The Cry of the Halidon (21 page)

McAuliff began walking noiselessly on the thick carpet down the corridor, hugging the left wall. He paused before
each door as he passed, his head constantly turning, his eyes alert, his ears listening for the sound of voices, the tinkling of glasses. For anything.

Nothing.

Silence. Everywhere.

He looked at the brass numbers—218, 216, 214, 212. Even 210. Any farther would be incompatible with what he remembered.

He stopped at the halfway point and turned. Perhaps he knew enough. Enough to tell Westmore Tallon. Alison had said that the tolerance range for the electronic bugs was one hundred yards from first positioning to the receiving equipment. This floor, this section of the hotel, was well within that limit. Behind one of those doors was a tape recorder activated by a man in front of a speaker or with earphones clamped over his head.

Perhaps it was enough to report those numbers. Why should he look further?

Yet he knew he would. Someone had seen fit to intrude on his life in a way that filled him with revulsion. Few things caused him to react violently, but one of them was the actual, intended invasion of his privacy. And greed. Greed, too, infuriated him. Individual, academic, corporate.

Someone named Craft—because of his greed—had instructed his minions to invade Alex’s personal moments.

Alexander Tarquin McAuliff was a very angry man.

He started back toward the staircase, retracing his steps, close to the wall, closer to each door, where he stopped and stood immobile. Listening.

212, 214, 216, 218 …

And back once again. It was a question of patience. Behind one of those doors was a man in a yellow shirt. He wanted to find that man.

He heard it.

Room 214.

It was a radio. Or a television set. Someone had turned up the volume of a television set. He could not distinguish the words, but he could hear the excitement behind the rapid
bursts of dialogue from a clouded speaker, too loud to avoid distortion.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a harsh, metallic crack of a door latch. Inches away from McAuliff someone had pulled back the bolt and was about to open the door.

Alex raced to the staircase. He could not avoid noise, he could only reduce it as much as possible as he lurched into the dimly lit concrete foyer. He whipped around, pushing the heavy steel door closed as fast and as quietly as he could; he pressed the fingers of his left hand around the edge, preventing the door from shutting completely, stopping the sound of metal against metal at the last half second.

He peered through the crack. The man in the yellow shirt came out of the room, his attention still within it. He was no more than fifty feet away in the silent corridor—silent except for the sound on the television set. He seemed angry, and before he closed the door he looked inside and spoke harshly in a Southern drawl.

“Turn that fuckin’ thing down, you goddamn ape!”

The man in the yellow shirt then slammed the door and walked rapidly toward the elevators. He remained at the end of the corridor, nervously checking his watch, straightening his tie, rubbing his shoes over the back of his trousers until a red light, accompanied by a soft, echoing bell, signaled the approach of an elevator. McAuliff watched from the stairwell two hundred feet away.

The elevator doors closed, and Alex walked out into the corridor. He crossed to Room 214 and stood motionless for a few moments. It was a decision he could abandon, he knew that. He could walk away, call Tallon, tell him the room number, and that would be that.

But it would not be very satisfying. It would not be satisfying at all. He had a better idea: he would take whoever was in that room to Tallon himself. If Tallon didn’t like it, he could go to hell. The same for Hammond. Since it was established that the electronic devices were planted by a man named Craft, who was in no way connected with the elusive Halidon, Arthur Craft could be taught a lesson.
Alex’s arrangements with Hammond did not include abuses from third and fourth parties.

It seemed perfectly logical to get Craft out of the chess game. Craft clouded the issues, confused the pursuit.

McAuliff had learned two physical facts about Arthur Craft: He was the son of Craft the Elder and he was American. He was also an unpleasant man. It would have to do.

He knocked on the door beneath the numerals 214.

“Yes, mon? Who is it, mon?” came the muffled reply from within.

Alex waited and knocked again. The voice inside came nearer the door.

“Who is it, please, mon?”

“Arthur Craft, you idiot!”

“Oh! Yes sir, Mr. Craft, mon!” The voice was clearly frightened. The knob turned; the bolt had not been inserted.

