Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

  "Where do you want to start?" asked Bethel.

  "Bottom up or top down?"

  "We're nearer to the bottom," said Tony.

  "Might as well begin there."

  So we went down into the basement where the boilers were. A hotel needs a lot of hot water and we had three calorifiers, each of a capacity of three million British Thermal Units. The huge drums of the calorifiers were connected by a tangle of pipes coloured red, blue and green, with arrows neatly stencilled to indicate the direction of flow. Tony asked questions and I looked about. The place was spotless and dry.

  Bethel was explaining something technical to Tony when I broke in.

  "This place is as dry as a bone, Tony; there have been no leaks recently." I turned to Bethel.

  "When did you last strip down any of this?"

  He frowned.

  "Must have been eight months ago, Mr. Mangan. A normal maintenance check. This equipment is efficient; hardly ever goes wrong."

  "Where does the water come from?"

  "Out of the mains supply." He nodded towards Mackav.

  "Mr. Mackay can tell you more about that."

  "Then why should we be the only building hit?" I asked Tony.

  "That's not exactly true," said "Mackay

  "Isn't the mains water piped into tanks somewhere at the top of the building?"

  "That's right," said Bethel.

  "Right at the top to give it a good head."

  "So it could have been contaminated in the tanks after it left the mains," I said.

  "I don't think it could have happened down here.

  Everything is as tight as a drum. "

  "Let's go to the top," proposed Tony, so we went up in the service elevator.

  The water tanks were on the roof and they were big.

  "Twenty-five thousand gallons," said Bethel.

  "Five thousand in each tank." He pointed out the mains piping rising up the side of the hotel.

  "The water comes up there and is distributed by this manifold into the tanks. Each tank has a ball valve to control the water level." He shrugged.

  "The whole system is just the same as the one you'll have in your own home; it's just that this is bigger."

  "I've never seen mine," I said.

  Bethel grinned.

  "I don't come up here too often myself. The system is automatic." He pointed.

  "You can see that the tanks are all interconnected by that manifold at the bottom."

  That meant that water would flow freely between the tanks.

  "Why five?" I asked.

  "Why not one big tank?"

  "Well, if something happens a tank springs a leak, say we can isolate it and go on using the other four." Bethel was very good at answering stupid questions from a layman.

  "And the tanks are sealed?"

  "Sure. There's a manhole on the top of each so we can get at a sticky valve if we have to, but the lids are bolted down on a mastic seal."

  "Let's take a look," said Tony, and began to climb the steel ladder on the side of the nearest tank.

  We all followed him. On top of the tank Bethel squatted on his haunches.

  "Here's the manhole. I had the tanks repainted about three months ago and we just painted over the manhole covers, bolts and all. You can see this hasn't been opened since then the paint seal isn't cracked."

  I looked at Mackay.

  "Then how did the bug get into the system? It must be in the mains water." Something bright on the roof shot a sun reflection into my eye and I turned slightly to get rid of it.

  "Impossible!" said Mackay positively.

  "Not if this is the only building affected. Look." He unrolled the chart he was carrying which proved to be a water distribution map.

  "All those houses take the same water. Even the airport is on the same water main."

  "People normally don't shower in airports," said Tony.

  "They do in houses," retorted Mackay.

  "It can't be in the mains water. Of that I'm certain."

  Bethel had wandered away and was standing on the next tank.

  "Hey!" he called, and again the reflection stabbed my eye as I turned.

  "This one's been opened." We crossed to the tank and stood around the manhole cover.

  "The paint has cracked around the bolts."

  "Opened some time in the last three months," said Tony.

  "Later than that," said Bethel confidently. He pointed to where bright metal showed where paint had flaked away.

  "It hasn't started to rust. I'd say some time in the last week."

  "That adds up," said Tony.

  "Who would have opened it?" I asked.

  "I didn't," said Bethel.

  "Harry Crossman might have, but if he did he didn't tell me."

  Crossman was Bethel's assistant.

