
glancing over the sea wall to the beach, where Alison and James Ferguson
were in deck chairs near the water. Every now and then, when the
dazzling Caribbean sun had heated their skin temperatures sufficiently,
Alison and the young botanist waded into the water.
They did not splash or jump or dive; they simply fell onto the calm
surface, as though exhausted. It seemed to be an exercise of weariness
for both of them.
There was no joy surla plage, thought Sam, who nevertheless picked up a
pair of binoculars whenever Alison began paddling about and scanned the
immediate vicinity around which she swam. He focused on any swimmer who
came near her; there were not many, and all were recognizable as guests
of Bengal Court.
None was a threat, and that’s what Sam Tucker was looking for.
Ferguson had returned from Montego Bay a little before noon, just after
Alex had driven off to Drax Hall. He had wandered onto the connecting
terraces, startling Sam and the temporarily disoriented Lawrence, who
had been sitting on the sea wall talking quietly about the dead Barak
Moore.
They had been stunned because Ferguson had been expansive about his
day-off plans in Mo’Bay.
Ferguson arrived looking haggard, a nervous wreck. The assumption was
that he had overindulged and was hung to his fuzzy-cheeked gills; the
jokes were along this line, and he accepted them with a singular lack of
humor. But Sam Tucker did not subscribe to the explanation. James
Ferguson was not ravaged by the whiskey input of the night before; he
was a frightened young man who had not slept.
HIs fear, thought Sam, was not anything he cared to discuss;
indeed, he would not even talk about his night in Montego, brushing it
off as a dull, unrewarding interlude. He appeared only to want company,
as if there was immediate security in the familiar. He seemed to cling
to the presence of Alison Booth, offering to fetch and carry…. A
schoolboy’s crush or a gay’s devotion? Neither fit, for he was neither.
He was afraid.
Very inconsistent behavior, concluded Sam Tucker.
Tucker suddenly heard the quiet, rapid footsteps behind him and turned.
Lawrence, fully clothed now, came across the terrace from the west lawn.
The black revolutionary walked over to Sam and knelt-not in fealty, but
in a conscious attempt to conceal his large frame behind the sea wall.