The door had opened no more than three inches when McAuliff slammed his shoulder against it with the full impact of his near two hundred pounds. The door crashed against the medium-sized Jamaican inside, sending him reeling into the center of the room. Alex gripped the edge of the vibrating door and swung it back into place, the slam of the heavy wood echoing throughout the corridor.

The Jamaican steadied himself, in his eyes a combination of fury and fear. He whipped around to the room’s writing desk; there were boxed speakers on each side. Between them was a pistol.

McAuliff lurched forward, his left hand aiming for the gun, his right grabbing any part of the man it could reach. Their hands met above the warm steel of the pistol; Alex gripped the black man’s throat and dug his fingers into the man’s flesh.

The man shook loose; the gun went careening off the surface of the desk onto the floor. McAuliff lashed out with the back of his fist at the Jamaican man’s face, instantaneously opening his hand and yanking forward, pulling the man’s head down by the hair. As the head went down, Alex
brought his left knee crashing up into the man’s chest, then into his face.

Voices from a millennium ago came back to him:
Use your knees! Your feet! Grab! Hold! Slash at the eyes! The blind can’t fight! Rupture!

It was over. The voices subsided. The man collapsed at his feet.

McAuliff stepped back. He was frightened; something had happened to him. For a few terrifying seconds, he had been back in the Vietnam jungle. He looked down at the motionless Jamaican beneath him. The head was turned, flat against the carpet; blood was oozing from the pink lips.

Thank God the man was breathing.

It was the gun. The goddamned
gun
! He had not expected a gun. A fight, yes. His anger justified that. But he had thought of it as a scuffle—intense, over quickly. He would confront, embarrass, forcibly make whoever was monitoring the tapes go with him. To embarrass; to teach an avaricious employer a lesson.

But not this.

This was deadly. This was the violence of survival.

The tapes. The voices. The excited voices kept coming out of the speakers on the desk.

It was not a television set he had heard. The sounds were the sounds of the Courtleigh Manor kitchen. Men shouting, other men responding angrily; the commands of superiors, the whining complaints of subordinates. All frantic, agitated … mostly unintelligible. They must have driven those listening into a fury.

Then Alex saw the revolving reels of the tape deck. For some reason it was on the floor, to the right of the desk. A small, compact Wollensak recorder, spinning as if nothing had happened.

McAuliff grabbed the two speakers and crashed them repeatedly against each other until the wood splintered and the cases cracked open. He tore out the black shells and the wires and threw them across the room. He crossed to the right of the desk and crushed his heel into the Wollensak,
grinding the numerous flat switches until a puff of smoke emerged from the interior and the reels stopped their movement. He reached down and ripped off the tape; he could burn it, but there was nothing of consequence recorded. He rolled the two reels across the floor, the thin strand of tape forming a narrow
V
on the carpet.

The Jamaican groaned; his eyes blinked as he swallowed and coughed.

Alex picked up the pistol on the floor, and squeezed it into his belt. He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and threw a towel into the basin.

He pulled the drenched towel from the sink and walked back to the coughing, injured Jamaican. He knelt down, helped the man into a sitting position, and blotted his face. The water flowed down on the man’s shirt and trousers … water mingled with blood.

“I’m sorry,” said Alex. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t reached for that goddamned pistol.”

“Mon!”
The Jamaican coughed his interruption. “You
crazy-mon!
” The Jamaican held his chest and winced painfully as he struggled to his feet. “You break up … everyt’ing, mon!” said the injured man, looking at the smashed equipment.

“I certainly did! Maybe your Mr. Craft will get the message. If he wants to play industrial espionage, let him play in somebody else’s backyard. I resent the intrusion. Come on, let’s go.” Alex took the man by the arm and began leading him to the door.

“No, mon!” shouted the man, resisting.

“
Yes
, mon,” said McAuliff quietly. “You’re coming with me.”

“Where, mon?”

“To see a little old man who runs a fish store, that’s all.” Alex shoved him; the Jamaican gripped his side. His ribs were broken, thought McAuliff.

“Please, mon! No
police
, mon! I lost everyt’ing!” The Jamaican’s dark eyes were pleading as he held his ribs.

“You went for a gun, mon! That’s a very serious thing to do.”

