Shooting Script

EIGHTEEN

I got the Mitchell off the ground just before the first airliner from Miami got in, and had an interesting flight to Port Antonio – nearly fifty miles east along the coast from Ochoríos- with the loose hydraulic pipes sealed off with corks and the wheels hanging down all the way. But at least J.B. had been right about the newspapermen: they were filling the Myrtle Bank like thirsty locusts when I got back in the afternoon, queueing up on the bar stools to borrow the phone and ring home to say it was a great story and send more money.

They were right, too, although the best of it was in the diplomatic rumpus, which mostly by-passed Jamaica. Venezuela kicked off by sounding worried about the safety of its citizens, but a little embarrassed about them turning out to be Repúblicarevolutionaries. The Ingles/Jiminez family was less inhibited, and came in calling the Repúblicarégimeseveral things – all of which were probably true, but hardly rare in that part of the world. And dead on cue, the Repúblicaboosted its own tough image by carefully muddling who'd insulted them and inviting Venezuela to step outside and say that again – remembering, of course, that 'outside' was a safe 500 miles of sea.

That took the first two days, after which the Ministry of Foreign Insults in each country handed the file down to the clerks to keep the row going for the usual fortnight with the usual notes and leaks.

With all this going on, nobody even tried to tie Whitmore in with the political side of Diego's death. After all, you don't suspect Hollywood of revolutionary politics any more than you do the Catholic Church. Sure, some film stars have friends on the shady side of the street, but how about the Church in its time? In Hollywood, a rebel is still a man who drives a Porsche instead of a Jaguar and comes to cocktail parties in a dirty tee shirt.

Even I got off lightly. The newspapermen came in with a fixed idea about me: with my Korean experience, I was obviously a restless-war-hero-looking-for-trouble. But that itself made me conventional and dull – they'd spent years writing the same story about pilots who'd flown for or against Castro. With the diplomatic fuss, the family angle and Whit-more there wasn't much room for me anyway.

Nobody went near Port Antonio.

Come Sunday lunch time most of the journalists had got all the local colour, heat, and smell they could stand from Kingston and had either flown home or evacuated to the north coast to pester Whitmore. So I was quietly waterlogging my sorrows in the Myrtle Bank when J.B. came on the phone telling me to turn out and help a company car meet the five o'clock plane.

Apparently somebody from the Jiminez/Ingles family was flying in from Caracas to collect Diego's body, and since the film company was shooting that day, it was thought that I'd add tone to the proceedings by forming a guard of honour. Myself, I wasn't so sure, but she'd rung off before I could think up an excuse. So by five I was waiting outside Customs in my Sunday suit, at least seven-eighths shaven and three parts sober.

I missed her the first time. Rather, I didn't exactly miss her – I'd have to be blind to do that – but I didn't immediately think of her as somebody who'd come to collect a corpse. Although shewas dressed in black: a silk sheath dress high at the neck and nearly as high at the knees, a black silk headscarf, and a vast black crocodile handbag.

I was looking at her in the general way you look at Caneton a l'orangeeven when you know you're going to have the hamburger, when she caught my eye, came straight over and asked:'Capitán Carr?'

'Uh… just Keith Carr. You're Miss… ah…' I tried to remember just what Diego's namehad been, after all.

But she stuck out a slim brown hand and said:'Juanita Jiminez.'

I just waved my head up and down. At a distance she'd been attractive; close up, she had the punch of a thirty-millimetre cannon. I was trying to work out how this girl could be Diego's sister. Well, maybe they had the same dark hair and big dark eyes, and if you had hauled Diego's stomach up eighteen inches and split it into two… Her centre of gravity was definitely forward. It's a good thing on aeroplanes and women both.

I came awake abruptly and said: 'There's a company car outside. If you'll point out your luggage, I'll put it aboard and the driver'll take you wherever you're staying.'

'But you're taking me there, aren't you?' The dark eyes looked infinitely sad.

'Am I? Where?'

'The Shaw Park.' Spanish-style, she rolled several imaginary R's at the end of Shaw. 'It's beyond Kingston, I think.'

J.B. might at least have told me. 'It's sixty miles beyond-' Then I started thinking what else I'd rather do that evening than ride sixty miles over the hills pointing out the sights to Miss Jiminez.

I nodded. 'Of course.' I went to collect her luggage. Perhaps she had owned it already, but it looked very much as if she'd bought it especially for the trip. It was black, brand new – and crocodile skin. The two cases, with their stainless-steel fittings, must have cost a good £500.

When I got it back to base, the party had grown: the inspector and the sergeant. I still couldn't remember their names, so I just said hopefully: 'You've met, have you?'

The inspector coughed and said heavily: 'You're looking after Miss… ah… Jiminez, I gather.'

'That's right.'

'I was just asking what she could tell us about her brother's… ah… activities. It might give us a lead.'

'I understand, Coronel,'she said sadly, 'that he was murdered by gangsters from the República. Have you caught them yet?'

