“Just as well. You would have had to wait a long time.”
Her head turned towards Fletcher. “What happened?”
“We had trouble,” Fletcher said. “There’s been a lot of treachery knocking around.”
“Treachery!” she said; and he could see that she had known nothing about it. Either that or she was putting on a good act; and he did not believe she was acting. She had not known; and he was glad about that. “What kind of treachery?”
King suddenly pointed an accusing finger at Denning. “Ask him. He can tell you.”
She stared at Denning. “What does he mean?”
Denning gave a slight shrug. “He means, my dear, that I am to be the new president.”
“You!” She could not believe it. “It’s not possible. Not you.”
“Oh, yes,” he said; “it is possible. Indeed, I might say it is inevitable.”
She seemed utterly bewildered. She glanced at Vincent, as though for confirmation; and Vincent gave a thin smile and a little nod of the head. It seemed to get through to her then. She looked again at Denning and spoke without raising her voice.
“You bastard!” she said. “You filthy, low-down, stinking bastard! My God, you make me sick!”
FOURTEEN:
OF INTEREST
Denning frowned. The girl’s contemptuous words had got through to him and touched a nerve. His voice had lost some of its urbanity when he said:
“Let’s not have any histrionics; we are dealing with realities. You’ve been floating around in the clouds long enough; now it’s time to come down to earth. This island is never going to be another Cuba; it’s not going Red and you’d better accept the fact.” His glance took in King and Lawrence. “All of you.”
They said nothing; merely stared back at him with hatred in their eyes.
“And now,” Denning said briskly, “we have no more time to waste. We must be moving. There’s a lot to do.”
Colonel Vincent stubbed out his cigar in a convenient ash-tray and stood up. “I am ready.”
“Let’s go, then.”
One of the servants appeared in the hall as they were going out. Denning snapped a curt order and the man retired hurriedly after giving one frightened glance at the guns Hutchins and Brogan were carrying. The light from the terrace was shining across the gravelled space below, revealing the Ford in which Leonora had arrived, and the Citroën and the Chrysler backed up against the low perimeter wall. They went down the steps and walked across to them, Hutchins and Brogan keeping close to King and Lawrence to make sure they did not attempt to break away.
“Leave the Ford,” Denning said. “We’ll use the other two cars.”
Brogan directed King to get into the front passenger seat of the Chrysler, while Hutchins and Lawrence climbed into the back. Brogan pocketed his revolver and got in behind the wheel. At the same time the others were piling into the Citroën, Vincent in the driving seat with Fletcher beside him; Denning and the girl in the back.
That was when the three men came over the wall. They must have been watching from the shadows and had probably guessed something of what was going on, if not all. Fletcher caught sight of them at the same moment as Brogan and Hutchins must have done. He saw the doors of the Chrysler swing open and Brogan step out on one side and Hutchins on the other. Brogan had his revolver in his hand again, and Hutchins had never put his away. Not that the weapons were going to be any use to them, because the men who had come over the wall were carrying submachine-guns and they were not waiting for anyone else to start the shooting; they started it themselves.
Hutchins and Brogan were so close to the blast of the guns that they seemed to be blown backwards. Fletcher ducked below the dashboard then and lost sight of them, because he had seen the third man coming towards the Citroën holding his own submachine-gun at the ready. And suddenly Vincent’s nerve cracked; he opened the car door and made a run for it. Fletcher lost sight of him also, but he heard the brief stutter of the gun and guessed that Vincent had not got very far.
Everything went very quiet after that, and a few seconds later he lifted his head cautiously and saw Vincent lying face downward on the gravel about ten yards away. The man who had shot him was standing over him and looking down. And then he rolled the body over with his foot and looked at the face, and gave a short, sharp laugh and turned away.
King was getting out of the Chrysler, stepping carefully over Brogan’s body. He walked over to the Citroen and looked in and said:
“Better go back to the house now. Looks like there’s been a change of plan.”
They were all big men; so big that the submachine-guns in their hands looked like toys. One of them was coffee-coloured and pock-marked, and he had a dirty rag of a bandage on his right forearm. The blood had run down on to his hand and had not been washed off but had simply been allowed to dry on the skin. The other two were as black as coal, and they all looked tired and dusty and as hard as rocks. Fletcher did not need to be told where they had come from or what they had been doing; nobody did. He wondered which one had shot the President, or whether each of them had put a bullet or two into the tyrant, sharing the blood between them like the assassins of Julius Caesar.
They sat on the chairs in Denning’s drawing-room and their eyes looked dull with fatigue. None of the servants had put in an appearance, though they must have heard the shooting; they were keeping their heads down, and Fletcher did not blame them. King had explained briefly to the three men just what the situation was. They had looked at Denning with death in their faces, but he had stared back at them coldly, without flinching, faintly contemptuous.
King said to him: “You will come with us now.”
“For what purpose?” Denning asked. “To be killed? I would rather be shot here.”
“To be tried.”
“It is the same thing.”
King shrugged. “You may think so.”
He did not discuss the matter further, but turned to Fletcher. “What will you do?”
“My plans haven’t changed. I shall still leave the island.”
“That may not be so easy now. If you went to Jamestown and tried to board an airliner or a ship I think you would be arrested. Who is there to vouch for you now?”
Fletcher appreciated the difficulty. The warrant for his arrest still stood, and now there were other incidents in which he had been involved. There could be little doubt that if he attempted to leave the island by the regular means he would inevitably end up in gaol.
“What do you suggest?”
“You could join us,” King said.
There was little attraction in that alternative. Joining King and his comrades would mean taking to the hills, the guerrilla hideouts; it would mean being on the run, hunted by the security forces, winkled out of one foxhole after another; it would mean living rough and being always in danger. And for what? An ideal in which he had no belief.
“No,” he said; “I don’t think that’s the game for me. There must be some way of getting off the island.”
“There’s the boat,” King said.
Fletcher glanced at Denning, who gave a sardonic laugh. “If you are asking my permission, take it. It’s hardly likely that I shall ever have need of it again. Charon’s boat is the only one I shall use.”
Fletcher shook his head. “I should never find my way back to it.”
“That’s true,” King admitted. “You would need a guide.” He seemed to think about it; then he said: “Very well; I will take you back to the boat.”
“I’ll go with you,” Leonora said.
Fletcher and King looked at her, but neither of them made any remark.
They travelled the first part of the journey in the Ford. King said it would bring them closer to the boat before they had to go on foot. None of them was going back to the house; when King had seen Fletcher safely to the boat he would make his own way to join up with the other party at a prearranged rendezvous. What Leonora proposed doing neither of them knew. She had packed a duffle-bag but had given no hint regarding her plans; perhaps had not even made up her own mind. Fletcher had abandoned his suitcase and had brought only the canvas holdall. They had all eaten a hurried meal before leaving and had brought some extra provisions with them. King said there were some reserve cans of petrol in the boat and still a useful amount in the tanks.