The Revengers Page 6

  I said, “Well, I didn’t take that bloody Triangle nonsense of hers too seriously. I figured she was using that to hide behind while she probed away secretly at something else. So what was she likely to be investigating while she pretended to be collecting fascinating data on the Mysterious Sea of Missing Ships? What made her pick that particular cover story, to cover the story she’s really working on? It came to me in a flash; and I had Washington crank up the computer and find out if there had been any new cases of ships going mysteriously missing of late. They sent me a bunch of clippings and some other stuff, very interesting. Inside and outside the Deadly Triangle, folks have been polluting the sea bottoms with busted-up vessels in a most reprehensible way, racking up well above the normal run of collisions and storm losses and groundings. The computer kicked out over half a dozen it thought deserved special

  attention—I haven’t gotten around to reading them all— and that doesn’t count the most recent one that was in the newspaper I read on the plane coming east. Come to think of it, I’ve got that one in my pocket. Here.”

  I dug out the torn-out piece of newsprint and laid it on the cabin table. Harriet turned it so she could read the headline above the picture of a neat new ship proceeding peacefully across a placid ocean.

  "TANKER SINKS,” she read aloud. “Date and so forth. . . . Four lives were lost when the tanker Fairfax Constellation, shown above on its maiden voyage in 1963, went down off the Bahama Islands in moderate weather after reporting an explosion and fire on board. The remainder of the crew was picked up etc., etc. . . . The twenty-five thousand ton ship was registered in Monrovia, Liberia. After taking on a full cargo of oil in Aruba, it was proceeding towards Wilmington, North Carolina, when the disaster occurred. The cause of the explosion has not been determined. ... It!” she said explosively.

  “What?”

  “It, for God’s sake!” Harriet made a face at the clipping. “I’m getting goddamn sick and tired of these Libbers mangling the goddamn language. A ship is not an it, goddamn it! A ship is a she, and has always been a she. As a woman I simply loved having hurricanes named after me; it’s bad enough now when they call a nice, big, beautiful blow ‘David,’ for God’s sake! It should have been ‘Danielle,’ or ‘Dorothy,’ or ‘Dora’ or something, a real credit to our sex. But when they have the gall to deprive us of having a lovely thing like a ship, even a seventeen-year-old flag-of-convenience rust-bucket like that, referred to in the feminine! . . .” She grinned abruptly. “Did you hear about that big whirlpool off Norway? You’re now supposed to call it the Personstrom, or the equal ladies will have your hide. Instead of the Maelstrom—Malestrom—get it?”

  I said, “Lady, you need another drink. Ugh!”

  She laughed and said, “I gather you’re convinced that all these recent sinkings are related in some way.”

  “Wasn’t Eleanor Brand? Isn’t that why she came to see you a second time, remembering from the previous interview that you know a hell of a lot about anything that floats?”

  After a moment, Harriet nodded. “You’re a good guesser. Yes, that’s why she stopped by on her way down to the Caribbean; but I couldn’t give her much help. Big ships aren’t really in my line. Anyway, you’ll have gathered I wasn’t very fond of Miss Eleanor Brand; and, of course, there were . . . reasons why I didn’t particularly want her hanging around asking questions.”

  “Reasons?”

  “Now who’s being stupid?” she asked. “Naturally, I don’t want her putting me into an article or giving me any other kind of publicity. And I certainly don’t want to get her interested enough in me to start checking up on my past, do I? And when a conscientious reporter gets important information from a certain source, he starts checking that source for reliability, doesn’t he? Or she?”

  “So you were careful not to give her any important information,” I said. “What important information?”

  She hesitated and looked oddly embarrassed. She spoke too quickly, “I didn’t mean . . . I was just speaking generally. What I meant was that I simply brushed her off as fast as I could; the last thing I wanted was her calling attention to me by quoting me as her tame nautical advisor.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What about me?”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice was guarded.

  “How about being my tame nautical advisor, Hattie? I’d like to have some idea of what this gal is getting herself, and me, involved in. You must have done a bit of thinking about this recent rash of ship sinkings, and even if big ships are out of your line, you know a hell of a lot more about them than I do.”

