Operation Nassau

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘They have a car along there,’ Johnson said. ‘Driven into a beach path of Great Harbour Drive. We’ve blocked the Drive, and they’ll have to go through the seaside fairways to reach it.’

  He had started running, and I was running beside him. Ahead, the fire was illuminating Krishtof Bey’s beautiful shirt and his rifle: Spry was standing beside him and a number of other men unknown to me were moving out of the undergrowth. Firing still sounded, but a good way ahead.

  ‘Two of Pentecost’s friends have been accounted for,’ Johnson said. ‘I think what you heard just now will be the remainder.’ He had reached the road and crossed it. I saw Spry look round unsurprised, and Krishtof give a jump. Spry put out a hand and stopped him advancing. No one else made a move to accompany us. I trotted after.

  The road to the right was blocked by a dark line of cars, and there were men standing about. The dying light from the wreck flickered on a lime-rubble track sweeping up and into the dark on the right: from ahead came the swish of the sea. There was no sound of footsteps. I realized that Trotter had been directed this way together with those of his friends who survived: that they were being neatly corralled, without further shooting: and that the getaway car would be their ultimate pen. Johnson said, ‘I’m going to the car. There’s no need for you to be in at the kill.’

  I said. ‘Yes, there is.’ We were running along the grass edge of the road. On our left, down the fairway, there was no sound at all. It was hard to imagine that there, parallel with us, two men were running for their lives, believing that ahead of them lay a car and escape. I added, under my breath, ‘Where’s Sir Bartholomew?’

  Johnson said, ‘Heading them off. He knows where the car is. They’ve got a boat, just past the airport. Look. Here we are.’

  Between shrubs on the left, a dim gritty track led towards the rustling boom of the sea. We were almost upon the dark shadow lying within before I realized it was a fast convertible coupe, drawn backwards off the road, its hood down. In the deep shadow to the right of it, men were lying. Johnson spoke to them softly, and then, opening one of its doors, motioned me into the back, closing it quietly on me again. He himself stayed crouched outside.

  It was almost dark now, and the afterglow had quite gone from the pale open sky over the sea. The beach lay concealed behind a black frieze of pine trees and coconut palms, their feet in the rough mixed scrub edging the long sixteenth fairway. The raised green lay beside me, its flag invisible against the dark trees, and into the darkness ran the even turf of the fairway, the two pale bunkers to left and to right dim patches before the invisible plateau of the tee.

  All this I could see, barely raising my head above the righthand door of the car. On my left, I saw the dark head of Johnson, and behind him a black sea of scrubland stretching between the beach and the road as far as the eye could distinguish. Far in the distance were the prick-lights of the small airport tower. The sea hissed and rumbled and the wind blew lightly south-east, from the airport, and carried all sound away.

  The fugitives would arrive from the right, along the long beach-side fairways. They would run through the scrub. I wondered whether they would choose the rough ground by the sea where the waves would drown their footsteps but might also deaden their hearing. Or the low jungle between the fairways and the road, pitted with cuttings and the half-built foundations of villas, good for an ambush or merely a broken ankle for the unwary. Unlike Johnson and myself, they couldn’t take the open, straight road. Theirs, creeping, ducking, silently moving from bush to bush and cover to cover, would take so much longer.

  There was no sound now but the sea. The last burst of firing had been some time ago, far over by the blockade. The escaping men had thrown off their pursuers, or had been allowed to believe that they had. Johnson had said that Edgecombe was heading them off. If so, there was no sign of him yet. I wondered if he was lying out there, somewhere under the scented black bushes, with his gun trained on the fairway, waiting for the moment when Trotter and Brady broke cover and made their run for the car.

  He had believed Johnson was dead: I had seen it in his face. Nor would I forget the passion of rage in which he had levelled his gun and pulled the trigger on the snarling, swerving figure of Trotter, the smoking gun still in his hand.

  And now, suddenly, the hunter was the hunted. Trotter had no time to seek out and kill Edgecombe now. If he wanted to escape with his life, he had to reach this car, and that boat.

