The Liquidator

Four

By the time we were back at the mooring late that night, Nathaniel seemed to have forgotten the ugly little incident on Block Island. He was as serene and self-possessed as ever as we walked into the darkened house, and when I did a quick check of the rooms, he looked at me with a kind of amusement.

“One cannot live in constant fear of assassination, you know,” he remarked. “Otherwise, what’s the point of living? We do the nasty little jobs we do and are more or less prepared for the consequences. So do a great number of other people in this world. And just imagine. Mr. McKee, how it would be if we all worried about who might be lurking around the next corner. Why, who would possibly have the gumption to run for president? Will you join me for a sandwich and some coffee?”

During the next few days, when we weren’t sailing I was studying, mostly catalogues and old clippings about the New York Boat Show. Nathaniel had a file drawer stuffed with working designs of every imaginable type of sailing craft, from day-sailers to ocean-going trimarans, together with photographs and advertisements from newspapers all over the country. We visited a number of boatyards in the vicinity, inspected hulls of those boats that were hauled out and the interiors of a whole lot of others. A couple of times he took me to Christie’s, a sprawling restaurant on a dock in Newport where the service and food were superb, and where you could run into a stray yachting Vanderbilt or a fuzzy-cheeked ensign from one of the local Navy bases. Nathaniel knew them all, and after a couple of visits I was pretty well established in my cover role as Daniel McKee, yacht broker from the west coast of Florida. I was even beginning to believe it myself.

The “exam” at the yacht club wasn’t all that easy. The members were men who knew their boats; they weren’t dockside cocktail-partiers, and the only yachting cap I saw was nailed to the wall above the bar. Nathaniel led the conversation at a big, round table, guiding it casually — maliciously, I thought — into technical areas where I was forced to come up with some answers. I guess I passed, because nobody in the crowd looked dubious. At any rate, when we left — very late — Nathaniel clapped me on the shoulder and looked very pleased. Walking back to his house, we stumbled in the sand a lot and I don’t know which of us held the other up.

It was still dark when an urgent pounding on my door woke me up. My head was a little fuzzy — they didn’t stint on the bourbon at that club — but I was on my feet instantly.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“Nick!”

“I’m Dan!” I snarled back.

“Yes, yes,” Nathaniel said. “But you have to get up and get moving.”

“Now?” I wondered what else he was going to put me through.

“It’s urgent. You’re to catch a flight for Tampa, and we barely have time to make it to the airport.”

“Tampa?”

“I don’t know why. David just called, and it’s top priority. Now get dressed. Hurry!”

Tampa, I thought as I shucked out of my pajamas. This was becoming one of the most confusing assignments I’d ever been on. And if the job was in Greece, I sure wasn’t getting any closer to it.