“Love you more.”
Stoke shrugged out of his jacket, folded it, and put it beneath Fancha’s head. Then he started climbing the stainless ladder to the top of the tower, moving fast.
Harry Brock was up there, staring at something in the sky through his binoculars.
“Holy shit. Will you look at that?”
“What?”
“Over there. To the west, just coming up over the Miami Herald building. Some kind of fuckin’ UFO or something.”
Stoke looked at the thing. “Damn.”
“What the hell is that thing, Stoke?”
“Some kind of new airship, I guess. Doesn’t look like any blimp I ever saw. Military, maybe, looking for go-fast drug boats coming up from the Keys.”
It was massive, whatever the hell it was. Stoke stared at the great silver ship floating over the Miami skyline toward him, a giant round opening where the nose should be. Weird-looking. Scary-looking, almost.
Make that definitely scary-looking.
18
Hawke, arriving at Shadowlands, found Ambrose Congreve standing at the front door, dressed to the nines, but adamantly refusing to get into the automobile Hawke had shown up in.
“Some car, isn’t it?” Hawke said, grinning. “Absolutely ripping.”
“I simply won’t ride into town in that contraption, Alex,” Congreve said. “I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Look at it. It’s a deathtrap, for one thing. No doors, no roof. It’s utterly ridiculous.”
“It has a delightful roof. A daffodil surrey roof of fringed canvas, I’ll grant you, and the fringe is a bit outré, but a roof all the same.”
Congreve disdainfully tapped one of the tiny moon-shaped wheel covers with the tip of his walking stick, making a hollow, tinny sound. He looked at Hawke and did not bother to disguise his sigh of frustration.
“Frankly, Alex, I find it astounding that you can transit this island in such a conveyance and keep a straight face. This…car, if one can call it such, looks as if it formerly belonged to a circus clown.”
“Mind your tongue, Constable. And get in the damn thing. C is waiting, and we’re already late.”
“Yes, and this is quite a serious meeting he’s invited us to. We’re taking on the dreaded Russians again, Alex. If Sir David happens to be standing outside the club when we arrive, he’ll think he’s invited the bloody Ringling Brothers to help him save Western civilization.”
Hawke tried not to laugh out loud.
Because of traffic congestion on the small island, every residence on Bermuda was allotted only one vehicle per household. Hawke was driving the car that had come along with his cottage. This tiny vehicle by the noble Italian design house of Pininfarina, was a 1958 Fiat 600 Jolly, and he’d somehow acquired it when he signed his lease for Teakettle Cottage.
It was an odd duck, to be honest, bright sunshine yellow, with seats made, improbably enough, of wicker.
But Hawke thought it quite sporting, and certainly Pelham enjoyed squiring the Jolly around town on his market runs each week. Besides, Congreve was right, there were few places on earth where a man could drive such an outrageous automobile and maintain a straight face. But Bermuda was one of those places.
Congreve sighed one of his immense sighs and settled his rather large person into the wicker armchair bolted after a fashion to the floor. He was shocked to discover that even the dashboard was wicker. He looked at Hawke with dismay. He felt as if he were riding in a ladies’ sewing basket.
He put his smart straw hat firmly on his head and prepared for the worst.
“Not even an airbag?” Congreve said, running his fingers along the wicker dash.
“Oh, I daresay it’s got one now,” Hawke said, engaging first gear. “On the passenger side at any rate.”
“Go, go, go,” the detective said, searching in vain for a seatbelt. “Let’s get this Mad Hatter’s wild ride over with.”
Hawke laughed, popped the clutch, and started off along the gently winding drive that traversed the shaded narrow length of Lady Mars’s Shadowlands estate. They drove the first few minutes in silence, the famous detective somehow maintaining an immutable scowl despite his deceptively innocent baby blue eyes and rakish mustache.
“Looking rather gay for our luncheon with C,” Hawke said finally, glancing over at his friend’s natty attire. Congreve was wearing lime-green Bermuda shorts with navy-blue knee socks, a Navy blazer, a pink shirt, and a pink and white madras bow tie. Tortoiseshell sunglasses completed the look. On his head was a straw boater.
“Gay? Really, Alex, you do push me to the brink.”
“As in festive, Ambrose. It was meant as a simple compliment. Shorts are a bit nancy for my taste, but what do I know?”
“De gustibus non est disputandum.”
“Exactly.”
Hawke turned left out of Shadowlands’ bougainvillea-covered stone portals and onto the South Road. They were heading east past the Spittal Pond Nature Reserve on their left. It was another perfect day in paradise, Hawke thought, brightly colored birds darting about flowering woods and tropical gardens on either side of the road. When he came to Trimingham Road, he whipped the little yellow buggy around to the right, coming to the first of two roundabouts that would lead him to the town of Hamilton proper.
Two cruise ships were moored along Front Street, and the charming old town was crowded with automobile traffic, motor scooters, and pedestrians. He looked at his watch. They were already ten minutes late, and C did not like to be kept waiting. He’d sounded very serious when he’d called, wanting Hawke and Ambrose to join him at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club at noon sharp. He wanted to discuss the status of Red Banner and hear their thoughts on getting the thing up and running.
“Ah! Hold on to your hat, Constable!” Hawke had spied a fleeting opening between an enormous cement truck and a taxi and inserted the little Jolly between them, just catching the green light by so doing.
“I say!” Ambrose said, giving him a stern look.
“Sorry. Look, here we are, and you’re still intact.”
“Shaken to the core by that last maneuver.”
Hawke smiled as he put the wheel hard over, and the little Jolly sailed into port. He pulled into the yacht club’s car park, finding a spot beneath a large ficus shade tree, and they climbed out. The club was at the end of a short street, situated at Albuoy’s Point, right on the harbor. The RBYC was a large, distinguished building, painted what Hawke could only describe as an odd Bermudian shade of plum. Like many things here, it would certainly look strange in London, but somehow it worked on the island.
They passed through the entrance where stood a beautiful old binnacle atop a compass rose in inlaid marble. A portrait of the queen hung to the left of the door leading to the small paneled bar where C had asked Hawke to meet him. It was a charming room of highly varnished Bermuda cedar, filled with ancient silver regatta trophies and faded yacht burgees from decades past. An elderly barman smiled at them as they entered.
C was waiting at a corner table beneath a window overlooking the club docks beyond. He stood up when the two men entered.
“Alex, Ambrose, hullo! Please order a drink, won’t you both?”
He didn’t seem at all aware of the fact that they were fifteen minutes late. Or, if he was, he was certainly nonchalant about it. Bermuda was good medicine for Sir David Trulove. Hell, it was good for all of them, Alex thought.
The beautiful little bar was empty. Still, Hawke thought it a strangely public place for discussing the establishment of a top-secret British counterintelligence operation.
“Don’t worry, Alex,” C said, seeming to read his mind. “We’re not lunching here. My dear old friend Dick Pearman, whose guest house I’m using, has generously offered the use of his yacht Mohican for that purpose. She’s just out there at the docks. Lunch will be served aboard.”