She laughed softly. “Blackmail! Actually, I was bluffing, darling. I’m the only one who lives on board, until you get down the line to the private boats. There’s not much of anybody around Charter Row at this hour of the night. So I guess we’d better go up to your place and take a look at those charts you’ve been dragging around all evening. Unless, of course, you have something else in mind…”
16
Regardless of what I did or did not have in my lecherous mind, we were soon knee deep in maps and charts, spread out on the cabin floor. Some day somebody’s going to have to take me aside and whisper in my ear the facts of cartographic life like, for instance, what the hell is an oblique Mercator projection. The maps were more colorful than the charts; but the charts had more cute little numbers on them. Did you know that there’s a spot in the Caribbean south of Cuba that’s over four miles deep?’
It was the north coast of the island that mainly concerned us, however. At least I had a hunch that was the most likely area, and Harriet agreed with me. Here there’s a sort of three-way watery crossroads between Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas—well, actually the Great Bahama Bank. The Old Bahama Channel cuts between these immense shallow flats and the north coast of Cuba; and then joins the Florida Straits carrying the Gulf Stream around the southern tip of the United States. Right at the intersection, like a safety island at the junction of two boulevards, is the small, triangular Cay Sal Bank, pronounced Key Sal Bank.
Kneeling on the rug, Harriet pointed out this and several other features, yanking her long skirt aside as she moved from chart to chart.
“You don’t know a hell of a lot about geography, do you?” she said. “Politics being what they are these days, I’d think Cuba would be a place you’d have learned something about, in your business.”
“I’ve been there,” I said. “A plane put a couple of us down in a hole in the jungle in the middle of the night, some characters with peculiar Spanish accents—the Cubans don’t seem to murder their Castilian quite the same way the Mexicans do—pointed us in the right direction and led us back again when we’d finished our job; and the plane came back for us, again at night. As a sightseeing jaunt, it was a bust.”
“I won’t ask what the job was,” she said. “Exactly where did you say all these boats and planes disappeared?”
“The last reported positions are all marked on the big map over there.”
She shifted her anchorage a fathom to port. “Damn this skirt,” she said, rearranging it once more. Then she studied the map for a while, and went on: “It’s plausible. That ketch with the cutie name might have hit a few head winds steering that far south of her course; but I gather she was a fast, weatherly boat with good auxiliary power, so it shouldn’t have slowed her up much. She could have slipped through any of these passages below the Great Bahama Bank without being seen. Even if Haseltine was already searching for his blonde beauty by the time the boat got there, I gather it didn’t occur to him to look that far south that early in the game.”
“How did you know she’s blonde and beautiful?” I asked.
“All you have to do is look at the man and you know the kind he’d pick,” Harriet said calmly. “Anyway, there were more pictures of Loretta Phipps and her movie-star mother in the papers at the time, than of her rich and important father. As a matter of fact, as far as pictorial coverage was concerned, the poor man ran a bad fourth behind the boat, if I remember right.”
“What about that diesel yacht out of Puerto Rico?” I asked.
“Sir James Marcus, you said his name was? He was the closest; he was practically there. The plane heading for Martinique is the big question. Even assuming it had enough gas…” She frowned at the brightly colored islands on the blue paper ocean. “Was it a seaplane or a landplane, darling?”
“Land,” I said.
“Of course, they could have ditched it in the water and had a boat standing by to take them off.” She shrugged. “That’s probably the way they did it. Landing strips still aren’t too common along that coast, I gather, particularly landing strips unknown to the local inhabitants and the Castro police.”
I said, “My hunch is that these people have an arrangement with the Castro police; they’d almost have to have one. That’s why I figure one of your politically oriented friends won’t have too much trouble getting the information for us. It should be available to anyone knowing the right people in Havana.” She didn’t say anything. I went on: “Now, where’s your harbor of refuge on this Communist shore?”
She glanced at me sharply. “You can’t expect me to tell you that, darling. I mean, maybe I’m willing to use my contacts to help you with this lousy job of yours, to save my own skin, but I’m not going to betray them to you.”