  She started to speak quickly, and stopped. There was a brief silence; then she said, “I’m afraid I can’t be much help to you, Matt.” She wasn’t looking at me; and her voice sounded strangely uncertain, for her. Then she drew a deep breath and turned to face me a bit defiantly. She said, “No, that’s not true. I won’t lie to you. I simply don’t want to be much help to you, any more than I wanted to be much help to Eleanor Brand. For just about the same reasons.”

  It shocked me a little. It was not what I’d expected from Captain Harriet Robinson, as she now was; even though it was a perfectly sensible attitude.

  I said, “You still feel pretty vulnerable, even after all these years, is that what you mean?”

  She nodded. “I . . . there could be something rather peculiar going on, Matt; but if there is, I don’t want to be mixed up in it in any way. Please try to understand. I mind my own business, ashore and on the water, and I let others mind theirs. Cap’n Hattie is deaf and blind and very, very, dumb, in a bright sort of way; and everybody knows it. I don’t ever see anybody smuggling drugs although it takes a lot of concentrated not-seeing. I do my fishing legally and if somebody else does it some other way you can never prove it by me. Everybody loves me and nobody hates me and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want to make anybody mad. I don’t want to give anybody reason to start asking questions about me even if you did fix up my records so nicely, for which you have my thanks. But I earned that, in a way, didn’t I? I don’t really owe you for that.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing, quite the contrary,” I said.

  She was looking out the cabin window, again refusing to meet my eyes. “Please understand. I’m still an easy mark for anybody who wants to make a real project of digging into my past. Even if you want to, you can’t protect me beyond a certain point, can you? Not if they learn the truth and take it to the proper authorities. There are still some old charges that could be revived if it’s learned that I’m alive; charges I doubt even your big man in Washington has pull enough to do anything about, if the information gets into the hands of an eager official—prosecutor?— who feels compelled to act on it. Accessory to murder is only one; they could call what I did up there conspiracy, or even treason, couldn’t they? I. . . I was so goddamn proud and cocky in those days, Matt, and so goddamn stupid! And I don’t intend to go to prison, my dear; I couldn’t endure that. It’s bad enough being . . . being exiled like this. . . Her voice stopped. We sat silent for a moment; she seemed to be listening to a replay of her own words. I felt her shudder beside me. She whispered, aghast, “God, listen to me, Matt! What’s happened to me? I sound like a sniveling coward hiding in a dark cave!”

  I said quickly, “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, goddamn it, it’s not all right!” Her voice was fierce. “That’s no way to live, what the hell am I thinking of? I have picked up some hints—”

  “No,” I said. “You really don’t owe me anything, Harriet. The debt runs the other way. I shouldn’t have come.” I got up. “Thanks for the drinks. I’ll be on my way. It’s been nice seeing you.”

  She said harshly, “You goddamn spook, park your ass and listen. Sit down!” There was a resonance to her voice; the ring of command. I sat down. She said, “I’ll give you a reference and a name; what you do with them is up to you. The reference is COLREGS Rule 18-a-iv. The name is George Winfield Lorca. And
I did not give any of that to Miss Brand, why should I stick my neck out for her? But if you want to use it, directly or for trading purposes, be my guest.”

  I asked, “Why should you stick your neck out for me?” She smiled and reached out to touch my lips with a silencing forefinger. “No questions. You got what you came for. Now you can go.”

  There was a hint of challenge in her voice, a go-to-hell inflection that made me look at her sharply. After a long moment I asked, “Did I?”

  “Did you what?”

  “Get what I came for?”

  She drew a long breath, regarding me intently. After a little, she said very softly, “Hey, spook, I think we have a problem.”

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t know about we, but when a skinny seafaring dame in greasy khakis begins to look good to me, I know I have a problem. A skinny seafaring dame who kicked me off her boat with curses when last met.” She smiled slowly. “But who hadn’t been too hard to talk out of her dress and shoes a little earlier.”

  I cleared my throat again. “As I recall, that’s all you were wearing at the time, a dress and shoes.”

  She asked, “Well, how do you want me tonight, quick or pretty?”

