by Stuart Woods
“Please give him or her a message,” Dino said. “Virginia Heller and Stone Barrington have just been arrested by a Colonel Marcel duBois of the Home Office, presumably in connection with the murder of Colonel Croft.”
“And your name, sir?”
“Dino Bacchetti; I am traveling with Ms. Heller and Mr. Barrington.” He gave the man the phone number at the inn. “I believe this to be a secure line,” he said, “since we disabled the bugs in the telephones. I can’t speak for your end.”
“I will pass on the message,” the young man said, then hung up.
James Tiptree’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “This is James Tiptree.”
“Scramble,” a voice said.
Tiptree pressed the button. “Scrambled.”
“Jim, this is Lance Cabot; we met some years ago in London.”
“Yes, Lance, I remember.”
“Have you received cable traffic regarding the replacement for Hugh English?”
Tiptree sat up straighter. “Not yet.”
“You should shortly. The cable will say that I have been appointed to replace Hugh.”
“Ah, well, congratulations, Lance.”
“Thank you. I’m calling to brief you with a situation on St. Marks.”
Tiptree immediately wondered what Cabot could know about St. Marks that he, himself, did not. “Yes?”
“I have an operative in St. Marks who is investigating the possibility that Teddy Fay is alive and on the island.”
Tiptree nearly laughed but decided silence was the better move.
“Are you acquainted with Teddy Fay?”
“I’ve heard about him, of course, but we never met.”
“My operative’s name is Holly Barker; she is using the cover of a real person named Virginia Heller, called Ginny, who operates a flying school in Florida, and she has a passport and other identification in that name.”
“Right.”
“She is traveling with two men, Stone Barrington and Dino Bacchetti, and a woman, Genevieve James. The two men are contract consultants to the Agency; the woman is just for color. They are traveling as vacationers and staying at the English Harbour Inn.”
“I understand; do they require my assistance?”
“Not at the moment, but I wanted you to be aware of their presence on the island. Barker and Barrington have already met with Bill and Annie Pepper. I had hoped to remove them all from the island tomorrow, but, as you know, travel restrictions have been imposed since the murder of Colonel Croft.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that; I was sitting on a bench next to Croft when the bullet struck him.”
“That must have been an interesting experience,” Lance said drily.
“Indeed; my clothes are at the cleaners.”
A young embassy officer knocked, entered Tiptree’s office and placed a sheet of paper on his desk. Tiptree nodded, and the man left.
“Lance,” Tiptree said, “it appears that Barker and Barrington do require my assistance. I’ve just received a telephone message from Bacchetti, saying that the two of them have been arrested by Croft’s successor, Colonel duBois, in connection with Croft’s assassination.”
“That’s preposterous,” Lance said. “They had nothing to do with it, but we suspect that Teddy Fay might have. Their only orders are to locate Teddy and verify his identity, then to report back to me.”
“Then I had better get over to police headquarters and see what I can do about shaking them loose before Colonel duBois gets too enthusiastic in their interrogation. I regard the man as worse than Croft, a loose cannon.”
“I understand,” Lance replied. “Do not, repeat, not bring State into this. Call me when you know more.” He hung up.
Tiptree hung up and buzzed his secretary. “Have my car brought around immediately,” he said, then hung up. He turned to his computer and began entering the names of Virginia Heller and Stone Barrington. In less than a minute he was printing out color copies of their U.S. passports. He put them in his briefcase, closed it and walked out of his office.
“Your car is waiting,” his secretary said.
“I’m going to police headquarters to try and obtain the release of two American citizens who have been detained, Virginia Heller and Stone Barrington. Alert the ambassador and tell him they are my good friends. If you haven’t heard from me in an hour, get him moving on it, but tell him Langley says not to involve the State Department.”
“Right.”
Tiptree set off on his second journey of the day to police headquarters. He hoped to God no more blood would be spilled. Blood only complicated his life.
44
Stone sat, still handcuffed, on a very uncomfortable chair before a desk in an otherwise bare room, more angry than frightened. It was clear that the chair he sat in had been constructed with the idea of discomfort in mind, and he was sure that he was about to be interrogated. He ran over the details of Holly’s cover in his mind, just to have everything straight. He stood up, walked to a wall and leaned against it.
A door opened and duBois entered. “Sit down,” he said.
“Thank you, no. What is the meaning of this?”
DuBois walked over and backhanded him. “Sit down and shut up, except to answer my questions.”
Stone felt a trickle of blood running down his cheek. DuBois had been wearing a ring of some sort. Stone sat down.
DuBois sat at the desk and removed a legal pad from a drawer. He took out a pen and held it poised over the pad. “What is your name?”
“Stone Barrington.” He spelled it.
“Occupation?”
“Attorney at law.”
“Show me identification.”
It was awkward with his hands cuffed, but Stone managed to retrieve his passport from his inside jacket pocket and toss it on the desk.
DuBois looked at the photo inside, compared it to Stone and noted the passport number. “Why did you kill Colonel Croft?”