I said, “I don’t go around slapping down Reds just because they’re Red. Tolerant, that’s me.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I’m still not going to tell you. It’s not my secret; and it’s got nothing to do with your problem. There’s no airfield and no secret harbor to hide a couple of hijacked yachts. It’s just a little fishing village on the coast; and when the time comes, if it comes, I’ll run in there and ask somebody to take me to Señor Soandso; and somebody’ll bury the boat for me; and I’ll be safely on my way to the workers’ homeland. Ugh.”
“Tsk, tsk,” I said. “That’s a hell of a Marxist attitude.”
“They’ve used me and I’ve used them,” she said. “We have a working relationship, darling, but there never was a meeting of political minds, if you know what I mean. Why do you think I’m living here finding fish for people too stupid to find their own?”
“I was wondering about that,” I said.
“Because I’d rather do that than be part of their regimented paradise.” She grimaced. “Actually, I guess I’m kind of a nature girl at heart. I like working outdoors; I had a model dairy farm once, up in Maryland, remember?”
“I remember,” I said. “The government put a highway through the middle of it, and you declared war on the United States of America.”
She laughed. “Well, I lost, so let’s forget it. But the fact is I’d rather run my own boats and lie awake nights figuring out the weather and the tides and the fish, not to mention the clients, than be part of their society of the future with a bunch of their stupid bureaucrats telling me what to do. If it’s a choice between that and jail, I’ll go; but not until I have to. And don’t tell me I’m inconsistent. Who isn’t?”
There was a little silence. It was time to change the subject; and I looked down at the map.
“Just one more foolish question,” I said. “What are all those funny little blue and red arrows for?”
“They indicate prevailing winds and currents,” she said. “As you can see, heading from here south to Cuba you’d better bring plenty of gas because it’s all uphill; everything’s against you. On the other hand, the refugees from Castro’s Communism have it easy once they’re past the patrols; everything blows and drifts from Cuba toward the land of liberty, if you’ll pardon the term. That chief of yours is taking his time, isn’t he? If he’s coming here at all. I only have your word for that.”
I grinned. “Don’t go ingénue on me, Hattie. You’re a grownup girl and I’m sure you can take care of yourself, if you really want to.”
She sighed theatrically. “But that’s just the problem, darling. I can’t decide whether or not I really want to take care of myself, as you so delicately put it. After all, we do have some unfinished business between us.”
“That’s not my fault,” I said. “I was doing my best to finish it, as I recall, when your knockout drops took effect…” I sighed, and said more briskly, “Saved by the bell. Here he comes now.”
Having recognized the footsteps that preceded it, I wasn’t too careful about answering the knock on the door; and it was Mac all right. His appearance hadn’t changed greatly since I’d left him at the Miami airport that afternoon. I closed the door behind him.
“Watc
h where you step, sir. We’ve got half the Caribbean spread out on the rug.”
He’d stopped in front of Harriet, who’d risen. He studied her for a moment without speaking, seeming particularly interested, for some reason, in her neat, smooth, dark coiffure. At last he glanced at me.
“You’re absolutely certain she hasn’t been out of your sight this evening? It’s very strange.”
“What is?” I asked.
“There was some interesting evidence clutched in Pendleton’s hand. The police allowed me to borrow it temporarily. If you have a sheet of white paper…”
I produced a piece of motel stationery from the table drawer. He took an envelope from his pocket, spread it open carefully, and with the point of a mechanical pencil drew out and arranged on the paper several long, dark hairs.
17
After a moment, Harriet laughed. She reached up deliberately and separated a couple of filaments of her own hair from the rest. With a quick little jerk, she pulled them free, wincing slightly. She laid them across the other end of the sheet of white stationery.
“Human hairs are supposed to be different,” she said. “You’re welcome to check.”
“We have,” Mac said calmly. “These hairs are from a man. A man with hands considerably larger than yours, Captain Robinson. He knocked Ramsay Pendleton unconscious with a blackjack, and then choked him to death, leaving distinctive marks on the throat. Do you happen to know a long-haired man with very large hands?”
