thing. Look at you! You grown into a beautiful woman.”
“Herbert! I can’t believe you’re still here.”
“I can’t either, Miz Vicky. I just turned ninety-two years old today and still going strong.”
“Happy Birthday! Alex, Herbert was a great friend of Daddy’s and always took care of me when I came here.”
“I imagine he did,” Hawke said, rising to shake the old fellow’s hand. “He’s certainly taken good care of me. Happy Birthday, Herbert.”
“Thank you, suh. You know, Miz Vicky,” Herbert said, “this old place ain’t ever been the same since your daddy left town. I still remember him playing the piano and telling his jokes. Have everybody in the place laughing.”
“And you used to let me slide across the parquet dance floor in my socks. It was just like ice skating.”
“Lord, we had us a good time, didn’t we?” Herbert said, a smile lighting up his soft brown eyes. “Can I bring you all something more to drink?”
“That would be great, Herbert,” Vicky said. “Two Ketel One martinis straight up, please.”
After the elderly waiter left, there was a long silence in which Hawke simply sat there staring at her. Vicky was not one easily embarrassed by silences at the table, but the intensity of his stare finally got to her. She noticed that he still had his right hand stuffed into the pocket of his dinner jacket.
“Gun in your pocket, big boy? Or, you all just happy to see me?” she asked, unable to think of anything more original.
“No gun,” he said. “Just this.” He pulled a small black velvet box out of his pocket and placed it on the table. He saw the look in her eyes, and said, “Don’t worry, Doc, it won’t bite. Open it.”
She reached for the velvet box. “Oh, Alex, I—”
“Miz Vicky?” The waiter had somehow reappeared at their table.
“Yes?” Vicky said. “What is it, Herbert?”
“My apologies for disturbing you all,” Herbert said, “but there is a telephone call for Dr. Sweet. The gentleman said it was urgent.”
She looked at Alex. “Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry. I have to take it. It could be one of my patients, an emergency.”
“Of course you should take it,” Alex said, standing up as she pushed her chair back. “I understand completely.”
“Order me something yummy, will you? Whatever you’re having.”
Alex picked up the menu she’d been scribbling on at the bar. For a moment he couldn’t figure out what she’d been writing and then he saw it. She’d been correcting all the French errors. There was a note at the bottom, in French, addressed to the maitre d’. It suggested that he take a crash course at the nearest Berlitz school before handing out any more mangled menus.
Alex smiled. He’d taken an instant dislike to this new chap they’d put at the gate. Disliked him despite the fact that Hawke was quite sure he wasn’t remotely French.
“That was quick,” he said, standing when Vicky returned and took her seat. She picked up the little black box she’d left on her empty serving plate.
“Hmm,” she said, looking from the box to Alex and back to the velvet box.
“Yes, hmm,” Alex replied.
“Weird. There was no one there, Alex,” she said, smiling and brushing a wing of auburn hair away from her eyes.
“No one there?”
“No.”
“Well, they’d hung up, then?” Hawke asked, lines of worry suddenly furrowing his brow. “Been disconnected.”
“I don’t think so, Alex,” Vicky said. “I could hear breathing at the other end. It’s so strange. I was thinking, none of my patients would have any idea of how to reach me here. I’ve got my cell phone, but of course you can’t have it on in here.”
“I’m sure it’s just a mistake.”
“It didn’t sound like a mistake, Alex,” Vicky said. “It sounded horribly deliberate. Almost like—”
She never finished her sentence.
A brutal explosion rocked the room. The sound and force of the shock wave hit instantaneously. Watches and clocks stood still. Time itself stopped and was exploded into countless pieces of flying glass, masonry, and human agony.
Alex found that he was no longer seated at a small, round table talking to Vicky. He seemed to be on his back, staring up into a roiling white fog. A fog that smelled more like harsh, choking smoke. There were cries and moans coming from all around him. He was aware of a jabbing pain in his shoulder and tried to roll away from it.
It got worse. He seemed to be lying on a bed of broken glass and cutlery. He held his hands up before his face and saw that they were sticky and bright red. He felt it might be a good thing to get out of there. He just wasn’t sure where he was. He heard a woman’s voice nearby, whimpering. He recognized it. It was Vicky.
“Doc?” he said, but there was no reply.
The acrid smoke was so thick now, he couldn’t see where any of the cries were coming from. He couldn’t see anything at all.
He got to his hands and knees and started crawling over the glass in the direction he thought her voice came from.
“Vicky,” he shouted. “Vicky!” That’s when he heard her.
“Alex, it hurts,” the voice said. “I’m cold. Where’s Daddy? Where’s my daddy?”
And then the voice stopped.
25
“Christ, it’s hot,” Congreve said to Sutherland. “Hotter than the bloody Exumas, if that’s not a physical impossibility.”
“You could probably take off that blue blazer without offending the local citizenry,” Ross said.
Ross wasn’t exactly sure what an actual “harrumph” sounded like, but it had to be something similar to what emerged from Congreve’s direction.
It was ten o’clock Saturday morning. The temperature had already climbed into the nineties.
They were in Nassau. And time had not been kind to Nassau.
An invasion of giant cruise ships, disgorging their legions of T-shirt shoppers, had laid waste to old Nassau Town. Straw markets and lazy little shops on Bay Street had been replaced with cheap souvenir emporiums full of worthless gewgaws. American fast food outlets had replaced the clubby little Bahamian restaurants. Everywhere he looked, Ross saw to his dismay that the island had succumbed completely to the dollar.
“Well, Ross, you were quite right. This is a lovely spot,” Congreve said, straining to be heard over the angry buzz of motorbikes careening through the crowded streets. He and Ross were negotiating their way along Bay Street, dodging the hordes of invading Americans as best they could.
Inspector Sutherland had flown them up at first light in Hawke’s little seaplane. Mechanics aboard Blackhawke had worked through the night to repair the damage done by the missile and the ensuing fire. Ross had risen at dawn, gone to the hangar for an inspection, and pronounced Kittyhawke airworthy.
“Must you fly so bloody low over the water, Ross?” Ambrose had asked, once they were airborne. “We’re not exactly a pair of jet jockeys sneaking in under the radar screen, after all.”
“Sorry, Chief,” Ross had said, pulling back on the stick and gaining altitude. “I thought you might actually think it was fun.”
Fun? There was nothing remotely fun about being sealed in an aluminium tube that might plunge from the heavens into the briny depths at any moment.
Now, having made it to Nassau alive, the two Scotland Yard detectives were decidedly lost. The house they
