And as the day went on, it steadily brightened, even if the swell remained big enough to indicate even more that there was weather out there somewhere. She began to enjoy herself, taking an occasional bite of cheese, washed down with a sip of either wine or water. There was no sound from below, although she did not doubt there was a good deal of discussion going on.
Steering with one hand, she took out her Fodor and studied Montevideo, noted the long mole jutting into the mouth of the River Plate, and also that the international airport was immediately on the outskirts of the city. The day drifted by and it became dark. She was now very tired, but she forced herself to stay awake, and at about midnight made out a flashing light ahead.
She doused her own navigation lights, put the engine into neutral and let the boat drift, then stripped, went on deck to do what was necessary over the side, returned to the wheelhouse to use the last of the water on her face and armpits, applied perfume, put on her red dress and her coat, both now sadly crushed, laid her gloves on the console with her high-heeled shoes beneath them, packed away her shirt and pants, and wedges, leaving her feet bare, and relaxed for a couple of hours.
Now there was a banging on the door. ‘Senorita!’ Salvador shouted. ‘What has happened? Why are we stopped?’
‘Go back to sleep,’ Anna recommended.
The noise subsided. Now there was a problem in keeping awake. She went on deck and walked about, listening to the waves slurping against the hull, watching the distant flashing light. At three o’clock she lowered the blue and white Argentine flag. Then she started the engine again, and moved towards the light.
It was just dawn when she sighted the mole, on her starboard hand. To port was a fort, the entrance to the harbour proper was between them, but she did not intend going that far. She had no doubt that the watch on the fort had sighted the visitor, and was now reporting it, but a single itinerant fishing boat was not going to cause an emergency. The city itself, behind a fringe of date palms, was just waking up, lights appearing in house windows, traffic just starting to growl. She used the binoculars to discern several iron ladders let into the stone sides of the mole, nosed alongside one of these, stopped the engine, put on her gloves, slung her shoulder bag, picked up her shoes, and stepped on to the ladder, dropping the cabin key overboard as she did so. At the top she put on her high heels and dark glasses and turned left to walk towards the houses.
‘Hey, you! Senorita!’
Anna stopped, and turned to face a policeman. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. You have come off that boat.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘That boat cannot stay there. Where has it come from, anyway?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What? But you were on it.’
‘Briefly. It came in . . . oh, about an hour ago. I had been unable to sleep, so I had come down here for a walk in the morning air, and these men called me, and asked me to go on board for a drink.’
The policeman peered at her. ‘Just like that? And you went? You did not know these men?’
‘No. But they seemed very nice. But when I got on board they made a pass at me, so I left.’
Almost she thought he was going to scratch his head. ‘You have identification?’
‘Of course.’ Anna felt in her bag, located the right passport, and gave it to him.
He flipped it open, looked from the photograph to her face. ‘Anna O’Reilly. You are Irish?’
‘Well, of course I am Irish,’ Anna said indignantly.
‘Ah,’ he commented, as if that explained everything. ‘And you have a visa.’
‘If I did not have a visa, I would not have been allowed in.’
‘You are working here in Uruguay?’
‘I am on holiday.’
‘Ah,’ he said again, even more obviously reflecting that only an Irishwoman would choose to holiday in the middle of winter. He handed her the passport. ‘You were very foolish to go on board a strange boat with strange men. But you will come with me and we will deal with them, eh?’
Anna took off her glasses in alarm, and fluttered her eyelashes at him. ‘Deal with them?’
‘They wished to assault you, did they not? And they have no right to be here. That is not a Montevideo boat, and anyway, it is not allowed to moor on this pier.’
‘But they are no longer there,’ she pointed out.
‘Eh? What?’ He swung round to watch the Bruja del Mar, which Anna had deliberately not moored, drifting away from the dock. ‘They cannot do that. I will call the harbour police. You stay here.’
‘But senor, I cannot stay here. I must go for breakfast.’
‘What? Where will you go for this breakfast?’
‘To my hotel.’
‘You are staying in a hotel?’
She remembered that it was early in the day, and he had probably been on duty for several hours, ‘Of course I am staying in a hotel, senor. The Splendide.’
‘The Splendide. That is very expensive.’
‘Is it? Senor, I think, if you really wish to speak to those men, you should hurry, or they will drift right out of the harbour.’
He turned again; the trawler was a hundred yards away from the dock. ‘Madre de Dios! Are they asleep? But you said . . .’
‘They were drunk,’ Anna said, disparagingly. ‘Listen, senor. You go and get the harbour authority and sort them out. I will go to my hotel and have breakfast, and then wait for you to come to see me.’
‘Yes. Yes, that is what you must do. I must do. And you are Senorita O’Reilly.’
‘What a good memory you have. Hasta la vista, senor.’ She hurried along the mole.
*
She found a taxi rank and was taken to the airport. ‘I do no think there are any flights at this hour, senorita,’ the driver warned.
