“How did that turn out for you?”
“My lawyer suggested to his lawyer that if his client would be willing to admit in public to doing some of the unsavory things my character had done, then he might have a case, and maybe twenty to life in Ossining as well.”
“So what do you think really happened to Peter Devereaux?” Finn asked, reining in the writer’s slightly meandering story. “Do you think there was any real connection between him and this Kerzner fellow?”
Mills took another sip of iced tea and leaned back against the pale couch cushions. “All I know for sure is that they both have suspicious backgrounds and that neither one of them was rescued before the hurricane and brought to the naval station in Key West.” He gestured toward the files on the coffee table. “I’ve got the list right there.”
“What about this Bishop Principe, is he on the list?”
“Yes. He was one of the ones who died during the fire.”
“What do you think happened to them?” Finn asked.
The old writer scratched delicately at his scalp, as though he was afraid of dislodging the last few wisps of hair floating almost invisibly across it. “Well, dear, before you and your pilot friend came along and screwed up my plot with your tall tale, I’d have said that they simply died in the explosion or the subsequent fire and were overlooked, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Somebody must have done a head count,” said Hilts. “You’d think it would have been a standard safety procedure.”
“It was,” replied Mills. “I had a lengthy telephone conversation with Capitan Francisco Crevicas, the master of the Acosta Star. He ran the check himself. A party of crew members checked every stateroom, every deck. Everyone was accounted for. He said that after everyone was off they stayed with the ship for more than an hour. He said by then some of the deck plates were glowing cherry red from the flames and paint was peeling off the hull in huge chunks. According to him no one could have survived.”
“Where was this?”
“Twenty miles south and slightly east of Curley Cut Cays. That’s the tip of Andros Island. According to the captain the fire broke out just as they were coming off the Tongue of the Ocean.”
“What did I tell you?” said Tucker Noe, speaking for the first time since they’d arrived.
“If you learn nothing else from your experience here,” said Mills, “learn that Bonefish Tucker Noe is always correct, right, Mr. Noe?”
“Always key-wreck, that’s key-wreck, Mistah Mills,” the old man answered with a smile and an outrageously put-on Bahamian accent.
Mills swooshed the ice cubes around in his empty glass. “You’ve asked me a lot of questions,” he said, looking at Finn. “Now I’d like to ask a few of my own.”
“Shoot,” said Finn. She glanced at Hilts, sitting beside her across from the white-haired writer. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
“As the unfortunate Mr. Lennon once said, everyone’s got something to hide,” responded Mills. “But that aside, can you tell me why you think your Mr. Adamson would be pursuing you so energetically. I met the man once or twice at cocktail parties and charity functions. He never struck me as being a homicidal maniac. You seem to be saying that the man is involved in some long-running criminal conspiracy involving stolen religious artifacts. It’s a little far-fetched, you’ll have to admit.”
Hilts answered. “Rolf Adamson comes from a long line of hyper-Christians. In his book, if it’s done in the name of Christ, it’s automatically ”right.’ ”
Mills smiled. “Hyper-Christian. Interesting term. You think he’s on some sort of crusade?”
“It worked for Richard the Lionheart. In his mind some kind of groundswell response to terrorism is just what the doctor ordered.”
“Fire with fire, that sort of thing?”
“And an eye for an eye.”
“Imperialism disguised as self-defense?”
“Something like that. We can invade everyone from Grenada to Afghanistan, but if anyone spills a drop of our blood, it’s terrorism.”
“Now we’re talking politics,” Mills said and smiled.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if politics wasn’t what it’s all about,” said Hilts. “Big power, big money, big politics.”
“Adamson?”
“Why not?” Hilts shrugged. “He uses this so-called Lucifer Gospel as a political device to rally around. The whole theory he’s putting out is that Christ spent his last days in the real promised land, America, which by definition makes Americans the real Chosen People.”
“Given the time frame it would probably make the chosen people members of the Algonquian tribe, if my knowledge of Native people is reliable.”
“The people from the Bible Belt could overlook that,” said Hilts. “Christ was an American; quite a platform for a fundamentalist political party. According to Adamson, the Lucifer Gospel is the one thing the Bible is missing: the teachings of Christ in his own words.”
“You truly think that’s what this is about?”
“Adamson’s got the background for it, and the ambition. He also has the money to make it happen. We’ve been heading in this direction since Reagan. Getting the United States back to its Puritan, witch-burning roots.”
“It’s still very hard to believe. According to you this man Hisnawi is involved. A Libyan, a Muslim. How do you explain that?”
“The same way you explain Iran, Iraq, even Venezuela and Cuba. Oil. Money. A deal. Who knows? Adamson’s got a lot of money and he’s been spreading it around. He got the license to launch a new dig in the desert for a reason, and it wasn’t to locate the remains of a Coptic monastery. Maybe Hisnawi wants to be the next dictator of Libya after he takes out Qaddafi, who’s getting pretty long in the tooth these days, I might add.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” said Mills.
Hilts nodded. “I’ve given it a lot of thought.”
“And you, Miss Ryan, where do you fit into all of this?”
“I’m not sure. At first I thought it might just have been a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You believe Mr. Hilts’s story?”
“I’m still with him, aren’t I? And Simpson’s involvement seems to be through me, or my father. I don’t have all the answers yet.”
“And you think those answers might be on the Acosta Star?”
“Some of them. One thing I do know is that we’re in a hurry. The passports we’re using aren’t going to last forever. We need proof to take to the authorities. At least something to show that we didn’t have anything to do with Vergadora’s murder. The ship is the next step, that much is clear.”
“I don’t think your Martin Kerzner with the Canadian passport and Peter Devereaux not turning up as a survivor is a coincidence any more than you do, Mr. Mills.” Hilts offered his own smile. “And I think you’re curious as hell to find out.”
The writer lifted his glass, took one of the ice cubes and cracked it between a set of remarkably strong teeth for a man of his years. He chewed on the broken chips for a moment, then swallowed. He put the glass down on the table again with a hard clunk.
“We’ll need something stronger than iced tea and lemon.” He grinned, then turned and looked back over his shoulder. Almost by magic Arthur the servant immediately appeared.
“Yes, sir?” the man said, shimmering into the room.
“Do we have any Kaliks in the refrigerator, Arthur?”
“I’m sure we do, sir.”
“Then why don’t you fetch us some,” said Mills. “Then my new friends and I can get down to work.”
31
The seaplane flew low over the dark, rich blue of the Caribbean at just over a hundred knots, the sculpted boat hull of the fuselage less than five hundred feet above the calm rolling sea. The sky above the high-set wings was almost perfectly clear, and the horizon ahead was a sharp, steady line except for a speeding dark island of squall far to the west.
Daffy’s two big Lycoming engines filled the cockpit with a steady, powerful roar, and the plane seemed to fly by itself. Hilts’s fingers on the old-fashioned throw-over yoke barely exerted any pressure, his free hand only rarely reaching up to the overhead knobs and throttles to make an occasional adjustment. They were an hour and a half out of Hollaback Cay, heading south above the Tongue of the Ocean.