The Cry of the Halidon: A Novel

  Voices from a millennium ago came back to him: Use your knees! Your feet! Grab! Hold! Slash at the eyes! The blind can’t fight! Rupture!

  It was over. The voices subsided. The man collapsed at his feet.

  McAuliff stepped back. He was frightened; something had happened to him. For a few terrifying seconds, he had been back in the Vietnam jungle. He looked down at the motionless Jamaican beneath him. The head was turned, flat against the carpet; blood was oozing from the pink lips.

  Thank God the man was breathing.

  It was the gun. The goddamned gun! He had not expected a gun. A fight, yes. His anger justified that. But he had thought of it as a scuffle—intense, over quickly. He would confront, embarrass, forcibly make whoever was monitoring the tapes go with him. To embarrass; to teach an avaricious employer a lesson.

  But not this.

  This was deadly. This was the violence of survival.

  The tapes. The voices. The excited voices kept coming out of the speakers on the desk.

  It was not a television set he had heard. The sounds were the sounds of the Courtleigh Manor kitchen. Men shouting, other men responding angrily; the commands of superiors, the whining complaints of subordinates. All frantic, agitated … mostly unintelligible. They must have driven those listening into a fury.

  Then Alex saw the revolving reels of the tape deck. For some reason it was on the floor, to the right of the desk. A small, compact Wollensak recorder, spinning as if nothing had happened.

  McAuliff grabbed the two speakers and crashed them repeatedly against each other until the wood splintered and the cases cracked open. He tore out the black shells and the wires and threw them across the room. He crossed to the right of the desk and crushed his heel into the Wollensak, grinding the numerous flat switches until a puff of smoke emerged from the interior and the reels stopped their movement. He reached down and ripped off the tape; he could burn it, but there was nothing of consequence recorded. He rolled the two reels across the floor, the thin strand of tape forming a narrow V on the carpet.

  The Jamaican groaned; his eyes blinked as he swallowed and coughed.

  Alex picked up the pistol on the floor, and squeezed it into his belt. He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and threw a towel into the basin.

  He pulled the drenched towel from the sink and walked back to the coughing, injured Jamaican. He knelt down, helped the man into a sitting position, and blotted his face. The water flowed down on the man’s shirt and trousers … water mingled with blood.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t reached for that goddamned pistol.”

  “Mon!” The Jamaican coughed his interruption. “You crazy-mon!” The Jamaican held his chest and winced painfully as he struggled to his feet. “You break up … everyt’ing, mon!” said the injured man, looking at the smashed equipment.

  “I certainly did! Maybe your Mr. Craft will get the message. If he wants to play industrial espionage, let him play in somebody else’s backyard. I resent the intrusion. Come on, let’s go.” Alex took the man by the arm and began leading him to the door.

  “No, mon!” shouted the man, resisting.

  “Yes, mon,” said McAuliff quietly. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Where, mon?”

  “To see a little old man who runs a fish store, that’s all.” Alex shoved him; the Jamaican gripped his side. His ribs were broken, thought McAuliff.

  “Please, mon! No police, mon! I lost everyt’ing!” The Jamaican’s dark eyes were pleading as he held his ribs.

  “You went for a gun, mon! That’s a very serious thing to do.”

  “Them not my gun. Them gun got no bullets, mon.”

  “What?”

  “Look-see, mon! Please! I got good job.… I don’ hurt nobody.…”

  Alex wasn’t listening. He reached into his belt for the pistol.

  It was no weapon at all.

  It was a starter’s gun; the kind held up by referees at track meets.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake …” Arthur Craft Junior played games—little boys’ games with little boys’ toys.

  “Okay, mon. You just tell your employer what I said. The next time, I’ll haul him into court.”

  It was a silly thing to say, thought Alex, as he walked out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him. There’d be no courts; Julian Warfield or his adversary, R. C. Hammond, was far preferable. Alongside Dunstone, Limited, and British Intelligence, Arthur Craft was a cipher. An unimportant intrusion that in all likelihood was no more.

