Crackdown

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Damn him.” I leaned over the rail to inspect the new scratch in Wavebreaker’s paint.

  “Didn’t I do well?” Ellen asked proudly.

  I had to laugh. “You did wonderfully!”

  “He had a gun!” She sounded astonished, and I knew that the real danger of the moment was only just occurring to her.

  “For someone who hates violence,” I agreed, “you used force with great skill. You gained a victory over a piece of scum, and I congratulate you.”

  “A piece of scum?” Ellen turned to look at the rapidly disappearing Dream Baby. “I thought he was kind of cute.”

  “Cute!” I was astonished by her. “You thought that scabby creep was cute?”

  “Yeah,” she sounded defensive, “kind of.”

  “Bloody hell,” I said, and decided that I would never understand women. “You’d better check that your cute friend didn’t steal anything when he was down below.”

  It took me two hours to paint out the damage that Sweetman had caused to our hull. Ellen meanwhile cleared the foam from the teak deck, then searched Wavebreaker’s cabins. She reported that Jesse Sweetman appeared to have stolen nothing and, except for the padlock on the companionway, had damaged nothing either. Ellen and I both assumed that Sweetman’s interest in Wavebreaker’s had been merely that of a prospective charterer who wanted to reconnoitre the boat’s amenities.

  So I forgot about him, at least until that evening when I gave Ellen some practice with the sextant. She was trying to master celestial navigation and I stood beside her as she trapped Altair in the mirror, then delicately and successfully brought the star down to the horizon. She read the star’s altitude off the sextant’s micrometer, and I dutifully jotted down the numbers and the time of day for her. “Does 666 mean anything?” I suddenly asked, remembering the numerals painted on Dream Baby’s bows.

  “Of course it does.” Ellen was already trying to identify another star. “It’s the number of the Beast, the anti-Christ, the personification of everything that’s evil.”

  “Seriously,” I said, “does it mean anything?”

  Ellen looked at me. “I’m not joking, Nick. It’s from the Bible. Ask Thessy tomorrow. It’s a bad news number, a kind of theological mindfuck.”

  I looked out to sea, almost as though I expected to see a puff of smoke and a beast with a forked tail appear from the darkness. “And you think Sweetman’s cute?” I asked Ellen.

  “I think he’s best avoided,” Ellen said in an unexpectedly sober voice, and suddenly, and for no particular reason on a very warm night, we both shivered.

  If McIllvanney’s yard had been deserted on Saturday afternoon, on Sunday morning it was unnaturally busy. Thessy arrived first, tired after an uncomfortable night on the ferry, and five minutes later Bellybutton half danced and half shuffled down the pontoon with a can of paint and a pocketful of rags and brushes. He arranged his materials on Starkisser’s long midnight-blue bows and, seeing my interest, offered an explanation. “Mr Mac wants a star painted on his sharp end, and what Mr Mac wants, Mr Mac gets.”

  Ten minutes later Mr Mac himself arrived, blasting his big Kawasaki into the yard before strolling down the quay to cast his sceptical gaze at Wavebreaker. “She looks all right,” he said grudgingly, then he crossed the gangplank for a closer look. “Good holiday?” he asked Thessy.

  “Thank you, sir, yes, sir.”

  “Well, it’s over now, you lazy black bastard, and the client wants three scuba sets put on board.” He tossed Thessy the keys to the storeroom. “So go fetch.”

  “Scuba?” I asked as Thessy ran towards the stores.

  “Master Rickie Crowninshield likes to scuba,” McIllvanney said sourly, “and his daddy’s paying for the gear, so gear they will have. Good morning, Ellen.” He stared defiantly at Ellen who, standing at the stern just above Wavebreaker’s swimming platform, nodded back very coolly. McIllvanney turned back to me and dropped his voice very slightly. “Ellen tells me she’s sailing away with you?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “You’re the lucky one, aren’t you.” He peered into the binnacle as though checking that no one had stolen the compass. “Screwing her, are you, Nick?”

  “Piss off.”

  He laughed, clearly in high spirits. “And the senator tells me that you’re only doing a two-week trial with his kids, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, it isn’t.” He straightened up from the binnacle and jabbed a finger painfully into my chest. “You do the full three months, Nicholas Breakspear, because I want the commission on this one, do you hear me?” If a charter was booked direct by McIllvanney, and not through either the London or the Fort Lauderdale agencies, then the Ulsterman collected the full fifteen per cent commission, which meant that the senator’s jaunt was worth at least eighteen thousand dollars to McIllvanney. “You cut this one short”—he jabbed my chest again—”and I’ll cut you so short that you’ll be singing falsetto.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a filthy bastard?” I asked McIllvanney in a tone of genuine enquiry.

