Operation Nassau Read Online Free PDF Page A

waiting to take Lady Edgecombe to see her husband. It was not until after he had gone that I discovered he had used my car. ‘But you’re not on call?’ my father said. ‘I forgot to tell you they were mending the Chevrolet.’ He stood, vodka bottle in hand, and surveyed my juice-smeared Bri-Nylon. The remaining guests, finishing their drinks, lay about chatting. My father said, reasonably, ‘I wasn’t to know you had a date to hear Bang Bang Lulu at the Bamboo Conch Club.’
    The years have made him, as you can see, inexorably frivolous. I said, ‘I have an appointment at the Coral Harbour marina.’ There was a slight pause, then one of the Lyford Cay group said, ‘I’ll drive you.’ His martini was still three-quarters up and the offer was hardly enthusiastic. I accepted however, politely, and after retiring briefly to change my two-piece for a pleated cotton dress by Horrocks I have found comfortable for many years, I returned to the drive where a car was drawn up waiting. My father was nowhere in sight, so I got in. The driver started the engine.
    We were half-way to the gates before I realized that the man sitting beside me at the wheel was not the socialite from Lyford Cay. I saw an older man of dark colouring and insignificant features, wearing neither a Bermuda beach set nor the briefer assembly of, I understand, St Tropez. I observed well-worn slacks, and a still older shirt made of thick terry towelling. There was a bulge in his left trouser pocket. It could have been caused by a pipe. It was quite possibly due, I considered, to a small firearm of the automatic variety.
    I had no syringe with me this time. As we swung out onto the road I gripped my bag hard with one hand and let my other fall idly close to the doorhandle just as the driver said, agreeably enough, ‘I swapped with Booby Swanston. I hope you don’t mind. Who is George?’
    ‘I should like you to stop this car,’ I said evenly.
    Behind us was a lorry piled with bananas and a small horse-drawn surrey full of tourists with This horse is called Elvis scrawled on the front board.
    ‘What, now?’ said my driver. The spectacles he wore covered his eyes, but his tone was justifiably surprised.
    ‘When you have an opportunity.’
    The glasses flashed in my direction, and I saw then that he had adjusted presbyopia: his spectacles were bifocal. Why did nothing forewarn me? Why did I think my only danger was physical?
    He said, ‘I thought you had a date in Coral Harbour?’
    ‘I have,’ I said, ‘a message to take to a person named Johnson Johnson.’
    He put his hand out of the window and waved; the banana lorry passed by, and the surrey, and Smiley and the Boys’ Bus Service and a bicycle advertising the Nassau Conference of the Seventh Day Adventists. He slowed, drew into the side and came to a stop.
    Then his arm came round, and I stiffened. But he merely reached to the back of the car, hauled towards him an old corduroy jacket, and emptying the pockets quickly and neatly, laid on the bench seat between us a driving licence, a passport, a number of envelopes and a folder advertising a one-man exhibition of paintings in the Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami. ‘Indeed you do?’ he said. ‘Then you can deliver it. I’m Johnson Johnson.’
    I read the documents. While I did so he drew the object from his pocket, which was indeed a blackened briar pipe, filled it, and struck a match, his eyes all the while watching me, as I was aware. He said. ‘Does the thought of my bronchial carcinoma upset you?’ and as I looked up with impatience, he smiled slightly and applying the match, lit his pipe. ‘You’re very patient with all us frail humans,’ he said. ‘If I had your message, I might know what’s frightening you?’
    ‘Frightening?’ I said.
    ‘Well,’ he said, puffing. We had stopped beside the life-sized white horse outside Hobby Horse Hall, between the golf-course and the lactocalamine pink of the Emerald Beach Hotel. ‘How many