  He walked out of the elevator and tried to recall the location of the telephone booths. They were to the left of the entrance, past the front desk, he remembered.

  He nodded to the clerks while thinking of Westmore Tallon’s private number.

  “Mr. McAuliff, sir?” The speaker was a tall Jamaican with very broad shoulders, emphasized by a tight nylon jacket.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you come with me, please?”

  Alex looked at the man. He was neat, the trousers pressed, a white shirt and a tie in evidence beneath the jacket. “No … why should I?”

  “Please, we have very little time. A man is waiting for you outside. A Mr. Tucker.”

  “What? How did—”

  “Please, Mr. McAuliff. I cannot stay here.”

  Alex followed the Jamaican out the glass doors of the entrance. As they reached the driveway, he saw the man in the yellow shirt—Craft’s man—walking on the path from the parking lot; the man stopped and stared at him, as if unsure what to do.

  “Hurry, please,” said the Jamaican, several steps in front of McAuliff, breaking into a run. “Down past the gates. The car is waiting!”

  They ran down the drive, past the stone gateposts.

  The green Chevrolet was on the side of the road, its motor running. The Jamaican opened the back door for Alex.

  “Get in!”

  McAuliff did so.

  Sam Tucker, his massive frame taking up most of the backseat, his shock of red hair reflecting the outside lights, extended his hand.

  “Good to see you, boy!”

  “Sam!”

  The car lurched forward, throwing Alex into the felt. McAuliff saw that there were three men in the front seat. The driver wore a baseball cap; the third man—nearly as large as Sam Tucker—was squeezed between the driver and the Jamaican who had met him inside the Courtleigh lobby. Alex turned back to Tucker.

  “What is all this, Sam? Where the hell have you been?”

  The answer, however, did not come from Sam Tucker. Instead, the black man by the window, the man who had led Alex down the driveway, turned and spoke quietly.

  “Mr. Tucker has been with us, Mr. McAuliff. If events can be controlled, we are your link to the Halidon.”

  14

  They drove for nearly an hour. Always climbing, higher and higher, it seemed to McAuliff. The winding roads snaked upward, the turns sudden, the curves hidden by sweeping waterfalls of tropic greenery. There were stretches of unpaved road. The automobile took them poorly; the whining of the low gear was proof of the strain.

  McAuliff and Sam Tucker spoke quietly, knowing their conversation was overheard by those in front. That knowledge did not seem to bother Tucker.

  Sam’s story was totally logical, considering his habits and lifestyle. Sam Tucker had friends, or acquaintances, no one knew about, in many parts of the world. Not that he intentionally concealed their identities, only that they were part of his personal, not professional, life.

  One of these people had been Walter Piersall.

  “I mentioned him to you last year, Alexander,” said Tucker in the darkness of the backseat. “In Ocho Rios.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I told you I’d met an academic fellow in Carrick Foyle. I was going to spend a couple of weekends with him.”

  That was it, thought McAuliff. The name Carrick Foyle; he had heard it
before. “I remember now. Something about a lecture series at the Kingston Institute.”

  “That’s right. Walter was a very classy type—an anthro man who didn’t bore you to death. I cabled him I was coming back.”

  “You also got in touch with Hanley. He’s the one who set off the alarms.”

  “I called Bob after I got into Montego. For a little sporting life. There was no way I could reach him later. We traveled fast, and when we got where we were going, there was no telephone. I figured he’d be mad as hell.”

  “He was worried, not mad. It was quite a disappearing act.”

  “He should know better. I have friends on this island, not enemies. At least, none either of us knows about.”

  “What happened? Where did you go?”

  Tucker told him.

  When Sam arrived in Montego Bay, there was a message from Piersall at the Arrivals desk. He was to call the anthropologist in Carrick Foyle after he was settled. He did, but was told by a servant in Carrick Foyle that Piersall might not return until late that night.

  Tucker then phoned his old friend Hanley, and the two men got drunk, as was their established custom at reunions.

