3
The Caribbean sun burned the earth and the rocks and the sand on the island of Virgin Gorda. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, prelude to the scorching hour of noon, and Tyrell Hawthorne’s «charters» protected themselves under the thatched roof of the outdoor beach bar, doing whatever they could possibly do to alleviate their nausea. When told by their captain that due to a mechanical emergency they could not sail until midafternoon at the earliest, four sighs of relief accompanied three one-hundred-dollar bills pressed into his hand by a banker from Greenwich, Connecticut, who pleaded, «For Christ’s sake, make it tomorrow.»
Tyrell returned to the villa, where Mickey stood guard over Cooke and Ardisonne while his colleague, Marty, attended to the docks. By now the two intruders had been stripped to their shorts, their clothes deposited at the hotel laundry. Hawthorne slammed the door and turned to the mechanic. «Mick, do me a favor. Go to the chickee and bring me two bottles of Montrachet Grand Cru—forget it, two bottles of white wine and I don’t care if it’s Thunderbird.»
«What year?» asked Ardisonne.
«Last week,» replied Tyrell. Mickey left quickly and Hawthorne continued. «All right, you secret agents you, let’s ‘carry on,’ as the English say.»
«You’re not funny,» said Cooke.
«Oh, it’s great when you Euros come up with your fog-bound narrow streets and your trench coats lurking around waterfronts, but why don’t you face it? High tech has replaced you, just as it replaced me. Amsterdam taught me that, unless they all lied on their own, which they couldn’t have. They were programmed by the numbers, do and say what the machines tell you, that’s all you know!»
«Not true, mon ami. Put simply, we are not equipped to deal with that technology. We are of the old school, and believe me when I tell you, it is coming back in ways you cannot imagine. The computers and their modems, the satellites and their high-altitude photographs, borders crossed by television and radio signals—all are magnifique, but they do not and cannot deal with the human condition. We did that … you did that. We meet a man or a woman face-to-face, our eyes and our instincts tell us whether he or she is the enemy. Machines cannot do the same.»
«Is that lecture by way of telling me our combined medieval practices can find this dragon lady, Bajaratt, quicker than faxing her photograph, description, and whatever else you’ve got to your secure sources on roughly fifty habitable islands? If so, I can only presume you should immediately be forced back into retirement.»
«I believe what Jacques is suggesting,» broke in Cooke, «is that our expertise, combined with available technology, can be more effective than one without the other.»
«Well said, mon ami. This psychopathic female, this killer, is not without brains or resources.»
«According to Washington, she’s also not without a lot of hate rattling around in that brain of hers.»
«Certainly no justification for what she’s done, or God help us, what she intends to do,» the man from MI-6 said emphatically.
«No, it isn’t,» agreed Hawthorne. «But I wonder who and what she might be now if there’d been someone to help her years ago… Christ almighty, the heads of your mother and father cut off in front of your eyes! I think if that had happened to my brother and me, we’d both be every bit the killer she is.»
«You lost a wife you loved very much, Tyrell,» said Cooke. «You didn’t become a killer.»
«No, I didn’t,» replied Hawthorne. «But I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you I thought about killing a number of people—not only thought about it, but in several cases planned it.»
«But you didn’t carry out those plans.»
«Only because I had help … believe me, only because there was someone to stop me.» Tyrell glanced out the window at the sea, the constant movement briefly mesmerizing him. There had been someone, and, oh, God, how he missed her! In drunken moments he would tell her of his plans to take out this one and that one, even going so far as to open locked drawers on his boat and, in a stupor, show her his plans, diagrams of streets and buildings, his strategies for ending the lives that caused the death of his wife. Dominique would hold him as he swayed in an alcoholic daze, whispering into his ear that causing death would not bring back the dead, only create pain for many others who had no connection with Ingrid Johansen Hawthorne. In the mornings she would still be there beside him, dismissing his hung-over guilt with gentle laughter, yet reminding him how foolish and how dangerous were his fantasies; she wanted him alive. Christ, he loved her! And when she disappeared, the whiskey went with her. Perhaps it was another fantasy, but he often wondered: If he had stopped his heavy drinking before, might she have stayed?
«I apologize for intruding,» said Ardisonne, both he and Cooke disturbed by Hawthorne’s sudden silence.
«You didn’t intrude; it’s just private.»
«So what is your answer, Commander? We’ve told you everything, even apologized for our actions last night, which at the time seemed appropriate. When a bartender stares at you with great hostility and lowers his body below the counter at a deserted chickee at night, well, both Jacques and I know the islands.»
«You have a point, but you used overkill. You said we had to talk right away; it was urgent. Yet you put me out for damn near six hours. Some urgency, pal.»
«Our measures were not designed for you or your friend the bartender,» said Ardisonne. «To be frank, they were designed for other people.»
«What other people?»
«Oh, come on, Tyrell, you’re not naive. The Baaka Valley is not without connections everywhere, and only the most innocent believe our services do not have corrupted personnel in one department or another. Twenty thousand pounds can turn a bureaucrat’s head.»
«You thought you might be intercepted?»
«We couldn’t dismiss the possibility, old boy, therefore we’ve carried only what’s in our heads, nothing in writing about Bajaratt, no photographs, no dossiers, no background material whatsoever. However, should anyone have been tipped off and tried to stop us, either in Paris, London, or Antigua, we could stop them.»
«So you’re back in your trench coats, prowling the dark alleys.»
«Why dismiss secrecy and hidden weapons? They saved your life more than once during the cold war, is it not so?»
«Maybe once or twice, no more than that, and I tried like hell not to become paranoid. Until Amsterdam it was pretty cut-and-dried. Who can you turn and how much will it cost?»
«It’s a different world now, Commander, we no longer have the luxury of known enemies. There’s another breed, and they’re neither agents nor double agents, or moles on one side or the other to be unearthed—those times are gone. Someday we may look back on them and realize how simple they were, for our root mentalities were not that different. It’s all changed now; we’re no longer dealing with people who think anything like the way we used to think. We’re dealing with hate, not power or geopolitical influence, but pure, raw hatred. The whipped of the world are turning, their age-old frustrations exploding, blind vengeance paramount.»
«That’s dramatic, Geoff, but I think you’re blowing it out of proportion. Washington knows about the woman, and until she’s taken out, the President won’t be put in vulnerable situations. I assume it’ll be the same in London, Paris, and Jerusalem.»
«Who is truly invulnerable, Tyrell?»
«No one, of course, but she’d have to be a goddamned illusionist to get by armies of guards and the most sophisticated security equipment in the world. From what I’ve been told by Washington, the Oval Office’s every move is controlled. No exteriors, no crowds, everything in-house and totally isolated. So, I repeat for the umpteenth time, what the hell do you need me for?»