Wyatt's Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  The bad news came with the second item on the radio. An oil tanker had blown up in Exuma Sound; an air reconnaissance found an oil slick already twenty miles long, and the betting was even on whether the oil would foul the beaches of Eleuthera or the Exuma Cays, depending on which way it drifted.

  The Bahamas do not have much going for them. We have no minerals, poor agriculture because of the thin soil, and little industry. But what we do have we have made the most of in building a great tourist industry. We have the sea and sun and beaches with sand as white as snow—so we developed water sports; swimming, scuba-diving, sailing—and we needed oiled water and beaches as much as we needed Legionella pneumophila.

  I could not understand what an oil tanker was doing in Exuma Sound, especially a 30,000 tonner. A ship that size could not possibly put into any port in any of the surrounding islands—she would draw far too much water. I detected the hand of Robinson somewhere; an unfounded notion to be sure, but this was another hammer blow to tourism in the Bahamas.

  I dressed and breakfasted, kissed Debbie goodbye, and checked into my office before going on to see Perigord. Walker, my constant companion, had not much to say, being conscious of the fiasco of the previous night, and so he was as morose as I was depressed. At the office I gave him a job to do in order to take his mind off his supposed shortcomings. ‘Ring the Port Authority and find out all you can about the tanker that blew up last night. Say you’re enquiring on my behalf.’ Then I got down to looking at the morning mail.

  At half past nine Billy Cunningham unexpectedly appeared. ‘What’s all this about a shoot-out at the OK Corral?’ he demanded without preamble.

  ‘How do you know about it?’

  ‘Steve Walker works for me,’ he said tersely. ‘He keeps me informed. Was Debbie involved in any way?’

  ‘Didn’t Walker tell you she wasn’t?’

  ‘I forgot to ask when he rang last night.’ Billy blew out his cheeks and sat down. ‘I haven’t told Jack about this, but he’s sure to find out. He’s not in good shape and bad news won’t do him any good. We’ve got to get this mess cleared up, Tom. What’s the pitch?’

  ‘If you’ve talked to Walker you know as much as I do. We’ve lost our only lead to Robinson.’ I held his eye. ‘Have you flown a thousand miles just to hold my hand?’

  He shrugged. ‘Billy One is worried. He reckons we should get Debbie out of here, both for her own sake and Jack’s.’

  ‘She’s well enough protected,’ I said.

  ‘Protected!’ Billy snorted. ‘Steve Walker is pissed off with your cops; he tells me they’ve taken his guns. How can he protect her if his guys are unarmed?’

  ‘Perigord seems to be doing all right,’ I said. ‘And there’s an armed police officer at the house.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Billy. ‘I didn’t know that.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘How will you find Robinson now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and we discussed the problem for a few minutes, then I checked the time. ‘I have an appointment with Perigord and his boss. Maybe they’ll come up with something.’

  It was then that Rodriguez and the good news came in. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, and skimmed a black-and-white photograph across the desk.

  It was a good photograph, a damned good photograph. It showed Carrasco hopping over the bows of a dory which had its prow dug into a sandy beach. The picture was as sharp as a pin and his features showed up clearly. In the stern of the dory, holding on to the tiller bar of an outboard motor, was another man who was equally sharply delineated. I did not know him.

  ‘You took this last night?’ Rodriguez nodded. ‘You were crazy to use a flash. What did Carrasco do?’

  ‘He did nothing. And who said anything about a flash? That crazy I’m not.’

  I stared at him then looked at the picture. ‘Then how…?’

  He laughed and explained. The ‘gismo’ mentioned by Walker was a light amplifier, originally developed by the military for gunsights used at night but now much used by naturalists and others who wished to observe animals. ‘And for security operations,’ Rodriguez added. ‘You can take a pretty good picture using only starlight, but last night there was a new moon.’

  I looked at the photograph again, then handed it to Billy. ‘All very nice, but it doesn’t get us very far. All that shows is Carrasco climbing from a boat on to a beach. We might get somewhere by looking for the man in the stern, but I doubt it. Anyway, I’ll give it to Perigord; maybe he can make something of it.’

