My Gal Sunday

  Senior Secret Service agent Jack Collins stirred restlessly. He was seated a table away from former President Britland, and that inner voice which warned him of danger was shrieking at him now.

  Something was up. His eyes moved restlessly around the room, scanning the occupants with MRI intensity. The diners were obviously affluent — a lot of older couples, some family groups with young children. They were all tanned, relaxed, and smiling. A group of suits were swapping stories.

  Probably here on a golf outing that would be charged to their company as a business meeting, Collins thought sourly.

  He watched as a ramrod-postured male, every inch of his body showing annoyance, exited the restaurant, almost colliding with four well-dressed women in their sixties. Collins observed the ladies follow the maître d’ into the room, then register obvious displeasure when he escorted them to a back table situated between the family groups. If they had a man with them that wouldn’t happen, he thought.

  He noticed a woman at the smallest window table, looking pensively out over the water. Gray hair, a lined face, plain sunglasses, a woebegone expression — she looked like someone recently bereaved.

  Collins’s eyes moved past her, on down the row of tables. He just didn’t like the vibes he was getting. Something seemed wrong here. It was a distinct relief when, an hour later, the Britlands got up to go.

  As they passed the reservations desk, the former president beckoned to Collins. “Jack,” he said, “a guy in the dining room left abruptly without eating. Did you notice him? There was something familiar about him. See what you can find out.”

  Collins nodded. Signaling the four accompanying agents to close around the Britlands, he sent them ahead, while he stopped at the desk.

  When he returned to Belle Maris an hour later, he had already arranged for round-the-clock surveillance of the hotel guest registered under the name of “Norman Ballinger.” The dining-room captain’s tale of the open cigarette case, followed by the room clerk’s amused description of Ballinger’s plans to have “innings of golf” — no wonder his instincts were on red alert, he thought.

  His beeper sounded seconds after he entered the mansion. “You’re onto something, Jack,” headquarters informed him. “ Ballinger is really Congor Reuthers, the one person close to Angelica del Rio. He’s always in the background of the political scene, but the word is that he has stayed in favor by being her troubleshooter.”

  “What’s he doing in Boca Raton?” Collins demanded.

  “We think he knows Alesso is there and wants to keep track of his movements. We’ll have him tailed, but be on guard. Reuthers doesn’t get his own hands dirty. He may have others with him.”

  Collins got off the phone and wished he could shake the ominous feeling that Henry Parker Britland IV should not have purchased the Columbia.

  On Tuesday morning, Lenny Wallace was painfully aware of the heightened security on the Columbia.

  At 7 A.M. he had checked in with Reuthers and had been informed that Miguel Alesso, the dissident leader running against the prime minister in next week’s election, was to have lunch with former President Britland on the yacht.

  “You must retrieve those papers,” Reuthers had snapped at him. “The prime minister is personally involved in this. Failure is not an option.”

  He then instructed Lenny to find some way to get into the dining room so that he could try to overhear what was being said at the luncheon.

  Lenny made a supreme effort to keep from telling Reuthers that only an imbecile would believe that a deckhand, unless he were invisible, could wander into any room where a highly confidential top-level meeting was taking place. Instead, he thought of Mama and his aunties and promised to do his very best.

  He did point out that when the former president was aboard the Columbia, his senior Secret Service agent, Jack Collins, was also there, and seemed to have the ability to know any time anyone on the boat so much as sneezed.

  Reuthers had one last word: “You should know that your mother and her sisters are under house arrest — only temporarily, I’m sure. Do whatever you think best.”

  At precisely twelve o’clock, Lenny was on the crew deck, binoculars pressed to his eyes, observing as a limo pulled up to the dock. He watched as two men and a woman stepped from it and boarded the launch: the Britlands, and with them, the opposition leader of Costa Baria, Miguel Alesso.

