The Messiah Choice

10. A BRUTAL GAME OF CHESS

Too tired and too confused to really do much, Maria had gone up the beach a bit and found a quiet-looking part of the inner beach almost surrounded by large rocks and driftwood, and in there, in a small area of sand, she had settled down to rest and think and soon drifted off. By the time she awoke, the sun was high and very hot and she felt like a refugee from a monster movie in which she was the monster.

Being naked was enough of a handicap in itself, but having been naked and gotten out of salt water, then having salt and sand dry on her, made her skin painful and irritated. Every muscle in her body ached, and she felt like she’d been run over by a truck, while her mouth burned and tasted of acid and bile.

She managed to get to her feet and peer out, hearing the sounds of humans on the beach not far away. She looked out and saw four people, fairly young, two men and two women, frolicking in the surf and along the beach. Both sexes wore skimpy string bikini type suits that were hardly anything at all; the women were topless, which wasn’t all that unusual in this area. What was unusual was that they were extremely tanned but still undeniably white, a fact which marked them as foreigners in this remote part of Bessel. She watched them for a while with envy, feeling more and more miserable as time passed, but they eventually grew too hot or too bored and picked up their things and went inland.

There were some small boats out on the sea, mostly small fishing boats and one or two tourists’ party fishing craft, but they were well out and of no real concern. She knew she couldn’t find clothing without giving herself away, and looking at the foursome gave her something of a plan, although her body groaned and burned at the mere thought of it.

She walked out and into the water, steeling herself for the ordeal, and went out to where it was just above her hips. It was low tide and the sea was calm, although an occasional wave would come in and momentarily cover her with water. It stung at the start, but eased as she got used to it.

She was pretty much at the northern limit of habitation, so she began to wade back towards the town perhaps a mile away, studying the houses on the beach. There weren’t many of them, and while all were rather small and plain they were clearly owned by people with money or influence. They were painted various colors, but only one was white, a stucco that had a patio jutting out almost on to the beach, its property large enough to set it off a bit from its neighbors. She knew that it might not be the one, that in fact there might be a dozen more white houses further along, but she was just too tired and sore to care any more. She felt she had done more than she could possibly be expected to do, and at this moment she didn’t even care if the Dark Man was sitting on the back porch.

She walked out of the water and across the sands and onto the patio area. Her only real fear right now was that nobody would be home. Everything was closed up, but she could hear the rumble of several window air conditioners and that boded well. Going up to the back door, she knocked on it, growing suddenly nervous and feeling both shy and embarrassed. Losing her nerve, even the way she felt, she hesitated to knock again, but suddenly the door opened and she was face to face with a young black woman of slight build whose eyes grew wide at the sight of the naked stranger.

“I—I’m sorry,” Maria managed. “I need help. I lost my boat and I’ve been mostly in the water for hours. Please help me.” Her voice sounded like atonal sandpaper.

For a moment, the black woman hesitated, then she opened the screen door and said, “Yes, come in.” Her accent was West Indian English, and she was probably a local resident.

The place wasn’t fancy, and the kitchen into which she entered wasn’t really air conditioned, but it was such a relief to get out of the sun that it felt wonderful.

“Come—sit down on the couch in the living room dere and I will get you some water,” the black woman said, sounding concerned, and leading her through a small hall to the room. It was a plain little room furnished with musty old furniture, but an ancient window air conditioner provided some circulation and relief. The couch was simply a cane affair, like the other furnishings, but it had soft cushions and backs and two small pillows and she sank into it all with tremendous relief. She felt as if she would pass out at any moment.

The black woman returned with a glass of iced tea and a cool wash cloth, and Maria downed one greedily while allowing her hostess to apply the other gently to her face.

“I am Paula Mochka,” her hostess told her.

“Sis—ah, Maria Marline,” she responded. “Thank you very much.”

“You are burning up with de fever,” Mochka told her. “If you can stand for a moment, I t’ink we first get you showered off some, den you take some aspirin and lie down a while.”

She did manage somehow to get back to the tiny bathroom with its peeling paint and cracked porcelain, but she allowed herself to get washed off, grateful beyond measure to this kind woman who could not possibly know anything about her and seemed to be in the house all alone. After, she was taken back to a small bedroom which had another old and noisy air conditioner in the window along with an unmade single bed that looked recently slept in.

Mochka gave her the aspirin with some more tea. She took them, but tried to explain a little more of what was going on, being as cautious as possible. “I was in trouble out there…” she began, but her hostess cut her off.

“No more now. You rest. Beat de fever. When you wake up, den you tell me everyt’ing, O.K.?”

Even though her skin felt on fire, she was fighting off a near comatose state and she just couldn’t fight any more under these conditions. She began to say something else, but everything just sort of drifted away.

She did, however, have dreams; dreams she could not fight and which she had to endure, although they faded in and out and often ran into one another.

