Operation Nassau Read Online Free PDF Page B

water grotto under the open-tread staircase glowed in the deepening dusk: someone lit a cigarette in one of the group of armchairs. A voice, bodiless above my head, said, ‘Don’t do it again, will you? Just don’t do it again.’
    My epidermal hair follicles sprang upright, but I do not give way easily to emotion. I set my foot on the stairs, just as Johnson, arriving suddenly with some letters in his hand, said, ‘What’s the matter?’ and a couple, laughing, began to come down the steps over my head. The young woman, in a white lace trouser-suit, said in an American voice, ‘Sure I’ll do it again, and you’ll stand by and like it. It’s a free world, darling David.’
    I stepped back, my hand prodding Johnson, to allow them to pass. Darling David was quite unremarkable, in long shorts and a sweater and greying brown hair. I had never seen him before. Then he said, ‘Well, come along. Bar’s open,’ and the voice was quite different, too, from that caressing voice in the Trueman. Johnson said, ‘It’s a lovely evening for a sail. You don’t mind, do you, having dinner on board? Spry is quite a good cook.’
    ‘If I might make that phone-call first,’ I said, and I saw him smile.
    ‘Of course, Doctor. Go ahead. I’ll wait just outside.’
    There is no point in being foolishly trusting.
    After I had called my father, who displayed a mild interest that Johnson Johnson should have sought my company and no interest whatever in my immediate and future plans, I joined my host outside and we walked along the well-manicured edge of the marina where the cruising yachts lay under the palm trees, like bedpans, I thought, in a sterilizer. Johnson said, ‘Here is Dolly .’ and led the way up on deck.
    If you know about boats she is a gaff-rigged auxiliary ketch, of about fifty-odd tons, which implies a great deal of money. She had a curious detachable shell fitted over the cockpit, which Johnson slid back without explanation. For the rest she was quietly and expensively fitted, not only with awnings and Neiman-Marcus soft furnishings, but with a depth-finder and R.D.F. unit. I noticed a big- scale radar set which I’d heard one of the lab technicians daydreaming about, over a sputum swab. They cost ten thousand dollars.
    I cut the tour short in the pricy saloon and led the way back to the cockpit. The big diesel engine was rumbling. A small middle-aged man in white overalls and yachting-cap stepped aboard, the mooring rope in his hand, coiled it and came forward towards us, expressing inquiry.
    ‘Never mind,’ said Johnson. ‘There’s not enough air. I’ll take her.”
    He had a hand on the wheel as he spoke. He moved a lever, and Dolly began to nose out into the waterway. ‘Get us some drinks, Spry, will you? We’ll get up the coast a bit and find some quiet water for dinner. . . Spry does all the work here, Dr MacRannoch. What will you drink? We’ve all kinds of fruit-juice. Or something carbonated, if you’d rather.’
    I settled for fresh lemon and soda, and sat carefully in the deep cockpit cushions, the wind stirring but not untidying my hair, which I like to keep short. The palm trees moved past, and the other boats, their lights drawing the eye in the gathering dark. I wondered, acidly, if Johnson also had a Japanese heir. The slight savour I had begun to feel in the occasion had vanished. Johnson said, ‘What do you spend on your golf?’
    I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ Moneyed persons often do this. In Nassau there are only two topics of conversation: business and sex.
    He increased his speed slightly, but the engine was still very soft. He said, hardly raising his voice, ‘Green fees eight dollars, power cart ten dollars, balls eighteen dollars fifty the dozen. And a complete set of clubs and bag, if you have them, what? Four hundred dollars?’
    ‘Ten pounds,’ I said. ‘Second-hand, five years ago.’
    ‘Relative to an M.O.’s salary,’ he said, ‘it still adds up. Dolly is my