The Cry of the Halidon: A Novel Read online

  PRAISE FOR ROBERT LUDLUM

  “Don’t ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “The Obi-Wan Kenobi of spy novelists.”

  —USA Weekend

  “Robert Ludlum is the master of gripping, fast-moving intrigue. He is unsurpassed at weaving a tapestry of stunningly diverse figures, then assembling them in a sequence so gripping the reader’s attention never wavers.”

  —The Daily Oklahoman

  “Robert Ludlum [is] the master of large-scale intrigue.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  THE CRY OF THE HALIDON

  A Bantam Book/December 1996

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1974 by Jonathan Ryder

  Introduction copyright © 1996 by Robert Ludlum

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81382-4

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Part One: Port Antonio/London

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two: Kingston

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Three: The North Coast

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Four: The Cock Pit

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Dedication

  Excerpt from The Bourne Identity

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  A number of years ago—a quarter of a century to be precise—an author barely in his forties was so exuberant over the fact that he had actually published two novels that, like an addict, he relentlessly pursued the source of his addiction. Fortunately, it was the narcotic of writing, chemically not dangerous, mentally an obsession. That obsessed author, me, is now far older and only slightly wiser, and I was exhilarated until I was given a gentle lecture by a cadre of well-meaning publishing executives. I was stunned—walleyed and speechless.

  Apparently, it was the conventional wisdom of the time that no author who sold more than a dozen or so books to his immediate family and very close friends should write more than one novel a year! If he did, he would automatically be considered a “hack” by “readers and critics alike.” (I loved this last dual-persona, as expressed.) Such writing giants of the past came to mind, like Dickens, Trollope, and Thackeray, fellows who thought nothing of filling up reams of copy for monthly and weekly magazines, much of said copy excerpts from their novels in progress. Perhaps, I thought silently, “hack” had a different meaning then, like in “he can’t hack it,” which implies that to “hack” is good, as opposed to “he’s a hack,” obviously pejorative. It was all too confusing, and, as I mentioned, I was speechless anyway. So I said nothing.

  Nevertheless, I was the new kid on the block, more precisely on Publishers Row. I listened to my more experienced betters and submitted The Cry of the Halidon as written by someone called “Jonathan Ryder,” actually the first name of one of our sons and a contraction of my wife’s stage name when she was a popular actress in New York and its environs.

  I’d be foolish to deny the influence this novel had on subsequent books, for it was the first time I actively forced myself to research obscure history along with the roots of myth as opposed to well-documented, if difficult to unearth, historical records. For me, it was terrific. My wife, Mary, and I flew to Jamaica, where most of the novel was to take place. I was like a kid in a giant toy store. There was so much to absorb, to study! I even stole real names before I learned you weren’t supposed to do that without permission. For example, “Timothy Durell,” the first character we meet in the book, actually was the youngest and brightest manager of a large international resort that I’d ever met; “Robert Hanley” is a pilot in the novel and was, as well, in everyday life. Among other detours, Bob ferried Howard Hughes around the Caribbean, and was on Errol Flynn’s payroll as his private pilot when the motion-picture star lived in Jamaica. (Other liberties I really should not reveal—on advice of counsel.)

  Of course, research is the dessert before an entrée, or conversely, the succulent shrimp cocktail before the hearty prime rib, the appetizer leading to serious dining. It is also both a trap and a springboard. A trap for it ensnares one in a world of geometric probabilities that an author resists leaving, and a springboard for it fires one’s imagination to get on with the infinite possibilities a writer finds irresistible.

  The first inkling I had regarding the crosscurrents of deeply felt Jamaican religiosity and myth came when my wife and I took our daughter, along with the regal lady who ran the kitchen at our rented house, to a native village market in Port Antonio. Our young daughter was a very blond child and very beautiful (still is). She became the instant center of attention, for this was, indeed, a remote thoroughfare and the inhabitants were not used to the sight of a very blond white child. The natives were delightful, as most Jamaicans are; they’re gentle, filled with laughter and kindness and intelligent concern for the guests on their island. One man, however, was none of these. He was large, abusive, and kept making remarks that any parent would find revolting. The people around him admonished him; many shouted, but he simply became more abusive, bordering on the physical. I’d had enough.

  Having been trained as a marine—and far younger than I am now—I approached this offensive individual, spun him around, hammerlocked his right arm, and marched him across the dirt road to the edge of a ravine, I sat him down on a rock, and vented my parental spleen.

