Десмонд Бэгли: Wyatt's Hurricane

‘Good lord, no!’ said Causton. ‘I was due for a week’s holiday, and since I was in New York, I decided to come down here.’

Wyatt glanced at Causton’s shrewd eyes and wondered how far that was true. He said, ‘There’s not much here for a holiday; you’d have been better off in the Bermudas.’

‘Maybe,’ said Causton non-committally. ‘Tell me something about San Fernandez. Does it have a history?’

Wyatt smiled sourly. ‘The same as any other Caribbean island — but a bit more so. First it was Spanish, then English, and finally French. The French made the deepest impression — you can see that in the language — although you do find the natives referring to St Pierre and San Pedro and Peter’s Port, and the language is the most mixed-up you’ve heard.’

Causton nodded ruefully, thinking of his recent difficulties with the waiter.

Wyatt said, ‘When Toussaint and Cristophe threw the French out of Haiti at the beginning of the 1800s, the locals here did the same, though it hasn’t had the same publicity.’

‘Um,’ said Causton. ‘How did an American base get here?’

‘That happened at the turn of this century,’ said Wyatt. ‘Round about the time the Americans were flexing their muscles. They found they were strong enough to make the Monroe Doctrine stick, and they’d just got over a couple of wars which proved it. There was a lot of talk about “Manifest Destiny” and the Yanks thought they had a big brotherly right to supervise other people’s business in this part of the world. San Fernandez was in pretty much of a mess in 1905 with riots and bloody revolution, so the Marines were sent ashore. The island was American administered until 1917 and then the Americans pulled out — but they hung on to Cap Sarrat.’

‘Didn’t something of the sort happen in Haiti as well?’

‘It’s happened in most of the islands — Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic’

Causton grinned. ‘It’s happened more than once in the Dominican Republic.’ He sipped his drink. ‘I suppose Cap Sarrat is held under some kind of treaty?’

‘I suppose you could call it that,’ agreed Wyatt. ‘The Americans leased the Cap in 1906 for one thousand gold dollars a year — not a bad sum for those days — but depreciation doesn’t work in favour of San Fernandez. President Serrurier now gets $1693.’ Wyatt paused. ‘And twelve cents,’ he added as an afterthought.

Causton chuckled. ‘Not a bad bit of trading on the part of the Americans — a bit sharp, though.’

‘They did the same in Cuba with Guantanamo Base,’ said Wyatt. ‘Castro gets twice as much — but I think he’d rather have Guantanamo and no Americans.’

‘I’ll bet he would.’

‘The Navy is trying to build up Cap Sarrat as a substitute for Guantanamo in case Castro gets uppity and takes it from them. I suppose there is a possibility that it might happen.’

‘There is,’ said Causton. ‘I don’t think he could just take it by force, but a bit of moral blackmail might do it, given the right political circumstances.’

‘Anyway, here is Cap Sarrat,’ said Wyatt. ‘But it’s not nearly as good as Guantanamo. The anchorage in Santego Bay is shallow — all it will take is a light cruiser — and the base facilities will take twenty years and a couple of hundred million dollars to even approach Guantanamo. It’s very well equipped as an air base, though; that’s why we use it as a hurricane research centre.’

‘Miss Marlowe was telling me about that—’ began Causton, but he was interrupted by the return of Hansen and Julie and he took the opportunity of asking Julie to dance.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me to have a drink?’ demanded Hansen.

‘Help yourself,’ said Wyatt. He saw Schelling come into the room with another officer. ‘Tell me, Harry; how did Schelling come to make Commander in your Navy?’

‘Dunno,’ said Hansen, sitting down. ‘Must be because he’s a good meteorologist, because he’s an officer like a bull’s got tits.’

‘Not so good, eh?’

‘Hell, one thing an officer’s got to do is to lead men, and Schelling couldn’t be a Den Mother for a troop of Girl Scouts. He must have got through on the specialist side.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Wyatt, and told Hansen about his conversation that morning with Schelling. He ended up by saying, ‘He thinks that meteorology is an exact science and that what the textbooks say is so. People like that frighten me.’

Hansen laughed. ‘Dave, you’ve come across a type of officer that’s not uncommon in the good old USN. The Pentagon is swarming with them. He goes by the book for one reason and one reason only — because if he goes by the book he can never be proved wrong, and an officer who is never wrong is regarded as a good, safe man to have around.’

‘Safe!’ Wyatt almost lost his voice. ‘In his job he’s about as safe as a rattlesnake.The man has lives in his hands.’

‘Most Navy officers have men’s lives in their hands at one time or another,’ said Hansen. ‘Look, Dave, let me tell you the way to handle guys like Schelling. He’s got a closed mind, and you can’t go through him — he’s too solid. So you go round him.’

‘It’s a bit difficult for me,’ said Wyatt. ‘I have no status. I’m not a Navy man — I’m not even an American. He’s the chap who reports to the Weather Bureau, and he’s the chap they’ll believe.’

‘You’re getting pretty steamed up about this, aren’t you? What’s on your mind?’

‘I’m damned if I know,’ admitted Wyatt. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a funny feeling that things are going to go wrong.’

‘You’re worried about Mabel?’

‘I think it’s Mabel — I’m not too sure.’

‘I was worried about Mabel when I was rumbling about in her guts,’ said Hansen. ‘But I’m pretty relaxed about her now.’

Wyatt said, ‘Harry, I was born out here and I’ve seen some pretty funny things. I remember once, when I was a kid, we had news that a hurricane was coming but that we’d be all right, it would miss Grenada by two hundred miles. So nobody worried except the people up in the hills, who never got the warning anyway. There’s a lot of Carib Indian in those people and they’ve had their roots down in the Caribbean for thousands of years. They battened down the hatches and dug themselves in. When that hurricane came up to Grenada it made a right-angle swerve and pretty near sank the island. Now how did those hill people know the hurricane was going to swerve like that?’

‘They had a funny feeling,’ said Hansen. ‘And they had the sense to act on it. It’s happened to me. I was once flying in a cloud when I got that feeling, so I pushed the stick forward a bit and lost some height. Damned if a civilian ship — one of those corporation planes — didn’t occupy the air space I’d been in. He missed me by a gnat’s whisker.’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘As a scientist I’m supposed to go by the things I can measure, not by feelings. I can’t show my feelings to Schelling.’

‘To hell with Schelling,’ said Hansen. ‘Dave, I don’t think there’s a competent research scientist alive who hasn’t gone ahead on a hunch. I still say you should bypass Schelling. What about seeing the Commodore?’

‘I’ll see how Mabel behaves tomorrow,’ said Wyatt. ‘I want to see if she’s a really bad girl.’

‘Don’t forget your feelings about her,’ said Hansen.

Julie’s cool voice spoke from behind Wyatt. ‘Do you really have feelings for this bad girl, Mabel?’

Hansen laughed and began to get up, but Julie waved him down. ‘I’m having my feet danced off, and I haven’t had a drink yet. Let’s sit this one out.’ She looked at Wyatt. ‘Who’s Mabel?’