  In the morning, while Hanley was still sleeping, Sam left the hotel to pick up cigars.

  “It’s not the sort of place that’s large on room service, boy.”

  “I gathered that,” said Alex.

  “Out on the street, our friends here”—Tucker gestured toward the front seat—“were waiting in a station wagon—”

  “Mr. Tucker was being followed,” interrupted the Jamaican by the window. “Word of this reached Dr. Piersall. He sent us to Mo’Bay to look after his friend. Mr. Tucker gets up early.”

  Sam grinned. “You know me. Even with the juice, I can’t sleep long.”

  “I know,” said Alex, remembering too many hotel rooms and survey campsites in which Tucker had wandered about at the first light of dawn.

  “There was a little misunderstanding,” continued Sam. “The boys here said Piersall was waiting for me. I figured, what the hell, the lads thought enough of me to stick out the night, I’d go with ’em straight off. Old Hanley wouldn’t be up for an hour or so … I’d call him from Piersall’s house. But, goddammit, we didn’t go to Carrick Foyle. We headed for a bamboo camp down the Martha Brae. It took us damn near two hours to get there, a godforsaken place, Alexander.”

  When they arrived at the bamboo camp, Walter Piersall greeted Sam warmly. But within minutes Tucker realized that something had happened to the man. He was not the same person that Sam had known a year ago. There was a zealousness, an intensity not in evidence twelve months before.

  Walter Piersall was caught up in things Jamaican. The quiet anthropologist had become a fierce partisan in the battles being waged between social and political factions within Jamaica. He was suddenly a jealous guardian of the islanders’ rights, an enemy of the outside exploiters.

  “I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, Alexander,” said Sam. “From the Tasman to the Caribbean; it’s a kind of island fever. Possession … oneness, I think. Men migrate for taxes or climate or whatever the hell and they turn into self-proclaimed protectors of their sanctuaries … the Catholic convert telling the pope he’s not with it …”

  In his cross-island proselytizing, Piersall began to hear whispers of an enormous land conspiracy. In his own backyard in the parish of Trelawny. At first he dismissed them; they involved men with whom one might disagree, but whose integrity was not debated. Men of extraordinary stature.

  The conspiratorial syndrome was an ever-present nuisance in any growing government; Piersall understood that. In Jamaica it was given credence by the influx of foreign capital looking for tax havens, by a parliament ordering more reform programs than it could possibly control, and by a small, wealthy island aristocracy trying to protect itself—the bribe was an all-too-prevalent way of life.

  Piersall had decided, once and for all, to put the whispered rumors to rest. Four months ago he’d gone to the Ministry of Territories and filed a resolution of intent to purchase by way of syndication twenty square miles of land on the north border of the Cock Pit. It was a harmless gesture, really. Such a purchase would take years in the courts and involve the satisfactory settling of historic island treaties; his point was merely to prove Kingston’s willingness to accept the filing. That the land was not controlled by outsiders.

  “Since that day, Alexander, Piersall’s life was made a hell.” Sam Tucker lit a thin native cigar; the aromatic smoke whipped out the open window into the onrushing darkness. “He was harassed by the police, pulled into the parish courts dozens of times for nonsense; his lectures were canceled at the university and the Institute; his telephone tapped—conversations repeated by government attorneys … Finally, the whispers he tried to silence killed him.”

  McAuliff said nothing for several moments. “Why was Piersall so anxious to contact you?” he asked Tucker.

  “In my cable I told him I was doing a big survey in Trelawny. A project out of London by way of Kingston. I didn’t want him to think I was traveling six thousand miles to be his guest; he was a busy man, Alexander.”

  “But you were in Kingston tonight. Not in a bamboo camp on the Martha Brae. Two of these men”—McAuliff gestured front—“followed me this afternoon. In this car.”

  “Let me answer you, Mr. McAuliff,” said the Jamaican by the window, turning and placing his arm over the seat. “Kingston intercepted Mr. Tuck’s cable; they made kling-kling addition, mon. They thought Mr. Tuck was mixed up with Dr. Piersall in bad ways. Bad ways for them, mon. They sent dangerous men to Mo’Bay. To find out what Tuck was doing—”

  “How do you know this?” broke in Alex.