  “The last creature who told me that is living in a greengrocer’s shop now. You know what lives in greengrocers’ shops, Nick? Vegetables do,” He guffawed, then gave a grotesque imitation of a witless paraplegic slumped in a wheelchair. “So everything’s ready, is it?” he asked, suddenly businesslike again.

  I nodded; then, on an impulse, I asked if McIllvanney had ever met a man called Jesse Sweetman.

  McIllvanney did not even need to think about his answer, but just shook his head. “What kind of a name is Jesse?”

  “It’s a southern name,” I said, “perhaps from South Carolina or Georgia? He runs around in a dazzle-painted sports-fisherman called Dream Baby.”

  “Dream Baby?” That name clearly struck a chord in McIllvanney, for he frowned at me for a few seconds, but the chord must have faded for he shrugged it off. “I’ve seen that boat somewhere, but I can’t place it. Does it matter?”

  “Sweetman and Dream Baby were here yesterday afternoon,” I said, “and he gouged Wavebreaker’s hull and prised open the companionway. He didn’t steal anything, but he annoyed me.”

  “He broke into the boat? The bastard.” Whatever else, McIllvanney ran a good boatyard and hated to think of it being vandalised. “Bellybutton!” he shouted.

  “I hear you!” Bellybutton had painted the outline of a five-pointed shooting star on the sleek deck of Starkisser’s bows. He had a surprisingly delicate touch and the silver star was going to look beautiful when it was finished. He had given the star a long fiery tail and surrounded it with darts of reflected light.

  “What do you know about a sports-fisherman called Dream Baby?” McIllvanney shouted over the water.

  Bellybutton, kneeling over his work, thought about it for a second, then spread his hands in a gesture of ignorance. “Don’t mean nothing to me, boss.”

  “Well if you see the bugger, run him off!” McIllvanney said angrily, then turned to look at the yard where a silver-grey stretch limo, its windows tinted black against the sun, rolled ponderously to park beside the stairs to his office. He scowled, because he never liked meeting the clients, and clearly the big car was bringing the Crowninshield twins for their cruise-cure.

  Ellen came and stood beside me. Our usual nervousness about meeting clients seemed more intense this bright morning, for neither of us knew quite what to expect of the senator’s children. One part of me, despite George Crowninshield’s reassurances, anticipated that the twins would emerge as shambling twitching wrecks, and for a second, believing my worst fears, I bitterly regretted accepting the senator’s charter. However, Rickie Crowninshield appeared reassuringly normal when he emerged from the limousine. At the very least I had expected him to be physically frail and mentally chastened; a boy worn out by his long addiction and frightened of the criminal charges that hung over him, but instead he came out of the limo and down the dock with the frisky energy of a puppy. H
e ran across the gangplank as enthusiastically as though he sought votes for his father’s election campaign, then approached us with an outstretched hand and a voice full of bright greetings. “You must be Nick? Dad told me about you. He says you’re one hell of a guy. Really!” His handshake was warm and firm, and his face redolent of his father’s sincerity. “And, oh boy! I know who you are. Ellen Skandinsky! Wow!” He gave her an admiring grin that was very reminiscent of the senator’s beguiling charm.

  “Hello.” Ellen’s manner was almost British in its cool restraint, matching our welcome which we had deliberately pitched at a low key. We were not filling the marina with the steel band jollity of Yellow Bird, nor were any of us in our matching blue and white uniforms, for this was not a usual charter, and none of us were at Rickie or Robin-Anne Crowninshield’s beck and call. Instead, if we were anything, we were their jailers. I introduced Rickie to McIllvanney who screwed his face into what he thought was a pleasant smile then, after exchanging an inanity or two, fled to his office.

  “A terrific boat, Nick! Really!” Rickie looked appreciatively round Wavebreaker’s deck. He sucked on a cigarette and I saw that the fingers of his right hand were stained a deep yellow by the nicotine. “Just outstanding! My mom said she had just the greatest time with you all last year. She said it was a blast, really! So I thought we could have a really good time as well, yeah?”

