“Sure. But even before that we kind of guessed Rickie might be making a play. It was all his idea to come to the Bahamas, remember? And the senator has been co-operating with the authorities for a few months now. In the first place he thought that by co-operating he could keep his son’s sentence low, and in the second place he reckoned it might just pay off in a big stinking heap of publicity, and publicity to a politician is what cocaine is to Rickie. But I still didn’t know if we were going ahead, even yesterday. We were kind of doing it by the seat of our pants, Nick, and I reckon if the bad guys hadn’t come gunning for you, then my lily-livered lawyer superiors wouldn’t have had the guts to turn us loose.” The Maggot turned to stare back at the houses. The fire had been put out now, but in its place was a patch of brilliant white light that was evidently cast by the sun-guns of some television crews. “The press are already here,” the Maggot explained, “on account that some of them were accidentally invited to watch a night of Operation Stingray.”
“Accidentally invited by the senator?” I asked.
“I do believe his press office was involved. And I do believe that we may just have seen the making of a President.” The Maggot lit a cigarette. “Of course, there’ll be a whole lot more pressmen and television people arriving in a few hours, and they’ll all want to talk to you. One of my jobs is to make sure you say the right things, Nick.”
The helicopters carrying the press had landed on the island’s northern promontory. From there the reporters had been escorted to see the tons of cocaine that had been waiting on the island for shipment to America, then the journalists were offered the senator as the hero of the hour. This would be tonight’s lead television news story; how a senator’s gallant attempt to rescue his children had led to the smashing of a Latin-American cocaine family. Good had triumphed over evil, the white knight had ridden deep into the valley of the shadow of death and had come out smelling of roses and his reward would be the White House rose garden. The politician had found his cause, America would have its illusion and the drugs would still flow in by other routes.
The press were not shown the bodies. One of the dead was Deacon Billingsley. He had been the man who had come to the door in the house and had there been killed by a full magazine from my Scorpion. Now, like the other dead, Billingsley had been zipped into a green rubber bodybag.
The press were not introduced to Rickie or Robin-Anne. Rickie was carried to a helicopter on a stretcher, while Robin-Anne walked beside him, her hand in his. “The rich are different,” the Maggot said sourly as he watched the senator’s two children being gently escorted away.
“How so?”
“Everyone else gets handcuffed and kicked around, but the bloody rich get choppered off to a five-star drug clinic. And doubtless the judge will be told that Rickie helped turn in the Colon family, which means Rickie will only get a light tap on the wrist and told not to be a silly boy again.” The Maggot spat into the sand as the Crowninshield twins were helped up into their helicopter.
The reporters were allowed to see the prisoners being led towards another waiting chopper. The cabinet minister was protesting his innocence, but Warren Smedley, the DEA agent, had already revealed to the press that a half-ton of cocaine had been discovered in the cabinet minister’s house. It was clear that the island’s distinguished hostages, designed to keep the Americans off Murder Cay, had been expected to share the island’s dangers as well as its pleasures. Miguel Colon, stone-faced, was submitting to the plastic manacles with dignity, while Smedley, his captor, was looking like a sourpuss that had found the world’s largest bowl of double cream. He even listened courteously as I passed on McIllvanney’s protestations of innocence. “At this time,” Smedley magnanimously responded, “we are recommending prosecution only against the island’s inhabitants and their paid guards, not against their domestic servants or transient visitors.”
“Not that any of it counts,” the Maggot said to me when Smedley had gone. “The lawyers will have every single prisoner out on bail by this time tomorrow, and we’ll be lucky if we can extradite even one of them.”
The reporters were not introduced to the Maggot, who stayed well clear of their cameras and notebooks. His name would not be mentioned in any newspaper because, officially, he did not exist. Instead he walked unnoticed towards the airstrip where the navigation lights of yet more American helicopters strobed in the day’s first feral light. “It’s time I went,” he told me, then he turned and stared briefly into the far western sky where, dark against the fading stars, a lone helicopter beat its way towards Murder Cay. “I guess you know what to say to the press, Nick?”
“The truth?” I suggested.
