The Hunt

“What else? I’d like to know—just in case I do Eddie a favor.”

“It was a Dunhill, I think,” Vannie said. “Yes. That’s right. A Dunhill. With a wolf’s head on the top. It was really quite. .

Keegan couldn’t hear her anymore. His heart was pounding too loud.

“Listen,” he said, his voice demanding, his expression intense. “This guy with the lighter, does he have three scars on the side of his face?”

“Three scars?” She stared into space for a long time, trying to picture him. “He has a beard,” she said. “I couldn’t tell. Kee, what’s gotten into you?”

“Jesus! This old gang you were talking about that used to go down to Jekyll, how many were there Vannie? Exactly?”

“Exactly? Let’s see, there was Uncle Joe and

“My God, do you have to count them all?”

She closed her eyes, counting faces in her mind, and shook a hand at him. “Just a minute, just a minute . . . uh, twenty-five

twenty-six.. . and old Crane, the toilet man we used to call him. His cottage has all gold fixtures in the bathrooms and..

“There were twenty-seven of them?”

“As close as I can remember

But Keegan wasn’t really interested in the answer. His mind was racing now. Twenty-seven millionaires, he thought. On a remote island off the coast of Georgia.

“My God, that’s it!” Keegan cried out. “That’s got to be it. What’s his name again?”

“Who?”

“The one who’s marrying he stopped again. “Jesus,” he said aloud, “they must be in on it, too. They set it up! They’re the connection!”

“Kee.. .“

“Christ, it was probably Willoughby’s idea!”

“Francis, whatever are you talking about?”

Twenty-seven of the richest men in America, he said to himself. My God, could that be it?

He wasn’t thinking about their names anymore, he was thinking about associations: steel, railroads, shipping, newspapers, the stock market, oil, automobiles, coal, banking, real estate. You name it, they were there.

Twenty-seven of the richest, most powerful people in the United States. People who controlled almost every facet of business and banking in the country. Isolated on an island two miles wide and five miles long.

Twenty-seven!

Twenty-seven millionaires! Siebenundzwanzig was going to neutralize America—and how better than to take these twenty- seven men and hold them hostage on that island!

But. . . that wouldn’t work. Couldn’t. One man could not hold the whole island captive. Stupid notion, he thought.

Unless he planned to take them off the island. .

He dug out an atlas and found Brunswick, Ga. The island was a mere spot on the map. For the next thirty minutes, Keegan was on the phone. But at one in the morning on the night before a holiday, he could not raise Smith and finally gave up.

No one else would believe him. He had no credentials. And that left him only one choice.

Dryman had been asleep about fifteen minutes when Keegan burst in the room with Vanessa close behind. He had a mug of black coffee and two aspirin in hand.

“H.P., it’s Keegan. Wake up.”

Dryman was dead to the world. He didn’t even groan. Keegan shook him roughly.

“Dryman!” he yelled. “Reveille!”

“Huh,” the pilot muttered without opening his eyes.

“Coffee in bed,” Vanessa said sweetly.

Dryman rolled over and peered through one half-open eye.

“Wha’time’sit?”

“It’s late,” Keegan said. “Here, wash these aspirin down with this coffee. You’ll feel much better.”

“G’way. S’a holiday.”

“Listen to me, H.P. Wake up!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled.