“I will inform the captain,” Garcia told them. “We will not be able to lay in close there, so it will have to be done with the dinghy.”
“How long until we get there?” MacDonald asked.
“Perhaps two hours, perhaps a little less. After five, certainly.”
He whistled. “That’s cutting it close. We may wind up doing this in daylight.”
“Then I had best get started,” Garcia responded, and was gone, leaving them alone in the cabin.
MacDonald sighed and got up. “Want some coffee? I sure need some. A good stiff belt after, but coffee right now.”
“No, thank you. I’m still weak and my stomach’s upset.” She paused, hearing the engines begin to rise in pitch, and feeling as well as hearing the increase in their throbbing speed. The windows rattled rhythmically with the thrum! thrum! thrum! of the engines.
He got his and sat back down. “Rook couldn’t give me more than the bare outlines. Mind filling me in on the story again?”
She didn’t. “Uh—but what’s this rook?”
“Chess piece. He’s King’s Rook. I’m Queen’s Knight. I’m afraid you became Queen’s Pawn One.”
“Who’s the king, then?”
He grinned. “That would be telling. They have their Dark Man, we have our King. I wish King had the powers the Dark Man had, but he’s strong enough—I hope. Now, I want to know everything, starting with just what happened on that island while I was still there.”
She told him, describing the terrible rites in the meadow, the tremendous power of the Dark Man and just how convincing he could be, the whole works.
He took it all in. “Tell me—did you ever see Sir Reginald with the Dark Man?”
“I never saw him at all, except occasionally in the dining hall or the library, going from one place to another. Why? Is he the Dark Man?”
“I don’t know. He’s the instigator, the man who started all this, that’s for sure. What we don’t know is whether or not he’s still in control of it, or whether he just thinks he is. Go on. You were about to tell me about Angelique.”
And she told him of the nightly forays, the terrible things they were made to do, and of the final transformation of Angelique and the spells that still bound her. And when she finished he pounded his fist on the table in anger, making the whole cabin shake.
“Damn them!” he said in anger and frustration. “That poor girl. So we’re going after somebody who’s forced to look and think like a naked, stone age woman. Great!”
“She still knows it all. She might not be able to find the words for it, but she knows who she is and how she came to be that way and she’ll know us, too. She hates the Dark Man. I think she’d do anything to defeat him. And, somehow, I get the feeling that as bad off as she is, she still feels better that way than the way she was. We can’t know what kind of hell those seven years without feeling, without being able to move more than her head, but with the heart and mind of a young and smart girl, was like.”
That sobered him. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” It was trading one sort of hell for another, that was true, but there were always degrees of Hell.
“I’m not proud of my part in all of this,” she told him, “but maybe somehow I can help make it right now.”
“Yeah, well, don’t let your guilt get to you all that much,” he told her sympathetically. “I don’t see how you could have done much else under the circumstances. This is a rough crowd, the most dangerous maybe that anybody’s ever faced, and they’re ready to spread out way beyond their current little base.”
“And you—what of you during that time? They said you were dead.”
“They knew better. I should have been, that’s clear. I’ll never know if they just built a good strong little building there or whether it was the fact that it was a church that stopped the thing. Others have been working on that question. The only thing I’m sure of is that it was real, at least for the time it was after me, and it almost got me. After they took King’s Knight everybody told me to get out of there. I’m surprised they let me go as long as they did. I guess it was because of Angelique. They needed to keep her there until they were ready to move, and she stayed because I was there.”
“You said they took out the other knight?”
He nodded. “Yes. Camille Jureau. He was one of the first to stumble onto a real plot, and he apparently tipped it to Sir Robert, which forced their hand and started the ball rolling. They must have figured Jureau for an obstacle, but at Sir Robert’s insistence he was recalled to Brussels for consultation and to help set up an independent organization that could investigate and fight this thing. Why he came back I’ll never know. He was a cocky, arrogant little bastard always real full of himself, but who am I to talk, considering how long I stayed with my neck in the guillotine? I guess we all think we’re immortal.”
“And you—you know of this when you arrived on the island?”
“Only part of it. I was really ignorant until Sir Robert’s murder. Then, when I was contacted by the company to investigate it, they also told me that something was really rotten there, that he and Jureau were investigating it, and so forth. I was given contact names and addresses and a method of getting information in and out using couriers and go-betweens who worked the supply ships. Sir Robert had set up the King’s side; the Queen’s pieces were added as we went along, starting with me. In a way, it’s still Sir Robert’s game, played from beyond the grave.”
“And after you escaped?” She was fascinated by it all, even if it still seemed unreal.