Harriet laughed again. “Drama!” she murmured. “What was I supposed to do, panic at the thought that I was a murder suspect and blurt out the name of the real killer to save myself?”
Mac shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“Hardly. Even if I knew the man, which I don’t admit, I’ve already told Matt, here, that while I’ll allow myself to be blackmailed to the extent of using some of my contacts for your benefit, I’m not going to betray them to you. Find your own long-haired murderer.”
“The man’s name is probably Morgan,” Mac said imperturbably. “He was seen in the Bahamas, where he is wanted for a murder I’m afraid he didn’t commit. A terrible miscarriage of justice. However, he seems to have eluded the Bahamian authorities; apparently he is now in the Keys; and he does seem to have committed this crime, apparently by mistake or accident, since there is no good motive known for him to kill Mr. Pendleton. He apparently had another victim in mind. Mr. Helm was told by a dying young woman that Morgan would get him; and that if Morgan didn’t, you would.”
Harriet faced him defiantly. “If you know all this, why the play-acting?”
“A great deal may depend on you, Captain Robinson,” Mac said. “I am trying to determine how far you can be relied upon.”
“And I’m supposed to sell out this Morgan, whoever he may be, to prove my good faith?”
Mac shook his head. “No. You’re supposed to refuse to sell him out to prove your good faith. As you have just done.”
Harriet glanced at me, and made a wry face. “If you work for this one, darling, I don’t envy you one bit. Does he ever make sense?”
Mac said, “If you were planning treachery with the help of your Communist associates of long standing, you’d most likely have got permission to throw us a bone or two—a bone named Morgan, for instance—to allay our suspicions. Since you instead have exhibited commendable loyalty to these people, I feel there is a fair chance that you may give us the same loyalty. I never trust traitors, Captain Robinson, no matter how noble their proclaimed motives may be. A man, or a woman, who’ll betray once, will betray twice.”
“So I passed the test,” Harriet said dryly, unimpressed. “Goody for me. Now what do we do?”
“Just a minute,” I said. “Before we get down to other business, let’s finish with Morgan. Talking about making sense, he doesn’t.”
Mac frowned. “What do you mean, Eric?”
I said, “Figure it out, sir. Here Morgan was, long hair and all, hiding in the closet or kitchenette or whatever, waiting to kill me. A stranger walks in and spots him—Pendleton, a pro, would check out the place as a matter of routine, before settling down to wait. Okay so far. But then what happened? Pendleton, unfortunately, wasn’t really expecting to find anybody hiding in the closet; he was just going through the standard motions, more or less off guard. Morgan caught him by surprise and knocked him out. Still nothing remarkable. But what happens next? Why, Morgan grabs him by the throat and strangles him to death—and takes off, for God’s sake, lugging the limp body away with him!”
Harriet asked, puzzled: “What’s the problem? Do you think he should have stuck around—with a dead man at his feet?”
I said, “Precisely. That’s exactly what he should have done. Otherwise, why kill?”
“I don’t get it,” Harriet protested. “What are you trying to say, darling?”
“Simple,” I said. “If he was going to flee anyway, once a stranger stumbled onto the scene, why did Morgan bother to commit murder? I mean, all he had to do was whack the intruder on the head—as he apparently did—and split before the guy regained consciousness. Even if he didn’t recognize Pendleton as an agent, and he’d probably seen the guy in Nassau, he could assume that anybody visiting me secretly at night wouldn’t make a public outcry about being sapped in my room. Once out of here, Morgan would be free and clear. On the other hand, if he was set on staying to finish the job he’d come to do, then killing Pendleton would have been quite logical—killing him, and hiding him in the bathtub behind the shower curtain or something. That way, grimly determined to go through with his original plan, Morgan would be sure Pendleton wouldn’t revive at the wrong moment and interfere. Either way, it would have made some sense. But to first go to the trouble of committing a quite unnecessary murder, and then to give up on the murder he’d come here to do, and run—taking the body with him, for God’s sake!—is professional idiocy.’’