“That’s usually dangerous.” The Maggot grinned. “Why not say that only you and the senator came to the island, no one else, and you didn’t bring any guns with you, you took the weapons off some careless guards who crashed their jeep. You’ll see that we’ve tipped the damn jeep over for you, so the story will ring true. You don’t say that the senator was pissing in his jockey shorts, instead you talk convincingly of his noble and self-sacrificing heroism and of his outstanding qualities of leadership. If you can sing a bar or two of ‘Hail to the Chief’, that would help. And, naturally, the two of you only fired in self-defence.”
I smiled. “Naturally.”
The lone helicopter was over the edge of the airstrip now, its landing lights bright on the stunted slash pines and sea-grape. The Maggot was not watching it; instead he was looking towards a small group of civilians who were being escorted by grinning Coastguards towards a big Chinook. “Dear Lord above.” The Maggot’s voice was suddenly hushed into an unnatural reverence. “Do you see what I see, Nick? Is that not pure essence of bimbo?”
I turned to see the group of girls being ushered towards the Chinook, but only one girl in that group could possibly have been a match for the Maggot’s concupiscent dreams. “She’s called Donna,” I told him, “and she’s an Episcopalian from Philadelphia, and she needs a tennis coach to look after her backhand.”
“Nick, don’t tease a friend.”
“It’s true,” I said, “as God is my witness, she’s worried about her backhand. Say you’re a friend of mine, and tell her I said ‘hi’.”
“You are a great and generous man, Nick. And I do believe I have found myself a private pupil.” He gave me an evil grin, then held out his huge hand with its heavy Superbowl ring. “I’ll see you before we die?”
I took his hand, then held on to it to stop him from walking away. “One question, Maggot,” I said.
“Try me.”
I had to raise my voice because of the din being made by the landing helicopter. “The girl in Pittsburgh? Was she a lie too?”
He shook his head. “No, my friend. Wendy is all too goddamned real. She’s why I do this.”
I let go of his hand. “Good luck, Maggot.”
“And to you, my friend!” He began running towards Donna’s Chinook, then paused to shout back at me. “Tell Ellen I’ll be glad to be the best man at your wedding! We’ll have a blast!”
I laughed and turned away. The incoming helicopter had thumped on to the runway and its rotors were slowing to a halt. The drifting dust was touched red-gold by the rising sun. I saw that the first reporters had spilt on to this southern part of the island, and some were now heading towards me. It was time for me to add my corroborating testimony to the senator’s instant legend. George Crownin-shield; the winning warrior of the drug war, the senator who dared to act, the man to lead a nation in its crusade against the drugs that had threatened his own children. I could almost see the senator’s halo as he strode about the island with the reporters and at the head of his newly arrived herd of aides and press secretaries.
Then a voice called from behind me and I turned, and I forgot the senator, and I forgot the reporters, and I forgot the Maggot, because Ellen had arrived on the lone helicopter, and her hair was red-gold like the new sun and her beauty brought a lump to my throa
t as I walked towards her. I held my arms outstretched, and she was running towards me, and I could see tears in her eyes and I knew she was happy, and I was just as happy; then we clumsily met, we clasped, we were laughing, and the embrace skewered a white-hot pain in my arm, but it did not matter.
“They wouldn’t let me come,” she said in breathless explanation, “because they said I might tell the truth to the press people, and I said if they didn’t bring me I’d certainly tell the truth, the whole bloody truth, to the whole damned world, so here I am.” She was laughing and crying. “Are you all right, Nick?”
“I am now,” I said, “I am now.” I heard voices strident behind me, and knew the press were almost on top of us. I kissed Ellen. “I want to make you a promise,” I told her.
“Go on.”
“I will always tell you the truth.”
“Dear Nick,” she said. “Why do you think I’m here?” Her hands were warm in mine. A flash bulb cracked its brightness as she laid her head on my shoulder.
“Mr Breakspear! What happened?” A dozen voices demanded of me.
