Authors: Harry Bingham
Mason reached the same conclusion and nodded, ‘Yeah, I see your point, now. It ain’t what you’d call businesslike this place, now is it?’
And the very next day, a room was found for Abe. It met his requirements exactly. It had whitewashed walls and a royal blue linoleum floor. Aside from that, it boasted a cheap metal desk, a folding wooden chair, an unshaded lightbulb, a good-sized window with a view of the airstrip, and a two-drawer filing cabinet that rattled emptily when he opened it. And that wasn’t all. Just four doors on down the corridor lay Mamie and Suky’s little office.
Abe was so close to his goal he could almost smell it. But no matter how close he got to doing what he had set out to do, Abe was still not free of the feelings which had gripped him all those long months ago, when Hennessey had first asked him to help save Independence. Would he stay and help or would he up and go? There was an inexorable current of events which was dragging him ever closer to the final decisive combat. Abe could feel the current dragging at his feet, his ankles, his knees. But he still hadn’t committed. In his heart, he hadn’t committed. A large part of him, perhaps most of him, still wanted to run, take wing, escape.
The yacht shone out like an advert for a better life. Crisp white paintwork contrasted with polished brass and wood so dark it had almost the colour of gingerbread. A flag, which maybe meant something, maybe didn’t, fluttered from a short wooden flagpole behind the bridge.
‘Like it?’ asked Junius Thornton, squinting against the sun.
Since Willard, dressed in tennis whites and slapping a racket against his calf, hadn’t yet set foot on the newly-purchased boat, his answer wasn’t based on anything much except the distant view and the knowledge of how many millions she had cost.
‘She’s glorious, Father.’
‘Hmm.’
Junius Thornton examined the yacht once more, then began to crunch up the seashell and pebble Connecticut beach. He had bought the boat with the same brute decisiveness that marked most big steps in his life. Willard wondered whether his father actually enjoyed anything about the nautical life, or whether he simply felt that a man of his income needed a yacht to keep pace.
‘How did you get on?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Junius Thornton stopped dead and examined his son, before repeating the question using the same words and the same tone of voice.
‘How did I get on? Eh? Oh, you mean in Florida. I guess you mean with Bob Mason – at least I hope you do since the roulette tables weren’t kind to me in Palm Beach.’
Willard left a little gap in his answer, in case his father felt like filling it with a chuckle or a smile of encouragement. But the gap went unfilled.
‘He seems like a good guy, Mason. It’s quite an operation he has there –’
‘We
have.’
‘We?’
‘Mason doesn’t own a cent of it.’
‘Of course, yes,
we
have,
we
have. Anyhow. He runs these freighters, huge things really, big river barges if you like, only obviously seaworthy enough…’ Willard left another gap for a response, got none, and ploughed on anyway. ‘Loaded with booze. I mean, absolutely loaded. And – of course, you know this, but it’s quite something – there’s an airplane overhead the entire time, just keeping an eye on the Coastguard, ready to give warning.’
Willard stopped again, leaving a longer gap this time. Since arriving at that icy airfield south of the Canadian border, Willard had got to know the Firm very much better – but the more he saw of it, the less he saw of his father. Powell was the man in charge and in control. Junius Thornton didn’t even possess a desk in the New York office. Junius Thornton spent his time down in the Washington office of Thornton Ordnance, lobbying the Federal government for bigger arms deals. Even now he was theoretically a member of the Firm’s inner circle, Willard didn’t know how much his father knew – if anything – about the day-to-day operations of the Firm.
But the older man just nodded. The nod could have meant: ‘I know everything about the airplanes. You don’t need to tell me.’ Or it could have meant: ‘This is the first I’ve heard about the use of aerial reconnaissance in booze-smuggling. What a very enterprising innovation.’
The rare burst of warmth that Willard had felt from his father back in Shakeston had long since dissipated. His father’s manner had reverted to his normal stern, almost Victorian stiffness. But though Willard continued to be unnerved, things had shifted. He
had
his father’s approval. He would need to continue to earn it, of course – Willard was under no illusions there – but at least he now knew it was there to be earned. So for all that he continued to be unnerved in his father’s presence, things had changed, things were better.