  ‘I took more than one picture,’ said Rodriguez. ‘Take a look at this one—especially at the stern.’ Another photograph skimmed across the desk.

  This picture showed the dory again which had turned and was heading out to sea. And it was a jackpot because, lettered across the stern, were the words: ‘Tender to Capistrano’.

  ‘Bingo!’ I said. ‘You might have made up for losing Carrasco last night.’ I looked at Billy. ‘That’s something for you to do while I’m with Perigord. Ring around the marinas and try to trace Capistrano.’

  Five minutes later I was in Perigord’s office. Also present was Commissioner Deane, a big, white Bahamian with a face the colour of mahogany, and the authority he radiated was like a blow in the face. I knew him, but not too well. We had been at school together in Nassau, but I had been a new boy when he was in his last year. I had followed him to Cambridge and he had gone on to the Middle Temple. Returning to the Bahamas he had joined the Police Force, an odd thing for a Bahamian barrister to do, because mostly they enter politics with the House of Assembly as prime target. He was reputed to be tough and abrasive.

  Now he said raspily, ‘This is a very strange business you’ve come up with, Mangan.’

  ‘We’d better discuss it later.’ I tossed the pictures before Perigord. ‘Carrasco probably made a rendezvous with a boat called Capistrano. Rodriguez took those last night.’

  A little time was wasted while we discussed how Rodriguez could possibly have taken photographs at night without a flash, then Perigord twitched an eyebrow at Deane. ‘With your permission?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deane. ‘Get busy. But you have a watching brief, that’s all.’

  Perigord left, and Deane said, ‘As I started to say, you have come up with an oddity. You have suggested a crime, or a series of crimes, with no hard evidence—merely a chain of suppositions.’

  ‘No evidence! What about the ampoules taken from Carrasco?’

  ‘Those won’t be evidence until we find what is in them, and Perigord tells me that will take four days. We flew an ampoule to Nassau during the night. So far the whole affair is very misty. A lot of strange things have been happening around you, and don’t think my deputy has not kept me informed. Now, these events are subject to many interpretations, as all subjective evidence is.’

  ‘Subjective!’ I said incredulously. ‘My first wife disappeared and my daughter was found dead; there’s nothing bloody subjective about that. My second wife and I were kidnapped; I suppose we dreamed it up. There have been two cases of disease in hotels and that’s fact, Commissioner, bloody hard fact.’

  ‘What is subjective is your interpretation of these events,’ said Deane. ‘You have brought in a number of events—the breakdown of a baggage carousel at the airport, a fire, an air crash, and a number of other things, and the only connection you can offer is your interpretation. Just give me one piece of hard evidence, something I can put before a court—that’s all I ask.’

  ‘You’ve got it—the ampoules.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing, until four days from now. And what’s in the ampoules might prove to be a cough cure.’

  ‘You can prove it right now,’ I said. ‘Just take one of those ampoules, break it, and inhale deeply. But don’t ask me to be in the same room when you do it.’

  Deane smiled unexpectedly. ‘You’re a stubborn man. No, I won’t do that because you may be right. In fact, I think you are right.’ He stood up and began to pace the room. ‘Your
interpretation of events dovetails with a number of mysteries which have been occupying my mind lately.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘A lot of telephoning was done during the night. We now know that Dr Luis Carrasco is unknown at 226 Avenida Bolivar in Caracas.’

  That was disappointing. ‘Another lead gone,’ I said dejectedly.

  ‘Negative findings can be useful,’ observed Deane. ‘It tells us, for instance, that he was bent, that he had something to hide.’ He added casually, ‘Of course, now we know his real name all becomes clear.’

  I sat up. ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘When you sealed his hotel room you did well. We could make nothing of the fingerprints so we passed them on to the Americans, and their report came on that telephone just before you arrived here. Carrasco turns out to be one Serafin Perez.’