  “I do hope so,” I said with polite enthusiasm.

  “Just outstanding,” Rickie said, but referring to what I could not tell. He was built like a basketball player; tall and as thin as a stick insect. I noticed a slight discolouration in his left eye that betrayed its blindness, but otherwise he looked as fit as a cricket. He had his father’s black hair, a strong sun-tan, and seemed filled with a manic energy; ready and eager to enjoy both Wavebreaker and our company. “God, you look like him,” he said to me, “like your dad, I mean. Really something. Wow.” He turned as Thessy struggled aboard with a heavy scuba outfit. “You must be Thessy, right? Just great to meet you, just great! Do I call you Thessy or Thessalonians?”

  Thessy, forced to put the scuba outfit down to shake Rickie’s hand, stammered that he did not mind what he was called, but Rickie had already forgotten his question. “Hey! Jackson!” He shouted towards a black man who was walking slowly along the dock. “You’re just going to eat this up! Really! This is just awesome!”

  The man who now approached Wavebreaker was as tall as Rickie Crowninshield, but, where Rickie was attenuated, this man was as broad shouldered and as heavily muscled as a pit bull. He was a black version of the Maggot, but this man appeared to have none of the Maggot’s casual bonhomie. I guessed he was in his forties and he had a hard face with small wary eyes and tightly curled hair that was cut very short.

  “That’s Jackson Chatterton,” Rickie introduced the big man, “and he’s my minder! Really! Ain’t that right, Jacko?” Chatterton carried two heavy suitcases across the gangplank and ignored the over-excited Rickie who shadowboxed two punches at his left arm.

  Chatterton dropped the suitcases and turned to me. “Chatterton,” he said flatly. “I’m a para-medic attached to the Rinkfels clinic.”

  “He’ll tell you he’s a male nurse,” Rickie said, “but he’s really my bodyguard. A big bad black bodyguard. Ain’t that what you are, Jacko?”

  Chatterton continued to ignore Rickie, as did I. “My name’s Breakspear,” I said to the huge man, “and welcome aboard.” Jackson Chatterton had not offered me his hand and appeared not to notice when I offered mine. Nor did he introduce himself to Ellen or Thessy, but instead looked warily up into the rigging as though he expected to be ambushed from the foremast’s crosstrees. “You were a soldier,” I said, not as a question, but as a straight assertion of fact, for almost everything about him spoke of the military.

  “He was a killer!” Rickie answered for the giant Chatterton. “Really! Wow! Bang-bang.”

  “Airborne,” Chatterton confirmed to me. “Sergeant.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “Yes sir! And proud of it.”

  Ellen opened her mouth, then had the brilliant good sense to close it unused.

  “You?” Chatterton unbent enough to ask me the question.

  “Royal Marines. Sergeant.” I summed up my military career in Chatterton’s own staccato fashion.

  The big man gave me an approving nod, then gestured at the suitcases. “Not mine, the twins’. Where?”

  “Ellen will show you.”

  Ellen offered me a poisonous smile, but I had no time to worry about her distaste for the militaristic para-medic. Instead I was looking down the quay to where a pathetically thin girl was walking beside a smartly dressed woman. “That’s Robin-Anne,” Rickie told me helpfully, “with Denise.”

  I crossed the gangway and Rickie came after me. “Were you really a marine?”

  “Yes.”

  “A sergeant? Why not an officer?”

  “I didn’t want to be an officer.”

  “No shit! Really?” Rickie was literally dancing in circles around me as I walked down the dock towards his sister, but then he paused in his frenetic progress to light one cigarette from the stump of another, and I wondered just what perverted fate decreed that such a boy should receive a legacy of six million dollars. “Is that your motorbike?” He had spotted McIllvanney’s Kawasaki.

  “No.”

  “Just awesome, Nick. Really! I mean, what a blast! Wow!” He ran on ahead, shouting at his sister. “He’s a killer, Robbie! Really! He was a marine! Just awesome!”

  Robin-Anne Crowninshield shyly offered me her hand. Like her brother she was painfully thin, but otherwise they seemed utterly unlike, despite being twins. Robin-Anne had her mother’s fair hair, so fair that it looked bleached, and she had her mother’s delicate good looks etched on to a face so pale that it seemed as though her skin must burn if it was exposed to anything more powerful than a light bulb. Her hand lay in mine as lightly as a bird’s wing. “It’s very hot,” she said.

