by Stuart Woods
“And why would he wish to bug the cottage of some tourists?”
“Because he can, and very likely because Winston wished it. As I recall, you were a tourist the last time you were here, but before you left you had caused Winston a great deal of bother. As much as I enjoyed watching it and being a part of it, I must tell you that I feared more for your safety than I let on at the time.”
“Do you fear for my safety just because I’m here again?”
“Let me put it this way: I think that if Winston could think of a plausible reason to arrest you, and perhaps your friends, jail you for a few days, then throw you ignominiously off the island, it would give him great pleasure to do so.” He smiled. “But I think it is unlikely that he would go so far as hanging you, as he tried so hard to do with the lovely Allison.”
Stone laughed. “Then I must be careful not to do anything to excite his interest.”
“There is another possibility as to why you were bugged,” Sir Leslie said. “It is possible that, after Thomas built the cottages, all of them were bugged, on general principles. It’s the sort of thing our Colonel Croft would do.”
“So it’s possible that I and my friends are not targets of Colonel Croft?”
“You should not draw that conclusion. The fact that the cottages may already have been bugged would simply be a convenience for the Colonel.”
“I’m surprised Thomas has not mentioned Colonel Croft to me,” Stone said.
“Thomas is in a delicate position,” Sir Leslie said. “He is your friend, but he is a subject of the Colonel’s and Winston’s constant attention. So far, he has fared well under the new regime, but he is well aware that, should he cross Winston, he could find himself bereft. You must be careful not to put him in that position.”
“I’m glad you told me this, Leslie, because I would not wish to do anything to harm Thomas or his interests here.”
“Just be very careful of your conversations in the cottage.”
“I’ll do so. Tell me, Leslie, do you know of an Irene Foster?”
“Ah, the CIA lady, the queen of Black Mountain!”
“Exactly.”
“She is quite something,” Leslie said. “I believe I might be one of the few men on the island she hasn’t slept with.” He giggled.
“Surely she can’t be that bad.”
“I exaggerate, of course, but I know of four instances where gentlemen have succumbed to her tender mercies. At the moment, I believe, she has an in-house lover.”
“Yes, one Harry Pitts; they knew each other back in Virginia.”
“I wonder if Mr. Pitts is or was CIA, too?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, these intelligence people tend to stick close to their own kind, don’t they?”
“I think he is probably what he says he is, a retired building contractor.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Permit me my fantasies; they are all that is left for an old man.”
“Do you know of an Englishman named Robertson?”
“Ah, the retired Englishman; he is quite new to the island, and also a denizen of Black Mountain. I understand he was in the computer business in some fashion, back in the mother country.”
“Have you met him?”
“No; I meet so few people these days, but I hear a lot.”
“Have you heard anything that might make you think that Mr. Robertson is not exactly who he says he is?”
Sir Leslie grinned. “No, but I suspect everyone.”
Stone laughed. “Please excuse me, Leslie, but I must rejoin my friends; they will think I’ve been arrested.”
Sir Leslie stood. “Then you must see to it that their worst fears are not realized. And Stone, if you should run afoul of the Colonel, tell Thomas to call me; I’ll be happy to represent you.”
“Thank you, Leslie.” They shook hands, and Stone took his leave. As he went through the garden gate he looked back to see Sir Leslie back on his knees, digging in the soil.
20
Stone drove back to the inn and parked at the cottage, and he saw Holly and Genevieve stretched out on the beach, naked, a very pleasant sight. He liked Holly’s slimmer body. He went inside, undressed, grabbed a towel and joined them.
“Hey, there,” Holly said. “Where you been?”
“I made a stop at the airport, then I went to see my old colleague Sir Leslie Hewitt.”
“And?”
“And I gleaned some useful information. Where’s Dino?”
“He says the sun makes you old; he’s napping inside.”
“Have you spoken with Lance today?”
“Yes; nothing new.”
“You may need to call him again. I began thinking about how Teddy always has an escape route planned, and if he’s on the island how he might need an airplane to get out of here to where there are international connections. So I went out to the airport and had a talk with a fellow named Don Wells, who runs the FBO, and he showed me an old Cessna 140 that belongs to a recent arrival on the island, one who answers to the general description of Teddy Fay.”
“Who is he?”
“He calls himself Robertson, says he’s English, a retiree who was formerly in the computer business.”
Holly sat up. “I like it,” she said.
“And get this: he lives on Black Mountain, at number 56.”
“Irene is number 100, so I guess he’s halfway up?”
Dino came out of the cottage and joined them. “You woke me up,” he said accusingly.
“Sorry about that. It’s good that you’re here, anyway; we have something to talk about.” He brought Dino up to date on Robertson.
“He sounds good to me,” Dino said.
“Yeah, well, we need to have Lance have his London station check him out, and thoroughly. There’s something else, though.”
“What?” Holly asked.
“Leslie has identified who may have bugged our cottage; his name is Colonel Croyden Croft, and he runs a department called Internal Investigations, which is part of the Home Office, but he really works for Sir Winston Sutherland.”
