He had, in a matter of hours, become the leader of his faction, lord of his pack. A hard authority had been swiftly developed, although he still felt the need to qualify the authority.
Get sleep now... please.
In a day or two the 'please' would be omitted. The command would be all.
So forever the office made the man.
Sam Tucker smiled at McAuliff in the bright Jamaican moonlight. He seemed to be reading Alex's thoughts. Or was Sam remembering McAuliffs first independent survey? Tucker had been there. It had been in the Aleutians, in springtime, and a man had died because Alex had not been firm enough in his disciplining the team regarding the probing of ice fissures.
Alexander Tarquin McAuliff had matured quickly that springtime in the Aleutians.
'See you later, Sam.'
Inside the room, Alison lay in bed, the table lamp on. By her side was the archive case he had carried out of Carrick Foyle. She was outwardly calm, but there was no mistaking the intensity beneath the surface, McAuliff removed his shirt, threw it on a chair, and crossed to the dial on the wall that regulated the overhead fan. He turned it up; the four blades suspended from the ceiling accelerated, the whirr matching the sound of the distant surf outside. He walked to the bureau, where the bucket of ice had melted halfway. Cubes were bunched together in the water, enough for drinks.
'Would you like a Scotch?' he asked without looking at her.
'No thank you,' she replied in her soft British accent. Soft, but laced - as all British speech was laced - with that core of understated, superior rationality.
'I would.'
'I should think so.'
He poured the whiskey into a hotel glass, threw in two ice cubes, and turned around. 'To answer you before you ask, I had no idea tonight would turn out the way it did.'
'Would you have gone had you known?'
'Of course not... But it's over. We have what we need now.'
This?' Alison touched the archive case.
'Yes'
'From what you've told me... on the word of a dying savage. Told to him by a dead fanatic.'
'I think those descriptions are a little harsh.' McAuliff went to the chair by the bed and sat down facing her. 'But I won't defend either one yet. I'll wait. I'll find out what's in here, do what they say I should do, and see what happens.'
'You sound positively confident, and I can't imagine why. You've been shot at. A bullet came within five inches of killing you. Now you sit here calmly and tell me you'll simply bide your time and see what happens? Alex! For God's sake, what are you doing?'
McAuliff smiled and swallowed a good deal of whiskey. 'What I never thought was possible,' he said slowly, abruptly serious. 'I mean that... And I've just seen a boy grow up into a man. In one hour. The act cost a terrible price, but it happened... and I'm not sure I can understand it, but I saw it. That transformation had something to do with belief. We haven't got it. We act out of fear or greed or both... all of us. He doesn't. He does what he does, becomes what he becomes, because he believes... And, strangely enough, so does Charley-mon.'
'What in heaven's name are you talking about?'
McAuliff lowered his glass and looked at her. 'I have an idea we're about to turn this war over to the people who should be fighting it.'
Charles Whitehall exhaled slowly, extinguished the acetylene flame, and removed his goggles. He put the torch down on the long narrow table and took off the asbestos gloves. He noted with satisfaction that his every movement was controlled; he was like a confident surgeon, no motion wasted, his mind ahead of his every muscle.
He rose from the stool and stretched. He turned to see that the door of the small room was still bolted. A foolish thing to do, he thought; he had bolted the door. He was alone.
He had driven over back roads nearly forty miles away from Carrick Foyle, to the border of Saint Anne's. He had left the police car in a field and walked the last mile into town.
Ten years ago St Anne's was a meeting place for those of the Movement between Falmouth and Ocho Rios. The 'nigger rich,' they had called themselves, with good-sized fields in Drax Hall, Chalky Hill, and Davis Town. Men of property and certain wealth, which they had forced from the earth and were not