benefit, ‘ ‘This is Chief Eriq Santiva, the man I work for nowadays, Ja.”
“ I am so pleased to make with your acquaintance, sir.” Okinleye looked about for their bags as he vigorously shook Santiva’s hand. “My aide, Kili, he will see to your bags. Where are you staying, my friends?”
“ ‘ Fraid we haven’t any bags, Ja,” confessed Jessica, a frown puckering her lips, “only what’s on our backs. We left in something of a hurry.” Jessica noticed the pained expression on Don Lansing’s face. “And as for reservations… well, we have none.”
“ Oh, not good… it is the height of the season… You will then stay with me and my family in my humble abode?”
“ We couldn’t put you out, Ja.”
“ Please, it is not a bother.”
“ Well… first things first,” said Santiva. “Have you had any word or inkling on the approach of this boat we’re chasing?”
“ No, none whatsoever. I only hope you are correct in assuming he will be corning this way.”
“ We’re ahead of him, Eriq, but he’ll be along,” Jessica assured Santiva and Ja Okinleye at the same time.
Ja smiled and said in a mirthful tone, “Is that what your instincts tell you?”
“ Yes… yes, it is. That and the difference between nautical miles and air flight.”
“ Well then, Chief Okinleye,” Eriq interrupted, swallowing hard, “maybe we’ll take you up on that offer of hospitality, after we stop at one of your local stores to pick up a few essentials?”
“ Not a problem. We will drive you to wherever you need go, right, Kili?” The silent, uniformed Kili eagerly nodded.
With this settled, Jessica turned to Don Lansing and thanked him for his help, paying him three times what his normal fee would have been. He stared at the cash as if it meant an operation for his kid sister or dog, his eyes sparkling. “Maybe this’ll help me make that commitment we talked about.”
She gave him a crooked smile. “I rather doubt it.”
“ This kind of dough… you sure you don’t want me to hang around for a flight back, maybe?”
“ What I’m going to need here is a helicopter, and I think Okinleye will point us in the right direction for that. Again, many thanks for getting us here so quickly, Don.”
“ Don’t mention it; my pleasure.”
“ You heading straight back?”
“ Yeah… my boss-partner-is going to be wondering what’n hell happened to me and his plane, so I’d better move it, yeah…”
Jessica, Santiva and Okinleye rushed now for the waiting official car which would take them from the broiler plate of the asphalt. It must be one hundred thirty degrees in the shade, she thought. A glance back showed Jessica that pilot Lansing still could not believe he had been a part of all this. Maybe the little Cayman Island flags on Ja’s official car were too much for him, she mirthfully thought.
TWENTY-TWO
Appearances are not held to be a clue. to the truth. But we seem to have no other.
“ So, now it has become a game of cat and de mouse, hey?” Okinleye asked Jessica and Santiva where they sat across from one another at his backyard patio table. There, they enjoyed a view of the ocean in the distance, the sun, the hibiscus trees, the birds chasing one another, the trade winds and the bright orange daiquiris which Ja’s wife, Aliciana, had just prepared for them. The Okin- leyes” home was, by island standards, a Grecian mansion, but Ja laughed uproariously when Jessica made mention of its grandeur.
“ This… this old place? It is our little hut.” Ja drew two of his three children into his arms while the third and oldest was ordered to answer an incessant door chime filtering out to them.
Ja had done well for himself and his family, perhaps too well to be above suspicion of graft, Jessica thought. It was well-known the islands over that graft was the rule of law and order in most dealings here. However, middle- class American standards of right and wrong seldom applied in foreign countries, where a man had to be concerned first for his family, and besides, here as in America, a complete absence of crime would mean people would have to go without food, clothing and shelter. Some just knew how to play the game better than others, it appeared. Jessica withheld her judgments of Ja for the time being.
“ It was a foreclosure, this house. The old couple died owing a great deal of money to the island government. It was put on auction. I was highest bidder.” It sounded good.
“ Were you able to find anything helpful in your records here about the disappearances, the deaths, any possible connections with our man Tauman?” asked Jessica.
Ja sadly shook his head. “Very little of help, I’m afraid. We used both names you supplied, but nothing comes as result. Some notion here and there about some strange fellow. I have my men working on it still.”
It didn’t sound promising, and Santiva gave Jessica a frown.
“ In the morning, we’ll want a helicopter, very early, say six,” she told Ja. “Can you provide us with one?”
“ Ours is a small government agency, Dr. Coran, not like your FBI, no… I can only recommend to you my most talented cousin who operates a tourist line from George Town Airport.”
“ That will do just fine, but we’ll need a combat-ready pilot for what we need. If we get lucky.”
“ Combat-ready? Henri, he is such a man.”
“ He has flown in combat conditions?”
“ Bad weather, yes… combat, no,” confessed Okinleye.“Well, he’ll have to do,” said Santiva.
“ I’m certified on fixed wing and choppers,” came a deep voice from the patio doors. “I also flew a chopper in Desert Storm. Let me help you,” added Don Lansing, who had been shown through the house by Okinleye’s oldest boy. The boy had a wide grin on his face as though he had performed a miracle in making Don appear.
“ Don, I thought you had to get back,” Jessica replied.
“ I’d like to help out any way I can, now that I know what you people are trying to do.”
“ And now you know how much we pay?” added Santiva.
“ Well, yeah… that, too.”
Lansing stepped closer, his hand out for Eriq to take. Eriq pushed up from his chair and the two men shook hands. “But what about getting back? What about Pete?” Jessica asked.
“ Are you kidding? I’m in no hurry to see Pete. Besides, this may be my only chance in this life at ever doing anything… well, heroic. Hell, we pull this off and we’re going to be island gods to these people, right, Chief Okinleye?” Lansing smiled down at the chief. Obviously, Don had done some checking around.
Jessica raised her eyebrows, confused for only a moment. Then, her eyes boring into Ja, she said, “It’s all over the island. Everybody knows about us being here and why we’re here, don’t they? Don’t they, Ja?”
“ Oh, good Christ,” moaned Santiva, whose eyes joined with Jessica’s to bore into Ja Okinleye’s.
“ It is a small island,” he weakly replied. “Word leaks out.”
“ It could leak out over the water,” Eriq complained. “Suppose a radio dispatch happens to say something to a ship out at sea.”
“ All the more reason to go out hunting tomorrow morning,” replied Jessica, “bright and early. Make it fiveish.”
“ How’re we going to know it’s him-his ship-when we see him?” asked Eriq.
“ We will… we just will…”
‘ ‘ Only boats we know of between here and Cuba are the racing ships,” said Ja.
“ Racing ships?” asked Eriq.
“ What about reports of any ships down at sea between here and the Gulf of Mexico?’’ asked Jessica.
