“You really want him to go back to Russia, Nigel?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“He won’t go. He swore he’d never go back. I loved the lunch and the wine, but it was a waste of time. Thanks all the same, but he won’t go. Not for money, not for threats, not for anything.”
A cab came. They shook, Jordan climbed in and the cab drove off. Sir Nigel Irvine crossed the street to the Four Seasons. He had some phone calls to make.
CHAPTER 11
THE FOXY LADY WAS TIED UP AND CLOSED DOWN FOR THE night. Jason Monk had bidden farewell to his three Italian clients who, although they had not caught much, seemed to have enjoyed the outing almost as much as the wine they had brought with them.
Julius was standing at the filleting table beside the dock, slicing off the heads and removing the offal from two modest-sized dorado. His own back pocket contained his wages for the day plus his share of the gratuity the Italians had left behind.
Monk strolled past the Tiki Hut toward the Banana Boat, whose open-sided plank-floored drinking and dining area was thronged with early imbibers. He walked up to the bar and nodded to Rocky.
“The usual?” The barman grinned.
“Why not, I’m a creature of habit.”
He had been a regular for years and there was an understanding that the Banana Boat would take calls for him while he was at sea. Indeed its telephone number was on the cards he had placed with all the hotels on the island of Providenciales to attract clients for a fishing charter.
Rocky’s wife, Mabel, called over:
“Grace Bay Club called.”
‘‘Uh-huh. Any message?”
“No, just call ‘em back.”
She pushed the telephone she kept behind her cash desk toward him. He dialed and got the operator at the reception desk. She recognized his voice.
“Hi, Jason, had a good day?”
“Not bad, Lucy. Seen worse. You called?”
“Yeah. What you doin’ tomorrow?”
“You bad girl, what had you in mind?”
There was a scream of laughter from the big, jolly woman at the reception desk of the hotel three miles down the beach.
The permanent residents of the island of Provo did not constitute an enormous group, and within the community serving the tourists who made up the island’s sole source of dollar income, just about everyone knew everyone, islander or settler, and the lighthearted badinage helped the time go by. The Turks and Caicos were still the Caribbean as it used to be: friendly, easygoing, and not in too much of a hurry.
“Don’t you start, Jason Monk. You free for a client tomorrow?”
He thought it over. He had intended to spend the day working on the boat, a task that never ends for boat owners, but a charter was a charter and the finance company in Miami that still owned half the Foxy Lady never tired of repayment checks.
“Guess I am. Full day or half day?”
“Half day. Morning. Say about nine o’clock?”
“Okay. Tell the party where to find me. I’ll be ready.”
“It’s not a group, Jason. Just one man, a Mr. Irvine. I’ll tell him. Bye now.”
Jason put the phone down. Single clients were unusual; normally they were two or more. Probably a husband whose wife did not want to come; that was pretty normal too. He finished his daiquiri and went back to the boat to tell Julius they would have to meet at seven to fuel up and get some fresh bait onboard.
The client who appeared at a quarter to nine the next morning was older than the usual fisherman, elderly in fact, in tan slacks, cotton shirt, and white Panama hat. He stood on the dock and called up: