“Sir—”
“You are supposed to carry liquor.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“There is a Coast Guard cutter out on the water there,” Carmody said, pointing vaguely out to sea with an over-the-shoulder gesture. “I shall report you to them if you refuse to serve us.”
“Mr. Carmody, I’m not refusing to serve you. We don’t carry liquor, sir, that’s all.”
“You do carry liquor. Every marina in the United States of America carries liquor. That is the American way. It is the American way to carry liquor in all marinas!”
The drunks on the boat began applauding, and Carmody bowed from the waist and then turned again to Jason. He was a rotund little man wearing a short-sleeved sports shirt patterned with flags and pennants of the international code. A dead cigar stub was clamped between his lips. He smelled of whiskey, or perhaps the stench of alcohol was simply something that permeated the entire yacht, rising on the air like a giant cloud of poison gas.
“Well?” he said.
“Sir—”
“There was whiskey in the marina at Barbados.”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“There was whiskey in the marina at Jamaica. B.W.I. British West Indies. There was whiskey on abundance there. In.”
“Mr. Carmody—”
“And there was whiskey in the marina at Bimini, our last port of call. So don’t try to hoodwink me into believing there is no whiskey here at Mr. Costigan’s fine marina, with his big welcome sign overhead! How can you possibly welcome anyone to your shores without a glass of cheer, eh? Would you mind telling me that?”
“We can give you gasoline and food, if you like,” Jason said patiently. “We’ve got a Coke machine outside the office, a telephone booth if you want to make any calls, and a john if you want to use it. We don’t carry whiskey. I suggest, sir, that you try some of the bigger marinas on the way down to Key West.”
“I am not on the way down to Key West,” Carmody said. “I am on the way to Miami from Bimini.”
“Well, I think you took a wrong turn back there someplace, sir,” Jason said.
“Horace Carmody does not take wrong turns.”
“No, sir.”
“Damn right.”
“When you pull out,” Jason said, “I suggest you come around to the east and follow the coastline up to the bridge at Long Key. You can catch the Intercoastal Waterway up there.”
“I’m not interested in catching the Intercoastal Waterway,” Carmody said.
“I just thought you might like the quickest way to Miami,” Jason said.
“You’re beginning to get on my nerves, young man,” Carmody said. “Please get Mr. Costigan at once. At. Once.”
Jason looked at him a moment longer, and then sighed. He glanced out toward the horizon where the cutter was clearly visible, the Chris-Craft alongside it. He didn’t want Carmody around when the boats began moving. He again debated reaching for the .45. But what kind of insane havoc could seven drunks cause in the repair shop? And even if he put them in the storage locker instead, what would he do for space when the others began arriving? He didn’t want to end up shooting Carmody and his buddies. Not unless he absolutely had to. But he could not afford to have them hanging around, either.
“I’ll get Mr. Costigan,” he said softly.
“Damn right, you will,” Carmody said.
Jason clenched his fists, turned on his heel, and began walking quickly toward the repair shop.
Early tomorrow morning the fat Horace Carmodys of the world would stand on the flying bridges of their fifty-foot yachts with twin Cadillac engines, and wonder what had happened to change the world so drastically. None of them would realize that Jason Trench had happened. None of them would know how long Jason Trench had been waiting for this day; none of them would know the resistance he had met from the others at first, including his own wife; none of them would know how difficult it had been later on to find men they could trust completely, men who would be willing to sacrifice their lives for their country if the situation demanded it.
How do you recruit a secret army?
You are not Horace Carmody, you do not have millions of dollars at your disposal, you cannot engage men to conduct your research, no. You have only the money from Japan, perhaps thirty thousand dollars left after the years of living in New York, that and the five men who were your closest friends.
By the spring of 1962, they had honed and polished every facet of the operation, and knew that they needed a total of fifty men to take the town and hold it, to hijack the cutter, to carry out the plan. But where could they find forty-four additional men who felt as they did, and who would be willing to back their feelings with action?
They turned initially to the many protest organizations Jason and Randy had belonged to over the years. At first the faces blurred together into a gray mass of professional agitators, confused malcontents, neurotic misfits, excitement seekers, misguided patriots, bigots, bloody anarchists, fanatics. But they began to sort out the names and the faces, surprised by the overlap in separate groups, more surprised to discover they could come up with a list of seventy-five remembered names between them, the names of people they had known, people who felt as they did and who were willing to attend meetings, distribute literature, contribute funds, join in protest marches and rallies. They plotted chance encounters, they asked discreet questions, they probed, they searched; they could not tell these people too much and yet they had to tell enough to elicit at least a tentative response. By the end of the year they had recruited only fourteen men they knew they could trust; what had earlier been six was now twenty. They were making progress, but they still had less than half the number of men they felt they needed.
They went over the plan again. If they could not find fifty men, they would have to carry out their plan with fewer. They trimmed and cut and then, as with many economy measures, they discovered they had gone too far; they had reduced their needs too drastically. If they did not allow themselves a margin of safety, their plan had no hope of success. So they began revising once more, upward this time, moving away from their very low and impractical estimate and back toward their original figure. They finally decided they could do what had to be done with a total of forty-two men.
It took them almost seven months to find those men. It seemed at times as though this would be the hardest part of the entire operation, the enlisting of merely twenty-two additional men. They worked slowly and carefully, hand-picking their candidates and then exploring their backgrounds and their beliefs, avoiding personal contact until they were sure the aims and ideals of the group would meet with certain approval. Even then, after a man was accepted, the true and complete nature of the plan was not revealed to him until he had been with them for months and it was certain he would not defect. Perhaps they were too cautious in the beginning. They began to discover that men they had earlier enlisted were beginning to lose interest, were beginning to press for the action they had been promised. A man like Willy, who would have been considered poor material in the first several months of their search, was eagerly and somewhat recklessly courted toward the end. Harry Barnes was flatly denied acceptance by Jason when Alex Witten first offered him as a prospect. It was not until the plan seemed in total danger of collapse that Jason reluctantly allowed him to join the other men. By that time Alex was badgering him mercilessly. We’ve got to move on this, he kept saying. If we expect to keep these men together, we have to do more than talk of a vague operation that’ll take place sometime in a misty future with faceless compatriots who haven’t been found yet.