Alex’s arrangements with Hammond did not include abuses from third and fourth parties.
It seemed perfectly logical to get Craft out of the chess game. Craft clouded the issues, confused the pursuit.
McAuliff had learned two physical facts about Arthur Craft: He was the son of Craft the Elder and he was American. He was also an unpleasant man. It would have to do.
He knocked on the door beneath the numerals 214.
«Yes, mon? Who is it, mon?» came the muffled reply from within.
Alex waited and knocked again. The voice inside came nearer the door.
«Who is it, please, mon?»
«Arthur Craft, you idiot!»
«Oh! Yes sir, Mr. Craft, mon!» The voice was clearly frightened. The knob turned; the bolt had not been inserted.
The door had opened no more than three inches when McAuliff slammed his shoulder against it with the full impact of his near two hundred pounds. The door crashed against the medium-sized Jamaican inside, sending him reeling into the center of the room. Alex gripped the edge of the vibrating door and swung it back into place, the slam of the heavy wood echoing throughout the corridor.
The Jamaican steadied himself, in his eyes a combination of fury and fear. He whipped around to the room’s writing desk; there were boxed speakers on each side. Between them was a pistol.
McAuliff lurched forward, his left hand aiming for the gun, his right grabbing any part of the man it could reach. Their hands met above the warm steel of the pistol; Alex gripped the black man’s throat and dug his fingers into the man’s flesh.
The man shook loose; the gun went careening off the surface of the desk onto the floor. McAuliff lashed out with the back of his fist at the Jamaican man’s face, instantaneously opening his hand and yanking forward, pulling the man’s head down by the hair. As the head went down, Alex brought his left knee crashing up into the man’s chest, then into his face.
Voices from a millennium ago came back to him: Use your knees! Your feet! Grab! Hold! Slash at the eyes! The blind can’t fight! Rupture!
It was over. The voices subsided. The man collapsed at his feet.
McAuliff stepped back. He was frightened; something had happened to him. For a few terrifying seconds, he had been back in the Vietnam jungle. He looked down at the motionless Jamaican beneath him. The head was turned, flat against the carpet; blood was oozing from the pink lips.
Thank God the man was breathing.
It was the gun. The goddamned gun! He had not expected a gun. A fight, yes. His anger justified that. But he had thought of it as a scuffle—intense, over quickly. He would confront, embarrass, forcibly make whoever was monitoring the tapes go with him. To embarrass; to teach an avaricious employer a lesson.
But not this.
This was deadly. This was the violence of survival.
The tapes. The voices. The excited voices kept coming out of the speakers on the desk.
It was not a television set he had heard. The sounds were the sounds of the Courtleigh Manor kitchen. Men shouting, other men responding angrily; the commands of superiors, the whining complaints of subordinates. All frantic, agitated … mostly unintelligible. They must have driven those listening into a fury.
Then Alex saw the revolving reels of the tape deck. For some reason it was on the floor, to the right of the desk. A small, compact Wollensak recorder, spinning as if nothing had happened.
McAuliff grabbed the two speakers and crashed them repeatedly against each other until the wood splintered and the cases cracked open. He tore out the black shells and the wires and threw them across the room. He crossed to the right of the desk and crushed his heel into the Wollensak, grinding the numerous flat switches until a puff of smoke emerged from the interior and the reels stopped their movement. He reached down and ripped off the tape; he could burn it, but there was nothing of consequence recorded. He rolled the two reels across the floor, the thin strand of tape forming a narrow V on the carpet.
The Jamaican groaned; his eyes blinked as he swallowed and coughed.
Alex picked up the pistol on the floor, and squeezed it into his belt. He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and threw a towel into the basin.
He pulled the drenched towel from the sink and walked back to the coughing, injured Jamaican. He knelt down, helped the man into a sitting position, and blotted his face. The water flowed down on the man’s shirt and trousers … water mingled with blood.
«I’m sorry,» said Alex. «I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t reached for that goddamned pistol.»
«Mon!» The Jamaican coughed his interruption. «You crazy-mon!» The Jamaican held his chest and winced painfully as he struggled to his feet. «You break up … everyt’ing, mon!» said the injured man, looking at the smashed equipment.
«I certainly did! Maybe your Mr. Craft will get the message. If he wants to play industrial espionage, let him play in somebody else’s backyard. I resent the intrusion. Come on, let’s go.» Alex took the man by the arm and began leading him to the door.
«No, mon!» shouted the man, resisting.
«Yes, mon,» said McAuliff quietly. «You’re coming with me.»
«Where, mon?»
«To see a little old man who runs a fish store, that’s all.» Alex shoved him; the Jamaican gripped his side. His ribs were broken, thought McAuliff.
«Please, mon! No police, mon! I lost everyt’ing!» The Jamaican’s dark eyes were pleading as he held his ribs.
«You went for a gun, mon! That’s a very serious thing to do.»
«Them not my gun. Them gun got no bullets, mon.»
«What?»
«Look-see, mon! Please! I got good job… I don’ hurt nobody…»
Alex wasn’t listening. He reached into his belt for the pistol.
It was no weapon at all.
It was a starter’s gun; the kind held up by referees at track meets.
«Oh, for Christ’s sake …» Arthur Craft Junior played games—little boys’ games with little boys’ toys.
«Okay, mon. You just tell your employer what I said. The next time, I’ll haul him into court.»
It was a silly thing to say, thought Alex, as he walked out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him. There’d be no courts; Julian Warfield or his adversary, R. C. Hammond, was far preferable. Alongside Dunstone, Limited, and British Intelligence, Arthur Craft was a cipher. An unimportant intrusion that in all likelihood was no more.
He walked out of the elevator and tried to recall the location of the telephone booths. They were to the left of the entrance, past the front desk, he remembered.
He nodded to the clerks while thinking of Westmore Tallon’s private number.
«Mr. McAuliff, sir?» The speaker was a tall Jamaican with very broad shoulders, emphasized by a tight nylon jacket.
«Yes?»
«Would you come with me, please?»
Alex looked at the man. He was neat, the trousers pressed, a white shirt and a tie in evidence beneath the jacket. «No … why should I?»
«Please, we have very little time. A man is waiting for you outside. A Mr. Tucker.»
«What? How did—»
«Please, Mr. McAuliff. I cannot stay here.»
Alex followed the Jamaican out the glass doors of the entrance. As they reached the driveway, he saw the man in the yellow shirt—Craft’s man—walking on the path from the parking lot; the man stopped and stared at him, as if unsure what to do.