The Intimidators (24 page)

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“My dear man, of course I want to tell you about it. I’ll be telling it at cocktail parties for the rest of my life; I’d better start getting into practice....” She stopped. When she spoke again, the lightness was gone from her voice. “Mr. Helm.”

“What?”

“What are the chances?”

“Of bringing them out?” I asked. She nodded. I said, “I don’t know yet. The data aren’t all in, but don’t get your hopes up too far. It’s going to be a close one. Everybody’s being clever as hell. The final result will depend on who turns out to have been cleverest.”

“I want to come along. I don’t want to be parked somewhere safe, waiting.”

I grinned. “That’s good, because as it happens I neglected to make provisions for parking you—or your daughter, whom I was really expecting—somewhere safe.”

She was silent for a moment; then she said softly, “Mr. Helm, I love that curly-haired, sea-crazy sonofabitch I’m married to. Get him out for me, please. I’ll spend the rest of my life on his lousy boats, bored stiff and loving it, if you’ll just get Buster back to me in one piece.”

“Just Buster?” I said slyly.

She made a face at me. “All right, I’m worried about Loretta, too; but just between us, the girl is kind of a pill even if she is my daughter and, well, to put it bluntly, I can live without her if I have to. That’s not very motherly, but that’s the way it is.” She laughed shortly. “Now that I’ve bared my soul, just what do you want to know?”

I learned that the three-fingered Estebanian paid hand, cook, or captain—whatever Leo Gonzales’ exact title had been—had produced a couple of pistols and taken over the
Ametta Too
well east of the Bahamas with the help of one of the college-boy crew members.

“Buddy Jacobsen,” Amanda said tartly. “Very intense. He liked to call himself a liberal, although what’s liberal about kidnaping and murder he wouldn’t say.”

“Murder?”

“There was another boy along, Sam Eilender, who tried to be brave and jump Leo when he wasn’t looking. Buddy shot him. They buried Sam at sea, if you want to call it a burial. They stuffed him into a sailbag with an odd length of anchor chain and rolled him over the stem....”

There had been several days of sailing with the Phippses locked into the boat’s big main cabin, aft. Finally, the anchor had been dropped and they’d been allowed on deck, finding themselves in a small harbor fringed with palm trees. It had been explained to them that all sails had been taken ashore, along with the dinghy and life rafts. The motor had been disabled. There was no way, they were told, that they could escape with the ketch. If they wanted to try swimming ashore, well, the island behind which they were lying was too small for anybody to hide on successfully. The other way, north, there were some not very nice shoals and swamps and channels between them and the mainland; and the mainland was Cuba, where their reception might not be very friendly.

“So we lived on board for weeks,” Amanda said grimly. “In a way, I guess, it wasn’t too bad, not as if they’d taken us ashore and locked us up in a shed with a lot of bugs and rats. They hadn’t sabotaged the generator, so we had power and light. They’d bring us supplies when we needed them, and water when that ran short. There was always one guard on board. We might have managed to overpower him—we considered it, of course—but what would have been the point? There was really no place to go.”

I said carefully, “Altogether, it was about five weeks from the time they took over the boat. Over four weeks at anchor, with absolutely nothing happening. Seems kind of pointless, if I’ve got it right.”

She looked at me for a moment, steadily. “You haven’t got it right, Mr. Helm. Quite a few things happened right at first. It was only after the first week in that place that everything settled down to a kind of dull prison-ship routine that came close to driving the three of us crazy.”

“But you’re not going to tell me what happened?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you. I want to see how things work out tonight. I want to think the whole thing over very carefully before I say anything about it. I want to be perfectly fair.”

“Try being fair to me, Mrs. Phipps,” I said. “Haseltine’s involved in some way, isn’t he? My life may depend on him before morning, miné and several other people’s. If there’s something I ought to know, you’d better tell me about it”

“If I thought it could have any effect on....” Amanda look her head quickly. “No. I think I’m quite safe in saying that what I’m holding back can’t possibly hurt.”

“Sure,” I said. “Okay, carry on, as we say in the Navy.”

One night, after a few weeks had passed, they’d been awakened by the arrival of another boat. In the morning they’d seen a big motor yacht at anchor fifty yards away, but communication between the ships had been discouraged. Much later, only a couple of days ago, a plane landed on the air strip, which had been partially cleared by their captors.