There was the meadow and that terrible altar stone, and she was stretched out on it, bound hand and foot, naked and helpless. All around were the leering men of the Dark Man’s company, and she knew just what they intended to do. She looked around, frantically, and caught sudden sight of a strange figure of a woman dressed in light blue and white.

“Mother Superior! Help me! In the same of Christ save me!’’ she cried, but the older nun shook her head sadly and had that stern face she always wore.

“No, no, no,” responded the Mother Superior as if talking to a kindergarten child. “You’ve been a very naughty girl, Sister Maria, and you know it. You weren’t forced onto the streets of New Orleans; you chose it deliberately instead of honest work or education, and you got what you deserved. Then you came to us to save you, and we gave you every chance, and at the first opportunity you cast off your new habit and went back to the old ones.”

“But I rescued Angelique!’’

“Angelique rescued Angelique. Nope. Sorry. Three strikes and you’re out.” She turned to the leering, slobbering men who didn’t really have faces any more. “O.K., boys,” screamed the Mother Superior, “fuck her brains out and then feed her to the devil!’’

They all advanced, and the Dark Man laughed and laughed, but the scene faded and for a while she drifted.

And then Angelique’s voice whispered to her, in French-accented English, “Art Cadell, Bessel Island, white house on the beach…”

“Hard to believe, but her prints say she’s the damned nun!” a strange male voice said casually.

“Well,’’ a woman replied, in a clear American tone that was otherwise accentless, “if they can make a monster, I guess they can do most anything.’’

“Christ! She’s burning up! If she gets through this she might be days coming out of it,” the man noted, concerned.

“No, no!” she shouted. “Angelique! Don’t have enough time to save her!’’

“Hear that?’’ the woman asked. “I wish we had a doctor we could trust around here.”

“In these sticks? Can’t risk it. Just keep her cool and keep giving her what you can to break the fever. We lose her, it’s all over anyway.”

But the voices seemed to fade even as she protested, and in the darkness a leering, looming shape rose.

“You can’t save her,” taunted the Dark Man. “Why, you can’t even save yourself.”

It went on and on and on…

It was night when she finally awoke in the same bed. She still felt terribly tired and very weak, but she looked around and saw the black woman there, asleep in a rocking chair and lightly snoring. She couldn’t remember the name, but she had to communicate. She didn’t even know how long she’d been out.

“Hey!” she croaked, her throat raw and sore. “Hey! Wake up!”

The woman stirred, opened one eye, and then was immediately awake and on her feet. “How do you feel?” she asked Maria.

“Horrible. Can I have some water?”

She was given some, but even the water hurt to swallow. Finally she asked, “How long have I been out?”

“Dis is de second night you’ve been here. You been ravin’ out of your head.”

“I—I guess I have. The nightmares were—horrible. Not so horrible as what I’ve seen and what I’ve come through, but horrible all the same.”

“You come from da professor’s island, I t’ink by your ravin’s. You were held dere or somet’ing?”

“Sort of.” She had a sudden sense of urgency. “You know a man named Art Cadell?’’

“I know him. He sometime come here. Why? What you got to do wit’ Mister Cadell?”

“He—he’s a friend of a friend, sort of. That is, he knows somebody I have to get word to.”

“Oh? And who’s dat?”

“A man named MacDonald. Gregory MacDonald.”

“Lot of folks look for Mister MacDonald. He very wanted man. Dey say he some kind of Russian agent, y’know. Dere is big reward for his capture.”

She sighed. “I thought as much. Still, this was the only place I had and time’s running out. She won’t wait for anybody but him or me and I’m in no shape to go anyplace right now.”

“We get some soup, maybe some fruit, in you. You’ll feel better real fast.” With that, the black woman went out of the bedroom and she could hear her go into the kitchen and start rattling pots and pans. She was still out there when a man walked into the room, looking a little sleepy himself. She had never seen him before. He was black, middle-aged and somewhat distinguished looking, but dressed in a faded plaid shirt and old and worn jeans.

“Good evening, Sister Maria,” he said, in a pleasant baritone. His voice was also West Indian, but highly educated and probably Trinidadan or Jamaican.

She started and felt fear rising inside her, but she knew she was too weak to do anything.

“I’m Harold St. Cyr,” he said, settling down in the rocking chair. “It’s Doctor St. Cyr, but don’t let that fool you. It’s quite literally in philosophy, not medicine.”

She sank down but relaxed a bit, realizing that this house was probably used by a lot of dignitaries as a vacation retreat and he was probably the one using it this week. “I’m sorry to barge in on your vacation, Doctor.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Can you tell me from whom you got Art Cadell’s name?”

“Huh? From—a friend in trouble.”

“Angelique Montagne?”

