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by Frederick Forsyth

  Julius was standing at the filleting table beside the dock, slicing off the heads and removing the offal from two modest-sized dorado. His own back pocket contained his wages for the day plus his share of the gratuity the Italians had left behind.

  Monk strolled past the Tiki Hut toward the Banana Boat, whose open-sided plank-floored drinking and dining area was thronged with early imbibers. He walked up to the bar and nodded to Rocky.

  “The usual?” The barman grinned.

  “Why not, I’m a creature of habit.”

  He had been a regular for years and there was an understanding that the Banana Boat would take calls for him while he was at sea. Indeed its telephone number was on the cards he had placed with all the hotels on the island of Providenciales to attract clients for a fishing charter.

  Rocky’s wife, Mabel, called over:

  “Grace Bay Club called.”

  ‘‘Uh-huh. Any message?”

  “No, just call ‘em back.”

  She pushed the telephone she kept behind her cash desk toward him. He dialed and got the operator at the reception desk. She recognized his voice.

  “Hi, Jason, had a good day?”

  “Not bad, Lucy. Seen worse. You called?”

  “Yeah. What you doin’ tomorrow?”

  “You bad girl, what had you in mind?”

  There was a scream of laughter from the big, jolly woman at the reception desk of the hotel three miles down the beach.

  The permanent residents of the island of Provo did not constitute an enormous group, and within the community serving the tourists who made up the island’s sole source of dollar income, just about everyone knew everyone, islander or settler, and the lighthearted badinage helped the time go by. The Turks and Caicos were still the Caribbean as it used to be: friendly, easygoing, and not in too much of a hurry.

  “Don’t you start, Jason Monk. You free for a client tomorrow?”

  He thought it over. He had intended to spend the day working on the boat, a task that never ends for boat owners, but a charter was a charter and the finance company in Miami that still owned half the Foxy Lady never tired of repayment checks.

  “Guess I am. Full day or half day?”

  “Half day. Morning. Say about nine o’clock?”

  “Okay. Tell the party where to find me. I’ll be ready.”

  “It’s not a group, Jason. Just one man, a Mr. Irvine. I’ll tell him. Bye now.”

  Jason put the phone down. Single clients were unusual; normally they were two or more. Probably a husband whose wife did not want to come; that was pretty normal too. He finished his daiquiri and went back to the boat to tell Julius they would have to meet at seven to fuel up and get some fresh bait onboard.

  The client who appeared at a quarter to nine the next morning was older than the usual fisherman, elderly in fact, in tan slacks, cotton shirt, and white Panama hat. He stood on the dock and called up:

  “Captain Monk?”

  Jason clambered down from his flying bridge and went to greet him. He was evidently English, by his accent. Julius helped him aboard.

  “You tried this before, Mr. Irvine?” Jason asked.

  “Actually, no. My first time. Bit of a new boy.”

  “Don’t worry about it, sir. We’ll take care of you. The sea’s pretty calm, but if you find it’s too much, just say.”

  It never ceased to surprise him how many tourists went out to sea with the presumption that the ocean would be as calm as the water inside the reef. Tourist brochures never show a whitecap wave on the Caribbean, but it can produce some seriously bumpy seas.

  He eased the Foxy Lady out of Turtle Cove and turned half-right toward Sellar’s Cut. Out beyond Northwest Point there would be wild water, probably too much for the old man, but he knew a spot off Pine Key in the other direction where the seas were easier and reports had it there were dorado running.

  He ran at full cruise for forty minutes, then saw a large mat of floating weed, the sort of place where dorado, locally called dolphin, were wont to lie in the shade just below the surface.

  Julius streamed four rigs and lines as the power eased off and they started to cruise around the bed of reed. It was on the third circuit that they got a strike.

  One of the rods dipped violently, then the line began to scream out of the Penn Senator. The Englishman got up from beneath the awning and sedately took his place in the fighting chair. Julius handed him the rod, slotted the butt into the cup between the client’s thighs, and began to haul in the other three lines.

