Benchley, Peter (17 page)

“You might heat me up some oil,” he said to Gail.

“What kind?”

“Olive oil. It’s over there by the burner. Dump half a bottle in a pan and fire her up.”

Treece sliced the two fillets in half and dropped them in the pan of hot oil, where they bubbled and spat and quickly turned from gray-white to golden.

Gail made a simple salad-Bermuda onions and lettuce-and asked Treece where the dressing was.

“Here,” he said, handing her an unlabeled bottle.

“What is it?”

“Wine, they say. I don’t know what’s in it, but it goes in most everything-salads, cooking, your stomach. Don’t want to drink too much of it, though. Give you a fearsome head.”

Gail poured an inch of the liquid in a glass and drank it. It tasted bitter, like vermouth.

The sun had dropped below the horizon when they sat down to eat, and rays of pink, reflected off the clouds, streamed in the window and washed the kitchen with a warm, soft glow.

Treece saw Gail toying with her fish, reluctant to eat it. “I’ll risk my mortal bones,” he said, smiling. “If he’s

ciguatoxic, you’ll know it in a few seconds.

One fellow was lugged off to hospital with the poisonous morsel still in his craw.”

He didn’t use a fork, but broke off a big piece of barracuda with his fingers and put it in his mouth. He cocked his head, feigning dread at the possible onset of crippling cramps. “Nope,”

he said. “Clean as a Sunday shirt.”

The Sanderses ate the fish. It was delicious, moist and flaky with a crisp coating of fried oil.

At 9:30, Treece yawned and announced, “Time to put it away. We’ll want to be up early. Have to fuel the compressor on the boat and show you how the air lift works. Ever used a Desco?”

“No,” Sanders said.

“Have to give you practice, then. There’s no trick to it, once you learn how to watch your air line. If it fouls on something, or kinks, you’ll think the beast from twenty thousand fathoms has grabbed you by the throat.”

“We won’t dive with tanks?” Gail said.

“We’ll take some, just in case. That’s another thing: WV11 have to fill them in the morning. That compressor out back makes a God-awful din. But you should try to use a Desco. You never run out of air, unless the compressor on the boat runs out of gas. You use a tank for five hours and you’ll think you’ve been kissing prickly pears. The mouthpiece begins to smart after a while.”

“There’s no mouthpiece on a Desco?”

“No. It’s a full-face mask. You can talk to yourself all you likesing, make a speech, give yourself a royal cussing. You can talk back and forth, too, if you read lips worth a damn.”

They were in bed by ten. The wind whistled outside, swooping up from the sea and over the cliff. As Sanders leaned over to turn off the bedside light, he saw the dog standing, tentatively, in the doorway.

“Hi,” Sanders said.

The dog wagged her tail and leaped onto the bed.

She curled up and lay between Gail and David.

“Shoo her off,” said Gail.

“Not me. I need all my fingers.”

They heard Treece call, “Charlotte!” and the dog’s ears

stiffened. Treece appeared in the doorway.

“Forgive her. That’s her rightful place. It’ll take her a day or two.” He said to the dog, “Come along,” and the dog raised her head, stretched, and went to Treece, who said, “Sleep well,” and shut the door.

The first bark seemed to be part of Sanders” dream.

The second, loud and prolonged, woke him. He looked at the radium dial on his watch: It was 12:10. A faint yellow light seeped around the edges of the closed window shade and flickered on the walls. The dog barked again. Gail stirred, and Sanders shook her awake.

“What is it?” she said.

“I don’t know.” He heard Treece walking in the hall. “It might be a fire.”

“What? In here?”

“No, outside.” He rolled off the bed and pulled on his boxer shorts. “Stay here.” He walked toward the door. “If there’s trouble …”

“If there’s trouble, what?” Gail reached for her bathrobe. “Hide under the bed?”

Sanders opened the bedroom door and saw Treece standing at the front door, naked except for a brief bathing suit. The dog stood beside him. Though Treece filled the doorway, beyond him Sanders could see a glow of firelight and some dark forms.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Treece turned at the sound. “Not sure.

Nobody’s said anything.”

Sanders approached Treece and stood beside him,

slightly to the side. By the gate there were two men, dressed in black and holding oil torches that sent streams of thick black smoke into the night air.

