by Stieve Adams
typewriters against modern IBM personal computers. Before bedtime, I fed in the codes from Valerie's paper on my little portable computer. Early next morning, it changed plans when I was supposed to complete a quote for the affiliate in St. Kitts. Therefore, I took the local flight to the neighboring island and was there after less than an hour.
2. St. Kitts
At the airport, I was, of course, met by a number of young people who more and less handled trying to help with my luggage and to ride a taxi. One of the taxi drivers was very determined and took me to his big old Dodge from the fifties. He took full speed against the city, that is, full speed according to the rate prevailing on St. Kitts. He was actually up for 50 km an hour on a couple of occasions. He was so courteous that he persuaded me to leave the car and buy a pair of sunglasses before continuing to the hotel.
I am very orderly of me and when I packed up I saw directly that someone had searched through my luggage. Nothing was gone so I did not take that seriously at all. Since the hotel did not have air conditioning I slept for the open window and the ceiling fan was spinning during the night. Suddenly, I woke up in the middle of the night, the fan that had blown me in the face did not work anymore. There was something or rather someone between me and the fan. This one was looking through my pockets. I sat up in bed and wondered what was going on. The black shadow warned this and rushed out onto the balcony and climbed weight down to the street level and disappeared.
I lifted the phone and alerted the front desk and a young man alerted the police after which my hotel room became the meeting place for the local police force the rest of the night. The policemen on this island are obviously large adults and should be able to scare the bows with their naked presence. I was also assured that on this little island there were no burglaries in hotel rooms. They assured me there had to be a temporary thief from another island. They advised me to shut the window and sleep, despite the heat.
Somewhat exhausted, I walked to my potential customer's branch. I felt persecuted but ignored this, who would be interested in shadowing me? In the middle of the street was a traffic police with big white gloves and an impressive uniform sleeve. In the crowd in front of the local traffic police who stood there in the middle of the street instead of traffic lights, I collided with a woman who apologized. I remembered this when I would make notes in my small notebook with the customer. It was gone. It was not stolen during the night but it was gone. Could it be a jerk like in the crowd in front of the traffic police who thought it was something valuable? Or were industrial spies from some American competing company?
3. Brimstone Hill
I wake up with a terrible headache, I'm having difficulty breathing because I feel a pressure on my chest. The neck feels like a rough sandpaper and I open my eyes. It does not help a dew, it's completely dark and surprisingly cold. I'm trying to remind myself that I'm actually in the Caribbean and in the Caribbean it's not cold, not even at night. I am lying on a floor, a cold floor, a cold stone floor, more specifically. When I try to move, I notice that the weight over me causes me to be stuck on the floor and I slowly start waking my muscles to do something about the situation. I'm on my back and something lies on top of me why I'm in a hurry to persuade my foolish limbs to do something about the situation.
I lift my arms to remove what lies on me and then feel that it is somewhat soft and quite fragrant that keeps me pressed against the floor. As I know, I find that there are human, indeed women, forms that lie there. Ever after I recognize both shapes and fragrances, memory begins to slowly return. Not that I have any idea where I am, but that I recall what has happened before. But how did I get on a cold floor in a dark room somewhere on a Caribbean island?
After finishing workday I had asked the hotel where I could eat a good pizza. In the recommendation of the hotel porter I walked around the corner, and a staircase overlooking the harbor was actually a pizzeria. The pizza maker was by no means Italian, but a tall black man with a broad Caribbean smile, with incredible elegance, fixed to a giant pizza.
In the middle of the pizza eating, I feel a hand on my shoulder and little nervous after the events of the day, I relax, but relax when the hand's female owner says
"Hi, what are you doing here?" To my surprise, it's Valerie from Antigua. With my mouth full of pizza I say I eat pizza and ask how she suddenly can be on this island.
"It's easy," said Valerie, "I've got a sister here in St. Kitts, whom I had today, and I was very surprised when I saw you here. I would just buy a couple of pizzas I would take home to my sister and eat there at home." She did not seem as happy and natural as last time I met her but did not think so much more about this. But I was not amazed when asked if I could not help bringing the pizzas to my sister.
