George agreed. “Right. But with my connections, we ought to be able to get a few allies at the site.”
Michael nodded. “Then we’d better start getting the arrangements in place.”
“What can I do to help?” Jessica asked.
“Stay here out of sight. When we come back I want you to help us figure out the layout of the estate.”
“Perhaps I could try to project myself over there again while you’re gone.”
“No!”
The vehemence of the syllable made George’s head whip around, but the Peregrine agent didn’t notice.
Jessica’s eyes challenged Michael’s to a silent tug-of-war. “Why not?” she finally asked.
“Sometimes you can’t get back by yourself, and I don’t want to take any chances.”
“You’re right,” she acquiesced. “This is new to me, too.”
Michael looked at his watch. “If we’re not back in three hours, use George’s transmitter to call headquarters.”
“You’re not anticipating any trouble, are you?”
“No. But you never can tell.”
Jessica pressed her hands against her sides to keep from reaching toward Michael and begging him not to go. She had the feeling that something wasn’t going to work out the way he was anticipating, but she knew a vague warning wouldn’t keep him from leaving. Besides, he and George could hardly stay there hiding when Jed’s life was hanging in the balance.
“Take care,” she whispered.
“You too. And don’t get off the boat.”
After they left Jessica washed the breakfast dishes and straightened the lounge before opening a day-old newspaper from Jamaica. It didn’t hold her interest. Wandering up on deck, she unfolded a canvas chair and dragged it into the shade from the cabin. Though fairly well screened from prying eyes, she had a good view of the harbor. The dock was busy. Local merchants had set up an open-air market on the quay and were doing a brisk business in fresh produce and souvenirs. A native woman deftly weaving baskets caught her interest, and she wanted to go over for a closer look. Yet Michael’s warning kept her on the boat. Standing up, she moved to the rail and leaned toward the shore. A small black boy wearing a score of shell necklaces saw her and came scurrying over.
“You want beautiful jewelry?” he asked in French.
The curly-haired little salesman looked so eager to please that she smiled, but shrugged. “I don’t understand French.”
He repeated the question in English. Jessica immediately asked, “How much?”
He removed several of the strands and held them out to her, naming a modest figure.
Jessica reached over and accepted them. They were made of tiny pearlaceous shells carefully strung on a long piece of nylon thread. “Did you make these yourself?” she asked.
“My sister.”
From the shadow of a nearby building along the dock, another figure watched the interchange with interest. He’d been treated like a second-class citizen by Talifero ever since he’d arrived down there. He hadn’t even gotten an invitation to the fancy dinner last night, and this morning he’d been sent out like one of the hired hands to keep an eye on the wharf. Already tired of the duty, he’d been about to find a café where he could get a cool drink. Now he was glad that he had remained on the scene. It looked as if he’d just found the trump card that was going to make Talifero take him seriously.
“I only have American money,” the woman was saying.
“I give you best exchange rate.” The boy grinned. He knew when he had a prospect hooked.
“You’re quite a salesman. Let me get my purse.” Jessica turned and ducked down the companionway to the lounge. When she reappeared, the man in the shadows watched her buy three shell necklaces and then resume her seat. It didn’t look as if she were going anywhere, and it wouldn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to go call in reinforcements.
* * *
M
OONSHADOW SET DOWN
her teacup and walked toward the bedroom window. Outside in the morning sunshine she could see Talifero talking to the
hungan,
Piers Lavintelle. She could imagine that the voodoo priest was unhappy about her presence. She certainly wouldn’t like her power usurped by an interloper. But there was no other choice. Conducting tomorrow night’s ceremony was a crucial part of the plan she was formulating.
She smiled with satisfaction. Her liaison in the garden last night with Gorlov—or Garcia, if he wanted to keep up the pretense—had been most informative. She’d given the man a great deal of pleasure. Afterward, while he was relaxed and vulnerable, she’d used a subtle hypnotic technique that had made him very talkative. Though he now remembered nothing of the conversation, he’d told her about Talifero’s plan to turn the island into a Soviet-backed dictatorship—financed in large part from U.S. sales of Dove. Moscow would get another foothold in the Caribbean and Talifero would get the kind of power he craved.