“Well?” Treece said aloud. He put his left hand on the door jamb and shifted his weight. Sanders saw that the apparently casual change of position put Treece’s hand within easy reach of a sawed-off shotgun that stood in the corner behind the door.

The two torchbearers stepped apart, and between them, walking slowly toward the gate, was Cloche. He was dressed entirely in white, against which his black skin shone like graphite. The firelight sparkled on the gold feather at his neck and on the round panes in his spectacles.

Sanders heard Gail’s barefoot steps on the wooden floor and smelled her hair as she came next to him.

“What do you want?” Treece said, his tone a blend of anger and disdain. “If you’ve business here, state it. Else, be on your way. I’m in no mood for silly games in the middle of the night.”

“Game?” Cloche raised his right hand to his waist and dipped the index finger.

Sanders heard a buzz. Instinctively, he ducked, and there was a thunk against the wooden door frame. A featherless arrow quivered in the wood, six inches from Treece’s head.

Treece had not flinched. He pulled the arrow from the wood and tossed it on the ground. “A crossbow?”

he said. “Put feathers on it; it’ll fly truer.”

“Your … friends … are not very prudent,”

Cloche said. “They paid a visit to the government.

I told them not to. Now the police are asking about me.”

“And?”

“You know what I want. I know they’re down there-ten thousand boxes of them.”

“That’s myth.”

“Your friends do not think so. They seemed quite convinced when they spoke to Mason Hall.”

Still looking at Cloche, Treece whispered to Sanders, “Go “round back and make sure nobody’s there.”

As Sanders padded down the hall, he heard Treece say, “You know tourists. They hear stories… .”

The kitchen was dark, and the door and windows were closed.

Sanders found the handle of a drawer, opened it, and fumbled with his fingers for a knife. He found a long heavy blade of carbon steel and slipped it into the waistband of his shorts. The cold metal against his thigh made him feel secure, though he knew it was a delusion: he didn’t know how to fight with a knife. But he was quick and strong, and he knew the house. In the dark, against a man unfamiliar with the house, he thought he would be able to handle himself.

He opened the kitchen door. There was no movement outside, no sound except the wind. He closed the door and locked it, then locked both windows. Now, he told himself, if somebody tries to get in, we’ll hear the sound of breaking glass. He went back to the front hall-pleased with himself-and stood beside Gail, his left hand resting on the hilt of the knife.

“… a mystery to me,” Cloche was saying. “Why you should be willing to help the British swine. After what they did to you.”

“That’s not your affair!” Treece snapped.

“Yes, it is. You have as much reason as I to hate them. Look what you lost.”

Sanders saw Treece glance quickly at him and Gail. Treece looked uncomfortable, eager to change the subject.

“Leave it be, Cloche. All you need

know is that I’ll not let you get those drugs.”

“What a pity,” Cloche said. “The enemy is there and you will not fight him. Are you worried about your little kingdom on St. David’s? I have no designs on that.”

Treece said nothing.

“Very well,” Cloche said at last. “With you or without you, the result will be the same.”

Two men moved out of the darkness and stood behind Cloche. Each carried a crossbow, loaded and cocked and pointed at the door. Cloche took a small bag from one of the men behind him. He held the bag by the bottom and flung its contents toward the door. Three linen dolls, each with a steel feather-dart in its chest, rolled in the dust.

Treece did not look down.

The crossbowmen fired.

Sanders slammed Gail against the wall and shielded her with his body. Treece dropped onto one knee and, in the same motion, reached for the shotgun. Sanders heard the arrows buzz through the doorway and clatter against the stone fireplace.

Treece fired three times, holding the trigger down and pumping the action. In the narrow hallway, the sound of the explosions was thunderous and painful.

When the echo of the last explosion had died, and all that remained was a ringing in Sanders” ears, he turned and looked at Treece. He was still on his knee, the gun cocked and ready to fire.

Where Cloche and his men had stood, now there was nothing but the two torches-abandoned, burning scattered pools of spilled oil.

“Hit anybody?” Sanders asked.

“I doubt it. They broke and ran when they saw this.” Treece patted the gun. “I don’t think they expected it.”

Sanders felt Gail trembling and heard her teeth chattering. “Cold?” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“Cold? Terrified! Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Sanders said honestly. “I didn’t have time to think about it.”