  That meant nothing to me. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Not many people have,’ said Deane. ‘He liked his anonymity. Perez is—was—a Cuban, a hardline communist and Moscow-trained. He was with Che Guevara when Guevara tried to export the revolution, but he broke with Guevara because he thought Guevara was mishandling the business. As it turned out Perez proved to be right and Guevara wrong. Since then he’s been busy and a damn sight more successful than Che. He’s been pitching up all over the place—Grenada, Nicaragua, Martinique, Jamaica. Notice anything about that list?’

  ‘The hot spots,’ I said. ‘Grenada has gone left, so has Nicaragua. Jamaica is going, and the French are holding on to Martinique with their finger tips.’

  ‘I believe Perez was here during the riots in Nassau. There was a certain amount of justification for that trouble, but not to the length of riot. Many of the rioters had no direct connection and I smelled a rent-a-mob. Now I know who rented it.’

  ‘So much for Carrasco-Perez,’ I said. ‘A white ant.’

  Deane looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When I was at Cambridge I knew a South African. He once said something which had me baffled and I asked him to explain it. He said he had been white-anted; apparently it’s a common South African idiom. A white ant is what we would call a termite, Commissioner.’

  Deane grunted. ‘Don’t talk to me about termites,’ he said sourly. ‘I’ve just discovered that my house is infested. It’s going to cost me five thousand dollars—probably more.’

  I said, ‘You take a wooden post or a beam in a house. It looks good and solid until you hit it, then it collapses into a heap of powder—the termites have got into it. When the South African said he’d been white-anted he meant he’d been undermined without his knowledge. In his case it was student politics—something to do with the student union. Commissioner, the Bahamas are being white-anted. We’re being attacked at our most vulnerable point—tourism.’

  ‘A good analogy,’ said Deane thoughtfully. ‘It’s true that the Ministry of Tourism is perturbed about the fall in the number of visitors lately. So is the Prime Minister—there was a special Cabinet meeting last week. And there’s more political unrest. Fewer tourists means more unemployment, and that is being exploited. But we need evidence—the Prime Minister demands it. Any crack-down without evidence would lead to accusations of police interference in political matters. The Prime Minister doesn’t want the Bahamas to have the reputation of being a police state—that wouldn’t do much for tourism, either.’

  ‘Then investigate the sinking of that tanker in Exuma Sound last night. The report mentioned a twenty-mile oil slick only eight hours after she went down. If that’s true the oil came out awfully fast. If I were you I’d question the skipper closely—if he’s still around. Don’t wait for the official inquiry; regard it as a police matter.’

  ‘By God!’ said Deane. ‘I hadn’t made that connection.’

  ‘And find Robinson,’ I said. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Your Mr Robinson is an unknown quantity.’

  Perigord came in. ‘Capistrano just left Running Mon marina, heading east along the coast.’

  East! ‘Making for the Grand Lucayan Waterway and the north coast,’ I said. ‘Florida next stop.’

  ‘What kind of a boat is she?’ asked Deane.

  ‘Sixty-foot motor yacht, white hull,’ said Perigord. ‘I don’t think she’s all that fast, she’s a displacement type according to the management of Running Mon. She put into the marina during the night with engine trouble. Had it fixed this morning.’

  I looked at Deane who was sitting immobile. ‘What are we waiting for? You have a fast police launch, and Capistrano is still in Bahamian waters.’

  ‘So we put men aboard, search her, and find nothing. Then what?’ Deane stood up. ‘I’ll tell you what would happen next. We’d have to let her go—with profuse apologies. If your Mr Robinson is as clever as you say we would certainly not find anything because there would be nothing to be found.’

  ‘But you might find Robinson,’ I said. ‘He could be aboard and he’s wanted for kidnapping in Texas.’

  ‘Not so,’ contradicted Deane. ‘A man calling himself Robinson is wanted for questioning concerning a kidnapping in Texas. He cannot possibly be extradited merely for questioning. We would have to let him go. He has committed no crime in the Bahamas for which we have evidence—as yet.’

  ‘Robinson might not be on board, anyway,’ said Perigord.

  ‘Then aren’t you going to do anything?’ I demanded desperately.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Deane blandly. He lifted his eyebrows interrogatively at Perigord. ‘I hope your contingency planning is working well.’

