Priestlike. Immobile.
“Sit on the ground, Dr. McAuliff,” instructed the strangely ragged paramilitary man, in clipped tones used to command.
Alex did so. The use of the title “Doctor” told him the unfamiliarity was more his than theirs.
The subordinate who had marched him up from the camp approached the priest figure. The two men fell into quiet conversation, walking slowly into the grass while talking. The two figures receded over a hundred yards into the dull yellow field.
They stopped.
“Turn around, Dr. McAuliff.” The order was abrupt; the black man above him had his hand on his holster. Alex pivoted in his sitting position and faced the descending forest from which he and the runner had emerged.
The waiting was long and tense. Yet McAuliff understood that his strongest weapon—perhaps his only viable strength—was calm determination. He was determined; he was not calm.
He was frightened in the same way he had experienced fear before. In the Vietnam jungles; alone, no matter the number of troops. Waiting to witness his own single annihilation.
Pockets of fear.
“It is an extraordinary story, is it not, Dr. McAuliff?”
That voice. My God! He knew that voice.
He pressed his arms against the ground and started to whip his head and body around.
His temple crashed into the hard steel of a pistol; the agonizing pain shot through his face and chest. There was a series of bright flashes in front of his eyes as the pain reached a sensory crescendo. It subsided to a numbing ache, and he could feel a trickle of blood on his neck.
“You will remain the way you are while we talk,” said the familiar voice.
Where had he heard it before?
“I know you.”
“You don’t know me, Dr. McAuliff.”
“I’ve heard your voice … somewhere.”
“Then you have remarkable recall. So much has happened.… I shall not waste words. Where are Piersall’s documents? I am sure it is unnecessary to tell you that your life and the lives of those you brought to Jamaica depend on our having them.”
“How do you know they’d do you any good? What if I told you I had copies made?”
“I would say you were lying. We know the placement of every Xerox machine, every photostat copier, every store, hotel, and individual that does much work along the coast. Including Bueno, the Bays, and Ocho Rios. You have had no copies made.”
“You’re not very bright, Mr. Halidon.… It is Mr. Halidon, isn’t it?” There was no response, so Alex continued. “We photographed them.”
“Then the films are not developed. And the only member of your team possessing a camera is the boy, Ferguson. He is hardly a confidant.… But this is immaterial, Dr. McAuliff. When we say documents, we assume any and all reproductions thereof. Should any surface … ever … there will be, to put it bluntly, a massacre of innocents. Your survey team, their families, children … all those held dear by everyone. A cruel and unnecessary prospect.”
… to the last extremity. R. C. Hammond.
“It would be the Halidon’s last action, wouldn’t it?” McAuliff spoke slowly but sharply, stunned by his own calm. “A kind of final … beau geste before extinction. If you want it that way, I don’t give a damn.”
“Stop it, McAuliff!” The voice suddenly screamed, a piercing shriek over the blades of wild grass, its echo muted by the surrounding jungles.
Those words … they were the words he had heard before!
Stop it. Stop it … stop it …
Where? For God’s sake, where had he heard them?
His mind raced; images were blurred with blinding colored lights, but he could not focus.
A man. A black man—tall and lithe and muscular … a man following orders. A man commanding but not with his own commands. The voice that had just roared was the same voice from the past … following orders. In panic … as before.
Something …
“You said we would talk. Threats are one-sided conversations; you take turns, you don’t talk. I’m not on anybody’s side. I want your … superiors to know that.” Alex held his breath during the silence that followed.
The quiet reply came with measured authority … and a small but recognizable trace of fear. “There are no superiors as far as you are concerned. My temper is short. These have been difficult days. You should realize that you are very close to losing your life.”
The man with the pistol had moved slightly; Alex could see him now out of the corner of his eye. And what he saw convinced him he was on the track of an immediate truth. The man’s bead had snapped up at the priest figure; the man with the weapon dangling was questioning the priest figure’s words.
“If you kill me … or any member of the team, the Halidon will be exposed in a matter of hours.”
Again silence. Again the measured authority; again the now unmistakable undertone of fear. “And how is this remarkable exposure going to take place, Dr. McAuliff?”
Alex drew a deep breath silently. His right hand was clasping his left wrist; he pressed his fingers into his own flesh as he replied.
“In my equipment there is a radio signaling device. It is standard and operates on a frequency that rides above interference. It’s functional within a radius of twenty-five miles. Every twelve hours I send out one of two codes; a light on the miniature panel confirms reception and pinpoints location-identification. The first code says everything’s normal, no problems. The second says something else. It instructs the man on the receiving end to implement two specific orders: fly the documents out and send help in. The absence of transmissions is the equivalent of the second code, only more so. It alerts all the factions in Kingston, including British Intelligence. They’ll be forced in; they’ll start with our last location and fan out. The Cock Pit will be swarming with planes and troops.… I’d better transmit the code, Mr. Halidon. And even when I do, you won’t know which one I’m sending, will you?” McAuliff stopped for precisely three seconds. And then he said quietly, “Checkmate, Mr. Bones.”