I turned and stared at the reporters. They were sweating and eager, hounds pressing on their kill. Sun-guns dazzled us, and microphones hedged us about. The journalists shouted insistent questions; demanding to know how I had met the senator, and did my father know I was here, and what had actually happened, and who was the girl with me, and how did I get the injury? But they went silent when I raised a hand. “I shall tell you the truth!” I made the promise in a stentorian voice, the voice of a marine sergeant shouting above the sound of a half-gale thrashing a parade ground, “and I shall tell you nothing but the truth.” The senator had been momentarily forgotten by the press and his face showed pure horror at the prospect of my veracity. One of his newly arrived aides was thrusting through the crush of reporters in an effort to reach and silence me, but I had my audience now and I would not waste it. “Our revels now are ended,” I said, but this time in the glorious voice of Sir Tom himself, the voice the old fraud had employed in his famous production of The Tempest at Stratford in ‘79, the voice that one critic had described as being like a golden-throated trumpet calling to the heart of a world’s perplexity. “These our actors,” I went on,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on—
I stopped abruptly, obedient to Sir Tom’s adage always to leave the little darlings panting for more, and then I bowed, and then I laughed, and then I walked away. Ellen, her arm in my good arm, was laughing with me. The senator looked like a man reprieved from death, but not sure why. The equally puzzled reporters swarmed after me, shouting their questions, but I had nothing more to say. The isle was full of noises, but I had none to add, nor did I care what the world made of me, nor of Ellen, for we were bound for the long seas where high stars would guide us and a good boat would carry us, together and for ever.
About the Author
BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of the acclaimed and bestselling Saxon Tales, which include The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North, and Sword Song, as well as the Richard Sharpe novels, the Grail Quest series, the Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles, the Warlord Chronicles, and many other novels, including Stonehenge and Gallows Thief. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod.
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BOOKS BY BERNARD CORNWELL
The Saxon Tales
THE LAST KINGDOM*
THE PALE HORSEMAN*
LORDS OF THE NORTH*
SWORD SONG*
The Sharpe Novels (in chronological order)
SHARPE’S TIGER
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Seringapatam, 1799
SHARPE’S TRIUMPH*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803
SHARPE’S FORTRESS*
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
SHARPE’S PREY*
Richard Sharpe and the Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807
SHARPE’S RIFLES
Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809
SHARPE’S HAVOC*
Richard Sharpe and the Campaign in Northern Portugal, Spring 1809
SHARPE’S EAGLE
Richard Sharpe and the Talavera Campaign, July 1809
SHARPE’S GOLD
Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810
SHARPE’S ESCAPE*
Richard Sharpe and the Bussaco Campaign, 1810
SHARPE’S FURY*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Barrosa, March 1811
SHARPE’S BATTLE*
Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811
SHARPE’S COMPANY
Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz, January to April 1812
SHARPE’S SWORD
Richard Sharpe and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812
SHARPE’S ENEMY
Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
SHARPE’S HONOUR
Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813
SHARPE’S REGIMENT
Richard Sharpe and the Invasion of France, June to November 1813
SHARPE’S SIEGE
Richard Sharpe and the Winter Campaign, 1814
SHARPE’S REVENGE Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814
SHARPE’S WATERLOO*
Richard Sharpe and the Waterloo Campaign, 15 June to 18 June 1815
SHARPE’S DEVIL*
Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820-21
The Grail Quest Series
THE ARCHER’S TALE *
VAGABOND**
HERETIC*
The Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles
REBEL*
COPPERHEAD*
BATTLE FLAG*
THE BLOODY GROUND*
The Warlord Chronicles
THE WINTER KING
THE ENEMY OF GOD
EXCALIBUR
The Sailing Thrillers *
STORMCHILD*
SCOUNDREL*
WILDTRACK CRACKDOWN*
Other Novels
STONEHENGE, 2000 B.C.: A NOVEL*
GALLOWS THIEF*
A CROWNING MERCY*
THE FALLEN ANGELS*
REDCOAT*
Copyright
CRACKDOWN.Copyright © 1990 by Bernard Cornwell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader June 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-165087-1
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About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Cover
Acknowledgements and Dedication
Contents
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
About the Author
Books by Bernard Cornwell
Copyright
About the Publisher
Bernard Cornwell, Crackdown
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