Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Of course we used something other than atropine,’ he said. ‘A muscle relaxant derived from curare, I believe; used when giving electric shock therapy. You’re lucky I wasn’t a Middle Eastern guerilla; they use something totally lethal. Very useful for street assassinations.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ I said. ‘But I can do without the technical lecture.’

  ‘It has a point,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Just like the needle. It’s to tell you we’re most efficient. Remember that efficiency, Mr Mangan, should you be thinking of trying anything foolish.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ He waved his hand. ‘Very well, if you must call me something call me…Robinson.’

  ‘Okay, Robinson. Tell me why.’

  ‘Why you’re here? Rest assured I shall do so, but in my own time.’

  He looked at a point over my head. ‘I was about to begin your interrogation immediately, but I have changed my mind. Don’t you think it is a mark of efficiency to be flexible?’

  He had a formal, almost pedantic, way of speech which fitted well with the tone of the ransom letters, and could very well have typed ‘headlamps’ instead of ‘headlights’. I said, ‘I couldn’t give a damn. I want to see my wife.’

  His gaze returned to me. ‘And so you shall, my dear chap. What is more, you shall have the privilege of seeing her alone so that you may talk freely. I am sure she will be able to tell you many things of which you are, as yet, unaware. And vice versa. It will make my later interrogation so much easier—for both of us.’

  ‘Robinson, quit waffling and get her.’

  He studied me and smiled. ‘Quite a one for making demands, aren’t you? And in the vernacular, too. But I shall accede to…er…shall we call it your request?’

  He put his hand behind him, opened the door, and backed out. The man with the shotgun went out, gun last, and the door closed. I heard it lock.

  I thought about it. The man with the shotgun was local, a Texan. He had spoken only a total of five words but the accent was unmistakeable. Robinson was something else. Those cultured tones, those rolling cadences, were the product of a fairly long residence in England, and at a fairly high social level.

  And yet…and yet…there was something else. As a Bahamian, class differences, as betrayed by accent, had been a matter of indifference to me, but my time in England had taught me that the English take it seriously, so I had learned the nuances. It is something hard to explain to our American cousins. But Robinson did not ring a true sound—there was a flaw in him.

  I looked with greater interest at my prison. The walls were of concrete blocks set in hard mortar and whitewashed. There was no ceiling so I could look up into the roof which was pitched steeply and built of rough timbers—logs with the bark still on—and covered with corrugated iron. The only door was in a gable end.

  From the point of view of escape the wall was impossible. I had no metal to scrape the mortar from between the blocks, not even a belt buckle; and they had carefully not put a knife on the tray with which to spread the butter, just a flat piece of wood. As Robinson had said—efficiency. A careful examination of the furniture told me that I was probably in a rural area. The whole lot had not a single nail in them, but were held together by wooden pegs.

  Not that I was intending to escape—not then. But I was looking at the roof speculatively when I heard someone at the door. I sat on the bed and waited, and the door opened and Debbie was pushed in, then it slammed behind her quickly.

  She staggered, regained her balance, then looked at me unbelievingly. ‘Tom! Oh, Tom!’ The next moment she was in my arms, dampening the front of my Houston Cougars’ teeshirt.

  It took some time to get her settled down. She was incoherent with a mixture of relief, remorse, passion and, when she understood that I, too, was a prisoner, amazement, consternation and confusion. ‘But how did you get here?’ she demanded. ‘To Texas, I mean. And why?’

  ‘I was drawn into it by bait,’ I said. ‘You were the bait. We were all fooled.’

  ‘The family,’ she said. ‘How are they?’

  ‘Bearing up under the strain.’ There were a few things I was not going to tell Debbie. One was that her father had just suffered a heart attack. Others would doubtless occur to me. ‘How were you snatched?’

  ‘I don’t know. One minute I was looking in the window of a store on Main Street, then I was here.’

  Probably Robinson had used his NATO gadget; but it did not matter. ‘And where is here? You’re the local expert.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Somewhere on the coast, I think.’

