He shook his head, thinking about how bad the situation was, and then he went slowly and carefully up on deck. The body of Ross was gone, too, he saw, and looked the other way, towards shore.
Bad. Desert type of place, nothing in sight.
Still, Baron must have known what he was doing, must have had some reason to stop here. Maybe just out of sight there was a city. Monterey. Or Corpus Christi. Or Eldorado.
A stray idea occurred to him. Was there any chance he might catch up with Baron, get the handle back? He didn’t know how much of a lead Baron had on him, maybe a full day’s worth, but was there nevertheless a chance it could be done?
The background music began, floating around his head. Arabic, partly, with threads of international intrigue. Foreign Legion, decidedly. A very Gary Cooper sort of role.
He felt his pockets and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and some matches. It was good the cigarette he lit was rumpled and bent, it added a dash of Humphrey Bogart to the blend. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he leaned on the rail at the bow and gazed towards shore.
What the hell, he’d have to go that way in any case. He couldn’t stay here. If he were to get the medical attention he needed, he had to find civilization, and that inevitably meant following in Baron’s footsteps. If, in so doing, he caught up with Baron, so much the better.
He’d have to prepare. He had no idea how far a town or city might be, or how much trouble he’d have reaching it. What might be a simple walk for Baron, hale and healthy, could be rough for Grofield the way he was right now.
He went back down into the cabin, in search of food. He’d left a few crackers, and these he stuffed in his shirt pocket. An empty Jack Daniels bottle would serve to carry water, and a half-full Jack Daniels bottle would serve to carry Jack Daniels. A wedge of American cheese went into his trouser pocket.
In a closet in the fore cabin he found a yachting cap. A hat would be good protection from the sun; he put it on and went up on deck, carrying the two bottles with him.
On deck, he changed his mind about one detail and decided it was foolish to carry two bottles, it would just weigh him down. He took three or four swigs from the bottle with the whisky in it, then tossed it overboard. Water would be more useful this time.
He clambered with difficulty over the side, waded through the shallow water, having trouble keeping his balance with all the rocks and stones underfoot, and made his first rest stop when he reached dry land.
The morning sun was still low on the horizon, making the sea gleam like a shield. To walk away from the sea. Grofield should head due west, and this meant keeping his back to the sun. Simple.
A halo of music. It was a martial air now, with a muted touch of wistfulness in it, a minor key. There’ll always be an England, a France, some damn place. Grofield moved out in time to the music, walking on his shadow stretched out in front of him, a thin elongated El Greco silhouette of himself.
He was somewhat unsteady, both because of the wound and because of the whisky. Still, he kept due west and he made fairly good time. The shadow of himself he walked on slowly shrank as the sun rose higher in the sky behind him, and when the shadow was no taller than the original he became aware of the heat.
It was building slowly but steadily. The early morning had been pleasant, if not cool, but now heat was massing on the floor of the world, stacked like woolly invisible blankets through which he had to walk. The sun beat on the back of his neck, and he knew for sure he already had a bad burn there. His left shoulder ached, but not badly.
He tried to make the water last, but he kept being thirsty, very thirsty. He hummed silently as he walked, and dreamed of other things, different times and places, the faces of people he knew and once had known.
He found he was walking towardsthe sun.
‘No,’ he said aloud. He turned around, very carefully. The shadow was a dwarf now, bunched up before his feet on the rock-bedraggled ground. He walked again.
‘This was very stupid,’ he whispered, and realized he was thirsty again, and held up the bottle to see it was empty. He grimaced at it, disappointed with the behaviour of the damn thing, and let it fall. It shattered on a rock.
He fell, not too badly, and got up again. He walked on, and fell again, and this time he didn’t get up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into the ground, apologizing to himself. ‘I shouldn’t have left the boat.’
He had been asleep, or unconscious, he couldn’t tell which, and then suddenly he was awake again. He rolled over on his back, unmindful of the stones, regardless of the sun’s light, and stared into the sky, and he thought he saw Parker coming down out of the sky on a cloud.
‘Sacrilege, Parker,’ he said aloud, and smiled, and closed his eyes.
FOUR
1
PARKER said, ‘There’s something there.’ He pointed down at the ground.
‘I see it,’ said the pilot.
England said, ‘If that’s our man, and he’s alive, we have no legal right to take him off Mexican soil.’
Parker had no time for England’s worries. He was staring towards the ground, trying to see suitcases. The helicopter lowered, and he could see it was a man down there, but no suitcases. Then the man rolled over on his back, staring up at the helicopter with its bulging transparent front bubble, the three men in it staring down at him, and Parker saw it wasn’t Baron. It was Grofield, and that was impossible.
Parker had last seen Grofield on the dock by the boathouses back at the island, just before he’d been shot. The bullet had hit him high on the right leg, spinning him around and throwing him to the ground, knocking him cold, but that was the second bullet. The first bullet had hit Grofield; Parker had seen him jerk forward.
When he’d come out of it, back there on the flaming island, the boat and the suitcases were gone, and a raging petulant England was standing over him, shaking him, shouting that Baron had got away. Parker had had no time nor inclination to look for Grofield’s body. There had been so many there, he’d just assumed one of them had to belong to Grofield.
The important thing was the money, and it figured the money was with Baron. According to England, Baron was on the boat, headed south.
Parker couldn’t stand then, though he kept trying. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘Are you on him?’
‘No. In all this wreckage you people caused, we lost him. We know he was heading south, it makes sense he’d try to get to Mexico, Cuba’s too far for him to reach, he must know that.’
‘Get on him,’ Parker said. ‘Find him.’ He was still trying to stand, still falling back. ‘And fix this leg,’ he said. ‘Fix it. Fix it. I can’t stand on it, fix it.’
They took him out to a Navy ship on a launch, where a guy in white cut off his trouser leg and somebody else in white, who said he was a doctor, probed around and took out the bullet. ‘You ought to stay off this,’ he said.
‘I can’t,’ Parker told him. England was still hanging around, yapping in his ear, wanting to know where he’d been the last week, why he’d ditched his tail, why Grofield and Salsa had suddenly turned on the men assigned to watch them at the island. Instead of getting on Baron, England stood around talking about ancient history.
When Parker told him to shut up and find Baron, England said, ‘We can’t look now, it’s the middle of the night, everywhere but on that damn island. It’s still burning, do you know that?’
‘When?’ Parker asked him.
‘When? Right now. Look at the red on the porthole, that’s fire,man.’
‘When do you look for Baron?’
‘When it gets light. In the morning.’
Parker said, ‘Nobody goes to him but me. They don’t go to him without me, that’s got to be part of it.’