Willard waited for a further response, got none, and decided to rattle on anyway. The wind off the ocean had a chilly edge, and the horizon was plated with steel-grey rain clouds moving in. Willard was cold after his tennis game, but his father kept crunching up the beach as though there were something important to be had there. Willard’s account rambled and jolted, describing the strong points and weak points in Marion’s defences.
After a long while, the older man interrupted.
‘You’ve got doubts.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Doubts. Powell tells me you’ve reassigned the pilot.’
Willard gaped for a second. He hadn’t told Powell about Rockwell’s relocation. He’d carefully avoided doing so, not wanting the trigger-happy men in the insurance department involved. But Powell knew. His father knew. Presumably Mason spoke to other people in New York than just Willard. Or perhaps New York kept a spy down in Marion to keep Mason honest. But, though taken aback, Willard kept his cool with his answer.
‘Not doubts exactly. The pilot looks after freighters coming into Marion. It seemed to make more sense to base him there.’
‘You know him?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s Captain Rockwell, Father.’
‘Oh?’
‘Captain Rockwell? My old commander? Lord, Papa, you must remember. The man had a ticker-tape parade in his honour.’
‘Ah… And he’s a good man?’
‘The best.’
Willard replied too fast and the older man stopped abruptly. One foot had come to rest, its toes bathed in a small rockpool. Salt water began to seep into the shoe. Willard stood back, to let his father take the quarter-pace needed to rescue his foot, but the older man did no such thing. He continued to stand with his left foot half underwater, gazing with belligerent frankness into his son’s face.
‘The best? Do you mean the best for the Firm or the best in some other sense?’
‘Well both, I suppose. I mean in the war, he was magnificent, of course…’
Willard spoke quickly, covering up for his first too-speedy answer, then covering a second time for any obviousness in his own cover-up. He spoke too much, too fast, too confusedly. He stuttered to a close – a habit his father detested. Junius Thornton said nothing, then turned abruptly and marched back down the beach towards the house. Willard followed, tennis racket swiping at the air.
‘Your girl.’
‘Rosalind? Yes?’
‘There is gossip.’ The businessman spoke the last word the way a Puritan might have spoken the word ‘nakedness’.
‘Gossip? Well, Pa, you know, Rosalind is a terribly good-looking girl, and the Sherstons have always been a good family. Not on a par with … but good. And then, these journalist folks have to write about something. And ever since the war and Hollywood, you know, they seem to have a thing about me. It’s always photographs or something. I don’t encourage them.’
‘You are not clear about your intentions?’
There was a path along the shingle which the older man occupied. Willard was left with the choice of dancing along amongst the rougher stones to either side, or trailing his father like a spaniel puppy. He went for the dancing option.
‘My intentions? You mean, do I mean to ask her to …? Gosh! We do get on awfully well, though.’
‘You know your own mind, I take it?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Willard sprang over a barnacle-clotted boulder, checked his footing and straightened to find his father staring at him. The younger man felt a moment of sudden clarity and confidence. ‘I shall ask her to marry me, of course.’
Junius nodded. ‘Good. You will tell me what you would like as a wedding gift.’
‘Yes, Papa.’
The rain clouds which had threatened began to dot and speckle the beach. Willard fell in behind his father, walking single file. Conversation halted. And Willard realised his father was right. Why wait? What was there to wait for? Rosalind looked wonderful on his arm. They got on terrifically well. They would be one of the most splendid couples in New York, their wedding one of the most talked about weddings of the year. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
Marriage was definitely the way to go.
Abe looked down at the deck of cards.
He let his attention flow into his fingertips. He waited until the rough edges of the cards spoke to his fingers. Then he began to move. He made cards flick in and out of existence. He retrieved cards from his jacket pocket, from the seat of the couch, from underneath the leg of the table in front of him. Since picking up his cards again around the time he had moved into the Miami airfield, he had become quicker, defter, more accurate than he’d ever been.
But he wasn’t interested in cards. He only played because there was too much in the current situation which disturbed him.