  I disentangled myself, stood up, and turned to look at her. The dress she was wearing certainly had not come from a plushy Main Street store—it was more reminiscent of Al Capp’s Dogpatch and went along with my jeans and teeshirt. From where I stood it seemed to be the only thing she was wearing. ‘All right, Daisy-Mae, has anyone told you why you were kidnapped?’

  ‘Daisy-M…?’ She caught on and looked down at herself, then involuntarily put a hand to her breast. ‘They took my clothes away.’

  ‘Mine, too.’

  ‘I must look terrible.’

  ‘A sight for sore eyes.’ She looked up at me and flushed, and we were both silent for a moment. Then we both started to talk at the same time, and both stopped simultaneously.

  ‘I’ve been a damned fool, Tom,’ she said.

  ‘This is not the time—nor place—to discuss our marital problems,’ I said. ‘There are better things to do. Do you know why you were kidnapped?’

  ‘Not really. He’s been asking all sorts of questions about you.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘About what you were doing. Where you’d been. Things like that. I told him I didn’t know—that I’d left you. He didn’t believe me. He kept going on and on about you.’ She shivered suddenly. ‘Who is this man? What’s happening to us, Tom?’

  Good questions; unfortunately I had no answers. Debbie looked scared and I did not blame her. That character with the automatic shotgun had nearly scared the jeans off me and I had just arrived. Debbie had been here at least three days.

  I said gently, ‘Have they ill-treated you?’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘Not physically. But it’s the way some of them look at me.’ She shivered again. ‘I’m scared, Tom. I’m scared half to death.’

  I sat down and put my arm around her. ‘Not to worry. How many are there?’

  ‘I’ve seen four.’

  ‘Including a man whose name isn’t Robinson? An English smoothie with a plummy voice?’

  ‘He’s the one who asks the questions. The others don’t say much—not to me. They just look.’

  ‘Let’s get back to these questions. Was there anything specific he wanted to know?’

  Debbie frowned. ‘No. He asked general questions in a roundabout way. It’s as though he wants to find out something without letting me know what it is. Just endless questions about you. He wanted to know what you’d told the police. He said you seemed to spend a lot of time in the company of Commissioner Perigord. I said I didn’t know about anything you might have told Perigord, and that I’d only met Perigord once, before we were married.’ She paused. ‘There was one thing. He asked when I’d left you, and I told him. He then commented that it would be the day after you’d found Kayles.’

  I sat upright. ‘Kayles! He mentioned him by name?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he’d ask me about Kayles, but he didn’t. He went off on another track, asking when we were married. He asked if I’d known Julie.’

  ‘Did he, by God! What did you say?’

  ‘I told him the truth; that I’d met her briefly but hadn’t known her well.’

  ‘What was his reaction to that?’

  ‘He seemed to lose interest. You call him Robinson—is that his name?’

  ‘I doubt it; and I don’t think he’s English, either.’ I was
thinking of the connection between Robinson and Kayles and sorting out possible relationships. Was Robinson the boss of a drug-running syndicate? If so then why should he kidnap Debbie and me? It did not make much sense.

  Debbie said, ‘I don’t like him, and I don’t like the way he talks. The others frighten me, but he frightens me in a different way.’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘The others are ignorant white trash—corn-crackers—but they look at me as a woman. Robinson looks at me as an object, as though I’m not a human being at all.’ She broke down into sobs. ‘For God’s sake, Tom; who are these people? What have you been doing to get mixed up in this?’

  ‘Take it easy, my love,’ I said. ‘Hush, now.’

  She quietened again and after a while said in a small voice, ‘It’s a long time since you’ve called me that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your love.’

  I was silent for a moment, then said heavily, ‘A pity. I ought to have remembered to do it more often.’ I was thinking of a divorce lawyer who had told me that in a breaking marriage there were invariably faults on both sides. I would say he was right.

  Presently Debbie sat up and dried her eyes on the hem of her dress. ‘I must look a mess.’

