It was another test. I knew Queet had already filled him in, the foregoing had been nothing more than ritual. There is a rite of passage when you deal with the Jamaicans, and I had made the mistake of trying to hustle through it. Jamaicans can't be hustled. There is a natural order to things, and part of that order is time. In the Jamaican perspective there will be a tomorrow, and it will be pretty much like today.
"My name is Wages, Elliott Grant Wages, but everybody calls me E.G. I'm looking for a shipwreck somewhere in the vicinity of the Tiger Reef. More specifically, I'm looking for containers that were supposed to be on that ship when it went down."
"How does Sarge fit into all of this, mon?"
"We've got a forty-seven footer out there that I'm told you know how to pilot."
Sargent shook his head. "No license. Had it pulled."
"That's taken care of," I assured him. "I know all about it."
Sarge seemed satisfied, the information meshing with what Queet had told him. The smile reappeared. "When?" he repeated.
"There's an old Nautiprince at Impalia, pier four, third slip — the Sloe Gin. She's outfitted and ready to go."
"When?" he repeated.
"Now! I want to clear the harbor by ten this morning."
Bearing's arrangements for the Prometheus team weren't exactly spartan. The Sloe Gin, while a little worn around the edges, could sleep eight, and assuming Byron Huntington stayed for the duration, we would have only six even after Queet joined us. Hannah led the boarding party and made some hard choices right there on the dock about which gear was essential and which was going to have to be left behind. Even Byron got into the act. Still grousing about his experience with the customs people earlier in the morning, he actually carted his own two suitcases on board. One, he informed us, was clothing, while the second was loaded with chemicals. Maggie immediately laid claim to the forward cabin for the ladies. It had two berths, a modest amount of storage space, a hanging locker and ready access to the head.
Both the ladies, as it turned out, had some sailing experience equal to or exceeding mine, and between the three of us we figured we could give Sargent all the support he would need. By the time he boarded, fired up the wheezing old diesel and maneuvered us out of the narrow inlet, it was 11:30. Considering the way most Jamaicans view time, it was not a bad start.
He took us just far enough out for the coastline to be a pleasant blur on the horizon, pointed the old girl downwind, handed the helm to Hannah while he rigged the main, then came aft. Only then did he express surprise that Queet wasn't on board. Apparently Queet hadn't told him everything.
"Queet tells me he's persona non grata in Montego Bay these days."
Sarge laughed, studied the horizon momentarily and slipped into a lengthy dissertation on the Cluster. It was obvious Queet had instructed him to bring me up to date. For the most part it was a description of the seven islands and not much more than I would have expected from a tourist guide. I waited for him to finish before getting down to the tough questions.
"Tell me about Alonzo Zercher." It was the question Cosmo had instructed me to get out on the table early in the proceedings.
Sarge looked surprised. "Salt and pepper," he answered matter-of-factly. "Half black, half white… no friends… plenty of connections… big money… very big muscle… plenty of power!"
"What's he got to do with all of this?"
Sargent looked surprised that I didn't know more. He squinted his eyes, gave the horizon another appraisal, looked up at the main and wet his lips. He was stalling, still trying to determine just how much he wanted to tell me.
"Zercher is the main mon. When the Schusters abandoned the Deechapal facility, Zercher moved in. He calls it a salvage operation, has a scow and everything to make it look like the real thing."
"And the first thing he did was build an airstrip, right?"
Sarge smiled. It confirmed everything without dragging me through another hour of half-ass information like Bearing Schuster had doled out.
Suddenly I felt very stupid. Sure, Schuster wanted his canisters. Sure, the Westmore police were cooperating. They had to be concerned — very concerned. They were protecting a source point. Get in there, Elliott, and get those canisters. Get in there and find them before half the world finds out Schuster Laboratories is connected with one damn big drug smuggling scheme. If you don't, hundreds of thrill-happy treasure seekers and pseudo-adventurers are going to be in there joyfully splashing around the waters off of Doobacque and looking for a couple of canisters containing the bodies of Adolph and Eva.
Pieces of the jigsaw were starting to slide into place. From Deechapal, the goodies could be slipped into the mainland in the Zercher salvage, and he could refuel some of the more intrepid souls in their light aircraft and send them happily on their way. The sheltered little harbor at Deechapal could accommodate the kinds of vessels that traversed the Caribbean, and there was no harbor authority except the Westmore police — and they were in on it. In other words, Zercher had, what we laughingly called back in the States, a full service operation. I didn't have to tell Sarge what I was thinking; he could tell the light was dawning.
"Okay then, what do you know about whatever it is that killed all those people?"
Sarge gave me a noncommittal shrug. "Not much, mon. Zercher put a big lid on it. Have a friend who tried to go out there to find out what happened to his sister, and they ran him off with guns."
"Surely someone knows something."
Sarge lowered his voice. "I do know someone who might know something," he admitted. "Have you talked to Crompton?"
"Does he know something?"
Sarge gave me a reluctant nod, suddenly demonstrating a concern for the way the old girl was rigged. He headed fore and left me with my speculations. When he relieved Hannah of her duties, it was the dark-haired lady's turn to drift toward me.
"Well, Elliott, you look like you've just seen a ghost."
I was tempted to blurt out everything that was ricocheting around in my troubled brain. There was no doubt that Maggie had the best legs on our team, but darling sweet Hannah was endearing herself to me with a clearly demonstrated inclination to deal with the ongoing nitty-gritty of our mission.
"Not a ghost — just some hard realizations. I just remembered how many sharks I counted that last time I hung around that reef where we're going Garl hunting."
Hannah probably didn't buy the hastily concocted vignette, but she went along with it. Instead she changed the subject.
"Most of the swelling is gone, isn't it?"
"How can you tell?"
"You're walking upright." She followed her observation with a teasing smile that forced me to do pretty much the same thing.
"So what's on your mind this morning?"
The lady hiked her cotton khaki skirt up, leaned back against the housing on the halyard winch and undid the top three buttons of her white cotton blouse. There was nothing terribly provocative about the gesture. It came across exactly like the lady had intended it to — an unabashed effort to soak up some of the good old Caribbean warmth.
"While you were running around doing whatever clandestine things people like you do," she said lazily, "I prevailed upon Byron baby to bring me up to date on the basics of cryonics."
"That must have been interesting," I replied with more than a modest amount of sarcasm in my voice.
Hannah leaned up, stretched, and in the process exhibited a little more leg. "Actually, it was. At least I have some idea now of what we can expect to find inside one of those cylinders if we do locate them."
At the moment, the prospect of finding the cylinders seemed remote. "Five will get you ten we don't even locate those crazy cans. Another five says that if we do happen to find them, the damn things will have leaked and the contents long ago turned into fish fodder."