The North-east Trade winds sweep three thousand miles across the Atlantic before they hit the coconut and casuarina trees that guard the silver beaches of Barbados. Promotion brochures call the island ‘paradise island’ and ‘island in the sun’. The English came to the island in 1625. Cotton, sugar and African slavery came a few years later. Independence followed in 1966.

  Edge and Ben Jones sat in Ben’s rum shop at Fustic Corner drinking and having lunch.

  “Independence been around for a long time but I don’t know if it change things much,” Ben was saying. “Don’t get me wrong, the young people getting big money, new cars and regular shopping trips to Miami, but the island still isn’t theirs.”

  Edge took a bite out of his lunch and washed it down with ice water. The afternoon sun sent ripples of heat dancing above the asphalt road in front of the shop. A plane roared overhead. The engines changed pitch as the pilot cut his speed for the final run in to Grantley Adams International Airport.

  “The old colonial shadow still falls over Barbados. The white people still own Bridgetown, the Brits and the Canadians own the banks and hotels and the economy relies on foreign investment more and more every day.”

  Edge looked up from his plate. “I’m not so sure what you’re talking about is unique to Barbados.”

  “The politicians and the economists are in their pockets too,” Ben said. “We have so much o’ them on the island that you can’t throw a rock in Bridgetown without it hitting an economist and bouncing off and cutting a politician. You know that one of them politicians even change the name o’ the village he born in from Pennyhole to Gemswick? He say that ‘wick’ is the olde English for ‘village’.”

  “What is he? Some kind of nut?”

  Ben shrugged. He filled Edge’s glass with more water and ice.

  “How’s tourism going?” asked Edge.

  “We getting a lot o’ tourists. And why not? Their dollar is worth two of ours. Rum is cheap. Sun is Free. And the beach boys are young and strong.”

  Edge waited.

  “The beach boys here are priceless,” started Ben. “They with woman all night, sleep late, pop vitamin pills and drink linseed. Some o’ them so organized that they only take women who got references.”

  “You’re kidding,” Edge said.

  “You don’t know this thing,” Ben said. “The women go back and tell their girlfriends and they come down and ask for these same boys. Sometimes them picture come down before them.”

  The new entreprenurial class. Edge smiled.

  Ben was talking again. “The wife does put she husband on the golf course and on the deep sea fishing boat and she in the room loading. The husband does put the wife on the beach to tan and he in the room loading the maid.”

  “Seriously Ben,” Edge asked. “How widespread is this thing?”

  “I mean everybody that come down here ain’t part of the package.” Ben sipped his drink.

  “I hear we found oil in St. Phillip,” Edge said.

  “Oil and gas,” Ben said.

  A little girl came into the shop. She ordered fifty cents in biscuits. Ben dispatched her and came and sat down again and poured another drink.

  “Doctor stop me from drinking this thing,” he said. “But I can’t mind he.”

  He looked at Edge over the top of his glass. “Man you don’t know how glad I is to see you,” he said.

  “It’s good to see you too, Ben,” Edge said.

  There were a lot of things about the island that Edge hadn’t realized he missed. Things like the laughter and the warmth of the people, and that special feeling of belonging.

  “I don’t feel too bad for an old man,” Ben said. “Course I got to leave the women alone nowadays.”

  “Yeah,” Edge said. “I believe you. You leave woman alone? Not you. Those grey hair might fool some people but they can’t fool me.”

  Ben laughed. “We got a lot of drinking to catch up on. You ever went across to the continent while you were in England?”

  “I went across a few times,” Edge said. “It was okay.”

  Edge stared into the bottom of his glass of water. He had picked up the Dover-Ostend ferry one afternoon, then thumbed his way to the Mediterranean. He had planned to travel down beyond the Sahara but war stopped him in Port Said. He spent a year there before going back to England and meeting Tamora. It was months before he realized that she was an agent for the Kenyan Government. She was in London gathering intel on Sudanese rebels that were mounting attacks on Southern Sudan through Kenya. Their relationship brought Edge to the attention of the SPLA. If it wasn’t for an SPLA agent pulling him out of a deadly situation with some Sudanese muscle, he may not have made it back from England.

  Edge’s mind drifted once more. “If it’s an assassin you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong man.”

  The High Commissioner shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not that. We’re setting up an Intelligence Bureau. Something quite small and compact. Responsible to the Prime Minister.”

  Edge studied the man behind the desk. The High Commissioner was about sixty. He had a cropped moustache, dark framed glasses and hair that was just beginning to turn grey.

