The Detonators (15 page)

We had dinner in the cockpit. I helped her with the dishes afterward and found that I could hardly stand it, working with her in that tiny galley, after the days we’d already spent in close, but not intimate, association pretending to be man and wife. I mean, I’d conquered the raging sea, hadn’t I? The victorious hero-navigator is customarily entitled to certain privileges, right? We’d both had showers in the rather rundown marina facilities, and she’d changed to crisp white sailcloth shorts and a rudimentary blue halter; and I couldn’t bear to look at her.

“It was a long night, last night,” I said, hanging up the dishtowel. “I think I’ll hit the sack early, if you don’t mind.”

“Matt…”

“Here it’s Johnny,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” I’d thrown her off-balance for a moment, but she drew a long breath and spoke softly: “Johnny, it’s all right. I told you when we started this that it would be all right. If you wanted to.” When I didn’t speak, she said a little bitterly, “Or is it that I’m well, such a crazy little broad that you don’t care to get, well, involved in that way? Is that why you’re fighting it so hard? Fighting me.”

I licked my lips and said stiffly, “I thought I was just being gentlemanly, not taking advantage of the situation. You made the offer, sure, but there were certain pressures, and you didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic.”

She said calmly, “I just didn’t want to… to oversell the merchandise.” Then she swallowed hard and whispered, “Heavens, this is kind of silly, isn’t it? Just standing here
talking
about it?”

The tired old seduction scene, I thought sourly, as she came into my arms. Amateur night in the whorehouse. But her lips were sweet and willing and her body was warm and nicely shaped and her hands were quick and helpful as, after the first clinging kiss, they assisted me in removing her halter and my shirt and guided my fingers to the fastenings of her little white shorts… Then we were naked on the starboard settee berth trying the kissing bit again in an experimental and exploratory way while our hands became acquainted with each other’s bodies as we prepared to proceed beyond mere childish osculation to the adult concerns of the evening.

I raised my head to look at her, wanting to see what kind of a passionate expression she’d put on her face, the damn little phony-blond tramp who’d led me here, all the way from Miami and into her arms at the behest of her lover, doing it all so skillfully that it was hardly fair to class her with the amateurs any longer…

It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have looked. She was watching me steadily and her face showed no imitation desire, no pretend passion, quite the contrary. What I saw was apprehension and a kind of innocent trust. Kissing had been all right, even kind of fun, but her wary expression said she knew all about what came next, the brutal indignities and shameful hurts she’d already experienced at the hands of a couple of clumsy, overeager college students and a twisted character calling himself Albert Pope. I had to do it, of course, because I was a man and all men had to do it; but she was counting on me, a nice guy for a change, to keep the humiliation and pain as small as possible.

I released her and sat up abruptly. I told myself that she was faking, she had to be faking; but I knew she couldn’t be that good, nobody could be. She couldn’t possibly be faking this apprehensive trusting innocence, any more than she could have faked her ignorance of guns. And it meant that we were wrong, everything was wrong, everybody was wrong, all the clever, clever people, including that undercover genius, superagent Helm. I got up and scooped my jeans off the cabin floor.

She started to speak behind me, and the wrong name almost came out, but she corrected it. Her voice sounded puzzled and a little hurt.

“Johnny?”

“Put something on and come on deck,” I said harshly. Then I found myself adding: “Please.”

“Yes, Johnny.”

“Turn out the lights when you come up. Please.”

Blindly, I hauled on my pants and found a couple of glasses and dosed them with ice and Scotch. I reached out the hatch to set them on the bridge deck, then climbed out after them. In a moment, the cabin lights went out and she joined me in the cockpit, in a short ruffled white silk nightshirt that made her look about ten years old with her straight blond hair shining in the soft light of the marina—what light found its way under the cockpit awning.

I said, “Listen to me carefully, please. I want you to drink this because you’re going to need it. Call it medicine. And then I want you to listen very carefuly and keep your pretty mouth very shut. Don’t say
anything
, do you understand? Whatever pops into your pretty head is bound to be wrong, so let’s not confuse the situation with a lot of impulsive recriminations and accusations. Do you think you can do that?”

After a moment, she nodded. “Yes, Johnny.”

