falling in a slick golden cascade.
She heard my footsteps on the paving. She glanced around, pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, then she stood up to face me, and I realized that she was tiny, seeming to reach not much higher than my chest. The bikini also was tiny and showed a flat smooth belly with a deep navel, firm shoulders lightly tanned, small breasts, and a trim waist. Her legs had lovely lines and her neat little feet were thrust into open sandals, the nails painted clear red to match her long fingernails. Her hands as she pushed at her hair were small and shapely.
She wore heavy make-up, but wore it with rare skill, so that her skin had a soft pearly lustre and colour glowed subtly on her cheeks and lips. Her eyes had long dark artificial lashes, and the eyelids were touched with colour and line to give them an exotic oriental cast.
“Duck, Harry!” Something deep inside me shouted a warning, and I almost obeyed. I knew this type well, there had been others like her - small and purringly feline - I had scars to prove it, scars both physical and spiritual. However, one thing nobody can say about old Harry is that he runs for cover when the knickers are down.
Courageously I stepped forward, crinkling my eyes and twisting my mouth into the naughty small boy grin that usually dynamites them.
“Hello I said, “I’m Harry Fletcher.”
She looked at me, starting at my feet and going up six feet four to the top where her gaze lingered speculatively and she pouted her lower lip.
“Hello,” she answered, her voice was husky, breathlesssounding - and carefully rehearsed. “I’m Sherry North, Jimmy North’s sister.”
We were on the veranda of the shack in the evening. It was cool and the Wspectacular sunset was a display of pyrotechnics that flamed and faded above the palms.
She was drinking a Pimms No. I filled with fruit and ice one of my seduction specials - and she wore a kaftan of light floating stuff through which her body showed in shadowy outline as she stood against the rail backlit by the sunset. I could not be certain as to whether or not she wore anything beneath the kaftan - this and the tinkle of ice in her glass distracted me from the letter I was reading. She had showed it to me as part of her credentials. It was a letter from Jimmy North written a few days before his death. I recognized the handwriting and the turn of phrase was typical of that bright and eager lad. As I read on, I forgot the sister’s presence in the memory of the past. It was a long bubbling letter, written as though to a loving friend, with veiled references to the mission and its successful outcome, the promise of a future in which there would be wealth and laughter and all good things.
I felt a pang of regret and personal loss for the boy in his lonely sea grave, for the lost dreams that, drifted with him like rotting seaweed.
Then suddenly my own name leapt from that page at me, ” - you can’t help liking him, Sherry. He’s big and tough-looking, all scarred and beat up like an old tom cat that’s been out alley-fighting every night. But under it, I swear he is really a softy. He seems to have taken a shine to me. Even gives me fatherly advice!-” There was more in the same vein that embarrassed me so that my throat closed up and I took a swallow of whisky, which made my eyes water and the words swim, while I finished the letter and refolded it.
I handed it to Sherry, and walked away to the end of the veranda.
I stood there for a while looking out over the bay.
The sun slid below the horizon and suddenly it was dark and chill.
I went back and lit the lamp, setting it up high so the glare did not fall in our eyes. She watched me in silence until I had poured another Scotch and settled in my cane, backed chair.
“Okay,” I said, “you’re” Jimmy’s sister. You’ve come to St. Mary’s to see me. Why?”
“You liked him, didn’t you?” she asked, as she left the rail and came to sit beside me.
“I like a lot of people. It’s a weakness of mine.” “Did he die - I mean, was it like they said in the newspapers?” “Yes” I said. “It was like that.”
“Did he ever tell you what they were doing out here?”
I shook my head. “They were very cagey - and I don’t ask questions.”
She was silent then, dipping long tapered fingers into her glass to pick out a slice of pineapple, nibbling at the fruit with small white teeth, dabbing at her lips with a pink pointed tongue like that of a cat.
“Because Jimmy liked and trusted you, and because I think you know more than you’ve told anyone, also because I need your help, I am going to tell you a story - okay?”
“I love stories,” I said.
“Have you heard of the “pogo, stick’T she asked. ,, it’s a child’s toy.”
“It’s also the code name for an American naval experimental vertical take-off all-weather strike aircraft.”
“Oh yes, I remember, I saw an article in Time Magazine. Questions in the Senate. I forget the details.”
“There was opposition to the fifty million development allocation.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Two years ago, on the 16th August to be precise, a prototype “pogo stick” took off from Rawano airforce base in the Indian Ocean. it was armed with four air-to-surface “killer whale” missiles, each of them equipped with tactical nuclear warheads–-“
“That must have been a fairly lethal package.”
She nodded. “The “killer whale” is designed as an entirely new concept in missiles. It is an anti-submarine device which will seek and track surfaced or submerged naval craft. It can kill an aircraft carrier or it can change its element air for water - and go down a thousand fathoms to destroy enemy submarines.” wow I said, and took a little more whisky. We were talking heady stuff now.
“Do you recall the 16th August that year - were you here?”
“I was here, but that’s a long time ago. Refresh my memory.”
“Cyclone Cynthia,“she said.
“God, of course.” It had come roaring across the island, winds of 150 miles an hour, taking away the roof of the shack and almost swamping Dancer at her moorings in Grand Harbour. These cyclones were not uncommon in this area.
“The “Pogo stick!” took off from Rawano a few minutes before the typhoon struck. Twelve minutes later the pilot ejected and the aircraft went into the sea with her four nuclear missiles and her flight recorder still aboard. Rawano radar was blanked out by the typhoon. They were not tracking.”
it was starting to make some sort of sense at last. “How does Jimmy fit into this?”
She made an impatient gesture. “Wait,” she said, then went on.
“Do you have any idea what the value of that cargo might be in the open market?”
“I should imagine you could write your own cheque give or take a couple of million dollars.” And old bad Harry came to attention, he had been getting exercise lately and growing stronger. Sherry nodded. `The test pilot of the “pogo stick” was a Commander in the US Navy named William Bryce. The aircraft developed a fault at fifty thousand feet, just before he came out through the top of the weather. He fought her all the way down, he was a conscientious officer, but at five hundred feet he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He ejected and watched the aircraft go in.”.
She was speaking carefully, and her choice of words was odd, too technical for a woman. She had learned all this, I was certain - from Jimmy? Or from somebody else?
Listen and learn, Harry, I told myself.
“Billy Bryce was three days on a rubber raft on the ocean in a typhoon before the rescue helicopter from Rawano found him. He had time to do some thinking. One of the things he thought about was the value of that cargo - and he compared it to the salary of a Commander. His evidence at the court of inquiry omitted the fact that the “pogo sticd” had gone down within sight of land, and that Bryce had been able to take a fix on a recognizable land feature before he was blown out to sea by the typhoon.”
I could not see any weakness in her story - it looked all right - and very interesting.
“The court of inquiry gave a verdict of “pilot error” and Bryce resigned his commission. His career was destroyed by that verdict. He decided to earn his own retirement annuity and also to clear his reputation. He was going to force the US Navy to buy back its “killer whale” missiles and to accept the evidence of the flight recorder.”
I was going to ask a question, but again Sherry stopped me with a gesture. She did not want her recital interrupted. “Jimmy had done some work for the US Navy - a hull inspection of one of their carriers - and he had
