"One more thing." Roper's back was turned to the terrace, and his pistol finger was pointing at Jonathan's skull. "I run a tight ship here. We thieve a little, but we play straight with each other. You saved my boy. But if you step out of line, you'll wish you'd never been born."
Hearing footsteps on the terrace, Roper swung round, prepared to be angry that his order had been flouted, and saw Jed setting out name cards in silver stands on the tables spread about the terrace. Her chestnut hair fell over her shoulders. Her body was hidden demurely in a wrap.
"Jeds! Come over here a minute! Got a spot of good news for you. Name of Thomas. Joining the family for a bit. Better tell Daniel; he'll be tickled pink."
She allowed a beat. She raised her head and turned it, favouring the cameras with her best smile.
"Oh, gosh.
* * *
It was the next morning, soon after seven, but in the Miami headquarters it could have been midnight. The same neon lights glowed on the same green-painted brick walls. Sick of his art deco hotel. Burr had made the building his solitary home.
"Yes, it's me," he replied quietly into the red receiver. "And you're you, by the sound of you. How've you been?"
As he spoke, his spare hand slowly rose above his head until the whole arm was stretched toward the shut-off sky. All was forgiven. God was in His heaven. Jonathan was calling his controller on his magic box.
* * *
"They won't have me," Palfrey told Goodhew with satisfaction, as they rode round Battersea in a taxi. Goodhew had picked him up at the Festival Hall. We'll have to make it quick, Palfrey had said.
"Who won't?"
"Darker's new committee. They've invented a code name for themselves: Flagship. You have to be on their list, otherwise you're not Flagship cleared."
"So who is on the list?"
"Not known. They're colour coded."
"Meaning?"
"They're identified by an electronic band printed into their office passes. There's a Flagship reading room. They go there, they shove their passes into a machine, the door opens. They go in, it shuts. They sit down, read the stuff, have a meeting. The door opens, and they come out."
"
"The developments. The game plan."
"Where's the reading room?"
"Away from the building. Far from prying eyes. Rented. They pay cash. No receipts. Probably the upstairs of a bank. Darker loves banks." He kept talking, anxious to unload and go. "If you're Flagship cleared, you're a Mariner. There's a new insider-speak based on sea lore. If something's a bit wet for circulation, that means it ought to be Flagship classified. Or it's too nautical for non-Mariners. Or somebody's a dry bob, not a wet bob. They've got a kind of outer rampart of code names to protect the inner bailey."
"Are all the Mariners members of the River House?"
"Purists, bankers, civil servants, couple of MPs, couple of makers."
"Makers?"
"Manufacturers. Arms makers. For Christ's sake, Rex!"
"Are the makers British?"
"Near enough."
"Are they American? Are there American Mariners, Harry? Is there an American Flagship? Is there an equivalent over there?"
"Pass."
"Can you give me
But Palfrey was too busy, too pressed, too late. He hopped onto the curb, then ducked back into the cab to grab his umbrella.
"Ask your master," he whispered. But so softly that Goodhew in his deafness was not absolutely sure.
There was Crystalside and there was Townside, and though the two were separated by a mere half-mile as the frigate bird flew, they could have been different islands, because between them sat the hillock proudly called Miss Mabel Mountain, the highest point of all the islands far around, which wasn't saying much, with an apron of haze hoisted round her midriff, and the broken-down slave houses at her feet, and her forest where shafts of sun shone like daylight through a broken roof.
Crystalside was meadowed as an English shire, with clusters of umbrella trees that from a distance could have been oak, and English cattle fences, and English ha-has, and vistas of the sea between soft English hilltops artfully landscaped by Roper's tractors.
But Townside was dour and blowy like Scotland with the lights on, with scraggy goat fields on the slant, and tin shops, and a cricket field of blown red dust, with a tin pavilion, and a prevailing easterly that flicked the water in Carnation Bay.
And around Carnation Bay, in a crescent of pastel-painted cottages, each with its front garden and steps leading to the beach, Roper accommodated his white staff. Of these cottages, Woody's House was unquestionably the most desirable, by virtue of its stylishly fretted balcony and its unspoiled view of Miss Mabel Island in the middle of the bay.