The Soviets weren’t willing to put up the initial money, but if Talifero proved he could pull off the coup, they were going to cement the relationship with foreign aid. Already communist military advisors and arms were in Cuba waiting for Gorlov to give the go-ahead for their embarkation. Now that Moscow’s representative had met Xavier and toured the chemist’s laboratory, he was very close to giving the order.
Gorlov had been very pleased with the idea of flooding the U.S. market with Dove. It would be a very disruptive influence. But Moonshadow knew that the pain would be felt most intensely in the lower-class community where drugs were a way of holding the realities of a harsh life at bay.
The prospect sickened her. So did Talifero’s plans for Royale Verde. As absolute master of Blackstone he was formidable enough. As the absolute ruler of a Caribbean island, he would be the scourge of the native population—and very dangerous to her personally. She suspected that he had plans to keep her here. If his island takeover proceeded as anticipated, there would be no way to get out from under his thumb.
Her only option was to stop his bid for power while she still could. But to carry off her escape plan, she would need Xavier’s help. Even after her previous betrayal, she was sure she could get the chemist to cooperate with her. After all, she would be offering him a way out of his dilemma. And if logic didn’t work, she’d make up another charm to bring him around using the vial of his blood that she’d brought with her from New Orleans. Yes, in the end he’d do her bidding. The only real problem was his stability. Though he was putting up a good front, she knew he was in worse shape than he’d been in New Orleans. If he went to pieces at the wrong time, he could get both of them killed.
* * *
T
HE MORNING HAD GONE
well, Michael thought as he and Holcroft strode back down the quay toward the
Sea Turtle.
The Peregrine agent was eager to tell Jessica about the local men they’d recruited and share some of the firsthand information he’d picked up.
The underground opposition to Talifero was more organized than he’d suspected. Several of the recruits had actually attended voodoo services at Blackstone in order to assess Talifero’s strength.
Another dissident who hadn’t been willing to go along had still been a very valuable source of information. He had worked briefly as a gardener at the estate and had provided a crude map of the compound. The lab was outside the main wall and not too far from the place where the voodoo rituals were held. But Michael wanted Jessica to fill in more details and particularly to pinpoint where Talifero was holding Jed.
“She must be below,” Holcroft observed as they drew close to the craft. Pulling the mooring rope, he brought the bow up to the edge of the wooden pier and stepped across onto the deck.
“Jessica?” Michael called as he followed the CIA agent.
There was no answer.
“Jessica?” he tried again. When his foot crunched against something on the deck, he looked down. It was a little pile of pink fragments that must have been a seashell, judging from the other shells that were scattered across the painted boards.
Holcroft stooped down and picked up a strand of nylon thread on which a few shells were still strung. Flung into the corner was another strand, still intact. “It looks as if she bought a couple of necklaces from one of the local vendors,” he observed.
“I told her not to get off the boat,” Michael muttered.
“She didn’t have to. The boys often come right up to the boat hawking their wares.”
“That doesn’t explain where she is now.”
“Maybe she went to get her money back. We can check the dock if you’re worried,” Holcroft offered.
Michael looked down at the broken strand. “I’m worried.”
As he started back down the wharf, a small black boy wearing a dozen shell necklaces detached himself from the crowd and scurried into a side street. Michael sprinted in his direction and caught up easily. “Wait a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t do nothing, boss.”
“Did you see a lady on the boat?”
The boy’s dark eyes slid away from the man’s penetrating gaze.
“Did you see where she went?”
Michael fished in his pocket for some coins. “Tell me.”
The boy licked his lips and looked at the money. “She left with two white men. I don’t think she wanted to go.”
Michael drew in a deep breath. “Can you describe them?”
