“You’re right.”
“You offering me a thousand dollars to take you right over there?” He jabbed his thumb toward Jekyll Island.
Keegan nodded.
“Government must pay you boys pretty well.” He took another swig of brandy, then got up and threw a log on the fire.
“Y’know, my son died on a night like this. Playing tug-of-war out in the sound. Kids’d get arguing over whose shrimp boat was toughest, tie two of ‘em back to back and then see which one would tow the other. Kind of like playin’ chicken in cars.”
He walked to the window, leaned over and peered through a brass telescope. He aimed it at Jekyll and waited for lightning to light up the bay.
“Be almost four years ago. Night they graduated from high school, him and his buddy Jimmy Wertz, they had a couple of beers, got challenging each other. So they went at it.”
He kept staring through the glass. Seas were running two feet, he estimated. Not bad. Wind was probably twenty-five knots.
“Seas were running about two feet just like they are out there now. Jimmy pulled Ray’s stern under. She flooded from the stern and tipped over. Ray was trapped in the cabin. He floated up on King’s Way Beach two days later. The boat’s still down there. Ninety feet down on the bottom of the channel.”
He walked back to the table and washed down the rest of his brandy.
“My wife died last year. She never got over that night. Wouldn’t eat worth a damn. Just kind of wasted away. I think she really died of a broken heart. We were married twenty-six years.”
“I’m sorry,” Keegan said. “I know what it is to lose someone you love. My fiancee was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis. She died there.”
Moyes did not respond but his face clouded up. He stared across the table at Keegan.
“I found out about this Nazi agent, Twenty-seven, from her brother. He’s head of the resistance movement in Germany. At first nobody’d believe me. Thought I was nuts, just like you did. But I knew he wouldn’t bullshit me.”
He explained how they had turned up Fred Dempsey and later Trexler in Colorado and described the scene in the murdered family’s home.
“Look at it this way, Mr. Moyes. If I am telling the truth, what better time to kidnap these people than now? It’s a holiday. Everything’s closed. It couldn’t be any darker. And this guy has been on that island since Saturday or Sunday . .
“Monday morning. Saw ‘em go over . .
“Okay, since Monday morning. Point is, he’s not going to wait all winter to take these people. He’s going to do it quick
and he’s already been over there four days.”
He finished his drink. Moyes stared at him for a long time without speaking, then poured him another stout brandy.
“Thanks, I’ve had enough,” Keegan said.
“Drink it, you’ll need it, It’s less than a mile over there but it’s gonna be a tough, wet ride.”
“You mean we have a deal?”
“You know anything about runnin’ a boat?”
“Not that kind.”
“You know port from starboard?”
“That I do know.”
“Well He scooped up the ten bills. “It wasn’t gonna be much of a Thanksgiving dinner anyway. Besides, this’ll be a lot easier than shrimpin’ and a helluva lot more lucrative.”
In the dining room of the spired clubhouse, the women arrived in their formal dresses, the men in tuxedos and tails. It was going to be a gala feast and the mood was cheerful, despite the raging storm.
“Part of island life,” Grant Peabody joked as they scurried through the rain and sought the refuge of the wide piazza that surrounded the clubhouse.
Twenty-seven watched them from a dark cluster of trees. At his feet lay one of the guards, his heart pierced by 27’s SS dagger. Another guard was floating face-down in the inlet, his throat cut. The third guard was making his rounds. Huddled against the storm, he trotted from one cottage to the next, cursing the foul weather. He was hungry and looking forward to dinner. The guards would be fed after the others were finished. He finally found a moment’s shelter in the radio shack.
In the flickering flashes of lightning, he and the radio operator saw a man staring through the rain-specked window. He entered the radio shack.
“You gave us a start there, sir,” the guard said. “Looked like a ghost starin’ through the window.”
The man who was calling himself Allenbee smiled.
“I
“Expecting a message?” the radioman asked without looking up. “I’ll tell you, sir, the reception is mighty poor and. .