  An unexplored possibility crossed Lenny’s mind: Alesso was gaining in popularity. Everywhere he made an appearance, the people went wild. Suppose I can’t find the papers? I could just disappear. If by some crazy chance he wins the election, I could get in touch with him, tell him what I was assigned to do. Then I could tell him where the bodies are buried. Maybe he’d reward me.

  But no, that could not be. He knew that. By the time the election was over it would be too late for his Mama and his aunties, those wonderful women who were known as the “Alphabet Sisters.” Mama, the oldest, was Antonella, the next oldest was Bianca, the third, Concetta, and so on until the youngest, Iona.

  Lorenzo Esperanza, aka Lenny Wallace, felt a renewed sense of duty as he brushed the tears from his eyes.

  The ring of truth, Sunday thought. It emanates from him. She and Henry were seated with Miguel Alesso in the salon. Henry had suggested that Alesso take Sir Winston’s favorite armchair.

  “I’m out of my league,” Alesso said with a slight smile, “although in a small way I may be able to compare my country’s precarious state with that of England during World War II.”

  Sunday knew that Alesso was scarcely thirty years old, but his air of grave maturity, his dark hair, heavily streaked with gray, and the wise yet sad expression in his hazel eyes combined to make him seem at least a decade older.

  Now he leaned forward, his demeanor intense. “Angelica del Rio planned and carried out the assassination of a truly great man,” he said passionately. “Her father, as you know, sir, was the commander of Costa Barria’s army. She married the prime minister on her father’s orders, always — I am convinced — with the intention of eliminating him. She was then and remains now a great beauty and also quite charismatic. And after all, as the saying goes, a man is a man . . .”

  He shrugged mournfully. “She changed his personal bodyguards, replaced them with the thugs who betrayed him, including her distant English cousin, who is now known as Congor Reuthers.

  “According to information I have gathered, she drugged her husband as well as your father and yourself, sir, with the special dessert her personal chef prepared. It was she who rendered Garcia del Rio unconscious. His bodyguards, led by Reuthers, weighted down his body and threw it overboard. It must have sunk to the very bottom of the ocean.

  “The bodyguards expected to be rewarded. They were. Upon their return to Costa Barria with the grieving widow, they were executed for dereliction of duty — all except, of course, for Reuthers.”

  “I still don’t understand why she chose that night, on this yacht,” Henry observed.

  Sunday studied her husband. He sat erect in his captain’s chair, his chin resting on his left hand, his entire being concentrated on Alesso. She could almost hear the strains of “Hail to the Chief” floating through the air.

  “Angelica had received a phone call from her father, the general, telling her that her husband was aware of an impending assassination attempt involving his bodyguards. He also informed her that del Rio was aware of the millions of dollars she had siphoned from the charities she headed. He was planning to have her arrested when they returned to Costa Barria. There was no other option. She had to make her move immediately.”

  Makes sense, Sunday agreed silently.

  “Their plan was that Angelica’s father would take over the government. But the general suffered a heart attack the next week, and she seized the opportunity to take over herself. She filled out her husband’s term of office, then, capitalizing on the love the people had for him, she seized absolute power.”

  “What proof is
there of all this?” Henry asked. “You did talk about proof, señior.”

  Alesso shrugged. “The proof is in the envelope that Garcia del Rio passed to you when you were a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “And how do you know all this?” the former president asked.

  “One of the bodyguards tried to bribe a prison official to allow him to escape execution,” Alesso replied. “He told the official about del Rio’s murder and said that Reuthers had searched del Rio’s body for an envelope before it was thrown overboard. The envelope contained a statement from del Rio, the one he was planning to make, accusing his wife. She had managed to get a glimpse of it, but didn’t have time to remove it from his jacket before they went to dinner.”

  “Why didn’t any of this ever come out?” Sunday asked.

  Alesso looked astonished at the question. “The prison official would have signed his own death warrant if he had admitted he knew the prime minister had been murdered,” he said. “But as he got older and drank a little more wine, as old men sometimes do, he began to talk. Eventually he talked too much. Then he disappeared.”

  “And now, all these years later, the puzzle is finally put together,” Henry mused.