  Annoyance flickered briefly in the eyes behind the glasses and was gone. The smooth face was as bland as before, and the eyes held only a weary patience.

  The High Commissioner raised his right hand to his temple. It was a soft, long fingered hand, with polished nails and rings on the fingers. He rubbed his fingers gently into the hair at his temple. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The hard-pressed diplomat knocking himself out in the service of his country. Edge felt almost sorry for him.

  They were in the office of Franklyn Somerset, High Commissioner of Barbados to Britain, Cyprus and Australia, and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to France, Sweden, Norway, Israel, Turkey and the European Community.

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  Somerset’s eyes fluttered open. A smile flickered across his face. It wasn’t a smile, really, Edge thought. It was more a sudden, fleeting change of expression that broke the wide expanse of smooth-jowled urbanity.

  “Let me give it to you from the top,” he said. “The Caribbean is changing fast. There’s global terrorism, drugs, Mafia money, multinational corporations. There’s also interest from China and the CIA. Our traditional law enforcement agencies cannot deal with those things. The Defence Force is a part-time affair. Its members shoot off blank ammunition on national holidays and go to camp once a year. That’s about it. The Police have been trained to track down petty criminals and nothing more.”

  Somerset paused and rubbed his temple again. “Of course there’s also Special Branch and the National Intelligence Committee. The Prime Minister is scrapping the Committee. All it ever does is push paper.”

  Somerset stared at a painting of an old Barbadian sugarmill on the opposite wall.

  “The CIA has its fingers all through the region and into South America tracking drug running, elections and political coups,” he said. “We can’t rely on foreigners to keep us informed anymore. It’s time we looked after ourselves.”

  “Have you looked around the Post Office?” Edge asked.

  Somerset pursed his lips. “We combed the Civil Service. We didn’t have any luck.”

  “Who’s the man in charge?”

  “We brought in a man on contract,” Somerset said.

  “Fellow named Hervey. Ex-M.I.6. Used to head the Caribbean Station of the British Secret Service at one time.”

  Somerset’s finger traced an invisible pattern on a folder that lay on his desk.

  “I know what you are thinking,” he said. “But there are a couple of things. The British are no longer an imperial power, and so are unlikely to mount operations in the Caribbean. Hervey has the experience and the background to get this idea going. And he is on contract. If you take the job, you’re number two until he goes.”

  “Somebody put you on to me,” Edge said. “Who?”

Somerset tapped the folder on his desk. “It’s all here,” he said. “Paratroopers. London Transport. School. Your time in Kenya. Everything you’ve done since coming to London. Everything that matters, that is.”

  Well at least they got some of it right, Edge thought.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.

  Somerset lit a cigarette. He blew smoke through his nostrils and looked past Edge at a spot on the wall.

  “Scotland Yard,” he said. “If they had anything on you, you bet your life they would have come after you.”

  Edge shrugged. He didn’t really care. With Tamora gone, that old restless feeling was hitting him again.

  “I’ll take the job,” he said.

  The Bureau’s cover name is Sterling Industrial Consultants and the office is on Roebuck Street.

  “The local CIA is our first target,” Hervey was telling Edge.

  Hervey was tall and thin, with a bony face, jutting nose and silver hair brushed straight back from his forehead. He wore a cream shirt and a navy-blue tie. Edge waited. Special Branch had already told them that the Political Officer at the Embassy was the CIA man on the island.

  “I was thinking about the field office,” Hervey said. “The man at the Embassy is chiefly liaison. They couldn’t risk him in a clandestine op.”

  They stuck a tail on one of the known CIA agents and he led them to others, and they in turn to people higher up. After three months of possibilities they were down to four; a university professor on contract from Northwestern University, a missionary, a retired American businessman and the general manager of an American subsidiary. The computer eliminated the missionary and the retired businessman. The other two were put under long-range surveillance. Three weeks later, Edge was ready.

  “Audel Firkhin, Caribbean Imports,” Hervey said. “And from the look of these transcripts he is regional coordinator as well.”

  The next day, a man phoned the police and told them a bomb was planted in Minerva House. Caribbean Imports was on the second floor of Minerva House. The bomb disposal squad spent four hours inside the building.

  Edge, Hervey and Audel Firkhin sat in the Conch Shell in Bridgetown.

  Audel Firkhin said: “Make it quick you guys.”

  “I’m offering you a job,” Hervey said.

  “Tell me another,” Firkhin said. “I like to laugh.”

