Wollensak, grinding the numerous flat switches until a puff of smoke
emerged from the interior and the reels stopped their movement. He
reached down and ripped off the tape; he could bum it, but there was
nothing of consequence recorded. He rolled the two reels across the
floor, the thin strand of tape forming a narrow V on the carpet.
The Jamaican groaned; his eyes blinked as he swallowed and coughed.
Alex picked up the pistol on the floor, and squeezed it into his belt.
He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and threw a towel
into the basin.
He pulled the drenched towel from the sink and walked back to the
coughing, injured Jamaican. He knelt down, helped the man into a
sitting position, and blotted his face. The water flowed down on the
man’s shirt and trousers … water mingled with blood.
“I’m sorry,” said Alex. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t have if
you hadn’t reached for that goddamned pistol.”
“Mon! ” The Jamaican coughed his interruption. “You crazy-mon!” The
Jamaican held his chest and winced painfully as he struggled to his
feet. “You break up …
everything, mon!” said the injured man, looking at the smashed
equipment.
“I certainly did! Maybe your Mr. Craft will get the message. If he
wants to play industrial espionage, let him play in somebody else’s
backyard. I resent the intrusion. Come on, let’s go.” Alex took the
man by the arm and began leading him to the door.
“No, mon!” shouted the man, resisting.
“Yes, mon,” said McAuliff quietly. “You’re coming with me.”
“Where, mon?”
“To see a little old man who runs a fish store, that’s all.”
Alex shoved him; the Jamaican gripped his side. His ribs were broken,
thought McAuliff.
“Please, mon! No police, mon! I lost everything” The Jamaican’s dark
eyes were pleading as he held his ribs.
“You went for a gun, mon! That’s a very serious thing to do.”
“Them not my gun. Them gun got no bullets, mon.”
“What?
Look-see, mon! Please! I got good job…. I don’ hurt nobody……
Alex wasn’t listening. He reached into his belt for the pistol.
It was no weapon at all.
It was a starter’s gun; the kind held up by referees at track
“Oh, for Christ’s sake Arthur Craft Junior played games-little boys’
games with little boys’ toys.
“Okay, mon. You just tell your employer what I said. The next time,
I’ll haul him into court.”
It was a silly thing to say, thought Alex, as he walked out into the
corridor, slamming the door behind him. There’d be no courts; Julian
Warfield or his adversary, R. C. Hammond, was far preferable.
Alongside Dunstone, Limited, and British Intelligence, Arthur Craft was
a cipher, An unimportant intrusion that in all likelihood was no more.
He walked out of the elevator and tried to recall the location of the
telephone booths. They were to the left of the entrance, past the front
desk, he remembered.
He nodded to the clerks while’thinking of Westmore Tallon’s private
number.
“Mr. McAuliff, sir?” The speaker was a tall Jamaican with very broad
shoulders, emphasized by a tight nylon jacket.
“Yes?”
“Would you come with me, please?”
Alex looked at the man. He was neat, the trousers pressed, a white
shirt and a tie in evidence beneath the jacket. “No … why should I?”
“Please, we have very little time. A man is waiting for you outside. A
Mr. Tucker.”
“What? How did—”
“Please, Mr. McAuliff, I cannot stay here.”
Alex followed the Jamaican out the glass doors of the entrance. As they
reached the driveway, he saw the man in the yellow shirt–Craft’s
man-walking on the path from the parking lot; the man stopped and stared
at him, as if unsure what to do.
“Hurry, please,” said the Jamaican, several steps in front of McAuliff,
breaking into a run. “Down past the gates. The car is waiting!”
They ran down the drive, past the stone gateposts.
The green Chevrolet was on the side of the road, its motor running. The
Jamaican opened the back door for Alex.
“Get in!”
McAuliff did so.
Sam Tucker, his massive frame taking up most of the backseat, his shock
of red hair reflecting the outside lights, extended his hand.
“Good to see you, boy!”
“Sam!”
The car lurched forward, throwing Alex into the felt.
McAuliff saw that there were three men in the front seat.
