A hand grenade.
Four
I ran forward, reached to scoop up the grenade. Even as my hand closed on it I was spinning around to the left, making a full arc and sending the familiar metal egg flying out over the water. I didn’t even wait for the explosion but ran ahead full speed toward the shack.
Someone in a dark suit stepped out from the cover of the shack. “Beautiful,” he was shouting. “Perfect, Kavanagh.”
There was a gun in his hand. If I stopped he would have a clean shot. If I kept going he might freeze, and if he froze I would have him wrapped up before he could kill me. There was no cover for me. All I could do was charge the gun.
“Kavanagh!”
I was fifteen yards from him when the bullet slapped the sand in front of me. I stopped in my tracks.
“Easy, Paul. Easy. Don’t come any closer.”
“You’re on my island.”
“Take it easy, Paul.”
“My island. My house.”
“Relax.”
“You threw a grenade at me.”
“It was a dud, Paul.”
“A grenade.”
A smile. “Just a dud, Paul. A dummy, not a real grenade. Had to find out how you’d react. Like poetry in motion. A real grenade would have exploded in the water, Paul. And this one didn’t. There was no noise.”
I thought. He was right; there had been no explosion.
“You threw a grenade at me,” I said. Fifteen yards separated us. He had his gun aimed right at my chest. It looked like a .45, powerful enough so that even a hip or shoulder wound would carry me out of the play.
“Paul—”
“You know my name.”
“Why, of course I do, Paul.”
“Nobody around here knows my name.” I had stopped using my own name when I left Miami. No one on Mushroom Key could possibly have known it. Clint Mackey called me Gordon when he called me anything at all, but I had left it open as to whether that was my first or last name. “Nobody knows my name. You’re on my island, you threw a grenade at me. Who the hell are you?”
“You know me, Paul.”
I stared at him. Good clothes, light brown hair, tall, thin, eyes hidden behind horn-rimmed sunglasses.
“I don’t know you.”
“This help?” He took off the sunglasses, squinted at me, replaced them before I could rush him. “How do you stand the sun around here? But I guess you get used to it. And it seems to agree with you, Paul. I’ll bet you’ve never looked better. I preferred you without the beard, personally, but—”
“I don’t know you.”
“You did once. Calm yourself down, Paul. Take it easy.”
“Who are you?”
“We met once. We talked.”
“Where?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“I’m really sorry about the grenade. It may have been unnecessary, but I had to know right away whether this back-to-nature routine had turned you hard or soft. You gave me the answer I wanted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being move so fast. You could have stared at the thing trying to figure out what it was and what to do with it, but instead you swung right into action. Beautiful to watch.”
“You—”
“Beginning to remember, Paul?”
“Washington,” I said.
“That’s the boy.”
“Washington. Dattner. George Dattner.”
I kept my eyes on his face but concentrated on the gun. “How did you find me, Dattner?”
“You were never lost.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were never out of sight, Paul. Not for very long, anyway. We had a man on you in New York. How did you enjoy Mrs. Jenss, by the way?”
“Who?”
“Sharon Jenss. Our man said she was damned attractive, and you certainly spent a lot of time with her. He said—”
“What the hell is this all about?”
“It’s about you, Paul.” He smiled. I thought back to our meeting in my room at the Doulton. Dattner seemed different, somehow. Or maybe it was just that I had grown different eyes. “Then you went to Miami, and then a few other places, and then we sort of lost track of you. I knew you were somewhere in the Keys. I didn’t know where, but all I had to do was scout around. No matter how careful a man is, he always seems to leave a trail. You used a lot of different names, didn’t you, Paul? And did you really throw Mr. Gregg overboard?”
“Who?”
“The real estate man.”
“Oh.”
“You wouldn’t believe the things he said about you. But after I talked with him I knew where you were. So this afternoon I rented a boat and came out here.”
“From Mushroom Key?”
“No. Little Table Key. Over that way.”
Little Table Key was no farther away from my island than Mushroom Key, but it was almost twice as large. I had been there once and had liked it less than Clint’s.
“You haven’t been to Mushroom Key?”
“No.”
I thought for a moment. “Get back in your boat,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Get in your boat and get the hell out.”
“Paul, Paul.” He shook his head sadly. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m here?”
“No.”
“Not interested at all?”
“No. You’re on my island, you threw a grenade at me. I just want you to go away.”
“The Noble Savage,” he said. “We need you, Paul.”
“We?”
“The Agency.”
I looked at him. “You’re crazy.”
“No. And neither are you, although you sound it right about now. The Agency has a job for you.”
“The Agency already sent me away.”
“Things have changed.”
“Go to hell.”
“And you’ve changed, too, Paul. In plenty of ways.”
I didn’t say anything. I took a tentative step toward him, but the gun came up and stopped me. He told me not to come any closer.
“You won’t shoot.”
“One more step and you’ll find out the hard way.”
“You wouldn’t come all the way out here just to shoot me. You want me for something. You don’t want to kill me.”
“I don’t want to get killed by you, either. I’ll shoot you in the leg, Paul.”
I stayed where I was. “Talk,” I said.
“You’re ready to listen? You’re calm enough?”
“I’m ready.”
He drew a breath. “You had me worried for a minute there,” he said. “What I’ve got to say is simple enough. We kept a watch on you because we thought you might come in handy sooner or later. You were going through a bad time emotionally, and we couldn’t risk hiring you because the odds were very long against your coming out of it in a form we could use. But men with your qualifications aren’t easy to find. So even though we couldn’t make any use of you just then, it didn’t hurt to tie a string on you.”
He paused for no apparent reason. I decided he wanted some sort of assurance that I was listening, so I nodded.
“Then this job came up. When I give you the details you’ll see why it’s just right for you. Pull it off and there’ll be a job open for you.”
“I don’t want a job.”
“You might change your mind. But think of it as an open contract, no strings on either side. You’ll be paid for your work on this one, and our rates for freelancers are more generous than you might think. There’s a lot of money in it for you.”
“I don’t need money.”
“Everybody needs money.”
“I don’t.”
“And everybody needs something to do.”
“Nothing is plenty.”
He grinned. “I read your list,” he said. “I like it.”
He read my list. He found me, he came to my island, he went into my house, he read my list.
I turned to look across the island. I couldn’t see his boat from where I was standing. All I had to do was get him to realize that there was nothing that would make me leave my island. Then he would get back in his boat and head back to Little Table Key and Key West and Washington and never bother me again.