  Silence. I wondered what Johnson was thinking. And if Judith Cicely Ballantyne was waiting to welcome him home. The men in the lee of the car lay without speaking. The surf buzzed, and a new wave began to echo along its oncoming length and broke and buzzed in its turn, leaving another silence, long and indrawn like a breath.

  A long, warbling scream burst upon it, ululating over the fairways, throbbing through the dense, grassy distances far on the right. Johnson’s hand, reaching suddenly from behind, pulled me hard and quickly backwards out of the car. I hit the grass beside someone else and lay as the ciy came again. Then wriggling out of his grasp I gripped the sides of the car and raised my head over the side panel to look.

  Bucking out of the dangerous darkness, erect, gallant, befringed and straight out of Schwartz’s side window, came one of the Tamboo Club golf-carts, a flutter of pink silk in the driving-seat, a full-blooded Islamic war-cry emerging from under the canopy. Krishtof Bey was quartering the ground between fairway and road at a high cruising speed, roaring joyous defiance as he did so.

  At the same moment, on the other side of the fairway, a second cart jolted out of the darkness and proceeded to scan the rough by the sea side, slowing now and then and picking up speed, but all the time coming steadily nearer.

  Dimly, as it approached, I glimpsed within it Bartholomew Edgecombe’s grey mane of hair. Johnson, kneeling beside me. began to laugh and then had to stifle it. ‘My God. The beaters,’ he said under his breath.

  He had just spoken when there was a crack from Krishtof Bey’s rifle and a man jumped from the palmetto far on our left, stopped, hesitated, and then turned and ran straight towards us, along the broad open fairway. There was a second shot from Krishtof Bey’s cart; then the cart jerked and began jogging towards us. The runner looked round and then quickened his pace. As he got nearer, the blur of pale hands and face resolved themselves into familiar features.

  ‘Trotter,’ said Johnson in a murmur. His hand was down, signalling us all to be still. No one moved. His other hand was tight on his gun.

  Then I saw Johnson’s fist relax and realized that Edgecombe had seen what was happening. Swerving out from the bush-covered dunes, he had set the cart over the fairway, edging the dark, running figure between Krishtof and himself. And as Trotter sensed it and looked round, a red flash of gunfire from Edgecombe’s cart splintered the darkness.

  Trotter didn’t fire back. He ran until we could hear the squeak of his footsteps and the sawing sound of his breath. Johnson let him come. He let him run up to the car on the opposite side of which we were all lying. He let him lay hands on the door-handle as Edgecombe’s golf-cart, cutting in front of its fellow, came to a dead halt.

  Trotter had already snatched the door-handle open when the silence warned him the cart had stopped moving. He let it go and flung himself on the ground, gun in hand, as Edgecombe knelt by the steering-wheel and fired at him, again and again.

  He missed him. I heard the bullets ring on the side of the car and the rustle as Trotter rolled off and got to his knees. Beside me, Johnson suddenly rose to his feet and stood, madly, in full view behind the low, open car.

  Lying where he was, Trotter couldn’t possibly see him. But Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe did. He half rose from where he was crouching, his eyes on Johnson: a vision, a man from the dead, and for a moment in his amazement, forgot even the gun in his hand.

  It was not a mistake that Trotter, the sergeant-major, would make. Edgecombe rose before him, the perfect target; and from where I sprawled by the rear of the car I
saw Trotter’s hand raise the gun.

  I still think I could have stopped him. I know that I put all the strength that I had behind the spring that would take me round the car and drag his gun arm away as he fired.

  Johnson stopped me. He flung me sideways with a sudden, swift violence that deprived me of breath, and then pinned me there, gasping and helpless, by the rear wheel of the car.

  And so Trotter raised his gun unimpeded, and fired; and a black hole sprang like a coin between Edgecombe’s eyes before he fell slowly sideways and dead, on to the perfect mown grass.

  Johnson pulled me away from the car just as Trotter vaulted into the seat and turned on the ignition. He looked round as he put her into gear: I think he saw us all behind him. He must have known the road would be ambushed; the boat gone. But he was an obstinate man. He put off the brake and shot forwards just as Johnson, aiming deliberately, shot him twice through the head.

