The Scorpio Illusion (28 page)

“When’s the plane due?”

“Six o’clock, give or take, weather permitting,” answered Catherine Neilsen, her eyes still closed. “And you can both stop whispering.” The pilot raised herself on her elbows, pulled up the sleeve of her unzipped wet suit, and looked at her watch. “My God, it’s a quarter to!”

“So?” said Poole. “You got an appointment at the beauty parlor?”

“Not too distant a relative, Jackson. This girl has to head up into the vines and pull a contortionist’s act.… Speaking of which, would you two gentlemen please return to your suits? Two men in their shorts—one revealingly wet, I might add—and a lone female officer on a proverbial desert island isn’t the image I want carried back to Patrick.”

“To Patrick?” objected Hawthorne sharply. “Who said anything about your air force base?”

“We’ve been over that, Tye, and if you don’t remember, nobody can blame you. Three hours ago you were just about the most exhausted man I’ve ever seen. You could still use a week’s sleep.”

“You’re right, not about the sleep, but I remember. Regardless of the orders, I’ll reach Stevens in D.C. and get off at Gorda.”

“Wrong,” protested Poole. “You don’t get off at Gorda,
we
get off. You may have a score or six to settle, but we have one that’s damned important to Cath and me. The name’s Charlie—you do remember him?”

“I do,” said Tyrell, studying the lieutenant. “We’ll get off at Gorda.”

“There’s the plane!” cried Cathy, jumping to her feet. “I’ve got to hurry!”

“Believe me,” said the lieutenant. “They’ll wait until you have your permanent.”

“Get into your suits!” snapped the major, hurrying up the embankment and into the shoreline woods.

“Ashkelon,” whispered the voice in London.

“Forever,” replied the Baj. “I may not be able to contact you at the assigned times and telephones for the next several days. We’re flying to New York and things will be hectic.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re doing splendidly. One of our people has just been hired for the security detail at Downing Street’s transport pool.”

“That
is
splendid.”

“About you, Baj?”

“The same. The circles are widening, yet growing more selective. Vengeance will be ours, my friend.”

“I’ve never doubted it.”

“Reach Paris and Jerusalem with my news, but tell them to adhere to our schedule of times and locations in case of an emergency.”

“I spoke to Jerusalem this morning; the hot-headed bastard’s ecstatic.”

“How so?”

“He fell in with a group of senior staff officers from the I.D.F. at a restaurant in Tel Aviv. It was a drunken night and they loved his singing. He’s been invited to several parties.”

“Tell him to be careful. His papers are as false as his uniform.”

“There’s no one better under cover, Baj. Besides, he recognized two of the officers; suckling pigs of the butcher Sharon.”

“Interesting,” said Bajaratt after a moment of silence. “Sharon could be a welcome bonus.”

“That was Jerusalem’s thinking.”

“But not at the expense of the prize, tell him that.”

“He understands.”

“Anything new in Paris?”

“Well, you know she’s sleeping with a ranking member of the Chamber of Deputies, a close friend of the President. She’s a foxy girl, very clever.”

“It would be better if she were sleeping with the President.”

“It could happen.”

“Ashkelon,” said the Baj, signing off the call.

“Forever,” said the voice in London.

*    *    *

British Virgin Gorda was still asleep when the U.S. Air Force seaplane, cleared by Government House, glided into the water two miles south of the yacht club. Hawthorne had requested no assistance insofar as the aircraft’s standard equipment included several PVC inflatable boats, and he wanted their entry to the island to be as secure as possible. When he had replaced the radio phone on the bulkhead cradle, Catherine Neilsen called out from a nearby seat, her voice loud enough to be heard over the outside engines.

“Just a minute, profound leader, haven’t you forgotten something?”

“What? I got us to Gorda, what else do you want?”

“Clothes, perhaps? Ours are on a British hovercraft a couple of hundred miles from here, and it strikes me that we’d be noticed in these black Spider-Man outfits. If you think I’m going to walk around in a bra and panties alongside two unshaven gorillas in white shorts, think again, Commander.”

“I guess we gotta take wearin’ apparel out of your expertise, huh, Tye?” said Poole, grinning. “ ’Course, you like greasy coveralls, but we come from a better class of folk.”

So Hawthorne got back on the phone and was patched into the yacht club’s switchboard. “Mr. Geoffrey Cooke, please.” Tyrell waited while the incessant, erratic ringing went unanswered. Finally, the clerk came back on the line.

