Debbie laughed and said to Amy Perigord, ‘Where do they get the energy? You wouldn’t think they’ve just swum two miles. Would you like a drink?’
‘I’d rather have tea,’ said Mrs Perigord. ‘I’m not really a drinker.’
‘We won’t bother Luke,’ said Debbie. ‘Come into the kitchen and chat while I make it.’
I smiled at Perigord as they went away. Because he had attended the Marathon in his official capacity he was in full fig, swagger stick and all. I said, ‘I propose something stronger. What will you have?’
He sat down and laid his cap and swagger stick by the chair. ‘Some people think because I’m a black Bahamian that I exist on a liquid diet of rum, but I prefer scotch.’
I went to the poolside bar and held up a bottle of Glenlivet. ‘This do?’
He grinned. ‘That will do very well.’
I poured two drinks and put a bottle of iced water at his elbow. I said, ‘Billy Cunningham rang me this morning. He says he’s growing a streak of white hair where that bullet grazed him. He thinks it makes him look distinguished.’
‘Did he really lose that pistol in the water?’ asked Perigord curiously.
‘I’ll answer that by asking you a question,’ I said. ‘Would Deane really have framed the crew of Capistrano by planting cocaine?’
Perigord smiled. ‘I see.’ He ignored the water and sipped the scotch. ‘Very good,’ he observed.
‘Now, tell me—who was Robinson?’
‘We sent his fingerprints to the States and the Americans told us, but we could have found out ourselves once we began to dig. He was an Anglo-Cuban, educated in England. His name was Rojas and he was Perez’s brother-in-law.’
I contemplated that information which did not mean much to me. ‘So what happens now? Do we live in a permanent state of siege?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Perigord. ‘An attempt was made—a covert attack on the Bahamas—and it failed. We have investigated every unusual occurrence since Rojas was killed and have found nothing to indicate that the attack is continuing. In my opinion, an opinion now shared by Commissioner Deane and the Government, the whole idea was conceived, planned and executed by Perez and Rojas. Probably Castro knew nothing about it.’
‘You think not?’
‘I think it was rather like Henry II and Becket. You know the story?’
‘Henry said, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” and the four knights went and slaughtered Becket in the cathedral.’
‘Henry did penance for it afterwards,’ said Perigord. ‘I know Fidel Castro is no saint, but I don’t think he’d stoop to what that pair did. He’s too vulnerable himself. No, there’s been bad blood between Cuba and the Bahamas ever since their jet planes shot up our fishery patrol vessel and killed four men, and matters haven’t become any easier since. I think Castro wondered aloud how to solve the Bahamian question, and Perez and Rojas decided to take action.’
‘So you now think we can live like reasonable human beings.’
‘I would say so.’ He smiled. ‘But didn’t someone say that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It has taught us a lesson from which we have benefited. At a cost.’
‘I’m not going to relax the security measures in the hotels,’ I said.
‘Very wise. We also have instituted security measures; they are unobtrusive but they are there.’ He held up his hand. ‘Don’t ask me what they are.’
I grinned at him. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ We sat in silence for a while and Perigord savoured his whisky. I said, ‘You know the funniest thing in the whole damn business?’
‘What?’
‘When you threw that swagger stick. You looked so damned silly, but it worked.’
‘Ah, the swagger stick. Do you know the history of this?’
‘No.’
‘It’s the lineal descendant of the ash plant carried by the Roman centurion over two thousand years ago. He used it to discipline his men, but then it became a staff of office. The line split quite early; one way led to the field marshal’s baton, the other to the officer’s cane. Catch!’ He suddenly tossed it to me.
I grabbed it out of the air and nearly dropped it because it was unexpectedly heavy. I had thought it to be merely a cane encased in leather, but this one was loaded with lead at both ends. Perigord said suavely, ‘Not only a staff of office but a weapon against crime. It has saved my life twice.’
I returned the weapon against crime, and he said, ‘Amy confided in me this afternoon that your wife is expecting a baby. Is that so?’
‘Yes—in about six months.’
‘I’m glad she wasn’t permanently harmed by what happened in Texas. In view of what I know about your family history may I offer the hope that it will be a boy?’
And six months later Karen had a brother.
DESMOND BAGLEY
Born on October 29th 1923 in Kendal, Westmorland, England, the second son of John and Hannah Marie Bagley. His father was a coal miner but then ran a theatrical boarding house in Kendal and, later, in Blackpool, Lancashire, where DB spent most of his youth.
After a minimum of schooling DB left to begin work at the age of 14 as a printer’s devil. At the start of World War II he worked in an aircraft factory in Lancashire making, among other things, Spitfire components and machine gun turrets. After the war he emigrated to Africa, travelling overland, and held a variety of jobs in Uganda, Kenya, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa before making a start in journalism.
This began when he wrote a series of radio talks on scientific subjects for the South African Broadcasting Corporation in Durban (1950-51). He then went on to Johannesburg where he worked as a freelance reporter for several newspapers—the Rand Daily Mail, the Sunday Times and the Star—and for several trade journals.
He was for a long time the film critic for the Rand Daily Mail and the Johannesburg Film Society; and wrote theatre, concert and record reviews. There were numerous feature articles and emphasis on fact-finding surveys and trade shows from 1956 to 1962.
DB also at this time wrote commercial film scenarios for the cinema and Rhodesian television. Privately he worked on a number of short stories, without marked success.
NOVELS
In 1962 he began to write a novel (not the first he had tried) which he had been planning for a long time, giving up other work while the book was in progress. This was The Golden Keel which was submitted to William Collins Ltd and was accepted by them in early 1963 for publication later that year.