  Monk turned the nose of the Foxy Lady away from the reed bed, set her power just above idle, and came down to the afterdeck. The fish had stopped taking line, but the rod was well bent.

  “Just haul back,” said Monk gently. “Haul back until the rod is upright, then ease forward and wind in as you go.”

  The Englishman tried it. After ten minutes he said:

  “I think this is a bit too much for me, you know. Strong things, fish.”

  “Okay, I’ll take it if you like.”

  “I’d be most grateful if you would.”

  Monk slipped into the fighting chair as the client climbed out and returned to the shade of the awning. It was half past ten and the heat was fierce. The sun was astern and the glare came off the water like a blade.

  It took ten minutes of hard pumping to bring the fish close to the transom. Then it saw the hull and made another run for freedom, taking a further thirty yards of line.

  “What is it?” asked the client.

  “Big bull dolphin,” said Monk.

  “Oh, dear, I rather like dolphins.”

  “Not the bottle-nosed mammal. Same name but different. Also called dorado. It’s a game fish, and very good to eat.”

  Julius had the gaff ready and as the dorado came alongside he swung expertly and brought the forty-pounder over the edge.

  “Good fish, mister,” he said.

  “Ah, but I think Mr. Monk’s fish, not mine.”

  Monk climbed out of the chair, disengaged the hook from the dorado’s mouth, and unclipped the steel trace from the line. Julius, about to put the catch into the stern locker, looked surprised. With the dorado on board, the routine would be to stream the four lines again, not put them away.

  “Go topside and take the helm,” Monk told him quietly. “Head for home, trolling speed.”

  Julius nodded without understanding and his lean ebony form went up the ladder to the upper control panel. Monk bent to the chilled locker, extracted two cans of beer, and popped both, offering one to his client. Then he sat on the locker and looked at the elderly Englishman in the shade.

  “You don’t really want to come fishing, do you, Mr. Irvine.” It was not a question but a statement.

  “Not my passion, actually.”

  “No. And it’s not Mr. Irvine, is it? Something bothering me all this trip. A VIP visit at Langley, way back, by the big honcho from the British Intelligence Service.”

  “Quite a memory, Mr. Monk.”

  “The name Sir Nigel seems to ring a bell. Okay, Sir Nigel Irvine, can we please stop fooling around? What is all this about?”

  “Sorry for the deception. Just wanted to have a look. And a talk. In privacy. Few places more private than the open sea.”

  “So ... we’re talking. What about?”

  “Russia, I’m afraid.”

  “Uh-huh. Big country. Not my favorite. Who sent you here?”

  “Oh, nobody sent me. Carey Jordan told me about you. We lunched in Georgetown a couple of days ago. He sends his best wishes.”

  “Nice of him. Thank him if you see him again. But you must have noticed that he is out of it these days. Know what I mean by ‘it’? Out of the game. Well, so am I. Whatever you came for, sir, it was a wasted journey.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s what Carey said. Don’t bother, he said. But I did anyway. It’s a long journey. Mind if I make my pitch? Isn’t that what you chaps say? Make my pitch, put my proposal?”

 
“That’s the expression. Well, it’s a hot and sunny day in paradise. You have two hours left of a four-hour charter. Talk if you wish, but the answer’s still no.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Igor Komarov?”

  “We get the papers here, a couple of days late, but we get ‘em. And we listen to the radio. Personally I don’t have a satellite dish, so I don’t get TV. Yes, I’ve heard of him. The coming man, isn’t he?”

  “So they say. What have you heard of him?”

  “He heads the right wing. Nationalist, appeals to patriotism a lot. That sort of thing. Makes a mass appeal.”

  “How far right-wing would you think he is?”

  Monk shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Pretty much, I guess. About as far as some of those Deep South ultraconservative senators back home.”

  “A bit more than that, I’m afraid. He’s so far right he’s off the map.”

