The Scorpio Illusion Read Online Free PDF Page B

choice,” said Hawthorne, turning and starting down the pier. “A hundred-and-ten-proof Overton coming up.” The charter captain hastened his pace past the slips.
    “Sorry, mate,” Martin the mechanic said to himself as he watched his friend turn left on the walkway. “I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got my orders.”
    Darkness enveloped the Caribbean. The hour was late as Captain Tyrell Hawthorne, sole owner of Olympic Charters, Ltd., U.S. Virgin Islands Registry, led his clients, first one couple and then the other, to their accommodations at the yacht club’s beach hotel. Their rooms were not what either twosome expected to wake up in, but going to sleep was no problem; the bartender had made certain of that. So Tye Hawthorne returned to the deserted open-air bar on the beach and rendered his thanks to the man behind it in more concrete terms. He gave the black bartender fifty American dollars.
    “Hey, Tye-Boy, you don’t have to do this.”
    “Then why are you gripping it so tightly in your fist?”
    “Instinct,
mon
. You can have it back.”
    They both laughed; it was a ritual.
    “How’s business, Captain?” asked the bartender, pouring Hawthorne a glass of his customary white wine.
    “Not bad, Roger. Both our boats are chartered, and if my idiot brother can find his way back to Red Hook in Saint T., we could even make a profit this year.”
    “Hey,
mon
, I like your brother. He’s a funny guy.”
    “Oh, he’s a real cartoon, Roge. Did you know that kid is a doctor?”
    “What,
mon
? Alla times he comes here, I got aches and pains all over me, and I coulda asked him?”
    “No, not that kind of doctor,” broke in Tyrell. “He has a doctorate degree in literature, just like our dad.”
    “He don’ fix bones and aches? So what good is it?”
    “That’s what he said. He said he broke his ass for eight years to get the damn thing and ended up making less money than a garbage collector in San Francisco. He was fed up, you know what I mean?”
    “Sure,” replied the bartender. “Five years ago I hauled fish off the charters and cleaned the throw-ups of the tourists an’ put ’em to bed when they drunk. No life,
mon
! So I bettered myself and learned how to
get
’em drunk.”
    “Good move.”
    “
Bad
move, Tye-Boy,” said Roger, suddenly whispering and reaching below the counter. “Two
mon
walkin’ down from the path. They lookin’ fer somebody, and you are the only somebody here. Also, I got a feeling—I don’ like ’em; they keep checkin’ their jackets, their sleeves, an’ they walk too slow. But don’ worry, I got my gun.”
    “Hey, come on, Roge, what are you talking about?” Hawthorne turned on the barstool. “Geoff!” he cried. “Is that you, Cooke?… And Jacques, you too? What the hell are you guys doing here?… Put away the hardware, Roger, these are old friends of mine.”
    “I’ll put it away when I learn they got no hardware of their own.”
    “Hey, fellas, this is another old friend—and the islands have been a little rough lately. Just hold out your hands and tell him you haven’t got any weapons, okay?”
    “How could we possibly have any weapons?” said Geoffrey Cooke contemptuously. “We both flew over on international flights where metal detectors are very much in evidence.”
    “
Mais oui
!” added Ardisonne, code name Richelieu.
    “They’re okay,” said Hawthorne, leaping off the barstool and shaking hands with both older men. “Remember our sail through the—oh, oh, why
are
you here? I thought you were both retired.”
    “We have to talk, Tyrell,” said Cooke.
    “Immediately,” said Ardisonne. “There is no time to waste.”
    “Hey, wait a minute. Suddenly my perfectly okay engine doesn’t work;
suddenly
, out of a quiet night on the beach Cookie arrives with our old pal Richelieu from Martinique. What’s going on, gentlemen?”
    “I said we had to talk, Tyrell,” insisted Geoffrey Cooke, MI-6.
    “I’m not sure we do,”