She grew suddenly wary again, as Paula Mochka came in with a platter holding a bowl of soup and some sliced fruit. She didn’t feel hungry, but she was very weak and knew she had to eat something.

“Yes,” she replied, as Paula fed her some soup from a spoon. “How did you know?”

“Art Cadell,” the doctor explained, “does not exist. It’s one of several hundred names used to identify the origin of anyone just happening on a place like this. We verified that MacDonald gave it in conversation to Miss Montagne, so she must have given it to you. The only question left is whether she gave it voluntarily or involuntarily.”

The soup had some effect, and she began to feel a little better inside. She wasn’t dumb, either, and the implications of all this were most interesting. If they checked on the origin of Cadell, they had to check with MacDonald himself—and they would hardly use long distance communications, which went by satellite these days, to do it. Not if they were on the other side.

“She gave it to me,” Maria told him. “I don’t know any way to prove that, though. We escaped together, but she didn’t come all the way. She’s waiting for a rescue now, I hope, but she won’t wait much longer.”

“Indeed? Why don’t you tell me your story? All the details?”

She managed a slight smile. “How do I know which side you’re on?”

“Fair enough. You don’t. And, the fact is, we’ve expected company here for some time, but not of your type. We felt the place was compromised, but we wished to see who or what would show up or what sort of surveillance would be placed on it. I’ve been spending the summer here, just waiting and incidentally finishing up my book on unique south Caribbean value systems. Not, I don’t hesitate to say, soon to be a best seller, but it will save my chair at Northwestern. We’d almost given up hope that this would pay off at all, and now here you are. I’d say you should tell us what the whole story is simply because you have no choice. Either we are friends who can help you, or we are enemies in whose power you now are and who can get anything from you we wish by other means, or, if you’re no use, we can simply shove you out the door, naked, penniless, on a remote little island with a population of under four thousand and a per capita income of about eight hundred dollars a year. So, let’s hear the story.”

And she told him, starting with her arrival at the Institute, and she spared nothing in detail, not even her encounters with the Dark Man and her fear-induced conversion to his use. He broke in only occasionally, asking a question or two, but mostly let her speak her piece. He was particularly interested in anything she could give him on the Dark Man himself, which was very little.

Angelique’s transformation fascinated him, but he did not question it. He was, however, quite concerned about the thrust of the attack on her core identity.

“They are trying to reduce her to the basic primitive— emotional, not rational, living half or more in the metaphysical realm. Her lack of real life experience makes her very vulnerable to this sort of thing. When they break her, they then plan to slowly build her back up the way they want her to be. I am, however, apprehensive at the ease of her escape when she is so central to them. I fear that this may not be a victory so much as part of the process.”

“Ease! I’ll tell you, it wasn’t easy!”

“But it was. A complex like that would have constant watches on someone so important. Now consider the result. She has been forced more and more into using the metaphysical—their way—to survive, and every time she does she becomes more and more like them. She has killed—not only under their control, but of her own free will—and thought nothing of it. After years of powerlessness, she has felt the heady wine of physical and metaphysical power.’’

“Then—it was all for nothing?” Maria felt crushed by the idea.

“Perhaps. Perhaps they have overplayed their hand. They are quite adept at doing that, believe me. Until now, we have been relatively powerless, helpless onlookers. This is the break we prayed for, but it is a dangerous game. She is the key to their plans, and she is now exposed.”

Maria felt a surge of energy. “Then—you’ll rescue her?”

“We will try, of course. You see, we still operate under a handicap in that we don’t really know their ultimate goals, only that she is a key player in their scheme. Whoever controls her controls something of the game. She will not only have to be gotten, she will have to be removed far from here as quickly as possible. Think of it as a game of chess. Both sides are playing, their side is winning, but there is only one queen. They have elected to jeopardize that queen in the hopes of greater gains. Our highest percentage move is to remove the queen from play, thus making their winning strategy impossible.”

“Doctor—can you tell me this? Is this really some kind of black magic, some horrible thing from the supernatural, or is it science gone mad? Are we dealing with men and machines whose power and knowledge is so great that they fool themselves as well as us? Or is this truly the devil’s own work?”

“I wish I knew. Both God and the devil have been quite content to work through humans most of the time, so the answer to that question may in fact be irrelevant. Many definitions of magic are based upon the idea that magic is anything the onlookers do not know or understand. The line is not clear, and we argue about it constantly, but the truth is that they can do what they claim to be able to do. They can materialize monsters to kill, they can bewitch and curse, and they can change the aspects and affect the wills of other people. Give me the identity of the Dark Man, and perhaps I can give you an answer. Perhaps.” He paused a moment. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy,” she told him. “But I am up to whatever is necessary.”

He nodded. “Good girl. Now—could you find your way back to where you left her?”

The question startled her. Until now, she had never thought of this not inconsiderable problem. “I—I don’t know. I shouldn’t be able to, but somehow I think I might. I can’t explain it, and I can’t know if I’m right until I do it.”