I ate my pizza in the meantime as the happy pizza baker baked a couple of giant pizzas for Valerie. I took the pizzas in one hand and Valerie in the other and walked out to a waiting taxi, a well-groomed Chrysler who had a number of years on his neck. I walked into the dark car from one side and Valerie from the other. As I dropped down in the backside with the pizzas in my knees I ended up next to something or someone who was definitely not Valerie. I felt something hard in the kidney suit, and a sore voice illuminated that it was a gun and that I would shut the door and keep calm. Valerie sat on the other side of the man with the voice without saying a word.
The man with the fierce meeting said "Drive" to the driver and the car started at a speed that I did not think was possible on this island.
"What does this mean," I said, "you must have misguided someone." I am Hamilton Jones, computer salesman from Scotland. "
"Keep silent," said the voice.
"Valerie", I tried "what's happening ...?"
The woman from Antigua was silent, but the pressure on the kidneys increased dramatically, and the daring voice urged me very firmly and not a dope to shut up. Because I did not think I would start any meaningful conversation, I kept silent and tried to find out what really was going on.
The man next door was big and black but could not see much more in the dark back seat. The driver I saw a little more oblique from behind when we occasionally met other cars. The driver was big and wide and had a look like a black Arawak indian. The ferry seemed to go north because I saw the sea on the left. After half an hour, the car rolled up against a large brick high that looked like a fortress from the 1700s. Without a word, we left the car and were brought down into the deep basement vaults of the old castle and three steps down I felt a smelly cheek that was pushed to my nose and suddenly I understood that I breathed in chloroform and whipped off.
Now, I lay in something that could be an old prison hole in an old castle. Three steps down seemed like I was locked safely. But who was lying on me, with smell and feeling, I realized that it was Valerie. Valerie began to wake up, had she been subjected to the same treatment?
I rolled the weight out of my body and when I felt over the curvy body getting to know what was up and down she was floating.
"Where am I, who are you, ugh how dark it is," she flushed.
"Calm," I said, "I'm Hamilton, you're in a prison hole in St. Kitts," I informed her about.
"Yes, yes, I remember, but why?"
"I thought you knew it was you who pulled me into this"
"No, I promise, it must be a mistake"
After knowing if the body worked, we investigated the cell to convince us that we were locked in. Undoubtedly it was. We started to freeze and did the best we could to heat each other. I'm used to moisture and cold from the British Isles, but poor Valerie soon started shaking terribly.
"I'm freezing if we do not soon get out of here," she said. Then we heard a noise on the outside, the lock that kept the door opening and I got a steady roof in a brick that I found in the cell. I had tried to find something hiding and a brick was the only thing I could find in the dark.
A light rectangle appeared and the door opened and released the light from a flashlight. I quickly backed the door, lifted the b
rick and prepared me to make sure that the intruder would get something hard in his head. A stubby person walked gently through the door and I went to an attack. The person in question heard me and directed the flashlight against me and after spending the last few hours in the columns, I was completely dazzled and missed roughly when I tried to cover the little person who entered the door.
My attack was so violent that I stepped straight into the wall opposite and dropped down on the floor.
"Valerie," said a young voice "are you?"
"Ouii," whispered Valerie, "Boy, you're an angel. Where do you come from, what's happening," she warned nervously.
"Quiet," he said, called Boy. "We have to get out of here"
"Yes, please," I bumped from the floor level.
Under the guidance of Boy, the boy was actually called Boy, we followed prisons into the light. In the shadow of a tree stood a big Chrysler taxi, and next to the taxi stood a big black native that looked like an Arawak Indian. Before I think he was wondering whether the cooked pork was fried or not, Boy and Valerie rushed to him and because Valerie kept me in my hand I just had to come along.
"I put the car in the shade so it would not get so hot," says the Arawak Indian.
Big Bill, shouted Boy, "Drive us to Basseterre soon before the bad