Authors: Donald Hamilton
“Oooh, what a clever lady it is!” I said admiringly: “So all that time you were sailing us around in circles?” She shrugged, modest now. “More or less. Actually, I kept us heading generally south in the daytime when you could tell direction by the sun. Then I came back north at night. I was afraid you might know something about the stars, but apparently you don’t.”
“I’m strictly a Big Dipper man, ma’am. And it was never visible from the portholes, or out of the forward hatch, what with the sails often blocking up to half the view.”
“Grieg was really quite ingenious,” Gina said. “He planted all those rumors about his secret cay way off in the remote islands; and all the time his transshipment point was within thirty miles of Providence Island.”
“But how did that coast guard boat stumble onto it? I thought they were searching far to the south and east of here. That’s where I was told they were heading, at least. That’s where I was supposed to be heading. That was where the body was found.”
Gina laughed shortly. “They did exactly what you just said, stumbled onto it. They’d picked up a tank of dirty gas in Nassau and—would you believe it?—limped in here to clean their carburetors and change their fuel filters. They were warned off and told it was private property, a private club, can’t you read the signs, stupid? The guard wasn’t as polite as he might have been, I guess. That young ensign, Sanderson, apparently got mad and suspicious at this breach of nautical etiquette: who turns away mariners in distress and is rude about it? Homer Allwyn may know something about security, actually he runs a very profitable business back home providing watchmen and bodyguards and checking offices for listening devices, that sort of thing. But he doesn’t know much about dealing with people.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve got a cracked rib to remind me.”
“Oh, my God! He was told very firmly that there was no need to get rough with anybody.”
“Maybe that’s why he kicked me,” I said. “And you should see the boy officer he worked over, practically a basket case.”
“I didn’t know…”
“Never mind it now,” I said. “Go on.”
After a moment, she shrugged helplessly and said, “Well, anyway, as they sputtered away on one sick engine, we could see the younger man looking astern with his big seven by fifties, studying every detail of the island. We knew who he was, of course; we knew all about the coast guard’s little expedition. As a matter fact, that was why I happened to be here at the time; I’d come out to warn them after we’d learned about it. Respectable citizens with money don’t have much trouble learning the plans of public servants, since they’re all made in quintuplicate with information copies given to everybody around… Well, anyway, watching from shore we saw him spot something, maybe a flaw in the camouflage, or something too phony-looking about one of the empty villas. We saw him point it out excitedly to his companions. So of course Homer had to go out with his cohorts and bring them back in.”
I said, “Well, you can figure that you broke even. You got your ship in the first place because of a convenient engine breakdown; and then the Coast Guard people spotted its hideout because of an inconvenient engine breakdown. How did Brennerman get away?”
“That was a big, powerful man. As the three of them were being marched away from the dock over there, he simply knocked a gun barrel aside and hit the man holding the gun hard enough to break his jaw. Then he ran to the beach over on the other side of the cay. There was some shooting. He was nicked, and he limped slightly before he dove in. He’d obviously hoped to swim over to Grouper or Arabella, although the currents would have given him a hard time. But the blood from his wound was too attractive, I guess.” She shrugged awkwardly. “It was… pretty awful. He had a good start, they had to take a boat clear around the island to go after him—he’d obviously counted on that—but they were almost to him when the shark hit. The biggest one they’d ever seen in these waters, they said. They put what… what was left of him in a fast, long-range boat and took it as far from here as they could and left it where it would probably be found, where it would be expected to be found, if there was a search. As there was.”
“And that,” I said, “in the classic phrase, was when the shit hit the fan. And you folks stopped being a bunch of fine, concerned, respectable citizens and became a gang of bloody-handed murderers.”
“It was an accident! Nobody was supposed to be hurt until—” She stopped abruptly.
“Until when?”
After a pause, she said, “There’s hardly ever any way of… of accomplishing something in this world without hurting
somebody
, Matt. You always have to measure the amount of bad against the amount of good.”
“What you’re trying to say is, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. That’s hardly an original observation, sweetheart.”
She didn’t respond to this; instead she said stiffly, as if I hadn’t spoken: “This ship has some watertight bulkheads forward. You must have seen them when you were brought on deck. In a bad collision they’d be ordered closed instantly, wouldn’t they, even if there might be some hurt crew members trapped beyond them? It would be a question of balancing the loss of a couple of men, say, as against the loss of the whole ship and the remainder of the crew.”