“There were some half a dozen men there from the art,” she said in answer to my question. “That’s not including Leo and Buddy Jacobsen. Leo seemed to more or less take charge when he got there. It was a good thing for us, since he still felt obliged to kind of look after us, after all those years of working for us. Two more men arrived with the strange yacht. A girl, a black girl in a stewardess uniform of some kind, came with the plane. We could see her through the binoculars, with a revolver in her hand, as she helped herd the passengers out They were rowed out to the other yacht, I suppose because it had more accommodations.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if it matters, but we recognized one of the plane people: a businessman friend of Bill Haseltine’s named Adolfo Alire. We’d met him the year before when we sailed down to Isla Rosalia, in the Windward Islands. It made a nice cruise, and Bill had some oil business he hoped to transact, but I don’t think it worked out—”

“Wait a minute!” I said. My voice sounded a little funny. “Hold everything! Isla Rosalia. That’s the island where they discovered oil offshore a year ago, right after it declared its independence?”

“Why, yes, on the Caracas Shelf, whatever that may be. Way down. Nobody’d been able to explore it effectively before, let alone drill on it, because it was too deep, Hut with modern equipment—”

“And Haseltine was interested?”

“Of course. It was oil, wasn’t it? But it turned out to be too big a deal for him, I think. He’s kind of a lone-wolf operator, you know; and here there were governments and giant international corporations and cartels all competing—”

“And Isla Rosalia is the place from which your hired captain came?”

“Yes, Leo was born there. At the time, we just thought it was nice that we could help him visit his home and family for a few weeks. We never dreamed his fanatic relatives would get him mixed up in their crazy political schemes.... Didn’t you know?”

I said grimly, “Mrs. Phipps, you’d be surprised at what people tell us. You’d be even more surprised at what they don’t tell us. Okay, give me the rest fast; we’re running out of time. What happened last night? I mean, it was last night, wasn’t it? You don’t look like the type to spend all day in your pajamas, attractive though they are.”

Manderfield must already have had her ready to use as a hostage when he set up the rendezvous with me at the Salty Dog. He must have got his instructions quickly—the instructions he didn’t like—and moved fast when Harriet reported to him after our sex interlude and conversation the night before. Well, I had no reason to question the man’s efficiency. I’d have been happier if I had.

“Thank you, sir,” Amanda said. “It happened well after midnight, but I’m afraid I never thought to look at my watch. There was a lot of confusion and shooting on land, awakening us. Then somebody set out flares along the airstrip, and planes came roaring in, two or three of them. We couldn’t make out what was happening; but suddenly there were rubber boats all over the harbor, and men swarming aboard the
Ametta.
Our guard was disarmed. Seeing how badly he was outnumbered, I guess he decided not to resist. We were all herded into the rubber boats without being given a chance to dress, and put ashore with the people from the other yacht. Our guard was thrown in with Leo Gonzales and Buddy Jacobsen and the rest of the kidnap gang. They were also prisoners, obviously but held separately. Then a couple of men with tommy guns—well, submachine guns of some kind—came up and shone their flashlights at us, looking us over. One pointed me out, and the other grabbed me and marched me over to one of the planes, and we took off. By this time, it was close to sunrise. After a while, in daylight, we landed somewhere and I was marched to a dock and put aboard that fifty-foot yacht you saw, which promptly cast off and put to sea. Later, they seemed to be chasing somebody, but Hattie, who’d taken over as my jailer, wouldn’t let me near the porthole, so I can’t tell you any more about it.”

“You were probably chasing Bill and me,” I said. “We had a little brush with them this morning.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about it some time,” she said dryly. “When I can stand more excitement. Anyway, eventually Hattie and I were loaded into the dinghy and ferried over to that dismal sandbar—I guess they call it Little Grass Key because there’s so little grass on it. Then you came riding to the rescue, and here I am, still in my pj’s.”

“Back to that place you were kept prisoner first,” I said. “Was the raiding party in uniform?”

“No. It didn’t seem to be an official Cuban military operation, if that’s what you mean. They wore all kinds of clothes and spoke several different languages among themselves, not just Spanish. And the way they were armed was out of this world. Anything that would shoot, cut, or stab, they all had it—” She stopped, as the sound of the diesels died abruptly, leaving a strange, ringing silence. “What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“I hope not,” I said. “But if there is, now’s the time to find it out, rather than hours from now off the Cuban coast....”