He nodded again and glanced at his watch. “It’s now close to one in the morning. Dawn is about three hours away. Use the time to gather what strength you can. Paula has found something for you to wear—not much, I fear, and probably not quite the right size, but it’s a slip-on dress that will give you a little protection.” He got up. “I must go out and make some preparations. We’ve had something set up on a contingency basis, if only to move you rapidly away, but now we have to activate it. We should leave as soon as possible.”

After he left, she got up, and discovered just how weak she really was. Still, with Paula’s help, she made it into the bathroom. She wanted to shower if she could, to wash off the last of the sweat and grime and sand, and she managed it. Standing there, toweling herself off, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was tanned unevenly but quite darkly, and there were spots where flecks of dead skin were peeling off. The spell had held; it was still a young, pretty face that stared back at her, the face of a teen-ager.

If only they could somehow win, the mirror promised a whole new life, a total new chance. For the first time she realized that the spell was more specific, more personal, than a mere gift of youth. This was the face and body that she’d had the day she’d made her terribly wrong choice on what to do with her life. This was Maria just before the Fall.

Neither the doctor nor Paula would be coming. A couple of big, black, musclebound men rowed her out from a point well north of the town and took her in silence to the looming hulk of a good sized fishing trawler. The crew looked native and the dominant language of the decks was Spanish, but she was ushered into the cabin area and came face to face with a big, bearded white man with long hair and weathered skin. A huge black man sat off in a corner drinking coffee. He hardly glanced at her as she entered.

“If you’re the nurse, you have changed,” the bearded man said genially. “Please—take a seat at the table here and get comfortable. We’ve met before. I’m Greg MacDonald.”

She stared at him wonderingly, and it took several seconds before she could see that it was indeed the detective. “You’re a wanted man,” she noted. “Am I supposed to trust you?”

He grinned. “Not any more than any other man.” He grew more serious. “Look, here’s a chart of the entire area between Allenby and Bessel. I want you to look at it and tell me as much as you can from the point of your escape through all you can remember.”

She stared at the map and saw the great number of tiny islands that lay in the way, but her mind seemed oddly clear. “We came around the island here, and then headed away due north until the place was completely out of sight.”

He looked and nodded. “Good choice. The big antennas can’t turn and see that close in that direction, let alone shoot anything. O.K., so we go north to about here, then what?”

“We—we made a sweeping turn to the southwest and headed—oh! There are dozens of islands along there! But we didn’t see or hit any until the one we stopped at!”

“That’s O.K. Now, you say you found a sheltered anchorage. Was it right on course when you hit the island, or did you have to go around it a bit?”

She thought a moment. “We went—right, along the coast a little. But it wasn’t very big. It was a slip in the rocks, nothing more. We had to grab on to tree limbs and hanging vines to get up on the island itself.”

He stared at the map, then beckoned a big black man with a thick moustache dressed in a formal shirt and striped gray pants. Clearly he was an officer of the ship. “Well, Senor Garcia? Think you can pick the spot?”

The man looked at the chart, then reached under it and pulled out a large set of bound maps, each a blowup of part of the area covered by the larger chart. He flipped through, then said, “There, I think.” His accent was heavily Spanish, but it was impossible to tell the country. “It almost has to be this tiny one here—San Cristobal. The name is bigger than the island.”

“Senor Garcia is the navigator,” MacDonald explained to her. “Sorry to be so short with introductions, but we’re on a tight schedule here. Look at this and see if it seems right.”

She looked. Blown up to the scale of this map, and looking down, it was impossible to tell, but she saw that there was one tiny area that was shaped very much like her tiny slip, and the profile chart indicated a table top topography with rock sides. “It might be. I can’t be sure, but it’s got everything.”

“I will inform the captain,” Garcia told them. “We will not be able to lay in close there, so it will have to be done with the dinghy.”

“How long until we get there?” MacDonald asked.

“Perhaps two hours, perhaps a little less. After five, certainly.”

He whistled. “That’s cutting it close. We may wind up doing this in daylight.”

“Then I had best get started,” Garcia responded, and was gone, leaving them alone in the cabin.

MacDonald sighed and got up. “Want some coffee? I sure need some. A good stiff belt after, but coffee right now.”

“No, thank you. I’m still weak and my stomach’s upset.” She paused, hearing the engines begin to rise in pitch, and feeling as well as hearing the increase in their throbbing speed. The windows rattled rhythmically with the thrum! thrum! thrum! of the engines.

He got his and sat back down. “Rook couldn’t give me more than the bare outlines. Mind filling me in on the story again?”

She didn’t. “Uh—but what’s this rook?”

“Chess piece. He’s King’s Rook. I’m Queen’s Knight. I’m afraid you became Queen’s Pawn One.”

