He pressed his forehead against the glass the glass was warm, the carpet beneath his feet was warm, the wall against which he pressed his hand was very warm and below him he could see the two figures emerge from the building, each carrying a suitcase, and hurry off through the flickering red in the direction of the boathouses.
Oh, would they! Baron turned, his eyes more accustomed to the darkness now, and found his way to the gun cabinet, still hanging open. He selected a Colt .45, the United States model, checked to be sure the clip was full, and then made his way across the room and down the stairs to where the casino at last had grown hot enough for the flames to begin to make headway. He crossed his arms in front of his face and ran from the building, the hair on his forearms singeing with an audible sound and a disgusting smell.
Outside, the holocaust stunned him for a second. People, the fainted or the trampled, lay like unwanted rag dolls amid the rock gardens, sprawled on their faces. Others still ran this way and that, some calling out names, looking for the lost or looking to be found. More were milling about on the piers, from which the last boat had already left.
The whole island was a torch, lighting the sea around itself. The power plant at the peak of the island burned with a particular brilliance, the bright flames releasing from their tonguelike tips great billows of black smoke, which were swept away westward on the prevailing winds, blending with the black sky, putting out the brilliant white dots of the stars.
Through the heat and the light Baron ran, cursing in four languages, the automatic hanging like a club from the end of his right arm. He hurried past the collapsing hulk of the staff’s quarters, down the path to the boathouses, and saw the two of them ahead of him, striding towards the boat, the suitcases swinging at their sides. He closed the distance between them, and just as they reached the boat and tossed the suitcases aboard he stopped, and levelled his arm out straight, and twice he fired.
One of them fell on the dock, one into the boat. In the uncertain light, in his excited frame of mind, he had no idea whether the shots had been fatal or not, but he didn’t care. A .45 automatic hits hard, no matter where it hits, hard enough at the very least to knock them out. The one on the dock was either dead now or would burn to death later. The one in the boat was either dead now or would drown later. In any case, there was no time to spare on them now.
He ran to the boat and climbed aboard it, and instantly realized this was the boat the boys had intercepted and sent on its way one noontime a couple of weeks ago. The boat had clearly not contained customers, the way it was behaving, so he had ordered some staffmen out to question its occupants, and after circling the island once it had gone away. So it had been a reconnaissance after all, a first trip by these idiots now dead and dying.
Baron knew boats. He got this one started right away, and headed straight out to sea. He fled half an hour on a line due south before moving away from the wheel and then the first thing he did was go back to the body on the deck.
It was not Grofield, not any face Baron had ever seen before. He had never seen Parker, so this must be he. He looked different from what Baron had anticipated. No matter; he was dead and finished. Baron threw the body overboard.
He set his course for Mexico.
7
GROFIELD lay in darkness, his mind uncertain, wavering between lucidity and delirium. He only kept control of one idea: if Baron found him he would die. He couldn’t defend himself against Baron now, and Baron would surely want to kill him, so the answer was he would die. To keep it from happening, he must keep tight his grip on the springs.
In and out of consciousness, in and out of pain, Grofield kept his grip on the springs.
For the fifth time tonight, for the fifth time in his life, Grofield had been shot. This one, he was afraid, this one was much worse than the other four. The pain was too diffuse, too changing and echoing, for him to be certain exactly where the bullet had entered him, but he believed it was in the back just below the left shoulder. He also believed the bullet was still in him, since he felt no equivalent pain at the top left side of his chest.
The hit had knocked him out for a while, he wasn’t sure how long. He’d come to slowly, being first aware that he was in a vehicle of some kind, in something that moved and rocked, and then coming to understand that he was in a boat. Because he was lying on something soft, he’d assumed at first he was in a bed or bunk and that Parker was operating the boat. But then he came closer to the surface of the world and realized he was lying on something too lumpy and oddly shaped to be a bed, and when at last he opened his eyes he found himself staring into the dead eyes of Ross, an inch away.
That shocked him the rest of the way to consciousness. He was on deck, in against the side wall, lying atop dead Ross. And the man at the wheel was not Parker, definitely not Parker.
He remained conscious that time long enough to think and long enough to act. He knew he was no match for Baron now, and that meant he had to hide, and the only place to hide on board a boat was somewhere below.
It was possible to get below without passing Baron at the wheel. Grofield crawled, pulling himself along with his left arm dragging, and when he got to the ladder he crawled backward to it, doing most of the work with his legs, and he was still so weak he fell part of the way, landing hard on the carpet down below, knocking the wind out of himself, and some of the clarity, for a few minutes.
When he was aware of himself again, he lay on his back in the middle of the main cabin, looking around, trying to find a hiding place. But everything was so compact on a boat like this, so small and so open, no wasted space or hidden corners anywhere.
Compact. Wasn’t there a fold-up bed concealed in one wall? There was, he knew there was. This boat was supposed to sleep eight, and that was accomplished with the help of a sofa that converted into a bed and another bed that folded conveniently away into the wall.
He had to fight great dizziness and weakness and a wandering mind, but he managed to rise, and to find the way to open the bed, and to lower it to the floor. But there was no excess space behind it, no place for him to hide.
His exertions were making the wound bleed more; the back of his coat and his sleeve were heavy and sopping and gluelike with blood. There were stains on the carpet, but that couldn’t be helped.
And there was more to be done, if he wasn’t to die here, as helpless as a kitten. He wrestled the mattress off the bed and onto the floor. Sometimes lying down, sometimes kneeling, he tugged and pushed and mangled the mattress through the doorway into the forward cabin and, folded lengthwise in half, under one of the beds there. Baron, when he looked, could simply believe the owners had for some reason of their own brought an extra mattress aboard, unless Baron was familiar with this sort of boat, and knew about hideaway beds, in which case all this struggle was for nothing, and he would die cowering in a hole in the wall behind a bed, like a silent movie lover discovered by an irate cross-eyed husband. In any case, Baron would be looking for him, that much was certain.
But there was nothing a man could do other than his best. Grofield made his way back to the centre cabin, up onto the twanging springs of the bed, and finally half-erect in the rectangular hole behind it, looking like a three-dimensional painting of despair.
He got the bed up, with great difficulty, and then he crouched in darkness, leaning against the walls at his back and right side, his fingers clutching the springs. He must not let the bed fall open. He must not lose consciousness so much that he should lose his balance and let the bed and himself crash down and out into plain sight.
He knew Baron would go back within the hour to throw the two bodies overboard, and he knew immediately afterwards Baron would begin the search. He could only hope Baron would not find him here and would believe Grofield had gone overboard.