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no answer.”

“Try Monsieur Ardisonne, Jacques Ardisonne.”

“Very well, sir.” Again the ringing continued to no avail, and again the clerk returned to the phone. “I’m afraid it’s the same, sir.”

“Look, this is Tyrell Hawthorne and I’ve got a problem—”

“Captain Hawthorne? I thought it sounded like you, but there’s so much noise on your end.”

“Who’s this?”

“Beckwith, sir, the night clerk,
mon
. Did I sound reasonably English, sir?”

“Right out of Buckingham Palace,” said Tye, relieved that he remembered the man. “Listen, Beck, I’ve got to reach Roger, and I left his home number on my boat. Can you get it for me?”

“Don’t have to, Cap’n. He fillin’ in for the day boy who got himself in jail for a fight. I’ll connect you.”

“Where you been all night, Tye-Boy?” Roger, the chickee bartender, said. “You lizard-scamp from one place to ’nother and don’t tell nobody!”

“Where are Cooke and Ardisonne?” Hawthorne cut in.

“We all tried to call you in St. Martin—you disappeared,
mon
.”

“Where are they?”

“Off-island, Tye-Boy. They got a call from Puerto Rico around ten-thirty, a very crazy call,
mon
, so crazy they reached Government House an’ all kinda crazy things happen! The police drive ’em to Sebastian’s Point, and the coast patrol take ’em out to a seaplane and a pilot who’s gonna take ’em back to P.R., that’s what they told me to tell you!”

“That’s all?”

“No,
mon
, I save the best for last … I think. They said to tell you they had someone named Grimshaw—”

“Breakthrough
!” shouted Hawthorne, his voice carrying through the fuselage of the plane.

“What happened?” cried Neilsen.

“What is it, Tye?” yelled Poole.

“We’ve
got
one of them!… Anything else, Roge?”

“Not actually, ’cept those two white
cocoruroos
stuck me with a tab I already run up.”

“You’ll be paid off fifty times over, pal!”

“Just half’d be enough. I can steal the rest.”

“One last thing, Roge. I’m flying in with two friends, but we need some clothes.…”

Chickee-Roge met them on the isolated east beach, a hundred-plus yards away from the yacht club’s docks, and pulled the heavy rubber boat up into the sand. “It’s still too early for the tourists to come down, and the pot skippers can’t see you, so follow me. I got an empty villa where you can change; the clothes are up there.… Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do with the inflatable? That’s a two-thousand-dollar piece of equipment.”

“Deflate it and sell it,” said Hawthorne. “Just make sure you block out the various initials. If you don’t know how, I’ll teach you. Let’s get up to the villa.”

The clothes were perfectly adequate, and in Major Neilsen’s case, more than acceptable.

“Hey, Cathy, you look gorgeous!” Poole gave a low whistle as the pilot emerged from a bedroom in a flowing muumuu embossed with hot tropical colors, all in the abstract patterns of peacock and parrot feathers, and designed to emphasize the upper and lower swells of a woman’s form.

Girlishly, Cathy pivoted around. “Why, Lieutenant, I’ve never heard you say anything like that.… Except maybe once, in a Miami strip joint.”

“Miami doesn’t count, and you know it, but except for that wedding—which I don’t much remember—I’ve never seen you in a dress, surely not one like that. What do you say, Tye? Does she pass muster-plus, or what?”

“You look lovely, Catherine,” Hawthorne said simply.

“Thank you, Tyrell. I’m not used to all this flattery. I think I’m blushing, would you believe that?”

“I would like to,” replied Tye softly, suddenly seeing on his inner screen the face of the sleeping Cathy next
to him—or was it Dominique?—but no matter, both images touched him … the last with a stabbing pang of loss. Why had she left him again? “We should hear soon from Cooke and Ardisonne in Puerto Rico,” said Hawthorne abruptly, breaking the interlude of admiration and turning to a window. “I want this Grimshaw, I want to break him myself and make him tell me how they found Marty and Mickey.”

“And Charlie,” added Poole. “Don’t forget Charlie—”

“Who the hell
are
these people who can do what they do?” cried Tyrell, hammering his fist on the nearest piece of furniture.

“You said they came from the Middle East,” offered Cathy.