  “It’ll be cooler at sea,” I reassured her, then I looked at her companion who was a very crisp and handsome black woman. “My name’s Breakspear,” I introduced myself.

  “Denise Harriman,” she responded. “I’m one of Senator Crowninshield’s aides.”

  “She’s from Washington,” the manic Rickie explained, in a tone of voice which suggested I should be impressed. “She had to deliver us here, but she ain’t coming with us because she gets seasick. Ain’t that right, Denise? You barf in boats?” Rickie began mimicking an attack of vomiting.

  “I don’t just barf on boats.” Denise Harriman shot Rickie a look of pure venom.

  The sarcasm went airily past Rickie who had suddenly stiffened, and whose face now showed a look of the most terrible anxiety. I dreaded to discover just what symptom of drug dependency I was witnessing, and wondered if I should shout for the big Jackson Chatterton to come and rescue me, but then Rickie turned his terrified gaze on to me. “Jesus!” He punched one hand into the other. “My dad promised to ask you a question, but he forgot, and Mom couldn’t remember. Shit!” He was clearly so fearful of the answer to his father’s unasked question that he scarcely dared pose it himself, but then summoned up the courage. “Does this boat have a sound system, Nick?”

  I nodded. “Sure. We’ve got a tape deck and a CD player.”

  His relief was palpable. “Really? A CD? Oh God, that’s awesome! Come on, Robbie!” His good spirits thus restored, Rickie seized his sister’s hand and dragged her excitedly towards the boat. Robin-Anne, who had been looking very apprehensive, seemed to go aboard Wavebreaker rather unwillingly.

  Denise Harriman, the senator’s aide, uttered a barely audible sigh which I translated as an expression of relief that her responsibility for the twins was ending. She took a thick manila envelope from her attaché case. “That envelope contains the twins’ documentation, Mr Breakspear: their passports, emergency air tickets and medical records. There’s also a full list of the
senator’s telephone numbers.” She handed me that envelope, then took another from the briefcase. “And these are the papers concerning your own boat.” She opened the envelope and handed me the forms which would be needed if the senator undertook the repairs to Masquerade. For the moment my boat was staying on Straker’s Cay, and she would only pass into the senator’s care if I agreed to extend the trial two weeks’ cruise-cure into a full summer’s excursion.

  I spread the forms on the saddle of Mclllvanney’s Kawasaki. If I did take the twins away all summer then Masquerade would be taken to a boatyard in Florida, so I now signed the necessary customs forms and the insurance waiver and the dozen other pieces of paper that would be needed to keep the United States government and the delivery company happy. I signed the last sheet, hoped to God that the US Customs service did not discover the huge Webley pistol deep in its box in Masquerade’s bilges, and handed Denise Harriman back her pen. She put the signed papers in her attaché case, then shot a poisonous glance towards Rickie who was rummaging though his pile of luggage on Wavebreaker’s deck. “Bon voyage,” she called aloud to him, and it was possible to discern a dance of relieved joy in her step as she walked back to the limousine.

  Bellybutton, painting his delicate silver star, laughed up at the twins with his discoloured teeth, while McIllvanney leered at them from his office window. The last of their luggage was brought from the limousine and, as Thessy and I prepared to cast off, Rickie tested our sound system with a cacophonous cassette of rock music. Robin-Anne searched for a silent dark hole in which to hide, Jackson Chatterton scowled at us, Ellen looked exasperated and Thessy appeared just plain scared. I started Wavebreaker’s engines, used the bow thruster to drive her stem away from the quay and, with an apparent cargo of misery and mania, went to sea.

  PART TWO

  We beat southwards all that first day, slicing through a glittering sea, and propelled by an apparently changeless south-easterly trade wind. We hardly saw the Crowninshield twins. They briefly appeared on deck for lunch; a meal which Rickie hardly touched, while Robin-Anne, despite her apparent frailty, attacked the sandwiches and salad with the savagery of a starving bear. Afterwards, incongruously dressed in a raincoat, she went to the bows and stared briefly down at the mesmerising onrush of sea where it split and foamed at Wavebreaker’s cutwater. She did not stay there long, but retreated from the fierce sun to the stern-cabin that she would be sharing with Ellen. The contrast between the two American girls was almost painful; Ellen was so healthy and strong, while the waiflike Robin-Anne was pathetically wan and listless. “What do you think of her?” I asked Ellen that afternoon.