  I told her I preferred my ladies gift-wrapped, if that was what she meant and if she truly wished to be my lady. She said for me to have another drink and start the clock when I heard the shower stop, let it run five minutes, and I should be right on target.

  I was.

  Chapter 6

  Early morning is usually a good time in the Florida Keys, calm and clear. I slipped out of the double bunk in the wedge-shaped stateroom up in Queenfisher’s bow—the big berth, set at a slant with respect to the boat’s centerline in order to take advantage of the oddly shaped space, pretty well filled the little forward cabin—and carried my clothes up into the deckhouse, leaving her asleep. I couldn’t shave or change into anything clean until I got my suitcase out of the car, so I simply hauled on shorts and pants for the time being. Shoeless and shirtless gents cause no particular comment around a Florida marina; but I had to admit that my torso was kind of fish-belly pale by local standards.

  An early-rising fisherman was heading out of the marina in a small outboard-powered boat; otherwise everything was very quiet as I stepped ashore. The little vessel’s

  V-shaped wake traveled silently across the glassy water of the harbor, but made small, surging, hissing noises when it encountered the sea wall, and sent a ripple of movement through the docked boats. I padded along the sea wall to the pay phone across the road from the lounge and restaurant, now closed and silent. If you want to buy breakfast in that resort, you have to hike or drive up to their coffee shop on the highway; but most of the cabins have kitchen facilities. Waiting for my call to Miami to go through collect, I admired the boats, now lying still once more, and the motionless palms, and the clear blue Florida sky. I hoped for a pelican to appear—the ugliest bird in the world and the most beautiful flyer—but they’re getting scarce down there nowadays and none showed.

  “Eric here,” I said when a voice spoke in my ear. “Report.”

  “The Paradise Towers Hotel, Nassau.”

  “What the hell is she doing in Nassau? I thought she was down in the Virgin Islands somewhere.”

  “The location is our business, friend; the motivation is yours.”

  I grimaced at a flying seagull, who didn’t seem to mind. “Well, that pretty well confirms my guess about what she’s really after; she must be checking up on that last ship that went down, but she reacts fast . . . Fairfax Constellation,” I said. “Twenty-five-thousand-ton tanker, Liberian registry, out of Aruba, recently sunk somewhere off the Bahamas. It was in the Miami papers yesterday; probably others as well. Get what details you can and locate the surviving crew for me, will you? Although I have a hunch all I have to do is keep Miss Brand in sight and she’ll lead me to them.”

  “Request noted.”

  “Who’s our man in Nassau these days, Freddie?”

  “Fred is still our man in Nassau, yes.”

  The voice was expressionless; but there are very few secrets in the organization and I had a hunch that our man in Miami, a young standby agent named Brent with whom I’d worked in the past, was quite aware that there had been friction between Fred and me the last time I’d operated in the Islands. Fred thought I was a racist bastard and he was perfectly right. I am highly intolerant of black men who are slow pulling the trigger when my life is at stake; and the last time we’d worked together he’d been damned slow. Of course I’m also intolerant of white men, blue men, red men, and green men who display similar dilatory characteristics under similar circumstances.

  I said, “Can you set me up for the flight and the hotel?”

  “Already done, friend. Get yourself up to Miami today; you’ve got a room for the night at the Airport Hotel. You take Eastern out tomorrow morning at eight-oh-five and land on New Providence Island at eight-fifty. Your reservation at the Paradise Towers is waiting. The subject is in room four-oh-five. She has company along; male, blond, husky, handsome. Ostensible occupation, photographer, but I wouldn’t trust him to cover my wedding if I were getting married, which I’m not. More muscle than art, I’d say. Name, Warren Peterson. Room four-oh-seven. I believe there are connecting doors.”

  “I’m jealous already,” I said. “But that’s real service; I’ll mail you a gold star for your report card. A couple more things. Please find out for me what the hell is a COLREGS. Cee-oh-ell-are. . . .”

  “The latest International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea were promulgated in 1972 by the United Nations Inter-Governmental Marine Consultative Organization. They were updated recently, I believe in 1977. They are now known as COLREGS—Collision Regulations, get it? In case you’re interested, the organization itself is known as IMCO. Just as a seagoing toilet is nowadays known as a Marine Sanitation Device or MSD, a life preserver is a Personal Flotation Device or PFD, and a pump or bucket is a Dewatering Device or DD—well, I don’t vouch for that last contraction. All courtesy of the fun-loving linguistic jokers of the United States Coast Guard known as USCG. What part of the rules?”

