"That sounds impossible."
"While she was coming to the aid of a gendarme." At Rue Charles de Gaulle in the steaming small port city that was the capital of the island's French side, Harold W. Smith spoke to the prefect of the island police.
He assured the prefect that he knew the young man, knew his background intimately, knew the family. It did not hurt that Smith spoke French fluently. In World War II, in the old OSS, he had parachuted into France. While by nature, he never discussed such things, in this case he allowed it to get into the conversation. He also shrewdly let the prefect know that he was saved by the underground and that if it had not been for the French, Smith would have been a dead man.
To hear Smith talk, one would have believed that the French had liberated America during the war and not vice versa. The prefect saw before him that rare American who was a gentleman. He allowed as how the law did not have to be as formidable in the Caribbean as it was in Paris.
Smith offered amends to both the gendarme and the market woman, though he was mystified as to how Barry Schweid could have started a commotion. He offered a thousand francs to the woman and two thousand American dollars to the officer. "For their trouble," he said.
The prefect knowingly put a palm on the back of Smith's hand.
"One thousand American dollars is enough of a salve for his dignity, monsieur," he said with a wink. And thus justice was done on Rue Charles de Gaulle between two old allies, who embraced warmly. With the money paid, Smith got Barry released. Smith could overhear men in the police headquarters commenting on how they were bringing out "the monster" and everyone should be wary. Sidearms silently came out of holsters. One burly officer gripped a lead-weighted stick.
In the main police room, between two large gendarmes, waddled a frightened, very pale and somewhat pudgy young man whose hair looked as if it hadn't seen a comb since the crib.
Barry still wore a flannel shirt and long pants and was sweating profusely. He had been afraid to go outside in a new country and so had stayed in the air-conditioned apartment, working. Smith had vainly tried to get him outside, saying he had promised Barry's mother the boy would get some sun.
"I will. A little bit later," Barry had said. "But not now." Smith did, however, get Barry to bathe and brush his teeth each day. And he did promise to comb his hair, but somehow his work always seemed more important than the seven seconds hair-combing would take.
Now he stood, five-feet five, semishaven, very meek and quite frightened, between two large French policemen.
"Hello, Barry," said Smith.
"Hello, Harold," said Barry softly.
"Are you all right, Barry?"
"No, Harold."
"What's wrong, Barry?"
Barry Schweid extended a finger and motioned Smith to come closer.
"You want to whisper it, Barry?"
"Yes, Harold."
Smith went over to the young man and asked that the guards move away a bit, then bent down to hear the complaint.
"I see, yes," said Smith. "Who has it?"
"I think him, Harold," said Barry. He nodded to a gendarme behind a large flat desk with the picture of the French premier behind it.
"Just a minute," said Smith and went over to the gendarme, who looked at him suspiciously.
Smith whispered in French.
"Did you take away a piece of soft blue cloth when you arrested Mr. Schweid?"
The gendarme said that he didn't quite remember, just as the prefect entered to make sure his compatriot, Harold W. Smith of the Second World War, was properly taken care of.
"You want a piece of cloth? Garbage?" asked the prefect.
As soon as he heard the word "garbage," the gendarme at the desk remembered. Schweid had been clinging to a piece of blue cloth when he was arrested and they threw it away.
"Could you get it again?" asked Smith in French.
"It's in the garbage," said the gendarme.
"Shh, not so loud," said Smith.
"What are you all whispering about?" screamed Barry, and three gendarmes drew pistols and aimed them at Barry's chest. Barry collapsed in the corner, covering his head with his arms and screaming.
"Get the cloth, damn it," snapped Smith.
"Go, go," ordered the prefect.
"It's all right, Barry," Smith said. "They're getting it. They're getting it."
But Barry only screamed and kicked his legs uselessly in the air. The computer genius was having a tantrum.
Guns returned to their holsters. Gendarmes exchanged puzzled looks in the station on Rue Charles de Gaulle. The prefect assured his American ally that Schweid had been a most dangerous adversary on the docks. In fact, the market woman who was injured weighed 220 pounds and was perhaps the strongest person on the island, including the Dutch side, where they had many large, uncivilized people.
Smith nodded. He did not know what had happened, but when they got the cloth, he would then be able to talk to Barry and find out. He assured the noble prefect that most certainly the incident would never happen again.
"If Mr. Schweid must commit that sort of mayhem," whispered the prefect, "and we do know a man's nature is his nature after all, there are places for it. There is, after all, the Dutch side of the island. You understand."
Smith nodded but assured the prefect that such violence was not normally in the young man's character. A gendarme came into the station carrying the blue piece of cloth at arm's length and holding his nose. It smelled of fish and rotted fruit and coffee grounds. It had been thrown into the garbage disposal.
"That's it. Mine," yelled Barry.
"It's all right, Barry. We're bringing it to you."
"Thank you, Harold," said Barry, sobbing and gratefully clutching the dirty cloth to his cheek. Barry Schweid, computer genius of the organization's vast secret network and newly named "Monster of Marigot," cried meekly and sucked his thumb.
The prefect gave them a driver to return them north to the village of Grand Case. Instead of going to their apartment, Smith had the driver leave them off at what appeared to be the gravel works on a road to a cul-de-sac. Inside the simple office of the gravel works, behind the mosquito-infested salt flats, Smith led Barry to a rear office which secretly opened up into a large cave that housed the storage and retrieval area of CURE's computer network.
It was here that Schweid had devised the portable system that Smith now carried. He also had figured out a way not only to make Smith's files entry-proof, but to find out the identity of anyone who accidentally came close to tapping into the network. Smith, who was not a neophyte to technology himself, never could figure out how.
When the doors behind them were closed, sealed beyond penetration by interlocking steel plates, Smith asked the simple question:
"What happened in Marigot?"
"It's all your fault," Barry Schweid said. He was rubbing his ear with a corner of the blanket.
"My fault?" Smith asked. "How?"