“Why does Sir Leslie think he bugged our cottage?” Holly asked.
“Because that’s what he does. Leslie thinks he might even have bugged all the cottages when they were built, but that doesn’t take any heat off us.”
“Heat?”
“Leslie says that Sir Winston would welcome an opportunity to throw us all in jail for a while, then expel us from the island. Apparently, he holds a grudge against me from our previous courtroom encounters.”
“Well, thanks, Stone,” Dino said, “for pissing off the powers that be. That’s a great help.”
“My point is, we’ve got to be very careful to be no more than tourists while we’re here. And, of course, we have to be very careful what we say inside the cottage.”
“I’m glad we didn’t yank the bugs,” Holly said. “That would have really pissed them off.”
“I think you have to be careful, too, not to be seen using the satellite phone to call Lance. The sight of the thing by someone who reports to Colonel Croft might just give them the excuse they need to bust us.”
“Good point,” Holly said. “I think I’ll go behind the cottage and phone Lance now; I want to get him working on this Robertson guy. If we can identify him as Teddy, then we can get out of here before Sir Winston falls on us.”
“Go ahead.” He handed her a slip of paper. “This is the British registration number of his airplane.”
Holly picked up her towel, wrapped it around her sarong-style and grabbed her handbag. She went into the cottage, then out the back door into a fenced-in area where the gas bottle and the garbage cans were, then she dug the satphone out of her bag and called Lance’s direct line at Langley.
“Lance Cabot.”
“It’s Holly.”
“Your second call today; something new?”
She told him about Robertson and asked for a background check, then explain
ed their situation with Sir Winston.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t get yourselves arrested,” Lance said. “If we had to bring pressure on the St. Marks government to get you out of there, we’d have to involve the State Department, and then questions might arise as to your presence there, and we wouldn’t want that.”
“I understand; we’ll be careful.”
“I don’t want you sniffing around this Robertson while I’m checking him out. It’s already late in London, so it’s going to be tomorrow before anything can be done. I’ll call the duty officer now and leave instructions so that they can get started first thing in the morning, while we’re still sleeping.”
“Great, but don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
“Why?”
“Because of the bugging in the cottage. I don’t want the listeners to hear the satphone ringing or my end of the conversation. What time shall I call you?”
“Around ten o’clock; I’ll know at least something by then. And remember, Holly, the last time Sir Winston got an American woman in his jail, he tried to hang her.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Holly said drily. “Will you call Ham and find out how Daisy is doing?”
“Holly, the Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t do dog checks.”
“Can I call him on the satphone?”
“Oh, all right.”
“Talk to you tomorrow.” She hung up and called her father in Orchid Beach, Florida.
“This is Barker,” he drawled.
“Hey, Ham.”
“Hey, girl; how’s it going?”
“Pretty well, I guess; tell Ginny I’m enjoying being her. I lost fifteen pounds for the job.”
“That couldn’t hurt.”
“Watch it, Ham. How’s Daisy?”
“Happy as a clam; she goes fishing with me every day and helps by lying down on the foredeck and falling asleep.”
“She’s eating well?”
“You ever know her to turn down a meal?”
“Well, you know, I miss her.”
“By the way, somebody was sniffing around the flight school, asking questions about Ginny.”
“Oh, God, I hope Ginny wasn’t there.”
“She was giving a flying lesson at the time. It was a black guy in a suit and tie, with some sort of accent, and being that dressed up is pretty rare around here.”
“Who’d he talk to?”
“The secretary/bookkeeper in the office. She told him Ginny was out of the country on vacation, like she was supposed to.”
“That’s a relief to hear. We found out our cottage was bugged, and it’s interesting to know that somebody’s checking on us.”
“Well, you watch your ass, girl; I don’t want to have to come down there and bring your corpse home.”
“Relax, Ham; nothing like that going on. I gotta go. You give Daisy a big, wet kiss for me.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll give Ginny one, instead.”
“Bye.” She hung up and went back out to the beach.
“What’s the word?”
“I’ll call Lance tomorrow at ten for the results of the background check. There’s something else, though.”
“What’s that?”
“A black man in a suit with an accent visited Ginny’s flying school and asked questions about her.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Fortunately, he didn’t see Ginny; she was flying. And the lady in the office gave him the ready story. I hope that satisfied him.”
“So do I,” Stone said. “I hope that’s an end to it.”
21
Everybody was dressing for dinner, and Stone was ready first. “I’m going to go up to the inn and see what Thomas knows about this Robertson character; I’ll meet you in the bar.”
“Okay,” Holly said, switching on her blow dryer.
Stone slipped into a linen jacket and walked up to the inn. Thomas was behind the bar, in conversation with a customer, a black man in a black suit. A very nice suit, Stone thought, but an odd choice for the tropics.
Thomas waved him over. “Stone, I’d like you to meet one of our more prominent citizens,” he said. “This is Colonel Croft, of our home office. Colonel, this is an old customer, Mr. Stone Barrington, from New York.”
