"Then you do think it's possible that he might have rigged those cylinders to go off when somebody opened them."
"Let me put it like this — it's technically feasible. They could have rigged them just like a bomb. Once the seal is broken, it's too late. The thing that makes me think there may be something to your theory is the similarity between what we've got here in Deechapal, what we saw on the deck of the Bay Foreman and the way Big Doobacque looks after all these years."
"Glad to hear you testify." I tried to force a grin without much success.
"Assuming Father Govan's notes from his conversations with Froelling are accurate, Froelling said his men were frozen in grotesque shapes, that they had clawed out their own throats. All you have to do is look around. Half of the bodies here are in the same condition. Froelling said the crew of the Garl was threatening to bring the cylinders up on deck and open them. Add to that what you told me about Big Doobacque being a virtual paradise when your friend Coop first came here. We saw the cylinder on the Bay Foreman we know they retrieved one — and Queet took the picture of the one lying open on the beach here. They all appear to be similar to the two we retrieved. It boils down to two questions. What is in the two cylinders Marshal has, and what about the one that's still down there near the fantail of the Garl?"
"Another way of asking it is — which of the cylinders, if any, contains the bodies of Hitler and his little playmate? Or are the remaining cylinders bombs as well?"
Hannah sighed. "From everything I've read, Martin Bormann was diabolical enough to think that way."
It was a sinking, futile feeling. After all the effort and loss, we still didn't know. Was the whole thing an elaborate ruse? What about Manfred Kohler's diary? "Everything's changed, yet nothing's changed."
Hannah stared absently into the grayness, nodding soberly.
"Do you realize what will happen if young Schuster takes Bormann's little toys back to Boca and decides to open them?"
Again Hannah nodded.
"The son-of-a-bitch could blow away half of Florida."
Hannah pushed herself up and walked slowly down to the edge of the water. She put her hands behind her back and stared morosely out at the nothingness. "Well, E.G.," she sighed, "there's not much we can do about it."
When I awoke the following morning, Hannah was already gone. It's safe to assume that she figured her battered partner needed all the R and R he could get.
Before sacking out the previous evening, we had located an empty hut as far from the carnage of the beach as possible and peeled open a couple of cans of tuna fish and pears, drank three diet Pepsi's and amused ourselves by picking shreds of coral out of our collective hides. Hannah had managed to pick up some, but nowhere near as much as myself, and what she did manage to pick up didn't seem to bother her as much.
The last thing I really remember was Hannah lying down beside me, pulling a sheet over us and saying something closely akin to "see you in the morning."
Now, stiff and sore and out of sorts with the civilized world, I got up and wobbled out to meet the new day. Hannah was headed straight for me, her arms loaded down with odds and ends and a couple of books. Outside of that, Deechapal looked every bit as depressing as it had the day before.
She gave me a cursory once over, allowed that I didn't quite measure up to her image of what she always dreamed about being stranded on a Caribbean island with, and dumped her booty on the table. She was smiling. It's amazing what some sleep, a new dawn and a discovery or two can do for the human condition.
"E.G., you rascal, we're a lot better off than I thought we were," she bubbled. "Look at this." She rifled through the pages of one of the water-stained journals. "Know what this is?''
I shook my head.
"This is the carefully detailed record of every shipment ever unloaded on our little playground. See? Shipments, amounts, source and destination — it's all here. Even if I can't nail Zercher with this, I can wipe this place off the map. With a little luck we can bring his whole operation down." She closed the book, tucked it in a canvas bag and pointed down the beach. "Not only that," she beamed, pointing, "but I found two boats. One is a dugout, not far from the cylinder. The other is a small sailboat. The problem is, I couldn't find any sails."
"You didn't happen to run across a telephone, did you?"
Hannah's face suddenly turned serious. "That's the other side of the coin. As near as I can determine, everything was run by a series of generators. There must be ten different sets located at different places around the village. The fuel has congealed in every one of them. There's nothing left but a gummy residue. On top of that, this hut appears to be the only one where the cans of food didn't split open, all of which adds a little credence to your theory about the whole damn island being quick frozen."
"Did you take a good look at the cylinders?"
The lady nodded. "Uh-huh. Actually, it appears to be some exotic alloy constructed in two separate layers like a big thermos bottle. It looks like it has a glass liner in it. The glass is shattered in a million pieces. On top of that there is a crusty yellow substance caked all over it."
"Any ideas?"
"it's the freezing point, I suppose, whatever that was. Years ago I read about a so-called death gas the Germans were supposed to be developing in the final days of the war. They intended to use it on the British Isles. It was supposed to be highly toxic. The only problem was that it destroyed everything — permanently."
"Like Big Doobacque and Deechapal?" I asked.
"Exactly. But according to what I read, the Germans could never get into actual production. All they had was the prototype material. Apparently they never really had enough to get any testing done. They say that what little the Nazi authorities claimed they had stashed away was never located."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Hannah nodded. "It's a possibility."
"A so-called death gas could confirm our worst fears."
"Precisely. When Marshal Schuster gets around to opening those canisters, we're liable to get a repeat performance of the Bay Foreman, Big Doobacque and Deechapal."
"Damn," I muttered.
"Unless we can find a way to stop him," Hannah reminded me.
"Has the pretty lady let it slip her agile mind that the two of us are stranded here on the island of the dead while mean old Marshal has long since disappeared with our canisters?"
"Gone, but not disappeared," Hannah interjected.
"How so?"
"Look, Elliott, Schuster put the cylinders on his boat, scuttled us and left us for dead. As far as your old college chum is concerned, we're fish food. We're no longer a threat. He couldn't go very far in that scow of his. He has to put in someplace. My guess is he headed for Jamaica."
"Does your crystal ball say where?"
"What's the closest community?"
"It's a tossup. Negril is the biggest, but Portamaine has an airstrip."
Hannah looked at me, a smile spreading across her sunburned face. "Bingo!"
"Damn," I muttered, "sure. Why the hell didn't I think of it? Zercher would have to have an airstrip, something for the bigger birds."
"They may not be there now," Hannah said, "but I'd bet a dollar to a donut that's where they headed when they left us."
Hannah turned and started for the door of the hut, paused and came back to pick up the two journals. "Let's go, big boy, we've got a lot of rowing to do."
There is a God, and it's true that he looks after fools and children. Also, as I've discovered, he keeps an eye cocked for middle-aged men who trundle off to Jamaica and get in over their heads.