good-paying firms, for operations remarkably exotic.
'... among them, of course, Beirut, Corsica, southern Spain. He joined me each time. For days, weeks at a time...'
The first confrontation with David Booth came about in Corsica. The survey was a coastal-offshore expedition in the Capo Senetosa area. David arrived during the middle stages for his usual two - to three-week stay, and during this period a series of strange telephone calls and unexplained conferences took place, which seemed to disturb him beyond his limited abilities to cope. Men flew into Ajaccia in small, fast planes; others came by sea in trawlers and small ocean-going craft. David would disappear for hours, then for days at a time. Alison's field work was such that she returned nightly to the team's seacoast hotel; her husband could not conceal his behaviour, nor the fact that his presence in Corsica was not an act of devotion to her.
She forced the issue, enumerating the undeniable, and brutally labelling David's explanations for what they were: amateurish lies. He had broken down, wept, pleaded, and told his wife the truth.
In order to maintain a life style David Booth was incapable of earning in the marketplace, he had moved into international narcotics. He was primarily a courier. His partnership in a small importing-exporting business was ideal for the work. The firm had no real identity; indeed, it was rather nondescript, catering - as befitted the owners -to a social rather than a commercial clientele, dealing in art objects on the decorating level. He was able to travel extensively without raising official eyebrows. His introduction to the world of the contrabandists was banal: gambling debts compounded by an excess of alcohol and embarrassing female alliances. On the one hand, he had no choice; on the other, he was well paid and had no moral compunctions.
But Alison did. The geological surveys were legitimate, testimonials to David's employers' abilities to ferret out unsuspecting collaborators. David was given the names of survey teams in selected Mediterranean sites and told to contact them, offering the services of his very respected wife, adding further that he would confidentially contribute to her salary if she was hired. A rich, devoted husband only interested in keeping an active wife happy. The offers were invariably accepted. And, by finding her 'situations,' his travels were given a twofold legitimacy. His courier activities had grown beyond the dilettante horizons of his business.
Alison threatened to leave the Corsican job.
David was hysterical. He insisted he would be killed, and Alison as well. He painted a picture of such widespread, powerful corruption-without-conscience that Alison, fearing for both their lives, relented. She agreed to finish the work in Corsica, but made it clear their marriage was finished. Nothing would alter that decision.
So she believed at the time.
But one late afternoon in the field - on the water, actually - Alison was taking bore samples from the ocean floor several hundred yards offshore. In the small cabin cruiser were two men. They were agents of Interpol. They had been following her husband for a number of months. Interpol was gathering massive documentation of criminal evidence. It was closing in.
'Needless to say, they were prepared for his arrival. My room was as private as yours was intended to be this evening...'
The case they presented was strong and clear. Where her husband had described a powerful network of corruption, the Interpol men told of another world of pain and suffering and needless, horrible death.
'Oh, they were experts,' said Alison, her eyes remembering, her smile compassionately sad. 'They brought photographs, dozens of them. Children in agony; young men, girls destroyed. I shall never forget those pictures. As they intended I would not...'
Their appeal was the classic recruiting approach: Mrs David Booth was in a unique position; there was no one like her. She could do so much, provide so much. And if she walked away in the manner she had described to her husband - abruptly, without explanation - there was the very real question of whether she would be allowed to do so.
My God, thought McAuliff as he listened, the more things change... The Interpol men might have been Holcroft speaking in a room at the Savoy Hotel.
The arrangements were made, schedules created, a reasonable period of time specified for the 'deterioration' of the marriage. She told a relieved Booth that she would try to save their relationship, on the condition that he never again speak to her of his outside activities.