Fear is the Key

May 3rd, 1958.

If you could call a ten by six wooden box
mounted on a four-wheel trailer an office, then
I was sitting in my office. I'd been sitting there for
four hours, the earphones were beginning to hurt
and the darkness was coming in from the swamps
and the sea. But if I had to sit there all night, then
I was going to do just that: those earphones were
the most important thing in the world. They were
the only remaining contact between me and all the
world held for me.

Peter should have been within radio range
three hours ago. It was a long haul north from
Barranquilla, but we'd made that haul a score
of times before. Our three DCs were old but
as mechanically perfect as unceasing care and
meticulous attention could make them. Pete was
a fine pilot, Barry a crack navigator, the West
Caribbean forecast had been good and it was far
too early in the season for hurricanes.

There was no conceivable reason why they
shouldn't have been on the air hours ago. As
it was, they must have already passed the point
of nearest approach and be drawing away to the
north, towards Tampa, their destination. Could
they have disobeyed my instructions to make
the long dog-leg by the Yucatan Strait and flown
the direct route over Cuba instead? All sorts of
unpleasant things could happen to planes flying
over war-torn Cuba those days. It seemed unlikely,
and when I thought of the cargo they were carrying
it seemed impossible. Where any element of risk
was concerned, Pete was even more cautious and
far-seeing than myself.

Over in the corner of my office on wheels a radio
was playing softly. It was tuned in to some English-
speaking station and for the second time that
evening some hill-billy guitar-player was singing
softly of the death of mother or wife or sweetheart,
I wasn't sure which. ‘My Red Rose Has Turned to
White' it was called. Red for life and white for
death. Red and white – the colours of the three
planes of our Trans-Carib Air Charter service. I
was glad when the song stopped.

There was nothing much else in the office. A
desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and the big RCA
receiver-transmitter powered by a heavy TRS cable
that ran through the hole in the door and snaked
across the grass and mud and one corner of the
tarmac to the main terminal buildings. And there
was a mirror. Elizabeth had put that up the only
time she'd ever been here and I'd never got around
to taking it down.

I looked in the mirror and that was a mistake.
Black hair, black brows, dark blue eyes and a white
strained haggard face to remind me how desperately
worried I was. As if I needed reminding. I
looked away and stared out of the window.

That was hardly any better. The only advantage
was that I could no longer see myself. I certainly
couldn't see anything else. Even at the best of
times there was little enough to see through that
window, just the ten empty desolate miles of flat
swampland stretching from the Stanley Field airport
to Belize, but now that the Honduras rainy
season had begun, only that morning, the tiny
tidal waves of water rolling endlessly down the
single sheet of glass and the torn and lowering
and ragged hurrying clouds driving their slanting
rain into the parched and steaming earth turned
the world beyond the window into a grey and
misty nothingness.

I tapped out our call sign. The same result as
the last five hundred times I'd tapped it. Silence.
I altered the waveband to check that reception
was still OK, heard a swift succession of voices,
static, singing, music, and homed back on our own
frequency again.

The most important flight the Trans-Carib Air
Charter Co. had ever made and I had to be stuck
here in our tiny sub-office waiting endlessly for the
spare carburettor that never came. And until I got it
that red and white DC parked not fifty yards away
on the apron was about as useful to me right then
as a pair of sun-glasses.

They'd have got off from Barranquilla, I was
certain of that. I'd had the first news three days
ago, the day I'd arrived here, and the coded cable
had made no mention of any possible trouble.
Everything highly secret, only three permanent
civil servants knew anything about it, Lloyd's
willing to carry the risk even although at one
of the biggest premiums ever. Even the news,
received in a radio report, of an attempted
coup
d'état
yesterday by pro-dictatorship elements to try
to prevent the election of the Liberal Lleras hadn't
concerned me too much, for although all military
planes and internal services had been grounded,
foreign airlines had been excluded: with the state
of Colombia's economy they couldn't afford to
offend even the poorest foreigners, and we just
about qualified for that title.

