The Cry of the Halidon: A Novel

  McAuliff stayed close to the runner, his flashlight beamed at the rocky darkness in front of him.

  Out of the caves, they proceeded through a short stretch of jungle to the first definable road they had seen. The runner activated a portable radio; ten minutes later a Land Rover came out of the pitch-black hollows from the west and the runner bid them good-bye.

  The rugged vehicle traveled over a crisscross pattern of back country roads, the driver keeping his engine as quiet as possible, coasting on descending hills, shutting off his headlights whenever they approached a populated area. The drive lasted a half hour. They passed through the Maroon village of Accompong and swung south several miles to a flat stretch of grassland.

  In the darkness, on the field’s edge, a small airplane was rolled out from under a camouflage of fern and acacia. It was a two-seater Comanche; they climbed in, and Malcolm took the controls.

  “This is the only difficult leg of the trip,” he said as they taxied for takeoff. “We must fly close to the ground to avoid interior radar. Unfortunately, so do the ganja aircraft, the drug smugglers. But we will worry less about the authorities than we will about collision.”

  Without incident, but not without sighting several ganja planes, they landed on the grounds of an outlying farm, southwest of Unity Hall. From there it was a fifteen-minute ride into Montego Bay.

  “It would arouse suspicions for us to stay in the exclusively black section of the town. You, for your skin, me for my speech and my clothes. And tomorrow we must have mobility in the white areas.”

  They drove to the Cornwall Beach Hotel and registered ten minutes apart. Reservations had been made for adjoining but not connecting rooms.

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and McAuliff fell into bed exhausted. He had not slept in forty-eight hours. And yet, for a very long time, sleep did not come.

  He thought about so many things. The brilliant, lonely, awkward James Ferguson and his sudden departure to the Craft Foundation. Defection, really. Without explanation. Alex hoped Craft was Jimbo-mon’s solution. For he would never be trusted again.

  And of the sweetly charming Jensens … up to their so-respectable chins in the manipulations of Dunstone, Limited.

  Of the “charismatic leader” Charles Whitehall, waiting to ride “nigger-Pompey’s horse” through Victoria Park. Whitehall was no match for the Halidon. The Tribe of Acquaba would not tolerate him.

  Nor did the lessons of Acquaba include the violence of Lawrence, the boy-man giant … successor to Barak Moore. Lawrence’s “revolution” would not come to pass. Not the way he conceived it.

  Alex wondered about Sam Tucker. Tuck, the gnarled rocklike force of stability. Would Sam find what he was looking for in Jamaica? For surely he was looking.

  But most of all McAuliff thought about Alison. Of her lovely half laugh and her clear blue eyes and the calm acceptance that was her understanding. How very much he loved her.

  He wondered, as his consciousness drifted into the gray, blank void that was sleep, if they would have a life together.

  After the madness.

  If he was alive.

  If they were alive.

  He had left a wake-up call for 6:45. Quarter to twelve, London time. Noon. For the Halidon.

  The coffee arrived in seven minutes. Eight minutes to twelve. The telephone rang three minutes later. Five minutes to noon, London time. It was Malcolm, and he was not in his hotel room. He was at the Associated Press Bureau, Montego Bay office, on St. James Street. He wanted to make sure that Alex was up and had his radio on. Perhaps his television set as well.

  McAuliff had both instruments on.

  Malcolm the Halidonite would call him later.

  At three minutes to seven—twelve, London time—there was a rapid knocking on his hotel door. Alexander was startled. Malcolm had said nothing about visitors; no one knew he was in Montego Bay. He approached the door.

  “Yes?”

  The words from the other side of the wood were spoken hesitantly, in a deep, familiar voice.

  “Is that you … McAuliff?”

  And instantly Alexander understood. The symmetry, the timing was extraordinary; only extraordinary minds could conceive and execute such a symbolic coup.

  He opened the door.

  R. C. Hammond, British Intelligence, stood in the corridor, his slender frame rigid, his face an expression of suppressed shock.

