«I’m sure there is a reason, monsieur, and I’m certain madame will explain.»
«I consider you a friend, Pauline.»
«Forever, monsieur.»
On his private island, the padrone hissed and giggled as he wheeled himself to the telephone and dialed the hotel in St. Barts, his new assistants racing behind him. «You were right, my only daughter!» he shouted into the phone after reaching the room. «He bought it! Hook, line, and sinker, as the banal Americans say. He now has a confidante in Paris by the name of Pauline!»
«Of course, my only father,» said Bajaratt over the telephone. «But I can conceive of another problem, and it disturbs me greatly.»
«What’s that, Annie? Your intuitions have proved too accurate to dismiss.»
«Their headquarters are temporarily at the yacht club in British Virgin Gorda—what have they received from MI-6? Or even American intelligence?»
«What do you want me to do?»
«Send an animale from Miami or Puerto Rico. Find out who they have there—and what they have there.»
«It is done, my child.»
It was four o’clock in the morning when the telephone pierced the silence of the deserted control tower. Hawthorne rolled off the short bed in panic, blinking his eyes, trying to orient himself, and rushed through the open door to the telephone on the desk.
«Yes?» he cried. «Who is it?» he said rapidly, shaking his head to throw off the sleep.
«Stevens, you bastard,» said the intelligence officer from Washington. «I’ve been at this for damn near six hours, and someday you’d better explain to my wife—who for reasons I’ll never understand happens to like you—that I’ve been working for you and not out tripping the light fantastic with a nonexistent girlfriend.»
«Anyone who uses the phrase tripping the light fantastic hasn’t a thing to worry about. What have you got?»
«To begin with, everything’s so buried, it would take an archaeologist to sort it out. That number in Miami is unlisted, naturally—»
«I hope that wasn’t a problem for you,» broke in Tyrell sarcastically.
Stevens ignored him. «It’s billed to a popular restaurant on Collins Avenue called Wellington’s, only the owner doesn’t know a thing about it because he’s never gotten a bill. He offered up the accounting firm that does his bookkeeping and pays his bills for verification.»
«The line can be traced; it’s called installation.»
«Oh, it was traced all right. To a voice-activated machine on a yacht in Miami harbor. The owner’s a Brazilian, currently unreachable in Brazil.»
«That lupo wasn’t talking to a machine!» insisted Hawthorne. «There was someone at the other end.»
«I don’t doubt it. How often have you and I monitored a drop or a pay phone during an operational time span? That someone on the yacht was told to be there when your lupo called.»
«So you didn’t get anything.»
«I didn’t say that,» Stevens corrected him. «We called in the electronic whiz kids with their voodoo equipment. I’m told they tore that machine apart like Swiss watchmakers, factoring it with several hundred programs, and came up with what they call a satellite laser search.»
«What does all that mean?»
«It means they came up with map coordinates based on probable satellite transmissions. They’ve narrowed down the reception areas to roughly a hundred-plus square miles between the Anegada Passage and Nevis.»
«That’s meaningless!»
«Not exactly. Number one, that yacht is now under constant surveillance. Whoever goes near it will be taken in and broken—chemically or otherwise.»
«What’s number two?»
«Less effective, I’m afraid,» answered Stevens. «We’ve got a smaller version of an AWAC at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa, Florida. It can pick up satellite transmissions, but the transmissions have to be active in order to pinpoint the reception dishes. We’re sending it out.»
«So they’ll shut down on both sides, all transmissions!»
«That’s what we’re counting on. Somebody’s going to check on that yacht, that machine. They have to. We’ve short-circuited it, so someone’s got to come down and find out what’s wrong and retrieve any messages received. It’s foolproof, Tye. They don’t know we found it, and the second anybody approaches that boat, we’ve got him.»
«Something’s wrong,» said Hawthorne. «Something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is.»
The last light of the descending moon passed over the Miami skyline as dawn broke over the eastern horizon. A telescopic video camera was trained on the yacht in the marina, every image projected on a screen in a warehouse two hundred yards away on the waterfront. Three agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation successively kept their eyes open, taking turns at a table where a red telephone with a single black button would instantly connect them to both the CIA and naval intelligence in Washington.
«This is bullshit,» said the agent on watch as he got up from his chair to answer the door. «The pizza’s here and I’m not picking up the whole tab.» His two companions opened their eyes in their chairs, yawning as the door was opened.
The gunfire from the single automatic weapon was absolute and lethal. In less than four seconds the three agents were slaughtered, sprawled across the floor, their blood-soaked bodies riddled. And on the television screen the yacht in the harbor exploded, the sharp, jagged flames drawn to the Miami skies.
6
«Jesus Christ!» roared Stevens over the phone to Hawthorne on Saba. «Miami was a massacre! They know everything! Everything we do!»
«Which means you’ve got a leak.»
«I can’t believe it!»
«Believe it, it’s real. I’ll be back in Gorda in an hour or so—»
«To hell with Gorda, we’re picking you up in Saba. Our mappers say it’s near the target area.»
«Your plane can’t land on this strip, Henry.»
«The hell it can’t. I’ve checked with our aircraft controls, you’ve got almost three thousand feet; with reverse thrust at max, they can make it. I want you to check out those coordinates—it’s all we’ve got left! If anything turns up, take whatever action you deem necessary. The plane’s under your command.»
«A hundred square miles between the Anegada and Nevis? Are you out of your goddamned mind?»
«Have you got a better suggestion? We’re dealing with a psychopathic female who could blow governments apart. Frankly, with what I’ve learned about her, I’m scared, Tye, really scared!»
«I don’t have a better suggestion,» Hawthorne conceded quietly. «I’ll cancel Gorda and wait here. I hope Patrick’s got an outstanding pilot.»
The AWAC II appeared in the western sky, a fat, snub-nosed, unattractive aircraft with its huge disk protruding above the fuselage. The super-secret plane descended, but instead of landing, swept up toward the end of the runway, circled, and repeated the procedure a second time. Watching, Tyrell had come to the conclusion that the pilot was radioing Patrick Air Force Base and telling them they were out of their minds, when, on the third approach, the bulky aircraft seemed to float down precariously close to the edge of the strip like a feathered pillow, its jet engines instantly roaring in reverse thrust.
«Hey, mon!» cried the tower controller, his eyes wide, his breathing momentarily suspended as the plane came to a stop several hundred feet from the end of the runway, then turned and taxied back. «That pilot, he good! I never seen nothin’ like that here on Saba. He flyin’ a pregnant cow!»