The driver wore a baseball cap; the third man-nearly as large as Sam
Tucker-was squeezed between the driver and the Jamaican who had met him
inside the Courtleigh lobby.
Alex turned back to Tucker.
“What is all this, Sam? Where the hell have you been?”
The answer, however, did not come from Sam Tucker.
Instead, the black man by the window, the man who had led Alex down the
driveway, turned and spoke quietly.
“Mr. Tucker has been with us, Mr. McAuliff. If events can be
controlled, we are your link to the Halidon.”
They drove for nearly an hour. Always climbing, higher and higher, it
seemed to McAuliff. The winding roads snaked upward, the turns sudden,
the curves hidden by sweeping waterfalls of tropic greenery.
There were stretches of unpaved road. The automobile took them poorly;
the whining of the low gear was proof of the strain.
McAuliff and Sam Tucker spoke quietly, knowing their conversation was
overheard by those in front. That knowledge did not seem to bother
Tucker.
Sam’s story was totally logical, considering his habits and lifestyle.
Sam Tucker had friends, or acquaintances, no one knew about, in many
parts of the world. Not that he intentionally concealed their
identities, only that they were part of his personal, not professional,
life.
One of these people had been Walter Piersall.
“I mentioned him to you last year, Alexander,” said Tucker in the
darkness of the backseat. “In Ocho Rios.”
I don’t remember.”
I told you I’d met an academic fellow in Carrick Foyle. I was going to
spend a couple of weekends with him.”
That was it, thought McAuliff. The name Carrick Foyle; he had heard it
before. “I remember now. Something about a lecture series at the
Kingston Institute.”
“That’s right. Walter was a very classy type-an anthro man who didn’t
bore you to death. I cabled him I was coming back.”
“You also got in touch with Hanley. He’s the one who set off the
alarms.”
“I called Bob after I got into Montego. For a little sporting life.
There was no way I could reach him later. We traveled fast, and when we
got where we were going, there was no telephone. I figured he’d be mad
as hell.”
“He was worried, not mad. It was quite a disappearing act.”
“He should know better. I have friends on this island, not enemies. At
least, none either of us knows about.”
“What happened? Where did you go?”
Tucker told him.
When Sam arrived in Montego Bay, there was a message from Piersall at
the Arrivals desk. He was to call the anthropologist in Carrick Foyle
after he was settled. He did, but was told by a servant in Carrick
Foyle that Piersall might not return until late that night, Tucker then
phoned his old friend Hanley, and the two men got drunk, as was their
established custom at reunions.
In the morning, while Hanley was still sleeping, Sam left the hotel to
pick up cigars.
“It’s not the sort of place that’s large on room service, boy.”
“I gathered that,” said Alex.
“Out on the street, our friends here”–Tucker gestured toward the front
seat—-@’were waiting in a station wagon-”
“Mr. Tucker was being followed,” interrupted the Jamaican by the
window. “Word of this reached Dr. Piersall. He sent us to Mo’Bay to
look after his friend. Mr. Tucker gets up early.”
Sam grinned. “You know me. Even with the juice, I can’t sleep long.”
“I know,” said Alex, remembering too many hotel rooms and survey
campsites in which Tucker had wandered about at the first light of dawn.
“There was a little misunderstanding,” continued Sam.
The boys here said Piersall was waiting for me. I figured, what the
hell, the lads thought enough of me to stick out the night, I’d go with
’em straight off. Old Hanley wouldn’t be up for an hour or so … I’d
call him from Piersall’s house.
But, goddammit, we didn’t go to Carrick Foyle. We headed for a bamboo
camp down the Martha Brae. It took us damn near two hours to get there,
a godforsaken place, Alexander.”
When they arrived at the bamboo camp, Walter Piersall greeted Sam
warmly. But within minutes Tucker realized that something had happened
to the man. He was not the same person that Sam had known a year ago.
There was a zealousness, an intensity not in evidence twelve months
before.
Walter Piersall was caught up in things Jamaican. The quiet
anthropologist had become a fierce partisan in the battles being waged