for the open sea, the second aiming for the bauxite docks east of Runaway Bay. A luxurious cabin cruiser rigged for deep-sea fishing sliced through the swells several hundred yards in front of them, the passengers pointing in astonishment at the strange sight of five humans picnicking on a reef.
McAuliff watched the others respond to the cruiser's surprised riders. Sam Tucker stood up, gestured at the coral, and yelled, 'Diamonds!'
Floyd and Lawrence, their black, muscular bodies bared to the waist, roared at Sam's antics. Lawrence pried loose a coral stone and held it up, then chucked it to Tucker, who caught it and shouted again, 'Twenty carats!'
Alison, her bluejeans and light field blouse drenched with the spray, joined in the foolish game. She elaborately accepted the coral stone, presented by Sam, and held it on top of her outstretched hand as though it were a jewelled ring of great value. A short burst of breeze whipped across the reef; Alison dropped the stone in an effort to hold her hat, whose brim had caught the wind. She was not successful; the hat glided off and disappeared over a small mound of coral. Before Alex could rise and go after it, Lawrence was on his feet, dashing sure-footedly over the rocks and down towards the water. Within seconds he had the hat, now soaked, and effortlessly leaped back up from the water's edge and handed it to Alison.
The incident had taken less than ten seconds.
'You keep the hat on the head, Miss Aleesawn. Them sun very hot; roast skin like cooked chicken, mon.'
'Thank you, Lawrence,' said Alison gratefully, securing the wet hat over her head. 'You run across this reef as though it were a golf green!'
'Lawrence is a fine caddy, Miss Alison,' said Floyd smiling, still sitting. 'At the Negril Golf Club he is a favourite, is that not so, Lawrence?'
Lawrence grinned and glanced at McAuliff knowingly. 'Eh, mon. At Negril they all the time ask for me. I cheat good, mon. Alia time I move them golf balls out of bad places to the smooth grass. I think everybody know. Alia time ask for Lawrence.'
Sam Tucker chuckled as he sat down again. 'Alia time big goddamn tips, I'd say.'
'Plenty good tips, mon,' agreed Lawrence.
'And probably something more,' added McAuliff, looking at Floyd and remembering the exclusive reputation of the Negril Golf Club. 'Alia time plenty of information.'
'Yes, mon.' Floyd smiled conspiratonally. 'It is as they say: The rich Westmorelanders talk a great deal during their games of golf.'
Alex fell silent. It seemed strange, the whole scene. Here they were, the five of them, eating cold chicken on a coral reef three hundred yards from shore, playing children's games with passing cabin cruisers and joking casually about the surreptitious gathering of information on a golf course.
Two black revolutionaries - recruits from a band of hill country guerrillas. A late-middle aged 'soldier of fortune'. (Sam Tucker would object to the cliche, but if it was ever applicable, he was the applicant.) A strikingly handsome... lovely English divorcee whose background just happened to include undercover work for an international police organization. And one thirty-eight year old ex-infantryman who six weeks ago flew to London thinking he was going to negotiate a geological survey contract.
The five of them. Each knowing that he was not what he appeared to be; each doing what he was doing... she was doing... because there were no alternatives. Not really.
It wasn't strange; it was insane.
And it struck McAuliff once again that he was the least qualified among these people, under the circumstances. Yet because of the circumstances - having nothing to do with qualifications - he was their leader.
Insanity.
By the seventh day, working long hours with few breaks, Alex and Sam had charted the coastline as far as Burwood, five miles from the mouth of the Martha Brae, their western perimeter. The Jensens and James Ferguson kept a leisurely parallel pace, setting up tables with microscopes, burners, vials, scales, and chemicals as they went about their work. None found anything exceptional, nor did they expect to in the coastal regions. The areas had been studied fairly extensively for industrial and resort purposes; there was nothing of consequence not previously recorded. And since Ferguson's botanical analyses were closely allied with Sam Tucker's soil evaluations, Ferguson volunteered to make the soil tests, freeing Tucker to finish the topographies with Alex.
These were the geophysical concerns. There was something else, and none could explain it.