“Right here,” Harriet said, placing a slim brown forefinger on a small grayish strip of land in the middle of a lot of shallow blue water along the Cuban coast. On a chart, the shallow water is blue and the deep water is white, just opposite from the way you find it in nature. I suppose there’s a reason.

We were gathered in the red-leather-and-gold cabin, around the cocktail table that wasn’t exactly designed for navigation—that marble would play hell with a nice sharp pair of dividers. Amanda Phipps had withdrawn discreetly to lean against the bar, giving the rest of us room; I gathered she wasn’t eager to rub shoulders with Haseltine. I wished I knew why, but I obviously wasn’t going to learn by asking. Harriet was sitting at the table with us three males hanging over her.

“Hell, that’s the old Club de Pesca,” Haseltine said. “If it hasn’t fallen down by now.”

“That’s right,” Harriet said. “The old, deserted Club de Pesca de Cayo Negro, to be exact. Black Island Fishing Club to you, Matt.”

“Go to hell,” I said. “I
habla Espanol
just as
bueno
as anybody, I’ll have you know.” I frowned at the spread-out chart. “Looks like a nice little harbor right inside the west end of it, but the water gets mighty thin once you’re past that. You couldn’t sneak in from the east in anything deeper than a canoe, I’d say, and you might have to carry that in places. What’s that long, narrow island to the west? It doesn’t seem to have a name on the chart, here.”

“Locally, it’s known as Cayo Perro, Dog Key,” Harriet said, still translating for my benefit. “It’s part of the same offshore chain.”

“And the channel behind it? At least it looks as if there might be a channel.”

“There is, or was. When I was there it was four or five feet deep, kind of tricky, but you could make it. We used to take the fishing boats out that way sometimes, when a norther was blowing and we wanted to get up the coast without taking a beating.”

“So you’ve been there?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “Years ago, before Castro, when I was a mere slip of a girl, of course.”

Her age, then or now, didn’t concern me at the moment I said, “So the harbor of this former fishing club can be reached from offshore either by coming in the direct channel between Cayo Negro and Cayo Perro, or by making an end run west of Cayo Perro and passing behind it. Can it be done in the dark?”

“They’re all mean little channels,” Harriet said. “However, with a powerboat that doesn’t draw too much water, like this one; and a good depthfinder and radar, it could probably be done if the situation hasn’t changed too much since I was there. But it isn’t necessary, Matt.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all set up for you. It’s all arranged. You don’t have to pull a sneak around right end. All you have to do is sail straight in and pick up your people. You’ll meet no resistance, I promise you.”

I looked at her for a moment. She met my gaze steadily enough; she was telling the truth, all right. Up to a point.

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s swell. Then you’ll run no risk of getting shot as you show us the way, will you?”

There was another little silence. At last, Harriet licked her lips and said, “That wasn’t the agreement, Matt.”

“If there’s no danger, sweetheart, why should you mind a little boat-ride?” I asked. “Anyway, the agreement was based on Loretta Phipps, not her mother, remember? If you can switch signals, so can I.”

“You’d have done it anyway, you bastard.”

“Sure,” I said. “But now I have a good excuse, don’t I? Anyway, there’s no way of putting you ashore without wasting time we can’t afford.”

“The outboard—”

“We’re taking the outboard with us. And that happens to be something I don’t want you reporting to your friends right away.”

She drew a long breath. “Then there’s not much use in arguing about it, is there?” she said, and I knew she’d been expecting it or she wouldn’t have given in so quickly. “But if we’re going to tow my boat all that way, in open water, we’d better have a bridle on her.”

I said, “Hell, use a bridle and saddle both, if it’ll make you happy. Bill, go with her and see she ties the right knots and doesn’t make a break for it. Remember, she’s still got keys for that boat of hers somewhere; and the thing will run circles around even this souped-up sex barge, if she ever gets loose in it.” I watched them disappear into the cockpit, Haseltine looking a little puzzled, as well he might. After all, he’d been more or less led to think that Captain Harriet Robinson was a trusted colleague of mine. Well, we all had our little secrets. “Where are we?” I asked Brent, standing nearby.