"It hurts my feelings. Roper gets in other kids for me, but I hate them. He's bought a new Rolls-Royce for Nassau, but Jed likes the Volvo better."
"Do you like the Rolls-Royce?"
"Yuck."
"What
"Dragons."
"When are they coming back?"
"The
"Jed and Roper."
"You're supposed to call him the Chief."
"All right. Jed and the Chief."
"What's
"Thomas."
"Is that your surname or your Christian name?"
"Whichever you like."
"It's not either of them, according to Roper. It's made up."
"Did he tell you that?"
"I just happened to hear it. Thursday probably. Depends if they stay on for Apo's binge."
"Who's Apo?"
"He's foul. He's got a tan's penthouse in Coconut Grove, which is where he does his screwing. That's in Miami."
So Daniel read to Jonathan about squid, and then he read to him about pterodactyls, and when Jonathan dozed off, Daniel tapped him on the shoulder to ask whether it would be all right to eat a bit of Madeira cake and would Jonathan like some too? So to please Daniel, Jonathan ate a bit of Madeira cake, and when Daniel shakily poured him a cup of tea he drank some tepid tea as well.
"Coming along, are we, Tommy? They made a right job of you, I will say. Very professional."
It was Frisky, seated on a chair just inside the door, wearing a T-shirt and white ducks and no Beretta, and reading the
* * *
While the patient rested, the close observer used his wits.
Crystal. Mr. Onslow Roper's island in the Exumas, one hour's flying time from Nassau by Frisky's right-handed watch, which Jonathan had managed to get a sight of as they loaded him on and off the plane. Slumped in the rear seat, his mind secret-bright, he had watched by white moonlight as they flew over reefs fretted like the tongues of a jigsaw puzzle. A solitary island rose toward them, a cone-shaped hillock at its centre. He made out a neat, floodlit airstrip cut into the crest, with a helicopter pad to one side of it, and a low green hangar and an orange communications mast. In his peculiar alertness he looked for the cluster of broken slave houses in the woods that Rooke said marked the spot, but he didn't see one. They landed and were met by a soft-topped Toyota jeep driven by a very big black man who wore string gloves with the knuckles left bare for hitting people.
"He okay for sittin', or you wan' me pull out the back?"
"Just take him nice and slow," Frisky had said.
They drove down an unmade snake track, and the trees changed from blue pine to lush green heart-shaped leaves the size of dinner plates. The track straightened, and by the jeep's headlights he saw a broken sign saying Pindar's Turtle Factory and behind the sign a brick sweatshop with the roof torn off and its windows smashed. And at the roadside, shreds of cotton hanging like old bandages from the bushes. And Jonathan memorised everything in order, so that if he ever got out of here and was on the run, he could count them in reverse: pineapple field, banana grove, tomato field, factory. By the burning white moon he saw fields with wooden stumps like unfinished crosses, then a Calvary Chapel, then a clapboard Highway Church of God. Go left at the Highway Church, he thought, as they turned right. Everything was information, everything a straw to clutch as he fought to stay afloat.
A circle of natives sat in the road, drinking from brown bottles. The driver manoeuvred respectfully round them, his gloved hand lifted in a calm salute. The Toyota bumped over a plank bridge, and Jonathan saw the moon hanging to his right, with the north star straight above it. He saw flame-of-the-woods and hibiscus and, with the lucidity that was on him, remembered reading that the hummingbird drank from the back of the hibiscus, not the centre. But then he couldn't remember whether this made the bird remarkable or the plant.
They passed between two gateposts that reminded him of Italian villas on Lake Como. Beside the gates stood a white bungalow with barred windows and security lights, and Jonathan took this to be a gatehouse of some kind, because the jeep slowed to a crawl as the gates appeared, and two black guards made a leisurely inspection of its occupants.
"This the one the Major say comin'?"
"What do you think he is?" Frisky asked. "A fucking Arab stallion?"
"Just askin', man. Ain't no cause for perturbation. What they do to his face, man?"
"Styled it," said Frisky.
From the gates to the main house was four minutes by Frisky's watch at around ten miles an hour for the speed bumps, and the Toyota seemed to move in a left-handed arc with sweet-smelling water to the left, so Jonathan reckoned a curved driveway about 1.5 kilometres long skirting the shore of a man-made lake or lagoon. As they drove he kept seeing distant lights between the trees and guessed a perimeter fence with halogen lamps, like Ireland. Once he heard the flutter of a horse's feet scampering beside them in the dark.