“Them not my gun. Them gun got no bullets, mon.”

“What?”

“Look-see, mon! Please! I got good job.… I don’ hurt nobody.…”

Alex wasn’t listening. He reached into his belt for the pistol.

It was no weapon at all.

It was a starter’s gun; the kind held up by referees at track meets.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake …” Arthur Craft Junior played games—little boys’ games with little boys’ toys.

“Okay, mon. You just tell your employer what I said. The next time, I’ll haul him into court.”

It was a silly thing to say, thought Alex, as he walked out into the corridor, slamming the door behind him. There’d be no courts; Julian Warfield or his adversary, R. C. Hammond, was far preferable. Alongside Dunstone, Limited, and British Intelligence, Arthur Craft was a cipher. An unimportant intrusion that in all likelihood was no more.

He walked out of the elevator and tried to recall the location of the telephone booths. They were to the left of the entrance, past the front desk, he remembered.

He nodded to the clerks while thinking of Westmore Tallon’s private number.

“Mr. McAuliff, sir?” The speaker was a tall Jamaican with very broad shoulders, emphasized by a tight nylon jacket.

“Yes?”

“Would you come with me, please?”

Alex looked at the man. He was neat, the trousers pressed, a white shirt and a tie in evidence beneath the jacket. “No … why should I?”

“Please, we have very little time. A man is waiting for you outside. A Mr. Tucker.”

“What? How did—”

“
Please
, Mr. McAuliff. I cannot stay here.”

Alex followed the Jamaican out the glass doors of the entrance. As they reached the driveway, he saw the man in the yellow shirt—Craft’s man—walking on the path from the parking lot; the man stopped and stared at him, as if unsure what to do.

“Hurry, please,” said the Jamaican, several steps in front of McAuliff, breaking into a run. “Down past the gates. The car is waiting!”

They ran down the drive, past the stone gateposts.

The green Chevrolet was on the side of the road, its motor running. The Jamaican opened the back door for Alex.

“Get in!”

McAuliff did so.

Sam Tucker, his massive frame taking up most of the backseat, his shock of red hair reflecting the outside lights, extended his hand.

“Good to see you, boy!”

“Sam!”

The car lurched forward, throwing Alex into the felt. McAuliff saw that there were three men in the front seat. The driver wore a baseball cap; the third man—nearly as large as Sam Tucker—was squeezed between the driver and the Jamaican who had met him inside the Courtleigh lobby. Alex turned back to Tucker.

“What
is
all this, Sam? Where the hell have you been?”

The answer, however, did not come from Sam Tucker. Instead, the black man by the window, the man who had led Alex down the driveway, turned and spoke quietly.

“Mr. Tucker has been with us, Mr. McAuliff. If events can be controlled, we are your link to the Halidon.”

T
hey drove for nearly an hour. Always climbing, higher and higher, it seemed to McAuliff. The winding roads snaked upward, the turns sudden, the curves hidden by sweeping waterfalls of tropic greenery. There were stretches of unpaved road. The automobile took them poorly; the whining of the low gear was proof of the strain.

McAuliff and Sam Tucker spoke quietly, knowing their conversation was overheard by those in front. That knowledge did not seem to bother Tucker.

Sam’s story was totally logical, considering his habits and lifestyle. Sam Tucker had friends, or acquaintances, no one knew about, in many parts of the world. Not that he intentionally concealed their identities, only that they were part of his personal, not professional, life.

One of these people had been Walter Piersall.

“I mentioned him to you last year, Alexander,” said Tucker in the darkness of the backseat. “In Ocho Rios.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I told you I’d met an academic fellow in Carrick Foyle. I was going to spend a couple of weekends with him.”

That was it, thought McAuliff. The name Carrick Foyle; he had heard it before. “I remember now. Something about a lecture series at the Kingston Institute.”

“That’s right. Walter was a very classy type—an anthro man who didn’t bore you to death. I cabled him I was coming back.”

“You also got in touch with Hanley. He’s the one who set off the alarms.”

“I called Bob after I got into Montego. For a little sporting life. There was no way I could reach him later. We traveled fast, and when we got where we were going, there was no telephone. I figured he’d be mad as hell.”