McGarvey had changed into a pair of swimming trunks and nothing else.
He sat back, put his feet up on the railing and sighed. “That’s a pleasant sound,” Kathleen said. Several small boats were anchored in the bay. Their tiny masthead lights were white pinpoints on the water, swaying slowly in the gentle swells. “Presidents run the country from Camp David,” she observed. “Why couldn’t you run the Agency from here?” “I’d miss the traffic.” She looked at him and grinned. “Yeah, right.” “I’d never get anything done,” he said after a while. She shrugged. McGarvey could feel himself drifting. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance. Here they crowed all hours of the day and night, not just at dawn. It was island time, Murphy had explained it to him the first time he came here. Inappropriate and yet appropriate.
Something about that thought percolated at the back of his head, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it might mean. “Soup’s getting cold,”
Kathleen said languidly. “Yeah,” McGarvey agreed. He put down his beer, got up and held out his hand. “Let’s go to bed, Katy.” She smiled up at him. “Best offer I’ve had all day.”
SATURDAY
SIXTEEN
“IT’S LIKE BEING STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND … ALMOST OVERWHELMING, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.”
They were up with the rising sun a few minutes after 6:00 A.M. Yemm had already started breakfast. While Kathleen was taking a shower, McGarvey got a cup of coffee and went out to the swimming pool. The morning was gorgeous. The pool, held against the side of the hill by a concrete retaining wall, was filled to the brim. Swimming in it seemed as if you were flying over the hills and the sea below. “What would you and Mrs. M. like to do this morning?” Yemm asked from the open patio doors. “Let’s see if we can round up some horses. I’d like to go riding on the beach.” “No problem. The chopper won’t be here until eleven.” “In the meantime, I’m coming in for a swim,” Kathleen said from the open bedroom doors at the other end of the house. McGarvey looked up. She stood, one knee cocked, one hand on the doorjamb, completely naked, a big grin on her pretty face.
“I think that it’s a good time to get back to the kitchen, I smell something burning,” Yemm said, and he disappeared back into the house.
Kathleen came around to the deep end of the pool, walking on the balls of her feet, her narrow back arched, her movements like those of a runway model’s.
She gave her husband a lascivious look, then dived cleanly into the water, surfacing a few seconds later right in front of him. “Last night was nice,” she said in his ear as she pressed her body against his. “How about an encore before breakfast?”
“If you’re going to act this way when we’re on vacation, we’re going to leave town a lot more often,” McGarvey said.
“Making up for lost time,” she murmured.
Their ride took them almost as far as East End, about six miles from the compound. Their horses were dove gray Arabians, gentle and very well trained, with a good turn of speed if they were left to it. Yemm had never sat on a horse in his life, but within fifteen minutes he could at least keep up with McGarvey, though not with Kathleen, who’d competed in equestrian events as a young girl and well into her college years at Vassar. She was a superb horsewoman, and McGarvey was content to let her run circles around him without rising to the challenge. She was a pleasure to watch. He admired competence above almost everything else. With the sun on his bare shoulders, his face shaded by a straw hat, the powder white sand, the aqua blue sea framed by the dense, intensely green jungle growth that rose into the hills, this was paradise. McGarvey pulled up to let Kathleen ride on ahead. She was in her own world, just then, oblivious to the fact he had stopped.
“Mrs. M. knows how to ride,” Yemm said at his side. “Yes, she does.
But I don’t think she’s been on a horse for twenty years.” “Some things you don’t forget how to do,” Yemm commented. “How are we doing on time?” McGarvey asked. He refused to wear a watch today. Yemm glanced at his. “We should start back.” “What about the horses?”
“I’ll call the stable to come pick them up.” Kathleen looked around, realizing that she was alone, and pulled up short, wheeling her horse around.
McGarvey gave her a wave, turned his horse sharply back the way they had come, and jammed his heels into the animal’s flanks. He took off down the beach as if he’d been shot from a cannon. He’d been raised on a ranch, and learned to ride about the same time he’d learned to walk.
The horse was an extension of his own body; instead of two legs, he had four.
He leaned forward, giving the horse its head, and he flew along the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. It had been a long time since he had ridden like this, but Yemm was right; there were some skills that you never forgot.
Yemm shouted something from down the beach. McGarvey looked over his shoulder as Kathleen came up next to him.
He was leaned forward, riding flat-out, but Kathleen sat very high, her back straight, one hand on the reins as if she were on a leisurely trail ride.
She smiled sweetly, blew him a kiss with her free hand, and barely nudged her horse’s flanks with her bare knees. The animal took off as if it had switched gears. The sound of her laughter drifted back to Mac, and he shook his head.
He reined his horse back to a slow canter, allowing Yemm to catch up with him. Kathleen looked back, then slowed her horse to a walk.
“Nice race, boss,” Yemm said.
The Island Tours Bell Ranger helicopter touched down in the compound precisely at eleven. It was the same pilot as last night. His name was Thomas Afraans, and he was a native West Indian of Dutch ancestry.
His English was British of the last century; but he seemed very knowledgeable and competent about flying. The picnic lunch was caviar with toast points and lemon wedges, a good champagne, fried chicken and cold lobster, potato salad, French baguettes, an assortment of sliced cheeses and pickles, and, for dessert, strong black coffee in a large thermos, Napoleon brandy and petits fours. They flew northwest across the jungle interior of St. John, coming out at Cinnamon Bay, where they crossed the Windward Passage between the islands. Afraans kept up a running commentary about the fantastic scenery passing beneath them.
There were dozens of islands between the north coasts of St. John and St. Thomas. Almost all of them were uninhabited. Lovango and Congo Cays, Mingo and Grass Cays, then Middle Passage across to Thatch Cay.
All of the islands were within sight of each other, many of them seemingly within swimming distance. Boats of all sizes and descriptions were everywhere; everything from tiny outboard motor boats to husky inter island cargo ships. “The U.S. Navy comes here, too,”
Afraans told them. “To St. Croix. Mostly nuclear submarines. Now, my Lord, that is a sight to behold.” Hans Lollick Island, less than three miles off the north coast of St. Thomas, was the largest of the smaller unihabited islands. There were only a couple of places to land along its oblong shoreline. For the most part the island quickly rose from the water in a series of cliffs and densely overgrown hills to the interior summit almost seven hundred feet above sea level. But the beach that Afraans touched down on was broad and white, and was protected by headlands northeast and southwest that formed a perfect cove about eight hundred yards across. Yemm jumped out first and helped Kathleen down. She immediately walked down to the water’s edge.