The colonel swiveled on his stool and smiled a broad smile with many teeth. “How do you do, Mr. Barrington?” he said.
He was wearing gold-rimmed dark glasses with reflective lenses, so Stone could not see his eyes, which he found a little disconcerting. “How do you do, Colonel? I didn’t know St. Marks had an army.”
“It’s a police title,” the colonel explained. “Since joining the Home Office I’m no longer a policeman, exactly, but the rank seems to have stuck. Everyone calls me Colonel.”
“I’m a retired policeman myself, like Thomas,” Stone said.
“You look awfully young to be retired,” the colonel replied.
“Medical reasons,” Stone said. “I took a bullet in the knee after fourteen years on the NYPD.”
“And what was your assignment on the force?” the colonel asked.
“I was a detective, mostly investigating homicides.”
The colonel smiled again. “Well, Mr. Barrington, you would have been unable to earn a living in St. Marks; we have so little violent crime and hardly any homicides.”
“You are to be congratulated,” Stone said. “It takes good police work to keep crime at such low levels.”
“We do our best for a small country. I understand you now practice law; in fact, I’ve heard that you have actually practiced in St. Marks, on a previous visit.”
So the colonel knew who he was; Stone was hardly surprised. “I had that honor,” he said, “but quite by happenstance. Your distinguished prime minister bested me handily in court.” Stone thought it best to spread the flattery on thick.
“Yes, your client was hanged, I believe.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I was chief of police in Markstown at that time,” the colonel said, “so I was not involved in the investigation, but, of course, everyone knew of the incident.”
“Yes, I believe the trial gained some notoriety in the United States as well.” Couldn’t hurt to remind him that treating Americans badly engendered bad publicity. “I hope your tourist trade was not affected.”
“On the contrary,” the colonel said, “the notoriety seemed to give us a shot in the arm, as it were, and our tourist trade has grown steadily since then, benefitting many St. Marksians, as Thomas can readily testify.”
“I can,” Thomas said. “My home island has been very good to me.”
“I hear rumors of a big expansion in tourism to come,” Stone said, “with the arrival of casinos.”
The colonel abruptly stopped smiling. “Oh? And where did you hear that?” he asked, and he seemed genuinely interested in an answer.
“Oh, just gossip on the beach. That couple who went home yesterday said something about it.” The colonel was silent, and Stone felt that his eyes might be boring into him from behind the reflective glasses. “I forget their names.”
“It is best not to repeat gossip, Mr. Barrington,” the colonel said, and it didn’t sound like a suggestion.
“Quite right,” Stone said. “May I buy you a drink, Colonel?”
The colonel looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I have an engagement,” he said. “Perhaps another time.” He stood up.
“I hope so,” Stone said.
“Will you be remaining in St. Marks for very long, Mr. Barrington?”
“Only until the weekend,” Stone said. “So much work waiting back in New York.”
“What a pity,” the colonel replied. “It would have been interesting to get to know you better.”
“Perhaps on some future visit,” Stone said. He offered his hand; the colonel shook it, then departed. When he had gone, Thomas sighed. “Stone, you want to be very careful of what you say to that gentleman.”
“Oh? Did I say somethi
ng wrong?”
“That business about the casinos is very closely held information.”
“The colonel did give the impression that I wasn’t supposed to know about it.”
“You recovered well, but still…Where on earth did you hear that? Not from me, certainly.”
“Just between you and me, it came up at dinner at Irene Foster’s house.”
“Ah.”
Stone shrugged. As he recalled, it had been Harry Pitts who knew about it, but he didn’t say so. “I visited Leslie Hewitt this afternoon, and I heard about Colonel Croft from him. I was surprised you hadn’t mentioned such an important figure.”
“It was my hope that you could visit St. Marks and depart without encountering the colonel,” Thomas said. “But now that you have, you should avoid further contact with him, if at all possible.”
“I think I would enjoy avoiding further contact with him,” Stone said. “He gives me the creeps.”
“He is the second most powerful man on the island, and he seems to derive a certain pleasure from making miserable the lives of people he dislikes. And it doesn’t take much to incur his dislike.”
“You seem to get on well with him.”
“I have made a point of it,” Thomas said. “I have to make a living here, and that might be impossible if the colonel didn’t wish it to be so.”
“Thomas, we talked this morning about the means of escaping this island. I hope you have a way out, should it become necessary.”
“You needn’t concern yourself about me, Stone,” Thomas replied. “I have always been a survivor and, even though I am enjoying my success, I know very well that my position here could become untenable if I make the wrong move.”
Stone nodded. “If I can ever be of help, I hope you’ll call on me.”
“Thank you; I hope that won’t be necessary.”
“By the way, speaking of escape routes, I visited Don Wells at the airport this afternoon, and he told me of a new arrival on the island, one Robertson, who has an airplane in one of Don’s hangars. Do you know him?”