I took a moment to review my decision. I was breaking security, of course. I was jeopardizing the whole mission, of course. And partly I was doing it out of a sense of guilt for the way I’d misjudged and deceived the small girl beside me—for the way we all had. But that was irrelevant. What was important was finding out what she really was, now that I was certain she wasn’t at all the kind of person we’d thought her. After all, I did have a directive of sorts: I’d been told it was important to get the information about Minister she carried in her head, as quickly as possible. Doug Barnett would scream his head off if he knew what I was doing, but instinct and experience warned me we’d had enough trickery and deceit and concealment here. It was time for a little trust for a change. It was time to see what a little honesty could accomplish.

I said, “If you pass on what I’m going to tell you to anybody, anybody at all, the security freaks in Washington will have my balls for breakfast. I hope you understand that.”

“I understand.” She swallowed hard. “Is it about my father? Tell me!”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one with instincts on this boat. I nodded and told her.

She sat very still as I talked, listening in silence as instructed. She used both hands to hold her glass of whiskey—well, a plastic tumbler. On a small boat you keep real, breakable glass at a minimum. She gripped it very tightly, as if it were a defensive weapon she’d need any minute, and perhaps it was. Now and then she’d take a cautious sip from it as she listened.

The marina was quiet, as marinas go. Some anglers drinking beer in the cockpit of a sportfisherman down the dock laughed a bit loudly from time to time; and across the water in the next row of slips we could see a man and woman talking in the cockpit of a sturdy cruising powerboat bearing some resemblance to a commercial trawler. Occasionally the murmur of their voices reached us.

But the place was not crowded. I’d been told that Bahamian marinas seldom are these days. Since the islands gained their virtual independence from Britain some years back, the hospitality for which they were once noted has deteriorated significantly. Service and maintenance have slipped in most tourist facilities—I could testify that the showers and toilets here were badly neglected—sending a lot of the pampered luxury trade, the gold-plated sportfishermen and the luxury cruising yachts, to look for more congenial accommodations elsewhere. Considering that tourists are just about the only cash crop of the Islands, it seems like a shortsighted policy; but if I were black and had a pretty new country to play with all my own, maybe I’d be shortsighted, too.

“Well, there you have the bare bones of it,” I said at last. When she didn’t speak immediately, I asked, “How about a refill?”

Her voice was almost inaudible when she spoke: “You’re bound to make an alcoholic of me, aren’t you?” But there was no smile on her face or in her voice. “All right. I might as well. You may have to clean up after me, but you’re used to that.”

When I returned to the cockpit she was still sitting there, in her pretty nightshirt, motionless, looking at nothing in particular. I put the drink into her hands. “Now it’s your turn to talk,” I said.

She sipped her whiskey and licked her lips thoughtfully, and looked at me. “It tastes almost good. Smooth. Not like that awful raw stuff I bought.”

“It’s Dewar’s White Label Scotch,” I said. “Cutty Sark and J. and B. are pretty good, too; and of course if you want to be fancy there’s Ballantine’s Pinch, but it costs. You probably got yourself a pint of Old Dynamite or Sammy’s Swamp Juice or something. But any girl who can get tight enough to pass out on a pint can afford to use the good stuff.”

“Matt…”

“Yes, Amy.”

She stared at me blindly, her eyes big and dark. “How could Daddy do it to me? How could he bear to trick me like that, even if he really thought I’d been sent to spy on him and betray him? And how could he think that? Couldn’t he just look at me and see that I… that I…” Then she was crying softly. “No, please don’t touch me! I’ll be all right. I don’t need any comfort from you!”

“Sure.”

“And you!” she gasped, sniffing and mopping her eyes with the ruffled hem of her shirt. “You! How could you possibly think I’d do
that
to myself deliberately, make such a ghastly spectacle of myself, just a fool you? And the way you went along with all that cruel trickery! Letting me believe I’d seen…” She stopped and studied my face for a moment, then asked, “Did you know?”

I said irritably, “I just told you! I talked with Doug Barnett the next day in West Palm Beach. Of course I knew he hadn’t killed himself.”

