“Mr. Moyes .
“Tully.”
“Tully, I know my story sounds outrageous but believe me, it’s true. I came out here because Tom Sirioot said you’re just crazy enough to take me over to Jekyll Island.”
“In this storm?”
“Right now.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life. If you won’t do it, can you call somebody who can?”
“Nope,” the lean man said, scratching his beard.
“Why not?”
“Phones are out. Been out for a couple hours now. Couldn’t call anybody if I wanted to. Besides, if I was to call anybody it’d be the Coast Guard. They wouldn’t believe you, but at least they wouldn’t laugh at me. No sir, we can’t call anybody and you can’t walk back to town. It’s over two miles and by now the water’s up to your knees out there.”
“Tully, I’m going over to that island if I have to swim over.”
“L.ook, Mr. Keegan, I’m eatin’ my Thanksgiving dinner. Me and Chelsea
He pointed to a black lab curled before the fireplace. It stared soulfully up at both of them, snorted and went back to sleep.
“Tully, you get me on the island over there and I’ll take you to New York and buy you the best turkey dinner you ever ate.”
“I’m eatin’ king mackerel, Mister. . . what’d you say your name was again . . . ?“
“Frank. Frank Keegan.”
Frank. I don’t eat anything that has feathers on it and flies through the air.”
“Well, whatever you want. Christ, I’ll buy you a year’s supply of king mackerel. Here, look .
He took out his money clip and counted out ten hundred- dollar bills and slapped them on the coffee table.
“Is that serious enough for you?”
Moyes perused the bills, separated them with a forefinger.
“That’s a thousand dollars!”
“You’re right.”
“You offering me a thousand dollars to take you right over there?” He jabbed his thumb toward Jekyll Island.
Keegan nodded.
“Government must pay you boys pretty well.” He took another swig of brandy, then got up and threw a log on the fire.
“Y’know, my son died on a night like this. Playing tug-of-war out in the sound. Kids’d get arguing over whose shrimp boat was toughest, tie two of ‘em back to back and then see which one would tow the other. Kind of like playin’ chicken in cars.”
He walked to the window, leaned over and peered through a brass telescope. He aimed it at Jekyll and waited for lightning to light up the bay.
“Be almost four years ago. Night they graduated from high school, him and his buddy Jimmy Wertz, they had a couple of beers, got challenging each other. So they went at it.”
He kept staring through the glass. Seas were running two feet, he estimated. Not bad. Wind was probably twenty-five knots.
“Seas were running about two feet just like they are out there now. Jimmy pulled Ray’s stern under. She flooded from the stern and tipped over. Ray was trapped in the cabin. He floated up on King’s Way Beach two days later. The boat’s still down there. Ninety feet down on the bottom of the channel.”
He walked back to the table and washed down the rest of his brandy.
“My wife died last year. She never got over that night. Wouldn’t eat worth a damn. Just kind of wasted away. I think she really died of a broken heart. We were married twenty-six years.”
“I’m sorry,” Keegan said. “I know what it is to lose someone you love. My fiancée was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis. She died there.”
Moyes did not respond but his face clouded up. He stared across the table at Keegan.
“I found out about this Nazi agent, Twenty-seven, from her brother. He’s head of the resistance movement in Germany. At first nobody’d believe me. Thought I was nuts, just like you did. But I knew he wouldn’t bullshit me.”
He explained how they had turned up Fred Dempsey and later Trexler in Colorado and described the scene in the murdered family’s home.
“Look at it this way, Mr. Moyes. If I am telling the truth, what better time to kidnap these people than now? It’s a holiday. Everything’s closed. It couldn’t be any darker. And this guy has been on that island since Saturday or Sunday . .
“Monday morning. Saw ‘em go over . .
“Okay, since Monday morning. Point is, he’s not going to wait all winter to take these people. He’s going to do it quick
and he’s already been over there four days.”
He finished his drink. Moyes stared at him for a long time without speaking, then poured him another stout brandy.
“Thanks, I’ve had enough,” Keegan said.
“Drink it, you’ll need it, It’s less than a mile over there but it’s gonna be a tough, wet ride.”
“You mean we have a deal?”
“You know anything about runnin’ a boat?”
“Not that kind.”
“You know port from starboard?”
“That I do know.”
“Well He scooped up the ten bills. “It wasn’t gonna be much of a Thanksgiving dinner anyway. Besides, this’ll be a lot easier than shrimpin’ and a helluva lot more lucrative.”
In the dining room of the spired clubhouse, the women arrived in their formal dresses, the men in tuxedos and tails. It was going to be a gala feast and the mood was cheerful, despite the raging storm.
“Part of island life,” Grant Peabody joked as they scurried through the rain and sought the refuge of the wide piazza that surrounded the clubhouse.
Twenty-seven watched them from a dark cluster of trees. At his feet lay one of the guards, his heart pierced by 27’s SS dagger. Another guard was floating face-down in the inlet, his throat cut. The third guard was making his rounds. Huddled against the storm, he trotted from one cottage to the next, cursing the foul weather. He was hungry and looking forward to dinner. The guards would be fed after the others were finished. He finally found a moment’s shelter in the radio shack.
In the flickering flashes of lightning, he and the radio operator saw a man staring through the rain-specked window. He entered the radio shack.
“You gave us a start there, sir,” the guard said. “Looked like a ghost starin’ through the window.”
The man who was calling himself Allenbee smiled.
“I am a ghost,” he said, and they all laughed.
“Expecting a message?” the radioman asked without looking up. “I’ll tell you, sir, the reception is mighty poor and. .
Twenty-seven leaned over the radio operator from behind, placed the palm of one hand under his chin, the other hand on the top of his head and snapped his neck. The guard, completely taken by surprise, stared open-mouthed at Allenbee as he let the radio operator’s head fall on the desk. Allenbee’s arm made a short upward stroke as he thrust his dagger up under the guard’s rib cage, slicing deep into his chest.
The guard’s head fell forward onto Allenbee’s shoulder and the Nazi agent shoved him away. He fell dead at Allenbee’s feet.
Allenbee dismantled the radio, then rushed across the compound to the telephone room. It was empty, the phones having been out for hours. He cut all the phone lines just to make sure, then stepped inside the small room, checked the clips in his machine pistol and his .38. He looked at his watch.
It was seven-twenty. Perfect timing. He rushed back to the clubhouse, looked in the window just as the kitchen and maid staffs were herded into the room. Lady Penelope entered with a birthday cake ablaze with candles. She walked to the front of the room. Allenbee walked around to the front of the dining room and entered through one of the French doors that lined one side of the room.
The guests looked at him with surprise. He was wet to the skin, his hair streaked down over his forehead. He looked like a wraith.
“Good grief, what happened to you?” Peabody asked.
Allenbee drew the machine pistol and fired a burst into the ceiling. A stream of plaster splashed on the floor at his feet. There was a chorus of screams. The men looked at Allenbee in shock.