  ‘It is. A fast Customs boat will pass Capistrano and enter the Lucayan Waterway ahead of her. There’ll be another behind. Once she’s in the Waterway she’s bottled up. Then we put the Customs officers aboard her.’

  ‘But I thought you said…’ I was bewildered.

  ‘We might as well try,’ said Deane smoothly. ‘Who knows what the Customs officers might find if they search thoroughly enough. Cocaine, perhaps?’

  I opened my mouth again, then shut it firmly. If this pair was about to frame Robinson by planting cocaine on his boat they would certainly not admit it to me, but it seemed that Deane was a hard case who was not above providing his own evidence. After all, all he had to do was to keep Robinson in the Bahamas for four days.

  ‘We had better be on hand,’ Deane said casually. ‘You’ll come, too—you can identify Robinson.’ He picked up the photograph of Carrasco-Perez. ‘And I shall certainly want to question those on board about their association with Perez. We rendezvous at the Casuarina Bridge in thirty minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said.

  Hoping and praying that Robinson would be aboard Capistrano I drove the few hundred yards to the Royal Palm knowing that Billy Cunningham would want to be in at the kill. As soon as he saw me he said, ‘Capistrano was in a marina called Running Mon, but she’s gone now.’

  I said, ‘I know. The police are going to pick her up.’

  ‘Is Robinson on board?’

  ‘I hope so. I’m joining Perigord and Deane. They want me to identify Robinson. Want to come along?’

  ‘Try stopping me,’ he said. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting that son of a bitch.’

  I made a decision. ‘We’ll go by boat. Let’s go down to the marina.’

  We found Joe Cartwright in the marina office. I popped my head around the door, and said, ‘I want the rescue boat, Joe; with a full tank.’

  Cartwright looked up. ‘Can’t be done, Mr Mangan. Got the engine out of her. Tuning her up for the BASRA Marathon next month.’

  ‘Damn! What else have we that’s fast and seaworthy?’

  ‘What about the inflatable?’ he suggested. ‘She’s not bad.’

  ‘Get her ready.’

  Within minutes we were at sea, roaring east along the south coast towards the Lucayan Waterway. Some people feel uncomfortable about being in a blow-up boat but they are very good. They are unsinkab
le, and the British even use them as lifeboats for inshore rescue. And they are damned fast even if they do tend to skitter a bit on the surface of the water.

  I told Billy about the plan of attack, and presently I pointed. ‘There’s the Waterway, and that’s the Customs launch just turning in. We’ve got Capistrano trapped.’

  I slowed as we entered the Waterway. The Casuarina Bridge was nearly two miles ahead, and in the distance I could see the Customs launch lying next to a white-hulled boat. ‘They’ve got her.’ We motored on and drew alongside the Customs launch where I tossed the painter to a seaman and cut the engine. ‘Let’s go aboard.’

  As we stepped on to Capistrano’s deck I was accosted by a Customs officer. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tom Mangan.’ I looked up at the bridge and saw Perigord and Deane looking down. ‘I’m with Commissioner Deane.’ Three men stood on the after deck. None of them was Robinson. ‘That the crew?’

  ‘Yes; skipper, engineer and seaman-cum-cook.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘We’re still looking. I’ve got men searching below.’

  One of the three men approached us. ‘Hell, Captain, this is crazy. We’re not carrying anything illegal. We’re just on a cruise.’ He was an American.

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about,’ said the Customs man.

  ‘Well, I’ve gotta get back before the bad weather blows up. Did you hear the weather report? If you don’t let me go I’ll have to see the American consul here.’

  ‘I’ll give you his address,’ said the officer blandly.

  Another Customs man emerged from a hatch. ‘No one below,’ he reported.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said.

  ‘We opened up every compartment big enough to hold a man.’

  ‘It’s a bust,’ said Billy disgustedly.

  Deane and Perigord had come down from the bridge and were picking their way along the shore towards us. I looked around the deck of Capistrano and stiffened as I noticed that the stern davits were empty. I swung around to face the skipper. ‘Where’s the dory—your tender?’

  ‘Mr Brown took it.’