The Intimidators (18 page)

“Watch where you step, sir. We’ve got half the Caribbean spread out on the rug.”

He’d stopped in front of Harriet, who’d risen. He studied her for a moment without speaking, seeming particularly interested, for some reason, in her neat, smooth, dark coiffure. At last he glanced at me.

“You’re absolutely certain she hasn’t been out of your sight this evening? It’s very strange.”

“What is?” I asked.

“There was some interesting evidence clutched in Pendleton’s hand. The police allowed me to borrow it temporarily. If you have a sheet of white paper....”

I produced a piece of motel stationery from the table drawer. He took an envelope from his pocket, spread it open carefully, and with the point of a mechanical pencil drew out and arranged on the paper several long, dark hairs.

After a moment, Harriet laughed. She reached up deliberately and separated a couple of filaments of her own hair from the rest. With a quick little jerk, she pulled them free, wincing slightly. She laid them across the other end of the sheet of white stationery.

“Human hairs are supposed to be different,” she said. “You’re welcome to check.”

“We have,” Mac said calmly. “These hairs are from a man. A man with hands considerably larger than yours, Captain Robinson. He knocked Ramsay Pendleton unconscious with a blackjack, and then choked him to death, leaving distinctive marks on the throat. Do you happen to know a longhaired man with very large hands?”

Harriet laughed again. “Drama!” she murmured. “What was I supposed to do, panic at the thought that I was a murder suspect and blurt out the name of the real killer to save myself?”

Mac shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Hardly. Even if I knew the man, which I don’t admit, I’ve already told Matt, here, that while I’ll allow myself to be blackmailed to the extent of using some of my contacts for your benefit, I’m not going to betray them to you. Find your own longhaired murderer.”

“The man’s name is probably Morgan,” Mac said imperturbably. “He was seen in the Bahamas, where he is wanted for a murder I’m afraid he didn’t commit. A. terrible miscarriage of justice. However, he seems to have eluded the Bahamian authorities; apparently he is now in the Keys; and he does seem to have committed this crime, apparently by mistake or accident, since there is no good motive known for him to kill Mr. Pendleton. He apparently had another victim in mind. Mr. Helm was told by a dying young woman that Morgan would get him; and that if Morgan didn’t, you would.”

Harriet faced him defiantly. “If you know all this, why the play-acting?”

“A great deal may depend on you, Captain Robinson,” Mac said. “I am trying to determine how far you can be relied upon.”

“And I’m supposed to sell out this Morgan, whoever ho may be, to prove my good faith?”

Mac shook his head. “No. You’re supposed to refuse to sell him out to prove your good faith. As you have just done.”

Harriet glanced at me, and made a wry face. “If you work for this one, darling, I don’t envy you one bit. Does he ever make sense?”

Mac said, “If you were planning treachery with the help of your Communist associates of long standing, you’d most likely have got permission to throw us a bone or two—a bone named Morgan, for instance—to allay our suspicions. Since you instead have exhibited commendable loyalty to these people, I feel there is a fair chance that you may give us the same loyalty. I never trust traitors, Captain Robinson, no matter how noble their proclaimed motives may be. A man, or a woman, who’ll betray once, will betray twice.”

“So I passed the test,” Harriet said dryly, unimpressed. “Goody for me. Now what do we do?”

“Just a minute,” I said. “Before we get down to other business, let’s finish with Morgan. Talking about making sense, he doesn’t.”

Mac frowned. “What do you mean, Eric?”

I said, “Figure it out, sir. Here Morgan was, long hair and all, hiding in the closet or kitchenette or whatever, waiting to kill me. A stranger walks in and spots him—Pendleton, a pro, would check out the place as a matter of routine, before settling down to wait. Okay so far. But then what happened? Pendleton, unfortunately, wasn’t really expecting to find anybody hiding in the closet; he was just going through the standard motions, more or less off guard. Morgan caught him by surprise and knocked him out. Still nothing remarkable. But what happens next? Why, Morgan grabs him by the throat and strangles him to death—and takes off, for God’s sake, lugging the limp body away with him!”

Harriet asked, puzzled: “What’s the problem? Do you think he should have stuck around—with a dead man at his feet?”