But I'd taken no chances. I'd cabled Pete to
take Elizabeth and John with him. If the wrong
elements did get in on May 4th – that was tomorrow
– and found out what we'd done, the Trans-
Carib Air Charter Co. would be for the high jump.
But fast. Besides, on the fabulous fee that was
being offered for this one freight haul to Tampa …

The phones crackled in my ears. Static, weak,
but bang on frequency. As if someone was trying to
tune in. I fumbled for the volume switch, turned it
to maximum, adjusted the band-switch a hair-line
on either side and listened as I'd never listened
before. But nothing. No voices, no morse call sign,
just nothing. I eased off one of the earphones and
reached for a packet of cigarettes.

The radio was still on. For the third time that
evening and less than fifteen minutes since I'd
heard it last, someone was again singing ‘My Red
Rose Has Turned to White.'

I couldn't stand it any longer. I tore off the
phones, crossed to the radio, switched it off with
a jerk that almost broke the knob and reached for
the bottle under my desk. I poured myself a stiff
one, then replaced the headphones.

‘CQR calling CQS. CQR calling CQS. Can you
hear me? Can you hear me? Over.'

The whisky splashed across the desk, the glass
fell and broke with a tinkering crash on the wooden
floor as I grabbed for the transmitter switch and
mouthpiece.

‘CQS here, CQS here!' I shouted. ‘Pete, is that
you, Pete? Over.'

‘Me. On course, on time. Sorry for the delay.'
The voice was faint and faraway, but even the flat
metallic tone of the speaker couldn't rob it of its
tightness, its anger.

‘I've been sitting here for hours.' My own anger
sounded through my relief, and I was no sooner
conscious of it than ashamed of it. ‘What's gone
wrong, Pete?'

‘This has gone wrong. Some joker knew what
we had aboard. Or maybe he just didn't like us.
He put a squib behind the radio. The detonator
went off, the primer went off, but the charge –
gelignite or TNT or whatever – failed to explode.
Almost wrecked the radio – luckily Barry was
carrying a full box of spares. He's only just managed
to fix it.'

My face was wet and my hands were shaking.
So, when I spoke again, was my voice.

‘You mean someone planted a bomb? Someone
tried to blow the crate apart?'

‘Just that.'

‘Anyone – anyone hurt?' I dreaded the answer.

‘Relax, brother. Only the radio.'

‘Thank God for that. Let's hope that's the end of
it.'

‘Not to worry. Besides, we have a watchdog
now. A US Army Air Force plane has been with us
for the past thirty minutes. Barranquilla must have
radioed for an escort to see us in.' Peter laughed
dryly. ‘After all, the Americans have a fair interest
in this cargo we have aboard.'

‘What kind of plane?' I was puzzled, it took a
pretty good flier to move two or three hundred
miles out into the Gulf of Mexico and pick up
an incoming plane without any radio directional
bearing. ‘Were you warned of this?'

‘No. But not to worry – he's genuine, all right.
We've just been talking to him. Knows all about
us and our cargo. It's an old Mustang, fitted with
long-range tanks – a jet fighter couldn't stay up all
this time.'
‘I see.' That was me, worrying about nothing, as
usual. ‘What's your course?'

‘040 dead.'

‘Position?'

He said something which I couldn't catch. Reception
was deteriorating, static increasing.'

‘Repeat, please?'

‘Barry's just working it out. He's been too busy
repairing the radio to navigate.' A pause. ‘He says
two minutes.'

‘Let me talk to Elizabeth.'

‘Wilco.'

Another pause, then the voice that was more to
me than all the world. ‘Hallo, darling. Sorry we've
given you such a fright.' That was Elizabeth. Sorry
she'd given
me
a fright: never a word of herself.

‘Are you all right? I mean, are you sure you're –'

‘Of course.' Her voice, too, was faint and faraway,
but the gaiety and the courage and the
laughter would have come through to me had
she been ten thousand miles away. ‘And we're
almost there. I can see the light of land ahead.'
A moment's silence, then very softly, the faintest
whisper of sound. ‘I love you, darling.'

‘Truly?'

‘Always, always, always.'

I leaned back happily in my chair, relaxed and
at ease at last, then jerked forwards, on my feet,
half-crouched over the transmitter as there came
a sudden exclamation from Elizabeth and then the
harsh, urgent shout from Pete.