  “Rule 18-a-iv.”

  “I don’t have it on tap but I can find it.”

  “It’s a relief to learn there’s something you don’t know offhand. I thought for a moment I might be hooked into our omniscient friendly neighborhood computer. Well, look it up and get it to me care of Fred, will you? Also a copy of an old article in Travel Times entitled ‘Kiruna Today,’ by a lady named Louise Taylor.” I gave him the date and waited while he wrote it down. He read it back to me to make sure he had it right. I went on, “I’d also appreciate it if you’d send somebody down here to keep an eye on Captain Harriet Robinson. You remember Cap’n Hattie. I have a hunch she knows too much to be perfectly safe.” There was something I had forgotten, but it came back to me. “Oh, and check on a name for me, please. George Winfield Lorca.”

  I heard a soft whistle. “Watch yourself, friend. That name packs a punch.”

  “I’m just an ignorant desert dweller,” I said.

  “I’ll send you what I can get in an asbestos envelope. Tell Fred to have his fire tongs handy.”

  “I get the message,” I said. “I’ll wear my bulletproof union suit known as BVD when I land in the British West Indies known as BWI. Only they aren’t that any longer, are they?”

  “No, they’re pretty much an independent nation now. Good luck.”

  “Eric out.”

  As I stepped out of the booth I saw that one lonely brown pelican had, after all, put in an appearance. He was sitting perched on top of one of the dockside pilings I had to pass, in the stump-like way they have, long beak tucked in close to long neck. He gave me a baleful look as I approached and spread his wings and glided away, instantly transforming himself from a figure of fun to a creature of remarkable grace. Even the outsized bill looked right when he was flying.

  I walked gingerly over to
the rental car in my bare feet, got my suitcase out of the trunk, and returned to the boat. There was no sound from the forward stateroom as I shaved in the diminutive cubicle called a head, utilized the apparatus known as MSD, and made myself reasonably respectable; shoes, shirt, and the works. I hoped Harriet had fewer protective and possessive feelings about her galley than Martha had about her kitchen, although that was not exactly a comfortable thought. My life seemed to be getting a bit complex with regard to the opposite sex. Risking displeasure, I fired up the stove, which operated in normal fashion on butane gas, a relief. Some boat cookers use alcohol or kerosene and require priming; and while I was checked out at an early age on Coleman gasoline camp stoves, which operate similarly, my rustic-stove techniques had become pretty rusty of late.

  I started heating water for instant coffee—Harriet seemed to be of my own persuasion in this respect—and found bacon and eggs in the small boat refrigerator; also some canned orange juice, which always seems unnatural in Florida. All those citrus groves and you’re supposed to drink it out of a can, for God’s sake? But the last time I got real, fresh-squeezed, breakfast orange juice handed to me in a restaurant, I recalled was in a motel in a little Mexican mining town with the odd name of Heroica de Caborca, where they were too far from civilization to know any better. The galley was very neat and tidy, but it was a sailor’s neatness, not a cook’s neatness. There was nothing to indicate that cooking was anything but just another boat chore to the owner, like polishing the fittings or scrubbing the decks. There were no intriguing, specialized, culinary implements in evidence, or oddball spices. When the deckhouse table was set and the bacon was draining on a paper towel, I went downstairs—oops, below—to wake my lady.

  She was kind of breathtaking lying there asleep, tanned and lovely; she had always been a spectacular lady. She had declared war upon the United States of America because of the arbitrary way its bureaucracy had condemned some land she’d owned and loved for purposes of which she did not approve—it had been part of a sizeable estate she’d inherited up there in Maryland. I could have sympathized with her angry feelings if she hadn’t picked her allies so badly, disregarding their motives and political beliefs in her desire to strike back at the establishment that, she felt, had robbed her of an important part of her birthright—and if, as I’d reminded her the night before, she hadn’t caused the death of one of our people in the course of her vengeful operations.