“Who’s the king, then?”

He grinned. “That would be telling. They have their Dark Man, we have our King. I wish King had the powers the Dark Man had, but he’s strong enough—I hope. Now, I want to know everything, starting with just what happened on that island while I was still there.”

She told him, describing the terrible rites in the meadow, the tremendous power of the Dark Man and just how convincing he could be, the whole works.

He took it all in. “Tell me—did you ever see Sir Reginald with the Dark Man?”

“I never saw him at all, except occasionally in the dining hall or the library, going from one place to another. Why? Is he the Dark Man?”

“I don’t know. He’s the instigator, the man who started all this, that’s for sure. What we don’t know is whether or not he’s still in control of it, or whether he just thinks he is. Go on. You were about to tell me about Angelique.”

And she told him of the nightly forays, the terrible things they were made to do, and of the final transformation of Angelique and the spells that still bound her. And when she finished he pounded his fist on the table in anger, making the whole cabin shake.

“Damn them!” he said in anger and frustration. “That poor girl. So we’re going after somebody who’s forced to look and think like a naked, stone age woman. Great!”

“She still knows it all. She might not be able to find the words for it, but she knows who she is and how she came to be that way and she’ll know us, too. She hates the Dark Man. I think she’d do anything to defeat him. And, somehow, I get the feeling that as bad off as she is, she still feels better that way than the way she was. We can’t know what kind of hell those seven years without feeling, without being able to move more than her head, but with the heart and mind of a young and smart girl, was like.”

That sobered him. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” It was trading one sort of hell for another, that was true, but there were always degrees of Hell.

“I’m not proud of my part in all of this,” she told him, “but maybe somehow I can help make it right now.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let your guilt get to you all that much,” he told her sympathetically. “I don’t see how you could have done much else under the circumstances. This is a rough crowd, the most dangerous maybe that anybody’s ever faced, and they’re ready to spread out way beyond their current little base.”

“And you—what of you during that time? They said you were dead.”

“They knew better. I should have been, that’s clear. I’ll never know if they just built a good strong little building there or whether it was the fact that it was a church that stopped the thing. Others have been working on that question. The only thing I’m sure of is that it was real, at least for the time it was after me, and it almost got me. After they took King’s Knight everybody told me to get out of there. I’m surprised they let me go as long as they did. I guess it was because of Angelique. They needed to keep her there until they were ready to move, and she stayed because I was there.”

“You said they took out the other knight?”

He nodded. “Yes. Camille Jureau. He was one of the first to stumble onto a real plot, and he apparently tipped it to Sir Robert, which forced their hand and started the ball rolling. They must have figured Jureau for an obstacle, but at Sir Robert’s insistence he was recalled to Brussels for consultation and to help set up an independent organization that could investigate and fight this thing. Why he came back I’ll never know. He was a cocky, arrogant little bastard always real full of himself, but who am I to talk, considering how long I stayed with my neck in the guillotine? I guess we all think we’re immortal.”

“And you—you know of this when you arrived on the island?”

“Only part of it. I was really ignorant until Sir Robert’s murder. Then, when I was contacted by the company to investigate it, they also told me that something was really rotten there, that he and Jureau were investigating it, and so forth. I was given contact names and addresses and a method of getting information in and out using couriers and go-betweens who worked the supply ships. Sir Robert had set up the King’s side; the Queen’s pieces were added as we went along, starting with me. In a way, it’s still Sir Robert’s game, played from beyond the grave.”

“And after you escaped?” She was fascinated by it all, even if it still seemed unreal.

“I got lucky running into that trawler. I’m no big shakes as a sailing man and that sea was still rough. They put in at Port of Spain, where I was able to slip off and call one of the emergency numbers. By that time the opposition had a lot of the region well bottled up and had put a price on my head, and I didn’t really want to try and run for it anyway, since that’d just take me completely out of the game. So, since that time, I’ve lived on various boats like this one, shuffling from one to the other before they make any major port. We have a lot of connections and some big money, thanks to Sir Robert’s planning. Not that it’s done much good. Allenby’s been bottled up for weeks now and any time you call you get cheer and a lack of problems from anybody. I guess that damned computer can imitate anybody. Jureau is still making reports— or so it seems—and Angelique even gave a mini press conference on what it felt like to inherit all that money and take over all this. It was very convincing—I’ve seen a tape of it.”

“You know the doc believes we were allowed to escape,” she said nervously. “I find it hard to believe, but…”

“Yeah, well, I don’t doubt they made you work hard on it, but he’s probably right. That’s why this is gonna be hairy— particularly in daylight, if that’s what it takes.”

“But—they can send orders to the navy to pick us all up and turn us all over to them! I know it!”

