«Yes.»
It was Hammond’s turn to remain silent. And Alex’s option not to break that silence. Instead, McAuliff watched the fifty-year-old agent struggle to regain his composure.
«The fact remains, you disregarded my instructions.»
«You must be a lovely man to live with.»
«Get used to it,» replied Hammond with cold precision. «For the next several months, our association will be very close. And you’ll do exactly as I say. Or you’ll be dead.»
TWO
KINGSTON
7
The red-orange sun burned a hole in the streaked blue tapestry that was the evening sky. Arcs of yellow rimmed the lower clouds; a purplish-black void was above. The soft Caribbean night would soon envelop this section of the world. It would be dark when the plane landed at Port Royal.
McAuliff stared out at the horizon through the tinted glass of the aircraft’s window. Alison Booth was in the seat beside him, asleep.
The Jensens were across the 747’s aisle, and for a couple whose political persuasions were left of center, they adapted to British Air’s first-class accommodations with a remarkable lack of guilt, thought Alex. They ordered the best wine, the foie gras, duck à l’orange, and Charlotte Malakof as if they had been used to them for years. And Alex wondered if Warfield was wrong. All the left-oriented he knew, outside the former Soviet bloc, were humorless; the Jensens were not.
Young James Ferguson was alone in a forward seat. Initially, Charles Whitehall had sat with him, but Whitehall had gone up to the lounge early in the flight, found an acquaintance from Savanna-la-Mar, and stayed. Ferguson used the unoccupied seat for a leather bag containing photographic equipment. He was currently changing lens filters, snapping shots of the sky outside.
McAuliff and Alison had joined Charles Whitehall and his friend for several drinks in the lounge. The friend was white, rich, and a heavy drinker. He was also a vacuous inheritor of old southwest Jamaican money, and Alex found it contradictory that Whitehall would care to spend much time with him. It was a little disturbing to watch Whitehall respond with such alacrity to his friend’s alcoholic, unbright, unfunny observations.
Alison had touched McAuliff’s arm after the second drink. It had been a signal to return to their seats; she had had enough. So had he.
Alison?
During the last two days in London there had been so much to do that he had not spent the time with her he had wanted to, intended to. He was involved with all-day problems of logistics: equipment purchases and rentals, clearing passports, ascertaining whether inoculations were required (none was), establishing bank accounts in Montego, Kingston, and Ocho Rios, and scores of additional items necessary for a long geological survey. Dunstone stayed out of the picture but was of enormous help behind the scenes. The Dunstone people told him precisely whom to contact where; the tangled webs of bureaucracy—governmental and commercial—were untangled.
He had spent one evening bringing everyone together—everyone but Sam Tucker, who would join them in Kingston. Dinner at Simpsons. It was sufficiently agreeable; all were professionals. Each sized up the others and made flattering comments where work was known. Whitehall received the most recognition—as was appropriate. He was an authentic celebrity of sorts. Ruth Jensen and Alison seemed genuinely to like each other, which McAuliff had thought would happen. Ruth’s husband, Peter, assumed a paternalistic attitude toward Ferguson, laughing gently, continuously at the young man’s incessant banter. And Charles Whitehall had the best manners, slightly aloof and very proper, with just the right traces of scholarly wit and unfelt humility.
But Alison.
He had kept their luncheon date after the madness at The Owl of Saint George and the insanity that followed in the deserted field on London’s outskirts. He had approached her with ambivalent feelings. He was annoyed that she had not brought up the questionable activities of her recent husband. But he did not accept Hammond’s vague concern that Alison was a Warfield plant. It was senseless. She was nothing if not independent—as was he. To be a silent emissary from Warfield meant losing independence—as he knew. Alison could not do that, not without showing it.
Still, he tried to provoke her into talking about her husband. She responded with humorously «civilized» clichés, such as «let’s let sleeping dogs lie,» which he had. Often. She would not, at this point, discuss David Booth with him.
It was not relevant.
«Ladies and gentlemen,» said the very masculine, in-charge tones over the aircraft’s speaker. «This is Captain Thomas. We are nearing the northeast coast of Jamaica; in several minutes we shall be over Port Antonio, descending for our approach to Palisados Airport, Port Royal. May we suggest that all passengers return to their seats. There may be minor turbulence over the Blue Mountain range. Time of arrival is now anticipated at eight-twenty, Jamaican. The temperature in Kingston is seventy-eight degrees, weather and visibility clear…»
As the calm, strong voice finished the announcement, McAuliff thought of Hammond. If the British agent spoke over a loudspeaker, he would sound very much like Captain Thomas, Alex considered.
Hammond.
McAuliff had not ended their temporary disassociation—as Hammond phrased it—too pleasantly. He had countered the agent’s caustic pronouncement that Alex do as Hammond instructed with a volatile provision of his own: He had a million dollars coming to him from Dunstone, Limited, and he expected to collect it. From Dunstone or some other source.
Hammond had exploded. What good were two million dollars to a dead geologist? Alex should be paying for the warnings and the protection afforded him. But, in the final analysis, Hammond recognized the necessity for something to motivate Alexander’s cooperation. Survival was too abstract; lack of survival could not be experienced.
In the early morning hours, a letter of agreement was brought to McAuliff by a temporary Savoy floor steward; Alex recognized him as the man in the brown mackinaw on High Holborn. The letter covered the condition of reimbursement in the event of «loss of fees» with a very clear ceiling of one million dollars.
If he remained in one piece—and he had every expectation of so doing—he would collect. He mailed the agreement to New York.
Hammond.
He wondered what the explanation was; what could explain a wife whose whispered voice could hold such fear? He wondered about the private, personal Hammond, yet knew instinctively that whatever private questions he had would never be answered.
Hammond was like that. Perhaps all the people who did what Hammond did were like that. Men in shadows; their women in unending tunnels of fear. Pockets of fear.
And then there was … Halidon.
What did it mean? What was it?
Was it a black organization?
Possibly. Probably not, however, Hammond had said. At least, not exclusively. It had too many informational resources, too much apparent influence in powerful sectors. Too much money.
The word had surfaced under strange and horrible circumstances. The British agent attached to the previous Dunstone survey had been one of two men killed in a bush fire that began inside a bamboo camp on the banks of the Martha Brae River, deep within the Cock Pit country. Evidence indicated that the two dead members of the survey had tried to salvage equipment within the fire, collapsed from the smoke, and burned in the bamboo inferno.
But there was something more; something so appalling that even Hammond found it difficult to recite it.