  Suddenly, he became docile, trancelike, then started to chant in a singsong manner words to the effect of: “The Holly dawn, the Hollydawn, all is for the Hollydawn!” I asked him what he was talking about. “You can never know, mon! It is not for you to know. It is the holy church of the Hollydawn! Obeah, Obeah. Give me money for the magic of the Hollydawn!”

  I realized he was high on something—grass, alcohol, who knows? I gave him a few dollars and sent him on his way. An elderly Jamaican subsequently came up to me, his dark eyes sad, knowing. “I’m sorry, young man,” he said. “We watched closely and would have rushed to your assistance should you have been in danger.”

  “You mean he might have had a gun, a weapon?”

  “No, never a gun, no one allows those people to hav
e guns, but a weapon, yes. He frequently carries a machete in his trousers.”

  I swallowed several times, and no doubt turned considerably paler than I had been. But the episode did ignite the fuses of my imagination. From there, and courtesy of Bob Hanley and his plane, I crisscrossed the infamous Cock Pit jungles, flying low and seeing things no one in a commercial airliner could ever see. I traveled to Kingston, to waterfronts Bob thought I was nuts to visit. (Remember, I was much, much younger.) I explored the coves, the bays, and the harbors of the north coast, questioning, always questioning, frequently met by laughter and dancing eyes, but never once hostility. I even went so far as to initiate negotiations to purchase Errol Flynn’s old estate, when, as I recall, Hanley hammerlocked me and dragged me back to the plane under sentence of bodily harm. (Much younger!)

  I was having so much fun that one evening, while sipping cocktails in the glorious glow of a Jamaican sunset, Mary turned to me and, in her delightfully understated way, said, “You were actually going to buy the Flynn estate?”

  “Well, there is a series of natural waterfalls leading to a pool, and—”

  “Bob Hanley has my permission to severely wound you. Your right hand excepted.” (I write in longhand.) “Do you think you’ll ever start the novel?”

  “What novel?”

  “I rest my case. I think it’s time we go home.”

  “What home …?”

  “The other children, our sons.”

  “I know them! Big fellas!”

  Do you get the picture? Call it island fever, a mad dog in the noonday sun, or a mentally impaired author obsessed with research. But my bride was right. It was time to go home and begin the hearty prime rib.

  While rereading this novel for editorial considerations, I was struck by how much I’d forgotten, and the memories came flooding back over me. Not regarding the quality of the book—that’s for others to comment on one way or another—but the things I experienced that gave rise to whole scenes, composite characters, back-country roads dotted with the great houses and their skeletons of bygone eras, the cocoruru peddlers on the white sandy beaches with their machetes decapitating the fruit into which was poured the rum … above all the countless hundreds of large dark eyes that held the secrets of centuries.

  It was a beautiful time, and I thank all those who made it possible. I hope you enjoy the novel for I truly enjoyed working on it.

  Robert Ludlum

  Naples, Florida

  January 1996

  ONE

  PORT ANTONIO/LONDON

  1

  PORT ANTONIO, JAMAICA

  The white sheet of ocean spray burst up from the coral rock and appeared suspended, the pitch-blue waters of the Caribbean serving as a backdrop. The spray cascaded forward and downward and asserted itself over thousands of tiny, sharp, ragged crevices that were the coral overlay. It became ocean again, at one with its source.

  Timothy Durell walked out on the far edge of the huge free-form pool deck, imposed over the surrounding coral, and watched the increasing combat between water and rock. This isolated section of the Jamaican north coast was a compromise between man and natural phenomenon. Trident Villas were built on top of a coral sheet, surrounded by it on three sides, with a single drive that led to the roads in front. The villas were miniature replicas of their names; guesthouses that fronted the sea and the fields of coral. Each an entity in itself; each isolated from the others, as the entire resort complex was isolated from the adjoining territory of Port Antonio.

  Durell was the young English manager of Trident Villas, a graduate of London’s College of Hotel Management, with a series of letters after his name indicating more knowledge and experience than his youthful appearance would seem to support. But Durell was good; he knew it, the Trident’s owners knew it. He never stopped looking for the unexpected—that, along with routine smoothness, was the essence of superior management.

  He had found the unexpected now. And it troubled him.

  It was a mathematical impossibility. Or, if not impossible, certainly improbable in the extreme.

  It simply did not make sense.

  “Mr. Durell?”

  He turned. His Jamaican secretary, her brown skin and features bespeaking the age-old coalition of Africa and Empire, had walked out on the deck with a message.

  “Yes?”

  “Lufthansa flight sixteen from Munich will be late getting into Montego.”

  “That’s the Keppler reservation, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. They’ll miss the in-island connection.”

  “They should have come into Kingston.”