“I got lucky running into that trawler. I’m no big shakes as a sailing man and that sea was still rough. They put in at Port of Spain, where I was able to slip off and call one of the emergency numbers. By that time the opposition had a lot of the region well bottled up and had put a price on my head, and I didn’t really want to try and run for it anyway, since that’d just take me completely out of the game. So, since that time, I’ve lived on various boats like this one, shuffling from one to the other before they make any major port. We have a lot of connections and some big money, thanks to Sir Robert’s planning. Not that it’s done much good. Allenby’s been bottled up for weeks now and any time you call you get cheer and a lack of problems from anybody. I guess that damned computer can imitate anybody. Jureau is still making reports— or so it seems—and Angelique even gave a mini press conference on what it felt like to inherit all that money and take over all this. It was very convincing—I’ve seen a tape of it.”
“You know the doc believes we were allowed to escape,” she said nervously. “I find it hard to believe, but….”
“Yeah, well, I don’t doubt they made you work hard on it, but he’s probably right. That’s why this is gonna be hairy— particularly in daylight, if that’s what it takes.”
“But—they can send orders to the navy to pick us all up and turn us all over to them! I know it!”
“Yeah, they can—but I don’t think they’ll take the chance. Things just might explode. Too many witnesses, too many people to doubt and maybe buck it upstairs. No, if they try anything now it’ll be with their own people and as closed as possible. At least, I hope so.”
And, with that, Gregory MacDonald got himself that shot of whisky and tried to relax.
The sun was not yet over the horizon, but the sky was rapidly growing light. There were signs of gathering storm clouds to the east that the marine forecasts said were heading in their direction, and the seas were already starting to be choppy as the little dinghy closed on the island. Aside from the rowers, it contained only Maria, Greg, and three submachine guns.
Maria was feeling very weak and nauseous, and the rapidly roughening sea did not help matters any, but she was determined now to see this through. She pointed to the island. “There! In back of those rocks! This is it, I know it!”
MacDonald frowned. “Damned if I can even see an inlet there. How the hell did you ever find it the first time?”
“I—I don’t know. Angelique, she’s got some of those crazy powers herself. Oh, I hope she’s still here and all right!”
They rounded the rocks with difficulty and found the little safe cut just as Maria had predicted. She was not physically able to manage climbing up there, though.
MacDonald looked at her. “You say you can speak that crazy language?”
“Yes. She—taught it to me, somehow.”
“Call to her, then. Tell her she’s got to get down to us and fast!”
Maria’s mind was awash with differing thoughts and emotions, and she had some trouble concentrating on that strange tongue. Finally she called out, as loud as she could, in Hapharsi, “Angelique my mother! Come to your daughter and to friends! Come quickly, for the storms blow and the sun rises as we speak!”
MacDonald looked at her in amazement, and the two rowers looked dubious. Though sheltered, they reached down and picked up the automatic weapons, ready for the unexpected. If somebody else had found her first, they were the fish in the barrel.
There was no response, which made them all even more nervous than they already were. “Try again,” MacDonald urged.
“Come, my mother, or we all perish! Come, or we must leave you forever!”
The wind was picking up, making it more difficult to hear anything, but suddenly a voice penetrated the noise. It was a pleasant, woman’s voice, saying words in a melodic tongue that was the same one Maria had used but far sweeter and more expert, like one born to it.
“They must put down their metal spears, my daughter, said the voice to Maria. “Then I will come. They are all friends?”
“Yes, my mother. One is Greg.” She turned to the others. “You must put down your guns,” she told them. “She’s afraid she’ll get shot if she shows herself.”
“You’re sure it’s her?” MacDonald asked worriedly.
“I’m sure.”
“No way to tell if she’s under her own free will. Still, I’ll signal them to put the guns down. We’re dead ducks in here anyway.” He gave a hand signal. “Wish I could speak Spanish, damn it all,” he muttered.
Suddenly the small, dark perfectly proportioned figure of a woman appeared above. She looked at the boat, then scrambled down the side of the rocky wall as if it had a ladder attached and dropped into the boat.
All three men were shocked at her appearance, MacDonald most of all. They had been warned of this, more or less, but seeing it was something else again.
Angelique and Maria hugged one another, and then the strange exotic-looking woman took a seat next to Maria and looked back at MacDonald with recognition in her eyes and a trace of embarrassment as well.
The detective stared at the strange newcomer as the men pushed out and then fought the increasing surf back to open sea and the trawler. He found it impossible to think of her as Angelique, for not a trace really remained. She was certainly exotic looking, and attractively so, but her skin was so dark and shiny it was almost a blue-black, the deepest and darkest coloration he’d ever seen in an area where ninety percent of everybody was “black.” Her hair was straight and long and even blacker than her skin. As she held on with the rest of them for dear life against the pitch and toss of the small boat, she betrayed strong muscles in her arms.