"Don't!"
Remo's warning went unheeded and unheard. The biker was already screaming as the loose earth fell below him and cast him bouncing like a rubber ball down the cliff into the whirling waters of the sea.
Fabienne dragged herself to Remo. "You all right?" he asked.
"Yes." She was sobbing. "Remo, was he trying to kill me?"
"Either you or me, sweetheart. We won't know for a while. Anyway, he's gone."
?Five
Alberto Vittorelli, the card read in the dim moonlight at the Soubise shipyard. The Dutchman had turned the lights off when he entered the compound. The place was silent except for the ragged grumbling and snoring of the men his mute, Sanchez, had brought for him. He was surprised when a little dark-haired man scrambled from the pile of insensate drunks in the corner and weaved toward him, thrusting his name embossed on white plastic in front of the Dutchman's face.
The card offered by the bruised, groggy man was his official identification for Lordon Lines.
"Do you still work for Lordon?" the Dutchman asked in English. Lordon was an English line whose cruisers regularly docked at Sint Maarten harbor.
The rumpled fellow held his temples with both hands, as though the Dutchman's voice were deafening. "Scusi?" he asked with some difficulty.
The Dutchman changed his language to Italian. "Do you work for the ship?" he asked, pointing to the enormous, light-festooned luxury liner a half-mile out to sea in the harbor.
"Si, si," the Italian said, brightening. In a torrent of emotion, he explained how he had been rolled in an alley by a group of drunken sailors who left him unconscious after stripping his wallet. "I always carry my identification in my vest pocket for just such an emergency, so that I may reboard the ship."
He looked around at the grim, bleak shipyard cluttered with metal truck containers standing in utter darkness. In a far corner of the yard, Vittorelli saw the group of men he had been with when he came to consciousness amid their unwashed bodies and alcoholic fumes. The men were bums, filthy, ragged beggars who moaned softly as they shifted their weight in the corner of the shipyard, oblivious to their unusual surroundings. They were a dramatic contrast from the tall, imperious aristocrat who stood before him, fixing him with cold, light eyes.
"You are from the... authorities, signor?" Vittorelli asked dubiously.
The Dutchman held down a surge of anger at Sanchez for his blunder. The mute had communicated to him that the night's preparations had been made. He was to have gone to the alleyways and tramp camps of Phillipsburg and Marigot to root out the island's dispossessed for the Dutchman's use. No one missed these men, who would disappear in the night and never return. When the Dutchman finished with them, their corpses were to be loaded into a forty-foot container and hauled out to deep water, where they would sink, forgotten, into the sea.
Fortunately, the Dutchman did not often require live partners for his practice. The possibility of picking up a victim who would be missed and reported was too great. Killing at the yard was rare, but it was still dangerous.
The worst had already happened. An American salvage ship had accidentally found a container loaded with bodies from one of the Dutchman's nights at the yard. He thought, when he had first heard the vessel was in the area, of forcing the ship's crew to abandon their search, but he knew Americans. At the slightest interference, they would search harder, thinking someone wanted to prevent them from locating the remains of the Spanish galleon they were after. So he'd kept to himself and they had found the bodies. Fortunately, he had made sure the box was untraceable to the Soubise Harbor Transportation Corporation by altering some invoices in the office. When the island authorities came to question the executives at the yard, they were shown the inventory records indicating that no containers had been lost or stolen, and they had left satisfied.
But it was not the island authorities who worried the Dutchman. Hours after the container was lifted on board the salvage ship, the Dutchman spotted a fleet of U.S. Army helicopters swarming around the ship. They stayed for some time, then left without questioning anyone on the island. Shortly after the helicopters took off, the salvage ship pulled away from Sint Maarten waters and never returned for the legendary sunken treasure ship. There was no word on the unusual find in any major publication in any language.
Clearly the United States government was somehow involved, but how? America was one of the few countries on earth that had never laid claim to the island. Someone had sent those helicopters in response to the ship's signal. Someone had hushed up the news. And now, someone might be watching to see if it happened again.
"What do you do on the ship?" the Dutchman asked Vittorelli. "Are you important?"
"Important? I?" The Italian spread his hands over his chest. "Signor, I assure you that I am of extreme importance. The ship cannot sail without Alberto. Without my services, Lordon's sauce is like river water. Pah!" He spat ceremoniously, if nervously, at a spot as far away from the coldly majestic Dutchman as he could muster.
"Do explain yourself," the Dutchman said. "Briefly."
"Very fast, very fast," Vittorelli whimpered, his hands fluttering like birds' wings at his sides. "Signor, I am the sous-chef in the ship's kitchen. I make the sauces. If I do not return, nine hundred and twelve passengers will sail tomorrow morning, doomed to eight days of dry salad, naked asparagus, and white spaghetti. I beg you, signor. There has been a great mistake."
There was a mistake, all right. A missing sous-chef wouldn't force Lordon into a full investigation, but it was still risky. He would have to let the man go.
"My apologies, signor," the Dutchman said. "There has been a rash of vandalism at the shipyard recently, which we believe was instigated by some of our own men. We have brought the suspects here for questioning, so as not to involve the police in our internal affairs. You understand."
Vittorelli cast a sidelong glance at the disorderly array of drunks at the far end of the yard. "Those are your workers, signor?"
The Dutchman's eyes grew even colder. "Perhaps you don't understand," he said softly.
"Si! Si! I understand perfectly, signor. Perfectly." His beet-red face nodded enthusiastically. "I go now, okay?" With trembling hands he reached for his Lordon identification.
"One more thing, Mr. Vittorelli," the Dutchman said.
"S-s-si?"
"You are not to discuss this episode with anyone. Is that clear?"
"Oh, absolutely."
"Because if you do, you will never set foot on Sint Maarten again."
"You will have no difficulty from me, signor. None whatsoever. Con permiso..."
You groveling little toad, the Dutchman thought.
Vittorelli jumped involuntarily.
"Go," the Dutchman commanded, forcing his eyes away from the Italian and toward the darkness over the Atlantic. The killing picture that began deep in the Dutchman's brain and shot out toward the Italian missed its target. Instead, the spark of loathing exploded harmlessly in the night sky, bursting over the sea like a firecracker. As the burning half-thought dissipated, the Dutchman gave a small sigh of relief. He was beginning, with great effort, to control the destructive force inside him.
Vittorelli shrieked at the sight of the spontaneous display in the sky. He ran at top speed toward the high-voltage fence.
"Stop!" the Dutchman called. "The fence is electrified. I'll let you out."