"Which was?"
"Can you beat it? An old shipwreck! Hell, the bay out there is littered with them. We add two or three a month now that the dealers are starting to work this area."
"What else do you know about all this?"
"Not much, except that it was an old freighter. Been there for a while, apparently. Cromp said it was a real rust bucket; found it off the reef." His face twisted into a perplexed frown. "I think he called it the Garl."
It was team meeting time, and I had the troops assemble on the aft deck of the Sloe Gin. Even Byron Huntington looked halfway interested in what I had to say.
"We have it from a reasonably reliable source that the Garl has been located."
"When?" Huntington sputtered.
"Where?" Hannah chimed in.
"It was right where Bearing and his sources figured it would be. The story I get is that somebody showed up two months ago in Negril and hired an old friend of mine to help them locate it."
"More importantly," Byron panted, "did they find the cylinders?" Outside of the little temper tantrum he had thrown in Ginny's condo at the Sea Breeze, it was the closest thing to emotion I'd seen out of the man.
"Don't know. I'm still looking for the guy that did the diving for them. As far as I know, he's the only one who can tell us."
"So where is this so-called friend of yours?" Hannah asked.
"At the moment, that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question. There's a network in Negril, and I've put the word out for him."
Sargent had perched himself on the cabin of the wheelhouse, listening intently.
"So what are you telling us? What's all of this mean as far as our project goes?" Byron asked.
"Shouldn't we get in touch with Bearing and let him know?" It was Maggie's question, and she was staring at me with those wide-eyed innocent orbs of hers.
"What's to tell him?" Hannah snarled. "We don't know anything for certain except that some guy we can't find claims he's located the
Garl
and so far we can't even verify that."
"Hannah is right. Who they are, what they found and just exactly where are all questions we don't have the answers to — yet."
"Damn," Huntington muttered, "they've located the cylinders. I just knew it would happen this way. They've probably tried to open them without taking the proper precautions, probably contaminated all of Bachmann's work." The little man was obviously distraught.
"For God's sake, Byron, quit complaining," Hannah snapped. "That's pure speculation."
"Sounds to me like we've got lots of work to do." There were distinct overtones of pessimism in Maggie's voice.
Collectively, they suddenly seemed daunted by the emerging complexities. If any of them had been thinking that Bearing Schuster was paying them handsome sums of money to warm their winter-weary bodies in the Caribbean sun, they were sadly mistaken.
"Are you trying to tell us we're hung up until you locate this Crompton fellow?" Huntington bristled.
"In a nutshell — yes. I've read the dossiers on each of you. There isn't a single member of our group here with diving experience below the eighty foot level. I was counting on Crompton to do the heavy work."
Hannah's response was emphatic. "Damn!"
Daddy Harry always used to tell me that even when you know the day is going to turn to shit in your hands, you should start the day with a leisurely breakfast. Harry's theory was simply that if you followed this sage bit of advice, you could always look back on the day and find one bright spot. It was a rule I followed whenever possible.
With that in mind, I hopped into the Achilles and motored to the Ciel. Sylvia hustled up some of the meanest omelets this side of paradise — omelets made with fresh eggs laid by hens that have never pumped anything into their stomachs except what good old mother nature intended for them to eat. Added to that, she served it on a patio overlooking a placid expanse of blue Caribbean with dozens of swaying palm trees under which lay a bevy of shamelessly well-endowed topless French ladies, each grimly determined to bronze her lovely body. Suffice it to say, Queet could have been running late, and it wouldn't have bothered me in the least.
But when he did arrive, he did it in style, resplendent in soft cotton whites and a collection of gold chains that called attention to his bull neck and wide shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen him without his beard, and he looked naked.
He slipped into the big wicker chair next to me and graced me with his classy, gold-toothed smile. "Welcome to Jamaica, mon."
I looked up from my grapefruit and glowered. "You're a tough man to find."
The Jamaican giant unleashed his raucous laugh and called all kinds of attention to our table. "I can tell by the look on your face that you ain't got your shit together, mon."
"There's a few wrinkles," I admitted.
Queet reached over, picked up my cup of coffee, took three or four healthy swallows and signaled for more. "Anything that can't be fixed?"
In the world of Queet Sebastian, nothing is ever broken beyond repair. If he can still get his big black hands around it, it's fixable.
"For starters, you can tell me what you know about what happened to Deechapal."
He picked up my fork, took a bite of my omelet, smacked his lips and rocked forward in his chair. "Information is very hard to come by, mon."
"Come on, dammit, Queet… this is me, Elliott. What the hell's going on out there?"
"There is lots of talk, mon, lots of talk."
"Share some of it with me."
"You know a mon by the name of Zercher?"
"I've heard the name. Never met him."
"Zercher's salt and pepper. He come crawling into these parts many years ago. He had himself an old scarred-up salvage scow and a couple of mean-looking bodyguards. He hung around these parts for months. Then one day word had it he had taken over the abandoned American research complex on Deechapal." Queet finished off Sylvia's finest, wiped his mouth and continued. "At the time there were several hundred Caribs still living there. Most of them went to work for him in his salvage operation."
Queet unleashed another of his powerful laughs and rocked back in his chair. "It's a good thing you got Cosmo to look after you, mon. Maybe it make more sense to you if Queet tells you Zercher has a second interest — distribution.''
"Distributing what?"
"Columbian goods, mon, Columbian goods."
"Strictly drugs? Nothing legitimate?"
"He ain't dealing in coffee, mon!"
Bingo! Another piece of the puzzle tumbled into place. Zercher was doing his thing, and the Westmore police were in on it. When a problem materialized, it was their job to keep the nosy types out. Hence, no more news out of the Cluster. "So Zercher's got a problem. What was it? An explosion or what?"
Some of the smile faded from Queet's big, expansive face. "Lots of people die, mon, lots of people."
"But what caused it?"
Queet shrugged. His expression had turned somber. "You know the Cluster, Elliott — always a big mystery, always that big island sitting out there like some kind of brooding god guarding the entrance to the other islands. The Schuster people came… and they went. Then Zercher took over. One night Kingston radio say we have a big storm, maybe even an earthquake. Queet thinks to himself that none of this makes sense. And when he gets the call from Elliott, he knows there is more to it than he has heard."
The beard was gone, but something else wasn't — Queet's penchant for talking in circles. He would tell you only what he wanted you to know and only when he wanted you to know it. He wasn't being specific because I wasn't being specific. I had forgotten how to play the game. If I wanted information. I had to be willing to trade something for it.