  "It will be on his work sheets," I said.

  "I want to see them. I want to see them now."

  Bethel stood up.

  "They're in my office."

  "Bring back a wrench," said Tony. T want to take samples from here. "

  There was no point in me watching Tony take samples so I went with Bethel. We climbed down on to the roof and walked towards the elevator motor housing, and I kicked something which rolled away and came to a stop with a clink at the edge of a water tank. I stooped and picked it up and found the object that had been sending reflections into my eye.

  But it was more than that much more. It was a cylindrical glass tube broken at one end. The1 other end was pointed as though it had been sealed in a flame, and I had seen others like it in Jack Kayles's first-aid box on My Fair Lady. Suddenly ideas came slamming into my head so hard and so fast that they hurt. Whole areas of mystification suddenly became clear and made sense; a weird and unnatural sense, it is true, but conforming to logic.

  I turned and yelled, "Tony, come down here."

  He clambered down the ladder.

  "What's the matter?"

  I held out the glass tube.

  "Could you take a swab from the inside of there and test it for your damned bug?"

  He looked surprised.

  "Sure, but…"

  "How long will it take?"

  "Not long. After the last scare they set up a testing facility in the hospital here. Say, four days."

  "I can't wait that long, but take care of it and do your test." I turned and ran for the staircase.

  Five minutes later I was talking to Walker at the Royal Palm on Grand Bahama. He said, "Where are you, Mr. Mangan? I'm supposed to be body guarding you."

  "I had to leave in a hurry, but never mind that. I want you to send a man on to the roof. No one is to get near the water tanks up there."

  "The water tanks!" he echoed.

  "What the…"

  "Never mind arguing, just do it," I said sharply.

  "And put another man near the air-conditioning cooling tower. Nobody is to get near that, either. Nobody at all."

  "Not your maintenance crew?"

  "Nobody," I said flatly. I did not know ifCarrasco had local assistance or not, but I was taking no chances.

  "Where's Carrasco?"

  "He spent the day sightseeing in West End," said Walker a shade wearily.

  "Right now he's having dinner at the Buccaneer Club out at Deadman Reef. I have two men with him Rodriguez and Palmer."

  "You'll probably have police to help you at the hotel as soon as I've talked to Perigord. And after that I'm flying back."

  As I rang off Bethel came in.

  "Nothing in Harry's work sheets, Mr. Mangan."

  "I know. He didn't do it. Do you know Bobby Bowen, my pilot?" Bethel nodded.

  "Chase him up, will you? Tell him we'll be flying to Freeport. Oh, and tell Dr. Bosworth he'll be coming with me. Mackay can take the samples to the hospital." Bethel turned to go, and I added, "And thanks. You've been a great help."

  When he had gone I rang Perigord. He was not in his office, not entirely unnaturally considering the
time of day, but neither was he at home. The telephone was answered by his daughter who told me in a piping voice that Mummy and Daddy were out. Where were they? She was vague about that. They had gone out to dinner. Could be the Stoned Crab or the Captain's Charthouse or possibly the Japanese Steak House in the International Bazaar or the Lobster House in the Mall.

  Or was it the Lucayan Country Club? I sighed and thanked her, then reached for the Grand Bahama telephone directory.

  I found him in none of those places but finally ran him to earth in the Mai Tai. It took me some time to convince him of my sanity and even longer to move him to action. I think I ruined his dinner.

  Tony Bosworth and I walked into the lobby of the Royal Palm and I noticed immediately the two uniformed policemen, one standing by the elevators, the other at the foot of the staircase. I crossed to the desk.

  "Is Commissioner Perigord here?"

  "In the manager's office."

  I jerked my head at Tony and we went in. Perigord, in plain clothes, was talking on the telephone, and Walker sat on a settee. Perigord said into the mouthpiece, "I quite agree; I'll check it out thoroughly. I can expect you tomorrow, then." He looked up.

  "He's here now; I'll have it in more detail by then. Yes, I'll meet you.

