story, he found himself trying to understand all over again. He spoke slowly, in a monotone actually; it was the drone of a man speaking through the mists of confusion.
Of the strange message from Dunstone, Limited, that brought him to London from New York, and a man named 'Julian Warfield.' Of a 'financial analyst' at the Savoy Hotel whose plastic card identified him as 'Holcroft, R. C., British Intelligence.' The pressurized days of living in two worlds that denied their own realities - the covert training, the secret meetings, the vehicle transfers, the hiring of survey personnel under basically false pretences. Of a panicked, weak James Ferguson, hired to spy on the survey by a man named 'Arthur Craft the Younger,' who was not satisfied being one of the richest men in Jamaica. Of an arrogant Charles Whitehall, whose brilliance and scholarship could not lift him above a fanatic devotion to an outworn, outdated, dishonoured concept. Of an arthritic little islander, whose French and African blood had strained its way into the Jamaican aristocracy and MI5 by way of Eton and Oxford.
Of Sam Tucker's odd tale of the transformation of Walter Piersall, anthropologist, converted by 'island fever' into a self-professed guardian of his tropic sanctuary.
And finally of a shaven-headed guerrilla revolutionary named 'Barak Moore.' And everyone's search for an 'unseen curia' called 'the Halidon.'
Insanity. But all very, very real.
The sun sprayed its shafts of early light into the billowing grey clouds above the Blue Mountains. McAuliff sat in the frame of the balcony door; the wet scents of the Jamaican dawn came up from the moist grounds and down from the tall palms, cooling his nostrils and so his skin.
He was nearly finished now. They had talked - he had talked - for an hour and forty-five minutes. There remained only the Marquis de Chatellerault.
Alison was still in the bed, sitting up against the pillows. Her eyes were tired, but she did not take them off him.
He wondered what she would say - or do - when he mentioned Chatellerault. He was afraid.
'You're tired; so am I. Why don't I finish in the morning?'
'It is the morning.'
'Later, then.'
'I don't think so. I'd rather hear it all at once.'
'There isn't much more.'
'Then I'd say you saved the best for last. Am I right?' She could not conceal the silent alarm she felt. She looked away from him, at the light coming through the balcony doors. It was brighter now, that strange admixture of pastel yellow and hot orange that is peculiar to the Jamaican dawn.
'You know it concerns you...'
'Of course I know it. I knew it last night.' She returned her eyes to him. 'I didn't want to admit it to myself... but I knew it. It was all too tidy.'
'Chatellerault,' he said softly. 'He's here.'
'Oh, God,' she whispered.
'He can't touch you. Believe me.'
'He followed me. Oh my God...'
McAuliff got up and crossed to the bed. He sat on the edge and gently stroked her hair. 'If I thought he could harm you, I never would have told you. I'd simply have him... removed.' Oh, Christ, thought Alex. How easily the new words came. Would he soon be using kill, or eliminate!
'Right from the very start, it was all programmed. I was programmed.' She stared at the balcony, allowing his hand to caress the side of her face, as if oblivious to it. 'I should have realized; they don't let you go that easily.'
'Who?'
'All of them, my darling,' she answered, taking his hand, holding it to her lips. 'Whatever names you want to give them, it's not important. The letters, the numbers, the official-sounding nonsense... I was warned, I can't say I wasn't.'
'How?' He pulled her hand down, forcing her to look at him. 'How were you warned? Who warned you?'
'In Paris one night. Barely three months ago. I'd finished the last of my interviews at the... underground carnival, we called it.'
'Interpol?'
'Yes. I met a chap and his wife. In a waiting room, actually. It's not supposed to happen; isolation is terribly important, but someone got their rooms mixed up... They were English. We agreed to have a late supper together... He was a Porsche automobile dealer from Macclesfield. He and his wife were at the end of their tethers. He'd been recruited because his dealership - the cars, you see - were being used to transport stolen stock certificates from European exchanges. Every time he thought he was finished, they found reasons for him to continue - more often than