I said, “Precisely. That’s exactly what he should have done. Otherwise, why kill?”

“I don’t get it,” Harriet protested. “What are you trying to say, darling?”

“Simple,” I said. “If he was going to flee anyway, once a stranger stumbled onto the scene, why did Morgan bother to commit murder? I mean, all he had to do was whack the intruder on the head—as he apparently did—and split before the guy regained consciousness. Even if he didn’t recognize Pendleton as an agent, and he’d probably seen the guy in Nassau, he could assume that anybody visiting me secretly at night wouldn’t make a public outcry about being sapped in my room. Once out of here, Morgan would be free and clear. On the other hand, if he was set on staying to finish the job he’d come to do,
then
killing Pendleton would have been quite logical—killing him, and hiding him in the bathtub behind the shower curtain or something. That way, grimly determined to go through with his original plan, Morgan would be sure Pendleton wouldn’t revive at the wrong moment and interfere. Either way, it would have made some sense. But to first go to the trouble of committing a quite unnecessary murder, and then to give up on the murder he’d come here to do, and run—taking the body with him, for God’s sake!—is professional idiocy.”

Harriet said, “Maybe this hypothetical Morgan, whoever he may be, simply lost his head, and his nerve.”

“I hope so,” I said. “If he’s that shaky, he should be fairly easy to cope with the next time he tries for me. But I saw him in Nassau, and he didn’t look like a man who’d normally blow his cool in a crisis. If he did crack under great pressure, who or what was exerting it?”

“Darling, maybe you’re overestimating the human race, at least where homicide is concerned. We aren’t all cold, calm, calculating automatons like you, remember? If somebody blundered in on
me
when I was waiting to kill somebody, I’m sure all my actions would be strictly illogical.”

I grinned. “That’s what you say, but I don’t think I’d care to bet my life on it.”

Mac glanced at his watch. “Mr. Morgan is interesting, but he is not the subject I came here to discuss.” He gestured toward the stuff on the floor. “Have you come to any conclusions about our problem, Captain Robinson?”

“Not yet,” she said. “There really isn’t too much to go on. Matt has a theory, and it’s not too far out; but even if it’s correct it covers a lot of ground, and water. Cuba’s a big island with lots of coastline suitable for hiding pirated boats. After all, the old buccaneers used all the Greater Antilles for approximately the same purpose for years, very successfully.”

“The Greater Whats?” I asked.

She laughed. “You really are a geographical innocent. The Greater Antilles are the big northern islands, from Cuba as far down as Puerto Rico, I believe. The Lesser Antilles are the rest of the Caribbean chain, the Leeward and Windward Islands and all that small stuff off the coast of South America.”

Mac said, “The point is that Cuba is the only island within reasonable sailing or flying distance of these disappearances, as close as we can place them, that has not been, and cannot be, searched very carefully. We have not been permitted to risk an international incident there, at least not yet. Satellite reconnaissance hasn’t been very helpful, and speculative scouting expeditions and oversights have been strictly forbidden. If we find the hiding place, we may be allowed to act against it, but we will be given only one chance, and our action must be successful. Apparently, delicate negotiations of some kind are in progress somewhere; and too many people remember the Bay of Pigs. There must be no more fiascos in that area.”

“Well, Bahia de Cocinos is clear over on the south coast of Cuba,” Harriet said. “It’s hardly the same area, but I see what you mean.”

There was a small pause. I took advantage of it to shove a chair forward for Mac. He waited politely for Harriet to sit down on the bed before seating himself. I took the couch at the side of the room. I didn’t bother to offer drinks around. It wasn’t exactly a social occasion.

Mac studied the colorful map of Cuba at his feet for a moment, and looked up, addressing Harriet: “Considering your rather questionable security status,” he said, “you will forgive me if I omit certain classified details. The basic problem seems to be this: Recently a certain small island in the Caribbean—down in the Lesser Antilles, since we’re making the distinction—declared itself a free and sovereign nation, as others have done. There was no real opposition at the time. The European nation that formerly exercised sovereignty over St. Esteban, as we’ll refer to it, wasn’t greatly concerned about the loss of a piece of fairly impoverished real estate, and everybody else was happy—everybody except the St. Estebanites, or Estebanians, or whatever they should be called.”