A macaw’s screech could be heard in the distance. From somewhere in the wet forests a pride of wild pigs was disturbed. The warm breeze bent the reeds of the tall grass ever so slightly; cicadas were everywhere. All these were absorbed by Alex’s senses. And he understood, too, the audible, trembling intake of breath from the darkness behind him. He could feel the mounting, uncontrollable pitch of anger.
“No, mon!” The man with the pistol cried out, lunging forward.
Simultaneously, McAuliff felt the rush of air and heard the rustle of cloth that precedes the instant of impact from behind. Too late to turn; defense only in crouching, hugging the earth.
One man tried to stop the priest figure as he lunged forward; the weight of two furious bodies descended on Alex’s shoulders and back. Arms were thrashing, fingers spastically clutched; hard steel and soft cloth and warm flesh enveloped him. He reached above and grasped the first objects his hands touched, yanked with all his strength, and rolled forward.
The priest figure somersaulted over his back; Alex crashed his shoulders downward, rising on one knee for greater weight, and threw himself on the coarse cloth of the caftan. As he pinned the priest, he felt himself instantly pulled backward, with such force that the small of his back arched in pain.
The two Halidonites locked his arms, stretching his chest to the breaking point; the man with the pistol held the barrel to his temple, digging it into his skin.
“That will be enough, mon.”
Below him on the ground, the yellow moonlight illuminating a face creased with fury, was the priest figure.
McAuliff instantly understood the bewildering, unfocused images of blinding, colored lights his mind had associated with the panicked words stop it, stop it.
He had last seen this “priest” of the Halidon in London’s Soho. During the psychedelic madness that was The Owl of Saint George. The man lying on the ground in a caftan had been dresse
d in a dark suit then, gyrating on the crowded dance floor. He had screamed at McAuliff, Stop … stop it! He had delivered a crushing fist into Alex’s midsection; he had disappeared into the crowds, only to show up an hour later in a government car on the street by a public telephone.
This “priest” of the Halidon was an agent of British Intelligence.
“You said your name was Tallon.” McAuliff strained his speech through the pain, the words interrupted by his lack of breath. “In the car that night you said your name was Tallon. And … when I called you on it, you said you were … testing me.”
The priest figure rolled over and slowly began to rise. He nodded to the two Halidonites to relax their grips and addressed them. “I would not have killed him. You know that.”
“You were angry, mon,” said the man who had taken Alex out of the camp.
“Forgive us,” added the man who had cried out and lunged at the priest figure. “It was necessary.”
The “priest” smoothed his cassock and tugged at the thick rope around his waist. He looked down at McAuliff. “Your recollection is sharp, Doctor. I sincerely hope your ability to think is equally acute.”
“Does that mean we talk?”
“We talk.”
“My arms hurt like hell. Will you tell your sergeants to let go of me?”
The “priest” nodded once again, and flicked his wrist in accord. Alex’s arms were released; he shook them.
“My sergeants, as you call them, are more temperate men than I. You should be grateful to them.”
The man with the pistol belt demurred, his voice respectful. “Not so, mon. When did you last sleep?”
“That does not matter. I should have more control.… My friend refers to a hectic several weeks, McAuliff. Not only did I have to get myself out of England, avoiding Her Majesty’s Service, but also a colleague who had disappeared in a Bentley around a Soho corner. A West Indian in London has a thousand hiding places.”
Alex remembered vividly. “That Bentley tried to run me down. The driver wanted to kill me. Only someone else was killed … because of a neon light.”
The priest figure stared at McAuliff. He, too, seemed to recall the evening vividly. “It was a tragedy born of the instant. We thought a trap had been set, the spring caught at the last moment.”
“Three lives were lost that night. Two with cyanide—”
“We are committed,” interrupted the Halidonite, who looked at his two companions and spoke gently. “Leave us alone, please.”
In warning, both men removed the weapons from their belts as they pulled Alex to his feet. As ordered, they retreated into the field. McAuliff watched them. A ragged-clothed twosome with the unlikely jackets and pistol belts. “They not only do as you say, they protect you from yourself.”
The priest figure also looked at his retreating subordinates. “When we are in our formative years, we are all given batteries of tests. Each is assigned areas of instruction and future responsibility from the results. I often think grave errors are made.” The man tugged at his caftan and turned to McAuliff. “We must deal now with each other, must we not? As I am sure you have surmised, I was an impermanent member of M.I. Five.”
“An ‘infiltrator’ is the word that comes to mind.”
“A very successful one, Doctor. Hammond himself twice recommended me for citations. I was one of the best West Indian specialists. I was reluctant to leave. You—and those maneuvering you—created the necessity.”
“How?”
“Your survey suddenly contained too many dangerous components. We could live with several, but when we found out that your closest associate on the geological team—Mr. Tucker—was apparently a friend of Walter Piersall, we knew we had to keep you under a microscope.… Obviously, we were too late.”
“What were the other components?”
The priest figure hesitated. He touched his forehead, where a grass burn had developed from his fall to the ground. “Do you have a cigarette? This very comfortable sheet has one disadvantage: there are no pockets.”
“Why do you wear it?”
“It is a symbol of authority, nothing more.”