He coughed awkwardly. 'Well… no, not yet, quite. Trouble is, Mr Carr didn't find your brother's… ah… your brother until twenty-four hours later.' He gave me a look which made the whole thing my fault.

She looked at me soulfully. 'And you were teaching him to fly, Capitán?'

'That's right.' I looked back at the inspector. 'Although I didn't know what it was for.'

She said: 'He was very devoted to his father's cause.'

Well, maybe – after women and his Jaguar E-type. But I stayed shut up. After a time, the inspector said gallantly: 'Well, a man should be-' then caught the sergeant's eye, and added: 'Depends on what cause, of course.'

Nobody said anything and we had a bit of rich dark Spanish gloom. Then the inspector said: 'So you can't think of anybody your brother knew particularly in Kingston?'

'Only Capitán Carr, Coronel.'

He grunted. I noticed he wasn't objecting to the'Coronel'title. After a little more gloom, he said: 'If you want to make arrangements for your… ah… brother, I see no objections. I've already spoken to the coroner and since there's obviously no possible dispute over the… ah… cause of death, he's been released for – well, you can make any arrangements you like. The inquest may. be delayed.'

And I could guess why. After three days of international politics and American journalists over a murder he'd probably decided was unsolvable, the last thing he'd want would be to remind everybody about it by staging an inquest in a hurry. This one was an inquest that would take up five minutes of a wet Monday morning in the middle of the next banana-loading strike.

'Please call on me at any time,' he finished – a little hopefully, I thought. She gave him a vast sad smile and he rocked, lifted his hand to salute, remembered he was in plain clothes, and tottered away with the sergeant loping after him.

She said contemptuously:'They will never catch them.'

I didn't think so myself, but all I did was make soothing noises and start humping her cases towards the exit.

Around the Palisadoes road and through Kingston itself I, kept talking and pointing out the sights – mostly to give my hands something to do apart from grab. The back seat there, with her tight skirt riding up a little beyond loud-hailing distance of her knees, was definitely a one-thought situation.

She listened, nodded, and smiled politely until Tom Pringle's Cotton Tree on the Spanish Town road finally exhausted my local knowledge. Then she said calmly: 'Now you will fly the bomber instead of Diego?'

I jumped and looked quickly at the driver. But I'd forgotten that it was one of those old-fashioned long Cadillacs some Jamaican car-hire firms use – with a glass partition behind the driver. Closed.

Still, our security didn't sound too good if the news had already spread as far as Caracas.

I asked cautiously: 'Why d'you think that?'

Her eyes got wide, and maybe a little disappointed. 'But of course, Capitán- I assumed it. You will want to revenge Diego.'

Well – that or get my Dove back or something. I nodded.

She smiled, then said thoughtfully: 'It is very good. It is the classic use of air power, as your Lord Trenchard said. To destroy die enemy air force on the ground.'

I said: 'Huh?'

'Indeed, it is the most pure of all tactics. Captain Liddell Hart wrote it: "fixing combined with die decisive manoeuvre". You are fixing the enemy's attention with your frontal attack, my father is manoeuvring on the flanks, one might say, to bring about Clausewitz's "decisive battle".'

This time I didn't say anydiing. I just let my jaw dangle against my chest. After a time she noticed my expression had changed from the hungry leer which I'd been wearing ever since we met, and asked: 'You know Clausewitz, of course, Capitán?'

'He was die German general who… well, it was in Napoleon's time, wasn't it?'

'He wrote On War,' she said, a little austerely.

'Yes, I expect he did.' Not quite my brightest and best remark, but I was still going through die disorientated feeling you might get if die aeroplane had suddenly decided to fly backwards.

'But you must have read his books in your Air Force. He has been much misunderstood, but he is still the basis of all strategy.'

I nodded helpfully. 'I'm sure diey read him at dietop of the RAF but I was pretty close to die bottom. They didn't consult me much on strategy.'

She frowned. 'Was that why you left your Air Force?'

I waved a helpless hand. 'Look -1 was just a pilot. A bullet. The air marshals pulled the trigger and I went where I was pointed. That's all.'

But that wasn't quite the impression I'd planned to give. I'd been diinking more along die lines of The Dashing Debonair Aviator Flying Fearless Into The Eye Of The Hurricane.

The hell with you, Clausewitz. I hope your tent leaked oncampaigns and your publishers cheated you on royalties.

'Now that,' I said, pointing, 'is the original church of Spanish Town. You should see some of the inscriptions on the gravestones from the plague days-'

'Your Lord Nelson was here before he became a Lord, I think,' she said.

'Yes, that's down at Port Royal-'

'He was not a strategist, of course, but a very good tactician.'

I thought of asking whether she meant Trafalgar or Lady Hamilton, but decided not to. I said: 'At one time, Spanish Town was the capital of-'

She said: 'Only the Nile and Copenhagen were his important battles of course. In each he used the factor of surprise in the most interesting way…'

In the next hour I learnt a lot about Nelson. I also picked up some good stuff about Marlborough, the Schließen Plan, the two Moltkes, Foch, and Hannibal.

Somehow, it still wasn't the car drive I'd planned.