“That’s true, but it’s too broad. You don’t know the Baaka Valley. I do. There are a dozen factions fighting one another for supremacy, each claiming to be the terrible sword of Allah. This group is different; they may be fanatics, but they go way beyond Allah or Jesus or Mohammed or Moses. Their sources are too diverse, the infrastructure too widespread—good Lord, leaks in Washington and Paris that we know about, Mafia connections, an island fortress, Japanese satellites, Swiss accounts, drops in Miami and Palm Beach, and who knows what else! Those contacts aren’t the result of fanatical appeals to the believers of selected gods and prophets. No, they may be zealots, but they’re also mercenaries, capitalists of terrorism engaged in a worldwide business.”

“They must have one hell of a big client list,” said Poole. “Where do they get them?”

“It’s a two-way street, Jackson. They sell and they buy.”

“Buy what?”

“For lack of a better word, destabilization. The means
to
it and the execution
of
it.”

“I guess the next question is why,” said Neilsen,
frowning. “I can understand the fanaticism, but why would people not even remotely interested in their causes—the Mafia, for example—cooperate, much less pay for it?”

“Because such people
are
interested and it hasn’t a damn thing to do with religious or philosophical convictions. It has to do with power. And money. Wherever there’s destabilization, there’s a power vacuum, and millions, hell,
billions
, can be made. In the panic, governments can be infiltrated, men put where others want them to be for future use, whole countries brought under the control of vested interests who aren’t discovered until they’ve milked their territories dry, by which time they disappear, or their political asylums are guaranteed.”

“Things can really happen that way?”

“Lady, I’ve
seen
it. From Greece to Uganda, Haiti to Argentina, Chile to Panama, and most of the former Eastern bloc—their ruling bureaucrats were as Communist as the Rockefellers.”

“Well, I’ll be dipped in muleshit!” exclaimed Lieutenant Poole. “I just never thought in those terms. I’m ashamed of myself, ’cause I see what you mean.”

“Don’t whip yourself. It was my business, Jackson. Projection is the bottom line where intelligence is concerned.”

“What do we do now, Tye?” said Cathy.

“We wait to hear from Cooke and Ardisonne. If it’s what I think, we’ll fly to Puerto Rico under military security.”

There was a knock on the villa’s door, an unnecessary knock, as the voice that followed belonged to the chickee bartender. “It’s me. I’ve gotta talk to you, Tye-Boy.”

“For God’s sake, Roge, the door’s not locked!”

“Maybe I don’ want to come in,” said Roger, slouching inside and closing the door, a newspaper in his hand. He crossed to Hawthorne and held out the paper for him. “It’s the early edition of
The San Juan Star
; it was flown in a half hour ago and the front desk is cacklin’
like chickens. The small story,
mon
, is on page three, I folded it for you.”

Tyrell Hawthorne threw the newspaper on the floor, spun around, and raced to the window, smashing his fist through the glass, leaving his hand covered with blood.

The Manhattan penthouse, high above Fifth Avenue, overlooked the lights of Central Park and was properly aglow with subdued crystal chandeliers and glass-enclosed floral candles on damask-draped tables. Among the guests were the movers and shakers of the city: politicians, real estate tycoons, bankers and prominent newspaper columnists, plus several instantly recognizable stars of films and television, as well as a smattering of established authors, all of whom had been published in Italy. They had been summoned by their host, a flamboyant entrepreneur whose questionable manipulations in the bond market had gone unnoticed while a great many of his associates had gone to jail. His Agincourt, however, was on the horizon, his outstanding debts soon to be called in, and his favors to the movers and the shakers reluctantly acknowledged, so all were there. The
object of their attention was a young man whose recommendations to his immensely wealthy father, the baron of Ravello, could considerably lessen the host’s difficulties.

The evening progressed with oily smoothness, the
barone-cadetto
and his aunt, the
contessa
, receiving the guests as though they were a czar’s favored son and sister in old St. Petersburg. To the Baj’s annoyance, one of the young television actresses spoke Italian and engaged “Dante Paolo” in prolonged conversation once the introductions were over and everyone mingled with cocktails. It was hardly jealousy that disturbed Bajaratt, it was the specter of danger. A sophisticated, multilingual young woman might easily spot flaws in Nicolo’s “noble” upbringing. The danger, however, blew away like an overinflated sausage casing when Nico turned to the Baj, the dark-haired actress at his side.