‘He's diving on us! The bastard's diving on us
and he's opened fire. All his guns! He's coming
straight –'

The voice choked off in a bubbling, choking
moan, a moan pierced and shattered by a high-
pitched feminine cry of agony and in the same
instant of time there came to me the staccato
thunderous crash of exploding cannon-shells that
jarred the earphones on my head. Two seconds
it lasted, if that. Then there was no more sound
of gunfire, no more moaning, no more crying.
Nothing.

Two seconds. Only two seconds. Two seconds
to take from me all this life held dear for me,
two seconds to leave me alone in an empty and
desolate and meaningless world.

My red rose had turned to white.

May 3rd, 1958.

I don't quite know what I had expected the man
behind the raised polished mahogany desk to look
like. Subconsciously, I suppose, I'd looked for him
to match up with those misconceptions formed by
reading and film-going – in the far-off days when
I had had time for such things – that had been as
extensive as they had been hopelessly unselective.
The only permissible variation in the appearances
of the county court judges in the southeastern
United States, I had come to believe, was in weight
– some were dried-up, lean and stringy, others
triple-jowled and built to match – but beyond
that any departure from the norm was unthinkable.
The judge was invariably an elderly man:
his uniform was a crumpled white suit, off-white
shirt, bootlace necktie and, on the back of his head,
a panama with coloured band: the face was usually
red, the nose purplish, the drooping tips of the
silver-white Mark Twain moustache stained with
bourbon or mint-juleps or whatever it was they
drank in those parts; the expression was usually
aloof, the bearing aristocratic, the moral principles
high and the intelligence only moderate.

Judge Mollison was a big disappointment. He
didn't match up with any of the specifications
except perhaps the moral principles, and those
weren't visible. He was young, clean-shaven,
impeccably dressed in a well-cut light grey tropical
worsted suit and ultra-conservative tie and, as for
the mint-juleps, I doubt if he'd ever as much as
looked at a bar except to wonder how he might
close it. He looked benign, and wasn't: he looked
intelligent, and was. He was highly intelligent, and
sharp as a needle. And he'd pinned me now with
this sharp needle of his intelligence and was watching
me wriggle with a disinterested expression that
I didn't much care for.

‘Come, come,' he murmured gently. ‘We are
waiting for an answer, Mr – ah – Chrysler.' He
didn't actually say that he didn't believe that my
name was Chrysler, but if any of the spectators on
the benches missed his meaning they should have
stayed at home. Certainly the bunch of round-eyed
schoolgirls, courageously collecting credit marks
for their civics course by venturing into this atmosphere
of sin and vice and iniquity, didn't miss it:
neither did the sad-eyed dark-blonde girl sitting
quietly on the front bench and even the big black
ape-like character sitting three benches behind her
seemed to get it. At least the broken nose beneath
the negligible clearance between eyebrows and
hairline seemed to twitch. Maybe it was just the
flies. The court-room was full of them. I thought
sourly that if appearances were in any way a
reflection of character he ought to be in the box
while I was below watching him. I turned back to
the judge.

‘That's the third time you've had trouble in
remembering my name, Judge.' I said reproachfully.
‘By and by some of the more intelligent
citizens listening here are going to catch on. You
want to be more careful, my friend.'

‘I am not your friend.' Judge Mollison's voice
was precise and legal and he sounded as if he
meant it. ‘And this is not a trial. There are no
jurors to influence. This is only a hearing, Mr –
ah – Chrysler.'

‘Chrysler. Not ah-Chrysler. But you're going to
make damned certain that there will be a trial,
won't you, Judge?'

‘You would be advised to mind both your language
and your manners,' the judge said sharply.
‘Don't forget I have the power to remand you
in gaol – indefinitely. Once again, your passport.
Where is it?'

‘I don't know. Lost, I suppose.'

‘Where?'

‘If I knew that it wouldn't be lost.'

‘We are aware of that,' the judge said dryly. ‘But
if we could localize the area we could notify the
appropriate police stations where it might have
been handed in. When did you first notice you
no longer had your passport and where were you
at the time?'