  Firkhin had pale blue eyes and his ears stood out from his head like sails in a strong breeze.

  The Bureau had taken a week to sift through the information Edge had taken from the safe in Firkhin’s office.

  “You’re finished here,” Hervey told Firkhin.

  Firkhin had been reaching for his drink when Hervey spoke. He pushed the glass away. A shadow crossed his face.

  “That bomb scare,” he said. “That was arranged for my benefit.”

  Hervey ignored the comment. “They’re going to love you in Washington when they hear you’ve been blown,” he said.

  Hervey studied the back of his hands. “Of course, since we are both more or less on the same side,” he said. “We can dispense with the unpleasantness,” He looked at Firkhin.

  Hervey’s accent reminded Edge of British officers in World War II films. The heir of Waterloo, fish and chips and nine hundred years of Anglo-Saxon culture hamming it up for the yokels, he thought.

  “All we want is your co-operation,” Hervey was saying.

  Firkhin’s head jerked like a stable-horse scenting smoke.

  “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind,” he said.

  “I’m not asking you to betray anybody,” Hervey said quietly. “You have access to information we don’t even know exists. I’m just asking you to be neighbourly. Anything you feel we ought to know, tell us. I want us to be friends, that’s all.”

  Firkin leaned back in his chair. He tried hard to contain the relief that showed on his face.

  “Anything I pass on to you guys will have to be okayed from Washington first,” he said.

  “Of course,” Hervey said. “I quite understand that.”

  “Any news on Foegel?” It was Edge.

  Play him gently, Hervey had said. Don’t lean on him too hard. We don’t want him to panic. We want him on our side, but we don’t want to put him up against a wall. Foegel was a freelance gun. The intelligence services threw him the jobs that were too dirty for their own people. Between jobs, he worked part-time as an enforcer for the Mafia-king controlling the Montego Bay-Fort Lauderdale drug run. He was suspected of killing one of Firkhin’s men in Antigua. The Agency had said: Get Foegel.

  Firkhin had become perfectly still at the mention of Foegel’s name.

  “Get Foegel,” Hervey said gently. “And they’ll make you a general or whatever.” He held Firkhin’s gaze. “I’ll trade him with you, but I won’t give him to you for free.”

  The silence lasted a long time. Finally Firkhin said:

  “You got a deal.”

  “He’ll be on the yacht ‘Nymphette’ leaving Caracas for St. Lucia Thursday next week,” Hervey said. “He’s yours.”

  “How did you find Foegel?” Edge asked. He and Hervey were walking back to the car.

  “The Director of the Caribbean station of the British service is an old friend of mine,” Hervey said. “Foegel used to do the odd job for him before he went bad.”

  “Before who went bad? Your friend or Foegel?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You fingered Foegel, stuck him aboard a yacht and now Firkhin’s waiting for him,” Edge said.

  Hervey shrugged. “Foegel knows the rules. A hatchetman has no friends.”

  Firkhin sent Edge a bottle of bourbon whiskey a week later. Edge knew the Foegel case was closed.

  He came out of a restaurant and there was a package on the seat of his car. The doors were still locked. There was no sign of forcing. He was dealing with a pro. That ruled out any possibility of a bomb. He untied the package. There was a phone inside with a note. The note read: “Graves End. Tomorrow. 1300 hours.” Firkhin hadn’t bothered to sign it.

  A dozen sun-and-fun fanatics from up north were toasting themselves on beach towels. A few heads bobbed in the blue-green water. The line of yachts riding at anchor beyond the breakers hardly seemed to move. Firkhin would be on one of them, he guessed – with a full supply of martinis and sun-tan lotion. He turned on the phone. It was one o’clock. The phone rang and Edge answered it.

  “You’re having a visitor,” Firkhin said. “Bandit. Barracuda Reef.” He gave Edge the date and time.

  “Nothing much ever happens here,” Ben’s voice snapped Edge back to the present. “Nothin’ much ever happens. Not like in them big countries.”

  “Yeah,” Edge said. “It’s real quiet here.”

  He finished his water and stood up. “Got any mauby left?” he asked Ben.

  Ben reached under the counter for a glass. He filled it with mauby from a cooler in the corner.

  “Best mauby this side of Canaan,” he said. “Good for the heat. Cool you down real good.”

  “How much do I owe you?” Edge asked.

  “This was my treat,” Ben said. “You buy next time.”

  “Well, what can I say?”

  “Don’t say nutten, man. Come around again soon.”

  They shook hands and Edge went down the steps to the car.