“Yeah, they can—but I don’t think they’ll take the chance. Things just might explode. Too many witnesses, too many people to doubt and maybe buck it upstairs. No, if they try anything now it’ll be with their own people and as closed as possible. At least, I hope so.”

And, with that, Gregory MacDonald got himself that shot of whisky and tried to relax.

The sun was not yet over the horizon, but the sky was rapidly growing light. There were signs of gathering storm clouds to the east that the marine forecasts said were heading in their direction, and the seas were already starting to be choppy as the little dinghy closed on the island. Aside from the rowers, it contained only Maria, Greg, and three submachine guns.

Maria was feeling very weak and nauseous, and the rapidly roughening sea did not help matters any, but she was determined now to see this through. She pointed to the island. “There! In back of those rocks! This is it, I know it!”

MacDonald frowned. “Damned if I can even see an inlet there. How the hell did you ever find it the first time?”

“I—I don’t know. Angelique, she’s got some of those crazy powers herself. Oh, I hope she’s still here and all right!”

They rounded the rocks with difficulty and found the little safe cut just as Maria had predicted. She was not physically able to manage climbing up there, though.

MacDonald looked at her. “You say you can speak that crazy language?”

“Yes. She—taught it to me, somehow.”

“Call to her, then. Tell her she’s got to get down to us and fast!”

Maria’s mind was awash with differing thoughts and emotions, and she had some trouble concentrating on that strange tongue. Finally she called out, as loud as she could, in Hapharsi, “Angelique my mother! Come to your daughter and to friends! Come quickly, for the storms blow and the sun rises as we speak!’’

MacDonald looked at her in amazement, and the two rowers looked dubious. Though sheltered, they reached down and picked up the automatic weapons, ready for the unexpected. If somebody else had found her first, they were the fish in the barrel.

There was no response, which made them all even more nervous than they already were. “Try again,” MacDonald urged.

“Come, my mother, or we all perish! Come, or we must leave you forever!’’

The wind was picking up, making it more difficult to hear anything, but suddenly a voice penetrated the noise. It was a pleasant, woman’s voice, saying words in a melodic tongue that was the same one Maria had used but far sweeter and more expert, like one born to it.

“They must put down their metal spears, my daughter, said the voice to Maria. “Then I will come. They are all friends?”

“Yes, my mother. One is Greg.” She turned to the others. “You must put down your guns,” she told them. “She’s afraid she’ll get shot if she shows herself.”

“You’re sure it’s her?” MacDonald asked worriedly.

“I’m sure.”

“No way to tell if she’s under her own free will. Still, I’ll signal them to put the guns down. We’re dead ducks in here anyway.” He gave a hand signal. “Wish I could speak Spanish, damn it all,” he muttered.

Suddenly the small, dark perfectly proportioned figure of a woman appeared above. She looked at the boat, then scrambled down the side of the rocky wall as if it had a ladder attached and dropped into the boat.

All three men were shocked at her appearance, MacDonald most of all. They had been warned of this, more or less, but seeing it was something else again.

Angelique and Maria hugged one another, and then the strange exotic-looking woman took a seat next to Maria and looked back at MacDonald with recognition in her eyes and a trace of embarrassment as well.

The detective stared at the strange newcomer as the men pushed out and then fought the increasing surf back to open sea and the trawler. He found it impossible to think of her as Angelique, for not a trace really remained. She was certainly exotic looking, and attractively so, but her skin was so dark and shiny it was almost a blue-black, the deepest and darkest coloration he’d ever seen in an area where ninety percent of everybody was “black.” Her hair was straight and long and even blacker than her skin. As she held on with the rest of them for dear life against the pitch and toss of the small boat, she betrayed strong muscles in her arms.

But what set her apart the most from others were the markings. Each cheek bore three stripes, each the thickness of a finger, running back nearly to her ears. The top was a deep blue, the second crimson, and the third yellow. They were regular and smooth, and slightly indented in the skin, as if a natural part of her face. Similarly, the nipples on her firm, hard breasts were ringed with the same three colors in the same order, and so, too, was her vagina, around which there seemed to be no pubic hair.

They made it to the trawler, but had some difficulty securing to the side so that they could all climb up the rope trellis let down for that purpose. The sea was getting rough indeed, and it took several tries before they could make it, MacDonald and one of the crewmen having to just about carry Maria while going up the bobbing ship’s side. Angelique seemed to have no trouble at all, and helped Maria to the deck. They then made it inside the cabin while the crew tried to lift and stow the dinghy.

Finally they did, and the captain immediately started forward, turning south and west to try and outrun the storm. There were suddenly a great number of voices yelling at once in Spanish, and Garcia came in, looking worried. “Senor Gregory! Two helicopters approach with strong searchlights! We do not like the look of this!”

MacDonald immediately made his way to the door, finding it hard to walk as the boat seemed to want to move in two dimensions at once, but he made it and looked out to where Garcia was pointing. There was no mistaking their nature or their intent.