  ‘You look as beautiful as ever. Cheer up, there’s still hope. Your folks will be skinning Texas to find us. I wouldn’t like to be anyone who gets on the wrong side of Billy One.’

  ‘It’s a big state,’ she said sombrely.

  The biggest—barring Alaska—and I could not see the Cunninghams finding us in a hurry. The thought that chilled me was that Robinson had made no attempt at disguise. True, his face was not memorable in the normal way, but I would certainly remember it from now on, and so would Debbie. The rationale behind that sent a grue up my spine—the only way he could prevent future identification was by killing us. We were never intended to be released.

  It was cold comfort to know that the Cunninghams were roused and that sooner or later, with the backing of the Cunningham Corporation, Robinson would eventually be run down and due vengeance taken. Debbie and I would know nothing of that.

  Debbie said, ‘I’m sorry about the way I behaved.’

  ‘Skip it,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘But you could be a son of a bitch at times—a real cold bastard. Sometimes you’d act as though I wasn’t there at all. I began to think I was the invisible woman.’

  ‘There was no one else,‘ I said. ‘There never was.’

  ‘No one human.’

  ‘Nor a ghost, Debbie,’ I said. ‘I accepted Julie’s death a long time ago.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that—I meant your goddamn job.’ She looked up. ‘But I ought to have known because I’m a Cunningham.’ She smiled slightly. ‘“For men must work and women must weep.” And the Cunningham men do work. I thought it might be different with you.’

  ‘And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep.’ I completed the quotation, but only in my mind; it was too damned apposite to say aloud. ‘Why should it have been different? The Cunningham men haven’t taken out a patent on hard work. But maybe I did go at it too hard.’

  ‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘You did what you had to, as all men do. The pity is that I didn’t see it. Looking back, I know there’s a lot I didn’t see. Myself, for one thing. My God, you married an empty-headed ninny.’

  That was a statement it would be politic not to answer. I said, ‘You had your problems.’

  ‘And piled them on your back. I swear to God, Tom, that things will be different. I’ll make an effort to change if you will. We’ve both, in our own ways, been damned fools.’

  I managed a smile. The likelihood that we would have a future together was minimal. ‘It’s a bargain,’ I said.

  She held out her hand and drew me down to her. ‘So seal it.’ I put my hands on her and discovered that, indeed, she wore nothing beneath the shift. She said softly, ‘It won’t hurt him.’

  So we made love, and it was not just having sex. There is quite a difference.

  FIFTEEN

  Robinson gave us about three hours together. It was difficult to judge time because neither of us had a watch and all I could do was to estimate the hour by the angle of the sun. I think we had three hours before there was a rattle at the door and the Texan came in, gun first.

  He stepped sideways, as before, and Robinson came in with another man who could have been the Texan’s brother and possibly was. He was armed with a pistol. Robinson surveyed us and said benignly, ‘So nice to see young people getting together again. I hope you have acquainted your husband with the issue at hand, Mrs Mangan.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what the hell you want,’ I said. ‘And neither do I. This is bloody ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, we’ll talk about that later,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I must part you lovebirds. Come along, Mrs Mangan.’

  Debbie looked appealingly at me, but I shook my head gently. ‘You’d better go.’ I could see the man’s finger tightening on the trigger of the shotgun.

  And so she was taken from me and escorted from the room by the man with the pistol. ‘We won’t starve you,’ said Robinson. ‘That should be an earnest of my good intentions—should you doubt them.’

  He stood aside and a woman came in with a tray which she exchanged for the breakfast tray. She was a worn woman with sagging breasts and hands gnarled and twisted with rheumatics. I pointed to the pitcher and basin on the other side of the room. ‘What about some fresh water?’

  ‘I see no reason why not. What about it, Leroy?’

  The Texan said, ‘Belle, git th’ water.’

  She took the pitcher and basin outside, and I had a couple more names, for what they were worth. Robinson looked at the tray from which steam rose gently. ‘Not the best of cuisine, I’m afraid, but edible…edible. And it’s very much a case of fingers being made before forks. I think you’ll need the water.’

