Crackdown (42 page)

“Maggovertski, John.” He grinned through his black tangled beard. “Otherwise known as the Maggot. You know who I am, Nick. Failed football player, failing businessman, good old country boy, layabout, average pilot, extraordinarily talented beer drinker, gun collector, lover of loose women, lover of tight women, lover of any women, tennis coach extraordinary.”

“DEA?” I carried on the list for him. “US Customs? Special Task Force? CIA?”

“I kind of go deaf to some questions, Nick, on account of having banged my head against dickhead offensive linemen too often. But considering I’m just an easy-going party-loving animal with an aeroplane and a boat, you’d be amazed how many people confide in me their wishes and plans to introduce strange and narcotic substances into America.”

We walked slowly on through the cloying sand. The small lagoon waves flopped feebly on the beach. The painkiller was making me light-headed, but not foolish any longer. “So where’s Ellen, John?”

“So far as I know, Nick, she’s in an Embassy guest house in Nassau. She’s been well treated, though she didn’t think so. We kind of denied her a telephone, and kept her on a leash, and she was unhappy about that. In fact she was as mad as hell. I know you’re fond of her, Nick, but have you ever caught the rough side of her tongue? Jesus, she could strip the teeth of a running chainsaw! We were only keeping her in Nassau for her own protection, but you’d never have known it from the way she cussed us.”

I smiled. “Were you the one who took her to Nassau?”

“Smedley did. You met Smedley, right? I kind of arranged it, though.” The Maggot had the grace to give me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Nick. But, Jesus, when you telephoned and asked for my help? You were just offering us temptation, and I was always kind of bad at resisting temptation.”

“Screw you, mate,” I said, but without malice, for I liked the Maggot, and he had been clever, so very clever. Instead of flying Ellen direct from Straker’s Cay to Nassau he had taken her to Free-port and allowed her to complete as much of her planned itinerary as possible, thus making it seem even more plausible that she had been kidnapped. “But why couldn’t you have told me the truth?” I asked.

“Think about it, Nick. If you’d known this whole party was being laid on and paid for by the US government, would you have put your miserable hide on the line for us?”

“No,” I confessed wisely and truthfully.

“And you were just too good to overlook,” the Maggot said with an indecent relish. “A trained soldier, and the son of the great Sir Thomas Breakspear! Even the Brits can’t object to us rescuing Sir Tom’s dear son from the
narcotraficantes.”

“But why did I have to do the killing?” I cut across his foolery with the bitter question.

He gave me a shrewd glance. “Because you were a marine, Nick.”

“Not in your Navy.”

He walked in silence for a few paces. “It’s a war against drugs, Nick, and we’re not going to win it unless we fight as cruelly and as pitilessly as the
narcotraficantes.
Not that we thought there’d be any killing here. Damn it, if the senator hadn’t thrown his radio at the bloody dog, no one would have got shot! It wasn’t meant to be like this.”

“It never is,” I said, and I thought that Ellen was right, and that this whole damn crooked business should be brought into the open so that no one could make profits so huge that they were worth the fighting and the dying and the lying and the stealing and the misery.

“Anyway, it’s over now.” The Maggot was uncomfortable with my dismay and hurried the conversation on. “I guess we owe you a big thank you, Nick. Not, of course, that I speak for the US government, you understand. In fact, and you may quote me, the US government is just like any other government; a load of fat-assed faggot lawyers who only understand how to spend people’s taxes but who can’t even piss downwind unless their aides show them how to do it. So I would hate you to spread a rumour that I was in any way associated with those pin-headed dickbrains, and do I make myself plain?”

I smiled. “Yes, Maggot, you do. You don’t exist, am I right?”

“You are so right.”

Dawn was showing like a line of gun-metal above the horizon. The wind was rife with the stench of helicopter fuel, but beyond the coral reefs there would be a cutting cleanness to the air. I suddenly wanted to be away in my boat; just Ellen,
Masquerade,
and myself in great waters. I looked ruefully at my bandaged arm. “You’ve made it kind of hard for me to mend my boat, you big non-existent bastard.”

“The boat’s going to Florida tomorrow, Nick. You signed the papers, remember?”

I stared up into the Maggot’s strong face. “When was all this set up? After Sea Rat Cay?”