Harriet said, “Maybe this hypothetical Morgan, whoever he may be, simply lost his head, and his nerve.”
“I hope so,” I said. “If he’s that shaky, he should be fairly easy to cope with the next time he tries for me. But I saw him in Nassau, and he didn’t look like a man who’d normally blow his cool in a crisis. If he did crack under great pressure, who or what was exerting it?”
“Darling, maybe you’re overestimating the human race, at least where homicide is concerned. We aren’t all cold, calm, calculating automatons like you, remember? If somebody blundered in on me when I was waiting to kill somebody, I’m sure all my actions would be strictly illogical.”
I grinned. “That’s what you say, but I don’t think I’d care to bet my life on it.”
Mac glanced at his watch. “Mr. Morgan is interesting, but he is not the subject I came here to discuss.” He gestured toward the stuff on the floor. “Have you come to any conclusions about our problem, Captain Robinson?”
“Not yet,” she said. “There really isn’t too much to go on. Matt has a theory, and it’s not too far out; but even if it’s correct it covers a lot of ground, and water. Cuba’s a big island with lots of coastline suitable for hiding pirated boats. After all, the old buccaneers used all the Greater Antilles for approximately the same purpose for years, very successfully.”
“The Greater Whats?” I asked.
She laughed. “You really are a geographical innocent. The Greater Antilles are the big northern islands, from Cuba as far down as Puerto Rico, I believe. The Lesser Antilles are the rest of the Caribbean chain, the Leeward and Windward Islands and all that small stuff off the coast of South America.”
Mac said, “The point is that Cuba is the only island within reasonable sailing or flying distance of these disappearances, as close as we can place them, that has not been, and cannot be, searched very carefully. We have not been permitted to risk an international incident there, at least not yet. Satellite reconnaissance hasn’t been very helpful, and speculative scouting expeditions and over-flights have been strictly forbid
den. If we find the hiding place, we may be allowed to act against it, but we will be given only one chance, and our action must be successful. Apparently, delicate negotiations of some kind are in progress somewhere; and too many people remember the Bay of Pigs. There must be no more fiascos in that area.”
“Well, Bahia de Cocinos is clear over on the south coast of Cuba,” Harriet said. “It’s hardly the same area, but I see what you mean.”
There was a small pause. I took advantage of it to shove a chair forward for Mac. He waited politely for Harriet to sit down on the bed before seating himself. I took the couch at the side of the room. I didn’t bother to offer drinks around. It wasn’t exactly a social occasion.
Mac studied the colorful map of Cuba at his feet for a moment, and looked up, addressing Harriet: “Considering your rather questionable security status,” he said, “you will forgive me if I omit certain classified details. The basic problem seems to be this: Recently a certain small island in the Caribbean—down in the Lesser Antilles, since we’re making the distinction—declared itself a free and sovereign nation, as others have done. There was no real opposition at the time. The European nation that formerly exercised sovereignty over St. Esteban, as we’ll refer to it, wasn’t greatly concerned about the loss of a piece of fairly impoverished real estate, and everybody else was happy—everybody except the St. Estebanites, or Estebanians, or whatever they should be called.”
“What was their gripe?” I asked.
Mac made a wry face. “It turned out that there were two factions striving for power, and once they no longer had a foreign government to hate, they promptly started hating each other. Frankly, I have been unable to determine the exact basis for disagreement. The races and language groups involved seem to be fairly evenly divided between the two sides. It seems to be an obscure family quarrel no outsider can really comprehend. The fact is that one group has managed to drive the other out of the capital city of St. Esteban, which we will also call St. Esteban, and bottle up its active, armed members in a mountainous corner of the island. The rebels, as they are now called by the faction that controls the seat of government, have struck back, quite simply, by seizing fairly prominent hostages from three major nations with Caribbean interests. All three governments have just been formally notified that if military aid is not forthcoming to help these downtrodden people regain their ‘rights,’ the hostages will die.”
The Intimidators Page 14