‘Then I will have to wait,’ Anna said bravely. She reckoned it was going to take a good hour for the Bruja del Mar to be recovered and Salvador and his crew freed, and then another hour or so of interrogation for them to convince the police that their side of the story was the truth, certainly once the Luger was found as it certainly would be, and perhaps the five thousand dollars as well. If she were lucky, they might still begin the search for her at the Splendide, even if Salvador would claim he had brought her from Pont del Mar.
The airport was indeed just waking up, but the restaurant was open. Anna had breakfast, then went to the PanAm desk where the first ticket clerk was just taking her place. ‘Miami?’ she remarked. ‘Today? Yes, there is a flight at ten o’clock. But economy is fully booked.’
‘I wish to travel first,’ Anna pointed out.
‘First?’ The woman looked sceptical as she regarded her; even if clearly expensive, her clothes were crushed and untidy.
‘I will pay cash.’ She opened her bag and took out her last four wads of hundred dollar bills.
*
‘That was a quick trip,’ Donald remarked. ‘Five days?’
‘Things went better than I expected. I’d like to use your radio to call the cay.’
‘Sure. Help yourself.’
‘Anna?’ Clive almost shouted. ‘You’re back already?’
‘Seems like it. Any problems?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘That’s great. Would you ask Tommy to come across and get me?’
‘Of course. But . . . ah . . . you saw . . .’
‘Not on the radio,’ Anna said. ‘Yes, I saw him. We’ll talk about it when I get home. I’ll expect Tommy tomorrow. Over and out.’
Donald had returned to the shop, but there were no customers at the moment. Anna joined him. ‘All correct?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but he can’t get here until tomorrow. How’d you like to put me up for tonight?’
‘Put you up? Well . . . wow! You’ve never asked me that before.’
‘Because I’ve always stayed in a hotel before. But right this minute Miami is a little hot for me; there are at least two groups of nasties looking for
me. And I don’t have any clothes.’
‘What?’ He peered at her. ‘Say, you went out with a suitcase.’
‘I lost it.’
‘Just like that?’
‘These things happen.’
‘Can’t you buy a new outfit?’
‘As I said, I feel it would be a good idea to keep a low profile here in Miami for the next few months. So how about it?’
‘I’d love to put you up, Anna. But I’m not sure how Jennie would take it.’
‘Jennie being?’
‘My wife.’
‘I didn’t know you had a wife.’
‘And how. I mean, don’t get me wrong. She’s a sweet kid, but she’s kind of highly strung when it comes to other dames.’
Well, Anna reflected, even secret service agents are entitled to have private, domestic lives . . . just as she was trying desperately to do. ‘Well, then—’
‘But say, you can stay here.’
‘Where?’
‘There’s a put-you-up out the back.’
‘With a bathroom? I desperately need a bath.’
‘Well, no. There ain’t no bath.’
‘Shit!’
‘There’s a toilet, and a washbasin. And hell, it’ll only be for eighteen hours.’
‘And what do I eat? In the last twenty-four hours I have had a lump of cheese, a light breakfast and two totally cardboard airplane snacks.’
‘Tell you what, I’ll nip out and get you some hamburgers and a couple of bottles of beer. That’ll keep you going until you’re on your boat. Won’t it?’
‘I suppose it’ll have to,’ Anna said sadly. ‘Just remember that I like lots of mustard and ketchup.’
*
‘You have no idea how good this feels,’ Anna told Tommy, as they stood together on the bridge of Fair Girl and helmed her out of Miami harbour.
‘It’s been a hard week, ma’am?’
‘Uncomfortable. So you take her for a while. I’m going below.’
‘You got it, ma’am.’
She dumped her dirty clothes on the cabin floor, then stood beneath her shower for half an hour, soaping again and again and then washing and rinsing her hair time and again. Then she wrapped her head in a towel and collapsed on to her bunk. Nothing had ever felt so good. She had to suppose that once upon a time Donald’s put-you-up had had springs, but that had clearly been a long time ago, so that it was now some forty-eight hours since she had had any proper sleep, and to be between her own sheets and with her head on her own pillow, as much as knowing that she was on her own boat and in the safest of hands, was luxury personified.
And the racing big seas of the Gulf Stream were soporific. She slept like a log for six hours, then got up, put on clean knickers, clean shirt and clean pants, and cooked a good lunch. They were by now across the Stream, and the Biminis were in sight to the south but as they were now in the open water of the North-West Providence Channel Tommy was able to put the boat on autopilot and join her in the saloon.
She poured them each a glass of cold beer. ‘So tell me what’s been happening on the cay. You had rain?’
‘Yes, ma’am. We had one heavy storm the day before yesterday. All night it was. Must have been six or seven inches.’
She knew he would hardly be exaggerating; summer rain in the Bahamas could be tropical in its intensity. ‘Well, that must have topped up the cistern.’
‘Yes, ma’am. It’s all but overflowing. They do say there’s a tropical storm down by Haiti, and it could well freshen up and come this way.’
‘What, on June two? That’s early.’ The hurricane season officially started at the beginning of June. ‘But you’ve had no visitors?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘No ships or yachts coming close to the cay?’
‘No, ma’am.’
Anna gave a sigh of relief, and finished her beer, ‘Well, then, let’s get this lot washed up.’