  “No, sir,” Alesso corrected, “the puzzle is not together until those papers, if they still exist, are located. But for the immediate present, I beg both of you to support my candidacy. I beg you, Congresswoman Britland, not to vote aid to my people while Angelica del Rio remains in power. To support her is to support oppression.”

  Sunday found herself unable to hold his intense gaze. She looked away, afraid to let him see the indecision in her own eyes.

  “And you, sir,” Alesso said, looking at Henry, “I implore you to urge the chief executive of the United States to cancel any plans to honor Angelica del Rio with a state dinner. The imprimatur of your great nation must not be given to strengthen a tyrant’s hand.”

  Lenny knew there was no way he could hope to get on the upper deck while the meeting was taking place. But he did learn that after the luncheon the Britlands were returning to Belle Maris until their early-morning departure for Washington. That meant the omnipresent Secret Service would be guarding the mansion, not the yacht.

  Lenny was scheduled to go off duty at 5 P.M. He knew it would seem odd if he did not make an immediate beeline for shore. As he scrubbed the teak deck, he hit upon an idea. No one would expect someone with food poisoning to leave his bunk.

  An hour later he presented himself to the purser. Perspirationlike moisture covered his face, his eyelids were at half-mast, his gait unsteady.

  “Something I ate,” he whined, clutching at his stomach.

  Ten minutes later he was in his cabin on the crew deck, lying on his bunk and getting up his courage to sneak up to Stateroom A. That would have to wait until later, though, under the cover of late-night darkness and lightened security.

  “Coming events cast their shadows before,” Henry thought that evening as he sipped espresso.

  He and Sunday were dining on the flower-filled terrace of Belle Maris. Tapered candles sent soft, flickering points of flame toward the full moon, which bathed the Columbia in eerie majesty.

  “Darling, you’re so quiet,” Sunday observed as she nodded to Sims to accept a refill of her double espresso.

  “Even you won’t sleep after all that coffee,” Henry admonished mildly.

  “You know me, Henry. I could sack out on a picket fence. It’s my clear conscience that does the trick.” She took a sip and smacked her lips. “As the old saying went, ‘Man, that’s coffee.’”

  Her expression became serious. “Henry, I haven’t asked you yet, but I’m going to now. You do believe Alesso’s story, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do, for more than one reason. Last night at the restaurant I got a good look at that man who seemed so familiar. As you know, I was right. I had seen him before. He’s Angelica del Rio’s right-hand man. And he was on the Columbia that night thirty-two years ago. He was near the prime minister and me when del Rio passed me the envelope. Logically, when he didn’t find it on del Rio, he’d suspect I had it. If he knows Alesso has uncovered the truth, he’ll move heaven and earth to get that envelope back. If I could take the yacht apart inch by inch, I would. But it was out of our hands for thirty-two years. Who knows if some maid didn’t find it stuck somewhere and just toss it out!”

  “Are you going to suggest that Des cancel the state visit for Madame del Rio?” Sunday asked.

  “State visits aren’t easily canceled, darling, except for grave reasons. If Madame del Rio wins the election next Tuesday and signs the human-rights agreement, stories circulated by her defeated opponent will be discounted. Without proof they simply cannot be considered credible. And as of now, Alesso has zero chance to beat her.”

  Sunday stared out at the Columbia. “Henry, know what? I’d like to spend one more night on the yacht. I love sleeping there. Would you mind?”

  Henry smiled. “I’m assuming I’m included in the plan. I think I would enjoy being rocked by the ocean myself, my love. Of course we’ll go. Who knows, maybe the Columbia will give up her secrets to us. Wouldn’t that be a cause to rejoice?”

  * * *

  At nine o’clock, before he left his cabin to retrieve the missing papers, Lenny arranged his bunk to give the appearance of a sleeping form within it.

  He had observed many cutters surrounding the Columbia and gleefully reminded himself that while they could make sure no one got on it, he was already there!