I said, “So you’re going to sacrifice a few people to insure the survival of Spaceship Earth.”
“Damn you, don’t sneer—” She caught herself and went on: “Long ago we resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d have some deaths on our consciences before this was over. But when Brennerman died we weren’t ready for…”
When she stopped and swallowed, I grinned at her. “You weren’t ready for all that gore, right? The water turning red. Rags of flesh and shreds of tendons and strings of intestines trailing from the mutilated body, enough to turn anybody’s stomach, right? Hell, you almost lost your breakfast a couple of mornings ago on account of a simple little groove in my skull and a few ounces of hemoglobin and other stuff splashing around. A hell of a bunch of queasy idealists you are! Like that fly-boy I told you about who could be ruthless as hell saving the world for democracy as long as he was just pushing buttons umpteen-thousand feet up in the sky but couldn’t bear to slam a forty-five-caliber slug into a real live human Nazi at point-blank range.”
“Just because we aren’t all hardened killers…”
“Well, you’d better get yourself some hardened killers, baby! I mean, why the hell are Mrs. Brennerman and young Sanderson still alive? You people want to break clean when it’s all over, don’t you? You don’t want to leave any live witnesses to your murders and whatever else you’re up to. Yet you’re keeping those two on ice for no good reason that I can see; and here I am, because you didn’t have the gumption to put a second bullet a little to the left of the first. Jeez, what a sloppy operation! What are you saving us for, anyway? You’ve got some potentially good homicidal material in Allwyn. Why don’t you turn him loose and let him get in a little assassination practice; he’d like that.”
She said sharply, “Don’t think Homer hasn’t suggested it; but we’ll soon have a cleaner way of disposing…” She paused. After a moment, she laughed softly. “You’re the strangest man, always telling people they ought to kill you, when anybody else would be pleading with them not to.”
I said, “It works, doesn’t it? If I were on my knees begging you to spare me, you’d laugh at me and throw me to the wolves or whatever you have in mind for us. But instead I have you thinking… What are you thinking, Gina?”
“I’m thinking that you’re right about the other two; they must be silenced,” she said calmly, “We can’t trust them not to break any promise we manage to extract from them. The world these days seems to be full of people who can rationalize disregarding a sacred oath whenever it becomes just slightly inconvenient; they tell themselves self-righteously that they don’t have to keep their word if it was given to a spy or a criminal, or if they were coerced into giving it. But your word’s been good so far, and you’ve had plenty of chances to break it; and… well, I don’t particularly want to see you dead. I told you I’d do what I could. There’s a way out for you, Matt.”
I looked at her for a long moment in the semidarkness beside the big building. I was a little embarrassed by her trust. I wasn’t at all certain how trustworthy I’d have been if it hadn’t suited my plans to abide by the paroles I’d given her.
“Spell it out,” I said. “What’s it going to cost me to stay alive?”
“That depends.”
“Don’t be coy.”
“To some extent it depends on how repulsive you find me.”
I said, “Hell, I can’t stand any woman in pants.” Then I said, “For Christ’s sake, Gina! You can’t tell me you’re so hard up for lovers you have to steal them away from the firing squad. Even gorgeous me.”
She said stiffly, “Have you forgotten that you saved my life up there off Great Stirrup Light, Matt? I’m trying to pay my debt.” She laughed abruptly. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking that I’m madly in love with you. But we do pretty well together, don’t we? And I do owe you something.”
I shrugged. “If you say so. What are the terms of my salvation?”
She said, “All you have to do is behave like a sensible man willing to change employers, for a consideration. A financial consideration, really. Substantial, we can afford it; but they’ll be more likely to believe you’re playing straight with us if you act just a little smitten with the lady who persuaded you to defect, if that’s the proper word.” She grinned at me. “That’s what I meant when I said your fate might depend on how repulsive you find me. Or don’t find me. I was going to wear something seductive to make it easy for you, but can you see me climbing around that grimy old ship all done up in sexy lace and satin? But I do smell pretty nice for a change, don’t I?”
“Like a rose,” I said. “In other words, I’m simply being offered a position with a different firm, with some interesting fringe benefits.”