Stone blinked. “I had nothing whatever to do with the death of Colonel Croft.”
“Where were you when he was killed?”
“When was he killed?”
“If you continue to be obstructive I will use unpleasant means to extract this information.”
Stone shrugged. “If you do that I will, of course, confess to anything you like, then repudiate the confession at the first opportunity. I want to see someone from the American Embassy immediately, and I want to see my attorney, Sir Leslie Hewitt. Until I do I will have nothing more to say, unless, of course, you torture it from me. I also wish to speak to Sir Winston Sutherland at once. He and I are personally acquainted.”
It was duBois’s turn to blink. He got up and left the room without a word.
Holly, though she did not know it, sat in a room identical to the one Stone occupied. She didn’t like being handcuffed. She got out of the uncomfortable chair, walked around the desk and rummaged in the drawers until she found where they had put her handbag. She unzipped an inside pocket, removed a handcuff key, opened the cuffs, then tucked the key into her bra and put her handbag back into the drawer. She tossed the cuffs onto the desk and sat down again.
DuBois entered the room and sat down at the desk.
“Why have I been arrested?” Holly asked.
DuBois raised his eyes from the legal pad before him; then he saw the handcuffs. “How did you get out of those?”
“One of your people removed them,” she replied. “Why have I been arrested?”
“What is your name?”
“Virginia Heller.”
“Occupation?”
“Flying instructor; I own a flying school in Florida. Why have I been arrested?”
“Give me your passport.”
“It’s in my handbag, which was taken from me and placed in one of your desk drawers.”
DuBois opened drawers until he found the handbag; he turned it upside down and emptied the contents onto the desk, then he picked up the satphone. “Why do you have
this?”
“It belongs to my gentleman friend; he loaned it to me so that I can keep in touch with him while I’m out of the country.”
DuBois put down the phone, opened her passport, compared the photo to her and noted the number. “Your friend, Mr. Barrington, is being charged with the murder of Colonel Croft; you will be charged as his accessory, which carries the same penalty as murder, that of hanging.”
“That’s preposterous,” Holly said. “We came here on vacation and for no other reason. We met Colonel Croft only once, at the English Harbour Inn. Why would we want to kill him?”
“Perhaps you were hired. Who hired you to kill him?”
“My friend is a prominent lawyer in New York; I have already told you what I do. We are not hired killers. Check out our backgrounds; that should be easy enough. Mr. Barrington is a retired New York City police officer, and I have a website that you may visit. I want to see Mr. Barrington.”
“Mr. Barrington is indisposed.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Holly demanded.
“Miss Heller, I caution you to be careful how you speak to me.”
“Very well, I will not speak to you again, until I have seen and spoken to Mr. Barrington.” She folded her arms and stared at a spot on the wall across the room.
DuBois got up so quickly that he knocked over his chair. He strode around the desk and came at Holly.
Holly stood up and faced him. He was about five-ten and slim; she was nearly as big.
DuBois drew back his right hand and swung it at her face.
Holly stepped inside the blow, grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back and, in the same motion, used a leg to sweep his feet from under him and slam him hard onto the floor. “You have no manners,” she said. She took the handcuffs from the desk and cuffed his hands behind his back. She heard a door open behind her.
“What is the meaning of this?” a deep voice said.
Holly turned and saw the imposing figure of Sir Winston Sutherland filling the doorway.
“Uh, good afternoon, Prime Minister,” she said, rising to her full height and leaving duBois on the floor.
“What is this, Marcel?” Sutherland demanded, “some kind of sex game?”
“Colonel duBois lacks charm,” Holly said. “Apparently he enjoys beating up women.”
Sutherland stepped into the room and was followed by Stone and another man.
“Ginny,” Stone said, “this is Mr. James Tiptree of the American Embassy.”
“How do you do?” Tiptree said, looking baffled.
DuBois attempted to get up, but Holly put her foot on his neck. “Be still,” she said.
Sir Winston Sutherland smiled, then began to laugh. Stone laughed, too. Tiptree just shook his head.
45
Stone and Holly sat in the backseat of a police car, headed back toward the inn.
“What the hell happened in there?” Stone whispered.
“Not now,” Holly said.
They sat in silence until they were driven to the inn and deposited at their cottage.
“Now,” Stone said as the police car drove away, “what the hell happened in there?”
“I freed myself from the handcuffs, pissed off duBois and, when he came at me, I put him on the floor and cuffed him.”
“So while I’m playing the lawyer and demanding to see everybody in authority, you’re beating up the guy who was supposed to beat you up?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you know, I think that’s what got us released so quickly? Sir Winston just loved it!”
“What was he doing there?”
“Tiptree, from the embassy, tried to reach him, couldn’t, and then, as he arrived at police headquarters, so did Sir Winston. He professed to be shocked, shocked that we had been arrested, and you know the rest.”
“Why were we arrested in the first place?”
“My guess is that we were at the top of the list of foreign visitors, so they came after us.”
“DuBois said you were being charged with Croft’s murder, and I was being charged as an accessory.”
