Then came fresh footsteps and voices, and for a bad moment Jonathan thought they had decided to come back and give him some more of the same, but in his confusion he had mistaken the origin of the sounds, because it was not his enemies who were now gathered round and staring down at him, but his friends, all the people he had fought for and nearly died for: Tabby and Frisky, Langbourne and the polo players, the old couple who touched each other's faces while they danced and the four young blacks from the bar, then Swats and Wet Eye, then Roper and Jed with little Daniel clutched between them. And Miss Amelia, crying, on and on, as if Jonathan had broken her arm too. And Mama Low, yelling at Miss Amelia to shut the fuck up and Miss Amelia screaming, "That poor Lamont." And Roper had noticed it and was taking exception.
"Hell's she calling him Lamont for?" Roper was complaining while he leaned his head this way and that to get a better look at Jonathan's face beneath the blood. "He's Pine from Meister's. The night flunky chap they had. Englishman. Recognise him, Tabby?"
"That's who it is, Chief," Tabby confirmed, kneeling at Jonathan's side and holding his pulse.
Somewhere at the edge of his screen, Jonathan saw Frisky pick up the abandoned briefcase and peer inside.
"It's all here, Chief," he was saying soothingly. "No harm except to life and limb."
But Roper was still crouching over Jonathan, and whatever he saw must have been more impressive than the jewellery, for he kept wrinkling his nose as if the wine were corked. Jed had decided Daniel had seen enough and was walking him sedately down the steps.
"You hear me all right. Pine?" Roper asked.
"Yes," said Jonathan.
"Can you feel my hand okay?"
"Yes."
"Here too?"
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"How's his pulse, Tabby?"
"Quite sporting, considering, Chief."
"You still hearing me, Pine?"
"Yes."
"You're going to be okay. Help's on its way. We'll get you the best there is. You talking to the boat there, Corky?"
"On line, Chief."
In the back of his mind, Jonathan had a notion of Major Corkoran holding a portable telephone to his ear, one hand propped on his hip and his elbow raised for extra authority.
"We'll fly him to Nassau on the chopper
"Doctors Hospital, Collins Avenue," said Corkoran.
"Book him in. Who's that pompous Swiss surgeon, got a house at Windermere Cay, always trying to put his money in our companies?"
"Marti," said Corkoran.
"Call Marti, get him up there."
"Will do."
"After that, call the coast guards, the police and all the usual idiots. Raise some serious hell. Got a stretcher, Low? Go and get it. You married or anything, Pine? Got a wife or anyone?"
"I'm fine, sir," said Jonathan.
But it was the equestrienne, typically, who had to have the last word. She must have done first aid at convent school.
"Move him as little as possible," she was telling someone, in a voice that seemed to float into his sleep.
Jonathan had vanished from their screens, missing believed killed by friendly fire. All their planning, all their listening and watching, all their supposed mastery of the game, lay like a trashed limousine at the roadside. They were deaf and blind and ridiculous. The windowless headquarters in Miami was a ghosthouse, and Burr walked its grim corridors like a haunted man.
Roper's yacht, planes, houses, helicopters and cars were on constant watch; so was the stylish colonial mansion in downtown Nassau where the Ironbrand Land, Ore & Precious Metals Company had its prestigious headquarters. So were the telephone and facsimile lines belonging to Roper's contacts round the globe: from Lord Langbourne in Tortola to Swiss bankers in Zug and semi-anonymous collaborators in Warsaw; from a mysterious "Rafi" in Rio de Janeiro to "Misha" in Prague and a firm of Dutch notaries in Curaçao and an as yet unidentified government official in Panama who, even when speaking from his desk in the presidential palace, affected a drugged murmur and the alias of Charlie.
But of Jonathan Pine, alias Lamont, last heard of in intensive care at Nassau's Doctors Hospital, not a whisper from any of them.
"He's deserted," Burr told Strelski, through the spread fingers of his hands. "First he goes mad, then he escapes from hospital. A week from now we'll be reading his story in the Sunday newspapers."
