Dead in the Water

Caribbean desk that an innocent American citizen is about to be hanged in St. Marks. Demand that they call the secretary of state and have him bring to bear every ounce of influence he can muster. No, wait—first call the chairman of the SenateForeign Relations Committee—it’s Jesse Helms, God help us—and get him to call the secretary of state. Call Senators Dodd and Lieberman of Connecticut and get them onto him as well. Hell, tell them to call the president.”
    “You think they’ll do that?”
    “They might; we have to try. Call both Phil Woodman and Max Weld and see if you can get them to make some calls. Then call your PR people and tell them to start calling reporters at home and the wire services. We need an all-out mobilization between now and tomorrow morning. Everything should be directed to the prime minister of St. Marks; it’s all in his hands now. Tell the PR people to call travel editors, too; we’ve got to let them know that hanging Allison will kill their tourist business. Jim Forrester is calling a couple of them.”
    “Who?”
    “Forrester is down here doing a piece for The New Yorker, but he’s done a lot of travel writing.”
    “Okay. Anything else?”
    “Anything you can think of, Bill. I’m absolutely desperate, and we don’t have a minute to waste. I want the prime minister to wake up tomorrow morning to the sound of his phone ringing; I want his fax machine flooded with indignant letters; I want to scare the living shit out of him.”
    “I’m on it.” Eggers hung up the phone.
    Stone switched off the satellite phone and started getting Allison’s things together.
    It was nearly midnight when Stone drove up to the jail door and found it locked. He rang the bell for threeminutes before a sleepy, barefoot cop opened the door. “What do you want, mister?” he demanded.
    “My name is Barrington; I’m Mrs. Manning’s lawyer. I want to see her.”
    “You can’t do that, man; we’re shut down for the night. Anyway, she’s asleep; you don’t want to wake her up, do you?”
    Stone shoved the duffel through the door. “Will you see that she gets these things, then?”
    “Okay, I’ll do that first thing in the morning.”
    “Thank you, and will you tell her I was here? Tell her not to worry; everything is going to be all right.”
    The man looked surprised. “You want me to tell her that? Everything ain’t going to be all right, you know.”
    “Just tell her what I said, please.”
    “Okay, okay. Good night now.” He closed the door and shot the bolt.
    Stone got back into Thomas’s car and drove back to the marina, worried, exhausted, and barely able to keep his eyes open.

Chapter
59
    S tone got five fitful hours of sleep aboard Expansive, then threw himself into a cold shower so that he would be fully alert. He made some coffee, ate a muffin, and started making lists of things to do. At 7:00 A.M. he called Bill Eggers.
    “Where are we?” he asked.
    “Okay, here’s a rundown. I couldn’t get to Senator Helms, but I did get to one of his staff; I told him the prime minister was a suspected communist.”
    “Good going.”
    “Woodman and Weld were also going to call him. I talked to the duty officer at the State Department and he put me through to the head of the Caribbean desk at home. He promised to try to get permission to send a cable in the secretary of state’s name. I’ll call him back after nine to see how he did. Oh, Woodman called the president last night; he was unavailable, but he did getthe White House chief of staff on the line, which is almost as good. He had seen the 60 Minutes report and promised to get some sort of protest out first thing this morning.”
    “That’s wonderful, Bill. Anything else?”
    “The PR people have been on it all night; they’ll report to me at the office at nine. I’m afraid we’re going to miss a lot of morning editions, but they think we’ll make some of them.”
    “Hilary Kramer promised me she’d get us in the Times this morning.”
    “Hang on,” Eggers said, “I’ll see.” He was gone for a moment, then returned. “She made the front page, lower right-hand corner, continued inside. It’s good stuff, Stone, and she quoted you about every American sending a wire.”
    “Thank God we made that one.”
    “I’m sure we’ll be all over the morning television shows, too; you want to be interviewed over the phone?”
    “I’m going to be too busy; you do it.”
    “If they’ll talk to