  “Well, Sir Nigel, that’s terribly tragic. But right now my major concern is whether I have a charter for tomorrow and whether the wahoo are running fifteen miles off Northwest Point. The politics of the unlovely Mr. Komarov do not concern me.”

  “Well, they will, I fear. One day. I … we … some friends and colleagues, feel he really should be stopped. We need a man to go into Russia. Carey said you were good ... once. Said you were the best … once.”

  “Yes, well, that was once.” Monk stared at Sir Nigel for several seconds in silence. “You’re saying this isn’t even official. This is not government policy, yours or mine.”

  “Well done. Our two governments take the view there is nothing they can do. Officially.”

  “And you think I am going to pull anchor, cross the world, and go into Russia to tangle with this yo-yo at the behest of some group of Don Quixotes who don’t even have government backing?”

  He stood up, crushed the empty beer can ‘in one fist and tossed it in the trash bucket.

  “I’m sorry, Sir Nigel. You really did waste your airfare. Let’s get back to the harbor. The trip’s on the house.”

  He went back to the flying bridge, took the helm, and headed for the Cut. Ten minutes after they entered the lagoon the Foxy Lady was back at her slot on the quayside.

  “You’re wrong about the trip,” said the Englishman. “I engaged you in bad faith, but you took the charter in good faith. How much is a half-day charter?”

  “Three-fifty.”

  “With a gratuity for your young friend.” Irvine peeled four hundred-dollar bills from a wad. “By the by, do you have an afternoon charter?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So you’ll be going home?”

  “Yep.”

  “Me too. I’m afraid at my age a short nap after lunch is called for in this heat. But while you’re sitting in the shade, waiting for the heat of the day to pass, would you do something?”

  “No more fishing,” warned Monk.

  “Oh, Lord no.” The elderly man burrowed into the shoulder bag he had brought and produced a brown envelope.

  “There is a file in here. It is not a joke. Just read it. No one else sees it, you do not let it out of your sight. It is more highly classified than anything Lysander or Orion or Delphi or Pegasus ever brought you.”

  He might as well have punched Jason Monk in the solar plexus. As the former chief ambled up the dock to find his rented buggy, Monk stood with his mouth open. Finally he shook his head, stuffed the envelope beneath his shirt, and went to the Tiki Hut for a burger.

  On the northern side of the chain of six islands that make up the Caicos—West, Provo, Middle, North, East, and South—the reef is close to the shore, giving speedy access to the open sea. On the south the reef is miles away, enclosing a huge thousand-square-mile shallow called the Caicos Bank.

  When he came to the islands, his money was short and prices on the north shore where the tourists went and the hotels were built were high. Monk had costed out his budget and with harbor dues, fuel, maintenance costs, a business license, and a fishing permit, there was not much left. For a small rental he was able to take a timber-frame bungalow on the less fashionable Sapodilla Bay, south of the airport and facing the glittering sheet of the bank where only boats of shallow draft could venture. That and a beat-up Chevy pickup comprised his worldly assets.

  He was sitting on his deck watching the sun go down to his right when a vehicle engine coughed to a halt on the sandy track behind his house. Presently the lean figure of the elderly Englishman came around the corner. This time his white Panama was complemented by a creased alpaca tropical jacket.

  “They said I’d find you here,” he said cheerfully.

  “Who said?”

  “That nice young gal at the Banana Boat.”

  Mabel was well into her forties. Irvine stumped up the steps and gestured to the spare rocking chair.

  “Mind if I do?”

  Monk grinned.

  “Be my guest. Beer?”

  “Not just now, thanks.”

  “Make a mean daiquiri. No fruit except fresh lime.”

  “Ah, much more like it.”

  Monk prepared two straight-up lime daiquiris and brought them out. They sipped appreciatively.

  “Manage to read it?”

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “It’s sick. It’s also probably a forgery.”

  Irvine nodded understandingly. The sun tipped the low hump of West Caicos across the bank. The shallow water glowed red.

  “We thought that. Obvious deduction. But worth checking out. That’s what our people in Moscow reckoned. Just a quick check.”