‘You putting in to Bimini, ma’am, for the night?’
Anna washed plates and cutlery while Tommy dried. ‘No, there’s still four hours of daylight left. We’ll go on to Great Harbour Cay and drop the hook, I don’t feel like company, and it’ll shorten the trip tomorrow.’
‘You got it, ma’am.’ He followed her back up to the bridge where she regained control. ‘You know what . . . I didn’t say, but there was that aeroplane yesterday.’
*
Anna turned her head, sharply. ‘What?’
‘Just after you called, ma’am. I got the boat out just as soon as Mr Bartley told me, and I was just passing through the reef when this plane came down.’
‘Came down? You mean, in the sea?’
‘No, no. It just came low, over the island. Over me and the boat too. Then it went up and turned, and came round again, dipping low. It did that three or four times. You know what I am thinking, ma’am? I am thinking that it was taking photographs.’
Shit, Anna thought. Shit, shit, shit. But her voice was calm. ‘Were you able to see how many people were on board?’
‘Oh, yes, ma’am. It come that low. There were three men. And one was using what I think was a big camera. You knew they was going to do this, ma’am?’
‘No. I did not know they were going to do this.’ But I should have, she thought.
‘Well, you know what I am thinking, ma’am: if you didn’t give them permission to fly low over your island and take photographs, that is an invasion of privacy. We should report them to the police in Nassau.’
Tommy’s law-abiding approach to every problem, she thought. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose they were doing any harm. It’s a beautiful and obviously thriving cay; they probably want to put us in a glossy magazine. Take her helm a moment.’ She went down the ladder and into the saloon, unrolled the chart. But as she had known would be the case, even Great Harbour Cay was too far from Fair Cay for her VHF, and while the temptation to keep going all night was tremendous, it would be the height of irresponsibility to risk striking an unseen reef in the dark; if they left at dawn tomorrow, they’d be home for lunch.
And as they approached the cay in the glow of the noonday sun, everything looked absolutely peaceful and normal. To her own surprise, Anna had slept well, lulled by the gentle motion of the boat riding to its anchor, and even more by the patter of rain on the deck above her head, just before dawn. Now the cay looked as green and prosperous as always, and as she had called ahead as soon as they were within range, there was the usual enthusiastic reception committee on the dock to greet her.
But after hugs and kisses all round, she was anxious to get Clive alone in the radio room. ‘I am assuming all went well, and successfully,’ he said.
‘All went successfully, in the end,’ Anna said. ‘But not well.’
‘Oh, no. You all right?’
‘I am fine. But Baxter’s set-up was full of shit.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s what he did not tell me, that mattered. Like that Edel had a wife and a kid.’
‘Oh, my God! You didn’t—’
‘No, I did not. But that was pure luck. She’d fallen out with her husband and was happy to be rid of him, even if perhaps not quite so finally. But as for my so-called contact, Baxter also didn’t tell me, or perhaps he didn’t know, that Lustrum is a small-time crook who is under surveillance by the police. Although I have a feeling that all of those references should be past tense by now.’
‘You mean . . .?’
‘No, I did not kill him. But his phone was being tapped, and as a result I was arrested.’
‘What? But . . .’
‘As you can see, I’m still here. But the local chief of police isn’t.’
‘Holy Jesus Christ! What—?’
‘Don’t worry about it. He was a nasty piece of work. And they’re looking for a wild Irish woman named Anna O’Rourke. Unfortunately if, as I suspect will have happened, and as they know I telephoned Lustrum when I got to Pont del Mar, they may have taken him as part of
their investigation into Captain Guimard’s death, and applied some pressure . . .’
‘You think they’ll have tortured him?’
‘They were certainly meaning to torture me. And that was before I’d shot their police chief.’
‘Then he may reveal that you were working for MI6!’
‘The words you want are will reveal.’
‘Shit! Look, my darling, I had better get back to England just as rapidly as possible.’
‘That figures. But you will be coming back? We have a marriage to sort out.’
‘I’ll be coming back.’
‘Bringing my carte blanche as well as my wedding ring.’
‘I’ll bring the wedding ring, certainly. But Anna . . . you do realize that MI6 are going to have to disown any knowledge of Anna O’Rourke? And Lustrum.’
‘I know that.’
‘Therefore, well . . .’
‘Clive, there is no possible connection between an Irish assassin Anna O’Rourke and reclusive Bahamian resident Anna Fitzjohn.’
‘That seems obvious to you and me, but it may not be obvious in London. They won’t sell you out. They can’t, without admitting that you did this job for them. But they may not be happy about giving you carte blanche to kill anybody else.’
‘In that case you had better tell Billy not to show his face here again, or he’ll be top of the list.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Now tell me about Joe. Has he called?’
‘Yes. And it’s not good.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, first of all, he was pretty browned off to discover you weren’t here, but I was.’
‘Hasn’t he got the message that you are liable to be here permanently, from now on?’
‘At your side. He’s a suspicious cuss.’
‘But what did he have to say about friend Strezzi?’
‘Ah. Now here’s the problem. They’ve identified her as a member of the Ravanelli Family. Do you know these people?’
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