“I mean before that.” She was watching me steadily. “That first day, in Miami. When you took me to see him in the jail. And later when we were out in that Coast Guard boat with that handsome brown-faced admiral, whatever his name was…”

“Sanderson: Antonio Sanderson.”

“Did you know
then
that it was all a… an elaborate hoax?”

I said, “What the hell difference does it make? Don’t kid yourself. If I had known, I’d have acted exactly the same way. I follow orders.”

“No,” she said quietly. “No, I don’t think you’d have acted
exactly
the same way. That’s just the point. So you didn’t know, back then, that they were misleading me so terribly with… with my father’s help, making me think he was a violent drug-smuggling criminal, making me believe I’d seen him commit suicide?”

I shook my head. “No. If it matters, I didn’t know, then. I wasn’t let in on the gag that early. They didn’t consider my thespian abilities adequate; they thought I’d put on a better show for you if I thought the situation was genuine. As I did.” I made a rueful face. “You’re right, of course. I got kind of carried away, as I wouldn’t have if I’d been putting on an act. Jesus, anybody’d have thought your pop was my sainted older brother, the way I laid it on!” I glanced at the shadowed small face framed by the fall of pale hair. “But I don’t get it. Isn’t all this kind of irrelevant?”

“No.” She raised her head. “No, it’s the most important thing as far as I’m concerned. You.”

I said grimly, “Then you’re in a very bad way. If I’m your most important thing. Because I’m a pro, Amy. I do what I’m told, with a few exceptions; and if it means deceiving gullible little girls, that’s just too damn bad. Let me go on to say that if anybody ever tries to use you for a shield while shooting at me, I’ll shoot right back and to hell with you. That’s the way we’re trained, that’s why I’m still alive when a lot of good men—probably better men in many respects—aren’t. And if you’re kidnapped, and the kidnapper threatens to cut you into little bloody pieces if I don’t do certain things, I’ll send him a sharp knife with a note telling him he might as well start slicing because I won’t play. We don’t ever play those sentimental hostage games, no matter who gets hurt, no matter who dies.”

Her smile was faint in the darkness, but it was a smile. “Tough guy,” she whispered. “The ruthless mechanical man who obeys orders no matter what! Oh, you’re so tough. But you couldn’t even make love to me under false pretenses, tough guy!”

I started to speak and found I didn’t have anything to say that made sense. I watched a small outboard boat cruise by in the channel outside the lighted marina. In a little while the ripples it had made stirred the boats along the docks and splashed gently against
Spindrift’s
hull.

“I should be very angry with you, shouldn’t I?” her voice said softly. “Well, I was, but I should stay that way, shouldn’t I? Instead of… I should detest you, all the lies you’ve told me, all the tricks you’ve played on me! But you couldn’t do
that
to me, even though I was lying there naked, all kissed and caressed and breathless, just waiting for you to… what’s the word, consummate?” The voice was almost inaudible. “Why couldn’t you consummate, Matt?”

I hesitated; then I drew a long breath and said, “Hell, I started out to screw a sinister conspiratorial-type lady, strictly in the line of duty, of course; and suddenly I found myself about to ravish an innocent young girl. And as you say, under false pretenses. I guess the shock was just too much for my virility.” I watched her for a little; when she didn’t speak, I asked, “So where do we go from here?”

“Isn’t that up to you?” Her voice was even. “Nothing’s really changed, has it? I mean, if you really had an investigation under way, well, we can keep on with it, can’t we? I don’t mind. I have no place else to go. Noplace else I want to go. Of course, if you were only playing secret agent for my benefit…”

I shook my head. “The mission is genuine enough. We just dressed it up a little fancier than we otherwise might have in order to impress Mrs. Penelope Matthews.”

She frowned. “That’s what I don’t really understand, Matt, all this terrific interest in me. What makes me so important? Even if everybody thought I’d come to Miami to spy on Daddy for the PNP, why all these elaborate games to gain my confidence? What is it you want from me, all of you? Information about Mrs. Williston’s group or some of the other organizations I’ve joined? I shouldn’t think I’d have much to add to what’s already known. It used to be a standing joke among us that half of us were probably working secretly for the FBI. They keep pretty good track of all the offbeat movements. So why in the world—” She broke off and stared at me in a startled way. “You can’t possibly be concerned with Albert!”