unable to think about anything but their own petty global concerns, would be convinced, unshakably convinced, that this holocaust was the work of American counterespionage, that his ‘cover’ (their word) had been broken, and that he was no longer of any use to them.
So Cockaigne was finished. But was Baron?
It was bad now. The men named Grofield and Parker were surely together on the island somewhere, and wouldn’t they be seeking their comrade? Salsa lay inert on the floor a little ways away, near the dead Steuber, whom Heenan had shot
That had been stupidity, stupidity compounded. Steuber had unlocked the cabinet where the handguns were kept, had swung wide the door, and suddenly Heenan was there, raging, terrified, clawing past Steuber, his hand closing on a Luger, an old gun, one from an earlier life. Steuber, rather than keep hold of the Irishman and wrest the gun away from him, had flung the stocky man away, with a grunt of impatience. The Irishman had landed heavily, and rolled, and had come up apoplectic. He was still close to Steuber, and Steuber took a step that brought him even closer, and he fired twice and Steuber fell over on his back.
That moronic Irishman. He had swivelled then, seeking out Baron, and had found him just as the lights flickered and went out. But he fired anyway, just once, as Baron leaped sideways in the sudden dark, and perhaps the sound of Baron hitting the floor had deceived him. In any case, he had done no more shooting, but had groped his way towards the stairs, Baron clearly hearing his progression across the room.
Baron himself was all turned around, and didn’t dare move to find a familiar piece of furniture and orient himself, not till the Irishman’s blundering footsteps had clattered away down the stairs. Then he had moved, and had just crawled into the side of the desk when he heard the firing begin downstairs.
He would not have heard any firing if the soundproofed door were shut, so Heenan must have left it open. Heenan himself necessarily was part of the gunplay down there, and the only ones Baron could think of who would be shooting at Heenan were Grofield and Parker, so those two were surely down there and would surely be coming up here. Baron crawled at once into the kneehole under the desk, crouched there in a ball, and waited to see what would happen.
He didn’t have long to wait. An uncertain light edged nervously along the walls, telling him someone was coming up with a flashlight. Then he heard their footfalls on the carpet in the room, and the beam of the light splayed around once, and one of them said, ‘Here’s Salsa.’
‘How is he?’
They all waited, Baron too, until the other voice said, ‘Dead. They beat his head in.’
Baron frowned. Had he done that? He’d let himself get too overwrought, too hysterical.
Above him, around him, they were prowling through the room, the flashlight stabbing this way and that. The sessions of his life had made him a man who did not easily get attached to a place, a landscape or a room or a piece of furniture, but the time spent on Cockaigne and specifically in this room had been among the most pleasant days of his life and so he had not been able to avoid developing a certain sense of proprietorship, a sense that now was violated by these strangers come to rob him of his money, his business, his safe harbour, and perhaps even his life. They prowled the room, hulking figures in the darkness behind their light’s stabbing beam, and from his crevice in the furnishings Baron watched them with eyes that hated and feared.
For a few moments the legs of one of them were thick prison bars just inches from his face; over his head the interloper was poking about the desk, riffling the papers and going through the drawers. He found the cashbox in the bottom righthand drawer, and said with muffled eagerness, ‘Parker!’ But he did not find Baron.
The cashbox didn’t satisfy them. They went through the filing cabinet, hurling papers about in their haste, and ultimately they found the wallsafe behind Shakespeare in the bookcase.
These were crude men, unskilled brutes. They hacked at the safe and finally shot its face off, and pulled from its depths Baron’s store of forged papers, his final private cash reserves, and the little flannel sacks of diamonds. Diamonds were sounder than any currency in the world, instantly convertible to cash in any civilized nation, readily transported and easily hidden. And, as he now watched, swiftly stolen.
They had brought a suitcase with them, and now it bulged with cash and diamonds. They closed it, and one of them said, ‘We’d better get out fast. The fire’s worse down there.’
The other one said, ‘Where’s Baron, I wonder?’
‘What do we care?’
Baron smiled a bitter smile, and the pale light receded, closed in at the far end of the room, confined itself in the stairwell.
Once they were gone, surely gone, Baron crawled out from beneath the desk. All was dark save the one window in this room, overlooking the front of the casino and the piers, and this window now showed a rectangle of dusky red. Baron hurried towards it, and looked out.
Was the whole island in flames? To his right the staff’s sleeping quarters was a torch, a hollow shell sinking in on itself. To his left the jungle underbrush was burning, even down to the water’s edge. And out in the water two yachts crammed together in a letter Y, slowly circling like the centre of a lazy whirlpool, burned like a campfire on the sea.
He pressed his forehead against the glass the glass was warm, the carpet beneath his feet was warm, the wall against which he pressed his hand was very warm and below him he could see the two figures emerge from the building, each carrying a suitcase, and hurry off through the flickering red in the direction of the boathouses.
Oh, would they! Baron turned, his eyes more accustomed to the darkness now, and found his way to the gun cabinet, still hanging open. He selected a Colt .45, the United States model, checked to be sure the clip was full, and then made his way across the room and down the stairs to where the casino at last had grown hot enough for the flames to begin to make headway. He crossed his arms in front of his face and ran from the building, the hair on his forearms singeing with an audible sound and a disgusting smell.
Outside, the holocaust stunned him for a second. People, the fainted or the trampled, lay like unwanted rag dolls amid the rock gardens, sprawled on their faces. Others still ran this way and that, some calling out names, looking for the lost or looking to be found. More were milling about on the piers, from which the last boat had already left.
The whole island was a torch, lighting the sea around itself. The power plant at the peak of the island burned with a particular brilliance, the bright flames releasing from their tonguelike tips great billows of black smoke, which were swept away westward on the prevailing winds, blending with the black sky, putting out the brilliant white dots
