"They're not scientists," Wakefield said. "They must be somebody's agents."
"Obviously," said Merton.
"So they did the killing."
"But how, Mr. Wakefield? How?"
"Effectively, obviously. If Friend would send me^ some more operatives instead of someone so obviously not an operative, I would have those scientists finished. Let me tell you this, Merton. I ran this operation to perfection until this point. And I resent your coming in here to push papers around and write reports."
"Why are you so sure I am not an operative, as you put it?"
"Look at you. Not enough meat on you to dress a coat rack," said Bradford. He liked that. He drank from his teacup. The tea was a bit too sweet. So sweet it burned his throat.
"Why aren't you drinking?" asked Bradford.
"Because it's poisoned. I poisoned the whole batch."
"Rubbish. I didn't see you go anywhere near the pot," said Wakefield.
"That's right. You're not supposed to see me go anywhere near the pot because if you did see me, old boy, you might not drink the tea, and then I would have to cut your throat. I prefer the least amount of violence. Even though I would cut your throat if I had to."
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"You couldn't have poisoned me and be so casual," said Wakefield. "Now, I could do it. But not you. You know why, little man? Because we had to rescue you during World War I and World War II. That's why. You think you're better than everyone else but you're not. You know why? I'll tell you why. Because we Wakefields are better than everyone else, that's why. And both of us can't be."
The sun was setting early this day on the yacht. Darkness was coming to Bradford's eyes. His fingertips felt numb. The burning began to tear at his throat. His stomach moved in strange ways.
But he wasn't going to show that twerp Merton that he was suffering. He was going to smile through the whole thing. And then an idea struck him, that last brilliant Wakefield idea.
He whispered to the little twerp.
"You'll never win, you know. They beat everyone," he said, and then he smiled.
"Bluffs don't suit you well, colonial," said Merton.
"I know now. Nobody can defeat them. Only sorry I won't be here to see them put you in your place, bloody English twerp."
Merton Lord Wissex watched the beefy American expire and then neatly emptied the teapot overboard, helped the corpse into a deck chair, and then washed out the teacups himself. He tied the chap's tie, walked up to the bridge of the yacht, chatted amiably with the captain about tides, got behind him when the captain showed him the sextant, broke captain's neck with a short karate chop, broke first mate's neck with similar chop, straightened own tie, left bridge, debarked Wakefield yacht, entered rented trawler, returned to American coast, poisoned trawler captain with laced glass of stout so there would be no identification, phoned Friend informing him of possible trouble, then in boarding room of American hostelry sat down to write a long and deep letter to his son on the importance of good manners.
He started it five times, each time throwing away the 79
first page. He just couldn't quite get through to the boy how utterly important manners were.
Without manners, he wrote finally, man is a beast.
Chambermaid entered room, discovered gun paraphernalia and had to be removed. And was. Suffocation.
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Chapter Five
On the mountain road that divides the island of St. Maarten's in the Dutch West Indies, Peter John, an upright man with a small herd of cows and a farm that through his courage fed a large family on but two acres, could not start his car.
He was a religious man, and he took the little setback with joyful calm. These were things of üfe. But within one day, because he could not start his car, a president of the United States would face the most horrifying decision of his life and do what he had vowed no president of the United States would ever have to do again.
And because Peter John could not start his car, assassins would fly into his little island to settle a centuries-old feud, and a computer chip would continue advancing toward its greatest profit venture ever, even if it meant the end of the civilized world.
Four times Peter John pressed the accelerator of his Ford station wagon, and four times there was nothing. Not even a cough.
"Betty, you naughty girl, you start now, precious," Peter John said to his station wagon. He talked to his car the way he talked to his animals. No one could ever prove to him that machines did not have souls.
"The only difference between a machine and an animal is that the machine won't kick you. The only difference between a machine and a person is that a
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machine will never give bitter tongue to pain the heart. I love my Betty," Peter John would say.
This morning Betty did not love him. She would not move and she would not cough, and Peter John got out of the station wagon and lifted the hood. There was a white soapy substance on the carburetor. He tried to smell it. It was odorless. He took a piece of it in his fingertips. It felt waxy.
But it crumbled. His fingertips stung a little bit, and he noticed that the pink pads turned just a shade whiter. Peter John was a black man, and he felt God had made him black so that the sun could kiss him without harm. Peter John did not yell of pride in his blackness or hold workshops on maintaining his blackness; he just wanted to be black for the rest of his life because that was what he was. And he reasoned that if this waxy substance could cause the pink pads of the underside of his hands to turn white, then it might do the same thing to the rest of his body, and he did not want that.
So he immediately phoned for an appointment with the doctor in Marigot, the French part of the island. He decided to use his friend's Chevrolet to drive there.
But that too would not start, and it too had the white substance in the carburetor. And so did another friend's Peugot.
Peter John reasoned that if it were in the carburetors, it might have come through the gas. So he opened the gas tank of Betty, and there was a small explosion of white waxy material that splashed all over him. The material had been compressed somehow in the gas tank, and Peter John wondered who would do such a nasty trick to such nice cars.
He telephoned the bus company that ran through the island. But no one answered, strangely enough, and he decided to hitchhike. He had heard from tourists that in America, hitchhiking took a long time because many cars would pass up people, especially black people. But Peter John knew the people of St. Maar-
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ten's were nicer than that. He never had trouble hitchhiking, and he never passed up people, either.
But this morning no cars were on the road, as he walked.
He walked past the large, sprawling acres of the Puressence Laboratory, and there he saw, high on the hill, a few very tiny cars chugging around, spilling off a purple exhaust. He had never seen an exhaust like that, but even down on the road beneath the laboratory's high hill, he could smell its bitter odor. It made breathing hard, even at this great distance.
He saw cars on the road, but none of them were moving. A few had popped their gas caps, and the white substance that he thought someone had dumped into his car in a prank was spilling out of the other cars. One gas station was a mound of white wax with the pumps and the concrete they had been set into lying back on their sides.
Peter John was now flecked with little white spots where the white substance had touched him, and the spots stung—not greatly but like an annoying mosquito.
His doctor was a Dutchman who had married a Frenchwoman and decided to settle on the French side of the divided island. He had treated Peter John's entire family.
John had lost three of his eight children. He attributed that to God's will. But he still had five of the eight. He attributed that to his doctor's skill. Peter John was generally a very happy man. He was also considered "that fool Peter John" by many, including his doctor.
"Excuse me, doctor," he said after his long walk, "but a strange substance attacked my car and is now attacking me." He pointed to the painful white spots on his rich black skin.