Десмонд Бэгли - Bahama Crisis

All the same I felt happier than I had felt for a long time, knowing that I would be seeing Debbie Cunningham monthly for the foreseeable future.

The months went by. Seven months after I became President of the Theta Corporation we had the Grand Opening of the Rainbow Bay Hotel on Eleuthera. I invited a crowd of notables: Government ministers, a couple of film stars, a golf champion and so on. I also invited Deputy-Commissioner Howard Perigord and his wife, Amy. And the Cunninghams came; Billy and his father, Billy One; Jack Cunningham, who looked upon me with some mistrust, and, of course, daughter Debbie.

To make sure that everything went like clockwork I pulled the best of the staff from the other three hotels. The service in those hotels might have suffered a little at that time, but not much because, in general, the quality of our staff was high. In the event all went well.

Before we flew to Eleuthera the Cunninghams and I had an informal board meeting. I handed out copies of the survey made by the American company, and added my report with its detailed recommendations. ‘You’re not expected to read all this now, but I’ll give you a brief summary.’

I ticked off the points on my fingers. ‘We go into the Family Islands...’ I paused, and said in parentheses, ‘They used to be known as the Out Islands but the Minister of Tourism thinks that the Family Islands sounds more cosy.’

‘He’s right,’ said Billy. ‘And Shakespeare was wrong. There’s a lot to names.’

‘Anyway, the future lies in the Family Islands. We go into real estate in a big way on Crooked Island, Acklins Island, Mayaguana and Great Inagua. And we buy a couple of cays in the Ragged Island Range. All this is undeveloped and we get in there first, especially before the Swiss moneymen move in and send the prices up.’

I tapped another finger. ‘We put together our own package deals and farm them out to travel agents in the States and in Europe. In order to do that we either make deals with a couple of airlines or charter planes ourselves to fly our customers into Grand Bahama or New Providence. From there we’ll either have to do a deal with Bahamasair or set up our own islands airline.’

Another finger went up. ‘Next I want one really top-class luxury hotel; not for the package tourist but for the people with money.’ I grinned. ‘Simple folks like yourselves. Ten per cent of the visitors to the Islands come in their own aircraft and I want to capture that market.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Billy.

Billy One said, ‘Yeah, it seems to make sense.’

Jack Cunningham had been flipping through the pages of my report. ‘What’s this about you wanting to start a school?’

I said, ‘If we’re building hotels we’ll need staff to run them. I want to train them my way.’

‘The hell with that!’ said Jack roundly. ‘We pay for training, then they leave and go to some other goddamn hotel like a Holiday Inn. No way are we doing that.’

‘The Ministry of Tourism is putting up half the cost,’ I said.

‘Oh, well,’ said Jack grudgingly. ‘That may be different.’

Billy said, ‘Jack, I’m Chairman of this corporation and as far as I’m concerned you’re the seventeenth Vice-President in Charge of Answering Stupid Questions. Don’t stick your oar in here.’

‘Don’t talk to your uncle like that,’ said Billy One. But his voice was mild.

‘I’ve gotten my money in here,’ snapped Jack. ‘And I don’t want this guy throwing it away. He’s already filled Debbie’s head with a lot of communistic nonsense.’

Billy grinned. ‘Show me another commie with over ten million bucks.’

‘Two million of which we gave him,’ snapped Jack. He tossed the report aside. ‘Billy, you damn near swore a Bible oath that the Government of the Bahamas was stable.’ He pointed at me. ‘You believed him. He gives us a report which makes nice reading, but I’ve been reading other words — in newspapers, for instance. There was a goddamn riot in Nassau three days ago. What’s so stable about that?’

I knew about the riot and was at a loss to account for it. It had flashed into being from nowhere and the police had had a hard time in containing the disturbance. I said, ‘An American outfit pulled out and closed down a factory. They did it too damned fast and without consultation. People don’t like being fired, especially when it’s done without so much as a by-your-leave. I think that started the trouble. It’s just a local difficulty, Jack.’

He grunted. ‘It had better be. Some American tourists got hurt, and that’s not doing the industry any good; an industry, I might point out, which we’re into for fifty million dollars.’

I could see that any relationship I had with Jack would be uneasy and I determined to steer clear of him as far as I could. As for the riot, I had given a glib enough explanation, but I was not sure it was the right one.

Billy One said, ‘Let’s cool it, shall we?’ He looked at me. ‘Would you happen to have any sour mash around?’

So it was smoothed over and next day we flew to Eleuthera. Eleuthera is 120 miles long but at the place where I had built the hotel it was less than two miles wide, so that from the hotel one could see the sea on both sides. Billy One looked at this in wonder. ‘I’ll be goddamned!’

I said, ‘We get two beaches for the price of one. That’s why I built here.’

Even Jack was impressed.

During the course of the day I had a few words with Perigord and asked him about the riot in Nassau. ‘What caused it?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. It’s not in my jurisdiction. It’s in Commissioner Deane’s lap — and he’s welcome to it.’

‘Any chance of a similar occurrence on Grand Bahama?’

He smiled grimly. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’

‘Was it political?’

He went opaque on me and deliberately changed the subject. ‘I must congratulate you on this very fine hotel. I wish you every success.’

That reaction worried me more than anything else.

But the Grand Opening was a tremendous success and I danced with Debbie all night.

And so it went. The Theta Corporation was a success after its first year although more money was going out than coming in. After all, that was the point — we were still in the stage of expansion. Billy was satisfied with the way I was handling things and so, largely, was Billy One. How Jack felt I did not know; he kept his nose out of things and I did not care to ask. Everything was going fine in my business life, and my private life was perking up, too, to the point where I asked Debbie to marry me.

She sighed. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

So I took her to bed and we were married three weeks later over the protests of Jack, whose open objection concerned the disparity in our ages, but he did not like me, something I knew already. Billy and, I think, Billy One were for it, but Debbie’s brother, Frank, followed Jack’s line. Various members of the family took sides and the clan was split to some extent on this issue. But none of them could say that I was a fortune-hunter marrying her for her money — I had enough of my own. As for my own feelings about it, I was marrying Debbie, not Jack.

We married in Houston in a somewhat tense atmosphere and then went back to the Bahamas to honeymoon briefly at the new Rainbow Bay Hotel. Then we went back to Grand Bahama via Abaco where we picked up Karen who seemed dubious about having a new mother. Debbie and Karen moved into the house at Lucaya and I went back to running the Corporation. Two months later she told me she was pregnant which made both of us very happy.

But then things began to go wrong again because people who were coming to the Bahamas on vacation were going home to die.