  Goodbye. " He put down the telephone.

  "Now, Mangan, you'll have to explain ' I cut him short.

  "First things first. I'd like you to get those coppers out of the lobby and out of sight. I don't want Carrasco scared off."

  He leaned forward.

  "If your story is correct then Carrasco is the most dangerous man in the Bahamas."

  "No, he's not," I contradicted.

  "Robinson is, and he's the joker I want. He's the boss." I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  "Besides, you can't charge Carrasco with anything. You need hard proof and you've got none. But scare him and he'll skip, and Robinson will send someone else in his place someone we don't know. Besides, I don't like uniformed policemen cluttering up the public rooms in my hotels.

  It lowers the tone. "

  Perigord nodded and stood up.

  "We may be guarding an empty stable," he said sourly.

  "Carrasco may not be back. Your men have lost him."

  He walked out.

  I turned on Walker.

  "For God's sake! Is that true?"

  He said heavily, "He went into the John at the Buccaneer Club and didn't come out. Rodriguez thinks he left by the window. His car is still there but no Carrasco."

  I thought for a moment.

  "Maybe he's in Harry's Bar; that's not far from the Buccaneer."

  "No Palmer checked that out."

  I thought of the topography ofDeadman Reef.

  "A boat," I said.

  "He's meeting a boat. Have your men thought of that?"

  Walker said nothing but reached for the telephone as Perigord came back. He glanced at Tony.

  "Who is this?"

  "Dr. Bosworth. He identified the disease and has been of great help."

  Perigord nodded briefly and sat down.

  "Are you really trying to tell me that Carrasco is a maniac the stereotyped mad doctor of the " B" movies who is poisoning the water in hotels in these islands?"

  "I don't believe him to be mad, but that's what he's doing. And Robinson is directing him."

  "But why?"

  "I've had a few thoughts in that direction which I'll come to in a minute. Let's look at the evidence."

  "That I'd be pleased to do," said Perigord sardonically.

  "I know it's all circumstantial, but so is most evidence of murder.

  When I found that glass tube it all came together suddenly. One, I'd seen others like it on Kayles's boat. Two, I remembered what Kayles must have heard me saying to Sam Ford. "

  "Which was?"

  "I was blowing my top about the chain of disasters which had hit the Bahamas. Rioting in the streets of Nassau, Legionnaires' disease at the Parkway, the burning of the Fun Palace, even the shredding of the luggage at the airport. Now, I'd knocked Kayles cold and he was just coming to his senses. He must have been muzzy dislocated enough in his mind to think I was actually describing Robinson's doings to Sam.

  So when he escaped he reported to Robinson that I knew all. "

  I frowned.

  "And what convinced Robinson was that there was at least one item on that list that Kayles wasn't privy to. That indicated to Robinson that I did indeed know about his plans – he told me so and he was as worried as hell because I might have told you."

  Perigord said, "Are you telling me that Robinson burned down the Fun Palace? And sabotaged the carousel at the airport?"

  "Yes, I think he did but not personally. Another thing: when Robinson admitted to trying to have me killed in an air crash he made a curious remark. He said the death of the Americans was an unexpected bonus, and he went on to say that Wall Street was a bit rocky about it. The idea seemed to please him. "

  "Come to the point you are so circuitously making."

  "It was all pulled into place by a remark made by Billy Cunningham," I said.

  "When we put together the Theta Corporation Billy did some research in the course of which he talked to Butler of the Ministry of Tourism. He learned that eighty per cent of the economy and two-thirds of the population are supported by tourism. Billy said to me that it was too many eggs in one basket, and it worried him a little. And that's your answer."

  "Spell it out," said Perigord.

  "Robinson is trying to sabotage the economy of the Bahamas." Perigord regarded me expressionlessly, and I said, "How many tourists have we lost since all this began? Ask Butler, and I guarantee the answer will startle you. And it's not long since Billy Cunningham warned me that if this series of disasters continued the Cunningham Corporation would think seriously of pulling out. The company which runs the Parkway in Nassau is already nearly bankrupt."