“Most white men look alike to me, boss. But one, he had an ugly scar on his face. It was shaped like a star.”
“On his left cheek?”
“You see him too, boss?”
Michael swore. He only knew one man with a scar like that—Lonnie, the dope distributor who had given the Dove to Jessica and been in charge of the recapture of Xavier. If he’d taken Jessica away, there was only one place she could be now: the Blackstone Clinic.
“How long ago did they leave with her?” he rasped.
The boy shrugged. “It’s been a while.”
“Thanks.” Handing the kid the money, Michael turned away, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. Christ, Jessica in Lonnie’s hands again! He remembered what that bastard had had in mind for her last time—and what he had tried to do to him as well. The thought made him want to go pound on the gates of the Blackstone Clinic and demand entrance. But he couldn’t do that. He’d just end up the way Jed had, and that wasn’t going to do anybody any good. He had to think clearly and not let his emotions trick him into doing something that was going to lose the whole shooting match for everybody.
Chapter Sixteen
L
onnie and his friend had waited patiently in the shadows until the boy left. Then, when Jessica had turned back to the companionway stairs to put the necklaces away, the drug dealer had made his way quickly down the dock and vaulted onto the deck of the
Sea Turtle.
After grabbing Jessica from behind, he’d wrestled her quickly out of sight into the lounge, where the other man had joined them. In a few succinct sentences, the man from New Orleans had explained what would happen to her if she screamed in the public dock area or tried to make a break for it.
In very short order the three of them were making their way down the quay, Lonnie holding firmly to Jessica’s arm and shielding the gun in her back with his body. As she passed, she tried desperately to catch the eye of the boy who had sold her the shell necklaces. He gave her a quick frightened look and turned his head away.
When Jessica and her captors reached a battered Ford parked on a narrow side street, Lonnie shoved her down into the backseat and gagged her with a handkerchief. After securing her hands and ankles with cord, the two men covered her with a dusty blanket. One of them remained in the backseat with her while the other drove.
It was hot and stuffy under the cover. With the gag in her mouth she could hardly breathe. She was half lying, half sitting. Whoever was driving was in a hurry, and the car swayed along winding roads, throwing her alternately against the locked door and the man who sat next to her. But the discomfort was nothing compared to her fear. The memory of Jed strapped to that table with acid pumping through his veins leapt into her mind. Convulsively she thrust it away. God, what was in store for her?
“Lie still,” the man next to her hissed. For emphasis his fingers closed around her arm in a vicelike grip. Escape seemed all the more impossible. Where were they taking her? The Blackstone Clinic was the most likely destination. The only hope she could cling to was that Michael was already mounting a rescue operation for Jed and Xavier.
They stopped only once, at what she assumed was a guard post. There was a hurried conversation in guttural French and then the clank of a heavy metal gate. On the other side was a crushed stone drive. The car swung off to the right and lurched to a stop. Jessica was pulled roughly from the seat. Someone untied her feet. But the other restraints remained. The blanket still over her head, she was marched through a doorway into an air-conditioned building. She could see only her feet and a small circle of polished tile floor. The man who had been in the backseat with her still kept a punishing grip on her arms. But her own terror numbed the sensation. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she could feel the vibrations throughout her body.
The conversation on the other side of the door came to her as waves of sound that she couldn’t decipher. She only knew the speakers might well be deciding her fate. When the barrier finally opened, she was shoved inside.
“What have we here?” a cultured male voice inquired as the blanket was pulled off her head.
The sudden brightness of the room made her blink. When her vision cleared she found herself staring at the white-haired man who had been giving orders in the garden. It was Jackson Talifero. His cold tone of command had frightened her in the vision. The reality of standing in the same room with him was far worse.
“It’s the bitch who was messing with our operation in New Orleans,” Lonnie supplied.
“Hmm,” Talifero murmured. He studied Jessica with the keen interest of a scientist fascinated with a new biological specimen.
She tried not to flinch. But as he removed the gag from her mouth, her heart began to pound even harder.