  “They didn’t,” said the girl, her voice carrying the same disapproval as Durell’s statement, but not so sternly. “They obviously don’t wish to spend the night in Montego; they had Lufthansa radio ahead. You’re to get them a charter—”

  “On three hours’ notice? Let the Germans do it! It’s their equipment that’s late.”

  “They tried. None available in Mo’Bay.”

  “Of course, there isn’t.… I’ll ask Hanley. He’ll be back from Kingston with the Warfields by five o’clock.”

  “He may not wish to.…”

  “He will. We’re in a spot. I trust it’s not indicative of the week.”

  “Why do you say that? What bothers you?”

  Durell turned back to the railing overlooking the fields and cliffs of coral. He lighted a cigarette, cupping the flame against the bursts of warm breeze. “Several things. I’m not sure I can put my finger on them all. One I do know.” He looked at the girl, but his eyes were remembering. “A little over twelve months ago, the reservations for this particular week began coming in. Eleven months ago they were complete. All the villas were booked … for this particular week.”

  “Trident’s popular. What is so unusual?”

  “You don’t understand. Since eleven months ago, every one of those reservations has stood firm. Not a single cancellation, or even a minor change of date. Not even a day.”

  “Less bother for you. I’d think you’d be pleased.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s a mathematical imp—well, inconsistency, to say the least. Twenty villas. Assuming couples, that is forty families, really—mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins … For eleven months nothing has happened to change anyone’s plans. None of the principals died—and at our rates we don’t cater exclusively to the young. No misfortunes of consequence, no simple business interferences, or measles or mumps or weddings or funerals or lingering illness. Yet we’re not the Queen’s coronation; we’re just a week-in-Jamaica.”

  The girl laughed. “You’re playing with numbers, Mr. Durell. You’re put out because your well-organized waiting list hasn’t been used.”

  “And by the way, they’re all arriving,” continued the young manager, his words coming faster. “This Keppler, he’s the only one with a problem, and how does he solve it? Having an aircraft radio ahead from somewhere over the Atlantic. Now, you’ll grant that’s a bit much. The others? No one asks for a car to meet them, no in-island confirmations required, no concerns about luggage or distances. Or anything. They’ll just be here.”

  “Not the Warfields. Captain Hanley flew his plane to Kingston for the Warfields.”

  “But we didn’t know that. Hanley assumed that we did, but we didn’t. The arrangements were made privately from London. He thought we’d given them his name; we hadn’t. I hadn’t.”

  “No one else would …” The girl stopped. “But everyone’s … from all over.”

  “Yes. Almost evenly divided. The States, England, France, Germany, and … Haiti.”

  “What’s your point?” asked the girl, seeing the concern on Durell’s face.

  “I have a strange feeling that all our guests for the week are acquainted. But they don’t want us to know it.”

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  The tall, light-haired American in the unbuttoned Burberry trench coat walked out the Strand entrance of the Savoy Hotel. He stopped
for an instant and looked up at the English sky between the buildings in the court. It was a perfectly normal thing to do—to observe the sky, to check the elements after emerging from shelter—but this man did not give the normally cursory glance and form a judgment based primarily on the chill factor.

  He looked.

  Any geologist who made his living developing geophysical surveys for governments, companies, and foundations knew that the weather was income; it connoted progress or delay.

  Habit.

  His clear gray eyes were deeply set beneath wide eyebrows, darker than the light brown hair that fell with irritating regularity over his forehead. His face was the color of a man’s exposed to the weather, the tone permanently stained by the sun, but not burned. The lines beside and below his eyes seemed stamped more from his work than from age, again a face in constant conflict with the elements. The cheekbones were high, the mouth full, the jaw casually slack, for there was a softness also about the man … in abstract contrast to the hard, professional look.

  This softness, too, was in his eyes. Not weak, but inquisitive; the eyes of a man who probed—perhaps because he had not probed sufficiently in the past.

  Things … things … had happened to this man.

  The instant of observation over, he greeted the uniformed doorman with a smile and a brief shake of his head, indicating a negative.

  “No taxi, Mr. McAuliff?”

  “Thanks, no, Jack. I’ll walk.”

  “A bit nippy, sir.”

  “It’s refreshing—only going a few blocks.”

  The doorman tipped his cap and turned his attention to an incoming Jaguar sedan. Alexander McAuliff continued down the Savoy Court, past the theater and the American Express office to the Strand. He crossed the pavement and entered the flow of human traffic heading north toward Waterloo Bridge. He buttoned his raincoat, pulling the lapels up to ward off London’s February chill.

  It was nearly one o’clock; he was to be at the Waterloo intersection by one. He would make it with only minutes to spare.