On the strength of this acceptance DB and his wife moved to England after a short and abortive attempt to live in Italy, and rented a house in Bishopsteignton, South Devon.
A second novel, High Citadel, had been written in South Africa just before the move and was accepted by Collins for publication in 1965. Since then they have published all DB’s novels:
1963 The Golden Keel
1965 High Citadel
1966 Wyatt’s Hurricane
1967 Landslide
1968 The Vivero Letter
1969 The Spoilers
1970 Running Blind
1971 The Freedom Trap
1973 The Tightrope Men
1975 The Snow Tiger
1977 The Enemy
1978 Flyaway
1980 Bahama Crisis
1981 The Man from Hell’s Gate*
These have all been published in Britain by Collins in hardback and by Fontana in paperback. There have also been English book club editions, radio dramatizations and readings, and serial publication. The books have all come out in Braille and large-print editions and have been read on to tape for the blind and the seriously handicapped. Both Collins and Hutchinson Educational Books Ltd have produced remedial editions.
WORK IN PROGRESS
DB is at present (August 1980) writing his autobiography, and at all times there is at least one novel in the pipeline.
The hardback American editions are published by Doubleday & Co. Inc. of New York.
Paperbacks in the US are produced by Bantam and Fawcett. There have been American serials, book club editions and Readers’ Digest condensations.
DB’s novels have also appeared in hard and soft-covered editions, book clubs, serials and condensations in the following languages:
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Hebrew, Afrikaans, Hindi, Turkish, Japanese, Czech.
In 1979 the Dutch Publisher, Elsevier, celebrated the occasion of the publication of one million copies of DB’s books in the Dutch language.
FILMS AND TV
One book, The Freedom Trap, was produced and released under the title The Mackintosh Man, starring Paul Newman and James Mason, and directed by John Huston. Other books are being considered for filming. DB spent some time in Hollywood in 1970-71 where he wrote his own script for Running Blind. However, the film was not made and he has decided not to tackle scriptwriting in future, preferring to stick to original work. In 1978 Running Blind was produced by BBC-Scotland as a three-part serial and this production has been screened in Britain and many other countries.*
PERSONAL
In 1960 DB married Joan Margaret Brown, Johannesburgborn, who was then working in a bookshop in that city. They have no children.
In 1965 they bought a Georgian house in Totnes, South Devon, and lived there until 1976. Then they moved to Guernsey in the Chanel Islands, where they bought a house of similar period, and where they live with three cats and a dog and a steady flow of visitors from the UK and abroad.
DB is a member of several writers’ organisations; in Britain the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors; in the US the Mystery Writers of America, the Authors’ Guild and the Authors’ League. He is a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies and, in 1978, was elected a member of The Detection Club.
He has travelled extensively in search of material for his books. Apart from two overland crossings of the Sahara and much of the rest of Africa, he has visited Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and much of Europe, especially liking Scandinavia. He has travelled to Iceland and Greenland. He has explored by boat the waterways of France, Germany and Ireland. In 1968 he went to Antarctica as a guest of the United States Navy, visiting several polar bases including the South Pole itself.
DB is deeply interested in modern technology. He has long owned and programmed his own computer and now composes his books and other writings (including this fact sheet) on a word processor. Outside of writing his interests include recreational mathematics, military history, music, photography and reading. He reads fast and widely on the above subjects and also science. His own ability to read and enjoy fiction has diminished since he began to write fiction himself, and he now prefers non-fiction.
He reads three daily and two weekend newspapers regularly and a large number of weekly and monthly periodicals including Scientific American and New Scientist, bookselling and computer journals and so on. He is a regular but highly selective TV viewer. He sees fewer new films than he used to and goes to few forms of live entertainment. He has done some sailing and used to be a fencer, but no longer takes part in any sport, actively or as a spectator.
Desmond Bagley
April 1981
* * *
*Published as Windfall in 1982. It was followed by Night of Error (1984) and Juggernaut (1985), both published posthumously.
*Since his death in April 1983, other books have been adapted into TV movies: Landslide (1992), The Vivero Letter (as Forgotten City, 2000) and The Enemy (2001).
About the Author
WYATT’S HURRICANE
BAHAMA CRISIS
Desmond Bagley was born in 1923 in Kendal, Westmorland, and brought up in Blackpool. He began his working life, aged 14, in the printing industry and then did a variety of jobs until going into an aircraft factory at the start of the Second World War.
When the war ended, he decided to travel to southern Africa, going overland through Europe and the Sahara. He worked en route, reaching South Africa in 1951.
Bagley became a freelance journalist in Johannesburg and wrote his first published novel, The Golden Keel, in 1962. In 1964 he returned to England and lived in Totnes, Devon, for twelve years. He and his wife Joan then moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Here he found the ideal place for combining his writing and his other interests, which included computers, mathematics, military history, and entertaining friends from all over the world.
Desmond Bagley died in April 1983, having become one of the world’s top-selling authors, with his 16 books—two of them published after his death—translated into more than 30 languages.
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Praise
‘I’ve read all Bagley’s books and he’s marvellous, the best.’
ALISTAIR MACLEAN
By the same author
Flyaway AND Windfall
The Golden Keel AND The Vivero Letter
High Citadel AND Landslide
Running Blind AND The Freedom Trap
The Snow Tiger AND Night of Error
The Spoilers AND Juggernaut
The Tightrope Men AND The Enemy
Copyright
HARPER
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This omnibus edition 2009
FIRST EDITION
Wyatt’s Hurricane first published in Great Britain by Collins 1966
Landslide first published in Great Britain by Collins 1980
Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works
Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1966, 1980, 1981
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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34766-7
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