  Now that it was time to do the job, his nerves were tingling. The danger was in getting to Stateroom A. Once inside, he should be home free. There was no reason for anyone to even glance into the stateroom tonight.

  The hardest part would be to cut out a section of the thick oak paneling without making a noise. Reuthers had said that the envelope and journal pages had been dropped into the hole created for the safe, so they couldn’t have fallen any farther than to the floor, and he should find them there, behind the paneling.

  So it made sense to start at the bottom, he reasoned. It would be easier to reach up than down if the papers were wedged inside the wall.

  Armed with a saw, a small hammer, and a drill he had stolen from the equipment room, he cautiously left the crew’s quarters.

  The first two decks were clear. Obviously any guards were on the dock or in boats. On the upper deck he barely avoided walking into a Secret Service man stationed at the staircase that led to the private suite the Britlands used.

  Waste of manpower, Lenny thought, since they’re staying at the house. But the near miss worried him. They were staying in the house, weren’t they? he wondered.

  Three harrowing minutes later, he slipped into Stateroom A. He didn’t dare turn on the light, but fortunately the night was clear and the full moon illuminated everything. The stateroom was twenty times the size of the cubicle they had given him; it had a double bed with headboard, a built-in desk, built-in dressers, a sofa and chairs — everything to assure that even in a rough sea the occupant wouldn’t be inconvenienced.

  The closet was deep. Once inside, Lenny closed the door; only then did he feel able to turn on the flashlight in safety. There it was against the back wall, the safe! Round in shape to resemble a port hole, its door painted to depict a tranquil sea, the old-fashioned combination lock made to resemble a compass, it commanded Lenny’s undivided attention.

  He ran his fingers over it, reflecting that no gem that ever would be locked in it would be half so valuable as what was hidden under it.

  He sat on the floor and tapped the wood paneling to measure its thickness. Thick, he told himself, damn thick! A lot of trees bit the dust to build this boat, he thought, as he anticipated a long night’s work. Sure, if he had a big ax and an electric saw — and wanted to attract every guard and crew member aboard — he could make fast work of it, but that wasn’t in the cards. Cautiously he began to drill a hole a few inches up from the flooring.

  Every fifteen minute
s he paused to rest. Nearly two hours later, as he was stretching, he thought he heard a faint click. Snapping off the flashlight, he opened the closet door a crack. His eyes bulged in alarm.

  Standing in the quiet room, her back to him, a single desk lamp illuminating her slender nightgown-clad body, Congresswoman Sandra O’Brien Britland was turning down the covers. As Lenny watched in disbelief, she got into bed and turned off the light.

  * * *

  As usual, Henry is right, Sunday thought with a sigh, as she tried to settle down, having left her husband fast asleep in their suite on the deck above. Too much coffee. Her brain was racing. But it wasn’t just the coffee. There was something Henry had told her about that night he had spent in this very cabin thirty-two years ago that was hammering at her subconscious. What was it?

  If only those papers could be found, she thought. If Alesso is right, a woman murdered her husband on this yacht and the proof may have been stolen from the desk in this room.

  Clearly, sleep was out of the question. Henry was usually the one to read for several hours after she dropped off, but tonight he had dropped into a heavy slumber the moment his head hit the pillow.

  It happened so seldom that she had decided to tiptoe into the sitting room of the suite rather than to lie there stirring about and risk disturbing him. But then the idea of coming down to this cabin had hit her. After all, this was where the theft took place.

  Henry had told her something important about what had taken place in this room the night del Rio disappeared. But what? It must be something seemingly trivial that everyone had missed.

  She had reasoned that if she came to the cabin where whatever it was had occurred, that might help to bring elusive facts to the surface. Before leaving the suite, she had scrawled a note to Henry and left it on the pillow. He worries too much about me, she had thought as she placed it there, resisting the impulse to draw up the coverlet around his neck. It might only awaken him. And he might not want her to go.

  Art, the Secret Service agent stationed at the foot of the staircase, had been surprised to see her but had nodded when she told him where she would be.