The Deceiver (61 page)

As she finished, there was a tap on the door, and her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, entered. He held the
Sunday Express
in his hand.

“Something I thought you might like to see, Prime Minister.”

“So who’s having a go at me now?” inquired the PM brightly.

“No,” said the beetle-browed Yorkshireman. “It’s about the Caribbean.”

She read the large centerfold spread, and her brow furrowed. The pictures were there: of Marcus Johnson on the hustings in Port Plaisance, and again, a few years earlier, seen through a gap in a pair of curtains. There were photos of his eight bodyguards, all taken around Parliament Square on Friday, and matching pictures taken from Kingston Police files. Lengthy statements from “senior DEA sources in the Caribbean” and from Commissioner Foster of the Kingston Police occupied much of the accompanying text.

“But this is dreadful!” said the Prime Minister. “I must speak to Douglas.”

She went straight to her private office and rang Douglas.

Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Douglas Hurd, was with his family at his official country residence—another mansion, called Chevening, set in the county of Kent. He had perused the
Sunday Times
,
Observer
, and
Sunday Telegraph
, but he had not yet reached the
Sunday Express.

“No, Margaret, I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “But I have it within arm’s reach.”

“I’ll hold on,” said the PM.

The Foreign Secretary, a former novelist of some note, knew a good newspaper story when he saw one. This one seemed to be extremely well sourced.

“Yes, I agree. It’s disgraceful, if it’s true. … Yes, yes, Margaret, I’ll get onto it in the morning and have the Caribbean desk check it out.”

But civil servants are human beings too—a sentiment not often echoed by the general public—and they have wives, children, and homes. With six days to go to Christmas, Parliament was in recess and even the ministries were thinly staffed. Still, there had to be someone on duty the next morning, Monday, and the matter of a new Governor could be addressed then.

Mrs. Thatcher and her family went to Sunday-morning service at Ellesborough and returned just after twelve. At one they sat down for lunch with a few friends. These included Bernard Ingham.

It was her political adviser Charles Powell who caught the BSB program
Countdown
at twelve o’clock. He liked
Count
down
. It carried some good foreign news now and again, and as an ex-diplomat that was his specialty. When he saw the program’s headlines and a reference to a later report on a scandal in the Caribbean, he pressed the “record” button on the VCR machine beneath the TV.

At two, Mrs. Thatcher was up again—she never saw much point in spending a long time over food; it wasted part of a busy day—and as she left the dining room a hovering Charles Powell intercepted her. In her study he put the tape into her VCR and ran it. She watched in silence. Then she rang Chevening again.

Mr. Hurd, a devoted family man, had taken his small son and daughter for a brisk walk across the fields. He had just returned, hungry for his roast beef, when Mrs. Thatcher’s second call came through.

“No, I missed that too, Margaret,” he said.

“I have a tape,” said the Prime Minister. “It is quite appalling. I’ll send it straight to you. Please screen it when it arrives and call me back.”

A dispatch rider roared through the gloom of a dismal December afternoon, skirted London via the M25 motorway, and was at Chevening by half-past four.

The Foreign Secretary called Chequers at five-fifteen and was put straight through. “I agree, Margaret, quite appalling,” said Douglas Hurd.

“I suggest we need a new Governor out there,” said the PM, “not in the new year, but now. We must show we are active, Douglas. You know who else will have seen these stories?”

The Foreign Secretary was well aware that Her Majesty was with her family at Sandringham but not cut off from world events. She was an avid newspaper reader, and she watched current affairs issues on television.

“I’ll get on to it immediately,” he said.

He did. The Permanent Under-Secretary was jerked out of his armchair in Sussex and began phoning around. At eight that evening the choice had fallen on Sir Crispian Rattray, a retired diplomat and former High Commissioner in Barbados, who was willing to go.

He agreed to report to the Foreign Office in the morning for formal appointment and a thorough briefing. He would fly on the late-morning plane from Heathrow, landing at Nassau on Monday afternoon. He would consult further with the High Commission there, spend the night, and arrive on Sunshine by chartered airplane on Tuesday morning to take the reins in hand.