“That’s nonsense; he was just bluffing, and you called him on it. I have to tell you, though, I’m not sure what duBois would have done to you once he got some help.”
“Funny,” Holly said, “I didn’t think about that; I just wanted to humiliate him.”
“Holly, it is not a good policy, when arrested in a foreign country, to humiliate your interrogator. That can lead to electroshock therapy, broken bones and a ruptured spleen. Didn’t they mention that to you during your CIA training?”
“No, we didn’t get that far; my training was interrupted by my sudden transfer to New York.”
“Oh.”
“They did say that I would have to return to complete the course, but I think Lance intervened.”
“I think it’s going to be nice to have Lance for a rabbi, now that he has the top operations job. Do you think he’ll bring you to Langley or keep you in the field?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she replied, “but I think that my future might be somehow connected to our success or failure in nailing Teddy Fay while we’re here.”
“What, exactly, do you mean by ‘nailing’?”
“Sorry, that should read, ‘finding.’ I still don’t know what happens after that.”
“Bill Pepper thinks that either you or he is going to be asked to kill him. Are you ready for that?”
“I certainly am not ready for that; I am not an assassin.”
“Well, we’d better start looking for him.”
“I’d like to shower and change before we do that,” Holly said. “That jail made me feel dirty.”
They went into the cottage and found Dino and Genevieve watching Tiger Woods play golf on TV.
“Hey, you’re alive!” Dino said, embracing them both.
“Thanks for calling in the cavalry,” Stone replied. “They arrived in the nick of time.” He told Dino about what Holly had done to duBois.
“Woman,” Dino said, “you are lucky to be alive.”
“No,” Holly said, “duBois is lucky to be alive. Excuse me, I’m going to shower and change.”
“Me too,” Stone said.
“Oh,” Dino said, holding out the photos of Pemberton, Weatherby and Robertson, “you dropped these.”
Sir Winston Sutherland seated himself in duBois’s chair in Colonel Croft’s large office. The photos on the wall were still those of Croft with various dignitaries; nothing of his replacement’s had been added. He looked up at Colonel duBois, who stood uncomfortably before the desk. “You blithering idiot,” he said.
“Prime Minister…”
“You knew who those people were; Colonel Croft investigated them days ago, and he even sent an agent to Ms. Heller’s flying school to verify her identity.”
“Prime Minister…”
“So while you were wasting time throwing your newly found weight around, Croft’s murderer is still out there, if he hasn’t already left the island.”
“Prime Minister…”
“And on top of that you somehow managed to allow a woman who was handcuffed to free herself and handcuff you!”
“Prime Minister…”
“Well, at least I got a good laugh out of that little scene in the interrogation room,” Sutherland said, chuckling.
“Prime Minister…”
“DuBois, you are no longer a colonel. I wish you to dress in the uniform of a police captain and continue your investigation into the assassination of Colonel Croft, and you are to wear that uniform at all times when you are on duty. Is that perfectly clear?”
“Yes, Prime Minister, but…”
“Get out, and by the way, this is no longer your office.”
DuBois saluted, executed an about-face and left the room. Back in his old office he got out his uniform, which still displayed his major’s gold leaves, then changed them to his old captain’s bars, then he armed himself
with a pistol and an Uzi machine pistol and left.
“Your car is waiting out front,” his secretary called after him.
DuBois walked out the front door of police headquarters to find his driver seated in an elderly, dusty and banged-up Land Rover.
“Good afternoon, Col…uh, Captain,” his driver said.
DuBois got in and tried to roll up his back-seat window, but it was stuck. “Get me out of here,” he said.
“Where, to, Captain?”
“Get me out of here!” duBois screamed. As they drove aimlessly down the roads of St. Marks, duBois entertained himself by fantasizing about what he was going to do to Ms. Virginia Heller when he found her again.
46
Teddy Fay stood on a cliff at the eastern end of St. Marks and watched the waves crash against the rocks a hundred feet below. He didn’t want to do this, but he had considered the alternatives, and there weren’t any. He couldn’t allow himself to be caught or even questioned with it in his possession.
He went back to his vehicle, opened the case and looked at the sniper’s rifle one last time. He had done all the gunsmithing on that weapon, made it into the precision tool it was, and he loved it the way some men loved an old dog.
He snapped the case shut, looked around to be sure he was entirely alone, then stood on a boulder embedded in the top of the cliff and imagined himself flinging the case as far as he could, then watching it sink in the deep water. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Teddy trudged to his vehicle, started it and began to drive back.
As he drove up Black Mountain Road, he caught a glimpse in his rear view mirror of an old Land Rover entering the road at the bottom of the mountain. It was not a police car, but Teddy automatically paid attention to every vehicle behind him. He was beginning to sweat as he continued up the mountain; there was only the one road, and his escape plans did not include a close pursuit by anybody. But the vehicle stayed well back.
Then, to his enormous relief, the Land Rover turned into the driveway of the Pemberton house. He continued to his own drive, then garaged the vehicle, removed the rifle case and let himself into his underground bunker in the house’s old cistern.