Strelski and Flynn sat on the bench. Burr balanced one buttock on a broken chair. Car, he decided. Those tracks were car tracks. Four wheels going straight. Flynn laid his machine gun across his knees, crooked a forefinger round the trigger and closed his eyes in order to listen to the chatter of the cicadas. The strip had been built by marijuana smugglers in the sixties, Strelski had said, but it was too small for today's shipments. The dopers of today flew 747 transports with civil markings, hid their stuff in manifested cargo and used airports with state-of-the-art facilities. And for the run home they stuffed their planes with mink coats for their hookers and fragmentation grenades for their friends. Dopers were like anyone else in the transport business, he said: they hated to ride home without a load.
Half an hour passed. Burr was feeling sick from the mosquito coils. Tropical sweat was springing out of his face like shower water, and his shirt was wringing wet. Strelski passed him a plastic bottle of warm water; Burr drank some and mopped his brow with his soaked handkerchief. The snitch re-snitches, Burr was thinking: and we get blown apart. Strelski uncrossed his legs to make his crotch comfortable. He was nursing his.45 automatic on his lap and wore a revolver in an aluminium ankle cup.
"We told him you were a doctor," Strelski had said. "I wanted to tell him you were a duke, but Pat here wouldn't have it."
Flynn lit another mosquito coil, then, as part of the same operation, levelled his machine gun at the door while he moved sideways in silent high strides. Burr didn't see Strelski move at all, but when he turned he discovered him standing flat against the back wall, with his automatic pointed at the roof. Burr stayed where he was. A good passenger sits tight and keeps his mouth shut.
The door opened, flooding the shed with red sunlight. The elongated head of a young man, ravaged by shaving spots peered round it. Ears like ping-pong bats, Burr confirmed. The scared eyes examined each of them in turn, resting longest on Burr. The head vanished, leaving the door ajar. They heard a muffled cry of "Where?" or "Here?" and a conciliatory murmur in reply. The door was shoved wide, and the indignant figure of Dr. Paul Apostoll, alias Apo, alias Appetites, alias Brother Michael, strutted into the shed, less a penitent than a very small general who has lost his horse. Burr's irritations were forgotten as the magic seized him in its spell. This is Apostoll, he thought, who sits at the right hand of the cartels. This is Apostoll, who brought us the first word of the Roper's plan, who conspires with him, eats his salt, blows the walls out with him on his yacht, and sells him down the river in his spare time.
"Meet the doctor from England," Flynn said solemnly, indicating Burr.
"Doctor, how d'you do, sir," Apostoll replied in a tone of offended gravity. "A little class will make a pleasant change. I surely admire your great country. Many of my forebears are of the British nobility."
"I thought they were Greek crooks," said Strelski, who on Apostoll's appearance had immediately adopted a stance of smouldering hostility.
"On my mother's side," said Apostoll. "My mother was related to the Duke of Devonshire."
"You don't say," said Strelski.
Apostoll didn't hear him. He was speaking to Burr.
"I am a man of principle, Doctor. I believe that as a Britisher you will appreciate that. I am also a child of Mary, privileged to enjoy the guidance of her legionaries. I am not judgmental. I give counsel according to the facts that are supplied to me. I make hypothetical recommendations based on my knowledge of the law. Then I leave the room."
* * *
The heat, the stench, the clatter of the cicadas were forgotten. This was work. This was routine. This was any agent-runner debriefing his joe in any safe house in the world: Flynn in his plain cop's Irish brogue. Apostoll with his courtroom lawyer's truculent precision. He's lost weight, thought Burr, remembering the photographs, noting the sharpened jaw and sunken eyes.
Strelski had taken charge of the machine gun and ostentatiously given Apostoll his back while he covered the open doorway and the airstrip. Lucan sat tensely at his penitent's side, head tilted, eyebrows raised. Lucan wore blue denims, but Apostoll was dressed for the firing squad, in a long-sleeved white shirt and black cotton trousers, and round his neck a gold chain with a figure of Mary holding out her arms. His waved black toupee, artfully awry, was too big for him. It occurred to Burr that he had picked up the wrong one by mistake.
Flynn was doing the agent-runner's housekeeping: What is your cover for this meeting, did anybody see you driving out of town? What time do you have to be back in circulation, when and where shall we meet next? What happened about Annette in the office who you say was trailing you in her car?
Here Apostoll glanced at Father Lucan, who remained staring into the middle distance.