Gail touched the knife in Sanders’ undershorts.

“What’s that for?”

“I had it… just in case.”

Gail said to Treece, “Will the police come?”

“The Bermuda police?” Treece stood up.

“Hardly. I told you, they don’t muck about with St. David’s. If they heard anything-and I don’t imagine they did-they’ll pay it no mind. Just the half-breeds shooting each other up. It’s the Islanders that concern me.”

“Why?”

“They’ll have seen, and heard. They’re a superstitious lot. I venture that was part of the purpose of Cloche’s visit, to throw the fear into them.”

“Fear of what?”

“Of him. They see a coal-black man, dressed all in white comt’s what they dress “em in when they die-coming up

a hill in the dark of night with two torchbearers and two crossbowmen: that’s powerful bush. If he comes again, there’s nothing short of holocaust that’ll bring people out of their houses.”

Sanders said, “Should we set watches?”

Treece looked at him. “Watches?”

“You know: four hours on, four hours off … in case he comes back.”

“He won’t be back tonight.”

“How do you know? Christ, you didn’t think he’d dare come up here in the first place!” Sanders was surprised at the harsh sound of his own words. He was challenging Treece, which was not what he had intended, and from the look on Treece’s face, a challenge was not what he had expected. Sanders knew he was right, but he didn’t care. He wanted to expunge his words. “I didn’t mean …”

“If he comes back,” Treece said evenly, “I’ll hear him. Or Charlotte will.”

“Fine.”

“It’s late. There’s a lot to be done tomorrow.”

Treece nodded to Gail, turned, and walked down the hall toward the living room.

David and Gail went into the bedroom and closed the door.

“Bite your tongue,” she said.

“I know.”

“Never mind. There’s no harm in letting him know we’re scared.”

“It wasn’t that. It’s just better to be prepared.”

Sanders pulled off his shorts and climbed into bed.

Gail sat on the edge of the bed and hugged her bathrobe around her. “I can’t go back to sleep.”

“Sure you can.” Sanders stroked her back. He smiled, wondering if the sudden, surprising flood of ardor had anything to do with the danger they had just been through.

When they awoke in the morning, they heard voices in the kitchen. Sanders put on a pair of trousers and left the room.

Treece was sitting at the kitchen table, cradling a cup of tea. Across from him, dressed in a stained sleeveless T-shirt, his mouth full of dark bread, was Kevin. They looked up when Sanders entered the kitchen. Kevin’s face conveyed no sign of recognition, even when Treece said, “You’ve met.”

“Sure,” Sanders said. “Hello.”

Kevin said nothing, but Sanders thought he saw him blink in his direction. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table.

Treece said to Kevin, “Does he have anybody who can use the equipment?”

Kevin shrugged.

“Does he have an air lift?”

“Papers didn’t say.”

“What’s this?” Sanders asked.

“You remember Basil Tupper, the

jewelry-store fellow who paid you a visit? Two crates of diving gear came in on the Eastern flight from Kennedy this morning, addressed to him.”

“How do you know?”

“A friend in customs. There were bottles, regulators, suits-six of everything.”

“Didn’t the government ask questions?”

“Nothing illegal about it. He paid the duty-in cash. Besides, he imports so much crap for his jewelry business that most of the customs people are his chums. He could say he was starting a dive shop.”

Treece cocked his head, listening, and for the first time Sanders noticed the low, muffled chugging sound of an engine, coming from somewhere outside the kitchen.

“Compressor’s running out of juice.” Treece stood and said to Kevin, “Call Adam Coffin for me. Tell him to be on the beach at high noon.”

Then he said to Sanders, “You better rouse your lady. If Cloche is training divers, we’ve just lost our practice time. You’ll have to settle for on-the-job training.”

“She’s up,” Sanders said.

They went outside. Kevin left, and Sanders followed Treece to a small shed behind the house.

Inside the shed, a gasoline-powered air compressor was coughing and sputtering as it used up the last of its fuel. Two scuba tanks were connected by hoses to the compressor. Treece checked the gauges atop each tank. “Twenty-two hundred,” he said.

“Want to top them off at twenty-five.” He stopped the compressor, filled it with gasoline from a jerry can, and restarted it. “Gonna get me an electric system one of these days.