  “Good God. It is you. I didn’t believe him. Your signals from the river … There was nothing irregular, nothing at all!”

  “That,” said Alex, “is about as disastrous a judgment as I’ve ever heard.”

  “They dragged me out of my rooms in Kingston before daylight. Drove me up into the hills—”

  “And flew you to Montego,” completed McAuliff, looking at his watch. “Come in, Hammond. We’ve got a minute and fifteen seconds to go.”

  “For what?”

  “We’ll both find out.”

  The lilting, high-pitched Caribbean voice on the radio proclaimed over the music the hour of seven in the “sunlight paradise of Montego Bay.” The picture on the television set was a sudden fade-in shot of a long expanse of white beach … a photograph. The announcer, in overly Anglicized tones, was extolling the virtues of “our island life” and welcoming “alla visitors from the cold climate,” pointing out immediately that there was a blizzard in New York.

  Twelve o’clock London time.

  Nothing unusual.

  Nothing.

  Hammond stood by the window, looking out at the blue-green waters of the bay. He was silent; his anger was the fury of a man who had lost control because he did not know the moves his opponents were making. And, more important, why they were making them.

  The manipulator manipulated.

  McAuliff sat on the bed, his eyes on the television set, now a travelogue fraught with lies about the “beautiful city of Kingston.” Simultaneously, the radio on the bedside table blared its combination of cacophonic music and frantic commercials for everything from Coppertone to Hertz. Intermittently, there was the syrupy female Voice-of-the-Ministry-of-Health, telling the women of the island that “you do not have to get pregnant,” followed by the repetition of the weather … the forecasts never “partly cloudy,” always “partly sunny.”

  Nothing unusual.

  Nothing.

  It was eleven minutes past twelve London time.

  Still nothing.

  And then it happened.

  “We interrupt this broadcast …”

  And, like an insignificant wave born of the ocean depths—unnoticed at first, but gradually swelling, suddenly bursting out of the waters and cresting in controlled fury—the pattern of terror was clear.

  The first announcement was merely the prelude—a single flute outlining the significant notes of a theme shortly to be developed.

  Explosion and death in Port Antonio.

  The east wing of the estate of Arthur Craft had been blown up by explosives, the resulting conflagration gutting most of the house. Among the dead was feared to be the patriarch of the Foundation.

  There were rumors of rifle fire preceding the series of explosions. Port Antonio was in panic.

  Rifle fire. Explosives.

  Rare, yes. But not unheard of on this island of scattered violence. Of contained anger.

  The next “interruption” followed in less than ten minutes. It was—appropriately, thought McAuliff—a news report out of London. This intrusion warranted a line of moving print across the television screen: KILLINGS IN LONDON FULL REPORT ON NEW HOUR. The radio allowed a long musical commercial to run its abrasive course before the voice returned, now authoritatively bewildered.

  The details were still sketchy, but not the conclusions. Four high-ranking figures in government and industry had been slain. A director of Lloyds, an accounts official of Inland Revenue, and two members of the House of Commons, both chairing trade committees of consequence.

  The methods: two now familiar
, two new—dramatically oriented.

  A high-powered rifle fired from a window into a canopied entrance in Belgrave Square. A dynamited automobile, blown up in the Westminster parking area. Then the new: poison—temporarily identified as strychnine—administered in a Beefeater martini, causing death in two minutes; a horrible, contorted, violent death … the blade of a knife thrust into moving flesh on a crowded corner of the Strand.

  Killings accomplished; no killers apprehended.

  R. C. Hammond stood by the hotel window, listening to the excited tones of the Jamaican announcer. When Hammond spoke, his shock was clear.

  “My God … Every one of those men at one time or another was under the glass”—

  “The what?”

  “Suspected of high crimes. Malfeasance, extortion, fraud … Nothing was ever proved out.”

  “Something’s been proved out now.”

  Paris was next. Reuters sent out the first dispatches, picked up by all the wire services within minutes. Again, the number was four. Four Frenchmen—actually, three French men and one woman. But still four.