  "It's all too thin," complained Perigord.

  "Too speculative. The only hard evidence we have is the glass tube you found, and that won't be evidence if it's clean. How long will it take you to make the tests, Dr. Bosworth?"

  "The hospital in Nassau is doing the testing, and it will take four days."

  "Not sooner?"

  "This bacterium is very elusive," said Tony.

  "The samples have to go through a guinea pig and then be cultured on an agar medium supplemented by cysteine and iron. Then ' Perigord flapped his hand.

  "Spare me the technical details," he said irritably.

  "All right four days."

  "I'll tell you something, Commissioner," said Tony.

  "If that capsule gives a positive result it means someone has found a way of culturing Legionella pneumophila in quantity, and that implies a well-equipped biological laboratory. It's not something you can whip up in a-kitchen."

  Perigord absorbed that in silence. Walker stirred and said, "There's something you ought to know. This morning one of my guys found Carrasco in a place he shouldn't be on one of the back stairs used by the cleaning staff. He said he'd got lost; taken a wrong turning and gone through the wrong door."

  I slapped the desk with the flat of my hand.

  "Perigord, what more do you want?" I turned on Walker.

  "So Carrasco has given you the slip before. I hope to God he didn't doctor the water tanks here."

  "No way," said W^alker, stung.

  "And he didn't give us the slip. He dropped out of sight and my guy went looking for him. He wasn't out of sight for more than three minutes."

  "I could bear to know a lot about who and why," said Perigord.

  "There's a proverb to the effect that fishing is best done in troubled waters," I said.

  "The CIA know it as destabilization.

  They've been pretty good at it in the past. "

  He looked startled.

  "You're not suggesting the CIA is behind this?"

  "I don't know who is behind it I didn't say it was the CIA.
It's not in the American interest to destabilize a sound capitalist economy in this part of the world. Others do come to mind, though."

  "Five will get you ten that Carrasco is a Cuban," said Walker.

  "Venezuelan my ass." The telephone rang and he picked it up.

  "I'm expecting this." He held a short conversation his end of it consisting of monosyllables. As he laid down the handset he said, "You were right; Carrasco went out in a boat. He's just come back and he's in the Buccaneer Club now, having a drink. We have a picture of him landing on the beach."

  "Taken at night," I said scornfully.

  "A fat lot of good that will be.

  And what good is a picture? We already know what he looks like. "

  "There was another guy in the boat," said Walker reasonably.

  "We might like to know who he is. As for picture quality, if anyone can come up with something good it's Rodriguez; he has some kind of gismo on his camera. That guy is gadget-happy. He says Carrasco came back in a small boat that's probably a tender to a big yacht. After landing Carrasco, the boat went out to sea again."

  "A night rendezvous," said Perigord.

  "I'll have a police boat take a look at Deadman Reef." He reached for the telephone.

  When he had finished we continued to kick the problerp around for quite a while. No, Perigord had not investigated the catastrophe of the airport carousel; it had not been considered a police matter at the time. He would look into it next day. The fire at the Fun Palace in Nassau had been investigated for arson, but no firm evidence had come up. It might be possible to borrow a deep-diving submersible from the Americans to look for the remains of Finder's Navajo in Exuma Sound. Evidence of sabotage would be useful.

  "Useful for what?" I asked.

  "That's in the past and I'm worried about the future. I'm wondering what Robinson's department of dirty tricks will come up with next."

  It was agreed that Carrasco was our only lead and that he would be closely watched. 1 looked hard at Walker.

  "And don't lose him again ' " I'll assign some of my own men to him," said Perigord.

  "There are too many whites watching him now. My blacks will blend into the background better." He looked at his watch.

  "Nearly midnight. I suggest that Dr. Bosworth will sleep better in a bed than in that chair. And I'm for bed, too." | I turned and found Tony asleep. I woke him up.