For one thing, he was watched all the time now; a thing he hated. As a pursuit pilot, he equated safety with invisibility. He liked to watch, not be watched. What was more, up here in Marion, Mason had far too many men for Abe to be able to keep track of his watchers. There were too many of them, they changed too frequently, there were always too many reasons for them to be hanging around somewhere close. The only time they didn’t seem to watch him at all was when he was in his little office, down the hall from Mamie and Suky. At those times, nobody entered to disturb him, nobody lingered beneath the window or in the corridor outside. It was a freedom which Abe found even more troubling than the watching.
And they searched him.
Not him personally, but everything else. His new house, his office, the tool shed, even the plane. And these guys were thorough. Once Abe discovered that they’d even prised off the heel of his flying boots to check if Abe had secreted anything there. The only way Abe knew was that they hadn’t been able to use the original nails to resecure the heel and had had to use shiny new tacks, their nail-heads not yet ground down and dirtied.
So Abe kept his head down. He made friends with Mamie and Suky, got into the habit of sharing cake and coffee with them, but did nothing to confirm Mason’s suspicions. And Brad had been right. The two girls handled everything: payroll, accounts, expenses, petty cash, product inventories – everything. It was a trove of information which Jim Bosse would have given his left arm to obtain.
And in one way Abe liked his new isolation. It gave him space to figure things out. That night in the tool shed with Pen, he had felt something clear from his heart, like some heavy weight he’d never even known was there. Afterwards, he’d expected the world to feel brighter, cleaner, easier. And so it had – briefly. Certainly, he had found it easier to bring Pen and Arnie inside his plans. Certainly, he was relieved not to have had to go it alone that night when the office buildings seemed suddenly alive with guards. But there was still something missing. An open cockpit is a lonely place, and flying is a lonely game. For all his flying life, Abe had loved the solitude. If being alone had sometimes had a melancholy tinge, he’d accepted the fact, just as he accepted bad weather, low cloud, headwinds and engine failure.
And now? Now he was unsettled. When he was on the ground, he wanted to be in the air. When he was in the air, he wanted to be on the ground. He got jumpy in Marion and fidgety in Miami. He was very conscious of Pen’s feelings for him. Much as he tried to keep relations between them normal, they both found it hard and Abe’s absence up in Marion was almost a relief.
But meantime, nothing held him for long – nothing except dreams of the Orteig Prize and the grey Atlantic. It was just as well, in a way, that he now had something else to worry about.
It wasn’t just Mason’s sudden intensification of his surveillance. It wasn’t just the watchers and the searches. It was something in the air, a sixth sense that Abe trusted with his life. And he knew that the endgame was approaching and
at somebody else’s pace.
Somewhere, somehow, the organisation had grown suspicious. It was getting tired of Abe and friends. It was as though his little attack formation had been spotted, as though the ambushers were about to be ambushed.
He looked down at his deck of cards and riffled it. Clouds of loneliness seemed to fill him. He got up abruptly, spilling the cards. Then, moving quietly through his empty villa, he went to the fuseboard in the understairs cupboard. He checked the wiring for a second, then put his hand to one of the cables. He tugged it free and exposed the live wire. He touched the wire against a couple of others where there was a flash of naked copper. He produced a bang, a blue flash, a tang of smoke. Throughout the house, the lights failed with a sigh.
In the darkness, Abe groped his way to the phone and dialled Mason.
‘Yeah?’
‘Mason, it’s me, Rockwell.’
‘What’s up?’
Abe explained. Complete power failure. Did Mason have anyone to get it fixed?
Mason’s voice, heavy with drink, swatted the problem aside. ‘Yeah, there’s a kid around here who fixes these things. I’ll get him to you first thing in the morning. Lundquist, his name is. Lundberg. Something like that. Any case. Tomorrow. OK?’
Abe nodded, said thanks, and hung up. He had just taken one more small step towards a destination he wasn’t even sure he wanted to reach. The grey Atlantic clouds, the endless ocean, the savage weather all pressed themselves into the forefront of his mind. Before going to sleep that night, Abe drank a pint bottle of whiskey and fell asleep, fully clothed and snoring.