  Again, they were prominent figures in industry and government. And the M.O.’s were identical: rifle, explosives, strychnine, knife.

  The Frenchwoman was a proprietor of a Paris fashion house. A ruthless sadist long considered an associate of the Corsicans. She was shot from a distance as she emerged from a doorway on the St.-Germain-des-Prés. Of the three men, one was a member of the president’s all-important Elysée Financial; his Citroën exploded when he turned his ignition on in the Rue du Bac. The two other Frenchmen were powerful executives in shipping companies—Marseilles-based, under the Paraguayan flag … owned by the Marquis de Chatellerault. The first spastically lurched and died over a café table in the Montmartre—strychnine in his late-morning espresso. The second had his chest torn open by a butcher’s knife on the crowded sidewalk outside the Georges V Hotel.

  Minutes after Paris came Berlin.

  On the Kurfurstendam Strasse, the Unter Schriftführer of the Bundestag’s AuBenpolitik was shot from the roof of a nearby building as he was on his way to a luncheon appointment. A Direktor of Mercedes-Benz stopped for a traffic light on the Autobahn, where two grenades were thrown into the front seat of his car, demolishing automobile and driver in seconds. A known narcotics dealer was given poison in his glass of heavy lager at the bar of the Grand Hotel, and an appointee of the Einkünfte Finanzamt was stabbed expertly—death instantaneous—through the heart in the crowded lobby of the government building.

  Rome followed. A financial strategist for the Vatican, a despised cardinal devoted to the church militants’ continuous extortion of the uninformed poor, was dropped by an assassin firing a rifle from behind a Bernini in St. Peter’s Square. A funzionario of Milan’s Mondadori drove into a cul-de-sac on the Via Condotti, where his automobile exploded. A lethal dose of strychnine was administered with cappuccino to a direttore of Customs at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. A knife was plunged into the ribs of a powerful broker of the Borsa Valori as he walked down the Spanish Steps into the Via Due Marcelli.

  London, Paris, Berlin, Rome.

  And always the figure was four … and the methods identical: rifle, explosives, strychnine, knife. Four diverse, ingenious modi operandi. Each strikingly news-conscious, oriented for shock. All killings the work of expert professionals; no killers caught at the scenes of violence.

  The radio and the television stations no longer made attempts to continue regular programming. As the names came, so too did progressively illuminating biographies. And another pattern emerged, lending credence of Hammond’s summary of the four slain Englishmen: the victims were not ordinary men of stature in industry and government. There was a common stain running through the many that aroused suspicions about the rest. They were individuals not alien to official scrutinies. As the first hints began to surface, curious newsmen dug swiftly and furiously, dredging up scores of rumors, and more than rumor—facts: indictments (generally reduced to the inconsequential), accusations from injured competitors, superiors, and subordinates (removed, recanted … unsubstantiated), litigations (settled out of court or dropped for lack of evidence).

  It was an elegant cross-section of the suspected. Tarnished, soiled, an aura of corruption.

  All this before the hands on McAuliff’s watch read nine o’clock. Two hours past twelve, London time. Two o’clock in the afternoon in Mayfair.

  Commuter time in Washington and New York.

  There was no disguising the apprehension felt as the sun made its way from the east over the Atlantic. Speculation was rampant, growing in hysteria: a conspiracy of international proportions was suggested, a cabal of self-righteous fanatics violently implementing its vengeances throughout the world.

  Would it touch the shores of the United States?

  But, of course, it had.

  Two hours ago.

  The awkward giant was just beginning to stir, to recognize the signs of the spreading plague.

  The first news reached Jamaica out of Miami. Radio Montego picked up the overlapping broadcasts, sifting, sorting … finally relaying by tape the words of the various newscasters as they rushed to verbalize the events spewing out of the wire service teletypes.

  Washington. Early morning. The Undersecretary of the Budget—a patently political appointment resulting from openly questioned campaign contributions—was shot while jogging on a backcountry road. The body was discovered by a motorist at 8:20; the time of death estimated to be within the past two hours.