One of the choppers approached close to the ship, and it was clear that the pilot was a very good one indeed to hold that thing in these winds.

The captain pulled back the sliding window to the left of the stick and looked back and shouted something in Spanish.

“They are ordering us to turn and follow them,” Garcia told him. “They want us and them clear of the storm and then we will stand to and be boarded. They say they are outfitted as helicopter gunships and in this weather are in no mood to argue!”

“I don’t blame ’em,” MacDonald replied. “Have the captain follow their direction for now. Have the men stand by their weapons but they are not to fire. Come on—let’s go up to the wheelhouse.”

As he said that, one of the helicopters let loose a tremendous but short burst, striking just ahead of the ship. There was no question that they were what they said they were. The captain didn’t have to have MacDonald’s instructions relayed, and he began to turn as instructed.

MacDonald made the wheelhouse and walked back to the marine radio. “This is a vessel of Panamanian registry in legal commerce in international waters,” he said, trying to sound as indignant as possible. “You have no right to order us about or fire on us. This is an act of piracy!”

“So yo ho ho and a bottle of rum,” somebody on the radio cracked back, apparently less than intimidated. “Now just don’t give me any of that legal shit or I might put a few hundred rounds in that wheelhouse. And nothing funny, see? Each of these choppers got two rockets underneath, any one of which could blow you all to hell. Just shut up and keep off the air waves and do exactly what you’re told to do.”

“He does not seem surprised to hear a Canadian accent,” Garcia noted. “I think we have been had, senor.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We expected something like this. Don’t think they got it easy up there. If you think this is rough, you should feel what they’re feeling. Those pilots are fighting a war just to stay up at all right now.” He stared at the helicopters at the window. “They got the missiles, all right, but they won’t use them. If they kill us, they kill who they’re after, too, and this all becomes a waste.”

“It seems we could knock them down with the machine guns,” Garcia noted, sounding almost wistful.

“No, not those babies. I don’t know which division of Magellan they got ’em from, but those are combat choppers. Armor plate, bullet proof glass, the works. We’d need good armor-piercing stuff to get anywhere inside them. Tell the captain not to hurry, though. Go as cautious and slow as they’ll allow and safety permits. If that storm comes in faster than we can get out of its way, they’ll either have to break off or go for a swim.”

The captain, an old hand, was already doing just that.

After several minutes in which the choppers took a real beating, the radio crackled, “Snap it up down there! You get cracking faster than that or we’ll put some rounds where they’ll do the most good and light a fire on your tail!” The message was repeated in perfect Spanish, just for emphasis.

“We may have to try and knock ’em down,” MacDonald said worriedly. “Let me get back and prepare the women, eh?”

He made his way back, and found them both sitting on the deck, holding on to whatever they could. As quickly as possible, he explained the situation to a very sick looking Maria, who tried to translate as much as she could.

“There are evil men in great metal birds that can shoot thousands of arrows in the blink of an eye,” she told Angelique. “They are making us run from the storm so they can take us back.’’

Angelique frowned and got up, then went to the window and looked out. She knew what helicopters and guns were even if there were no words for it, and she saw that all was not perfect with their tormentors. “How can they still fly in the storm?” she asked, and Maria translated.

“Not very well,” MacDonald replied. “They’re having a worse time up there than we are here, but we’re going out of the storm’s path.”

“She asks if they would fall to the sea if caught in the midst of the storm,” Maria told him.

“They aren’t made to take this kind of beating, yeah. But the storm’s on a different track. We’re going out of it.”

Angelique cast out her mind to the things and felt the evil there, but not evil of the depth she feared. She stepped back, grabbed a rail to keep standing, closed her eyes, concentrated, and began her soft chanting.

“Spirits of nature come to the Mother of Earth. Speak to the great storm. Tell him that his power is great and we are awed by its fury and also by its beauty. Beg for his great presence to come to me.”

The men on the ship and the men in the helicopters were suddenly aware of the clouds behind them. One by one, as they noticed, they turned and called to their fellows and pointed as the clouds rumbled and gathered and began to flow towards them at a fantastic speed. They seemed like something alive, something not altogether natural. In less than two minutes the storm had rolled over them like a great wave, and lightning and thunder rumbled all around them and strong rain pelted their frail vessels.

Angelique felt the tremendous power, but she no longer feared the elements. Before Greg could stop her, she opened the door and went out onto the deck and then aft. MacDonald followed her, but could hardly stand in the crash and roar of the storm that tossed the ship like some child’s toy in an immense bathtub. She, however, had no such problems, her bare feet sticking to the deck and fixing her firmly.

Both helicopters were in trouble, and clearly would have broken off if they could, but they were stuck in the midst of the ferocity. It was clear that neither would probably make it as it was, but Angelique was not going to let them go that easily. She felt supercharged, a tremendous exhilaration running through every fiber of her being. At last, again, she was not victim but in total control, and she relished the power.