‘Three days ago – and you know as well as I do
where I was at the time. Sitting in the dining-room
of the La Contessa Motel, eating my dinner and
minding my own business when Wild Bill Hickock
here and his posse jumped me.' I gestured at
the diminutive alpaca-coated sheriff sitting in a
cane-bottomed chair in front of the judge's bench
and thought that there could be no height barriers
for the law enforcement officers of Marble Springs:
the sheriff and his elevator shoes together couldn't
have topped five feet four. Like the judge, the
sheriff was a big disappointment to me. While I had
hardly expected a Wild West lawman complete
with Frontier Colt I had looked for something
like either badge or gun. But no badge, no gun.
None that I could see. The only gun in sight in the
court-house was a short-barrelled Colt revolver
stuck in the holster of the police officer who stood
behind and a couple of feet to the right of me.

‘They didn't jump you,' Judge Mollison was
saying patiently. ‘They were looking for a prisoner
who had escaped from the nearby camp of one of
our state convict road forces. Marble Springs is a
small town and strangers easily identifiable. You
are a stranger. It was natural –'

‘Natural!' I interrupted. ‘Look, Judge, I've been
talking to the gaoler. He says the convict escaped
at six o'clock in the afternoon. The Lone Ranger
here picks me up at eight. Was I supposed to have
escaped, sawed off my irons, had a bath, shampoo,
manicure and shave, had a tailor measure and
fit a suit for me, bought underclothes, shirt and
shoes –'

‘Such things have happened before,' the judge
interrupted. ‘A desperate man, with a gun or
club –'

‘––and grown my hair three inches longer all in
the space of two hours?' I finished.

‘It was dark in there, Judge––' the sheriff began,
but Mollison waved him to silence.

‘You objected to being questioned and searched.
Why?'

‘As I said I was minding my own business. I
was in a respectable restaurant, giving offence to
no one. And where I come from a man doesn't
require a state permit to enable him to breathe
and walk around.'

‘He doesn't here either,' the judge said patiently.
‘All they wanted was a driver's licence, insurance
card, social security card, old letters, any means of
identification. You could have complied with their
request.'

‘I was willing to.'

‘Then why this?' The judge nodded down at the
sheriff. I followed his glance. Even when I'd first
seen him in the La Contessa the sheriff had struck
me as being something less than good-looking
and I had to admit that the large plasters on his
forehead and across the chin and the corner of the
mouth did nothing to improve him.

‘What else do you expect?' I shrugged. ‘When
big boys start playing games little boys should stay
home with Mother.' The sheriff was halfway out
of his seat, eyes narrowed and ivory-knuckled fists
gripping the cane arms of his chair, but the judge
waved him back impatiently. ‘The two gorillas he
had with him started roughing me up. It was
self-defence.'

‘If they assaulted you,' the judge asked acidly,
‘how do you account for the fact that one of
the officers is still in hospital with damaged knee
ligaments and the other has a fractured cheekbone,
while you are still unmarked?'

‘Out of training, Judge. The state of Florida
should spend more money on teaching its law
officers to look after themselves. Maybe if they
ate fewer hamburgers and drank less beer –'

‘Be silent!' There was a brief interval while
the judge seemed to be regaining control of himself,
and I looked round the court again. The
schoolgirls were still goggle-eyed, this beat anything
they'd ever had in their civics classes before:
the dark-blonde in the front seat was looking at
me with a curious half-puzzled expression on her
face, as if she were trying to work out something:
behind her, his gaze lost in infinity, the
man with the broken nose chewed on the stump
of a dead cigar with machine-like regularity: the
court reporter seemed asleep: the attendant at
the door surveyed the scene with an Olympian
detachment: beyond him, through the open door,
I could see the harsh glare of the late afternoon
sun on the dusty white street and beyond that
again, glimpsed through a straggling grove of palmettos,
the twinkling ripple of sunlight reflecting
off the green water of the Gulf of Mexico …
The judge seemed to have recovered his composure.

‘We have established,' he said heavily, ‘that you
are truculent, intransigent, insolent and a man of
violence. You also carry a gun – a small-bore
Lilliput, I believe it is called. I could already commit
you for contempt of court, for assaulting and
obstructing constables of the law in the course of
the performance of their duties and for being in
illegal possession of a lethal weapon. But I won't.'
He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘We
will have much more serious charges to prefer
against you.'

