Десмонд Бэгли - Bahama Crisis

After washing I turned to the clothing — a pair of jeans, a tee-shirt with the words HOUSTON COUGARS emblazoned across the chest, and a pair of dirty white sneakers. As I was putting on the jeans I examined the bruise on the outside of my thigh; it was livid and there seemed to be a small pin hole in the middle of it. It did not hurt much so I put on the jeans, then the shirt, and sat on the bed to put on the shoes. And there I was — dressed and almost in my right mind.

I might have hammered on the door then, demanding in highfalutin terms to be released, and what the devil is the meaning of this, sir? I refrained. My captors would see me in their own time and I needed to think. There is a manoeuvre in rugby football known as ‘selling the dummy’, a feint in which the ball goes in an unexpected direction. The Cunningham family had been sold the dummy and I would bet that Billy Cunningham would be spitting bullets.

I mentally reviewed the contents of the first and second ransom letters. The object of the first was to get me to Houston. The second was so detailed and elaborate that no one thought it would be the dummy we were being sold. It was a fake all the way through.

One thing was certain: the Cunninghams would be incensed beyond measure. To kidnap a Cunningham was bad enough, but to add a double-cross was to add insult to injury. Right at that moment the Cunningham Building would be like a nest of disturbed rattlesnakes; all hell would be breaking loose and, perhaps, this time they would bring in the police. Not that it would help me, I thought glumly, or Debbie.

Which brought me to Debbie. Was she here or not? And where the devil was here? There was a frustrating lack of information. I went to the window again and looked out through the bars and again saw nothing but trees. I tested the bars; steel set firmly in concrete, and immoveable.

I turned at a metallic noise at the door. The first man to enter held a shotgun pointing at my belly. He was dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt open almost to the waist, and had a lined grim face. He took one pace inside the room and then stepped sideways, keeping the gun on me. ‘On the bed.’ The barrel of the gun jerked fractionally.

I backed away and sidled sideways like a crab to the bed. The muzzle of that gun looked like an army cannon.

Another man came into the room and closed the door behind him. He was dressed in a lightweight business suit and could have been anybody. He had hair, two eyes and a mouth, with a nose in the middle — a face-shaped face. He was nobody I had seen before or, if I had, I had not noticed him. He was my most forgettable character.

‘Good morning, Mr Mangan. I hope you had a quiet night and slept well.’

English — not American, I thought. I said, ‘Where’s my wife?’

‘First things first.’ He gestured sideways. ‘This man is armed with an automatic shotgun loaded with buckshot. Anything that will kill a deer will kill a man — men die more easily. At ten feet he couldn’t miss; he could put five rounds into you in five seconds. I think you’d be chopped in half.’

‘Two seconds,’ said the shotgunner flatly and objectively.

I was wrong about him being English; at the back of those perfectly modulated tones was the flavour of something I could not pin down. I repeated, ‘Where’s my wife?’

‘She’s quite safe,’ he said reassuringly.

‘Where? Here?’

He shrugged. ‘No harm in you knowing. Yes, she’s here.’

‘Prove it. I want to see her.’

He laughed. ‘My dear Mr Mangan, you are in no position to make demands. Although...’ He was pensive for a moment. ‘Yes, my dear chap, that might be a good idea. You shall see her as soon as we have finished our initial conversation. I trust you are fit and well. No ill effects from the curious treatment we were forced to administer?’

‘I’m all right,’ I said shortly.

He produced a small cylinder from his pocket and held it up; it looked like a shotgun cartridge. ‘It was one of these that did the trick. Issued to NATO soldiers for use in nervegas attacks. You put one end against the arm or leg — so — and push. A spring-loaded plunger forces a hypodermic needle right through the clothing and into the flesh, then injects atropine. I admit that the needle going through clothing is not hygienic; there’s a small risk of tetanus — but that is preferable to heart failure from nerve gas, so the risk is acceptable. I don’t think you even felt the prick of the needle.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Of course we used something other than atropine,’ he said. ‘A muscle relaxant derived from curare, I believe; used when giving electric shock therapy. You’re lucky I wasn’t a Middle Eastern guerilla; they use something totally lethal. Very useful for street assassinations.’

‘Very interesting,’ I said. ‘But I can do without the technical lecture.’

‘It has a point,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Just like the needle. It’s to tell you we’re most efficient. Remember that efficiency, Mr Mangan, should you be thinking of trying anything foolish.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Does it matter?’ He waved his hand. ‘Very well, if you must call me something call me... Robinson.’

‘Okay, Robinson. Tell me why.’

‘Why you’re here? Rest assured I shall do so, but in my own time.’

He looked at a point over my head. ‘I was about to begin your interrogation immediately, but I have changed my mind. Don’t you think it is a mark of efficiency to be flexible?’

He had a formal, almost pedantic, way of speech which fitted well with the tone of the ransom letters, and could very well have typed ‘headlamps’ instead of ‘headlights’. I said, ‘I couldn’t give a damn. I want to see my wife.’

His gaze returned to me. ‘And so you shall, my dear chap. What is more, you shall have the privilege of seeing her alone so that you may talk freely. I am sure she will be able to tell you many things of which you are, as yet, unaware. And vice versa. It will make my later interrogation so much easier — for both of us.’

‘Robinson, quit waffling and get her.’

He studied me and smiled. ‘Quite a one for making demands, aren’t you? And in the vernacular, too. But I shall accede to... er... shall we call it your request?’

He put his hand behind him, opened the door, and backed out. The man with the shotgun went out, gun last, and the door closed. I heard it lock.

I thought about it. The man with the shotgun was local, a Texan. He had spoken only a total of five words but the accent was unmistakeable. Robinson was something else. Those cultured tones, those rolling cadences, were the product of a fairly long residence in England, and at a fairly high social level.

And yet... and yet... there was something else. As a Bahamian, class differences, as betrayed by accent, had been a matter of indifference to me, but my time in England had taught me that the English take it seriously, so I had learned the nuances. It is something hard to explain to our American cousins. But Robinson did not ring a true sound — there was a flaw in him.

I looked with greater interest at my prison. The walls were of concrete blocks set in hard mortar and whitewashed. There was no ceiling so I could look up into the roof which was pitched steeply and built of rough timbers — logs with the bark still on — and covered with corrugated iron. The only door was in a gable end.

From the point of view of escape the wall was impossible. I had no metal to scrape the mortar from between the blocks, not even a belt buckle; and they had carefully not put a knife on the tray with which to spread the butter, just a flat piece of wood. As Robinson had said — efficiency. A careful examination of the furniture told me that I was probably in a rural area. The whole lot had not a single nail in them, but were held together by wooden pegs.