She raised her arms over her head, palms out, oblivious to the wind and rain and the pitch and yaw of the ship. MacDonald and some of the crew watched as a great bolt of electricity seemed to arc down and strike those arms, and the small woman was bathed in an eerie green glow, while around her danced small globes of the same green fire.

Suddenly both hands went out in front of her, index fingers pointing at the two aircraft, and from her there seemed to shoot beams of green fire, leaping from her to the two helicopter gunships and bathing them in the same green glow. There were sounds from the aircraft that carried over even the roar of the storm, moans of protest as their power and electrical systems went out, leaving them helpless, yet suspended for a moment in that green glow.

Angelique dropped her arms to her sides, and the two helicopters crashed into the sea behind the trawler and erupted in tremendous explosions, sending bright fireballs into the sky.

MacDonald was transfixed by the display and not a little scared, but he finally moved towards her, soaked to the skin, pulling himself along on ropes rigged along the trawler for this purpose. The green had faded and vanished and the globes of green fire shot off back into the heart of the storm and disappeared. She turned to him now, and he saw on her face an expression unlike he’d ever seen on a human being before, a wicked, self-satisfied grin and eyes lit with joy. She herself frightened him more at this moment than the enemy did.

Forward, the captain had not seen the full display but he’d seen the helicopters fall and heard their demise and he was taking full advantage of it. He brought the ship around into the wind and prepared to ride out the storm, but before he could do more than take the elementary precautions the storm clouds rolled back in unnatural motion, a reverse wave returning to its original course, and the wind died down and the rain stopped.

MacDonald stared into those strange, large brown eyes not quite daring to think, but he knew he had to snap out of it. With great effort he turned and made his way forward again. She followed him, holding on to the rope now herself but in a more casual manner than he found necessary. He opened the door and she re-entered the cabin, but he then continued on forward and entered the wheelhouse.

Garcia saw him, and saw his expression, but did not press it. “The radar is showing the storm receding rapidly to the northwest,” the navigator informed him. “There are several large and small vessels but a few kilometers to the south, though. One or more must be the one they were herding us toward. What should we do? If we can see them, then they can see us.”

The very news that they weren’t out of danger yet seemed to jolt him out of his daze and bring him back somewhat to reality. “We can’t afford to meet them, and they have this ship marked now. We have to—”

At that moment the captain let loose a string of Spanish that even MacDonald knew contained some choice expletives.

“Three small craft have detached themselves from the largest vessel and are headed our way,” Garcia told him.

“Probably small gunboats. How close are we to the mainland at this point?”

“About thirty kilometers, senor. Over two hours in this sea. They will catch up to us before that.”

He was all business now and thinking fast. This sort of situation was one in which he was at his best, and the pressure and continued danger helped shove the fear of other things back from his mind. “We’re already in somebody’s territorial waters. Whose?”

“Venezuela, senor.”

“Get on the radio. Call the Venezuelan Coast Guard on the emergency frequency. Identify yourself, give your position, and state that you have come under sttack by pirates. Ask for protection if possible.”

“But they will hear, too!”

“Yeah, I know. That doesn’t matter. Do it!”

Reception was poor; there was still a lot of electrical interference from the storm and its aftermath, but Garcia finally got through. A Venezuelan navy destroyer answered, being closest to them, and after an exchange of positions they headed for it.

There were suddenly other voices on the channel, all talking furiously in Spanish.

“They are identifying themselves as Caribean Pact Security Forces and state that they are not pirates but in pursuit of a criminal ship. They ask that the Venezuelan forces stand down and allow them to reach and board us.”

They all sweated the next few minutes. MacDonald was counting on the Venezuelan captain, who now had two different versions to contend with and had to make a decision. He did, and it was the only one he could have made under the circumstances.

“Capitan Gonsalves has replied,” Garcia told him. “He says that this is all in Venezuelan territorial waters, that our registration checks out, and that the Caribbean Security Forces have no jurisdiction here, which is true. He demands that their forces break off and retreat to international waters. They are protesting. They do not like being told what to do.” Garcia was grinning.

MacDonald turned to watch the radar screen. For a while, the three small blips continued to close on them, and he began to fear that they were going to take their chances with the destroyer. He knew that on their mother ship they were radioing for instructions and calculating the odds.

“The captain is getting very upset and a little bit nasty,” Garcia told him. “National pride is at stake now. He has threatened to call for air support if they do not break off immediately and vacate the area.”

For a few more anxious seconds, the blips continued to close, and were now almost certainly within sight of the trawler. Then they peeled off and took a wide circle, and reformed heading back towards the mother ship. The relief and jubilation on the bridge was a tangible thing.

Now they had only the destroyer to worry about.