The Deceiver

“I’ll be coming to Sunshine with you,” said Bannister. “Some problem over there with the communications. It seems they can’t get the Governor’s safe open. I’ll fix a new set, so you can talk to the High Commission here on a direct radio­telephone link. Secure, of course. And of course, we’ll have to get the body back when the coroner releases it.”

He sounded brisk and efficient. Hannah liked that. He met the four men from the forensic team provided by the Baham­ian Police as a courtesy. The conference took an hour.

Hannah looked down from the windows to the airport apron below. Thirty yards away, a chartered ten-seater was waiting to take him and his now-expanded party to Sunshine. Be­tween the building and the airplane, two camera teams had been set up to catch the moment. He sighed.

When the final details had been settled, the group left the VIP lounge and headed downstairs. Microphones were thrust at him, notepads held ready.

“Mr. Hannah, are you confident of an early arrest?” “Will this turn out to be a political murder?” “Is Sir Marston’s death linked to the election campaign?”

He nodded and smiled but said nothing. Flanked by Baham­ian constables, they all emerged from the building into the hot sunshine and headed for the aircraft. The TV cameras re­corded it all. When the official party had boarded, the jour­nalists raced away toward their own chartered planes, which had been obtained by the production of large wads of dollars or prechartered by the London offices. In an untidy gaggle the planes began to taxi for takeoff. It was four twenty-five.

At three-thirty, a small Cessna dropped its wings over Sun­shine and turned for the final run-in to the grass airstrip.

“Pretty wild place!” the American pilot shouted to the man beside him. “Beautiful, but from way back! I mean, they don’t have nothing here!”

“Short on technology,” agreed Sam McCready. He looked through the prespex at the dusty strip coming towards them. To the left of the strip were three buildings: a corrugated-iron hangar, a low shed with a red tin roof (the reception building), and a white cube with the British flag flying above it—the police hut. Outside the reception shed, a figure in a short-sleeved beach shirt was talking to a man in boxer shorts and singlet. A car stood nearby. The palm trees rose on either side of the Cessna, and the small plane thumped onto the grit. The buildings flashed past as the pilot settled his nose-wheel and lifted his flaps. At the far end of the strip, he turned around and began to taxi back.

“Sure, I remember that plane. It was dreadful when I heard later that those poor people were dead.”

Favaro found the baggage porter who had loaded the Navajo Chief the previous Friday morning. His name was Ben, and he always loaded the baggage. It was his job. Like most of the islanders, he was free-and-easy, honest, and prepared to talk.

Favaro produced a photograph. “Did you notice this man?”

“Sure. He was asking the owner of the plane for a lift to Key West.”

“How do you know?”

“Standing right next to me,” said Ben.

“Did he seem worried, anxious, in a hurry?”

“So would you be, man! He done told the owner his wife called him and their kid was sick. The girl, she say that was real bad, they should help him. So the owner said he could ride with them to Key West.”

“Was there anyone else nearby?”

Ben thought for a while. “Only the other man helping load the luggage,” he said. “Employed by the owner, I think.”

“What did he look like, this other loader?”

“Never seen him before,” said Ben. “Black man, not from Sunshine. Bright-colored shirt, dark glasses. Didn’t say noth­ing.”

The Cessna rumbled up to the customs shed. Ben and Favaro shielded their eyes from the flying dust. Favaro saw a rumpled-looking man of medium build get out, take a suitcase and attachй case from the locker, stand back, wave to the pilot, and go into the shed.

Favaro was pensive as he studied the scene. Julio Gomez did not tell lies. But he had no wife and child. He must have been desperate to get on that flight and home to Miami. But why? Knowing his partner, Favaro was convinced that he had been under threat. The bomb was not for Klinger. It was for Gomez.

He thanked Ben and wandered back to the taxi that waited for him. As he climbed in, a British voice at his elbow said, “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could I hitch a ride into town? The cab rank seems to be empty.”

It was the man who had just gotten off the Cessna. “Sure,” said Favaro. “Be my guest.”

“Awfully kind,” said the Englishman as he put his gear in the trunk. On the five-minute ride into town, he introduced himself. “Frank Dillon,” he said.

“Eddie Favaro,” said the American. “You here for the fishing?”

“Alas, no. Not really my scene. Just here on vacation for a bit of piece and quiet.”

“No chance,” said Favaro. “There’s chaos here. There’s a whole crowd of London detectives due in soon, and a whole bunch of journalists. Last night someone shot the Governor in his garden.”

“Good Lord!” said the Englishman. He seemed genuinely shocked.

Favaro dropped him on the steps of the Quarter Deck, dismissed the cab, and walked the few hundred yards through the back streets to Mrs. Macdonald’s boarding house. Across Parliament Square, a big man was addressing a subdued crowd of citizens from the back of a flat truck. It was Mr. Livingstone himself. Favaro caught the booming roar of his oratory.

“And I say, brothers and sisters, you should share in the wealth of these islands! You should share in the fish caught from the sea, you should share the fine houses of the few rich who live up on the hill, you should share the ...”

The crowd did not look very enthusiastic. The truck was flanked by the same two large men who had torn down the Johnson posters in the Quarter Deck Hotel in the lunch hour and put up their own. There were several similar men through­out the crowd seeking to start a cheering response. They cheered alone. Favaro walked on. This time Mrs. Macdonald was in.

Desmond Hannah touched down at twenty to six. It was almost dark. Four other, lighter aircraft had just made it in time and were able to depart back to Nassau before the light faded. Their cargoes were the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times man sharing with the Sunday Telegraph, and Sabrina Tennant and her team from BSB, the British Satellite Broadcasting company.

Hannah, Parker, Bannister, and the four Bahamian officers were met by Lieutenant Haverstock and Inspector Jones, the former in a cream tropical suit and the latter immaculate in his uniform. On the off-chance of earning some dollars, both of Port Plaisance’s taxis and two small vans had also ap­peared. All were snapped up.

By the time formalities were completed and the cavalcade had descended on the Quarter Deck Hotel, darkness had fallen. Hannah decreed there was no point in beginning inves­tigations by flashlight, but he asked that the guard on Govern­ment House be continued through the night. Inspector Jones, much impressed to be working with a real Detective Chief Superintendent from Scotland Yard, barked out the orders.

Hannah was tired. It might be just after six in the islands, but it was eleven P.M. on his body clock, and he had been up since four A.M. He dined alone with Parker and Lieutenant Haverstock, which enabled him to get a firsthand account of what had actually happened the previous evening. Then he turned in.

The press found the bar with unerring and practiced speed. Rounds were ordered and consumed. The usual jocular banter of the press corps on a foreign assignment grew louder. No one noticed a man in a rumpled tropical suit drinking alone at the end of the bar and listening to their chatter.

“Where did he go after he left here?” Eddie Favaro asked Mrs. Macdonald. He was seated at her kitchen table while the good lady served up some of her conch chowder.

“He went over to the Quarter Deck for a beer,” she said.

“Was he in a cheerful mood?”

Her lilting singsong voice filled the room. “Bless you, Mr. Favaro, he was a happy man. A fine fish for supper,