  I said, ‘What about coming to the point?’

  He wagged a finger at me. ‘Later…I said later. There is something which I must think over rather carefully. There’s really plenty of time, my dear chap.’

  Belle came back, put the basin on the table and stood the pitcher in it. When she left Robinson said, ‘Bon appetit,’ and backed out, followed by Leroy.

  The meal was fish or, rather, wet cotton wadding mixed with spiky bones. I ate with my fingers and the flesh tasted of mud. When I had eaten rather less than my fill, but could stomach no more, I walked over to the water pitcher and was about to pour water into the basin to wash my slimy hands when I stopped and looked at it thoughtfully. I did not pour the water but dabbled my hands in the pitcher, then wiped them dry on my jeans.

  The pitcher held more than two gallons. That, plus the weight of the pitcher itself, would be about twenty-five pounds. I was beginning to get ideas. I went back to the bed, spread butter on a thick slice of bread, and munched while looking at the pitcher, hoping it would tell me what to do. The first faint tendrils of an idea began to burgeon.

  Robinson came back about two hours later with his usual bodyguard, and Leroy took his position just to the left of the door. Robinson closed the door and leaned on it. ‘I’m sorry to learn of your marital troubles, Mr Mangan,’ he said suavely. ‘But from what I heard I gather you are on your way to solving them.’ He smiled at my startled expression. ‘Oh, yes, I listened to your conversation with your wife with great interest.’

  I cursed silently. Ramon Rodriguez had shown me what could be done with bugs, and I might have known that Robinson would have the place wired. ‘So you’re a voyeur, too,’ I said acidly.

  He sniggered. ‘I even recorded your love-play. Though not my main interest it was very entertaining. If set to music it could hit the top twenty.’

  ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Now, now,’ he said chidingly. ‘That’s not the way to speak when you’re at the wrong end of a gun. Let us come to more serious matters—the case of Jack Kayles. I
noted when listening to the tape that you showed interest when your wife mentioned his name. My interest is in how you tracked him down. I would dearly like to know the answer to that.’

  I said nothing but just looked at him, and he clicked his tongue. ‘I advise you to be cooperative,’ he said. ‘In your own interest—and that of your wife.’

  ‘I’ll answer that if you tell me why he killed my family.’

  Robinson regarded me thoughtfully. ‘No harm in that, I suppose. He killed your family because he is a stupid man; how stupid I am only now beginning to find out. In fact, it is essential that I now find the measure of his stupidity, and that is why you are here.’

  He took a pace forward and stood with his hands in his pockets. ‘Kayles was supposed to sail from the Bahamas to Miami in his own boat. There was a deadline, but Kayles was having problems—something technical to do with boats.’ Robinson waved the technicality aside. ‘At any rate he found he could not meet the deadline. When he heard that a skipper needed a crewman to help take a boat to Miami the next day he jumped at the chance. Do you follow me?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘Now, Kayles was carrying something with him, something important.’ Robinson waved his hand airily. ‘There is no necessity for you to know what it was. As I say, he is stupid and he let your skipper find it, so Kayles killed him with the knife he invariably carries. His intention was to conveniently lose that poor black man overboard but, unfortunately, the killing was seen by your little girl and then…’ He sighed and shrugged. ‘…then one thing led to another. Now, Mr Mangan, I don’t mind telling you that I was very angry about this—very angry, indeed. It was a grievous setback to my plans. Disposing of your boat was a great problem, to begin with.’

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ I said bitterly. ‘You’re talking about my wife, my daughter and my friend.’ I stuck my finger out at him. ‘And you’ve no need to be coy about what Kayles was carrying. It was a consignment of cocaine.’

  Robinson stared at me. ‘Dear me! You do jump to conclusions. Now, I wonder…’ He broke off and looked up at the roof, deep in thought. After a while his gaze returned to me. ‘Well, we can take that up later, can’t we? I’ve answered your question, Mangan. Now answer mine. How did you trace the idiot?’