  Sir Nigel did not produce the verification report. He narrated it, stage by stage. Monk, despite himself, was interested.

  “Three of them, all dead?” he said at length.

  “ ‘Fraid so. It really does seem Mr. Komarov wants that file of his back. Not because it’s a forgery. He’d never have known about it if another hand had written it. It’s true. It’s what he intends to do.”

  “And you think he can be terminated? With extreme prejudice? Taken out?”

  “No, I said ‘stopped.’ Not the same. Terminating, to borrow your quaint CIA phraseology, would not work.”

  He explained why.

  “But you think he can be stopped, discredited, finished as a force?”

  “Yes, actually I do.”

  Irvine eyed him keenly, sideways.

  “It never quite leaves you, does it? The lure of the hunt. You think it will, but it’s always there, hiding.”

  Monk had been in a reverie, his mind going back many years and many miles. He jerked out of his thoughts, rose, and refilled their glasses from the pitcher.

  “Nice try, Sir Nigel. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he can be stopped. But not by me. You’ll have to find yourself another boy.”

  “My patrons are not ungenerous people. There’d be a fee of course. Laborer’s worthy of his hire and all that. Haifa million dollars. U.S., of course. Quite a tidy sum, even in these times.”

  Monk contemplated a sum like that. Wipe out the debt on the Foxy Lady, buy the bungalow, a decent truck. And half left over shrewdly invested to produce ten percent per annum. He shook his head.

  “I came out of that damn country, and I came out by the skin of my teeth. And I swore I’d never go back. It’s tempting, but no.”

  “Ah, hum, sorry about this, but needs must. These were waiting in my keyhole back at the hotel today.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over two slim white envelopes. Monk eased a single sheet of formal letterhead paper out of each.

  One was from the Florida finance company. It stated that due to changes in policy, extended loan facilities in certain territories were no longer deemed acceptable risks. The loan on the Foxy Lady should therefore be repaid in one month, failing which foreclosure and repossession would be the company’s only choice. The language involved the usual weasel words, but the meaning was plain enough.

  The othe
r sheet bore the emblem of Her Majesty’s Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands. It regretted that His Excellency, who was not required to give reasons, intended to terminate the residence permit and business license of one Jason Monk, U.S. citizen, with effect from one month from the date of the letter. The writer signed himself as Mr. Monk’s obedient servant.

  Monk folded both letters and placed them on the table between the two rocking chairs.

  “That’s dirty pool,” he said quietly.

  “I’m afraid it is,” said Nigel Irvine, staring over the water. “But that’s the choice.”

  “Can’t you find somebody else?” asked Monk.

  “I don’t want anybody else. I want you.”

  “Okay, bust me. It’s been done before. I survived. I’ll survive again. But I ain’t going back to Russia.”

  Irvine sighed. He picked up the Black Manifesto.

  “That’s what Carey said. He told me, he won’t go for money and he won’t go for threats. That’s what he said.”

  “Well, at least Carey hasn’t turned into a fool in his old age.” Monk rose. “I can’t say it’s been a pleasure, after all. But I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.”

  Sir Nigel Irvine rose too. He looked sad.

  “Suppose not. Pity, great pity. Oh, one last thing. When Komarov comes to power, he will not be alone. By his side stands his personal bodyguard and commander of the Black Guard. When the genocide starts, he will be in charge of it all, the nation’s executioner.”

  He held out a single photograph. Monk stared at the cold face of a man about five years older than he. The Englishman was walking up the sand track to where he had left his buggy behind the house.

  “Who the hell’s he?” Monk called after him. The old spymaster’s voice came back through the deepening dusk.

  “Oh, him. That is Colonel Anatoli Grishin.”

  ¯

  PROVIDENCIALES Airport is not the world’s greatest aviation terminal but it is a pleasant place to arrive and depart, being small enough to process passengers without much delay. The following day Sir Nigel Irvine had checked his single suitcase, was nodded through passport control, and sauntered into the departure area. The American Airlines plane for Miami was waiting in the sun.