  Noon. London time.

  New York. At approximately seven o’clock in the morning, when one Gianni Dellacroce—reputed Mafia figure—stepped into his Lincoln Continental in the attached garage of his Scarsdale home, there was an explosion that ripped the entire enclosure out of its foundation, instantly killing Dellacroce and causing considerable damage to the rest of the house. Dellacroce was rumored to be …

  Noon. London time.

  Phoenix, Arizona. At approximately 5:15 in the morning, one Harrison Renfield, international financier and real-estate magnate with extensive Caribbean holdings, collapsed in his private quarters at the Thunderbird Club after a late party with associates. He had ordered a predawn breakfast; poison was suspected, as a Thunderbird waiter was found unconscious down the hall from Renfield’s suite. An autopsy was ordered.… Five o’clock, Mountain time.

  Twelve, noon. London.

  Los Angeles, California. At precisely 4:00 A.M. the junior senator from Nevada—recently implicated (but not indicted) in a Las Vegas tax fraud—stepped off a launch onto a pier in Marina del Ray. The launch was filled with guests returning from the yacht of a motion-picture producer. Somewhere between the launch and the base of the pier, the junior senator from Nevada had his stomach ripped open with a blade so long and a cut so deep that the cartilage of his backbone protruded through spinal lacerations. He fell among the revelers, carried along by the boisterous crowd until the eruptions of the warm fluid that covered so many was recognized for the blood that it was. Panic resulted, the terror alcoholic but profound. Four in the morning. Pacific time.

  Twelve noon. London.

  McAuliff looked over at the silent, stunned Hammond.

  “The last death reported was four in the morning … twelve o’clock in London. In each country four died, with four corresponding—identical—methods of killing … The Arawak units of four—the death Odyssey … that’s what they call it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Deal with the Halidon, Hammond. You have no choice; this is their proof. They said it was only the tip.”

  “The tip?”

  “The tip of the Dunstone iceberg.”

  “Impossible demands!” roared R. C. Hammond, the capillaries in his face swollen, forming splotches of red anger over his skin. “We will not be dictated to by goddamn niggers!”

  “Then you won’t get the list.”

  “We’ll force it out of them. This is no ti
me for treaties with savages!”

  Alexander thought of Daniel, of Malcolm, of the incredible lakeside community, of the grave of Acquaba, the vaults of Acquaba. Things he could not, would not, talk about. He did not have to, he considered. “You think what’s happened the work of savages? Not the killings, I won’t defend that. But the methods, the victims … Don’t kid yourself.”

  “I don’t give a damn for your opinions.” Hammond walked rapidly to the telephone on the bedside table. Alex remained in a chair by the television set. It was the sixth time Hammond had tried to place his call. The Britisher had only one telephone number he could use in Kingston; embassy telephones were off-limits for clandestine operations. Each time he had managed to get a line through to Kingston—not the easiest feat in Montego—the number was busy.

  “Damn! Goddammit!” exploded the agent.

  “Call the embassy before you have a coronary,” said McAuliff. “Deal with them.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” replied Hammond. “They don’t know who I am. We don’t use embassy personnel.”

  “Talk to the ambassador.”

  “What in God’s name for? What am I supposed to say? ‘Pardon me, Mr. Ambassador, but my name’s so-and-so. I happen to be …’ The bloody explanation—if he’d listen to it without cutting me off—would take the better part of an hour. And then the damn fool would start sending cables to Downing Street!” Hammond marched back to the window.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “They’ve isolated me, you understand that, don’t you?” Hammond remained at the window, his back to McAuliff.

  “I think so.”

  “The purpose is to cut me off, force me to absorb the full impact of the … past three hours.…” The Britisher’s voice trailed off in thought.

  McAuliff wondered. “That presupposes they know the Kingston telephone, that they shorted it out somehow.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Hammond, his eyes still focused on the waters of the bay. “By now Kingston knows I’ve been taken. Our men are no doubt activating every contact on the island, trying to get a bearing on my whereabouts. The telephone would be in constant use.”