“Sure. But even before that we kind of guessed Rickie might be making a play. It was all his idea to come to the Bahamas, remember? And the senator has been co-operating with the authorities for a few months now. In the first place he thought that by co-operating he could keep his son’s sentence low, and in the second place he reckoned it might just pay off in a big stinking heap of publicity, and publicity to a politician is what cocaine is to Rickie. But I still didn’t know if we were going ahead, even yesterday. We were kind of doing it by the seat of our pants, Nick, and I reckon if the bad guys hadn’t come gunning for you, then my lily-livered lawyer superiors wouldn’t have had the guts to turn us loose.” The Maggot turned to stare back at the houses. The fire had been put out now, but in its place was a patch of brilliant white light that was evidently cast by the sun-guns of some television crews. “The press are already here,” the Maggot explained, “on account that some of them were accidentally invited to watch a night of Operation Stingray.”

“Accidentally invited by the senator?” I asked.

“I do believe his press office was involved. And I do believe that we may just have seen the making of a President.” The Maggot lit a cigarette. “Of course, there’ll be a whole lot more pressmen and television people arriving in a few hours, and they’ll all want to talk to you. One of my jobs is to make sure you say the right things, Nick.”

The helicopters carrying the press had landed on the island’s northern promontory. From there the reporters had been escorted to see the tons of cocaine that had been waiting on the island for shipment to America, then the journalists were offered the senator as the hero of the hour. This would be tonight’s lead television news story; how a senator’s gallant attempt to rescue his children had led to the smashing of a Latin-American cocaine family. Good had triumphed over evil, the white knight had ridden deep into the valley of the shadow of death and had come out smelling of roses and his reward would be the White House rose garden. The politician had found his cause, America would have its illusion and the drugs would still flow in by other routes.

The press were not shown the bodies. One of the dead was Deacon Billingsley. He had been the man who had come to the door in the house and had there been killed by a full magazine from my Scorpion. Now, like the other dead, Billingsley had been zipped into a green rubber bodybag.

The press were not introduced to Rickie or Robin-Anne. Rickie was carried to a helicopter on a stretcher, while Robin-Anne walked beside him, her hand in his. “The rich are different,” the Maggot said sourly as he watched the senator’s two children being gently escorted away.

“How so?”

“Everyone else gets handcuffed and kicked around, but the bloody rich get choppered off to a five-star drug clinic. And doubtless the judge will be told that Rickie helped turn in the Colon family, which means Rickie will only get a light tap on the wrist and told not to be a silly boy again.” The Maggot spat into the sand as the Crowninshield twins were helped up into their helicopter.

The reporters were allowed to see the prisoners being led towards another waiting chopper. The cabinet minister was protesting his innocence, but Warren Smedley, the DEA agent, had already revealed to the press that a half-ton of cocaine had been discovered in the cabinet minister’s house. It was clear that the island’s distinguished hostages, designed to keep the Americans off Murder Cay, had been expected to share the island’s dangers as well as its pleasures. Miguel Colon, stone-faced, was submitting to the plastic manacles with dignity, while Smedley, his captor, was looking like a sourpuss that had found the world’s largest bowl of double cream. He even listened courteously as I passed on McIllvanney’s protestations of innocence. “At this time,” Smedley magnanimously responded, “we are recommending prosecution only against the island’s inhabitants and their paid guards, not against their domestic servants or transient visitors.”

“Not that any of it counts,” the Maggot said to me when Smedley had gone. “The lawyers will have every single prisoner out on bail by this time tomorrow, and we’ll be lucky if we can extradite even one of them.”

The reporters were not introduced to the Maggot, who stayed well clear of their cameras and notebooks. His name would not be mentioned in any newspaper because, officially, he did not exist. Instead he walked unnoticed towards the airstrip where the navigation lights of yet more American helicopters strobed in the day’s first feral light. “It’s time I went,” he told me, then he turned and stared briefly into the far western sky where, dark against the fading stars, a lone helicopter beat its way towards Murder Cay. “I guess you know what to say to the press, Nick?”

“The truth?” I suggested.

“That’s usually dangerous.” The Maggot grinned. “Why not say that only you and the senator came to the island, no one else, and you didn’t bring any guns with you, you took the weapons off some careless guards who crashed their jeep. You’ll see that we’ve tipped the damn jeep over for you, so the story will ring true. You don’t say that the senator was pissing in his jockey shorts, instead you talk convincingly of his noble and self-sacrificing heroism and of his outstanding qualities of leadership. If you can sing a bar or two of ‘Hail to the Chief’, that would help. And, naturally, the two of you only fired in self-defence.”