“It shouldn’t take long, my dear,” he told Lady Rattray as he packed. “Mucks up the pheasant shooting, but there we are. Seems I’ll have to withdraw the candidacy of these two rascals and see the elections through with two new candidates. Then they’ll grant independence, I’ll hoist the old flag down, London will send in a High Commissioner, the islanders will run their own affairs, and I can come home. Month or two, shouldn’t doubt. Pity about the pheasants.”

*   *   *

At nine o’clock on Sunday morning on Sunshine, McCready found Hannah having breakfast on the terrace at the hotel.

“Would you mind awfully if I used the new phone at Government House to call London?” he asked. “I ought to talk to my people about going back home.”

“Be my guest,” said Hannah. He looked tired and unshaved, as someone who had been up half the night.

At half-past nine, island time, McCready put his call through to Denis Gaunt. What his deputy told him about the
Sunday Express
and the
Countdown
program confirmed to McCready that what he had hoped would happen had indeed happened.

Since the small hours of the morning, a variety of news editors in London had been trying to call their correspondents in Port Plaisance with news of what the
Sunday Express
was carrying in its centerfold page spread and to ask for an urgent follow-up story. After lunch, London time, the calls redoubled—they had seen the
Countdown
story as well. None of the calls had come through.

McCready had briefed the switchboard operator at the Quarter Deck that all the gentlemen of the press were extremely tired and were not to be disturbed under any circumstances. He had himself been elected to take all their calls for them, and he would pass them on. A hundred-dollar bill had sealed the compact. The switchboard operator duly told every London caller that his party was “out” but that the message would reach him immediately. The messages were duly passed to McCready, who duly ignored them. The moment for further press coverage had not yet come.

At eleven
A.M.
he was at the airport to greet two young SAS sergeants flying in from Miami. They had been lecturing for the benefit of their colleagues in the American Green. Berets at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when alerted to take three days’ furlough and report to their host on the island of Sunshine. They had flown south to Miami and chartered an air taxi to Port Plaisance.

Their baggage was meager, but it included one hold-all containing their toys, wrapped in beach towels. The CIA had been kind enough to ensure that bag cleared customs at Miami, and McCready, waving his Foreign Office letter, claimed diplomatic immunity for it at Port Plaisance.

The Deceiver brought them back to the hotel and installed them in a room next to his own. They stashed their bag of “goodies” under the bed, locked the door, and went for a long swim. McCready had already told them when he would need them—at ten the next morning at Government House.

Having lunched on the terrace, McCready went to see the Reverend Walter Drake. He found the Baptist minister at his small house, resting his still bruised body. He introduced himself and asked how the pastor was feeling.

“Are you with Mr. Hannah?” asked Drake.

“Not exactly with him,” said McCready. “More … keeping an eye on things while he gets on with his murder investigation. My concern is more the political side of things.”

“You with the Foreign Office?” persisted Drake.

“In a way,” said McCready. “Why do you ask?”

“I do not like your Foreign Office,” said Drake. “You are selling my people down the river.”

“Ah, now that might just be about to change,” said McCready, and told the preacher what he wished of him.

Reverend Drake shook his head. “I am a man of God,” he said. “You want different people for that sort of thing.”

“Mr. Drake, yesterday I called Washington. Someone there told me that only seven Barclayans had ever served in the United States armed forces. One of them was listed as Drake W.”

“Another man,” growled Reverend Drake.

“This man said,” pursued McCready quietly, “that the Drake W. they had listed had been a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Served two tours in Vietnam. Came back with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. I wonder what happened to him?”

The big pastor lumbered to his feet, crossed the room, and stared out at the clapboard houses up and down the street where he lived.

“Another man,” he growled, “another time, another place. I do only God’s work now.”

“Don’t you think what I ask of you might qualify?”

The big man considered, then nodded. “Possibly.”

“I think so, too,” said McCready. “I hope I’ll see you there. I need all the help I can get. Ten o’clock, tomorrow morning, Government House.”