She laughed at the way I’d put it. “That’s right. I think I can show you that what we’re doing is very important, very worthwhile. And we can use a man like you; you said so yourself. What do you really owe that ruthless establishment organization you work for? Over the years, you’ve given them their money’s worth several times over, haven’t you?” She slipped her arms around my neck and touched her lips to mine. “And you do find the fringe benefits attractive, don’t you?”
I said, after taking a little time to return her kiss, “You’re twisting my arm. At least I think that’s what you’re twisting. Something. But you keep talking around the most important subject: If I do join your exclusive outfit of dedicated millionaires, what the hell will I be joining? What’s going on here, anyway? What’s it all about?” When she hesitated, I said roughly, “Come on, sell it to me, sweetheart! Don’t leave me thinking I’ll be betraying my country for a piece of tail; that’s no way to soothe a man’s conscience.”
She released me abruptly and stepped back. “You do pick your words, don’t you, right out of the sewer!” she snapped. Then she laughed. “But you’re right. Enough of this circumlocution. Come on back inside, I’ll show you.”
She led me inside the building, past one of Allwyn’s men, the big one whose name I didn’t know, Jesperson’s partner, who’d been keeping an eye on us out in the dark. She guided me back onto the ship, and aft to the superstructure, and inside past another guard I didn’t recognize, to a metal stairway leading down—but I guess they’re all called ladders on shipboard, whether they’re slanty or straight up and down. This ladder deposited us in the forward end of the engine room.
I could see why she hadn’t wanted to trail any sexy lingerie through here, or even her nice white dress; everything was either rusty or greasy or both. We made no inspection of the ship’s ancient power plant lurking back there in the dark. Instead Gina turned the other way, leading me past a thumping generator that, shiny and obviously brand new, was an exception to the engine room’s dirt and corrosion—apparently, whatever they were doing on board, they needed a reliable source of electricity. We came to a watertight door like those I’d seen up forward, but this one was open. At six four, I had to duck to get through it. I straightened up in the cavernous, lighted space beyond, the ship’s main hold; but it no longer looked like a space for cargo. It looked more like a sci-fi movie.
Gina was brushing at a rusty smudge on her jeans. Before trying to determine just what I was being shown, I looked forward and spotted, at the far end of the steel room, the heavy steel door, clamped tightly shut, that presumably gave access to the passageway in the bow off which Molly Brennerman and Ricardo Sanderson were still imprisoned. Having located that, I let my attention move to the object occupying the place of honor in the center of the hold. It really wasn’t very impressive, just a shiny metal cylinder about the size of a fifty-five-gallon drum. It was lying on its side, firmly secured in a massive wooden cradle bolted to the floor of the hold. Metal tubes led to the shiny thing, perhaps for temperature control. There were also heavy electric cables and some lighter wires of different colors. The rest of the space was more impressive, since it contained a well-equipped machine shop and what seemed to be a chemical laboratory of sorts.
Then I saw the sturdy little wooden boxes, or packing crates, that had been shoved aside under one of the laboratory benches. They’d been pried open and whatever had been inside was no longer there; but I could see that they were lined with lead. On the outside of each discarded box, on every visible surface, was stenciled in red the words:
Danger!
—radioactive material—
Danger!
I looked again at the shiny cylinder under the lights in the rusty steel room.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I said to Gina. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
When I was a boy I dreamed of owning a certain legendary weapon: the old Colt single action army revolver, in .45 caliber of course. It took some doing since there wasn’t much money and, while my parents weren’t opposed in principle to having meat providers like deer rifles and duck guns on our modest New Mexico ranch, they still clung to the European notion—shared by a lot of Americans now, it seems, but not so many back then—that while a weapon fired from two hands might be morally acceptable, a one-hand gun just had to be inherently evil; a distinction I still fail to comprehend. But I was a hardworking young fellow and a persistent one; and in the end I wound up defending myself from a lot of hostile tin cans and savage paper targets, not to mention a few ferocious jackrabbits, with my faithful, .45 Colt, only to discover that it wasn’t all that great. Its accuracy left a lot to be desired, the leaf springs kept breaking under hard use, it was slow to load and unload and, since it had to be cocked for each shot, not very fast to shoot…