  The car crossed the road under its own momentum, hit the verge and turned over twice. It lay several seconds, wheels spinning, before the explosion burst it apart and the fire, rosily flickering, revealed us all to each other. Tiny Tim and hot chestnuts and Christmas. Flameproof your nightwear. Flameproof your relationships. No one is ever what he seems.

  Krishtof Bey jumped down from his golf-cart and Wallace Brady, carrying Krishtof’s rifle, stepped out from the passenger seat of the same cart and bent over the dead body of Edgecombe. I watched them without understanding and almost without interest. Cars drew up and all the persons who had been waiting inert about us had suddenly become very busy. A water-cart arrived and someone began to play hoses on the half-consumed car. I wondered if it was the boy in the red shirt and the fancy straw hat. I could no longer hear the sound of the sea.

  A large, closed Buick slid up beside me and Johnson, emerging from a talking cluster of men, took my arm and said, ‘Get in, Beltanno. Spry will take you to Dolly and it won’t be long before you’re safe on Crab Island with James Ulric and the Begum. I’ll be there as soon as I can get away.’ He looked at me, and then said, ‘Wait a bit.’

  He had a flask of whisky, what else, in his pocket. I watched him pour it and took the cup, remembering the three stiff ones he had poured in Bart Edgecombe’s house, and why I drank it, and he took the cup back. ‘Good girl. Explanations later,’ said Johnson. ‘But you were a magnificent doctor bird. The undoubted backbone or vertebral column of the whole bloody exercise.’

  I didn’t say anything. I saw Wallace Brady look over, but I didn’t want to say anything to him either. I got into the car and sat stiffly in it as Spry drove me away from the noise and the light into the warm, airy darkness. A faint hissing came to my ears: the sea, clouded by the night spray of all the myriads of sprinklers, grooming the greens for the next championship match. Who had won - Mr Tiko, perhaps. No one else.

  It wasn’t until the car stopped moving that I realized we were at the quay where Dolly’s speedboat was lying. The Begum and James Ulric were already on Crab Island, he said. Mr Tiko would be there soon, I supposed. And Krishtof and Wallace Brady. Or were they part of the plot too? Were even Johnson and Dolly what they seemed? Did anyone know?

  Or perhaps they all knew, except me. The backbone of the whole scheme, he had called me. The dupe. The laughing-stock, the bartered bride, the cropped dummy, the fall guy.

  Spry was holding open the door.

  I said, ‘No. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go to Crab Island. I want to go straight back to Nassau. There must be plenty of planes leaving, with all this upheaval. Do you think you could take me instead to the airport?’

  I thought he would stall me, or try to make some objection, but he didn’t. He took me straight to the airport, and I was in a plane and heading for Nassau inside an hour.

  Even from the air you could see it all: the criss-crossing beams of the cars, and the spiralling light and smoke from the dying bonfire of Trotter’s wrecked car. Then the little plane heeled round and flew off, leaving Great Harbour Cay and its golf-course lying behind on the dark sea.

  SIXTEEN

  I had to work a month’s notice in the United Commonwealth Hospital, and no one bothered me during that time, although I had two calls from James Ulric asking me if I was all right, and Mr Tiko rang once to say that he had been called back to New York but wished me to know that he would be happy to accede to whatever plans I wished to make for the future. I thanked him, and said that I would write to him presently. I found I was glad, if surprised, that Johnson hadn’t killed him as well. He wrote back that perhaps he would meet me at the MacRannoch Gathering.

  Perhaps.

  I worked very hard at my job. Perhaps a holiday was what I had needed. Or perhaps it was energy released by the act of resignation. It had pleased my father, even when I informed him that in future I proposed to draw on our joint account. He had never wanted me to work. He had only wanted me to become married. And so I might have, if I had never met Johnson.

  I didn’t ask him about the outcome on Great Harbour Cay, and there was nothing of moment in the Nassau Guardian, only the heading Edgecombe Rites Monday and a large, respectful obituary on Sir Bartholomew, fatally wounded while grappling with an Army deserter in his Great Harbour Cay garden. There was a brief recapitulation of Lady Edgecombe’s recent tragic demise. I read them both sketchily and stopped thinking about it again.

