Kassouli smiled. “But this is a nonsense, Captain Sandman! Fate has sent you to me. Fate has put you into Anthony Bannister’s confidence, and I do not believe that fate is so very capricious.” He held up a hand to check my protest. “I understand, Captain, that I am asking you to take on trust that my daughter was murdered. You must reflect that not every course of action in this world is under-pinned by cause and proof, by validation and reason, or by the natural justice of good sense and right feeling. Sometimes, Captain, we have to trust our God-given instincts and act!” The last word was stressed by a punch of his right fist into his left. “Did you?” he asked,
“consider the sense and rationality of your actions when you assaulted the Argentinian positions on the night you won your medal?”
“No,” I said.
“Then do not become a weak man now, Captain.”
“It isn’t weakness…”
“My daughter is dead!”
I closed my eyes. “And you cannot prove it was not an accident.” I opened my eyes to see that, surprisingly, Kassouli was smiling.
“You have not disappointed me, Captain. I would have been shocked had you offered instant agreement. I like strong people.
They are the only ones on whom I can rely. So, I wish you to do one thing for me.” He held out a hand to indicate that I should accompany him to the door. As we walked he made one last effort to sway me. “I want you to consider everything I have said. I want you to consider the meteorological conditions, the sea conditions, and the experience of my daughter. I want you to weigh in the balance the value of her immortal soul against that of Anthony Bannister. I want you to search your conscience. I want you to consider the damage I can cause to your country. And when you have done all of those things, then I want you to inform me whether or not you will help me. Will you do that, Captain?”
I glanced towards Jill-Beth, but she just smiled and lifted a hand in farewell.
“Will you do that, Captain?” Kassouli insisted.
“Yes, sir,” I said lamely.
He pressed a button beside the doorframe and the tall Scandinavian servant appeared instantly. Kassouli gripped my hand. “Good-night, Captain. I will send for your answer in due time.” The door closed on me. The Scandinavian asked whether I wanted to rejoin the party, but I shook my head. Instead I was shown to a limousine that took me back to my lavish hotel. I waited there half expecting a knock on the door or a telephone call, but none came.
So I slept uneasily. And alone.
In the morning I walked about the harbour and tried to persuade myself that Kassouli’s threats had been nonsensical. I could not convince myself. I walked back to the hotel where I was informed that a car would be taking me to the airport that afternoon, and that Miss Kirov was waiting for me in the Lobsterman’s Saloon.
The saloon was decorated with old-fashioned lobster pots, nets and plastic crustaceans. I found Jill-Beth sitting alone at the polished bar. She smiled happily. “Hi, Nick! Irish whiskey?” Her ebullience was like a mockery of the evening before. “How did you sleep?” she asked.
“Alone.”
“Me too.” She shrugged, and I knew I had been brought to this town only to meet Kassouli. Jill-Beth had been nothing but the bait and, like a greedy mackerel snapping at a gaudy feather, I’d bitten. “So what did you make of Yassir?” she asked me.
“Mad.”
She shook her head. “He’s a grieving father, Nick. He lost a daughter and he wants to sleep better. It isn’t madness. You want to eat lobster?”
I took the menu out of her hands and laid it down. “He isn’t talking about sabotaging Bannister’s attempt at the St Pierre, Jill-Beth, he’s talking about killing Bannister!” Her eyes widened in mock horror. “I didn’t hear him say that!”
“Not in so many words.”
She shook her head disapprovingly. “Then you’re talking out of turn, Nick. Maybe Yassir just wants to talk to Bannister? Maybe he wants a signed confession so the courts can take it over? Hell, he probably wants to save his insurance company paying out a million bucks! Maybe he just wants to put Bannister over his knee and tan his hide? I don’t know what he wants, Nick.”
“He’s mad! He can’t declare economic war on a whole country!”
“Sure he can! Hotels, chemical works, computers, investments, oil, shipping. I guess his companies employ thirty thousand people in Britain? I know that’s not many, but there are subcontractors too.
Still, why should you care about unemployment?”
“For God’s sake!” Her insouciance angered me.
“Nick.” She touched my hand. “He’s a very, very angry man.”
“He hasn’t got a shred of proof!”
“There can’t be proof of a perfect murder.” I sipped the whiskey that was drowning in crushed ice. “Who was Nadeznha Bannister in love with?”
“Goodness knows.” Jill-Beth shrugged. “Charlie doesn’t know, or won’t say.”
“But that’s part of Kassouli’s evidence,” I protested. “A love affair that no one even knows existed, a weather map that doesn’t describe the sea conditions, and the probability that she’d have been wearing a safety harness. That’s it, Jill-Beth! On that thin basis he’s predicating murder!”
“You got it, Nick.”
“You can’t believe it,” I challenged her.
She stirred her drink with a lobster-shaped swizzle stick. “I work for Kassouli, so I guess I’m predisposed to believing what he wants me to believe. But if I weigh the evidence?” She stared up at the net-hung ceiling. “Yeah, I guess it was murder. I mean, who’s to know?
Bannister doesn’t want a divorce, he’s kicking around with that new blonde of his, he knows Nadeznha will give him grief with the taxman, so he pushes her over the edge five hundred miles out on the return leg? I’d call that the perfect murder.”
“It isn’t me who lives in La-la land,” I said bitterly. “Kassouli goes on about unquiet souls? About ghosts?”
Jill-Beth smiled. “La-la land, my dear Nick, is where everything is simple, where the virtuous always triumph, and where honour rules. This isn’t La-la land. You’re dealing with a guy who’s very angry, very frustrated, and who wants justice. He only has two children; one’s crippled, one’s dead, and he can’t have any more.”
“Why can’t he have any more?” I asked.
Jill-Beth ordered herself another drink. “Dorothy’s got cancer.
Dying very slowly.”
“Jesus.” I flinched.
“Yassir loves her very much. He’s given sixteen million to cancer research. Is that mad?”
“No.”
“He built a whole research wing around her in Utah. He read somewhere that Utah has the lowest rate of cancer in America.” She shrugged, as if to show that nothing Kassouli could do would save his wife. “Yassir isn’t mad, Nick, but he’s very, very determined.
Hell, all he’s got left now is his son, and you’ve seen him.”
“Surly,” I commented.
“Sky-high, you mean.”
It took me a second or two to realize what she implied. “Drugs?” I sounded astonished.
“Drugs, though he hides it from his father.” She stirred her drink.
“People envy Kassouli. He’s rich. But he’s been dealt a bad hand with his family, and he wants to hit back.” I looked at her, and I thought how very American Jill-Beth was; bright-eyed, firm-faced, shining hair, and it struck me how like Nadeznha she must be. Yet this lovely girl was condoning murder.
She would deny it, but I was convinced that Kassouli planned murder. “Suppose I went to the police?” I said. “Suppose I tell them that you’re trying to make me an accessory to piracy on the high seas? Or murder?”
“Try it,” she said cheerfully.
“They’d have to believe me,” I said, without too much conviction.