  For the briefest instant, the man by the window glanced at the driver. It was difficult to tell in the dim light and rushing shadows, but McAuliff thought the driver nodded imperceptibly.

  “We took the men who came to Mo’bay after Mr. Tuck. That is all you need to know, mon. What was learned caused Dr. Piersall much concern. So much, mon, that we flew to Kingston. To reach you, mon … Dr. Piersall was killed for that.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “If we knew that there would be dead men hanging in Victoria Park.”

  “What did you learn … from the men in Montego?”

  Again, the man who spoke seemed to glance at the driver. In seconds he replied, “That people in Kingston believed Dr. Piersall would interfere further. When he went to find you, mon, it was their proof. By killing him they took a big sea urchin out of their foot.”

  “And you don’t know who did it—”

  “Hired niggers, mon,” interrupted the black man.

  “It’s insane!” McAuliff spoke to himself as much as to Sam Tucker. “People killing people … men following other men. It’s goddamn crazy!”

  “Why is it crazy to a man who visits Tallon’s fish market?” asked the Jamaican suddenly.

  “How did—” McAuliff stopped. He was confused; he had been so careful. “How did you know that? I lost you at the racetrack!”

  The Jamaican smiled, his bright teeth catching the light from the careening reflections through the windshield. “Ocean trout is not really preferable to the freshwater variety, mon.”

  The counterman! The nonchalant counterman in the striped linen apron. “The man behind the counter is one of you. That’s pretty good,” said McAuliff quietly.

  “We’re very good. Westmore Tallon is a British agent. So like the English: enlist the clandestine help of the vested interests. And so fundamentally stupid. Tallon’s senile Etonian classmates might trust him; his countrymen do not.”

  The Jamaican removed his arm from the seat and turned front. The answer was over.

  Sam Tucker spoke pensively, openly. “Alexander … now tell me what the hell is going on. What have you done, boy?”

  McAuliff turned to Sam. The huge, vital, capable old friend was staring at him through the darkness, the rapid flashes o
f light bouncing across his face. Tucker’s eyes held confusion and hurt. And anger.

  What in hell had he done, thought Alex.

  “Here we are, mon,” said the driver in the baseball cap, who had not spoken throughout the trip.

  McAuliff looked out the windows. The ground was flat now, but high in the hills and surrounded by them. Everything was sporadically illuminated by a Jamaican moon filtering through the low-flying clouds of the Blue Mountains. They were on a dirt road; in the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was a structure, a small cabinlike building. A dim light could be seen through a single window. On the right were two other … structures. Not buildings, not houses or cabins, nothing really definable; just free-form, sagging silhouettes … translucent? Yes … wires, cloth. Or netting … They were large tentlike covers, supported by numerous poles. And then Alex understood: beyond the tents the ground was matted flat, and along the border, spaced every thirty or forty feet apart, were unlit cradle torches. The tents were camouflaged hangars; the ground was a landing strip.

  They were at an unmarked airfield in the mountains.

  The Chevrolet slowed down as it approached what turned out to be a small farmhouse. There was an ancient tractor beyond the edge of the building; field tools—plows, shoulder yokes, pitchforks—were scattered about carelessly. In the moonlight the equipment looked like stationary relics. Unused, dead remembrances only.

  Camouflage.

  As the hangars were camouflaged.

  An airfield no map would indicate.

  “Mr. McAuliff? Mr. Tucker? If you would come with me, please.” The black spokesman by the window opened the door and stepped out. Sam and Alex did the same. The driver and the third Jamaican remained inside, and when the disembarked passengers stepped away from the car, the driver accelerated and sped off down the dirt road.

  “Where are they going?” asked McAuliff anxiously.

  “To conceal the automobile,” answered the black man. “Kingston sends out ganja air patrols at night, hoping to find such fields as these. With luck to spot light aircraft on narcotics runs.”