  I took a week-end trip to New York and bought some clothes and went to a theatre and had a large Bossa Nova in the interval, which was a mistake, as it made me think of Miami all over again. Next day I wore my dark glasses in hospital, but no one commented adversely.

  I had never found the hospital atmosphere so clear and so pleasant as it had been this last month. Perhaps because they knew I was leaving. Perhaps because of my wig? My C.M.O. took me out to lunch and unfolded two risqué jokes and a long account of how he had always wanted to be a veterinary surgeon while I had two Yellowberries without noticeable effect. I was getting used to them. I was getting used to everything except being utilized and being ignored.

  My father rang up for the third time and said the Begum wanted to know if she could get married, and I said, Ask Johnson. He said Johnson had gone away, and what was it to do with him anyway? It was too complicated to explain, so I rang off.

  It was two days later, operating day, when I got home to be met by Daffodil at the door, and the smell of pipe smoke curling round from the hallway. A gentleman had called in to see me. A Mr—

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Good evening, Mr Johnson.’

  He was standing in my father’s sitting-room in a crumpled shirt and tie, evidently put on in my honour, and a serious look round the bifocals, saying nothing at all. I uttered a few common-place bromides while Daffodil closed the door and walked with reluctance away from the keyhole. Johnson said, ‘I apologize for coming along uninvited, but I knew you wouldn’t see me if I telephoned. The Begum tells me I have made an impression midway between Mussolini and a Chubb T.D.R. safe. I am here to adjust my image. You weren’t expected to suffer all that without a word of decent explanation.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I got the dose without the anti-depression pill. It was my own fault for leaving so quickly.’ I didn’t ask him to sit down.

  ‘You were seen,’ said Johnson gravely, ‘drinking Yellowberries. But if you don’t want to listen, I’m not going to pressure you. The other reason I came was to carry out a commission.’ He glanced at the wall. ‘I’ve been asked to leave you a painting.’

  I walked two steps in and looked where he nodded. A square artist’s canvas, unframed, had been propped between the floor and the wall. Out of it, cheerful and enigmatic, gazed the dark face of Krishtof Bey, his hands clasped below at his knees.

  ‘With the sitter’s compliments,’ Johnson said. ‘I was also to convey to you Wallace Brady’s competitive love, and James Ulric wants to know if you’ve married that little buff Wop yet.’

  ‘Nip,’ I said automatically. I stared from Johnson’s bifocals to
Krishtof Bey’s large eyes with their shameless false lashes. There was no doubt at all. He was a fiendishly good painter. I said, ‘You are a bloody Mussolini.’

  ‘It’s a lie,’ he said calmly.

  ‘I ought to turn you out. I don’t want any more dirt on my hands. I don’t want to hear -’

  ‘You do;’ said Johnson. ‘You want to know why Wallace Brady isn’t in prison and you want to know if Krishtof Bey is married or not.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ I said. ‘I looked him up in Who’s Who.’

  There was an attentive movement of the bifocals. ‘You don’t mean the Begum’s folio edition?’ Johnson said. ‘You should try an up-to-date one. You’ve missed half his love-life. I don’t suppose it said a word about my six children.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it mentioned Judith Cicely Ballantyne.’

  The bifocals remained completely impassive. ‘The daughter,’ he said, ‘of perhaps the most famous Russian spy the world has ever known, Igor Vasily Balinski. She married me on Kremlin orders to extirpate all my secrets, and when the truth came out later, we shot each other. They gave her a Soviet State funeral. Her aim had always been poor.’

  We stared at one another, on the heels of this farrago. Whatever other precepts I had hurled out of the window, I could still respect privacy. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Sit down. What will you drink?’

  He remained standing. He said thoughtfully, ‘Why should you suppose that had any truth in it?’

  Ever since I had met him here in this house, the night he had taken me sailing on Dolly, he had been deceiving me. He must have been. Hardly anything he told me during all those subsequent days had been truthful. Why then should I believe that his wife was dead, and that he had loved her? He wanted me to listen, and sympathetically. He had made sure that I would.