“What are you talking about?” Stoner asked, intrigued despite himself.
Markov was warming up, more like his cheerful self. “I had thought of bringing you champagne and caviar, to celebrate your new office. But what good are they? Merely food for the belly. I bring you a lasting gift for the mind. Besides, I couldn’t afford to buy champagne and caviar.”
Stoner sat up straighter and placed both his hands on the polished surface of his broad, empty desk. “Okay, I’m bracing myself for this terrific symbol.”
With a flourish, Markov produced from behind his back a large, brown, shaggy coconut.
Stoner stared, then laughed.
“No, no, no!” Markov said, his face almost serious. “It is truly a symbol, as I said. It is symbolic of this island, isn’t it? And if you try to open it, you’ll find that—and this is an American idiom, I believe—it is a tough nut to crack!”
Stoner raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right, friend. When you’re right, you’re right.”
“A tautology,” Markov replied. “Another thing about this symboclass="underline" it is a world traveler. The coconut can float across the entire Pacific Ocean, I am told, and germinate on shores far from its place of origin.”
“Like our visitor,” Stoner realized, his grin dissolving.
“Exactly.”
“You’re a deep thinker,” Stoner said. He took the coconut from Markov’s hands and placed it on his bare desktop, next to the telephone. “I’ll keep it here, to remind me of what we’re up against.”
“Good. One more symbolism: Once you have cracked open a coconut, it contains milk and meat to sustain life.”
“But the trick is to crack it open.”
“Not easy.”
“Unless you have the proper tools…and the skill.”
Markov nodded.
“Thanks, Kirill,” Stoner said. “You’ve cheered me up. It’s been a pretty somber day.”
“Yes. They still haven’t found Cavendish, you know.”
“Cavendish?” Stoner tensed.
Blinking, Markov asked, “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Dr. Cavendish has disappeared. They presume he has drowned. There is no trace of him on the island, and the Navy has sent out search patrols…”
Stoner sagged back in his chair. As if to reinforce Markov’s revelation, a helicopter thundered by; the building vibrated to the roar of its engines.
“Cavendish,” Stoner repeated. “My god…”
Markov tugged at his beard. “Are you all right? Your face has gone white.”
Looking up at the Russian, Stoner said, “Cavendish was an agent…a spy…”
“No,” Markov said.
“He told me himself. A double agent. He worked for your side, the KGB—but he really was working for British Intelligence.”
Markov’s mouth dropped open in a silent gasp of amazement.
“He told me himself,” Stoner repeated. “Both sides were leaning on him.”
“And now he’s disappeared,” Markov whispered. “Dead, no doubt.”
Stoner mused aloud, “Schmidt tries to kill me last night, and Cavendish disappears. The same night.” He looked up at Markov. “Kirill, what does it add up to?”
The Russian just stared back at him, wordlessly.
“Do you think your people are out to prevent me from making the rendezvous flight?”
“I…” Markov hesitated. “I think perhaps that might be true,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“Jesus Christ.”
Markov shook himself, like a man trying to throw off a bad dream. “Let me check into it. Let me see what I can learn.” He got to his feet.
But Stoner put out a restraining hand. “Maybe you ought to stay out of it, Kirill. You could get yourself into real trouble if you put yourself in the middle of this.”
“I am already in the middle of this,” Markov said with iron in his voice. “They have tried to kill my friend.”
“And they’ve already killed Cavendish.”
“Perhaps so.”
Stoner stood up and came around the desk. “Stay out of it, Kirill. Don’t get yourself in trouble.”
Markov laughed. “We are all in trouble, my friend. Every last one of us.”
Into the hot afternoon sunshine Markov strode, unblinking, unseeing. Down the main street, his back to the radio telescope antennas, past squat blockhouse office buildings, past the BOQ, the hotel, the trailer park. He turned into the area where the bungalows stood and marched straight to his own house.
“Maria Kirtchatovska!” he bellowed as he slammed the front door shut behind him.
She came out of the kitchen, a sizzling saucepan in one hand. “What are you doing home?”
“Put that down and come here,” Markov said, pointing to the sofa.
She scowled at him, but went back into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later, wiping her hands on a towel.
“I was making dinner for us,” she said.
“Sit down.”
“I haven’t told anyone about your temper tantrum last night…”
“Dr. Cavendish is dead,” Markov snapped, feeling fury racing along his veins. “Drowned, most likely.”
She sat heavily on the sofa. “Drowned?”
Still standing, Markov added, “And young Schmidt went berserk with a drug overdose last night and tried to kill Stoner. Do you see any connection between these two events?”
Maria looked away from him without answering.
Looming over her, Markov said, “That…machine you were using last night. It had something to do with Cavendish, didn’t it? Or was it Schmidt?”
“Kir, we agreed long ago that there are certain parts of my work that we would never discuss.”
He was tempted to raise his hand and slap her. “That agreement is finished. I should have ended it when you ruined that young student’s life. Now you’ve murdered Cavendish, haven’t you?”
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Maria Kirtchatovska! The man was a KGB informant and now he is dead. You killed him, with that infernal machine.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “The device was a communications system, a sort of radio…”
“Nonsense! You communicate with Moscow by those silly letters you send each week in the supply plane. I know that much. Somehow your machine killed Cavendish.”
“It couldn’t have…”
“I saw the look on your face when I caught you at it! You weren’t communicating anything except pain and death! Don’t try to deny it.”
“Kirill, I…” Maria ran a hand through her short-cropped hair, suddenly agitated, tearful. “What could I do? I have to follow my orders. What else could I do?”
“Murder. Torture. You’ve been involved in it all along, haven’t you? All these years.”
She was crying, tears leaking down her broad cheeks. “No. Not until now. And I didn’t want to. I had to. It was the only way to survive…”
“And all these years I closed my eyes to it. I knew that all the whispered stories were true, but I kept telling myself, ‘Not my Maria. She wouldn’t do such things. She’s only in the cryptographic section. She’s not involved in arrests and interrogations and assassinations…’”
“I’m not!” she wailed. “Not until this…this…thing came upon us.”
“You never had anyone arrested? You were never involved in interrogations? Murders?”
“No! Not directly.”
He threw up his hands and paced across the room. “Pah! Not directly. Your hands are clean—almost. Disgusting. Disgusting! To think that I’ve lived with you all these years and kept my eyes closed.”
Her chin went up. “I’ve kept my eyes closed to your adventures. If you…”
“My adventures!” He wheeled around to face her. “I was making love, woman! I was seeking beauty and kindness and joy! I wasn’t giving electric shock treatments to some poor wretch in the basement of a prison hospital.”