He left and strolled down through the town to the harbor. Jimmy Dobbs was working on the
Gulf Lady
. McCready spent thirty minutes with him, and they agreed on a charter voyage for the following day.

He was hot and sticky when he arrived at Government House just before five that afternoon. Jefferson served him an iced tea while he waited for Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock to return. The young officer had been playing tennis with some other expatriates at a villa in the hills.

McCready’s question to him was simple: “Will you be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”

Haverstock thought it over. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

“Good,” said McCready. “Do you have your full tropical dress uniform with you?”

“Yes,” said the cavalryman. “Only got to wear it once. A state ball in Nassau six months ago.”

“Excellent,” said McCready. “Ask Jefferson to press it and polish up the leather and brasses.”

A mystified Haverstock escorted him to the front hall. “I suppose you’ve heard the good news?” he asked. “That detective chappie from Scotland Yard. Found the bullet yesterday in the garden. Absolutely intact. Parker’s on his way to London with it.”

“Good show,” said McCready. “Spiffing news.”

He had dinner with Eddie Favaro at the hotel at eight. Over coffee he asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Going home,” said Favaro. “I only took a week off. Have to be back on the job Tuesday morning.”

“Ah, yes. What time’s your plane?”

“Booked an air taxi for midday.”

“Couldn’t delay it until four o’clock, could you?”

“I suppose so. Why?”

“Because I could do with your help. Say, Government House, ten o’clock? Thanks, see you then. Don’t be late. Monday is going to be a very busy day.”

McCready rose at six. A pink dawn, herald of another balmy day, was touching the tips of the palm trees out in Parliament Square. It was delightfully cool. He washed and shaved and went out into the square, where the taxi he had ordered awaited him. His first duty was to say good-bye to an old lady.

He spent an hour with her, between seven and eight, took coffee and hot rolls, and made his farewells.

“Now, don’t forget, Lady Coltrane,” he said as he rose to leave.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. And it’s Missy.”

She held out her hand. He stooped to take it.

At half-past eight, he was back in Parliament Square and dropped in on Chief Inspector Jones. He showed the chief of police his Foreign Office letter.

“Please be at Government House at ten o’clock,” he said. “Bring with you your two sergeants, four constables, your personal Land-Rover, and two plain vans. Do you have a service revolver?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please bring that too.”

At the same moment, it was half-past one in London. But in the Ballistics Department of the Home Office forensic laboratory in Lambeth, Mr. Alan Mitchell was not thinking of lunch. He was staring into a microscope.

Beneath the lens, held at each end in a gentle clamp, was a bullet. Mitchell stared at the striation marks that ran the length of the lead slug, curving around the metal as they went. They were the marks left by the rifling in the barrel that had fired the bullet. For the fifth time that day, he gently turned the bullet under the lens, picking out the other scratches—the “lands”—that were as individual to a gun barrel as a fingerprint to a human hand.

Finally he was satisfied. He whistled in surprise and went for one of his manuals. He had a whole library of them, for Alan Mitchell was widely regarded as the most knowledgeable weapons expert in Europe.

There were still other tests to be carried out. He knew that somewhere four thousand miles across the sea, a detective waited impatiently for his findings, but he would not be hurried. He had to be sure, absolutely sure. Too many cases in court had been lost because experts produced by the defense had flawed the evidence presented by the forensic scientists for the prosecution.

There were tests to be carried out on the minuscule fragments of burnt powder that still adhered to the blunt end of the slug. Tests on the manufacture and composition of the lead, which he had already carried out on the twisted bullet he had had for two days, would have to be repeated on the newly arrived one. The spectroscope would plunge its rays deep into the metal itself, betraying the very molecular structure of the lead, identifying its approximate age and sometimes even the factory that had produced it. Alan Mitchell took the manual he sought from his shelves, sat down and began to read.

McCready dismissed his taxi at the gate of Government house and rang the bell. Jefferson recognized him and let him in. McCready explained he had to make another phone call on the international line that had been installed by Bannister, and that he had Mr. Hannah’s permission. Jefferson showed him into the private study and left him.