McAuliff reached into his pocket, withdrew a pack of cigarettes, and shook one up for the Halidonite. As he lighted it for him, he saw that the black hollows in the very black skin beneath the eyes were stretched in exhaustion. “What were the dangerous components?”
“Oh, come, Doctor, you know them as well as I do.”
“Maybe I don’t; enlighten me. Or is that too dangerous, too?”
“Not now. Not at this point. The reality is the danger. Piersall’s documents are the reality. The … components are inconsequential.”
“Then tell me.”
The priest figure inhaled on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the soft breeze of the dull yellow light. “The woman you know about. There are many who fear her on the Continent. Among those, one of the Dunstone hierarchy … the Marquis de Chatellerault. Where she is, so is an arm of the Intelligence service. The boy, Ferguson, is deep with the Craft interests; actually, they fear him. Or did. And rightly so. He never understood the calamitous economic potential of his fiber work.”
“I think he did,” interrupted Alex. “And he does. He expects to make money out of Craft.”
The Halidonite laughed quietly. “They will never let him. But he is a component. Where does Craft stand? Is he part of Dunstone? Nothing happens in Jamaica that the soiled hand of Craft has not touched.… Samuel Tucker I have told you about: his association with the suddenly vital Walter Piersall. Whose summons did he answer? Is he on the island because of his old friend McAuliff? Or his new friend, Piersall? Or is it coincidence?”
“It’s coincidence,” said Alex. “You’d have to know Sam to understand that.”
“But we do not, you see. We only understand that among the first telephone calls he made was one to a man who was disturbing us profoundly. Who was walking around Kingston with the secrets of two hundred years in his brain … and somewhere on paper.” The priest figure looked at McAuliff—stared at him, really. His eyes in the moonlight conveyed a supplication for Alex to understand. He looked away and continued. “Then there is Charles Whitehall. A very … very dangerous and unpredictable component. You must know his background; Hammond certainly did. Whitehall feels his time on the island has come. His is the hot mysticism of the fanatic. The black Caesar come to ride up Victoria Park on nigger-Pompey’s horse. He has followers throughout Jamaica. If there is anyone who might expose Dunstone—wittingly or otherwise—it could well be Whitehall and his fascists.”
“Hammond didn’t know that,” protested McAuliff. “He made it clear that you … the Halidon … were the only ones who could stop Dunstone.”
“Hammond is a professional. He creates internal chaos, knowing that his breakthrough can come at any instant during the panic. Would it surprise you to know that Hammond is in Kingston now?”
Alex thought for a moment. “No … but I’m surprised he hasn’t let me know it.”
“There is a reason. He doesn’t want you to fall back on him. He flew in when word was received that Chatellerault was in Savanna-la-Mar.… You knew that, didn’t you?”
“He knows it because I told Westmore Tallon.”
“And then there are the Jensens. That charming, devoted couple. So normal, so lovable, really … who send back word to Julian Warfield of every move you make, of every person you make contact with; who bribe Jamaicans to spy on you.… The Jensens made a huge mistake once, years ago. Dunstone, Limited, stepped in and recruited them. In exchange for obliterating that mistake.”
McAuliff looked up at the clear night sky. A single elongated cloud was drifting from a distant mountain toward the yellow moon. He wondered if the condensation would disappear before it reached the shining satellite, or blur it from beneath … envelop it from the ground.
As he was so enveloped.
“So there are the components,” said Alex aimlessly. ?
??The Halidon knows a lot more than anyone else, it seems. And I’m not sure what that means.”
“It means, Doctor, that we are the silent caretakers of our land.”
“I don’t recall any election. Who gave you the job?”
“To quote an American writer: ‘It comes with the territory.’ It is our heritage. We do not swim in the political rivers, however. We leave those to the legitimate competitors. We do try our best to keep the pollution to a minimum.” The priest figure finished his cigarette and crushed the burning end under his sandaled foot.
“You’re killers,” said McAuliff simply. “I know that. I think that’s the worst kind of human pollution.”
“Are you referring to Dunstone’s previous survey?”
“I am.”
“You don’t know the circumstances. And I’m not the one to define them. I am here only to persuade you to give me Piersall’s documents.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Why?” The Halidonite’s voice rose in anger, as before. His black eyes above the black hollows pierced into McAuliff’s.
“Mon?” came the shouted query from the field. The priest figure waved his arm in dismissal.
“This is not your business, McAuliff. Understand that and get out. Give me the documents and take your survey off the island before it is too late.”
“If it was that simple, I would. I don’t want your fight, goddammit. It has no appeal for me.… On the other hand, I don’t relish being chased all over the globe by Julian Warfield’s guns. Can’t you understand that?”
The priest figure stood immobile. His eyes softened; his lips parted in concentration as he stared at Alexander. He spoke slowly; he was barely audible. “I warned them that it might come to this. Give me the nagarro, doctor. What is the meaning of the Halidon?”
McAuliff told him.
26
They returned to the river campsite, McAuliff and the runner who had assumed the name and function of Marcus Hedrik. There was no pretense now. As they neared the bivouac area, black men in rags could be seen in the bush, the early dawn light shafting through the dense foliage, intermittently reflecting off the barrels of their weapons.