Kendrick felt a third presence but, turning in the chair, saw no one else on the deck of the pleasure yacht. Then he raised his eyes to the aft railing of the bridge. A figure stepped back into the shadows but not quickly enough. It was the excessively tall, deeply tanned contributor from Bollinger's library, and from what could be seen of his face, it was contorted in hatred. 'Are all of the Vice President's guests on board?' he asked, seeing that the Mafioso had followed his gaze.
'What guests?'
'You're cute, Luigi.'
'There's a captain and one crew. I've never seen either of them before.'
'Where are we going?'
'On a cruise.'
The boat slowed down as the beam of a powerful searchlight shot out from the bridge. The Mafia soldier unstrapped himself and got up; he walked across the deck and down into the lower cabin. Evan could hear him on an intercom, but with the wind and the slapping waves was unable to make out the words. Moments later the man returned; in his hand was a gun, a standard issue Colt .45 automatic. Suppressing the panic he felt, Kendrick thought of the sharks of Qatar and wondered if another Mahdi across the world was about to carry out the sentence of death pronounced in Bahrain. If it was to be, Evan made the same decision he had made in Bahrain: he would fight. Better a quick, expeditious bullet in the head than the prospect of drowning or being torn apart by man-eaters of the Pacific.
'We're here, Congressman,' said the Mafioso courteously.
'Where is here?'
'Damned if I know. It's some kind of island.'
Kendrick closed his eyes, giving thanks to whoever cared to accept them, and began to breathe without trembling again. The hero of Oman was a fraud, he reflected. He simply did not care to die, and fear aside, there was Khalehla. The love that had eluded him all his life was his, and every additional minute he was permitted to live was a minute of hope. 'From the looks of you I don't think you really need that,' he said, nodding his head at the weapon.
'Not from your press reports,' replied the Secret Service guard positioned by the upper ranks of the underworld. 'I'm going to unbuckle you, but if you make any sudden moves you won't set foot on land, capisce?'
'Motto bene.'
'Don't blame me, I've been given my instructions. When you provide a service, you accept reasonable orders.'
Evan heard the snaps and felt the wide cloth straps loosening around his arms and legs. 'Has it occurred to you that if you carried out those orders you might never get back to San Diego?' he asked.
'Certainly,' answered the Mafioso casually. 'That's why we've got the Viper in a vice. “Viper in a vice.” Acceptable alliteration, wouldn't you say?'
'I wouldn't know. I'm a construction engineer, not a poet.'
'And I've got a gun in my hand, which means I'm not a poet, either. So behave, Congressman.'
'I assume “Viper” is the Vice President.'
'Yes, and he said he'd heard the name and it was an insult. Can you imagine? Those fuckers had the moral turpitude to bug our unit?'
'I'm appalled,' replied Kendrick, rising awkwardly from the metal chair and shaking his arms and legs, restoring circulation.
'Easy!' cried the Secret Service man, leaping back, his .45 levelled at Evan's head.
'You try sitting in that damned thing for as long as I did the way I did and think you're going to walk a straight line!'
'Okay, okay. Then walk a crooked line over there to the side of this fancy tug, to the steps. That's where you're getting off.'
The yacht circled in what appeared to be a cove, then in fits and starts—with sputtering forward and reverse screws—banked into a dock perhaps a hundred feet in length, with three additional boats, each smaller, faster, more powerful, bobbing on the other side. Shaded wire-meshed lights illuminated the watery berth as two figures raced out of darkness from the base of dry ground, stationing themselves beside the appointed pylons. As the boat was expertly manoeuvred into its tyre-protected resting place, lines were thrown fore and aft, the stern line whipped over by the Mafioso, the weapon in his left hand, the bow line by the lone crewman. 'Off!' he yelled at Kendrick as the yacht bounced gently into the dock.
'I'd like to personally thank the captain for a safe and pleasant trip—’
'Very funny,' said the Secret Service man, 'but save it for the movies and get the hell off. You're not going to see anybody.'
'You want to bet, Luigi?'
'You want your balls on the deck? And the name's not Luigi.'
'How about Reginald?'
'Off!'
Evan walked down the island pier towards the sloping ground and an ascending stone path, the Mafioso behind him. He passed between two signs, both hand painted: white lettering on stained brown wood, each done tastefully, professionally. The sign on the left was in Spanish, the one on the right in English.
Pasaje a China
Propiedad Privada
Alarmas
Passage to China
Private Property
Alarms
'Hold it there,' ordered the Secret Service man. 'Don't turn around. Look straight ahead.' Kendrick heard the sound of running feet on the dock, then quiet voices, the distinguishable words spoken in English but with Hispanic accents. Instructions were being given. 'Okay,' continued the Mafioso. 'Go up the path and take the first right… Don't turn around!'
Evan obeyed, although he walked with difficulty up the sharp incline; the long constricting trip on the yacht had severely numbed his legs. He tried to study the surroundings in the semi-darkness, the shaded lights from the dock only barely compensated by small amber lamps lining the stone path. The foliage was lush and thick and damp; trees everywhere rose to heights of twenty, perhaps thirty feet, with heavy vines that appeared to spring from one trunk to another, arms enveloping arms and bodies. Clusters of bushes and undergrowth had been cut back and down with precision, forming identical waist-high walls on both sides of the path. Order had been imposed on the wild. Then his vision was sharply reduced by the steep ascent and the growing darkness away from the pier, and sounds became the focus. What assaulted his ears were not unlike the sounds of the incessant, staccato eruptions of the rapids during his runs in the white water, but these had a beat of their own, a pulse that controlled their own particular thunder… Waves, of course. Waves crashing against rocks and never very far away, or perhaps amplified by echoes bouncing up from stone and reverberating through the wild greenery.
The ground-level amber lights divided into two sets of parallel lines, one heading straight ahead and up, the other to the right; Kendrick turned into the latter. Heading across, the path levelled off, a ridge cut out of the hill, when suddenly there was an alarming increase in visibility. Black shafts and swelling shadows became dark trunks and spotted palms and tangled, blue-green underbrush. Directly ahead was a cabin, lights shining through two windows flanking a central door. It was not, however, an ordinary cabin, and at first Evan did not know why he thought so. Then as he drew closer he understood. It was the windows; he had never seen any like them, and they accounted for the burst of light when the source appeared to be minimal. The bevelled glass was at least four inches thick, like two huge rectangular prisms magnifying the interior light many times its candlepower. And there was something else that accompanied this imaginative feat of design. The windows were impenetrable… from both sides.
'That's your suite, Congressman,' said the Secret Service man who provided extra-official services. '“Your own villa” describes it better, doesn't it?'
'I really couldn't accept such generous accommodation. Why don't you find me something a little less pretentious?'