I smiled. “Naturally.”

The lone helicopter was over the edge of the airstrip now, its landing lights bright on the stunted slash pines and sea-grape. The Maggot was not watching it; instead he was looking towards a small group of civilians who were being escorted by grinning Coastguards towards a big Chinook. “Dear Lord above.” The Maggot’s voice was suddenly hushed into an unnatural reverence. “Do you see what I see, Nick? Is that not pure essence of bimbo?”

I turned to see the group of girls being ushered towards the Chinook, but only one girl in that group could possibly have been a match for the Maggot’s concupiscent dreams. “She’s called Donna,” I told him, “and she’s an Episcopalian from Philadelphia, and she needs a tennis coach to look after her backhand.”

“Nick, don’t tease a friend.”

“It’s true,” I said, “as God is my witness, she’s worried about her backhand. Say you’re a friend of mine, and tell her I said ‘hi’.”

“You are a great and generous man, Nick. And I do believe I have found myself a private pupil.” He gave me an evil grin, then held out his huge hand with its heavy Superbowl ring. “I’ll see you before we die?”

I took his hand, then held on to it to stop him from walking away. “One question, Maggot,” I said.

“Try me.”

I had to raise my voice because of the din being made by the landing helicopter. “The girl in Pittsburgh? Was she a lie too?”

He shook his head. “No, my friend. Wendy is all too goddamned real. She’s why I do this.”

I let go of his hand. “Good luck, Maggot.”

“And to you, my friend!” He began running towards Donna’s Chinook, then paused to shout back at me. “Tell Ellen I’ll be glad to be the best man at your wedding! We’ll have a blast!”

I laughed and turned away. The incoming helicopter had thumped on to the runway and its rotors were slowing to a halt. The drifting dust was touched red-gold by the rising sun. I saw that the first reporters had spilt on to this southern part of the island, and some were now heading towards me. It was time for me to add my corroborating testimony to the senator’s instant legend. George Crownin-shield; the winning warrior of the drug war, the senator who dared to act, the man to lead a nation in its crusade against the drugs that had threatened his own children. I could almost see the senator’s halo as he strode about the island with the reporters and at the head of his newly arrived herd of aides and press secretaries.

Then a voice called from behind me and I turned, and I forgot the senator, and I forgot the reporters, and I forgot the Maggot, because Ellen had arrived on the lone helicopter, and her hair was red-gold like the new sun and her beauty brought a lump to my throat as I walked towards her. I held my arms outstretched, and she was running towards me, and I could see tears in her eyes and I knew she was happy, and I was just as happy; then we clumsily met, we clasped, we were laughing, and the embrace skewered a white-hot pain in my arm, but it did not matter.

“They wouldn’t let me come,” she said in breathless explanation, “because they said I might tell the truth to the press people, and I said if they didn’t bring me I’d certainly tell the truth, the whole bloody truth, to the whole damned world, so here I am.” She was laughing and crying. “Are you all right, Nick?”

“I am now,” I said, “I am now.” I heard voices strident behind me, and knew the press were almost on top of us. I kissed Ellen. “I want to make you a promise,” I told her.

“Go on.”

“I will always tell you the truth.”

“Dear Nick,” she said. “Why do you think I’m here?” Her hands were warm in mine. A flash bulb cracked its brightness as she laid her head on my shoulder.

“Mr Breakspear! What happened?” A dozen voices demanded of me.

I turned and stared at the reporters. They were sweating and eager, hounds pressing on their kill. Sun-guns dazzled us, and microphones hedged us about. The journalists shouted insistent questions; demanding to know how I had met the senator, and did my father know I was here, and what had actually happened, and who was the girl with me, and how did I get the injury? But they went silent when I raised a hand. “I shall tell you the truth!” I made the promise in a stentorian voice, the voice of a marine sergeant shouting above the sound of a half-gale thrashing a parade ground, “and I shall tell you nothing but the truth.” The senator had been momentarily forgotten by the press and his face showed pure horror at the prospect of my veracity. One of his newly arrived aides was thrusting through the crush of reporters in an effort to reach and silence me, but I had my audience now and I would not waste it. “Our revels now are ended,” I said, but this time in the glorious voice of Sir Tom himself, the voice the old fraud had employed in his famous production of
The Tempest
at Stratford in ‘79, the voice that one critic had described as being like a golden-throated trumpet calling to the heart of a world’s perplexity. “These our actors,” I went on,