“What was their gripe?” I asked.

Mac made a wry face. “It turned out that there were two factions striving for power, and once they no longer had a foreign government to hate, they promptly started hating each other. Frankly, I have been unable to determine the exact basis for disagreement. The races and language groups involved seem to be fairly evenly divided between the two sides. It seems to be an obscure family quarrel no outsider can really comprehend. The fact is that one group has managed to drive the other out of the capital city of St. Esteban, which we will also call St. Esteban, and bottle up its active, armed members in a mountainous corner of the island. The rebels, as they are now called by the faction that controls the seat of government, have struck back, quite simply, by seizing fairly prominent hostages from three major nations with Caribbean interests. All three governments have just been formally notified that if military aid is not forthcoming to help these downtrodden people regain their ‘rights,’ the hostages will die.”

I whistled softly. “Jesus!” I said. “Those airplane hijackers are pikers, with their lousy little half-million-dollar ransoms. These characters think big. What they want is the United States Marines, Her Majesty’s Gurkhas, and the French Foreign Legion, if I have the titles and outfits correct.”

“You haven’t,” Mac said. “As a matter of fact, I believe two of the military organizations to which you refer no longer exist in an effective way. But the principle is correct.”

Harriet asked, “If it’s not classified, what’s the official reaction?”

“Whose official reaction?” Mac shrugged. “The British have their reaction and the French have theirs. In Washington, I would say the message at first evoked equal parts of incredulity and dismay. The dismay remains. The incredulity soon faded when it was established that these people do in all likelihood hold the hostages enumerated; and that they probably mean what they say. Apparently, they are logical men and women in their primitive way, and reason that a nation that has never seemed reluctant to hand over a large sum of money to ransom an airplane and a few obscure passengers, isn’t going to hesitate to provide an armored regiment or two in return for a number of reasonably important citizens and their expensive nautical and aeronautical toys.” He paused, and went on: “The message also states that it is no use for us to try to locate the hostages, as they are being held in a place where we couldn’t touch them even if we found them. This could, of course, be a ruse to keep us from looking too closely at a certain corner of the island of St. Esteban, but it could also mean that Mr. Helm is on the right track. The Cubans may well have been persuaded to extend unofficial hospitality to a project guaranteed to embarrass a number of capitalist nations, including the United States of America.

I said, “I suppose there’s a time limit.”

“We have five days left,” Mac said. “In the meantime, orders have actually gone out to certain units of the Marines; and suitable transports are being ostentatiously prepared in Key West. What the final decision will be, if the hostages are still hostages at the end of the allotted time limit, nobody knows; but it was thought best to go through the motions to keep their captors happy while other responses are being considered.”

“Like us,” I said. “One question, sir. Satisfy my curiosity. Has it been established that there actually was an Estebanian, or whatever they’re called, on each of the craft involved?”

“The inhabitants of the island are noted for being excellent sailors and fishermen,” Mac said. “When they leave St. Esteban, they often find work on board yachts and sportfishing vessels. The
Ametta Too
carried a paid hand, Leo Gonzales, who was bom on St. Esteban. It is thought that one of the two American college youths on board was also sympathetic to the rebel movement; at least he’d spent some time in the area before independence.”

So much for the clean bill of health given the crew, albeit reluctantly, by Haseltine. I wondered if he’d known the truth, and if so, why he’d held it back.

“What about the others?” I asked.

“Sir James Marcus’s yacht employed two crewmen from the island; and Lavalle’s plane carried a very attractive black Estebanian stewardess, I’m told,” Mac said. “One of the Baron’s companions, Adolfo Alire, is known to have commercial connections in the island, maybe significant, maybe not. I think we can take it that the crafts were not captured by open enemy action; they were seized by people already on board, and sailed or flown to the place we’re trying to find.” Mac looked from me to Harriet and back again. “Any more questions? No? Then I’ll take my leave. I was supposed to be in Washington six hours ago.” He glanced at me. “Come out to the car, please, Eric. There is something you’d better see before I leave; something confidential. If you’ll excuse us, Captain....”