The court reporter opened one eye for a moment,
thought better of it and appeared to go to sleep
again. The man with the broken nose removed
his cigar, examined it, replaced it and resumed
his methodical champing. I said nothing.

‘Where were you before you came here?' the
judge asked abruptly.

‘St Catherine.'

‘I didn't mean that, but – well, how did you
arrive here from St Catherine?'

‘By car.'

‘Describe it – and the driver.'

‘Green saloon – sedan, you'd call it. Middle-aged
businessman and his wife. He was grey, she was
blonde.'

‘That's all you can remember?' Mollison asked
politely.

‘That's all.'

‘I suppose you realize that description would fit
a million couples and their cars?'

‘You know how it is,' I shrugged. ‘When you're
not expecting to be questioned on what you've
seen you don't bother –'

‘Quite, quite.' He could be very acid, this judge.
‘Out of state car, of course?'

‘Yes. But not of course.'

‘Newly arrived in our country and already you
know how to identify licence plates of –'

‘He said he came from Philadelphia. I believe
that's out of state.'

The court reporter cleared his throat. The judge
quelled him with a cold stare, then turned back to
me.

‘And you came to St Catherine from –'

‘Miami.'

‘Same car, of course?'

‘No. Bus.'

The judge looked at the clerk of the court, who
shook his head slightly, then turned back to me.
His expression was less than friendly.

‘You're not only a fluent and barefaced liar,
Chrysler' – he'd dropped the ‘Mister' so I assumed
the time for courtesies was past – ‘but a careless
one. There's no bus service from Miami to
St Catherine. You stayed the previous night in
Miami?'

I nodded.

‘In a hotel,' he went on. ‘But, of course, you will
have forgotten the name of that hotel?'

‘Well, as a matter of fact –'

‘Spare us.' The judge held up his hand. ‘Your
effrontery passes all limits and this court will no
longer be trifled with. We have heard enough.
Cars, buses, St Catherine, hotels, Miami – lies,
all lies. You've never been in Miami in your life.
Why do you think we kept you on remand for
three days?'

‘You tell me,' I encouraged him.

‘I shall. To make extensive inquiries. We've
checked with the immigration authorities and
every airline flying into Miami. Your name wasn't
on any passenger or aliens list, and no one answering
to your description was seen that day. You
would not be easily overlooked.'

I knew what he meant, all right. I had the
reddest hair and the blackest eyebrows I'd ever
seen on anyone and the combination was rather
startling. I'd got used to it myself, but I had to
admit it took a bit of getting used to. And when
you added to that a permanent limp and a scar that
ran from the corner of my right brow to the lobe of
my right ear – well, when it came to identification,
I was the answer to the policeman's prayer.

‘As far as we can discover,' the judge went
on coldly, ‘you've spoken the truth once. Only
once.' He broke off to look at the youth who had
just opened the door leading to some chambers
in the rear, and lifted his eyebrows in fractional
interrogation. No impatience: no irritation: all very
calm: Judge Mollison was no pushover.

‘This just came for you, sir,' the boy said nervously.
He showed an envelope. ‘Radio message.
I thought –'

‘Bring it here.' The judge glanced at the envelope,
nodded at no one in particular, then turned
back to me.

‘As I say, you told the truth just once. You said
you had come here from Havana. You did indeed.
You left this behind you there, In the police station
where you were being held for interrogation and
trial.' He reached into a drawer and held up a small
book, blue and gold and white. ‘Recognize it?'

‘A British passport,' I said calmly. ‘I haven't got
telescopic eyes but I assume that it must be mine
otherwise you wouldn't be making such a song
and dance about it. If you had it all the time, then
why –?'

‘We were merely trying to discover the degree
of your mendacity, which is pretty well complete,
and your trustworthiness, which does not
appear to exist.' He looked at me curiously. ‘Surely
you must know what this means: if we have the
passport, we have much else besides. You appear
unmoved. You're a very cool customer, Chrysler,
or very dangerous: or can it be that you are just
very stupid?'